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Part Four
The woods were spring damp and New England rocky. Sam frowned miserably as the mud squelched loudly under his right boot and he was careful not to put too much weight on that leg, hoping that the mud wouldn’t suck at his foot until he left the boot to the woods. He’d lost more than pair of shoes that way when he was still with the Boy Scouts. He shifted, unsuccessfully trying to adjust the weight of his bag and gun. The duffel wasn’t made to be carried long distances over time and Sam wouldn’t be surprised when, the next day, he would find bruises along his shoulder. The gun was just damned heavy. “You can’t even remember where you were sleeping?”
“I’m sorry if I’m a little distracted,” Dean retorted sharply. “But I wasn’t exactly paying attention at the time either. It was definitely on this trail.” The further they got into the forest south of Colrain, the jumpier Dean got. When he saw Dean twitch at the sound of every cracked twig and flutter of new leaves, Sam wondered if he should have fought harder to leave Dean behind in Greenfield.
“The papers said they found your campsite about a half mile from the turn off in the road,” Mr. Singer, Bobby, told them in a steady, soothing voice. “They found your friend’s body about a mile and a half from there, but it looked as though he’d be running for a good part of that. I figure he started running once the myling jumped him. Do you remember what you heard, Dean? More than you told the reporters?”
Frowning, Dean whacked at some offending thorn bushes with his knife. “I told the truth. I took a break for some water and a Powerbar. I was exhausted; I’d barely slept the night before. I thought I was catching up to him; I could hear him talking. It sounded like he was talking to a little kid, like a really little one. You know, ‘What are you doing out here, buddy?’ That kind of shit. I’m pretty sure he was off trail. And then he started yelling and I started running and, boom, I wake up in the hospital.”
Bobby nodded a moment. “Makes sense. You wouldn’t want to bury your kid right on the trail. And most of the people this thing’s got have been the adventurous type.”
“We’re going to have to go off trail and hope that we find the thing?” Sam asked with sudden revelation.
“I hope you didn’t think this was going to be walk in the park,” Bobby told him with a raised eyebrow. “We’ll start near where you were found, Dean, and cover as much ground as we can while we have daylight. We don’t want this thing getting the one up on us in the dark.”
Dean’s face screwed up and his knuckles went a little white around his knife, but he didn’t say anything. Sam stepped closer to him, moving away from the trail edge, and brushed shoulders. Neither brother said anything, but Sam liked to think that Dean’s breathing sounded a little easier.
Off the trail and moving slowly away from the road, the forest floor was progressively marshier. It smelled like decay and damp. Sam told himself that it was just normal, the smell of last autumn’s rotting leaves and the wet of the rain and the snows without any sun peeking through the canopy to dry things out. It didn’t help. He kept thinking that it smelled like death and wrong. He shook himself; he’d been on a hundred spring hikes with his dad, with the Boy Scouts, up in New Hampshire, out around Royalston. This wasn’t any different, except for the gun resting on his right side and the bag full of the makings of an exorcism.
“Hey, mister.”
“Oh Jesus!” Sam cried, startled, before he realised that this was what they were looking for. It looked like a little boy, but from another time. He didn’t even come up to Sam’s waist and was dressed in short pants, a button down shirt, and a straw hat.
“You shouldn’t blaspheme,” the thing told him, its blue eyes large and solemn.
“You scared me,” Sam told it, watching Bobby and Dean approach in his peripheral vision. “And you’re right, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I’m lost. Can you take me home?”
Sam reminded himself that this was the thing that killed Tony, that crushed him to death in a dell a mile away, but it was hard. It looked just like a little boy, a lost child who just wanted to go home. “Home?”
“I just want to go home,” it said, its voice pitched as though ready to sob. “My parents left me here and I just want to go home.”
“Where’s home?” Sam asked, wondering what the hell Bobby and Dean were waiting for.
“That way.” The myling pointed west and its lower lip began to tremble.
“I - ah - “
“I’m tired,” it said plaintively. “Could you carry me? I’ve been walking forever.”
“I - ah - I - “
“Please?” Before Sam could answer, it lunged forward and grabbed Sam’s leg, holding it tightly to its chest.
“Dean!” Bobby yelled. “Dean, you have the knife!”
But Dean was frozen, his rune-laden knife equally frozen in his right hand, staring at Sam and the myling. His breathing was erratic and his eyes were wide. Sam immediately recognised the symptoms of one of Dean’s panic attacks.
“Bobby, you have to do something!” Sam said, staring in horror. “He can’t do anything right now.”
Bobby swore and backed up a bit. “This is going to hurt. Brace yourself.”
“Jesus fuck!” Sam swore at the salt slammed into his leg, dispersing the myling and tearing his jeans and skin. He bit his lip and fell backward onto the swampy ground. “Holy fuck, that hurts.”
Sam’s cursing seemed to magically unfreeze Dean who immediately ran to Sam’s side. “Oh my god,” he said lowly, the recrimination obvious in his voice. “Oh my god. Are you okay?” He hands immediately went to Sam’s leg, feeling it, pulling at the ripped denim and daubing at the broken skin. “Sammy, tell me you’re okay.”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Sam closed his eyes in pain for a moment before bracing himself on Dean’s shoulders to get back onto his feet again. “So what’d we do do now, Bobby?”
“Grab your shovels,” Bobby said, after gazing at Sam’s leg for a moment. “We’re digging.” He pulled his own folding shovel from his bag, along with a white trash bag. “The myling should originally appear over his own grave, so that’ll be about where you’re standing. It’s probably not deep. Then we put the body in a bag and bring it to the graveyard.”
After a quick tug-of-war, Dean pulled their folding shovel away from Sam, who toppled to the ground again. Dean joined Bobby in digging into the wet earth and Sam decided that discretion was the better part of valor and sat down on a fallen log. “So we just dig it up and rebury it?”
“That seems too easy,” Dean said, throwing mud off to the side. “I - I remember Dad coming home bloody and bruised. It can’t be that easy.”
Bobby’s lips were a tight line as he shoveled. “It’s not. The myling has attached itself to Sam - it wants Sam to save it.”
“That’s what we’re doing though, isn’t it?” Sam asked as he splashed some holy water on his leg to loosen the rock salt from his skin.
“It knows it wasn’t baptised and it was abandoned. As much as it wants to be saved and will kill to be saved, it knows it will die once we put it in the graveyard.”
“It’s going to kill, Sam?” Dean asked in a strangled voice just as his shovel hit something dull and wooden in the earth.
“That’s why I’m going to carry the body, probably the body in this rotting coffin, and you’re going to stick with Sam.” Bobby knelt down and lifted the blackened wood box from the mud. “That knife of yours, it’s got silver in it, right?”
