We Were always Gonna End Up Here, for freya922
Title: We Were Always Gonna End Up Here
Recipient: freya922
Wordcount: ~6000
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Author’s Notes: I am beyond grateful for my ever-helpful betas and cheerleaders. Thank you.
Written for this prompt: “I'm dying for some very early Wee!chesters - Maybe someone (Missouri? Pastor Jim? Relatives?) is trying to convince John to settle down for the boys' sake, and he tries, but then SOMETHING HAPPENS that convinces him he has no choice but to become a hunter. Sam a baby or toddler, Dean very young.”
Dearfreya922, like you I came late to the Supernatural party, and like you I am fascinated by the young Winchesters. So thank you for the fantastic prompt (all of them were great, but this one really spoke to me), I had a ball writing this and I hope that you enjoy it! xox
Summary: John Winchester is a hard man to convince on a good day, but there are always people who are gonna try. Three times someone tried to get John to settle down; three times John kept moving.
Mary has been dead for 45 days.
Sam cries all the time. Dean is so quiet it scares me.
I don’t know what to do.
December 1983 - - John Winchester
The first time he lets his boys out of his sight after Mary dies it's to visit a psychic and he comes home to find them sprawled on the floor, both of them sobbing, and it hits him with blinding force that this is his life now.
The babysitter is hovering over them helplessly and after he sends her away he picks up his motherless sons and carries them to the couch. Dean clutches him and soaks through the collar of his shirt before he calms enough to ask if Mommy had to go because they got Sammy in exchange.
Maybe if we give Sammy back Mommy can come home?
Oh, buddy, the words catch in John’s throat. It doesn’t work that way.
He takes them to see Missouri the next day. He doesn’t know why but it feels important, and he doesn’t look farther than that.
Dean had woken up still full of questions about what John told him the night before. Sammy’s all we have left, son, and we gotta work with what we have. Dean’s eyes had gone wide when John handed little Sammy to him, showed Dean how to hold him right, how to support his head and give him his finger to hold.
Now John shows him how to give Sam his bottle, how to test it to make sure it’s not too hot. Re-spon-si-bi… Dean tests the long word, looking up at John, unsure. Responsibility. It’s like a job. Looking after Sammy, it’s our job now. And Dean gazes down at the tiny bundle in his arms and asks, Mine too?
Especially yours, Deano. He needs you.
He watches Dean in the rearview mirror while he drives. Watching Dean watch Sam like his brother might vanish if Dean so much as blinks.
Missouri coos, when they arrive, and reaches for the baby. She cradles him in her arms, rocking him instinctively.
“Young man,” she barks a moment later, shaking John out of his reverie at seeing Sam once again nestled safely in a woman’s loving arms, and making him look down at his eldest. Dean's little hands are clenched into angry fists as he glares up at Missouri. “Young man, I’ve held a child or two in my time and they've all lived to tell the tale, so settle yourself.”
The first flicker of amusement he’s felt in weeks takes John by surprise when Dean doesn't back down. “You never held Sammy before,” he challenges, as though his brother is something new and utterly unique to this world.
Missouri lifts her eyebrows, then smiles down at Dean and tells him to follow her to the sofa and, once seated, asks him to show her how holding Sammy ought to be done. Dean does, repositioning Sam in her arms, not letting go of his tiny hand even after he's arranged to Dean’s satisfaction.
And so an hour passes. Dean speaks more than he has in a month, warming to Missouri all at once when Sammy opens his eyes and beams up at her, gurgling happily and clapping his hands. He likes you, is Dean’s wondering remark, and then it’s off to the races. I know how to do this and Sammy likes to do that. John watches and listens for awhile, drifting, world-weary and grateful for a reprieve, however brief.
But then Missouri’s looking at him, speaking to him, and John is laser-sharp again, focused on getting the answers he needs. After a minute he realizes that Dean is hanging on his every word and John says, “Dean, why don’t you take your brother into the other room, there’s some toys you can play with.”
And Dean pouts, of course, and dawdles, but he picks up his brother and carries him away, already narrating a tale of daring and heroics. The plot is familiar from when John would come home to find Dean lying on his stomach beside Sam, acting out quests and adventures with his building blocks and toy soldiers. Dean leaves the door open and John watches them settle into the living room, digging through the dolls and action figures from the toy chest Missouri keeps there. With a triumphant cry Dean pulls out a garish red silk cloth and ties it around Sammy’s shoulders like a cape.
“Your boys are blessed to have each other,” Missouri says, and John turns to her with a snort and a deeply incredulous look.
“Whatever the opposite of ‘blessed’ is, that’s all we are, Missouri. My boys are going to grow up without their mother and so help me, if it’s the last thing I do I will get justice for them.”
Missouri sighs, looking at him like she can see right through him. Mary used to get that look, sometimes, and it shakes John down to his marrow to see such a familiar look on a stranger’s face.
“John, if you’re already making plans for how you’re going to go out in a blaze of glory, I’m afraid I can’t help you. But I can give you the number of a good psychologist in town.”
John spits out several words he hadn’t uttered since before his first son was born. He hadn’t needed a goddamn therapist when he got back from ‘Nam and he didn’t need one now. Missouri doesn’t bat an eye, and John deflates.
“You have a choice ahead of you, John Winchester. I don’t need to tell you that you’re at a crossroads. The insurance money just came in, am I right? You’ve been looking at houses in the area, but none of them are home to you, because to you, home is Mary and your boys. And so you don’t think that home can ever exist for you again. But someone needs to tell you, John. You’re wrong. You can make the painful choice and you can choose to build a new home, just you and your boys, and you can tell them about their mother, you can make her real for them. But for that, you have to let go of her yourself. You have to be at peace with the fact that she’s gone.”
John digs his knuckles into his eyes, the white-hot need to break down, to grieve, almost overcoming his ironclad self-control. “I can’t,” he chokes out eventually. “Can’t you see that? I can’t. She wasn’t supposed to go this way. My babies-”
Missouri’s hand on his knee anchors him, and he breathes through the ragged sobs until he achieves something like equilibrium again. He looks up at her. “My sons weren’t supposed to grow up without her. She was perfect, and they deserve to know that I didn’t just let her go. I won’t have any peace, Missouri, until I have justice.”
“John,” she says gently, squeezing his knee before letting him go. “You’re a good man, I’ve known that since the moment you crossed my threshold. So I’m trusting you to listen to me. You say the word ‘justice,’ but your energy is screaming ‘vengeance.’ There’s a difference, John, and the difference is between a full life and an empty one. If you want justice for you wife and your boys, you’ll think on my words and contemplate your actions. Do you understand me?”
John nods, and Missouri sighs again. She turns to look through the doorway to where Dean is helping Sam sit up, trying to get him to hold out his arms, then lifting him up and swinging him gently left and right, the red cape flapping around him. “I got you! Look, Sammy, you’re flying!”
“I don’t know what took your wife, John. But I can put you in touch with someone who might help you get better answers. Only promise me you’ll think about it. Think about the path that might lead you down, what you might deny your boys if you devote your life to answers instead of to, well, to living.”
John promises, and Missouri insists that they take the superhero cape home with them.
John tries. He goes back to work, he makes calls to realtors, he stops unplugging the phone when he gets home. But then a few weeks later, after he’s been out all day, he comes home to find it’s the same story as before. Sammy won’t stop crying and Dean is wrapped around him, clutching his baby brother tight and wailing for their mom. It’s almost Christmas and John doesn’t know what any of it means without Mary there to make sense of it for him; for all of them.
