SPN Fic: The Messenger (Gen, R, Pre-series, John and Castiel)
This one is for seferin, who made me some really, really awesome icons from two Jeff clips I really wanted iconed. He wanted to see how John would respond to Castiel, and I actually wrote a MUCH longer story about exactly that --- one that turned into how John and Jim would respond to Castiel if Castiel showed up with nefarious intent toward Sam --- but it didn't want to refine itself just yet, so until it does, it's on my hard drive, marinating in its own angst. In the mean time, I decided to tell this one because it seemed to be willing to be told without turning itself into a fucking novel in the process. Because the whole "John/living" thing requires, logically, for Castiel to be using someone other than Jimmy as a vessel, if you're looking for a John-Castiel interaction that looks a little more like Jeffrey Dean and Misha, you might try Leave No Man Behind, which is a VERY different story, and also one in which John is not living, so Castiel need not be in a vessel other than Jimmy.
So anyways ...
Title: The Messenger
Author: Dodger Winslow
Genre: Gen
Rating: R (language)
Word Count: 5,300
Disclaimer: I don't own the boys, I'm just stalking them for a while ...
Summary: He is here. He is watching.
The Messenger
If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, John would never have believed it. Dean knew better … he’d known better since he was four.
"Hey!"
John’s voice cut through the crisp autumn air like a scythe. Dean flinched-he’d better fucking flinch-and took an instinctive step back from the man crouched before him like some kind of oversized bird in a trench coat. The man himself didn’t respond to John’s belligerent hail except to turn his head, look at John like he was considering one of several options.
"You," John added with almost as much sharp as grim. "Get the fuck away from my kid."
The man still didn’t move, but Dean did, scrambling a hasty retreat as John bore down on them in the new dark like the wrath of heaven come calling. It was half past dusk, and-but for his boys and this man he’d never seen before-the playground was as empty as a beach in winter. John shifted the bag of groceries in his arm, freed up his right hand to pull the silver-loaded nine mil from where it was nestled cold and solid against his spine if the need to do so arose.
He was almost to them, almost close enough to get his own body between Dean and whatever this jackass had in mind, when Sammy spotted him and let out a squeal that sounded a bit like a piglet put to a hard boot. Someone else might have mistaken that sound as distress, but John knew his two-year-old’s collection of squeals, squalls and wails by heart, and he recognized this one for exactly what it was: delight. Hanging upside down, swinging by the knees from the uppermost bars of a jungle gym that looked like the pain-in-the-ass portion of an obstacle course John might have navigated in boot camp a decade ago, Sammy squealed a second time, just in case the dead people the next county over missed hearing him the first time. His chubby little face broke to a face-eating grin as both arms shot over his head-down in the direction of the blacktop-with all ten fingers already splayed wide in something Dean called, not inaccurately, grabby-hands.
"Daddy!"
At peril of courting another, louder squeal of less-than-delighted outrage, John ignored the summons to face off against the man rising to meet him. "Who are you? What do you want? Why are you talking to my son?" The questions were ground fire to cover a quick, updating glance at Dean. Verifying his wide-eyed six-year-old had backpedaled far enough to clear the kill zone, he turned his full attention back to the stranger amongst them. "Well?" he prompted tersely as he slipped between his sons and this as-of-yet unassessed threat, using himself as a shield to protect his boys from bearing witness to anything he didn’t want them to see, or becoming collateral damage to any throwdown that might blow up from still seas on less than a moment’s notice.
The man didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he cocked his head to one side, studied John like some kind of science experiment gone awry. It wasn’t a look John particularly appreciated. It reminded him too much of Sammy … Sammy who, even at two-going-on-too-damn-big-for-his-britches, was already starting to look at John the same way: like whatever he was saying, it was so far out of line that even a toddler could tell he was full of shit and making do.
"Don’t look at me that way," John snapped. "And answer the fucking question. Who are you, and what in the hell do you think you’re doing?"
