SPN Fic: To Everything A Season (12/14) (Gen, R, FutureFic)
Sam was being an emo bitch and wouldn't tell me what his problem was. But he finally copped to it, so we're up and running again. When I left you last, thought I was at a scene break. Turned out not so much, so we're resuming where we left off, mid-scene instead of new scene. Again, blame Bitch Emo-Sam. It's not his fault, but he gets blamed for everything anyway, so why not this. :D
As always, lemme know what y'all think.
Title: To Everything A Season (Part 12/14)
Author:
dodger_winslow
Challenge: Firsts Chart: First Memory
Genre: Gen (some het, not graphic), FutureFic
Word Count: 110,000 (total)
Pairings/Characters: John/OFC, Dean/OFC, Sam/OFC (hey, did I mention it was Future Fic?)
Rating: R
Warnings: Language, sexual situations (not graphic)
Spoilers: Oh yeah. Everything S1
Disclaimer: I don't own the boys, I'm just stalking them for a while.
Timeline Note: Set seven years after the events of Devil's Trap. John, Dean and Sam all survived the crash to hunt down and destroy the Demon. For Sam, life goes on. For Dean, life stalls. For John, life has no more meaning, and he begins to self destruct.
Summary: A little piece of good advice: Never hunt a wendigo when you're drunk.
Part 12
"He was remembering Lawrence. Jefferson City. Phoenix. It was all pretty much a hash omelet in his head, but you know the basic ingredients. They were all there."
"Son of a bitch," Sam whispered.
"Yeah," Dean agreed. "At the very least."
For some time, neither of John’s sons said a word. They were both inside their heads, both remembering the things Danny needed to know, the events of their father’s life that had scarred him, that were igniting his mind to a firestorm that promised an endgame of utter annihilation unless someone found a way to put it out.
"So where do we go from here?" Dean asked finally, speaking to Danny. "Would it be better for Sam and I to leave? Let him settle back into his life? Scar up so he can get on with what he was doing before we showed up to rattle his cage?"
"I think we’re past that," Danny said. "He remembers you now. That isn’t going to change."
"It could."
Danny studied the younger man for a long moment. "I don’t see how," he said finally. "Once you open Pandora’s Box, it’s pretty hard to close it again."
"My dad can do anything he decides to do. He’s like that. Always has been."
"I’m not sure I’m following."
"I’m just saying if he forgot us once, he can do it again. All he needs is the right reason."
Danny’s eyes narrowed as he considered the possibility. "What do you have in mind?"
"You could tell him we don’t exist."
"Just like that? Hey, John, you know those sons you remember raising? Yeah, they don’t exist. Something along those lines?"
Dean shrugged. "He trusts you. I’m sure you could sell him some version of truth that doesn’t include us, and then convince him anything he remembers contrary to it is a figment of his fucked up head."
"He won’t believe it."
Dean smiled. It was a dark, bitter smile. "You’d be amazed what my dad can believe. He puts more faith in who he trusts than in what he sees. And with what I saw in there?" He indicated the room down the hall with a small lift of his chin. "There’s not a hell of a lot of pre-existing structure to work against. He so screwed up right now he doesn’t know what to think. He’s walking on ice, and the slightest breeze puts him to his ass as it blows by. All you’d have to do is give him some solid ground to believe in. That’s all it would take to convince him the life he has here is the only life he needs to remember. Once you give him that to believe in, he’ll do the rest himself."
"You’re seriously asking me to tell him you and Sam don’t exist?" Danny asked.
"I don’t really give a rat’s ass what you tell him," Dean said. "As long as he believes it. That we don’t exist. That we died when we were kids. That we’re manifestations of his fucked up way of mixing and matching time and events in his head to delusions that are part truth and part fear and part who-the-fuck-knows-what. Take your pick."
"If we went that way, you’d never be able to see him again."
Dean waited for a full thee-beat before saying, "Do I look stupid to you, Danny? Do I look like I’d suggest telling him we don’t exist and then expect to be invited to Sunday dinner?"
Danny glanced at Sam. He was watching, but his expression was neutral. Or perhaps less neutral than blank. Studiously blank. Fiercely blank. So ferociously blank it was screaming.
"It would mean severing all ties," Danny said more to Sam than to Dean. "All contact. He couldn’t even know you as friends rather than his sons. He couldn’t know anything about your lives, about the lives of your children. Any contact at all - even something as insignificant as seeing you on a street corner, or hearing your voice on the phone - could act as a trigger mechanism, destabilize the whole house of lies to disastrous consequences. The only way to protect against that would be no contact at all. Period."
Sam didn’t react. He just stood there, being blank.
"Sam?" Danny prompted after a beat. "Do you understand what I’m saying?
"I understand it," Sam said quietly.
"Before John started remembering this morning, you said you wanted to keep in contact," Danny reminded him. "To establish a relationship with him that didn’t involve him knowing who you are beyond someone he met in a café one day. That wouldn’t be an option. It would be too much of a risk that something about you - just an expression, a tone of voice, a reference to something inane and otherwise insignificant - could trigger him again, destabilize him."
It was Dean who spoke this time, saying, "Sammy understands that. We both do."
"And you’re both willing to do that?" Danny asked, still speaking to Sam more than Dean.
"If that’s what it takes," Dean said. "Sam and I have gotten along fine without him for six years. I doubt we’d fall apart now just because it isn’t a mystery any more whether he’s dead or alive."
"That isn’t what I’m asking," Danny said.
"I know it isn’t," Dean agreed. "But that’s what I’m answering."
"And that’s your answer, too, Sam?"