He buckles his boys into their seats in the Impala and drives aimlessly around Lawrence for hours, the way they would when Dean was a restless baby, until the low, steady rumble of the engine and the answering song of the road soothe them to sleep. He gets them both into Sammy’s crib without waking them and sinks down into the armchair in the corner, watching them cling to each other in their sleep, his mind’s eye fixed on the empty passenger seat.
Hours later, John digs out the scrap of paper and squints through a whiskey haze to interpret Missouri’s loopy handwriting.
“Hello,” he says, when the phone is answered on the third ring. “My name is John Winchester, is this Jim Murphy? Yes, I was told you might be able to help me.”
- - -
Mom’s been gone for three and a half years.
Sam said his first word, it was my name! Then he learned all the other words and now he doesn’t shut up. I broke my first bone, it was my wrist, it hurt but it wasn’t too bad. Dad said it was good, how I didn’t even cry much. Sammy knows how to read a little and I know how to shoot a gun.
June, 1987 - - Dean Winchester
“It would do them good to be with other children. They’re bright kids, both of them. Sam’s already reading, John. Do you realize how unusual that is for a kid his age? Dean should be worrying about catching frogs and pulling pigtails, not teaching his little brother how to read.”
They’re staying in a place Dad keeps apologizing for but Dean doesn’t know why. There’s running water that stays warm long enough he can give Sammy his own bath and there’s a yard and he has a bike and it’s only two minutes to walk to Pastor Jim’s house where there’s always milk and cookies and sandwiches and on Sundays other kids to play with. Dean doesn’t really care about that last part, but Sammy likes to run around and holler with the other babies so Dean figures it’s okay once in awhile.
“Your boys need stability, John. You can give that to them, here. Just say you’ll think about it. I know this place isn’t ideal, but there are others. We’ll find you work and you can afford someplace your boys can call home. And when you get your lead on the demon, if you need to take off, I’ll be here for them.”
Dean looks quickly over at Sammy but he’s not listening. Scratching at a mosquito bite, Dean figures it makes sense. Sammy might be the smartest little kid in the world but he’s still a little kid. Pretty much a baby. It’s good that he can sit in the yard and build little huts out of sticks and leaves and not even hear the grown ups arguing through the open window. Dean looks down and starts pulling the bark off a twig in long strips instead of grabbing his baby brother and covering his ears and running away, taking him somewhere he’ll never have to hear the word demon again. After a minute Sam looks up and sees Dean’s little pile of bark thread. Making a happy sound he scoops it up, remembering to say thank you. He’s like that, always saying thank you but forgetting to say please. Dean scoots closer to him in the dirt and watches as Sammy uses the shreds to thatch the roofs of his little houses.
There’s the sound of a glass getting filled up and his dad’s voice rumbles low like thunder and Dean leans down to rest his head on top of Sammy’s, wishing he could ignore them too and just listen to his little brother telling him stories about the people who live in his tiny village. Elves, they might be. Or gnomes. Gnomes are nicer than demons, they gotta be.
“Shoulda seen ‘em, Jim.” Dad sounds so tired, and there’s the glassy clink again. “Whole family, all…chewed up. Can’t…who could jus’ sit still, seein’ that? Gotta…It ain’t just about me an’ my boys, now. We ain’t the only family suffering cuz these sons of bitches are walkin’ the earth. I can’t just-we can’t just sit back an’ let it happen.”
Sam’s looking up and around, finally hearing Dad. He smiles at Dean and starts to push himself up to his feet. Dean grabs for him and pulls him back down. Hey what about that house, you didn’t finish it yet.
“You’ve seen him,” Dad was saying, his voice thick. “How he gets when I ask him to do something. Says ‘okay, Dad,’ and means it. That kid…he could handle anything, take anything and keep going. Reminds me of her. Got her spark. And he takes care uh Sammy better’n I ever could.”
Dean’s chest feels full to bursting and Sam hums happily against him, marching his beat-up GI Joes over a mound of dirt and only squirming a little when Dean presses his lips to the crown of his head. His little brother’s hair lost its baby softness over the winter and Dean has to check on it all the time. Like how he had to check on his finger and toenails when they started growing and clip them sometimes so Sammy doesn’t scratch himself, like he had to check on what was okay for a one-year-old to eat, and then for a two- and three- and then a four-year-old and he stops right there, and he feels cold even under the hot sun when he thinks, four years old.
“‘Could’ and ‘should’ are very different things when it comes to children, my friend. Dean may have remarkable resilience but that’s not justification to test his limits.”
Four years old. Dean was never so little himself, he’s pretty sure of it. Look at Sammy, he can barely throw a ball, how could he carry someone out of a burning house? He’s a baby. He could never protect someone, he needs protecting all the time. That’s what Dean’s here for after all, isn’t it? Sammy might be a super smart little kid and sometimes he might be a pain in the butt but someone has to look out for him and that someone is Dean. Easy as pie. It’s stupid how Pastor Jim is talking about him, saying Dean needs looking after, too. Like he’s ever been the one who needed to be looked after.
Sam squeals just then, all loud and excited, because a bright yellow butterfly just landed on the stack of river stones he’d somehow stacked up like a church tower in the middle of his little village, and even Dean has to admit it looks pretty magical how the crazy leaning tower is decorated with its slowly fluttering wings, like an angel statue come to life. Look, Dean, look! is all Sam’s saying but it brings Dad and Pastor Jim out to check on them and Dean sits up straighter, puts his arm around Sammy and wills him to calm down, looking boldly up at Dad. It’s okay, Dad, is what he says. You don’t have to worry about us, is what he means. I got him.
Dad leaves for two weeks and they stay with Pastor Jim. It’s summer and all Dean wants to do is spend their days playing outside and sometimes he manages it, slipping away with Sammy to disappear into the woods behind the church in the early morning before anyone looks for them. They play in the meadow and splash across the little stream and Dean helps Sammy climb trees and when he remembers to sneak food out from the kitchen they don’t have to come back all day. But mostly they’re stuck inside at boring bible camp and Dean sulks and smart-talks his way through classes and songs while Sam soaks it up like he’s some stupid plant doing photo-whatever and the words coming out of Jim’s mouth are straight from the sun. Dean thinks it’s weird how Sammy is so fascinated by the stories but he reads to him from Pastor Jim’s boring old books anyway, dragging his finger carefully under each word so Sammy can follow along. Every night it’s some new story about some dude who needs a haircut or some other dude who’s way too into his rainbow clothes.
And when it’s not that, it’s this: They’re out on the church playground and Dean’s asking Jim about Dad. If he’d called, if he’s coming home soon. And Jim’s about to tell him when Dean catches sight of Sammy trying to climb up a ladder by himself, sees his foot slip and his arms start to pinwheel as he goes down. He darts forward but suddenly Jim is blocking him. Jim’s hand on his shoulder, holding Dean back, makes him see white and then red and he’s clawing at the preacher, lashing out with every move Dad ever taught him and wishing he had a gun. Wishing he had a gun so he could point it at Pastor Jim’s face and pull the trigger.