Up close and personal, the man didn’t look like much of a threat. He was clean-shaven and well groomed, his eyes too clear and his manner too calm to be either high or hunting. The suit under his trench coat was rumpled; his shirt, unbuttoned at the collar; his tie, pulled loose and hanging askew. He was shorter than John, and slight-maybe a hundred and fifty pounds, soaking wet-and had the complexion of a man who read books for a living, and the hands to match. The blond comb-over didn’t hide enough to do him any favors on the middle-age crisis front, and he was wearing his wire-rimmed glasses the way old ladies do: low enough on his nose to afford a better view over them than through them. All in all, he looked more like an on-the-dole tax accountant than he did any particular brand or stripe of pervert; but John took no comfort in that. He’d waxed enough monsters over the past two years to know the worst of them had a nasty habit of looking like anything but the bad-ass kid killers they inevitably proved out to be.
"I mean Dean no harm," the stranger said calmly.
John tensed from neck to knees. What the fuck?!? Dean told this guy his name?!? Jesus Christ, he was lucky the guy didn’t have candy, or a puppy, or both. He was lucky he’d showed up when he did; lucky this douchebag-in-a-raincoat got his rocks off talking instead of doing.
Dean knew better than this. He knew better.
John glanced at his son, caught Dean staring at him like some cherry-popped FNG waiting for permission to breathe again after his first brush with the black pajama brigade in the bush. He wanted to yell at the kid, but he didn’t; wanted to demand an explanation for such a catastrophic breach of protocols, but he didn’t. He swallowed instead, put it all in the "later" file and did his best to focus on the clusterfuck at hand.
"Take your brother and get in the car," he ordered. "Lock the doors. I’ll be there in a minute."
Unless he was actively hunting, John always left the Impala’s keys with Dean. It was their SOP and had been since the beginning: a matter of course so habitual it ran a close second to breathing. The car was more than just a ride or a weapon’s cache; more than just a mobile home or a touchstone to Mary and the life they’d had before it was murdered out from under them. It was their fallback position. The damn thing was a safe house on wheels, sigiled out the ass and blessed from timing belt to hubcaps. Between he and Bobby and Jim, they’d booby trapped the old girl inside and out; made her a deathtrap for-or at least a rebarbative defensive barrier to-any kind of evil that heaven or hell could imagine … and a few they hopefully couldn’t.
"I didn’t-" Dean started.
"Now!" John snapped and regretted it before the word had finished dying in his mouth.
Dean flinched at the anger in John’s voice and didn’t say anything more in his own defense. He didn’t have to. The sound he made was enough to put John down for the count. Somewhere between a whimper and a whine, it came from his chest instead of his mouth, so quiet in the uttering that John could barely hear it. But he did hear it. He heard it with every bone in his body, took it like a beating in how much it stood as a tactile reminder of the unfathomable despair that had burned Dean mute for almost a year after Mary’s murder. He’d started making that sound right before he started talking again, and it scared John soulless to think such a road marker on the way out might also be one on the way back in.
John’s jaw flexed. His teeth clenched. "It’s okay, son," he revised, his throat painfully tight with the effort it took to curb his tone back to moderation. "I’m not mad. You didn’t do anything wrong. Just take your brother and get in the car. Do it now, Dean. Do it right now."
"Yes, sir," Dean whispered.
The Impala’s keys jingled when Dean dug them out of his pocket. The muttered conversation between his boys was too low to actually hear-nothing more than shapeless whispers in the dark, really-but even so, it painted such a clear picture in John’s mind that he didn’t need to see it to know it was accurate. Without looking, John would have bet his kidneys his here-to-fore irrepressible two-year-old was hiding behind a three-inch diameter pole like a bear cub behind a birch tree. Cut as suddenly subdued by his dad’s tone as a brother who was still ten hours silent for every ten minutes spoken, that toddler would be holding onto the pole with chubby hands like it was his one anchor in an unexpected windstorm, shaking his head vehemently at every damn thing his brother said in an effort to get him moving the right direction.
There was no moving Sammy when Sammy didn’t want to go. Not unless you had a better than thirty-year headstart on the kid when it came to being a stubborn jackass, and not unless you outweighed him by at least a buck and a half and change.
"Want Daddy," Sammy announced in a tearful stage whisper, verifying John’s assessment of how much his Tasmanian devil of a two-year-old could resemble a turtle when threatened. Dean said something John couldn’t make out, and Sammy responded to it with another, more belligerent, "Want Daddy!"
A turtle with the temperament of a jackass.
