SPN FIC - Never That Man
For
dodger_winslow and the John girls.
Length: 2,255 words
Rating: PG, for language
Pairings: none
Spoilers: up through "In My Time of Dying"
Sam fights because it’s in his blood. It’s in all of them, inhabits every breath they take. It’s Jack Winchester’s legacy to them: the anger, the hurt, the frustration, the feeling of not good enough. Of the three of them, Sam had the best chance of climbing out. That’s gone now, John knows, gone like the last ashes of a small, bright campfire.
Never That Man
By Carol Davis
He wonders if Mary would laugh at the name he chose.
He can see her in his mind’s eye, curled up on the couch, eating popcorn and watching I Love Lucy in a bathrobe almost the same shade of blue as the one he’s wearing. She’s gone now, really gone - Missouri told him so a couple of months ago - but in his mind’s eye she will always be nearby. She will be there, laughing, frowning, sleeping, singing. Looking at him with greed and joy and hunger and pleasure and desperation and glee and contentment and pain.
Always.
McGillicuddy was Lucy’s maiden name - on television, at least.
And Elroy? Elroy was for Sammy, who loved The Jetsons. Who would follow him around the apartment giggling, “Roak-ray, Rorge!”
Roak-ray, Rorge, he thinks.
He sent Sammy away a while ago, in search of Bobby: reasonable, pragmatic, logical Bobby.
Bobby, who makes more sense than John Winchester - Elroy McGillicuddy - ever has. Ever did, even before the demon.
He harbors no illusion that Sam will bring back the things on his little shopping list without knowing what they’re for. If Sam doesn’t puzzle it out on his own, Bobby will tell him. And Sam will yell, will scowl and sulk and yell, because that’s what Sam does. It doesn’t accomplish anything, all that noise, but you could no more convince Sam not to be angry at his father than you could convince water to flow uphill. It’s possible - anything is possible - but it’s no cakewalk.
And really, he can’t blame Sam for yelling. For being angry.
His mind drifts, wandering back through the years. He can see Sammy sitting on the couch, his child’s face scrunched up in concentration and dismay, wanting to fill out the credit card application himself rather than just suggesting names that John and Dean both smile at but unable to print letters small enough to fit in the little boxes.
And he can see Dean, patiently teaching Sam how to hold a pencil, how to write his name. Tie his shoes, brush his teeth, make his bed.
He can see Dean doing any number of things. Sitting at a battered table with weapons spread out before him, ready to be cleaned. Buttering toast. Walking away from a group of middle school kids who have nothing to say to him because he’s new in town and dresses the wrong way and isn’t one of them. Pretending not to be hurt. Gathering his things quickly and efficiently into a worn and dirty duffel bag so that they can move on to another town, another school, another group of kids who won’t like him any better.
Flirting with a girl in a pool hall. Bending over the pool table with easy, practiced grace, cue in hand, a distracted smile pulling at his mouth as he lines up his shot. Leaning close to the girl, murmuring to her, brushing a kiss against her cheek.
He can see Dean standing in an open grave, in the narrow space he’s dug alongside the casket, his face bathed golden by firelight.
He can see Dean dying.
Here. Now.
Cerebral edema. Contusions to liver and kidney. Complicated words that play themselves over and over in John’s mind like an old LP with a skip. Swelling, bruising, that’s all it is. But that’s not all it is. The demon ripped Dean open deep inside, made him bleed in torrents. Made him whimper and grunt and cry from pain. Made him plead for help. Dad…don’t let it kill me.
Dad…
More words wander through John’s head: phrases he heard over and over as a child, from his mother, who believed. Hail Mary, full of grace. Blessed are thou among women. And blessed is the fruit of thy womb…
His mother would be horrified. He’s blaspheming, she would say, for connecting the words - even if only in his mind - to another Mary, another child. Distantly, and without much real interest, he wonders what she would think if she knew what’s become of her child. What he does. What he hunts. What he is.
John shifts his gaze and lets it rest on the still figure of his firstborn.
He can control himself on the outside - control what he shows to the world. He learned to do that long before his first day of boot camp. He can keep his body and his face perfectly still, perfectly serene.
Inside is another story.
Inside, something clutches at his heart and holds on.
His hand curves, forms an arc, the way it did yesterday, the yesterday that was so long ago.
She takes his hand by the wrist and rests his palm against the smooth warmth of her skin. He smiles at her, indulging her. He can feel the baby, yes - feel shapes and firmness and movement. He indulges her because really, this is like the game where you thrust your hand into a paper bag and try to identify by touch alone what’s inside. The baby will become real to him on the day it’s born, when he can hold it in his arms and look into its eyes.
Then the shape, the collection of lumps and bumps and movement, shifts under his palm. Squirms. And settles.
Settles, as if the touch of his hand is a comfort.
He knows then that this bump, this shape, is his son. And for a moment, he feels as if he has been thrown off a building.
“John?” she says.
He smiles. Knows it looks phony.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
I’m scared, he thinks. I’m afraid I can’t do this.
I’m afraid I’m going to be like him.
Him.
Dad. Pop. William Jonathan Winchester - “Jack” to almost everyone - the son of another William. A fucked-up drunk, the son of another fucked-up drunk, and more than likely the grandson of one as well. He worked when he could, when he felt like it, which was seldom. Stopped working altogether after the accident wrecked his hip and made walking and lifting and sitting and driving painful. Made life painful, from the way he acted. But that was an excuse, and a damned convenient one. He had a wife who could work and a sixteen-year-old son who could work, and by God he had paid his dues enough to sit back and collect what was coming to him.