“He’s fine,” the stupid noises coming out of Jim’s stupid mouth finally start to make sense when Dean sees that Sam is up and climbing again, sees him make it to the top and launch himself down the slide with a whoop. “He’s fine, see? Look-he’s already forgotten about it.”
Jim gets down on one knee once Dean has worn out his rage and his strength fighting against him. With his hands on Dean’s shoulders, Jim looks him in the eye. “How will he learn to pick himself back up if you’re always there to do it for him, hm?”
Dean feels his lip curl and he finally jerks himself out of Jim’s grasp, stalking over to Sam and taking his hand, checking him over even though he was obviously, like Jim said, Fine. But that isn’t the point. Sammy never would have fallen in the first place if Dean had been doing his job.
He watches Sammy more carefully after that, though he tries sometimes to stay farther away. He doesn’t like it but he thinks about what Pastor Jim said. He knows that nothing’s ever gonna take him away from Sam, but that doesn’t mean Sam shouldn’t learn how to do some things for himself. So Dean sits in the shade, or else does the exercises Dad taught him, while Sammy plays. And it’s mostly good, Dean decides. Sammy gets better at some things, like the monkey bars. And one time Dean sees him tell one of the greedy kids that he should share the toy trucks with the rest of the kids in the sandbox, and the other kid actually listens to him, which Dean thinks is pretty cool. But then there always comes the time when Sam will look around for Dean, finding him in the crowd right away, and come tearing across the yard on his stupid little-kid legs to launch himself at his brother, asking for a story or a tickle war or a piggyback ride.
When Dad finally gets home, Dean lies quietly in their room, pinching his leg to stay awake until Dad and Jim figure they’re asleep and finally start talking about real stuff. He sneaks out of bed to listen at the cracked door, careful not to wake Sam, because maybe he was right about some things but Dean still doesn’t trust what Pastor Jim will say about him and Sam.
Dad’s saying it’s time for them to move on and Pastor Jim’s asking him to stay.
“You volunteering to babysit every time I gotta take off?” Dad asks, sounding pissed.
“No,” Jim tells him, “I’m asking you to stop taking off.”
Dean chews on his thumbnail while Jim goes on about how Dad needs to give up something called a vendetta because it won’t let him have any peace, him or his boys.
After Jim finally leaves, Dean listens for a few more minutes, hears Dad flip through channels before sighing and turning the TV off, and then he sneaks out and gets up on the couch beside Dad.
“Hey, sport,” Dad says, squeezing his shoulder. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, Dad.”
“Okay.”
They sit quiet for a few minutes, Dean not-quite-leaning against Dad, trying to figure out what he should say. He doesn’t know how to ask for what he wants because he doesn’t really know what it is. In the dark TV set reflection he can tell Dad is looking at him, and he thinks maybe Dad knows he was listening at the door and heard what Pastor Jim said, about the way Dean clings to Sam and the way Sam follows everywhere after Dean.
Dean looks toward the bedroom door when it squeaks open and there’s Sammy, tottering out with his eyes half-covered because of the bright light, holding up his hands so Dean can help him up onto the couch to snuggle in between them. Of course Sam follows after him, Dean thinks, he’s Sam’s big brother. And Dean follows Dad. That’s how it works. He knows Dad was right, what he said to Jim, that family is all you can count on. “My boys will grow up knowing that they’ve always got someone to watch their backs.”
“Dad?” Dean asks after a minute. “Um, if Sammy can’t sleep, we should take him for a ride, like we used to.”
“Ride,” Sammy agrees, putting his head on Dean’s shoulder to look up at Dad with a sleepy smile.
With the three of them in the dark Impala like caterpillars in a safe cocoon, the night could never be scary to Dean. Pressed up against Sammy’s car seat with one of his little hands tucked into Dean’s, he closes his eyes and listens to his brother breathe.
“The two of them are going to grow up not knowing how to stand alone if you keep them isolated forever. Stay here, John. Let them start school and learn how to live a normal life,” Pastor Jim said, and Dean thinks about the kids from the church, the brothers only a little older than him and Sam. Mikey and Kurt, were their names, and their life seemed pretty normal. Like what Pastor Jim called normal, anyway, and they acted like they didn’t even like each other. Dean was pretty sure that if Mikey’s little brother was getting attacked by a monster, Mikey would just run away.
If that’s what normal life means, if that’s what’s gonna happen if they stay here…well, Dean just won’t let it go that way, that’s all.
Dean looks up to see Dad’s watching him in the mirror again. In the dark, his face is all covered in shadows but Dean thinks he looks tired. Thinks he looks sad. He can’t be scared because he’s Dad but Dean would do anything to make those shadows go away. “It’s okay, Dad. You’ll find what got Mom, and I’ll take care of Sammy. And maybe when I get a little bigger I can help you, and Sammy too, and we’ll all be together. It will be okay.”
Dad blinks at him in the mirror, and brings the car to a stop so he can turn around to put his hand on the side of Dean’s head for a minute, and then he nods. “Okay, son.”
They glide forward into the night and when Sammy squirms and starts to wake up, Dean repeats his promise quietly into his ear. It’s okay, Sammy. I got you.
- - -
Mary has been dead for almost twelve years.
There are times I get so caught up in the job that I go for days without thinking about how I got here in the first place. And then there are days I see her everywhere I turn. I’m not sure which is the worse torture, but I know I wouldn’t make it through any of this without my boy who reminds me so much of her that I can barely look at him some days. Any more than he could make it without his little brother who’s starting to look at me like I’m a stranger. Like I’m the monster he wants to hunt.
May, 1995 - - John Winchester
Ellen smiles when he walks in, mouths the words Just a minute, sweetheart, with the phone clamped between her shoulder and her chin.
“Yeah he’s here, just walked in,” she says, pouring John two fingers of whiskey and sliding it down the bar. He nods in thanks and sips it slowly, eyes rolling closed as the good stuff slides down his throat. It’d been too long a drive without any relief. “I’ll tell him. No, we’ve got it handled, preacher. Thanks for the heads up.”
John huffs a sour laugh. Pastor Jim had introduced him to the Harvelles how many years ago and now he seems to do nothing but warn them away from him. He tunes out Ellen’s conversation to gaze across the bar instead. Bill had their little girl sitting up on one of the pool tables, he could hear them singing to each other. Some tune he vaguely recognized, words he knew better than his own name, sounding strange in a little girl’s piercing voice.
“Holy water demon’s bane, iron gets the spirits; shifters, weres and skinwalkers run from the glint of silver!”
“Whose idea was that?” John asks when Ellen leans up against the bar beside him.
“The songs? Mine,” Ellen smiles slightly. “Makes it easier to remember, you know. Hell I have trouble remembering to restock the snack machine but I can recall a half-dozen cigarette jingles from radio ads when I was a kid.”
John hides a frown behind his glass. Little Joanna is a firecracker, he knows that from his increasingly frequent stops at the Roadhouse. Calls him Uncle John without his invitation and always wants to hear stories when he gets in.
“Wish my youngest was anything like that,” he grumbles into his glass. Sammy was maybe two years older than her but where she was eager he was stubborn as hell, only acquiescing to learn anything useful about the hunting life when Dean spoon-fed it to him.
“I hear your boys are real smart cookies,” Ellen says, turning to face him with one elbow on the bar, looking keenly at him.
John snorts, playing it off though his chest feels tight. “Who fed you that line?”