"I can live with whatever Dean can."
"It isn’t only Dean’s decision," Danny said.
"Sure it is." Sam didn’t look at Dean. Dean didn’t look at Sam. That detail alone told Danny more about the past ten years of their lives than anything either of them could have said. "I gave up on Dad a long time ago," Sam added. "I’m not the one who put my life on hold for ten years to run interference for him so he wouldn’t act irresponsibly. I’m not the one who drove all over the country, hunting for him when he disappeared. This is Dean’s call. I’ll live by whatever he decides."
"You’re still his son, Sam."
"Not the way Dean is."
If Dean heard the bitterness in his brother’s voice, he didn’t acknowledge it. His expression was almost as blank as Sam’s when Danny turned back to him to say, "And you’d be okay with that? Completely cutting yourself off from him? No contact at all?"
"It wouldn’t be much of a change for us," Dean said. "That’s how we’ve lived for the past six years."
"It doesn’t make a difference knowing he’s alive?"
"I was always pretty sure he was alive. I just figured he didn’t want to be found."
Danny frowned. He studied the younger man for a long moment before saying, "Explain that to me, will you? Explain how you think the man I saw you with in that room - a man’s who’s brought to his knees by the mere thought of you leaving without him - is someone you see playing hide and seek with you for six years, letting you think he’s dead."
"You don’t know him like I do," Dean said.
"Fair enough. Tell me about him."
Dean laughed. Shaking his head, he rubbed at his mouth, then leaned forward again to rest his forearms on his thighs. "No offense Danny, but you’re looking at a very small picture. You see someone who panics when he thinks I’m going to leave him. I remember the guy who asks how long it takes me to crawl off a woman to come pick him up."
Danny’s eyes narrowed a little. "I’ll concede I saw some aspects of John in there I’ve never seen before," he agreed. "But they aren’t ones I didn’t know existed. I’ve worked with a lot of alcoholics. A lot of addicts. They inflict damage. That’s what they do."
"Then you don’t really need me to explain him to you, do you?"
"I saw the way you were with him. And the way he was with you."
"He’s my dad," Dean said simply.
"He shuffled through two dozen versions of himself, and the only consistency among them was you. How much he needs you. How scared he is of losing you."
Dean stared at his hands "You’re not seeing him the way he is," he said finally.
"How so?"
"He’s vulnerable right now. Hurt. Confused. He’s looking to grab on to something, and that something’s me. That’s all you saw in there. He knows me. He knows I’ll have his back, and that’s important to him right now, so I’m important to him."
"And how’s that different from the way I see him?"
"It makes you think he needs me," Dean said. "He doesn’t. He doesn’t need anybody. That’s how he protects himself: by not needing anybody."
"That’s not the John I know."
"Then you don’t know my dad. My dad can turn and walk away from anybody at any time. That’s his greatest strength. He trusts me. But he doesn’t need me."
"Give me an example, Dean. Tell me what makes you think he doesn’t need you."
Dean continued looking at the floor between his feet. He didn’t answer for so long that Danny turned to Sam, prompting, "Sam? Do you agree with this?"
"He needs Dean as much as he needs anyone," Sam said quietly.
"That’s not an answer."
Sam shrugged.
"Dad needed me as long as I did what he wanted," Dean said suddenly. "But if you cross him, that goes away. He only needs you for as long as you’re doing what he needs."
"And you crossed him?" Danny surmised.
"Sammy broke ranks once," Dean said in lieu of an answer. "He wanted to go to college. Got a full ride to Stanford. Dad told him he couldn’t go. Said if he went, he didn’t need to ever bother coming back. Sam went anyway. It took four years to work that one through, and that was Sammy. The rebel. The one who gets to break ranks and come home again, the prodigal son."
"But they did work it through," Danny pointed out.
"I’m just saying six years isn’t all that long, considering. Not with Dad, anyway. And not considering it was me this time."
"You broke ranks?" Danny asked quietly.
Dean hesitated, then said, "Yeah. Something like that."
"What happened?"
"Not the point. Point is that I did."
"Losing you seems to be central to what’s happening to John," Danny explained patiently. "It would help me understand what’s going on if I knew what happened between the two of you. If I knew why he thinks he lost you."
Dean shrugged, still looking at his hands. "We had a fight," he said finally. "I said some things I’m sure he didn’t think I’d ever say. It went downhill from there. He took off, and I let him go instead of running after him to apologize, to say it was all my fault, and I was completely out of line, and I never should have said things like that to him, because he doesn’t deserve anything but my respect and my adoration and my undying obedience to every fucking thing he says and thinks and does."
Dean stopped, waited a couple of beats, then went on: "So he disappeared. He went dark, left me standing in the street with my thumb up my ass. He’d done it before, and it works. It makes me crazy. It’s his way of putting me back in line, of reminding me who’s the boss and who’s the bitch in our relationship."
He looked up then, met Danny’s eyes. "Who needs who; and who doesn’t."
They stared at each other for several moments of silence before Dean looked back down at his hands. "By the time I’d calmed down enough to remember that," he went on quietly, "his trail had gone cold. I couldn’t find him, and I figured that was because he was making a point."
"And you thought he was making that point for six years?" Danny asked when Dean didn’t go on.
"Dad’s big on making points."
"It didn’t occur to you that something happened to him?"
"Yeah. It occurred to me," Dean said bitterly. "It occurred to me that he got himself drunk off his ass and went hunting grizzlies to make sure I really got the point. Which is exactly what he did. The fact that the point he was looking to make missed its mark a little in him surviving the encounter is something I’ll always take as a little bit of back wages on some of the good things I’ve done in my life.