“Yeah, uh, two strips on each side. I had to get it done special.” Dean opened the trash bag for Bobby to dump the box and bones in.
“Good. Stick by your brother and when the thing comes back, slice through with the knife. That should keep it at bay, at least long enough for us to get to the graveyard.”
“The graveyard?”
“Once we get back on the trail, it’s about a half an hour north of here. The trail winds right by it. It’s probably further than the myling’s plot, but we know where it is.”
With Sam’s wounded leg and Bobby carrying extra weight, the grave yard was almost an hour up the trail, through marsh like flat lands and more that one sharp and rocky incline. Sam had thought that trying to hike through the woods on his leg would have been torture, but it only got worse. The myling followed them, begging Sam to tell it where they were carrying its body, pleading to be put down and left alone, crying like a little boy. And when begging and pleading didn’t work and Dean was only so fast with his knife, slashing and muttering prayers in Latin, the myling would weigh him down into the mud on his bad leg, heavier and stronger every time.
Sam almost burst into tears with relief when they caught sight of the iron fence of the old graveyard. Dean leaned forward and wrapped Sam’s arm around his shoulders so that Sam could use him as a crutch for the last few hundred yards and they made it to the graveyard with due speed. Once inside the fence, Bobby dropped the bags and grabbed his shovel. Dean joined him in digging the shallow grave for the rotting body. Sam lowered himself to sit on the edge of a particularly sturdy looking gravestone.
“No!” Sam looked up to see the little boy face of the myling on the other side of the iron. “No! You can’t!”
“We’re bringing you home,” Sam tried to explain gently. “We’re just bringing you home.”
“No!” the myling cried again, clenching his fists like a child have a temper tantrum. “No!”
Sam gasped as he toppled from the headstone. He reached up to clutch his chest and could feel the squash of the wet, dead grass underneath him as he lay sprawled over the grave. “Holy…” He gulped for air and his hands clawed uselessly at his chest. It felt like he was being crushed, like there were a thousand boulders weighing down on his chest, pressing the air out of his lungs and the blood out of his heart, but there was nothing there. There was nothing but the myling standing on the other side of the fence, staring at him intently.
“Sam!” Dean cried as soon as he saw Sam fall from the gravestone. “Sam!”
Sam worked his jaw, trying to get enough air to say something to Dean, to say that the myling wasn’t even in the graveyard, to ask Dean to save him, to tell Dad he was sorry he ran off like this, but it was a futile effort. He felt like he was underwater, like he was drowning, like he was dying. Dean’s hands scrabbled at his chest and neck and head for a moment and then they were gone.
“That goddamn son of a bitch isn’t going to take Sammy,” Sam heard Dean snarl, his voice carrying over the graves. “It’s not going to be that easy.”
And suddenly, the pressure was gone and Sam could breathe again. Sam began to take in big gulps of air, overjoyed at the sensation of oxygen hitting his lungs again. His chest rose and fell rapidly, until he realised that the weight was not going to come back and kill him this time. He rolled over onto his side, graveyard mud slick in his hair and on his clothes, and stared at Dean, who stood over a fiery grave, matchbook in one hand and small canister of gasoline behind him.
“You okay?” he asked, catching Sam’s eye.
Sam nodded and rubbed his chest.
Bobby began to shovel dirt back over the fire. “That wasn’t bad for a first hunt.”
“Wasn’t bad?” Sam’s voice sounded as though someone had been walking on his throat.
“You know you can depend on each other. You know how to read each other. It’s a valuable skill and not one to forget. And you, you’re strong. Most people would have been felled by the myling by now. Even strong men are killed by them. And you, Dean, you knew when to leave Sam alone and go after the body. Most folk would have tried to stick by Sam and try to get him breathing again.”
Dean helped Sam get back on his feet and began to ineffectually brush at the dirt and grass and mud sticking to Sam’s back. “Sam almost died. I don’t think that qualifies anywhere near ‘good.’”
“I didn’t say it was good. I said it wasn’t bad.” Bobby stomped on the refilled grave for a moment and then pulled a bottle of water, presumably blessed by a priest of some sort, and poured the water over the slightly smoking earth. “If you’d seen my first hunt… let’s just say that more than the damned demon ended up dead and leave it at that.” He looked at the brothers, Sam leaning, exhausted, on Dean, who was only too happy to be propping up his little brother. “And your dad’s first? Well. It certainly wasn’t as neat and tidy as all this was. Most people get hurt when they start hunting, boys. Don’t think you’re special.”
“There’s more out there?” Sam asked, even as Dean said, “More things are killing people?”
Bobby snorted. “I didn’t take you for a pair of idiots. Of course there’re more creatures out there killing people. What do you think your daddy did before you lot disappeared on us? When you know about this kind of thing, you can’t help but go after it. Save people. Help people.” Bobby shrugged. “Dean grab your stuff. Sam, you think that if we split the bags between us, you can make it back to the cars by yourself?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” Sam shifted his weight back onto his good leg so that Dean could grab his gun and duffel bag. “What do you mean you can’t help but go after it? I mean, you said that Dad did this, but he doesn’t anymore. I mean, he won’t let guns in the house.”
“John? No guns?” Bobby stared at him with a raised eyebrow.
Dean opened the squeaky iron gate of the graveyard and led Sam back onto the trail. “What he doesn’t know hasn’t hurt him yet. But he hasn’t gone on a hunt since we were in grade school. It was one hunt when we first got to Fitchburg and then that was it. He works down at the garage and teaches some night classes, but definitely doesn’t go after this stuff.”
“He told us, told Dean, that it wasn’t real,” Sam added, despite the glare he knew Dean would give him.
“Not real? That father of yours needs a talking to.” Bobby adjusted his pack on his shoulders. “I think I’ll follow you two home and try to pull John’s head out of his ass.”
*
It was a tense ride back to Phillipston. Sam had agreed with Dean that he wasn’t in any kind of condition to drive back home by himself and Bobby assured them that his car would be safe if they left it at the Candlelight Motor Inn for the night, that Bobby’s room came with two parking spaces. Dean had insisted on stopping at the local mom and pop store in Colrain, before they’d even made it back to Greenfield, and buying some bandages for Sam’s legs. Sam didn’t like the recriminating looks that Dean gave him when he wrapped his leg or the strange feeling of guilt that began to coat his gut.
Somewhere in Erving, Sam turned from staring out the window at the endless green scenery and saw that Dean’s knuckles were bone white against the black steering wheel and his breathing was sharp and jagged. Sam reached out and gently gripped Dean’s shoulder. “Whoa, man, I’m here. I’m okay. My leg’s kind of ripped up, but I got worse falling off my bike, okay?”