“Singer, for one. The preacher for another. Say, Winchester, why is it you never bring your boys around here? I hear you’re always draggin’ ‘em one place to the next when you’re not leaving them with one hunter or another. Why not bring ‘em here, let ‘em sit a spell? This place could be a home to you.”
He gives her an incredulous look and downs the rest of his whiskey. There’s no home for him and his boys, not when home was stolen from them near twelve years ago. Not many people push him on that these days. Ellen, though, she reaches behind the bar for the bottle, tops him up, and keeps talking.
“I’m serious, John. We got plenty of room here. Y’all could settle in, I’d watch after ‘em along with Joanna Beth when you go off. Dean’s old enough to be useful around here, ain’t he? Earn his keep? And your Sam and my Jo are still young enough to play together, be friends. They’ve still got time to have a little childhood. Be good for all three of ‘em, a chance for something as normal as folks like us can provide.”
The door creaks open and afternoon sunlight spills in, the breeze sending dust motes dancing through the air inside. Ellen greets the newcomers by name and goes around the bar to get them drinks, asking for the news.
She’s back a minute later before John’s had time to decide if the thought of stopping, of not running anymore, makes him feel so damn tired because it’s the last thing in the world he wants, or because he knows if he stopped moving he might never start again, and that would mean Mary was truly gone.
“Just think about it, all right?” Ellen says. “Maybe when school starts up again you could sign ‘em up to go where Joanna goes. All that movin’ around can’t be good for the soul.”
John takes a swallow, rolling it across his tongue as he watches Bill with Joanna. They really had carved out some kind of life here, and built up a hub for a damn good network of hunters while they were at it. These past two years, every whisper he’d heard about the demon had come through here, one way or another.
“Let me ask you something, Ellen. I know you used to be out there, too. You used to be on the road with Bill.” It makes John’s skin crawl to imagine ever putting his own wife in danger like that but he’s mostly learned to keep his mouth shut after nearly getting his teeth kicked in for saying something about it to Bill. But still, he wonders. He nods to indicate the Roadhouse, the handful of hunters along the far side of the bar and the table of nervous civilians who’d been slow to pick up the vibe that this wasn’t the family establishment they were looking for. “After that, after hunting, how do you turn around and do…this?”
She snorts. “I had a daughter, that’s how.”
John nods. He’d figured that to be the case. Motherhood had softened Mary, it stands to reason even a woman like Ellen wouldn’t be unaffected, especially after having a girl.
Ellen fixes him with a look like she knows exactly what he’s thinking and she adds, “Hunting was never in my blood the way it is Bill’s, or yours. I got in cuz of him but it wasn’t my family got ripped to shreds.”
John taps his ring against his glass, rolling it between his palms. “So it wasn’t enough for Bill, when your girl was born, to make him get out.”
She shakes her head and John thinks that stare of hers really could cut through steel. “It ain’t about getting’ out or stayin’ in, John, you know that. There is no out, there’s just…making the best of it. Working out how to have a life alongside all the death. Bill, if he can save just one more family from going through the kind of hell he did, that’s what he’s gonna do. Me, I’m gonna raise my daughter and serve drinks and keep my ears open. Who the hell do you think puts together the cases you boys come in here for, anyway?”
John’s eyes slide away from hers, to where Bill is lifting Joanna down from the pool table. Her pigtails bounce as she skips along beside him, over to John and Ellen.
“Ready to go, John?”
He nods at Bill and puts down his glass, ignoring the way Joanna looks up at him with wide, hopeful eyes like she’s waiting for a hello or a hug or whatever-the-hell little girls want.
“You think on what I said, you hear?” Ellen says, laying a hand on his elbow. “You’re like family, John. You and your boys are welcome here.”
“Goodbye, sweetheart,” Bill sweeps Joanna up in a bear hug, kissing the top of her head before putting her down. “I’ll see you in a couple weeks.”
“Bring me back a present!” she calls after them as they push through the saloon door and out into the afternoon heat.
One week later and he’s listening to his youngest son rage at him while his brother tries in vain to take the phone away.
“Sammy-”
“Sam!” John growls a warning but Sam barrels on ahead. “I can’t believe you, Dad! You promised! You said we were going to settle down, you said I could go to school in the same place all year and have friends! Why do you even say these things if you’re just going to take them back a week later?”
Sammy, stop it, John hears in the background, and No, Dean, he promised!
Sam sounds close to tears and he’s too old to be crying over a broken promise. Promises get broken every day, hell, lives get broken every day, there’s nothing you can do about it except to keep going, keep fighting.
There’s blood under John’s nails and a body in the back of his truck and a knife with the monogram WAH on the passenger seat.
The sound of a skirmish is followed by the static crack of the phone falling to the floor. And then, finally, “Dad?”
“Dean, put your brother back on the line, and make him shut up long enough to listen to me, all right?”
“Yes, sir. Sammy, get over here.” Just hear him out, okay?
A muffled sniff and another scuffle and Sam’s saying “What” into the receiver like his father is a goddamn telemarketer, and it wasn’t so long ago that John would have done anything to keep his youngest from ever sounding like that, so miserable and helpless, but now…
“Don’t take that tone, son, you listen to me. We have done everything we can to keep you safe, to let you have the things that you want. But you know the truth, now. You know what’s out there, and you know why we have to do what we do. Don’t interrupt me, Sam. It is well past time you stepped up to your duty. You are part of this family, you hear me? And this family is all we got. The three of us? We have no one else. No one, Sammy, do you hear me, there is nobody out there we can trust besides each other. So I will not listen to you cry over a change of plans, do you hear me? I said, do you understand me, son?”
A huff and a muffled, almost sarcastic Yes, sir, as Sam shoves the phone back into his brother’s hands and John can hear the distant sound of a door slamming.
“Dad,” Dean’s voice is razor-thin, exhausted. “Dad, I’m sorry.”
“You let him know I won’t be tolerating talk like that when I get back. This always happens when I leave you with Bobby, you spoil that boy, both of you. Have you been keeping up with your drills? Good. You keep him in line until I get there, you hear? Your brother’s got to learn that standing by his family is all that matters.”
Dean’s Yes, sir, is crisp, sharp, and John nods. If he can get through to Dean, Dean can get through to Sam. He simply won’t allow what remains of his family to be torn apart the way he’d just allowed the Harvelles’ to be.
God damn Bill, anyway, for trusting him.
He tells Dean he’s coming to them by way of Nebraska, shouldn’t be more than two days and then they’re heading down towards Flagstaff. Rumors of a nest of chupacabras outside the city.
John hangs up the payphone and slides back into his truck. He folds his arms over the steering wheel and rests his head on his forearms. He knows what’s going on at Bobby’s right now. The old man has told him often enough how it goes when Sam gets in his moods, sulking around the salvage yard with his books and his sour lemon expression until Dean pulls him out of it, sometimes literally. Ignoring their training regimen to shove his little brother into the Impala and take off, sometimes for hours at a time. Dean had always been of the opinion that driving could soothe everything, from a baby’s fussing to a teenager’s ruffled feathers and stormy mind, and John didn’t disagree. He won’t feel settled again until he has his boys in his rearview mirror again.
The truck roars to life and he starts towards Nebraska. Driving toward the Roadhouse and away from the idea that it, or anything that didn’t have four wheels beneath it, could ever be home to them. Even Sammy will come to see that, John knows he will, because this is where they belong. In the car, on the road, together.