"But that doesn’t mean I want to go back to where we were. To return to him being the boss, and me being the bitch. Because I don’t. I’ve gotten past that in the last six years, and I like where I’m at. I like needing people who need me back, knowing they won’t walk away just to prove they can."
Dean looked up again, straightened this time, facing Danny squarely, almost belligerently. "So I’m glad he’s alive, Danny," he said. "I really am. But I’m not all that keen on rekindling old fires because I am always the one who got burned. So when you’re asking if I’d be okay with no contact at all? Yeah. I had to learn to be okay with that. It took a while, but I did it. My dad’s a good teacher. I usually learn what he’s trying to teach me if we keep at it long enough. And I learned this. So if cutting ties is what it takes to get him back on his feet and functional again? Then yeah, I can do that. I’ve been doing it for six years, and I’ve found it has its up sides. And maybe that was Dad’s point all along. If it was, he made it. And if it wasn’t? Well, he made it anyway."
Danny nodded slowly. "So … the son I saw in there, holding his dad’s hand, talking him through the fire like both of them were walking it in the same skin - that was all just play acting?"
"Fuck you," Dean snapped. "He’s my dad. I never said I don’t love him. I said I don’t need him the way I used to. So if what it takes to save him is no contact of any kind, I can do that. It won’t be the kind of problem it would have been before he went hunting wendigoes with Jim, Jack and Jose."
"So you’re willing to walk away, if that’s what it takes," Danny surmised.
"I’m not the one walking away." The ferocity of Dean’s voice on those words told Danny what he was trying to hear. Verified what he thought he was reading in how hard Dean was trying to sell not needing a man he so obviously needed. "He’s the one who walked away. I’m just willing to let it stand, if that’s the way it has to be."
"Is that what you want, Dean?" Danny asked.
"What I want doesn’t matter," Dean said. "What Dad needs matters."
"Dean doesn’t consider what he wants when it comes to Dad," Sam said. Leaning against a far wall, he was still standing well away from his brother, a statement made rather than a happenstance of position. "Whatever Dad needs, that’s what Dad gets. Dean comes in a distant second."
Dean’s gaze shifted from Danny to his brother. He looked at Sam for a long moment before he said, his voice quiet, cold, "Third."
It was said to hurt, and it did. But it also told Danny more of what he needed to know. Sam looked away, his features tight with resentment he didn’t put to voice. Dean waited for a moment before he returned his attention to Danny.
"So that’s how we proceed then? Sam and I’ll disappear so you and his wife can put him back together when he comes up again? Sell him on whatever story it takes: that we died, that we don’t exist, that we’re just extraordinarily handsome figments of his own fucked up delusions?"
"Her name is Julie," Danny said.
"What?"
"His wife. Her name is Julie."
Dean’s expression flickered. "Sure. Julie. Sorry. Wasn’t trying to be disrespectful."
Danny nodded, then said, "Tell me about your mother, Dean. How old were you when she died?"
Dean snorted. He shook his head, leaned back into the couch cushions, distancing himself from the question, separating himself from the man asking the question. "Yeah. Right. Why don’t you tell me about your sex life, Danny. Your wife a good fuck?"
Danny had to work to keep from smiling. It was the same way John answered the first time Danny asked a question he felt was too personal, wildly inappropriate, and none of his fucking business. The exact same words in fact, save one: Yeah. Right. Why don’t you tell me about your sex life, Doctor Danny. Your wife a good fuck?
"As a matter of fact," Danny said, answering Dean the same way he’d answered John, "she is. A stupendous fuck, even. But I don’t think Sarah’s and my sex life has any relevance to John’s situation, other than just anecdotally speaking. Your mother, on the other hand, seems to be right at the crux of his most comprehensive breaking point. I think it would help me to know a little more about her. About John’s relationship with her. About how she died, and how that affected John. And you."
"It hurt," Dean said.
"I’m sure it did," Danny agreed.
He waited.
Dean didn’t say anything else.
When it became apparent he wasn’t going to, Danny said, "Tell you what: I’ll trade you stories, tit for tat. My mother died when I was seven. Some drunk fuck plowed into our car and wrapped it around a telephone pole. Julie and I walked away relatively unscathed. My mother didn’t. Your turn."
The revelation blindsided Dean, as it was intended it to. The antagonism in his expression eased, but the resistance didn’t. "Sad story," he said after a beat. "But I don’t talk about my mother. You want to know something about her, ask Sammy."
"Sam?" Danny asked, never taking his eyes off Dean. "How old was Dean when your mom died?"
"He was four. Almost five."
"And you?"
"Six months."
"So you remember her then," Danny said, talking to Dean again.
"Of course I fucking remember her," Dean snapped. "She’s my mother."
Danny nodded. Dean might not want to talk about his mother, but he would. Not willingly, but he would.
"Does it bother you John re-married?" he asked.
"Not at all. I’m glad he’s got someone to care about him. Takes the weight off of me. Now if we can just throw in a couple of kids, he can have a whole new family and just forget Sammy and I ever even existed. Oh, wait, he already has that, doesn’t he? Looks like he’s all set, then. Guess that settles it: Sammy and I never existed seems like the way to go."
The antagonism was full and rich and dark in his eyes and his expression. He was lashing out, punishing Danny for pushing. He was so much like John it was a little scary. His responses were so similar, his instincts so consistent. That made it easier for Danny, made him more confident he could get what he needed by pushing the same buttons in John’s son that he would push in John to open him up and get him to talk about things that hurt too much to talk about.