Dean blinked hard, once. “You almost weren’t. Christ, Sam, I know what you’re thinking. You listened to Uncle Bobby and you think it makes sense, to keep going after this kind of thing. You’re thinking that that’s the good thing, the right thing. And damn it, you didn’t see yourself in that fucking graveyard. You couldn’t breathe, man. You - It was killing you and I couldn’t do a fucking thing.”
“You did. You burned the thing. Jesus, I wouldn’t have known how to do that.”
“Dad did it to the shtriga. The one that almost killed you. While I was grabbing everything I could to put in the car, he dragged the body into the parking lot, doused it in a salt, and set it on fire. I was fucking terrified. But I figure that if that’s what Dad did to that thing, that it’d probably work on this myling.”
Sam nodded. “That makes sense. You did save my life, you know.”
Dean nodded and frowned at the windshield for a little while. “You want to do this, don’t you?”
“What?”
“This hunting thing. Bobby wasn’t kidding when he said that you wanted to keep people safe.”
Sam silently thought that he could just replace ‘people’ with ‘Dean’ and the sentence would be more accurate, but knew better than to tell Dean that. “Yeah.”
“You’re going to get hurt again.”
Sam pretended that he didn’t hear Dean’s voice almost break. “Other people are going to get hurt if we don’t. People will die. People like Tony who can’t even imagine that this could even happen, never mind that it could kill them.”
“But - Wait, we?”
“You don’t think I could do this alone, do you?” Sam glanced at Dean out of the corner of his eye. “Besides, you’re the one with the brains here. I wouldn’t have known to set that fucker on fire.”
“You think we could do this? Learn to kill this things? And not get killed ourselves?”
Sam smiled at twisted in his seat to look into the setting sun and see Bobby’s beat up truck following behind them on the winding highway. “Yeah. I think we could. And, you know, I think that Bobby would be willing to teach us what we can’t figure out. He doesn’t seem that big on us getting ourselves killed either.”
*
It was almost dark by the time Dean pulled the Impala into the driveway of the bricked-red ranch house and Bobby parked his truck on the street, leaving plenty of space in the driveway for the Impala, Dad’s truck, and Sam’s missing Riviera. The lights were on in the kitchen and by the time Dean pulled the keys out of the ignition, Sam could see Dad’s silhouette in the doorway. And as soon as Dean stepped out of the car, he could hear the absolute fury in his father’s voice.
“Where’s your brother?” Anger and something that could have been fear echoed deeply in Dad’s voice. “Where the hell is your brother, Dean?”
Sam jiggled with the passenger side door, the one that always jammed, for a moment before he managed to pop it open. “I’m here, Dad. I’m home.” He tried to step out of the car, but forget about his leg and put all of weight on it. “Oh shit.”
“Sam!” Dean made his way around to Sam and propped him up. “You idiot, that’s not how you’re supposed to move. And your leg’s got to be all kinds of cramped up anyway.”
“Your leg?” Dad stepped off the front step and walked toward Sam, stopped when he saw the tan and white bandaged decorating his lower leg. “What the hell happened to you?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” Bobby said, coming up behind Sam.
Dad took a step back. “Bobby?”
Bobby rested on hand each on Sam and Dean’s shoulders for a moment. “Why don’t we take this conversation inside. I don’t think this is the kind of thing that you want your neighbor getting an earful.”
Dad frowned, the lines marking his face deeply, but silently led Bobby, and Sam and Dean by extension, into the living room. He did not bother to invite anyone to sit down, though Sam took advantage of one of the cane back chairs and rested his leg. “What are you doing here? What are you doing with my boys?”
“Why don’t you ask them?”
“I’m asking you, Bobby Singer,” Dad said, his voice low and dangerous. “What are you doing with my boys? Why did you come out here? We’re not anywhere near South Dakota.”
“I said, ‘Why don’t you ask them?’” Bobby folded his arms across his chest, his plaid shirt still dirty from digging the new grave up in Colrain, and looked like he was prepared to out-stubborn John Winchester.
Dad narrowed his eyes and turned to Dean. “What are you doing with Bobby Singer, Dean? What were you doing with your brother, bringing him there?”
“You’ve got that turned around and you damn well know it,” Bobby said sharply. “You know that Dean followed Sam and not the other way around. Hell, if I’ve got it figured right, you’re the one who sent him after Sam.”
“So what did you do to get Sam to - go where? West of here? North?” John asked, his voice like a knife’s edge. “What did you do to find us? To find my sons? What did you do?”
“It wasn’t like that.” Sam glared up at his father from where he was sitting in the cane chair. “I called Bobby first. He thought I was dead.”
“What?”
Bobby nodded and Sam continued. “I called him. I needed to figure out what was going on. So I found him. And called him.”
“What was going on?” Dad repeated. “Nothing’s going on.”
Dean snorted bitterly and muttered something that could have been ‘bullshit,’ but Sam protested before Dad could get on his case about respect.
“Nothing’s going on? Dad, there’s a pentagram from the Great Key of Solomon under the welcome mat!” Sam exclaimed, exacerbated and in pain. “You won’t let me or Dean go out at night anymore. Tony died and no one could figure out what could kill him like that, never mind how someone could managed to do that in the state forest without anyone noticing. Fuck, no one around here looks at us the same anymore!”
“You,” Dean pointed out, coolly, smoothly, like he was used to bringing strangers from South Dakota home to fight with Dad. “They don’t look at you two the same anymore. They’ve always thought I was the freak of the week.”
Sam set his jaw. “You know what I mean.”
“Sam, what happened to Tony was a tragedy and people are upset about that,” Dad explained, “and maybe I’ve been a little strict, but you can’t be saying that Bobby has anything to do with Tony’s death.”
“Cut the crap, John.”
Dad looked up to meet Bobby’s unwavering stare. “I don’t know what you’ve been telling my sons, but -”
“You never were this full of bullshit when they were kids. You didn’t lie to them or to yourself.” Bobby paused for a moment and took a deep breath. “How do you think Sam hurt his leg?”
Dad looked at the mess of bandages, the brown ace bandages helping to keep the gauze and medical tape in place. “Did you take him on some godforsaken trek through the woods? Or maybe he took a fall from a bike or skateboard. I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”
“I shot him.”
“You son of a bitch!” Dad cried and made a lunge for Bobby, but Dean intervened, grabbing Dad by the shoulders.
“He saved Sam’s life!” Dean shouted. “If it weren’t for him, Sam would be dead! Dead like Tony!”
Dad coiled back, like a tiger deprived of prey. “Dead like Tony?” he asked, as though he were tasting something indescribably bitter on his tongue.
“You’re a damn fool,” Bobby said lowly. “Both of your sons’ lives have been in danger and it could have been prevented if you’d just told them the God’s honest truth. If they knew what was out there, how to protect themselves, none of this would have happened. Your youngest son wouldn’t have called me in secret, wanting to make sure that he and his brother weren’t going absolutely crazy, that there were things out that are real even if everyone in the world doesn’t know about them.”