Recipient: freya922
Wordcount: ~6000
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Author’s Notes: I am beyond grateful for my ever-helpful betas and cheerleaders. Thank you.
Written for this prompt: “I'm dying for some very early Wee!chesters - Maybe someone (Missouri? Pastor Jim? Relatives?) is trying to convince John to settle down for the boys' sake, and he tries, but then SOMETHING HAPPENS that convinces him he has no choice but to become a hunter. Sam a baby or toddler, Dean very young.”
Dearfreya922, like you I came late to the Supernatural party, and like you I am fascinated by the young Winchesters. So thank you for the fantastic prompt (all of them were great, but this one really spoke to me), I had a ball writing this and I hope that you enjoy it! xox
Summary: John Winchester is a hard man to convince on a good day, but there are always people who are gonna try. Three times someone tried to get John to settle down; three times John kept moving.
Mary has been dead for 45 days.
Sam cries all the time. Dean is so quiet it scares me.
I don’t know what to do.
December 1983 - - John Winchester
The first time he lets his boys out of his sight after Mary dies it's to visit a psychic and he comes home to find them sprawled on the floor, both of them sobbing, and it hits him with blinding force that this is his life now.
The babysitter is hovering over them helplessly and after he sends her away he picks up his motherless sons and carries them to the couch. Dean clutches him and soaks through the collar of his shirt before he calms enough to ask if Mommy had to go because they got Sammy in exchange.
Maybe if we give Sammy back Mommy can come home?
Oh, buddy, the words catch in John’s throat. It doesn’t work that way.
He takes them to see Missouri the next day. He doesn’t know why but it feels important, and he doesn’t look farther than that.
Dean had woken up still full of questions about what John told him the night before. Sammy’s all we have left, son, and we gotta work with what we have. Dean’s eyes had gone wide when John handed little Sammy to him, showed Dean how to hold him right, how to support his head and give him his finger to hold.
Now John shows him how to give Sam his bottle, how to test it to make sure it’s not too hot. Re-spon-si-bi… Dean tests the long word, looking up at John, unsure. Responsibility. It’s like a job. Looking after Sammy, it’s our job now. And Dean gazes down at the tiny bundle in his arms and asks, Mine too?
Especially yours, Deano. He needs you.
He watches Dean in the rearview mirror while he drives. Watching Dean watch Sam like his brother might vanish if Dean so much as blinks.
Missouri coos, when they arrive, and reaches for the baby. She cradles him in her arms, rocking him instinctively.
“Young man,” she barks a moment later, shaking John out of his reverie at seeing Sam once again nestled safely in a woman’s loving arms, and making him look down at his eldest. Dean's little hands are clenched into angry fists as he glares up at Missouri. “Young man, I’ve held a child or two in my time and they've all lived to tell the tale, so settle yourself.”
The first flicker of amusement he’s felt in weeks takes John by surprise when Dean doesn't back down. “You never held Sammy before,” he challenges, as though his brother is something new and utterly unique to this world.
Missouri lifts her eyebrows, then smiles down at Dean and tells him to follow her to the sofa and, once seated, asks him to show her how holding Sammy ought to be done. Dean does, repositioning Sam in her arms, not letting go of his tiny hand even after he's arranged to Dean’s satisfaction.
And so an hour passes. Dean speaks more than he has in a month, warming to Missouri all at once when Sammy opens his eyes and beams up at her, gurgling happily and clapping his hands. He likes you, is Dean’s wondering remark, and then it’s off to the races. I know how to do this and Sammy likes to do that. John watches and listens for awhile, drifting, world-weary and grateful for a reprieve, however brief.
But then Missouri’s looking at him, speaking to him, and John is laser-sharp again, focused on getting the answers he needs. After a minute he realizes that Dean is hanging on his every word and John says, “Dean, why don’t you take your brother into the other room, there’s some toys you can play with.”
And Dean pouts, of course, and dawdles, but he picks up his brother and carries him away, already narrating a tale of daring and heroics. The plot is familiar from when John would come home to find Dean lying on his stomach beside Sam, acting out quests and adventures with his building blocks and toy soldiers. Dean leaves the door open and John watches them settle into the living room, digging through the dolls and action figures from the toy chest Missouri keeps there. With a triumphant cry Dean pulls out a garish red silk cloth and ties it around Sammy’s shoulders like a cape.
“Your boys are blessed to have each other,” Missouri says, and John turns to her with a snort and a deeply incredulous look.
“Whatever the opposite of ‘blessed’ is, that’s all we are, Missouri. My boys are going to grow up without their mother and so help me, if it’s the last thing I do I will get justice for them.”
Missouri sighs, looking at him like she can see right through him. Mary used to get that look, sometimes, and it shakes John down to his marrow to see such a familiar look on a stranger’s face.
“John, if you’re already making plans for how you’re going to go out in a blaze of glory, I’m afraid I can’t help you. But I can give you the number of a good psychologist in town.”
John spits out several words he hadn’t uttered since before his first son was born. He hadn’t needed a goddamn therapist when he got back from ‘Nam and he didn’t need one now. Missouri doesn’t bat an eye, and John deflates.
“You have a choice ahead of you, John Winchester. I don’t need to tell you that you’re at a crossroads. The insurance money just came in, am I right? You’ve been looking at houses in the area, but none of them are home to you, because to you, home is Mary and your boys. And so you don’t think that home can ever exist for you again. But someone needs to tell you, John. You’re wrong. You can make the painful choice and you can choose to build a new home, just you and your boys, and you can tell them about their mother, you can make her real for them. But for that, you have to let go of her yourself. You have to be at peace with the fact that she’s gone.”
John digs his knuckles into his eyes, the white-hot need to break down, to grieve, almost overcoming his ironclad self-control. “I can’t,” he chokes out eventually. “Can’t you see that? I can’t. She wasn’t supposed to go this way. My babies-”
Missouri’s hand on his knee anchors him, and he breathes through the ragged sobs until he achieves something like equilibrium again. He looks up at her. “My sons weren’t supposed to grow up without her. She was perfect, and they deserve to know that I didn’t just let her go. I won’t have any peace, Missouri, until I have justice.”
“John,” she says gently, squeezing his knee before letting him go. “You’re a good man, I’ve known that since the moment you crossed my threshold. So I’m trusting you to listen to me. You say the word ‘justice,’ but your energy is screaming ‘vengeance.’ There’s a difference, John, and the difference is between a full life and an empty one. If you want justice for you wife and your boys, you’ll think on my words and contemplate your actions. Do you understand me?”
John nods, and Missouri sighs again. She turns to look through the doorway to where Dean is helping Sam sit up, trying to get him to hold out his arms, then lifting him up and swinging him gently left and right, the red cape flapping around him. “I got you! Look, Sammy, you’re flying!”
“I don’t know what took your wife, John. But I can put you in touch with someone who might help you get better answers. Only promise me you’ll think about it. Think about the path that might lead you down, what you might deny your boys if you devote your life to answers instead of to, well, to living.”
John promises, and Missouri insists that they take the superhero cape home with them.
John tries. He goes back to work, he makes calls to realtors, he stops unplugging the phone when he gets home. But then a few weeks later, after he’s been out all day, he comes home to find it’s the same story as before. Sammy won’t stop crying and Dean is wrapped around him, clutching his baby brother tight and wailing for their mom. It’s almost Christmas and John doesn’t know what any of it means without Mary there to make sense of it for him; for all of them.