"Go with Dean, bud," John said, never taking his eyes off the stranger in front of him. "I’ll be there in just a minute."
"Want you," Sammy whined. "Want Daddy."
That statement alone was an indication of exactly how much fear John had managed to inflict on his own kid-kids-by forgetting they weren’t grunts. Forgetting that their instinct would be to freeze when frightened, not flee; that the kind of tone you used to motivate a soldier to obey didn’t motivate a kid to do anything but crap his pants and cry for mommy … or daddy, as the case may be.
"Want Daddy," Sammy wailed, find his groove now and playing it for all it was worth. "Want Daddy. Want Daddy. Want Daddy."
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, Sammy didn’t want a damn thing to do with his old man. He wanted Dean. Only Dean. Exclusively Dean. It was only when he was truly scared-or when Dean was scared-that his demands turned from Dean to Daddy, from comfort to safety, from love to protection.
Because safety, in this particular instance, was with Dean and not him, John countermanded his kid’s instinct for survival-Sammy not possessing that particular instinct, as put to evidence by his willingness to blat like a lamb tied to a post so every fucking predator in the tri-state area knew he was alone and vulnerable-forcing his tone hard enough to break his two-year-old’s heart when he said, "Stop it, Sammy. Go with Dean. That’s an order."
Sammy’s reverence for orders was just about as well developed as his instinct for survival. "Want you," he insisted tearfully. "Want Daddy."
"I said stop it," John repeated. He gave the kid a little anger to go with his rebuff this time. Anger scared Dean, but it didn’t scare Sammy. Present blatting to the contrary, there wasn’t much that actually did scare Sammy … nothing but something that scared Dean enough for the both of them. Anger did, on the other hand, piss Sammy off. It put his back up, insulted him that whatever he’d done deserved anger in your eyes rather than the unqualified praise and adoration he took as his God-given due. "No arguments," John added. "Go with Dean, and do it now."
Dean was quick to step in and fill the vacuum John created by telling his kid to fuck off when all he wanted was comfort and a little reassurance. "Come on, Sa…bud," Dean urged. And this time, Sammy went with him.
John listened to Dean herd his brother to the car, listened to him use the keys to open the door so he could hoist Sammy inside and crawl in after him. He slammed that door behind them and locked it. Bunkered them in for the duration. It was only after John had heard all four locks snap into place that he let himself even consider relaxing, even consider talking to this stranger as if he might be something other than the piece of shit John had assumed him out of self defense.
And he did consider it. Considered it for several seconds, in fact, before he decided to stick with aggression and belligerence anyway.
Aggression and belligerence were his strong suits; and the simple truth was, regardless of what else this man might be? He was also a fucking idiot. And perhaps an even simpler truth was that John didn’t really give a fuck about fair and unfair any more. Somewhere between finding his wife eviscerated and torched in their own home and now, he’d forgotten how to care who he offended or whether or not they deserved it. All he cared about was keeping what he had left safe. And keeping those boys safe meant keeping anyone or anything he didn’t know, to a moral certainty, presented no threat to them whatsoever back. Pushing them off. Keeping them away. Keeping everyone away … the farther away, the better.
"Listen," John said to the man still watching him with that infuriatingly speculative expression. "I don’t know who you are or what you want, and I care even less. All I care about is that you stay away from my boys. Far away. Is that clear, or do I need to draw you a picture?"
"I mean Dean no harm," the man said again.
"Well you keep meaning him no harm, but do it someplace else. Because the next time I see you talking to my kid? Will be the last time." John backed toward the Impala, keeping his eye on this man more because he’d forgotten how to be careless, too, than because he still thought there was any kind of real threat here.
"My name is Castiel," the man said like he thought John might give a fuck.
"Good for you," John returned. "My name’s Wolverine, and I meant what I said. Stay the fuck away from my kid." He’d already turned and started for the Impala when the man who called himself Castiel froze him to a standstill with a single word.
"John," he said.