"Is that what you’re looking to do?" Danny pushed a little harder. "Surrender him to someone else?"
"Wouldn’t be the worst thing that ever happened to me."
"What would the worst thing be?"
Dean snorted. "So many to choose from I’d hate have to pick just one."
"The doctors could have saved my mother," Danny said, shifting gears on him again, jarring him off the stance he was trying to establish. "She wasn’t hurt that badly. Julie and I rode with her in the ambulance to the biggest trauma center in the city. She kept telling us everything was going to be alright. That God was watching over us, and He didn’t let bad things happen to good people."
Dean eyes flashed so bitter for a moment it was hard for Danny to watch it, but he did. He watched it, read it, learned from it until Dean looked away, looked down. It was exactly what he expected. Exactly the way John would have reacted in the early days to any implication that God protected people rather than hanging them out to dry for His own capricious, incomprehensible reasons.
"You a man of faith, Dean?’ Danny asked.
"Why don’t you tell me a little more about your wife," Dean countered. He was holding on to his stance, trying to save it.
So Danny hit him again: "Doctors wouldn’t let us stay in the ER with her. Said we were too young. Told Julie to take me and go. She was smiling last time I saw her, waving at us with her fingers, trying to look like it didn’t hurt all that much even though she was bleeding out even then."
"This doesn’t have anything to do with my father," Dean said.
It was an attempt to negotiate. Danny refused it. "They could have saved her, but they didn’t. They didn’t care enough to actually even try."
This hurt. It hurt more than he’d thought it would, bringing all this up to use on Dean like a can opener. He went on, pretending that it didn’t.
"We could hear most of what was going on from where we were sitting in the hallway. The ER attending was telling one of his buddies about the woman he fucked the night before. Julie was doing her best to pretend she didn’t hear it; but she was holding onto my hand, and I remember how hard she was shaking, hearing things most porn movies would have more class than to put on screen."
He’d never wanted to kill anyone so much in his life. Certainly not before he was seven, but not after either. The pressure of Julie’s hand in his was an almost tangible physical sensation, the memory of it was still that strong.
"I told her maybe we should wait in the waiting room, but she didn’t want to leave the hallway. She was eleven, and taller than me. She could see Mom through the window, even though I couldn’t."
He remembered that so clearly. Remembered thinking how unfair it was at the time, not understanding it was twice as unfair as he thought it was, just one hundred and eighty degrees left of the way he was looking at it.
Dean was watching him, seeing things in his eyes John would have understood, so he likely did, too. It wasn’t a negotiation when he said, "You don’t have to tell me this."
"No. I want to," Danny lied. "I haven’t spoken about it but once since I was seven. Told Sarah after a particularly stupendous fuck one night, but other than that, I’ve never said a word of this to anybody."
And he hadn’t thought he ever would. But the stakes were too high to hold off even this, if that’s what it took to get what he needed. And knowing John as well as he did, and seeing John so clearly in his son the way he did, Danny was pretty sure this is exactly what it was going to take.
He needed to see what Dean wasn’t telling him. The only way to buy a ticket to that show was to offer something of equal value in return. Pain for pain. It was the currency in which some men traded. He was one. And being one, he recognized the same trait in Dean.
"So anyway," he went on, hiding as much as he could hide while showing what he felt he had to show, "when she flat-lined, there was a burst of give-a-fuck all around, but it was a little late by then. Julie and I heard it all from the hallway: the first arrhythmias, the escalation into fibrillations, the defribrillator charging, discharging, charging again. And then that one long, uninterrupted whine from the heart monitor telling us she was gone.
"Julie got the bird’s eye view of them trying to shock her back to a rhythm. That’s one of the few times in my life I actually believe God might have been watching out for me, if not for her, in me not being tall enough to watch them do what they were doing. At the time, I didn’t see it that way. But I do now. Julie got to watch. She got to stand there in a hospital hallway and watch the whole thing. I only had to listen."
He could still hear it in his head. Still hear every moment dragging by as the heart monitor whined, destroying him with hope he wasn’t old enough to know was nothing more than a mother’s love put to reassurances that had nothing to do with truth. Don’t worry, baby boy. God’s watching over us. He doesn’t let bad things happen to good people.
"And when it was over," Danny went on, "Dr. I Fucked a Woman Twelve Ways from Sunday came out to tell us we could wait for my dad to come pick us up in the waiting room down the hall. It was very compassionate, the way he said it. He told us we could watch TV if we wanted. I think there was a sorry in there somewhere, but I might have put that in myself, just to sweet up the memory a little bit."
He could tell by the way Dean was watching him that he’d said enough. That he’d anted enough pain to the game for Dean to match his bet. He could fold, of course. He could turn and walk away like what Danny said didn’t matter. But he wouldn’t. He was John’s son. He’d stand up like a man and tell Danny what he wanted to know, even though it would cut him as deep as the last few minutes had cut Danny.
"She burned," Dean said finally, unwillingly, forcing the words out in a way that showed how much he resented them being traded into an open forum by someone who knew which buttons to push and how to push them. "She screamed in the middle of the night. It woke me up. I ran down the hallway and found Dad in Sammy’s nursery. She was burning. I could see it from where I was standing. Dad grabbed Sammy, gave him to me, told me to take him outside and not to look back. I did it because I’ve always done what my dad told me to. That was the last time I saw her. She wasn’t smiling. She wasn’t waving at me. She was just burning."
"John stayed behind with her?"