He buckles his boys into their seats in the Impala and drives aimlessly around Lawrence for hours, the way they would when Dean was a restless baby, until the low, steady rumble of the engine and the answering song of the road soothe them to sleep. He gets them both into Sammy’s crib without waking them and sinks down into the armchair in the corner, watching them cling to each other in their sleep, his mind’s eye fixed on the empty passenger seat.
Hours later, John digs out the scrap of paper and squints through a whiskey haze to interpret Missouri’s loopy handwriting.
“Hello,” he says, when the phone is answered on the third ring. “My name is John Winchester, is this Jim Murphy? Yes, I was told you might be able to help me.”
- - -
Mom’s been gone for three and a half years.
Sam said his first word, it was my name! Then he learned all the other words and now he doesn’t shut up. I broke my first bone, it was my wrist, it hurt but it wasn’t too bad. Dad said it was good, how I didn’t even cry much. Sammy knows how to read a little and I know how to shoot a gun.
June, 1987 - - Dean Winchester
“It would do them good to be with other children. They’re bright kids, both of them. Sam’s already reading, John. Do you realize how unusual that is for a kid his age? Dean should be worrying about catching frogs and pulling pigtails, not teaching his little brother how to read.”
They’re staying in a place Dad keeps apologizing for but Dean doesn’t know why. There’s running water that stays warm long enough he can give Sammy his own bath and there’s a yard and he has a bike and it’s only two minutes to walk to Pastor Jim’s house where there’s always milk and cookies and sandwiches and on Sundays other kids to play with. Dean doesn’t really care about that last part, but Sammy likes to run around and holler with the other babies so Dean figures it’s okay once in awhile.
“Your boys need stability, John. You can give that to them, here. Just say you’ll think about it. I know this place isn’t ideal, but there are others. We’ll find you work and you can afford someplace your boys can call home. And when you get your lead on the demon, if you need to take off, I’ll be here for them.”
Dean looks quickly over at Sammy but he’s not listening. Scratching at a mosquito bite, Dean figures it makes sense. Sammy might be the smartest little kid in the world but he’s still a little kid. Pretty much a baby. It’s good that he can sit in the yard and build little huts out of sticks and leaves and not even hear the grown ups arguing through the open window. Dean looks down and starts pulling the bark off a twig in long strips instead of grabbing his baby brother and covering his ears and running away, taking him somewhere he’ll never have to hear the word demon again. After a minute Sam looks up and sees Dean’s little pile of bark thread. Making a happy sound he scoops it up, remembering to say thank you. He’s like that, always saying thank you but forgetting to say please. Dean scoots closer to him in the dirt and watches as Sammy uses the shreds to thatch the roofs of his little houses.
There’s the sound of a glass getting filled up and his dad’s voice rumbles low like thunder and Dean leans down to rest his head on top of Sammy’s, wishing he could ignore them too and just listen to his little brother telling him stories about the people who live in his tiny village. Elves, they might be. Or gnomes. Gnomes are nicer than demons, they gotta be.
“Shoulda seen ‘em, Jim.” Dad sounds so tired, and there’s the glassy clink again. “Whole family, all…chewed up. Can’t…who could jus’ sit still, seein’ that? Gotta…It ain’t just about me an’ my boys, now. We ain’t the only family suffering cuz these sons of bitches are walkin’ the earth. I can’t just-we can’t just sit back an’ let it happen.”
Sam’s looking up and around, finally hearing Dad. He smiles at Dean and starts to push himself up to his feet. Dean grabs for him and pulls him back down. Hey what about that house, you didn’t finish it yet.
“You’ve seen him,” Dad was saying, his voice thick. “How he gets when I ask him to do something. Says ‘okay, Dad,’ and means it. That kid…he could handle anything, take anything and keep going. Reminds me of her. Got her spark. And he takes care uh Sammy better’n I ever could.”
Dean’s chest feels full to bursting and Sam hums happily against him, marching his beat-up GI Joes over a mound of dirt and only squirming a little when Dean presses his lips to the crown of his head. His little brother’s hair lost its baby softness over the winter and Dean has to check on it all the time. Like how he had to check on his finger and toenails when they started growing and clip them sometimes so Sammy doesn’t scratch himself, like he had to check on what was okay for a one-year-old to eat, and then for a two- and three- and then a four-year-old and he stops right there, and he feels cold even under the hot sun when he thinks, four years old.
“‘Could’ and ‘should’ are very different things when it comes to children, my friend. Dean may have remarkable resilience but that’s not justification to test his limits.”
Four years old. Dean was never so little himself, he’s pretty sure of it. Look at Sammy, he can barely throw a ball, how could he carry someone out of a burning house? He’s a baby. He could never protect someone, he needs protecting all the time. That’s what Dean’s here for after all, isn’t it? Sammy might be a super smart little kid and sometimes he might be a pain in the butt but someone has to look out for him and that someone is Dean. Easy as pie. It’s stupid how Pastor Jim is talking about him, saying Dean needs looking after, too. Like he’s ever been the one who needed to be looked after.
Sam squeals just then, all loud and excited, because a bright yellow butterfly just landed on the stack of river stones he’d somehow stacked up like a church tower in the middle of his little village, and even Dean has to admit it looks pretty magical how the crazy leaning tower is decorated with its slowly fluttering wings, like an angel statue come to life. Look, Dean, look! is all Sam’s saying but it brings Dad and Pastor Jim out to check on them and Dean sits up straighter, puts his arm around Sammy and wills him to calm down, looking boldly up at Dad. It’s okay, Dad, is what he says. You don’t have to worry about us, is what he means. I got him.
Dad leaves for two weeks and they stay with Pastor Jim. It’s summer and all Dean wants to do is spend their days playing outside and sometimes he manages it, slipping away with Sammy to disappear into the woods behind the church in the early morning before anyone looks for them. They play in the meadow and splash across the little stream and Dean helps Sammy climb trees and when he remembers to sneak food out from the kitchen they don’t have to come back all day. But mostly they’re stuck inside at boring bible camp and Dean sulks and smart-talks his way through classes and songs while Sam soaks it up like he’s some stupid plant doing photo-whatever and the words coming out of Jim’s mouth are straight from the sun. Dean thinks it’s weird how Sammy is so fascinated by the stories but he reads to him from Pastor Jim’s boring old books anyway, dragging his finger carefully under each word so Sammy can follow along. Every night it’s some new story about some dude who needs a haircut or some other dude who’s way too into his rainbow clothes.
And when it’s not that, it’s this: They’re out on the church playground and Dean’s asking Jim about Dad. If he’d called, if he’s coming home soon. And Jim’s about to tell him when Dean catches sight of Sammy trying to climb up a ladder by himself, sees his foot slip and his arms start to pinwheel as he goes down. He darts forward but suddenly Jim is blocking him. Jim’s hand on his shoulder, holding Dean back, makes him see white and then red and he’s clawing at the preacher, lashing out with every move Dad ever taught him and wishing he had a gun. Wishing he had a gun so he could point it at Pastor Jim’s face and pull the trigger.
“He’s fine,” the stupid noises coming out of Jim’s stupid mouth finally start to make sense when Dean sees that Sam is up and climbing again, sees him make it to the top and launch himself down the slide with a whoop. “He’s fine, see? Look-he’s already forgotten about it.”