Dad’s mouth set in a firm line and he didn’t say anything, looking as implacable as a stone wall.
“Do you have any idea how lucky you are that Dean needed breakfast when he did on that hike? That if he’d stayed with Tony Farro, that it would have been just as likely that it would have been your son who died that day? Any idea how lucky you are that Sam had the brains to try to find someone who knew more than he did when he realised that he needed to go after whatever killed his brother’s roommate? It’s only by sheer dumb luck that your boys are alive today.”
“Sam almost died?”
“It latched onto him,” Dean said quietly. “He was the one who walked over its grave and it wanted him. Uncle Bobby got it when it grabbed him, that’s when he got Sammy in the leg. But it - it had already imprinted on him or something. It followed us all the way to the graveyard. Tried to kill him. To suffocate him or something.”
“It?”
“Bobby called it a myling,” Sam told Dad. “It looked like a little boy, but… “ Sam rubbed his throat. “It wasn’t really a kid. It weighed me down like a boulder on my chest.”
“A myling?” Dad paled, white under his five o’clock shadow. “It was a myling?”
“Your boys did good. Sam was strong enough to hold it off and Dean knew enough to salt and burn it.”
Dad sagged with relief.
“Sam knew just enough to go after it and Dean knew enough to go after Sam, but they didn’t know enough to figure out what it was or how to kill it.” Bobby’s voice was low and accusatory. “Now, I don’t know what happened up in Wisconsin. I don’t know why you came out here or why you stopped and I don’t pretend to. But I do know that you put your sons right in harm’s way, not telling them what you know, not teaching them how to defend themselves. And you can thank Lady Luck and their own goddamn ingenuity that they’ve lived as long as they have.”
“My son almost died in my arms!” Dad snapped, finally. “And it wasn’t luck or goddamn ingenuity or anything that saved him. It was faith and time and he was alive and I was not - am not giving that up for anything!”
“What do you think you did when you decided to lie to them? When you decided that keeping them in the dark was going to keep them safer than preparing them for life? Who do you think you put in danger when you did that?”
“I kept them safe! For ten years they’ve been safer than any other hunter could have kept them!”
“And then it found them! A myling found your family, John, and you put your head in the sand and did nothing! Oh, sure, you put salt at the windows and a Devil’s Trap by the doors, but God forbid you actually go out and hunt the goddamn thing. Don’t think that I didn’t talk to Caleb, not after Sam called me, scared of what was happening. And don’t think that I don’t remember you showing up on my doorstep asking for answers. I just never thought that someday your son would be doing the same thing.”
“I did what I needed to do.”
“I don’t get it. You were so sure, so determined. You knew how to do your research when you went up to Wisconsin. You were determined. I was so sure that you’d die with that damned rifle in your hand, still chasing your holy grail. And you just gave it up.”
Dad sighed heavily and took a seat next to Sam. “I did what I needed to do, Bobby, and then I took care of my boys.”
Bobby froze and stared at him. “You did it? You killed it?”
Dad nodded and looked at Dean. “Sam was sick, so sick. I got every healer, every voodoo and hoodoo man, every witch and magician, every psychic and priest I knew to look him over, to give me their books, to tell me what I could do, what could be done. Sam had more hex bags made for him before he turned seven than most hunters do in a lifetime. They prayed over him and did their magic and sent their friends. I paid in kind as best as I could.”
Sam stared at his father, remembering, vaguely, the bags and things that had decorated his bedroom back in Fitchburg. By the time they'd moved, the bags had disappeared, but he could remember them, crumpled leather and hemp pouches hanging from the bed and tucked away in drawers.
“And some people couldn’t help him, but they gave me books, books that would help me track Mary’s killer. They said that if I lost my son, at the very least I could avenge my family’s deaths. And the yellow eyed demon, Azazel, he had his strongest ties to the world out here. It took some work, but I summoned him and exorcised him. And then I just wanted to be a father to my sons.”
“And you just stopped?”
“Sam was starting school and Dean could barely let Sam out of his sight. I needed to do something. I needed to be there for them. And I couldn’t do that and drag them all over the country, sacrificing them to save people I didn’t even know.”
“Maybe those people need to be saved now,” Sam suggested. “We’re grown up. Maybe you need to help people.”
“What did you tell them, Singer? What kind of bullshit lies have you been feeding my sons? Telling them they can be heroes? That people will love them if they kill things?”
“Your boys aren’t idiots,” Bobby retorted. “If this is what they want to do with their lives, it’s not because they think they’re going to be some damn fools saving the damsel in distress.”
“My sons have a fine life here, going to school, living normal lives.”
“If this is what we want to do, we can do it.” Dean looked down at Dad, his body tensed for the fight. “We’re both adults. People need saving, people who don’t know any better. And we can do it.”
“You?” Dad asked, more than a little incredulous. “Dean, you’ve been sleeping with a nightlight since you managed to steal one in Utah. Do you really think that you’re going to travel around, hunting the things that live in the dark?”
“Dean saved my life today!” Sam pulled himself to his feet, careful of his leg. “If it weren’t for Dean, if he hadn’t known what to do and how to do it, I wouldn’t be here right now! Bobby helped us and showed us what to do and we did it. We’re learning and that’s good enough for us!”
“You’re taking them hunting with you?” Dad was back on his feet, anger once again replacing his exhaustion.
“Sam and I are doing that together,” Dean said, meeting Dad’s eyes evenly. “If Uncle Bobby is willing to show us the ropes, then, yeah, we’d like to go with him. But if he doesn’t, or you won’t let him, we’re still going when he finishes his finals. We can practice until then, catch up on our reading.”
“But… I thought you were happy, Sam?”
Sam shrugged. “I was. But… That thing killed Tony. Bobby says it killed other people, that there are other things out there killing people. Dean told me that there are things that only go after kids. I… Kelly’s parents wouldn’t even let her go to prom with me anymore. So, I went out with Bobby and Dean and we killed the thing that killed Tony. I don’t - If people are already going to think that I’m different, that I’m a freak, then the least that I can do is help people.”
“Sam and Dean managed most of this hunt on their own,” Bobby said, his voice gentler than it had been since he had seen John. “They only did what you did, what you were the best at. Imagine what they could be once they got themselves trained up. The two of them, together? If you helped, they could be better than the best.”
“It’s not safe. They could - they will get hurt.”
“They’re going to get hurt whatever they do or don’t do about this. Even if they decide to live normal lives, eventually something will find them. And if they’re not trained, if they don’t know what they’re doing, they’re definitely going to get hurt. They could die. But if they know what they’re doing, if they’re good enough to hunt? They could survive. They could help people. You could show them how to do it.”