And for just a moment, John couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. His heart skipped a beat, hung on the sound of his own name in a stranger’s voice like a fish on a hook for what seemed an eternity before it started up again, tried to make up for lost time by pulsing his temple like a strobe light and pushing enough blood through his wrists, his ankles, his neck to make the skin there feel tight enough to pop. Fuck. Dean told this guy his name, too? What the fuck? What else did Dean tell him? How long had the two of them been talking? How the fuck long had this son-of-a-bitch been out here in the dark, all alone with his kids, playing pattycake with a six-year-old who damned straight new better than to talk to any stranger, or let one of them talk to him? A six-year-old who wouldn’t talk to his own God damned teacher unless he absolutely had to. Who wouldn’t talk to cops or old ladies or men of God in full costume. Who wouldn’t talk to a fucking soul but his brother and his old man, and sometimes not even them; but he’d talk to a total stranger? He’d tell a stranger their names and their social security numbers and God knows what else just because … what? He was bored? The guy asked? He’d suddenly decided to be Sammy instead of Dean and tell every God damned person they met every God damned thing that crossed his mind?
What the fuck kind of sense did that make?
John turned slowly, his free hand slipping to the small of his back, closing around the butt of the nine mil to loosen it in his belt. "How do you know my name?" he asked, suddenly certain that Dean hadn’t told this man a fucking thing, and certainly not their names.
"I mean you no harm, John," the man said. "I came to deliver a message, to tell you that you’re not alone. That your sons are not alone."
As disturbing as this son-of-a-bitch knowing their names was, the message he came to deliver was ten times that and more. John went cold to his bones. He scanned the empty playground again, checked the ever deepening shadows for movement as he might have missed earlier, when dusk was settling to full-on dark. All he saw now was the same thing he’d seen then: a jungle gym, a couple of teeter totters, four swings, a slide and a merry-go-round. It was what passed as a park in this podunk little town even though there wasn’t a blade of grass to be had. That’s why he gave in to Sammy’s wails in the first place. That’s why he let the boys stay here and slide! slide! slide! instead of going inside with him: because it was blacktop all the way to the street.
He’d let Sammy win this one not because he wasn’t capable of breaking the kid’s heart twice in one day, but rather because he’d already said no to ice cream! and doggy! and ice cream! again, and he couldn’t see any undue danger to leaving them here to play for the ten minutes it would take to restock their cabinets. Whoever’d thought it was a good idea to put asphalt under swings had also thought it would be convenient to butt the playground up against the back of the local market, and they’d done so for exactly the purpose John put it to.
The reasons John let his kids play there while he shopped, on the other hand, had nothing at all to do with convenience. They had to do with things like the fact that there wasn’t a fucking tree in sight, so there was nothing to hide behind, no cover to give an enemy the advantage of an unseen approach. There was no one around but the two of them, so Dean wasn’t going to put some kid with two left feet or the local bully to his ass for bumping Sammy, and Sammy wasn’t going to tell some friendly looking woman who they were and how they lived and what they had for breakfast.
His boys were together, he was within shouting distance, and the lay of the land was about as innocuous as it could possibly be. It was a parking lot with toys, for God’s sake. If they weren’t safe here, they weren’t safe anywhere.
"We’re here," Castiel added when John didn’t say anything. "We’re watching. We’re always watching."
They weren’t safe anywhere.
The hair on the back of John’s neck stood straight on end. His heart hammered painfully in his chest; his lungs struggled a bit to pull air in and push it out again.
They weren’t safe anywhere. They weren’t safe anywhere. They weren’t safe anywhere.
His fingers cramped where they were clenched around the nine mil tucked in the small of his back. It was too late for any kids but his to be hanging upside down by their knees in this asphalt park, and although there were half a dozen cars in the side lot that corresponded to the scattering of grocery shoppers inside, none of them were occupied at the moment. The night was dark was cool and concealing; and the four of them were alone. He could put this guy down and be gone before anyone was the wiser.
"Who?" John demanded, doing the best he could to reign in the wash of blind panic before it overwhelmed him into shooting this man dead where he stood. "Who’s always watching?"
Castiel titled his head again. His eyes glazed over slightly, made him look someone had flipped his off switch, or like he was listening to something he could almost hear, but not quite, instead of simply trying to figure John out.
