"When the Badger Grows Horns" 5/5
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Epilogue
Shitsílí Shíká Doogááł
“By yon bonny banks and by yon bonny braes / Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond....”
Joe Winchester sighed as he watched his grandson standing by the corral and singing softly to one of the horses-Sam’s favorite horse, Aggie. She’d been Sam’s high school graduation gift.
Now she and Dean were mourning together.
“Where me and mo bhràthair will never meet again / On the bonny, bonny banks o’ Loch Lomond....”
Joe still remembered the Christmas when Sam finally got tired of Dean’s whistling the AC/DC version of the old Scots tune and forced him to learn the lyrics. And laughed when Dean said, “Dude, that’s depressing.”
When had they learned Gaelic? He’d never noticed them speaking it before.
“Ye’ll take the high road... and I’ll take the low road... And I’ll be to Lawrence afore ye....” Dean’s voice cracked, and Aggie gently nuzzled his shoulder as he began to cry quietly.
If history was any guide, this would be the last time Dean would speak English until he worked through his grief.
Joe was suddenly aware of someone else standing beside him-the Bóhólníihii bidiyingo yá Dį́’íjį́ Nida’anish who looked like some Bilagáana accountant, the one Sarah’s kids called Bináá’ yágo dootł’izh... Castiel, that was his name. He’d shown up several times when John’s boys were visiting these last two years, but this was probably the first time since the world... didn’t end four days earlier.
“I thought he was in Indiana,” the angel said in Diné bizaad.
“Indiana?” Joe asked. “Hait’éegochą’?”
“There is a woman there whose son might be Dean’s. Sam made him promise to try to live a normal life with her.”
Aggie nudged Dean, and he climbed onto the top rail of the fence and then onto Aggie’s bare back. She looked back at him, but he simply sat there, listlessly stroking her mane. The horse then looked at Joe and Castiel for a moment and took off for the other side of the corral, jumped the fence, and cantered off into the hills.
“She can wait,” Joe declared. “We can give him normal here. Sam was always the one who wanted the city house and the white picket fence, thought that would solve everything. Dean remembers a time when it didn’t.”
Joe also remembered the year after Mary died, when Dean refused to speak English-if he spoke at all-because English was his mother’s language and it made him cry. However much he’d tried to hide it, and as much as he loved his mother and her heritage, Dean’s heart had always been closest to his father’s people. And Joe knew that when Dean had given up hope and planned to say yes to Michael, just hours before Sarah’s grandson Adam had disappeared, Sam and Castiel had intercepted Dean in Jericho, Texas, because Sam knew that the last stop on his farewell tour was going to be Dinétah.
Castiel nodded thoughtfully as he watched Dean and Aggie disappearing into the distance. “Yes. It will be better this way.” Then he turned and laid a hand on the wall of the hooghan, letting out a brief burst of white light.
“Why did you do that?”
“I have placed wards upon your hooghan. Dean will be safe here for as long as he wishes to remain.”
Joe frowned. “I thought the war was over.”
Castiel shook his head. “We have stopped the Apocalypse, but Heaven and Hell are in disarray. There may yet be demons and other monsters who will try to kill Dean, or to kill you in order to torment him. I am needed elsewhere and can no longer watch over him in person.”
Joe glanced back out at the hills and sighed, then turned back to Castiel. “Will you stay for lunch, my grandson?”
Castiel nearly smiled. “Thank you, my grandfather. I will.”
The land was Sarah’s now, since both Emily and her mother had passed on during the famine, and the hooghan that John had grown up in had been torn down because they hadn’t been able to get Emily to the hospital in time. But Sarah had insisted that Joe build a new hooghan for himself nearby for the boys’ sake. “We’re the only family they have,” she argued, “the only constant thing in their lives except for Bobby Singer, especially now that John is dead. If we change too much... they may not survive.”
Neither of them had known then how right she was.
Dean stayed on the ranch all summer, leaving the Impala under a tarp and riding only horses, helping tend the livestock and doing chores and growing nearly as brown as his Chee cousins. He refused to go into town except at greatest need, unwilling or unable to face being called Monster Slayer, hailed as a hero by the elders, or having to answer questions about Sam under any of his nicknames-and the Holy People have mercy on anyone but Joe who mentioned the scar on Dean’s left shoulder or asked whether he knew what had happened to Adam. And as when Mary died, Dean spoke only Diné bizaad the entire time, even with Castiel, who came to visit at least once a week and quickly became just as much a part of the family as Dean was.
When the heat started getting bad around mid-June, Joe suggested that they consider moving into Sarah’s house, which had air conditioning. Dean responded by building a summer hooghan by himself, which Castiel warded while muttering something about St. Anthony.
“I think he wants to suffer,” Castiel explained when Joe cornered him about it. “He knows that Sam wanted him to be able to get out of hunting, to go on living, but he can’t let himself enjoy modern comforts knowing that Sam’s in Hell. He thinks he doesn’t deserve it.”
It wasn’t just air conditioning, either. Joe managed to convince Dean not to drown himself in alcohol, but Dean would often ride out into the hills with minimal provisions and a handgun and knife, sometimes on one of his own horses but often on Aggie, and stay away for two or three days at a time, and Joe had no way of knowing what he did out there. Castiel did report that he wasn’t doing anything to break his final promise to Sam, but they were both worried about him.
And then, one evening at the end of September, Joe heard Dean shouting something in the distance and ran outside to see Aggie returning at a gallop with not one rider, but two-and the second....
“Shinálí hastįį! Shinálí hastįį! Shoo, shoo! Naaltsoos-miil shaa níyá!!”
Joe could scarcely believe it, but it was true. Even from a distance, there was no mistaking Thousand Books for anyone else.