Dad looked from Dean to Sam to Bobby. He saw the determination mirrored on his sons’ faces. He nodded in defeat. “I guess I’m probably a little rusty right now. What do you say to going over the ropes with me, Bobby? This summer? And then we can get on with it.”
Bobby nodded and clapped Dad heartily on the shoulder. “After Sam finishes school then? We’ll make a good team. And when they’re ready, those boys of yours might be the best that there ever was.”
Dean grinned at Sam, the relief that he didn’t have to fight Dad on this again clear on his face, and hitched Sam’s arm over his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get a better look at your leg. We can’t have the best there ever was taken down before his time by a little salt.”
The woods were spring damp and New England rocky. Sam frowned miserably as the mud squelched loudly under his right boot and he was careful not to put too much weight on that leg, hoping that the mud wouldn’t suck at his foot until he left the boot to the woods. He’d lost more than pair of shoes that way when he was still with the Boy Scouts. He shifted, unsuccessfully trying to adjust the weight of his bag and gun. The duffel wasn’t made to be carried long distances over time and Sam wouldn’t be surprised when, the next day, he would find bruises along his shoulder. The gun was just damned heavy. “You can’t even remember where you were sleeping?”
“I’m sorry if I’m a little distracted,” Dean retorted sharply. “But I wasn’t exactly paying attention at the time either. It was definitely on this trail.” The further they got into the forest south of Colrain, the jumpier Dean got. When he saw Dean twitch at the sound of every cracked twig and flutter of new leaves, Sam wondered if he should have fought harder to leave Dean behind in Greenfield.
“The papers said they found your campsite about a half mile from the turn off in the road,” Mr. Singer, Bobby, told them in a steady, soothing voice. “They found your friend’s body about a mile and a half from there, but it looked as though he’d be running for a good part of that. I figure he started running once the myling jumped him. Do you remember what you heard, Dean? More than you told the reporters?”
Frowning, Dean whacked at some offending thorn bushes with his knife. “I told the truth. I took a break for some water and a Powerbar. I was exhausted; I’d barely slept the night before. I thought I was catching up to him; I could hear him talking. It sounded like he was talking to a little kid, like a really little one. You know, ‘What are you doing out here, buddy?’ That kind of shit. I’m pretty sure he was off trail. And then he started yelling and I started running and, boom, I wake up in the hospital.”
Bobby nodded a moment. “Makes sense. You wouldn’t want to bury your kid right on the trail. And most of the people this thing’s got have been the adventurous type.”
“We’re going to have to go off trail and hope that we find the thing?” Sam asked with sudden revelation.
“I hope you didn’t think this was going to be walk in the park,” Bobby told him with a raised eyebrow. “We’ll start near where you were found, Dean, and cover as much ground as we can while we have daylight. We don’t want this thing getting the one up on us in the dark.”
Dean’s face screwed up and his knuckles went a little white around his knife, but he didn’t say anything. Sam stepped closer to him, moving away from the trail edge, and brushed shoulders. Neither brother said anything, but Sam liked to think that Dean’s breathing sounded a little easier.
Off the trail and moving slowly away from the road, the forest floor was progressively marshier. It smelled like decay and damp. Sam told himself that it was just normal, the smell of last autumn’s rotting leaves and the wet of the rain and the snows without any sun peeking through the canopy to dry things out. It didn’t help. He kept thinking that it smelled like death and wrong. He shook himself; he’d been on a hundred spring hikes with his dad, with the Boy Scouts, up in New Hampshire, out around Royalston. This wasn’t any different, except for the gun resting on his right side and the bag full of the makings of an exorcism.
“Hey, mister.”
“Oh Jesus!” Sam cried, startled, before he realised that this was what they were looking for. It looked like a little boy, but from another time. He didn’t even come up to Sam’s waist and was dressed in short pants, a button down shirt, and a straw hat.
“You shouldn’t blaspheme,” the thing told him, its blue eyes large and solemn.
“You scared me,” Sam told it, watching Bobby and Dean approach in his peripheral vision. “And you’re right, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I’m lost. Can you take me home?”
Sam reminded himself that this was the thing that killed Tony, that crushed him to death in a dell a mile away, but it was hard. It looked just like a little boy, a lost child who just wanted to go home. “Home?”
“I just want to go home,” it said, its voice pitched as though ready to sob. “My parents left me here and I just want to go home.”
“Where’s home?” Sam asked, wondering what the hell Bobby and Dean were waiting for.
“That way.” The myling pointed west and its lower lip began to tremble.
“I - ah - “
“I’m tired,” it said plaintively. “Could you carry me? I’ve been walking forever.”
“I - ah - I - “
“Please?” Before Sam could answer, it lunged forward and grabbed Sam’s leg, holding it tightly to its chest.
“Dean!” Bobby yelled. “Dean, you have the knife!”
But Dean was frozen, his rune-laden knife equally frozen in his right hand, staring at Sam and the myling. His breathing was erratic and his eyes were wide. Sam immediately recognised the symptoms of one of Dean’s panic attacks.
“Bobby, you have to do something!” Sam said, staring in horror. “He can’t do anything right now.”
Bobby swore and backed up a bit. “This is going to hurt. Brace yourself.”
“Jesus fuck!” Sam swore at the salt slammed into his leg, dispersing the myling and tearing his jeans and skin. He bit his lip and fell backward onto the swampy ground. “Holy fuck, that hurts.”
Sam’s cursing seemed to magically unfreeze Dean who immediately ran to Sam’s side. “Oh my god,” he said lowly, the recrimination obvious in his voice. “Oh my god. Are you okay?” He hands immediately went to Sam’s leg, feeling it, pulling at the ripped denim and daubing at the broken skin. “Sammy, tell me you’re okay.”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Sam closed his eyes in pain for a moment before bracing himself on Dean’s shoulders to get back onto his feet again. “So what’d we do do now, Bobby?”
“Grab your shovels,” Bobby said, after gazing at Sam’s leg for a moment. “We’re digging.” He pulled his own folding shovel from his bag, along with a white trash bag. “The myling should originally appear over his own grave, so that’ll be about where you’re standing. It’s probably not deep. Then we put the body in a bag and bring it to the graveyard.”
After a quick tug-of-war, Dean pulled their folding shovel away from Sam, who toppled to the ground again. Dean joined Bobby in digging into the wet earth and Sam decided that discretion was the better part of valor and sat down on a fallen log. “So we just dig it up and rebury it?”
“That seems too easy,” Dean said, throwing mud off to the side. “I - I remember Dad coming home bloody and bruised. It can’t be that easy.”
Bobby’s lips were a tight line as he shoveled. “It’s not. The myling has attached itself to Sam - it wants Sam to save it.”
“That’s what we’re doing though, isn’t it?” Sam asked as he splashed some holy water on his leg to loosen the rock salt from his skin.