John’s fingers itched. His skin tingled. He was hot suddenly. It was claustrophobically close in the open playground. The air itself was so heavy he could hardly stand its weight against his body. This must be what hell’s like, he thought dully. The constant terror of igniting Armageddon at the drop of a hat. The impossible choices between untenable and unthinkable plaguing you night and day, haunting you long term and short. The heightened acuity of a flight-or-fight response on twenty-four/seven red alert corroding your nerves until even the weight of air is its own torture to bear. The unrelenting pressure of knowing that something much worse than the worst thing you can imagine is right around the corner, waiting for you. Waiting for your sons.
They weren’t safe here. They weren’t safe anywhere.
"Who’s watching my sons?" John demanded again.
Castiel focused. His head straightened, and he looked at John like he was actually looking at him this time, instead of staring past him into some unseen infinity. "God has a plan for you, John," he said. "He has a plan for your sons. You’re not alone. God is here. God is watching."
A flood of relief so strong it nearly broke John at the knees overwhelmed him. Tension drained from his muscles like water through a sieve as the fear inside him uncoiled: a sprung spring that no longer had the capacity to tear him apart-to tear his life apart-from the inside out like so much confetti thrown to the four winds in celebration of nothing.
God is here. God is watching.
Almost giddy with the difference between one moment and the next, John glanced at Castiel’s hand to see if he was carrying around his own personal copy of the I’m Better Than You: Ask Me How book. He wasn’t. His hands were empty. He had no Bible to thump, no flyers to stick under windshield wipers or pamphlets to leave in screen doors when people with better things to do refused to open at his ring, or wouldn’t stop and give him the pulpit he demanded on a street corner, or in the street itself, or on a kid’s playground that was side-by-side with a grocery store parking lot.
"God, huh?" John smiled a little, not because he wanted to encourage some door-to-door God salesman to launch into his schpeil about salvation and damnation, but rather because he was just that fucking relieved to realize this is what the man had wanted. What he wanted from them; what he wanted from Dean.
Castiel looked pleased. "Yes. I’m a messenger of the Lord. I’ve come to you with His word."
"Okay. Well … thanks, but no thanks. I’ve already got enough of that to go around. And if I ever run out, I’ve got my own personal God jockey with a direct line upstairs, so I’m covered there, too."
Castiel looked less pleased. "I’m not a minister," he said after a long beat. "I’m a messenger. I have a message for you, John. A specific message."
"That God’s watching me?" John surmised dryly. "That He’s always watching me?"
Castiel might not be the brightest bulb in the box; but he picked up what John was putting down this time … heard something in his tone, where he’d missed it earlier, in John’s smile. "Yes," he said, his voice tighter than it had been earlier … not quite defensive, but not much short of it either by John’s estimation. "God is watching you. God is watching your sons." He studied John for a long moment, then personalized his sermon a bit before re-delivering it. "You’re not alone, John. No one is alone; but you, more than other men, are not alone."
John looked to the left, kept his eyes on the Impala and the fear-faced children inside in an effort to keep from disrespecting the sincerity of this man’s tone by laughing in his face. Dean, in particular, looked worried (Sammy looked more pissed, and maybe a little bored), so John flashed the kid a quick smile just to tell him everything was okay. That nothing was wrong. That his dad had overreacted; so, even though Dean would never come right out and say as much, this day was pretty much like any other day. The expression Dean gave him in return-a tremulous smile of his own, a noticeable and specific lessening of the terror burning behind little boy eyes-was enough to keep John from telling a holy roller who’d scared a year’s growth out of the both of them exactly what John Winchester thought of God, and what he was pretty sure God thought of John Winchester in return.
If there even was a God, which-Jim Murphy to the contrary-John still didn’t take as either verified or an absolute.
Given the things he’d seen over the past couple of years? Given the shit he’d witnessed being done to the faithful and the faithless alike? to the good, the innocent, and the vulnerable … and even occasionally to those most qualified to protect themselves from the kind of evil that ran the shadows by day and the streets at night? John’s studied opinion on the subject of God wasn’t all that charitable. It wasn’t charitable at all, in fact … was more along the lines of condemning as all hell. Because as far as he was concerned, if there really was a God? He was either one lazy-ass bastard who couldn’t be bothered to roust His divine ass to the task of stopping the slaughter of His supposedly beloved children; or He was every bit as bad as, if not worse than, the flip side of that "we’re fucked" coin humanity had been carrying around in its collective pocket since the dawn of time: not a savior or a protector or a fucking father at all, but rather just a different flavor of the same profane bullshit.