Dean had his hands full getting Sam into the hooghan, however. Still wearing the clothes he had supposedly died in, Sam was pale, disoriented, and shaking as if he hadn’t eaten in days; his eyes were glassy and unfocused, and he could neither follow what Dean was saying to him in Diné bizaad nor put together a coherent sentence in any other language. Dean, for his part, seemed to have forgotten his other native language entirely and kept fussing at Sam in Diné bizaad. It wasn’t until Joe grabbed the arm that wasn’t around Dean’s neck and pulled it across his own shoulders, ignoring the fact that Sam smelled like Iwo Jima, that Sam managed a “Grandpére?”
French. That was a new one. Fortunately, Joe knew just enough French to be able to answer, “Oui, c’est moi” as they all but carried Sam into the hooghan.
And that seemed to flip a switch for both boys.
“Y’r accent’s t’rr’ble, G’n’pa,” Sam slurred.
“So’s yours, Sasquatch,” Dean shot back, and they settled him beside the hearth.
“Howw’d you know, D’n?”
“Dude, you sound like you’re drunk.”
“Nnngh... tha am pathadh orm.”
Dean swallowed hard and replied, “Dè ghabhas tu?”
“Uisge.”
“Glè mhath.” Dean shot Joe a worried look and got Sam a glass of holy water.
Sam took a sip and frowned. “D’you put corn pollen in this?”
Dean blinked. “No. Why?”
“Tastes funny.” But he drank the rest of it in one gulp. “Guess my taste buds are kinda messed up.”
“Hell will do that to you.”
Sam handed the glass back to Dean. “Ahéhee’. I’m gonna pass out now.” And he did so, nearly knocking Joe over in the process.
“’Swhy we call ’im Thousand Books-that’s how much he weighs,” Dean grumbled, but Joe could still see the concern in his grandson’s green eyes.
“A thousand paperbacks don’t weigh that much,” Joe teased and got an amused glare for his trouble. “Since when do you two speak Gaelic?”
Dean sighed and started working Sam’s jacket off. “Sammy was... twelve, I guess? Wanted to do a report on Scotland for World History, and Bobby suggested he try learning a little Gaelic to impress the teacher. Sam asked me to help him practice, and... next thing I know, we’re speaking it to each other all the time, and Dad comes back from a hunt lookin’ at us like we’re nuts.” He shrugged. “We’re Campbells, Grandfather. We just... wanted more of a heritage than soup can labels.”
Joe laid a hand on Dean’s right shoulder. “Mary would be proud of you both, my grandson. So would your father. So am I.”
Dean looked up at him then and whispered, “Ahéhee’, shinálí hastįį.”
Together they got Sam stripped to his boxers, and Dean gave his brother a gentle sponge bath and washed his long hair in a basin while Joe took his sulfurous clothes outside to air and retrieved his duffle from the trunk of the Impala. They had just gotten him into a clean T-shirt and shorts and onto a bed when Castiel appeared.
“Shoo, Cas,” Dean whispered, gesturing toward his sleeping brother.
“I am glad, Dean,” Castiel replied gently. “He did not deserve to die.” After a pause, he continued, “I’m sorry, but I have bad news. Crowley is holding Bobby’s soul for ransom.”
Dean frowned. “Can he do that?”
“It depends on the terms of the contract, and of course he won’t let me see it. But he is demanding that Bobby give him a powerful artifact that even I can’t find. If Bobby doesn’t come up with it in two weeks, Crowley will kill him.”
Dean spat a Gaelic curse. “Can you heal Sam? Kid deserves a break, but we can’t let Bobby die.”
Castiel touched two fingers to Sam’s forehead, and the boy’s hazel eyes were clear when he sat up and blinked at the angel. “Cas? What... what are you doin’ here? What’s goin’ on?”
“Bobby needs us,” Dean replied, handing Sam a clean pair of jeans. “I’ll explain on the way.”
“Bobby’s alive?”
“Yeah, but not for long if Crowley gets his way.”
Sam echoed Dean’s Gaelic curse and threw on his jeans, socks, and boots while Dean stuffed his own possessions back into his duffle.
“Sorry to leave like this, Grandfather,” Dean said, giving Joe a one-armed hug. “We’ll be back for Thanksgiving, I promise.”
“What do you want me to do with Sam’s clothes?” Joe asked.
“Burn ’em,” the brothers chorused-and oh, Joe had missed their speaking in stereo.
Castiel stepped toward Dean. “Dean, I could....”
“We’re driving,” they chorused again.
Sam hugged Joe and accepted his duffle. “Love you, Grandpa.”
“Hágoónee’, shinálíké,” Joe replied.
And then they were out the door, Dean calling over his shoulder, “Sołtį’, Cas!”
Castiel hesitated, but Joe chuckled. “Go, Castiel. I’ll see you at Thanksgiving.”
“Hágoónee’,” Castiel nodded and vanished.
As the familiar roar of the Impala’s engine reached his ears, Joe stepped to the door of the hooghan and waved goodbye to his grandsons... all three of them. Monster Slayer, Thousand Books, Blue Eyes. Between them, they had saved the world, though Joe didn’t quite understand how it had all happened, and he had no clue as to how Sam, beyond all hope, had returned to them.
Aggie was still standing near the door looking bewildered, forgotten in all the excitement. And as Joe walked her back to the corral, a badger came out of the brush to investigate the commotion-a very plain badger that showed no signs of growing horns.
Joe sighed and looked down the road again at the cloud of dust obscuring the Impala. And he wondered... without their Diné family to keep them sane, could Sam and Dean still have won their war?
He decided he’d rather not know.
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