“It knows it wasn’t baptised and it was abandoned. As much as it wants to be saved and will kill to be saved, it knows it will die once we put it in the graveyard.”
“It’s going to kill, Sam?” Dean asked in a strangled voice just as his shovel hit something dull and wooden in the earth.
“That’s why I’m going to carry the body, probably the body in this rotting coffin, and you’re going to stick with Sam.” Bobby knelt down and lifted the blackened wood box from the mud. “That knife of yours, it’s got silver in it, right?”
“Yeah, uh, two strips on each side. I had to get it done special.” Dean opened the trash bag for Bobby to dump the box and bones in.
“Good. Stick by your brother and when the thing comes back, slice through with the knife. That should keep it at bay, at least long enough for us to get to the graveyard.”
“The graveyard?”
“Once we get back on the trail, it’s about a half an hour north of here. The trail winds right by it. It’s probably further than the myling’s plot, but we know where it is.”
With Sam’s wounded leg and Bobby carrying extra weight, the grave yard was almost an hour up the trail, through marsh like flat lands and more that one sharp and rocky incline. Sam had thought that trying to hike through the woods on his leg would have been torture, but it only got worse. The myling followed them, begging Sam to tell it where they were carrying its body, pleading to be put down and left alone, crying like a little boy. And when begging and pleading didn’t work and Dean was only so fast with his knife, slashing and muttering prayers in Latin, the myling would weigh him down into the mud on his bad leg, heavier and stronger every time.
Sam almost burst into tears with relief when they caught sight of the iron fence of the old graveyard. Dean leaned forward and wrapped Sam’s arm around his shoulders so that Sam could use him as a crutch for the last few hundred yards and they made it to the graveyard with due speed. Once inside the fence, Bobby dropped the bags and grabbed his shovel. Dean joined him in digging the shallow grave for the rotting body. Sam lowered himself to sit on the edge of a particularly sturdy looking gravestone.
“No!” Sam looked up to see the little boy face of the myling on the other side of the iron. “No! You can’t!”
“We’re bringing you home,” Sam tried to explain gently. “We’re just bringing you home.”
“No!” the myling cried again, clenching his fists like a child have a temper tantrum. “No!”
Sam gasped as he toppled from the headstone. He reached up to clutch his chest and could feel the squash of the wet, dead grass underneath him as he lay sprawled over the grave. “Holy…” He gulped for air and his hands clawed uselessly at his chest. It felt like he was being crushed, like there were a thousand boulders weighing down on his chest, pressing the air out of his lungs and the blood out of his heart, but there was nothing there. There was nothing but the myling standing on the other side of the fence, staring at him intently.
“Sam!” Dean cried as soon as he saw Sam fall from the gravestone. “Sam!”
Sam worked his jaw, trying to get enough air to say something to Dean, to say that the myling wasn’t even in the graveyard, to ask Dean to save him, to tell Dad he was sorry he ran off like this, but it was a futile effort. He felt like he was underwater, like he was drowning, like he was dying. Dean’s hands scrabbled at his chest and neck and head for a moment and then they were gone.
“That goddamn son of a bitch isn’t going to take Sammy,” Sam heard Dean snarl, his voice carrying over the graves. “It’s not going to be that easy.”
And suddenly, the pressure was gone and Sam could breathe again. Sam began to take in big gulps of air, overjoyed at the sensation of oxygen hitting his lungs again. His chest rose and fell rapidly, until he realised that the weight was not going to come back and kill him this time. He rolled over onto his side, graveyard mud slick in his hair and on his clothes, and stared at Dean, who stood over a fiery grave, matchbook in one hand and small canister of gasoline behind him.
“You okay?” he asked, catching Sam’s eye.
Sam nodded and rubbed his chest.
Bobby began to shovel dirt back over the fire. “That wasn’t bad for a first hunt.”
“Wasn’t bad?” Sam’s voice sounded as though someone had been walking on his throat.
“You know you can depend on each other. You know how to read each other. It’s a valuable skill and not one to forget. And you, you’re strong. Most people would have been felled by the myling by now. Even strong men are killed by them. And you, Dean, you knew when to leave Sam alone and go after the body. Most folk would have tried to stick by Sam and try to get him breathing again.”
Dean helped Sam get back on his feet and began to ineffectually brush at the dirt and grass and mud sticking to Sam’s back. “Sam almost died. I don’t think that qualifies anywhere near ‘good.’”
“I didn’t say it was good. I said it wasn’t bad.” Bobby stomped on the refilled grave for a moment and then pulled a bottle of water, presumably blessed by a priest of some sort, and poured the water over the slightly smoking earth. “If you’d seen my first hunt… let’s just say that more than the damned demon ended up dead and leave it at that.” He looked at the brothers, Sam leaning, exhausted, on Dean, who was only too happy to be propping up his little brother. “And your dad’s first? Well. It certainly wasn’t as neat and tidy as all this was. Most people get hurt when they start hunting, boys. Don’t think you’re special.”
“There’s more out there?” Sam asked, even as Dean said, “More things are killing people?”
Bobby snorted. “I didn’t take you for a pair of idiots. Of course there’re more creatures out there killing people. What do you think your daddy did before you lot disappeared on us? When you know about this kind of thing, you can’t help but go after it. Save people. Help people.” Bobby shrugged. “Dean grab your stuff. Sam, you think that if we split the bags between us, you can make it back to the cars by yourself?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” Sam shifted his weight back onto his good leg so that Dean could grab his gun and duffel bag. “What do you mean you can’t help but go after it? I mean, you said that Dad did this, but he doesn’t anymore. I mean, he won’t let guns in the house.”
“John? No guns?” Bobby stared at him with a raised eyebrow.
Dean opened the squeaky iron gate of the graveyard and led Sam back onto the trail. “What he doesn’t know hasn’t hurt him yet. But he hasn’t gone on a hunt since we were in grade school. It was one hunt when we first got to Fitchburg and then that was it. He works down at the garage and teaches some night classes, but definitely doesn’t go after this stuff.”
“He told us, told Dean, that it wasn’t real,” Sam added, despite the glare he knew Dean would give him.
“Not real? That father of yours needs a talking to.” Bobby adjusted his pack on his shoulders. “I think I’ll follow you two home and try to pull John’s head out of his ass.”
*
It was a tense ride back to Phillipston. Sam had agreed with Dean that he wasn’t in any kind of condition to drive back home by himself and Bobby assured them that his car would be safe if they left it at the Candlelight Motor Inn for the night, that Bobby’s room came with two parking spaces. Dean had insisted on stopping at the local mom and pop store in Colrain, before they’d even made it back to Greenfield, and buying some bandages for Sam’s legs. Sam didn’t like the recriminating looks that Dean gave him when he wrapped his leg or the strange feeling of guilt that began to coat his gut.