Which way he leaned on that particular subject depended on the day and how many times he’d already missed Mary between waking up without her and bothering to give a rat’s ass about God’s existence or lack thereof; but either way it played, by John Winchester’s measure at least, God wasn’t doing a very good job of proving Himself worthy of a fucking thing that otherwise reasonable men like Jim Murphy-and maybe even this jackass in a trench coat-granted Him under the heading of "faith".
"Okay," John said finally. "Well … that’s good to know, I guess. Thanks for the message of hope and faith. You be sure to pass along my regards to God the next time you talk to him."
When John started to turn away again, Castiel put a hand on his forearm to stop him. It wasn’t a threatening gesture, but it tensed John anyway, made him want to drop the grocery bag and deck this guy just on general principles. That he didn’t do exactly that wasn’t any reluctance to put a self-ascribed man of God to the asphalt so much as it was the fact that they were out of both bread and milk, and Sammy could be a real pain-in-the-ass if he didn’t get his cereal in the morning and his PB&J sandwich for lunch.
So he warned Castiel off instead, saying, "Get your fuckin hand off me," in a low, dangerous voice that was threatening enough to scare a three-strike felon straight.
To his surprise, Castiel wasn’t intimidated. He moved his hand as John requested, but there was no sign of anxiety or wariness or fear in either his posture or his voice when he said, yet again, "You’re not alone."
The man either had the survival instincts of a martyr, or he thought God was his own personal sword and shield against faithless assholes like John Winchester. It was a dangerous way of thinking, to John’s mind … especially around the kind of faithless asshole who might take it upon himself to prove a pious fool wrong and justify it by calling it something he did for their own good. Resisting the urge to do any hands-on teaching today, John settled for stating the obvious instead: "And you don’t appear to have the brains God gave a goat. Keep your hands to yourself, preacher, or learn how to tie your shoes with your teeth." He walked away without interference this time, strode to the Impala and knocked twice on the driver’s side window, then once more.
Dean scrambled across the seat, unlocked the door and popped it open from the inside. John passed him the bag of groceries and watched while he stashed their provisions on the floor in the backseat, then got himself back to shotgun and buckled in for the ride home. Once Dean was settled, John turned back to the man still standing in the night-dark playground half a dozen yards away
"Might want to think twice about thumping your Bible to a kid on a playground after dark again," he advised. "All good intentions aside, there are some who’d take that as all the reason they’d need to kick your ass … for stupidity, if nothing else."
"Your sons’ fates are in your hands, John," Castiel said.
John’s blood pressure spiked, not from fear this time, but from anger. He bit down on his first response because his boys would hear it, too, and he tried not to do any more God bashing around them than he absolutely had to. He owed that much to Mary: owed her at least an effort to raise their sons the way she would have wanted them raised. God knows, his efforts fell short enough on that front and others the way it was, so when it occurred to him to shut his fucking mouth before he rendered an opinion on God in their presence rather than after, he tried to do it, for her if not for them.
"Been in my hands for a while now, and we’re doing just fine," he said tersely. It wasn’t what he wanted to say, but it close enough for government work. Or maybe it wasn’t, because he hadn’t even drawn a full breath before he found himself adding, "Doing a hell of a lot better than we did when it was in His hands, at least."
"He is here," Castiel repeated. "He is watching."
Even knowing what the nutcase meant this time, a chill still skated John’s spine like ice against Summer-hot skin. It lifted the hair on the back of his neck and stirred his gut to a restless sense of unease.
They weren’t safe here. They weren’t safe anywhere.
"Stay away from my boys," John said one last time before ducking into the Impala, slamming the door shut and kicked the engine to life.
They drove away into darkness, leaving Castiel alone in the middle of an empty playground, watching. John glanced in the rearview mirror once, just to make sure their messenger didn’t follow, and thought he saw shadows flocking behind the man’s trench coat like ravens looking for a place to roost. It was an illusion that vanished even as it registered, and John gave it just about as much credence as he figured it deserved, turning his eyes back to the road ahead and his attention on to other things.
On his knees in the backseat, barely tall enough to see out the back window, Sammy waved an enthusiastic goodbye to someone he’d never met before as if the two of them had known each other since the day before the dawn of time.