He’s dead now, and his boy Johnny has not grieved for him, ever, since the day the old bastard stopped breathing.
Instead, his boy grieves for what might have been. Should have been. Could have been.
If only.
But lessons learned are etched deeply and permanently on the soul, and all the good intentions in the world can’t erase them.
There’s no point in laying blame, not now. Not on Pop, not on the demon, not on the weariness that made John fall asleep in the chair in front of the TV that night instead of in bed beside Mary so that he could have been the one to respond to the sounds coming from Sammy’s nursery. Would the demon have murdered him instead of Mary, he wonders, if it had been he who wandered in there instead of her? In all the investigation he’s done, he’s found nothing about fathers dying, only mothers. So maybe there was nothing he could have done. Maybe it was all meant to be.
His lips curve a little, because that’s a bunch of crap.
Should’ve been him who interrupted the son of a bitch. Could have had it out with the thing, killed it then and there.
Somehow.
Somehow…
He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he sent Sam away. A couple of hours? Sam’s numb, he thinks, and more than a little lost. Can’t figure out how to take the reins of this thing on his own, so he’s agreed to run an errand.
Sam hasn’t agreed to run John’s errands for years. Not since… Well, it had to be before high school. Before Sam went into high school. Before Dean was supposed to graduate from high school and didn’t, because there was…something. Somewhere. A hunt. Something that demanded all three of them take it on. Them and…someone. Somewhere.
Sam fights because it’s in his blood. It’s in all of them, inhabits every breath they take. It’s Jack Winchester’s legacy to them: the anger, the hurt, the frustration, the feeling of not good enough. Of the three of them, Sam had the best chance of climbing out. That’s gone now, John knows, gone like the last ashes of a small, bright campfire.
He could believe Sam hates him, because that’s what the package says on the outside. It says You dragged me down the wrong road, you son of a bitch. You cost me more than I could bear to pay.
But he doesn’t believe that. Can’t. Won’t. He held Sam in his arms in Chicago and there was no hatred there.
Sam is angry and suffering and John is the only one who will not shrivel in the heat of his pain. It would kill Dean, if Sam turned that heat on him, fixed him with cold eyes and said the things he has said to John.
The machine doing Dean’s breathing for him clicks and hisses. It’s a steady rhythm: click, hiss. Click, hiss.
His boy is dying.
Forever ago, he sat in the rocking chair that was a gift from Mary’s uncle and cradled his sleeping son in his arms. Almost unconsciously he began to press his bare foot against the floor, tipping the chair gently back and forth, back and forth.
Click, hiss.
Dean’s eyes are closed, pale lids covering vivid green.
I’m sorry, son, John thinks. I’m so very sorry.
He knows that he has done wrong by his boy - by both of his boys. He has fucked this up in ways he could not have imagined back then, when they were born, long ago and far away. He has betrayed Dean, betrayed Sam, betrayed Mary, betrayed his own promises.
And there is no way of going back.
Only forward.
Sam will be furious, he knows. In a way, Sam is Pop come back to life, with a ready arsenal of the criticism Pop hurled blindly but so well. That wasn’t true years ago, when Sam was small and round-faced and clumsy. If he complained to anyone then, it was to Dean. To his father he would offer nothing more negative than a puzzled frown or a peevish, “But I wanna go tooooo.” The yelling didn’t start until… Until he hit puberty, John thinks. Then all hell busted loose. It did with Dean, too, but Dean got a saddle on it somehow.
Somehow. Because of something.
Something I didn’t pay any attention to.
Sam can argue and bitch and yell but it won’t do any good. John has made his decision - made it long before he said quietly to Sam, “I have a plan,” only to be greeted by another blast from his son the fire-breathing dragon. It doesn’t matter how much Sam objects, even though Sam’s objections will be as sensible as anything Bobby Singer could conjure up, even though Dean - if he were awake - would be horrified.
Dean loves him. He knows that with as much raw certainty as he has ever known anything in this life.
He knows, too, that all Dean has ever really wanted is to be needed.
And he is.
Sam needs him.
Sam has always needed him, right from the get-go. It was Dean who carried Sam out of the house in Lawrence, Dean who fed him, curled around him in the night, taught him to read, write, brush his teeth. It was Dean who listened to him, helped him puzzle out his homework, explained what had happened to their mother.
Dean is not a loner. And Sam is Dean’s not-alone.
Blessed are thou, John thinks distantly. He has never prayed, not really, not when his mother wanted him to, not when he was grown, and certainly not after the demon took Mary from him. But he wonders now if there is someone, Someone, to pray to, someone who’s listening, someone who might think, even fleetingly, that he has not fucked up his life beyond all redemption. Watch over them, he thinks. Try to do a better job of it than I did.
Sam will be furious. But there is only one choice here, only one answer to the question, What am I supposed to do?
The price is high.
He knows the demon won’t be satisfied with the Colt. Not in exchange for something as precious as Dean’s life. That would be, John thinks with a wisp of humor, like buying Manhattan for a handful of beads and trinkets. He had the thing inside him, its mind right alongside his, for more than a day. He knows what it will want. It’s a price neither of his boys would want him to pay - Sam, who couldn’t pull the trigger, and Dean, who begged Sam not to. But he can’t not pay it. They need each other, Mary’s children, need each other in a desperate, painful way that’s as screwed up as every other part of their lives.
John knows that. He forged them into what they are, he and the demon.
He will pay the price of letting Dean survive, after Sam brings him what he asked for.
And ultimately, he prays, so will the demon.