Somewhere in Erving, Sam turned from staring out the window at the endless green scenery and saw that Dean’s knuckles were bone white against the black steering wheel and his breathing was sharp and jagged. Sam reached out and gently gripped Dean’s shoulder. “Whoa, man, I’m here. I’m okay. My leg’s kind of ripped up, but I got worse falling off my bike, okay?”
Dean blinked hard, once. “You almost weren’t. Christ, Sam, I know what you’re thinking. You listened to Uncle Bobby and you think it makes sense, to keep going after this kind of thing. You’re thinking that that’s the good thing, the right thing. And damn it, you didn’t see yourself in that fucking graveyard. You couldn’t breathe, man. You - It was killing you and I couldn’t do a fucking thing.”
“You did. You burned the thing. Jesus, I wouldn’t have known how to do that.”
“Dad did it to the shtriga. The one that almost killed you. While I was grabbing everything I could to put in the car, he dragged the body into the parking lot, doused it in a salt, and set it on fire. I was fucking terrified. But I figure that if that’s what Dad did to that thing, that it’d probably work on this myling.”
Sam nodded. “That makes sense. You did save my life, you know.”
Dean nodded and frowned at the windshield for a little while. “You want to do this, don’t you?”
“What?”
“This hunting thing. Bobby wasn’t kidding when he said that you wanted to keep people safe.”
Sam silently thought that he could just replace ‘people’ with ‘Dean’ and the sentence would be more accurate, but knew better than to tell Dean that. “Yeah.”
“You’re going to get hurt again.”
Sam pretended that he didn’t hear Dean’s voice almost break. “Other people are going to get hurt if we don’t. People will die. People like Tony who can’t even imagine that this could even happen, never mind that it could kill them.”
“But - Wait, we?”
“You don’t think I could do this alone, do you?” Sam glanced at Dean out of the corner of his eye. “Besides, you’re the one with the brains here. I wouldn’t have known to set that fucker on fire.”
“You think we could do this? Learn to kill this things? And not get killed ourselves?”
Sam smiled at twisted in his seat to look into the setting sun and see Bobby’s beat up truck following behind them on the winding highway. “Yeah. I think we could. And, you know, I think that Bobby would be willing to teach us what we can’t figure out. He doesn’t seem that big on us getting ourselves killed either.”
*
It was almost dark by the time Dean pulled the Impala into the driveway of the bricked-red ranch house and Bobby parked his truck on the street, leaving plenty of space in the driveway for the Impala, Dad’s truck, and Sam’s missing Riviera. The lights were on in the kitchen and by the time Dean pulled the keys out of the ignition, Sam could see Dad’s silhouette in the doorway. And as soon as Dean stepped out of the car, he could hear the absolute fury in his father’s voice.
“Where’s your brother?” Anger and something that could have been fear echoed deeply in Dad’s voice. “Where the hell is your brother, Dean?”
Sam jiggled with the passenger side door, the one that always jammed, for a moment before he managed to pop it open. “I’m here, Dad. I’m home.” He tried to step out of the car, but forget about his leg and put all of weight on it. “Oh shit.”
“Sam!” Dean made his way around to Sam and propped him up. “You idiot, that’s not how you’re supposed to move. And your leg’s got to be all kinds of cramped up anyway.”
“Your leg?” Dad stepped off the front step and walked toward Sam, stopped when he saw the tan and white bandaged decorating his lower leg. “What the hell happened to you?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” Bobby said, coming up behind Sam.
Dad took a step back. “Bobby?”
Bobby rested on hand each on Sam and Dean’s shoulders for a moment. “Why don’t we take this conversation inside. I don’t think this is the kind of thing that you want your neighbor getting an earful.”
Dad frowned, the lines marking his face deeply, but silently led Bobby, and Sam and Dean by extension, into the living room. He did not bother to invite anyone to sit down, though Sam took advantage of one of the cane back chairs and rested his leg. “What are you doing here? What are you doing with my boys?”
“Why don’t you ask them?”
“I’m asking you, Bobby Singer,” Dad said, his voice low and dangerous. “What are you doing with my boys? Why did you come out here? We’re not anywhere near South Dakota.”
“I said, ‘Why don’t you ask them?’” Bobby folded his arms across his chest, his plaid shirt still dirty from digging the new grave up in Colrain, and looked like he was prepared to out-stubborn John Winchester.
Dad narrowed his eyes and turned to Dean. “What are you doing with Bobby Singer, Dean? What were you doing with your brother, bringing him there?”
“You’ve got that turned around and you damn well know it,” Bobby said sharply. “You know that Dean followed Sam and not the other way around. Hell, if I’ve got it figured right, you’re the one who sent him after Sam.”
“So what did you do to get Sam to - go where? West of here? North?” John asked, his voice like a knife’s edge. “What did you do to find us? To find my sons? What did you do?”
“It wasn’t like that.” Sam glared up at his father from where he was sitting in the cane chair. “I called Bobby first. He thought I was dead.”
“What?”
Bobby nodded and Sam continued. “I called him. I needed to figure out what was going on. So I found him. And called him.”
“What was going on?” Dad repeated. “Nothing’s going on.”
Dean snorted bitterly and muttered something that could have been ‘bullshit,’ but Sam protested before Dad could get on his case about respect.
“Nothing’s going on? Dad, there’s a pentagram from the Great Key of Solomon under the welcome mat!” Sam exclaimed, exacerbated and in pain. “You won’t let me or Dean go out at night anymore. Tony died and no one could figure out what could kill him like that, never mind how someone could managed to do that in the state forest without anyone noticing. Fuck, no one around here looks at us the same anymore!”
“You,” Dean pointed out, coolly, smoothly, like he was used to bringing strangers from South Dakota home to fight with Dad. “They don’t look at you two the same anymore. They’ve always thought I was the freak of the week.”
Sam set his jaw. “You know what I mean.”
“Sam, what happened to Tony was a tragedy and people are upset about that,” Dad explained, “and maybe I’ve been a little strict, but you can’t be saying that Bobby has anything to do with Tony’s death.”
“Cut the crap, John.”
Dad looked up to meet Bobby’s unwavering stare. “I don’t know what you’ve been telling my sons, but -”
“You never were this full of bullshit when they were kids. You didn’t lie to them or to yourself.” Bobby paused for a moment and took a deep breath. “How do you think Sam hurt his leg?”
Dad looked at the mess of bandages, the brown ace bandages helping to keep the gauze and medical tape in place. “Did you take him on some godforsaken trek through the woods? Or maybe he took a fall from a bike or skateboard. I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”
“I shot him.”
“You son of a bitch!” Dad cried and made a lunge for Bobby, but Dean intervened, grabbing Dad by the shoulders.