"He tried to go back, to get to her, to save her; but it was already too late. He almost didn’t make it out before the house came apart. If he hadn’t, Sammy and I would have died, too, because I was too young and too stupid to realize standing five feet outside the front door doesn’t constitute taking your brother to safety when your house is burning down. He grabbed us and got outside of the blast radius before the house went. If he hadn’t, the fucker would have gotten the whole lot of us instead of just Mom."
"What fucker?"
It took Dean half a second too long to answer. "The fire," he said.
Danny didn’t push it. He’d just gotten more context for John’s traumas in six minutes than he’d gathered in six years. His mind was working through it, sorting it, tagging it, filing it in appropriate slots.
"So now you know about my mother," Dean said after several long beats of silence. "And I know about yours. How does that help my dad? How does any of that make any difference at all in how we go about erasing Sam and I from his life so he won’t implode again?"
"That isn’t what we’re going to do," Danny said.
He’d know as much from the moment Dean suggested it, but he’d let Dean think otherwise until now, letting his willingness to sacrifice a man he loved in order to save him talk to the relationship that still existed between them, even if Dean wasn’t willing to admit it. "Even if we could make him do it - which I still don’t think we could - forgetting you and Sam wouldn’t be good for him. In fact, I’m more sure now than I was before that it would be disastrous."
"Might not be good for him," Dean said, "but it would probably be best for us." He hesitated a beat, then revised: "At least for me." He kept looking at Danny, but when he spoke again, it was to Sam. "That pretty much your point, Sammy? That where you want me to be? Just turn and walk away, right? Leave him to someone else so he doesn’t drag me down again?"
When Sam didn’t answer, Dean turned, looked at him. "Because despite what you may think," he said, "I can do that. I will do it. I just wasn’t willing to do it when there was no one else to step in and stop him if he decided to get blasted then go hunt wendigoes for the fuck of it. When he decided to do that. Because that’s where he’s been every since Phoenix. And that’s where I’ve been, too: doing whatever it took to get in the way of it, doing whatever it took to keep him from getting done what he’d set his mind to doing."
Still, Sam said nothing.
"That’s what you’ve got for me, Sammy?" Dean asked, stressing Sam’s name, making it almost an insult in the way he said it. "Just bitch silence?"
"What do you want me to say, Dean? That I see it that way? Well I don’t. Dad’s a drunk. He’s irresponsible. You didn’t have that excuse."
"Me?!?"
"Yes. You."
"I didn’t have an excuse for what?"
"For throwing your life away. You did it for the same reason you’ve always done it: Because that’s what you thought Dad needed. And yeah, you’re right. I wish I could say you weren’t, but you are: You’ve done the same thing for me. But I’ve tried not to take advantage of that. I’ve tried all my life to keep you from giving things up for me. Dad traded on it. He traded on knowing you’d always put him first. And you let him."
"Maybe. But that was the only way I could keep him alive."
"And that makes it okay," Sam said. It wasn’t a question, it was a condemnation.
"What else was I supposed to do, Sam? Let him die?"
"Yes."
Dean stood, walked away. He was on the other side of the room when he turned and said, "No. No fucking way. One of us had to stay. It wasn’t going to be you, so it had to be me."
"It didn’t have to be you. Dad’s a grown man. You could have let him chose for himself whether to live or die. But you didn’t. You wouldn’t. So I lost you both."
"How did you lose me?" Dean demanded.
"I lost you," Sam said again.
"Bullshit."
"You were turning into him."
Dean blinked. "What?"
"You were turning into him, Dean. Every month. Every year. Until you met Mary, you were turning into him. That’s where I’ve been since Phoenix: doing whatever it took to get in the way of it, doing whatever it took to keep you from following him down a hole he chose back in Lawrence because you refused to let him go."
"You’re full of shit," Dean said after a long beat.
"Those are your choices," Sam said quietly. "Bitch silence or full of shit. Because I’m not going to tell you what you want to hear. That would make me you."
Danny watched them interact, reading a hundred truths about their family dynamic in the way they dealt with one another, truths that re-enforced conclusions he’d come to by watching John deal with others over the years, by watching him deal with Julie, and, in turn, with little Sammy."
"I’m going to go check on Julie," Danny said suddenly, breaking what had become a stalemate between them. "See if I can get her to lie down for a while."
Sam looked to Danny, saying "I can sit with Dad if she needs a break." The deliberate way he disengaged the glare locked between he and his brother was a statement. It didn’t leave much doubt he was finished with the subject of conversation, at least for the time being.
"I’ll tell her," Danny said, "but don’t hold you breath waiting for her to take you up on it. No way in hell she’s giving up her squatting rights. Best we can hope for is that she’ll agree to lie down there in the room with him. Either one of you hungry?"
"I could eat," Sam said. Dean just shrugged.
"Stevie over at the café should be sending someone around with some food before too much longer. If you’ve got a yen for something specific, I’ll give them a call and let ’em know. Damn convenient having your own family kitchen to bring worms back to the nest whether you ask for them or not, isn’t it?"
"Worms," Dean said, pushing to a stand. "Mmmmm. I could use another cup of coffee though." He hesitated, then, almost as if it was a peace offering, asked, "You, Sam?"
"No. Thanks." Sam pushed off the wall, telling Danny, "Yell if she wants to take me up on the break. I’ll be outside fucking up my lungs," and then he left, walking out the front door without looking back.
Dean was already headed for the kitchen.
"Hey. Dean," Danny called. Dean stopped, looked back at him. "Than you for telling me about your mother. I know you didn’t want to."
Dean snorted lightly. "You’re a manipulative bastard," he said.
"Yeah," Danny agreed. "I am."