Jim gets down on one knee once Dean has worn out his rage and his strength fighting against him. With his hands on Dean’s shoulders, Jim looks him in the eye. “How will he learn to pick himself back up if you’re always there to do it for him, hm?”
Dean feels his lip curl and he finally jerks himself out of Jim’s grasp, stalking over to Sam and taking his hand, checking him over even though he was obviously, like Jim said, Fine. But that isn’t the point. Sammy never would have fallen in the first place if Dean had been doing his job.
He watches Sammy more carefully after that, though he tries sometimes to stay farther away. He doesn’t like it but he thinks about what Pastor Jim said. He knows that nothing’s ever gonna take him away from Sam, but that doesn’t mean Sam shouldn’t learn how to do some things for himself. So Dean sits in the shade, or else does the exercises Dad taught him, while Sammy plays. And it’s mostly good, Dean decides. Sammy gets better at some things, like the monkey bars. And one time Dean sees him tell one of the greedy kids that he should share the toy trucks with the rest of the kids in the sandbox, and the other kid actually listens to him, which Dean thinks is pretty cool. But then there always comes the time when Sam will look around for Dean, finding him in the crowd right away, and come tearing across the yard on his stupid little-kid legs to launch himself at his brother, asking for a story or a tickle war or a piggyback ride.
When Dad finally gets home, Dean lies quietly in their room, pinching his leg to stay awake until Dad and Jim figure they’re asleep and finally start talking about real stuff. He sneaks out of bed to listen at the cracked door, careful not to wake Sam, because maybe he was right about some things but Dean still doesn’t trust what Pastor Jim will say about him and Sam.
Dad’s saying it’s time for them to move on and Pastor Jim’s asking him to stay.
“You volunteering to babysit every time I gotta take off?” Dad asks, sounding pissed.
“No,” Jim tells him, “I’m asking you to stop taking off.”
Dean chews on his thumbnail while Jim goes on about how Dad needs to give up something called a vendetta because it won’t let him have any peace, him or his boys.
After Jim finally leaves, Dean listens for a few more minutes, hears Dad flip through channels before sighing and turning the TV off, and then he sneaks out and gets up on the couch beside Dad.
“Hey, sport,” Dad says, squeezing his shoulder. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, Dad.”
“Okay.”
They sit quiet for a few minutes, Dean not-quite-leaning against Dad, trying to figure out what he should say. He doesn’t know how to ask for what he wants because he doesn’t really know what it is. In the dark TV set reflection he can tell Dad is looking at him, and he thinks maybe Dad knows he was listening at the door and heard what Pastor Jim said, about the way Dean clings to Sam and the way Sam follows everywhere after Dean.
Dean looks toward the bedroom door when it squeaks open and there’s Sammy, tottering out with his eyes half-covered because of the bright light, holding up his hands so Dean can help him up onto the couch to snuggle in between them. Of course Sam follows after him, Dean thinks, he’s Sam’s big brother. And Dean follows Dad. That’s how it works. He knows Dad was right, what he said to Jim, that family is all you can count on. “My boys will grow up knowing that they’ve always got someone to watch their backs.”
“Dad?” Dean asks after a minute. “Um, if Sammy can’t sleep, we should take him for a ride, like we used to.”
“Ride,” Sammy agrees, putting his head on Dean’s shoulder to look up at Dad with a sleepy smile.
With the three of them in the dark Impala like caterpillars in a safe cocoon, the night could never be scary to Dean. Pressed up against Sammy’s car seat with one of his little hands tucked into Dean’s, he closes his eyes and listens to his brother breathe.
“The two of them are going to grow up not knowing how to stand alone if you keep them isolated forever. Stay here, John. Let them start school and learn how to live a normal life,” Pastor Jim said, and Dean thinks about the kids from the church, the brothers only a little older than him and Sam. Mikey and Kurt, were their names, and their life seemed pretty normal. Like what Pastor Jim called normal, anyway, and they acted like they didn’t even like each other. Dean was pretty sure that if Mikey’s little brother was getting attacked by a monster, Mikey would just run away.
If that’s what normal life means, if that’s what’s gonna happen if they stay here…well, Dean just won’t let it go that way, that’s all.
Dean looks up to see Dad’s watching him in the mirror again. In the dark, his face is all covered in shadows but Dean thinks he looks tired. Thinks he looks sad. He can’t be scared because he’s Dad but Dean would do anything to make those shadows go away. “It’s okay, Dad. You’ll find what got Mom, and I’ll take care of Sammy. And maybe when I get a little bigger I can help you, and Sammy too, and we’ll all be together. It will be okay.”
Dad blinks at him in the mirror, and brings the car to a stop so he can turn around to put his hand on the side of Dean’s head for a minute, and then he nods. “Okay, son.”
They glide forward into the night and when Sammy squirms and starts to wake up, Dean repeats his promise quietly into his ear. It’s okay, Sammy. I got you.
- - -
Mary has been dead for almost twelve years.
There are times I get so caught up in the job that I go for days without thinking about how I got here in the first place. And then there are days I see her everywhere I turn. I’m not sure which is the worse torture, but I know I wouldn’t make it through any of this without my boy who reminds me so much of her that I can barely look at him some days. Any more than he could make it without his little brother who’s starting to look at me like I’m a stranger. Like I’m the monster he wants to hunt.
May, 1995 - - John Winchester
Ellen smiles when he walks in, mouths the words Just a minute, sweetheart, with the phone clamped between her shoulder and her chin.
“Yeah he’s here, just walked in,” she says, pouring John two fingers of whiskey and sliding it down the bar. He nods in thanks and sips it slowly, eyes rolling closed as the good stuff slides down his throat. It’d been too long a drive without any relief. “I’ll tell him. No, we’ve got it handled, preacher. Thanks for the heads up.”
John huffs a sour laugh. Pastor Jim had introduced him to the Harvelles how many years ago and now he seems to do nothing but warn them away from him. He tunes out Ellen’s conversation to gaze across the bar instead. Bill had their little girl sitting up on one of the pool tables, he could hear them singing to each other. Some tune he vaguely recognized, words he knew better than his own name, sounding strange in a little girl’s piercing voice.
“Holy water demon’s bane, iron gets the spirits; shifters, weres and skinwalkers run from the glint of silver!”
“Whose idea was that?” John asks when Ellen leans up against the bar beside him.
“The songs? Mine,” Ellen smiles slightly. “Makes it easier to remember, you know. Hell I have trouble remembering to restock the snack machine but I can recall a half-dozen cigarette jingles from radio ads when I was a kid.”
John hides a frown behind his glass. Little Joanna is a firecracker, he knows that from his increasingly frequent stops at the Roadhouse. Calls him Uncle John without his invitation and always wants to hear stories when he gets in.
“Wish my youngest was anything like that,” he grumbles into his glass. Sammy was maybe two years older than her but where she was eager he was stubborn as hell, only acquiescing to learn anything useful about the hunting life when Dean spoon-fed it to him.
“I hear your boys are real smart cookies,” Ellen says, turning to face him with one elbow on the bar, looking keenly at him.
John snorts, playing it off though his chest feels tight. “Who fed you that line?”
