Fic-ish?
So. I'm not sure what this is, but it jumped out of my brain while I was feeding Soren breakfast a few minutes ago. Could be a ficlet or a drabble or a part of something bigger. I just wanted to get it down here. Cut for spoilers. Just fair warning, it's rough, but here it is:
Untitled
When Ben was a new father at 27, he looked for Dean Winchester. Not to tell him that he wasn't still angry, or that he thought Dean was right for leaving, but that he understood that Dean had to do what he thought was right.
It had been fifteen years since he'd last seen the man and the phone number he'd had all that time ago had been disconnected a few days after the last time Dean had showed up. After he'd called and begged Dean to come home. In some ways he felt like he'd been looking for Dean Winchester his entire life.
When his mother had explained to him that they weren't like the other families in his preschool class, that they didn't need a father to make them a family. When the bullies at school had teased him and pushed him around for being different, because he didn't have a dad to teach him how to play catch. When his mother had gotten married to a man with a nice, settled life and a nine to five job at the bank.
In the end, it took eleven months, fifteen days, five hours and more money and promised favors than he felt strictly comfortable with, but he finally had an address. It took two more weeks to work up the nerve to make his way to the backwater Pennsylvania town. It took an extra twenty minutes to find the old, overgrown road that his GPS insisted was there. It was yet another hour's walk when his rental car couldn't go any farther.
It didn't take long at all to realize there wasn't someone living in the decripit shack just off the road. Another dead end. He walked around the shack and wished, not for the first time, that Dean had taught him more than how an engine worked. He wished that he knew how to find someone, how to help them when they really needed it.
Halfway back to the road he found the plaque, his boot scraping roughly over the raised metal. It was dumb luck that he'd found it at all; it was nearly as overgrown as the road leading to the shack. The inscription, once he'd cleared it of weeds and dirt, was simple.
Dean Winchester
1-24-70 to 12-21-12
He saved the world.
And Ben understood.
Untitled
When Ben was a new father at 27, he looked for Dean Winchester. Not to tell him that he wasn't still angry, or that he thought Dean was right for leaving, but that he understood that Dean had to do what he thought was right.
It had been fifteen years since he'd last seen the man and the phone number he'd had all that time ago had been disconnected a few days after the last time Dean had showed up. After he'd called and begged Dean to come home. In some ways he felt like he'd been looking for Dean Winchester his entire life.
When his mother had explained to him that they weren't like the other families in his preschool class, that they didn't need a father to make them a family. When the bullies at school had teased him and pushed him around for being different, because he didn't have a dad to teach him how to play catch. When his mother had gotten married to a man with a nice, settled life and a nine to five job at the bank.
In the end, it took eleven months, fifteen days, five hours and more money and promised favors than he felt strictly comfortable with, but he finally had an address. It took two more weeks to work up the nerve to make his way to the backwater Pennsylvania town. It took an extra twenty minutes to find the old, overgrown road that his GPS insisted was there. It was yet another hour's walk when his rental car couldn't go any farther.
It didn't take long at all to realize there wasn't someone living in the decripit shack just off the road. Another dead end. He walked around the shack and wished, not for the first time, that Dean had taught him more than how an engine worked. He wished that he knew how to find someone, how to help them when they really needed it.
Halfway back to the road he found the plaque, his boot scraping roughly over the raised metal. It was dumb luck that he'd found it at all; it was nearly as overgrown as the road leading to the shack. The inscription, once he'd cleared it of weeds and dirt, was simple.
Dean Winchester
1-24-70 to 12-21-12
He saved the world.
And Ben understood.