"That the truth about your mother, or just bait to obligate me into talking?"
"It was the truth."
"That why you’re a doctor?"
"One of the reasons."
Dean nodded. "Sorry about the sad story crack," he said finally.
"It is a sad story," Danny returned easily.
"Why’d you ask me if I’m a man of faith?"
"Curious."
"Sounded like more than that."
Danny shrugged a little. "God and I have a bit of an antagonistic relationship," he allowed. "It was something John and I had in common. I see some of that in you. Made me curious how deep it goes."
"I was electrocuted once," Dean offered. "Fucked my heart to a terminal state. Faith healer re-booted it for me, gave me someone else’s life to live like it was mine."
"Really." Danny studied him for a beat. "So … that’s a yes?"
"Wasn’t about God. Wasn’t about faith. It was about bad things happening to good people. I just happened to be the beneficiary of it."
"God works in mysterious ways," Danny said, cutting the words with the tone he used.
Dean laughed a little. "Yeah. That would just about sum up my take on it. Fucker needs to learn to be a little more straight forward, wouldn’t you say?"
"So not faith, but belief?" Danny said.
"Hard to see the things I’ve seen and not believe," Dean returned. "But believing cuts both ways. Not sure I’m always on the side of the coin my mother would have wanted me on."
Danny nodded. "I hear that."
"Why don’t you have them send over a burger or something. My stomach’s beginning to think my throat’s been cut for all the love it’s getting these days."
"I’ll see what I can arrange."
Dean started to say something else, then changed his mind.
"What?" Danny prompted.
"Ah, nothing. Just had an urge to get a little chick flicky there for a minute. Tell you some kind of shit about being glad my dad stumbled across someone like you when he was trying to drink himself dead. But then I thought better of it. Wouldn’t want you to think I’m a girl or anything."
"You’ve met my sister, right?" Danny said.
"Yeah," Dean returned a little cautiously.
"When I get around to introducing you to my wife, I’m pretty sure you’ll understand why, after living with the two of them my whole life, I aspire to be a girl when I grow up."
A slow grin spread across Dean’s face. "My wife’s a little like that," he said.
"I thought maybe she was. She seemed the type to keep you in line."
"She’s a stupendous fuck, too," Dean offered.
Danny chuckled. "You and John have absolutely no lines," he said. "There’s a daybed on rollers in John’s den. When you get a chance, roll that thing down the hall and bring it into their bedroom, will you? I’m going to try and talk some sense into my sister. I don’t hold out much hope of success, but if you show up with a daybed in tow, I might just get her to lie down for a while, if nothing else."
"Good luck with that," Dean said.
Danny snorted. "Yeah. I’m sure I’ll need it." Turning, he walked down the hall to his sister’s bedroom, steeling himself to face the quiet despair of a woman he’d do anything to spare the hell in which she was burning.
*
Danny cracked the door open carefully just in case she was sleeping. Julie looked up from where she sat on the side of John’s bed, holding his hand, watching him as she had been when Danny left her.
She smiled. He didn’t believe her.
"How you doing?" He stepped into the room, leaving the door cracked open behind him.
"He’s back to not moving," she said, either mishearing the question or simply answering the request she chose to hear. "His skin’s not nearly as cold though, and his pulse is much more consistent."
"He’s not catatonic now, Julie," Danny told her gently. "Or in psychological shock. He’s just asleep. Drugged. If I hadn’t put him down as far down as I did, he’d be up and kicking, probably telling us to fuck off and get him a drink."
"I think his blood pressure’s still jumping around."
"Probably. He’s under a lot of emotional stress. But right now, he’s comfortable, and he’s going to stay that way for several hours. I want you to take advantage of that and get some sleep while you can, okay?"
"I can’t sleep, Danny."
"Then at least lie down. Give mini D a break from standing on his head for a while."
"I don’t want to lie down. I want to sit here and hold John’s hand. That’s what I want to do, Danny; so just go away and let me do it, will you?"
Danny crouched down beside her, putting one hand flat on the side of her belly. She hated it when someone did that. It irritated her to a crabby agitation to have anyone not John presume to just reach out and lay hands to her belly as if it was some kind of public science exhibit. She’d smacked him more than once for doing just that, knowing the only reason he did it was to irritate her.
"Little Danny thinks you need to lie down and get some rest," Danny said when she didn’t respond to something he did just to get a response.
"Danny needs to mind his own fucking business," she returned quietly, turning her gaze back to watch the still, silent features of her unconscious husband.
"Language, language," he said. It was something she always said to him when he slipped with this profanity or the other around Sammy. "Wouldn’t want my man here to learn his socially unacceptable vocabulary from anyone but me."
"Go away, Danny," she said quietly
"No."
"Please?"
"No."
She started crying. He moved up to sit beside her on the bed, pulled her in, held her and let her cry. She hadn’t shed a tear since John went down. She made up for it now, and he held her until she was finished.
When she was done, she wiped at her face, then pulled out of his arms and took John’s hand again. "Now will you go away?" she asked.
"Sure."
Dean was standing outside in the hallway. He had been for several minutes. He’d showed up with the rolling daybed in tow shortly after Julie broke down, stepping into the room and then back out again just as quickly when he realized what was going on. Danny saw him then, but waited until now to acknowledge his presence, nodding just slightly to let him know it was okay to interrupt.
Dean tapped on the door like he’d just arrived, then pushed it open and came in, asking Danny, "Where you want it?"
"Right there’s fine."
Dean settled the daybed in place, then stepped back in the direction of the doorway, asking, "Anything else I can do?"