“Singer, for one. The preacher for another. Say, Winchester, why is it you never bring your boys around here? I hear you’re always draggin’ ‘em one place to the next when you’re not leaving them with one hunter or another. Why not bring ‘em here, let ‘em sit a spell? This place could be a home to you.”
He gives her an incredulous look and downs the rest of his whiskey. There’s no home for him and his boys, not when home was stolen from them near twelve years ago. Not many people push him on that these days. Ellen, though, she reaches behind the bar for the bottle, tops him up, and keeps talking.
“I’m serious, John. We got plenty of room here. Y’all could settle in, I’d watch after ‘em along with Joanna Beth when you go off. Dean’s old enough to be useful around here, ain’t he? Earn his keep? And your Sam and my Jo are still young enough to play together, be friends. They’ve still got time to have a little childhood. Be good for all three of ‘em, a chance for something as normal as folks like us can provide.”
The door creaks open and afternoon sunlight spills in, the breeze sending dust motes dancing through the air inside. Ellen greets the newcomers by name and goes around the bar to get them drinks, asking for the news.
She’s back a minute later before John’s had time to decide if the thought of stopping, of not running anymore, makes him feel so damn tired because it’s the last thing in the world he wants, or because he knows if he stopped moving he might never start again, and that would mean Mary was truly gone.
“Just think about it, all right?” Ellen says. “Maybe when school starts up again you could sign ‘em up to go where Joanna goes. All that movin’ around can’t be good for the soul.”
John takes a swallow, rolling it across his tongue as he watches Bill with Joanna. They really had carved out some kind of life here, and built up a hub for a damn good network of hunters while they were at it. These past two years, every whisper he’d heard about the demon had come through here, one way or another.
“Let me ask you something, Ellen. I know you used to be out there, too. You used to be on the road with Bill.” It makes John’s skin crawl to imagine ever putting his own wife in danger like that but he’s mostly learned to keep his mouth shut after nearly getting his teeth kicked in for saying something about it to Bill. But still, he wonders. He nods to indicate the Roadhouse, the handful of hunters along the far side of the bar and the table of nervous civilians who’d been slow to pick up the vibe that this wasn’t the family establishment they were looking for. “After that, after hunting, how do you turn around and do…this?”
She snorts. “I had a daughter, that’s how.”
John nods. He’d figured that to be the case. Motherhood had softened Mary, it stands to reason even a woman like Ellen wouldn’t be unaffected, especially after having a girl.
Ellen fixes him with a look like she knows exactly what he’s thinking and she adds, “Hunting was never in my blood the way it is Bill’s, or yours. I got in cuz of him but it wasn’t my family got ripped to shreds.”
John taps his ring against his glass, rolling it between his palms. “So it wasn’t enough for Bill, when your girl was born, to make him get out.”
She shakes her head and John thinks that stare of hers really could cut through steel. “It ain’t about getting’ out or stayin’ in, John, you know that. There is no out, there’s just…making the best of it. Working out how to have a life alongside all the death. Bill, if he can save just one more family from going through the kind of hell he did, that’s what he’s gonna do. Me, I’m gonna raise my daughter and serve drinks and keep my ears open. Who the hell do you think puts together the cases you boys come in here for, anyway?”
John’s eyes slide away from hers, to where Bill is lifting Joanna down from the pool table. Her pigtails bounce as she skips along beside him, over to John and Ellen.
“Ready to go, John?”
He nods at Bill and puts down his glass, ignoring the way Joanna looks up at him with wide, hopeful eyes like she’s waiting for a hello or a hug or whatever-the-hell little girls want.
“You think on what I said, you hear?” Ellen says, laying a hand on his elbow. “You’re like family, John. You and your boys are welcome here.”
“Goodbye, sweetheart,” Bill sweeps Joanna up in a bear hug, kissing the top of her head before putting her down. “I’ll see you in a couple weeks.”
“Bring me back a present!” she calls after them as they push through the saloon door and out into the afternoon heat.
One week later and he’s listening to his youngest son rage at him while his brother tries in vain to take the phone away.
“Sammy-”
“Sam!” John growls a warning but Sam barrels on ahead. “I can’t believe you, Dad! You promised! You said we were going to settle down, you said I could go to school in the same place all year and have friends! Why do you even say these things if you’re just going to take them back a week later?”
Sammy, stop it, John hears in the background, and No, Dean, he promised!
Sam sounds close to tears and he’s too old to be crying over a broken promise. Promises get broken every day, hell, lives get broken every day, there’s nothing you can do about it except to keep going, keep fighting.
There’s blood under John’s nails and a body in the back of his truck and a knife with the monogram WAH on the passenger seat.
The sound of a skirmish is followed by the static crack of the phone falling to the floor. And then, finally, “Dad?”
“Dean, put your brother back on the line, and make him shut up long enough to listen to me, all right?”
“Yes, sir. Sammy, get over here.” Just hear him out, okay?
A muffled sniff and another scuffle and Sam’s saying “What” into the receiver like his father is a goddamn telemarketer, and it wasn’t so long ago that John would have done anything to keep his youngest from ever sounding like that, so miserable and helpless, but now…
“Don’t take that tone, son, you listen to me. We have done everything we can to keep you safe, to let you have the things that you want. But you know the truth, now. You know what’s out there, and you know why we have to do what we do. Don’t interrupt me, Sam. It is well past time you stepped up to your duty. You are part of this family, you hear me? And this family is all we got. The three of us? We have no one else. No one, Sammy, do you hear me, there is nobody out there we can trust besides each other. So I will not listen to you cry over a change of plans, do you hear me? I said, do you understand me, son?”
A huff and a muffled, almost sarcastic Yes, sir, as Sam shoves the phone back into his brother’s hands and John can hear the distant sound of a door slamming.
“Dad,” Dean’s voice is razor-thin, exhausted. “Dad, I’m sorry.”
“You let him know I won’t be tolerating talk like that when I get back. This always happens when I leave you with Bobby, you spoil that boy, both of you. Have you been keeping up with your drills? Good. You keep him in line until I get there, you hear? Your brother’s got to learn that standing by his family is all that matters.”
Dean’s Yes, sir, is crisp, sharp, and John nods. If he can get through to Dean, Dean can get through to Sam. He simply won’t allow what remains of his family to be torn apart the way he’d just allowed the Harvelles’ to be.
God damn Bill, anyway, for trusting him.
He tells Dean he’s coming to them by way of Nebraska, shouldn’t be more than two days and then they’re heading down towards Flagstaff. Rumors of a nest of chupacabras outside the city.
John hangs up the payphone and slides back into his truck. He folds his arms over the steering wheel and rests his head on his forearms. He knows what’s going on at Bobby’s right now. The old man has told him often enough how it goes when Sam gets in his moods, sulking around the salvage yard with his books and his sour lemon expression until Dean pulls him out of it, sometimes literally. Ignoring their training regimen to shove his little brother into the Impala and take off, sometimes for hours at a time. Dean had always been of the opinion that driving could soothe everything, from a baby’s fussing to a teenager’s ruffled feathers and stormy mind, and John didn’t disagree. He won’t feel settled again until he has his boys in his rearview mirror again.
The truck roars to life and he starts towards Nebraska. Driving toward the Roadhouse and away from the idea that it, or anything that didn’t have four wheels beneath it, could ever be home to them. Even Sammy will come to see that, John knows he will, because this is where they belong. In the car, on the road, together.