Let's Not Call It a Game - Prologue
She’s gone.
John can feel it in the subtle changes in the air. He doesn’t need to check the hospital, much less the children’s ward, but he does it anyway. Sees the kids that were nothing but pale shadows of real children when they were admitted, sitting up in their beds, eating, smiling, getting better.
He wants to feel happy for them, happy for their families.
All he really feels is the bitter taste of smoke in the back of his throat while the black hole inside his chest sucks more and more matter into itself.
The children of Fort Douglas might be getting better, but that only means other children in other places are going to die.
White lights, sucking children dry, taking everything from them until they’re only pale shells and then taking that as well.
White lights hovering over little boys in their sleep while their fathers are away and their brothers don’t do a thing about it.
A quick jolt of terrified anger, his fingers crush the half-smoked cigarette he’s holding and then he’s dry heaving over the nearest trashcan. There’s nothing there to bring up, but that doesn’t stop his body from trying; twisting and turning his guts until his palms hurt from holding too tight onto the cold, rusty metal.
Nobody really pays attention to a guy who looks like death warmed over being sick in a hospital parking lot. John isn’t sure how that’s supposed to make him feel. He coughs one last time to make sure his stomach is done trying to climb out of his body before he slowly rights himself.
His heart is clenching in a way that makes his head spin, pumping blood and thoughts through his mind at a speed he can’t keep up with.
He wants to haul ass to Blue Earth and make sure Dean never dares to so much as think about not following orders again.
He wants to drink himself stupid for leaving his kids alone when he knew there was a kid killing monster on the loose.
He wants Sammy in his arms, warm and strong and not dead.
John doesn’t know how his messed up thoughts translate to stumbling towards the nearest phone booth, but the next thing he knows he’s leaning up against the graffitied glass, digging through his pockets for some change.
A used condom is stuck to the floor, halfway hidden under John’s boot. He tries to make himself care but his foot just doesn’t slide to the side.
His fingers move over the dial plate off their own accord, finding their way to Bobby Singer’s number through muscle memory alone. Which is probably a good thing because John couldn’t help them much with the way his thoughts are simultaneously too fast and not moving at all.
Bobby answers his phone in the usual gruff, this better be important or else way John’s come to expect from him.
John needs more intel on the shtriga. He needs Bobby to figure out where she went and how John can find her and rip her heart out through her throat before she can put her ugly hands on his Sammy again. His voice is unsteady, stumbling as he fills Bobby in on this cluster fuck of a failed hunt.
And then suddenly Bobby stops grunting and starts yelling.
“You did what?” he spits, the shout merging with the constant static of the ancient phone. “They’re boys, John, not bait.”
John slams down the receiver before Bobby’s quite done threatening to load his shotgun and track down John’s sorry ass to the last corner of the country.
Suddenly John feels like his knees are about to buckle, like he’d be on his way to breaking his nose on the filthy floor if he weren’t surrounded by an inch of plexiglass on every side.
He rests his forehead against the inside of the booth, closes his eyes until he doesn’t feel like passing out anymore. His fingers are cold inside his jacket pockets, cold and trembling and God, he needs a drink.
He wasn’t using them for bait. He wasn’t, but maybe leaving them alone the way he did is even worse.
He’d been hunting the thing for three days straight, hadn’t even thought of the dangers until suddenly he did. He came rushing back to the motel room, just in time to find the shtriga bent over Sam’s bed, just in time to see Dean frozen with his hands around his shotgun.
They taught them not to dwell on what ifs, several lifetimes ago when he was fighting another war. John didn’t listen. Not when Deacon took a bullet to the shoulder because John couldn’t stand where he was fucking told to stand and not now.
John tries to push the thought away but it rolls over his defenses, dark and strong and oh so ugly.
It doesn’t matter that keeping the boys safe should be John’s responsibility. John’s the dad and when he tells Dean to do something simple, like keeping his ass inside a fucking motel room for a couple of days, it’s Dean’s job to do that, yessir, no questions asked.
John lets his head fall against the plexiglass wall, takes deep breaths, in through his nose, out through his mouth, even though the smell of sex and inner-city decay is almost enough to make him gag again.
He breathes slowly, carefully, but all he ever thinks about is Sammy, grey and pale and dead, Dean with that look on his face. That look John’s seen in country, plastered all over the faces of scared kids who couldn’t pull the trigger when they still had the chance. Dead kids.
I just went out.
Just for a second, I’m sorry.
John knows he can’t go back to Blue Earth right now. Not with his fists screaming for him to hurt something, to break and tear until he can’t feel the hole inside him anymore. He goes back now, he’ll unleash it all on Dean, not the licking he probably deserves for falling out of line, but something dark and ugly that John doesn’t even want to think about.
He stumbles out of the phone booth, suddenly overwhelmed by the need for fresh air and finds himself on his knees in the damp October grass, right back to retching.
He needs a bar fight.
There’s a bar, just down the street (because doctors and nurses need somewhere to forget about their depressing-as-fuck jobs as well, right?). It’s barely after noon but the place is full with people like John, desperate and alone, grieving or just waiting for someone to tell them it’s okay to go home. John Winchester pisses people off even when he isn’t trying, so when he goes out of his way for a fight it’s a done deal.
|Part I|