"As a matter of fact, there is." Danny stood. "Stay here with Julie for a minute while I go get my bag, will you? I want to check on the baby, then your dad. Won’t take long: I’ll be back before you know it."
"Sure," Dean agreed.
"Danny …" Julie’s tone was tight, angry.
Danny smiled down at her, touched her face with one hand. "Be right back," he said, and then he left.
Dean stood awkwardly near the door, his back to a wall, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans. Julie glanced at him, offered him the kind of smile he was used to getting from Meredith, then returned her attentions to his dad.
"How’s he doing?" Dean asked after a long stretch of heavy silence.
"The same," she answered levelly.
Dean took a step closer to get a look at his father. His color was better, and his face was relaxed, almost peaceful. "He looks better," Dean noted.
Julie didn’t answer.
"Does he talk or anything?" he asked. "I mean … like dreams or something?"
"No."
"Yeah. Okay."
"Do you want to sit with him for a while?" The words came out like teeth being pulled.
"No. That’s okay. I mean … unless you’re looking for a break or something."
"I don’t want a break. I want to stay here with him."
Dean nodded. "Okay. Sure. That’s fine."
"Thanks." The sarcasm in her voice was hard to miss.
"I didn’t mean it that way," he said.
"It’s okay. I realize this is all about you."
Dean flushed. He bit down on his response to keep from saying it. The weight of the silence between them multiplied.
"Sorry," she said finally. "That wasn’t really fair."
"That’s okay," he said. He stopped short of saying what he wanted to say - that he realized this was all about her - because it wasn’t fair. He wanted to say it though. He really, really did.
She heard it anyway, and laughed.
"What?"
"I suppose I deserve that."
"I didn’t say anything," he protested.
"You didn’t have to."
"Fuck. Is everybody psychic but me?"
She laughed again, a little more genuinely this time. "It’s a hard time," she said. "I’m sure I’m being incredibly unfair to you; but I have to take it out on somebody, and you’re the lucky guy who won the lotto this week."
He smiled a little. "That’s all right. I’ve been bitch slapped by the best. Take your best shot; I can handle it."
She didn’t say anything for a while, then offered, "That’s not really fair."
"I didn’t mean it … bad," he said quickly. "I was just saying ---"
"Being likeable," she interrupted. "I’d much prefer it if you were an ass."
"Oh." His smile came back. "I can do that."
"So I’ve heard."
This time it was Dean who laughed. "Been talking to Sammy have you?"
"Sam would step in front of a train for you."
That surprised him. Not only that she said it; but the way she said it, like she had no patience for anyone so stupid as to not be able to see something so obvious.
"I know that," he said finally, just so she wouldn’t think he was really that stupid.
"Good. Because he would."
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything at all.
"I love your dad, you know," Julie offered when he didn’t speak. She was watching John as she spoke, reaching out to touch his face, running her fingers along his skin. "I love him like I think he must have loved your mother."
"I can see that," Dean said.
"No you can’t."
Again, she surprised him. She didn’t have any patience for lies, either. Or for platitudes. Or for being told something she wanted to hear when she knew it wasn’t true. He looked down at his shoes, admitting, "Okay. You’re right. But Sam told me do."
She nodded, accepting what he said this time. "I wanted you to know that. Just in case it makes a difference to you."
In caseit makes a difference. Like knowing his father was loved wouldn’t make a difference to him because it wasn’t his mother doing the loving.
"Julie …" he started. Then he stopped. She was still touching his father, still running her fingers along the planes of his face. The intimacy of it was too much for Dean to watch, so he slid down to a crouch, leaning his back against the wall, balancing his arms on upthrust knees and closing his eyes just to rest them from the sight of something that burned like fire in his gut.
"What?" she said almost three minutes later.
He opened his eyes again. "Excuse me?"
"You said ‘Julie.’ I just was asking what."
"I don’t know what I was going to say," he admitted. "That I’m sorry, I guess."
"Sorry for what?"
"I didn’t really … Sammy’s the one who’s good at thinking things through. I react more from my gut. Usually that works for me; but this time it totally fucked us all, and I’m sorry for that." Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, "If that makes any difference to you."
"I’m not sure what you mean," she said.
"I mean I meant to stay in the car," he elaborated. "I know I should have just left, but I wanted to see him. I thought I could see him and just stay in the car. But then when he almost fell …"
He closed his eyes again, dropping his head back against the wall. "I’m sorry. I should have let Sam handle it. He could have done it without losing track of the plan. I just … I needed to get to him. When I saw him start to fall, I needed to get to him. It was just instinct. I couldn’t control it."
He waited several beats, then said, "I knew he’d remember me, but I didn’t think he’d react that way. I hope you believe that. If I’d thought there was any chance I’d hurt him, I wouldn’t have come. I would have stayed away and let Sam handle it to make sure I didn’t fuck anything up." Then, more quietly, he added, "I just wanted to see him. Just see him for myself, so I knew he was really alive."
When he finished, she didn’t speak. She didn’t say anything for so long he opened his eyes. She’d turned on the bed and was watching him. He offered her a small smile that he knew was poor excuse for anything other than the anemia of someone who had nothing better to offer.
"This wasn’t your fault, Dean," she said.
"Sure it is. He saw me and everything went to hell in a handbag. If I’d just stayed in the fuc- freaking car, everything would have been fine. I could have seen him, and everything would have been fine."
"Nothing’s been fine with John since the day I met him," Julie said quietly. "You didn’t break him, Dean. He came broken. All seeing you did was bring it all to the surface instead of letting it hide down inside him where it sabotages us on a daily basis."
"I should have stayed in the car," he said again.
"No, you shouldn’t have. I wish you had, but you shouldn’t have." He stared at her. She shrugged a little, and tried to smile. "He’s your father."
Dean had to look away, look anywhere but her. "It would be a lot easier to resent you if you could just be a little less generous," he said finally.
"It would be a lot easier to blame you if you could just be a little less who Danny says you are," Julie returned.
That made him look at her again. "What did Danny say about me?"
"That you’re just like him."
"Like who?"
"John."
"Oh." He studied his feet for a minute. "Yeah. I guess we are alike in some ways."
"A few," she conceded.
He smiled a little. "Hope you don’t hold that against me," he said after a moment.
"I’ll try not to."
Danny returned then, slipping through the door with his doctor’s bag. "Thanks, Dean. Stevie will be bringing you out a burger and a few other things in about thirty minutes. Now go away so I can give my sis the once over."
Dean pushed to his feet. "Yeah. Sure."
He left them as Danny sat down on the bed next to his sister and set his bag to the floor.
Julie looked at him. "You’re a manipulative bastard," she said.
He smiled at her. "Yeah," he agreed. "I am."
*
Sam was standing on the front porch, smoking a cigarette. It was his third since he’d left the living room, and he’d smoked them one right after another, leaning against his father’s house as he stared at the Impala like it held the secrets to the universe.
Danny joined him there after he’d checked on Julie, bumming a cigarette and lighting it up as he said, casually, like he was making a comment about the weather, "The world’s a fucked up place, isn’t it Sammy?"
Sam grunted. "That just a general observation, Danny? Or were you thinking of something in specific?"
"Did a little googling on wendigoes after Julie told me about your phone conversation with Dean yesterday," he offered. "Nasty little bitches if the stories can be believed."
"Some of them can," Sam said.
"So that’s what you meant by superhero stuff? Saving the innocent, kicking ass on the bad guys?"
Sam shook his head. "Is there anything they don’t tell you?"
"What can I say? I’m nosey, and this house has some fucked up acoustics."
"Meaning?" Sam prompted.
"Let’s just say I know a little bit more about your relationship with your wife than I’d care to, but such are the perils of sleeping in Julie’s den. Or trying to sleep there at least, which is harder than it looks, mostly due to what you city types evidently feel is acceptable coffee conversation between you and your old man, and the flying camel John sends in to test my emergency preparedness training every time I give him the opportunity by forgetting to go the fuck home and sleep in my own damned bed."
Sam chuckled, remembering the look in his dad’s eyes earlier when he’d mentioned the wake-up ritual his daughter and her uncle shared. It had reminded him of Dean and Garrison at the time. It reminded him of them even more now.
"So are you going to answer the question?" Danny asked after a moment of silence.
"Do you really need it answered?"
Danny turned, looked at him. "There are a lot of questions about your dad I need answered if I’m going to help him," he said. "Like what he saw happen to your mother."
"He saw her murdered," Sam said simply, grimly. "The same way I saw Jess murdered."
Danny waited for Sam to go on. When he didn’t, Danny asked, "Can you expound on that a little? What I’m most interested in is what Dean didn’t tell me. Who he thinks would have gotten you that night, if your father didn’t leave your mother. Who he called a fucker, then tried to pass it off like he was talking about fire."
"If I tell you that, it will change the way you see the world."
"On good days, I view God as a fucked up, capricious, sadistic, mother fucker of a son of a bitch," Danny said. "Most would argue I could use a change of perspective."
Sam glanced at Danny, checking to make sure the other man knew what he was asking. Secure that he did, Sam’s focus returned to the Impala.
"Mom and Jess were murdered by a Demon." His voice was flat, unemotional. "They were pinned to the ceiling, eviscerated and burned alive. My mother over my crib when I was six months old. Jess over our bed twenty two years later. Dean and I grew up hunting It. We caught up with It in Jefferson City, almost a year after It got Jess. It possessed my dad; and while It had him, he very nearly killed Dean. We caught up to It again in Phoenix. That time, It possessed Dean. It shouldn’t have. I destroyed It."
Danny digested his new perspective for several minutes without commenting.
"That’s a little story we Winchesters tell," Sam said finally. "Most of it’s legend and fable. Kind of a whole family-mythos thing we weave to scare the in-laws on Halloween. It isn’t really true though. None of it really happened." Dropping his cigarette on the porch, Sam ground it out under the heel of his shoe before looking up to meet Danny’s eyes. "You’re a smart guy. An educated man. Surely you don’t believe in that kind of crap, right?"
Danny started at him for a long time without speaking. "Julie’s going to have your ass for that," he said finally, indicating the cigarette butt with a small lift of his chin.
"I plan to tell her it was you."
"She’ll never buy it." Danny dropped his cigarette next to Sam’s and ground it out, too. "She knows I don’t smoke. I’m a doctor, for fuck’s sake. Everyone in town knows I don’t smoke."
"Funny how what you know doesn’t always turn out to be the truth, isn’t it?" Sam said.
"That’s profound, Sammy," Danny returned. "And also fucked up. True, but fucked up. You ready to go back inside? Try and figure out a way to fix this?"
"No."
"Good. Balance the scales a little in how much I wasn’t ready to find out there are things out there more fucked up, capricious and sadistic than my fucked up, capricious, sadistic, mother fucker of a son of a bitch God."
"You asked," Sam said.
"You should have warned me it was a don’t ask, don’t tell thing."
"I believe I did."
"Yeah," Danny said. "But I thought you were lying."
*