“He saved Sam’s life!” Dean shouted. “If it weren’t for him, Sam would be dead! Dead like Tony!”
Dad coiled back, like a tiger deprived of prey. “Dead like Tony?” he asked, as though he were tasting something indescribably bitter on his tongue.
“You’re a damn fool,” Bobby said lowly. “Both of your sons’ lives have been in danger and it could have been prevented if you’d just told them the God’s honest truth. If they knew what was out there, how to protect themselves, none of this would have happened. Your youngest son wouldn’t have called me in secret, wanting to make sure that he and his brother weren’t going absolutely crazy, that there were things out that are real even if everyone in the world doesn’t know about them.”
Dad’s mouth set in a firm line and he didn’t say anything, looking as implacable as a stone wall.
“Do you have any idea how lucky you are that Dean needed breakfast when he did on that hike? That if he’d stayed with Tony Farro, that it would have been just as likely that it would have been your son who died that day? Any idea how lucky you are that Sam had the brains to try to find someone who knew more than he did when he realised that he needed to go after whatever killed his brother’s roommate? It’s only by sheer dumb luck that your boys are alive today.”
“Sam almost died?”
“It latched onto him,” Dean said quietly. “He was the one who walked over its grave and it wanted him. Uncle Bobby got it when it grabbed him, that’s when he got Sammy in the leg. But it - it had already imprinted on him or something. It followed us all the way to the graveyard. Tried to kill him. To suffocate him or something.”
“It?”
“Bobby called it a myling,” Sam told Dad. “It looked like a little boy, but… “ Sam rubbed his throat. “It wasn’t really a kid. It weighed me down like a boulder on my chest.”
“A myling?” Dad paled, white under his five o’clock shadow. “It was a myling?”
“Your boys did good. Sam was strong enough to hold it off and Dean knew enough to salt and burn it.”
Dad sagged with relief.
“Sam knew just enough to go after it and Dean knew enough to go after Sam, but they didn’t know enough to figure out what it was or how to kill it.” Bobby’s voice was low and accusatory. “Now, I don’t know what happened up in Wisconsin. I don’t know why you came out here or why you stopped and I don’t pretend to. But I do know that you put your sons right in harm’s way, not telling them what you know, not teaching them how to defend themselves. And you can thank Lady Luck and their own goddamn ingenuity that they’ve lived as long as they have.”
“My son almost died in my arms!” Dad snapped, finally. “And it wasn’t luck or goddamn ingenuity or anything that saved him. It was faith and time and he was alive and I was not - am not giving that up for anything!”
“What do you think you did when you decided to lie to them? When you decided that keeping them in the dark was going to keep them safer than preparing them for life? Who do you think you put in danger when you did that?”
“I kept them safe! For ten years they’ve been safer than any other hunter could have kept them!”
“And then it found them! A myling found your family, John, and you put your head in the sand and did nothing! Oh, sure, you put salt at the windows and a Devil’s Trap by the doors, but God forbid you actually go out and hunt the goddamn thing. Don’t think that I didn’t talk to Caleb, not after Sam called me, scared of what was happening. And don’t think that I don’t remember you showing up on my doorstep asking for answers. I just never thought that someday your son would be doing the same thing.”
“I did what I needed to do.”
“I don’t get it. You were so sure, so determined. You knew how to do your research when you went up to Wisconsin. You were determined. I was so sure that you’d die with that damned rifle in your hand, still chasing your holy grail. And you just gave it up.”
Dad sighed heavily and took a seat next to Sam. “I did what I needed to do, Bobby, and then I took care of my boys.”
Bobby froze and stared at him. “You did it? You killed it?”
Dad nodded and looked at Dean. “Sam was sick, so sick. I got every healer, every voodoo and hoodoo man, every witch and magician, every psychic and priest I knew to look him over, to give me their books, to tell me what I could do, what could be done. Sam had more hex bags made for him before he turned seven than most hunters do in a lifetime. They prayed over him and did their magic and sent their friends. I paid in kind as best as I could.”
Sam stared at his father, remembering, vaguely, the bags and things that had decorated his bedroom back in Fitchburg. By the time they'd moved, the bags had disappeared, but he could remember them, crumpled leather and hemp pouches hanging from the bed and tucked away in drawers.
“And some people couldn’t help him, but they gave me books, books that would help me track Mary’s killer. They said that if I lost my son, at the very least I could avenge my family’s deaths. And the yellow eyed demon, Azazel, he had his strongest ties to the world out here. It took some work, but I summoned him and exorcised him. And then I just wanted to be a father to my sons.”
“And you just stopped?”
“Sam was starting school and Dean could barely let Sam out of his sight. I needed to do something. I needed to be there for them. And I couldn’t do that and drag them all over the country, sacrificing them to save people I didn’t even know.”
“Maybe those people need to be saved now,” Sam suggested. “We’re grown up. Maybe you need to help people.”
“What did you tell them, Singer? What kind of bullshit lies have you been feeding my sons? Telling them they can be heroes? That people will love them if they kill things?”
“Your boys aren’t idiots,” Bobby retorted. “If this is what they want to do with their lives, it’s not because they think they’re going to be some damn fools saving the damsel in distress.”
“My sons have a fine life here, going to school, living normal lives.”
“If this is what we want to do, we can do it.” Dean looked down at Dad, his body tensed for the fight. “We’re both adults. People need saving, people who don’t know any better. And we can do it.”
“You?” Dad asked, more than a little incredulous. “Dean, you’ve been sleeping with a nightlight since you managed to steal one in Utah. Do you really think that you’re going to travel around, hunting the things that live in the dark?”
“Dean saved my life today!” Sam pulled himself to his feet, careful of his leg. “If it weren’t for Dean, if he hadn’t known what to do and how to do it, I wouldn’t be here right now! Bobby helped us and showed us what to do and we did it. We’re learning and that’s good enough for us!”
“You’re taking them hunting with you?” Dad was back on his feet, anger once again replacing his exhaustion.
“Sam and I are doing that together,” Dean said, meeting Dad’s eyes evenly. “If Uncle Bobby is willing to show us the ropes, then, yeah, we’d like to go with him. But if he doesn’t, or you won’t let him, we’re still going when he finishes his finals. We can practice until then, catch up on our reading.”
“But… I thought you were happy, Sam?”
Sam shrugged. “I was. But… That thing killed Tony. Bobby says it killed other people, that there are other things out there killing people. Dean told me that there are things that only go after kids. I… Kelly’s parents wouldn’t even let her go to prom with me anymore. So, I went out with Bobby and Dean and we killed the thing that killed Tony. I don’t - If people are already going to think that I’m different, that I’m a freak, then the least that I can do is help people.”
“Sam and Dean managed most of this hunt on their own,” Bobby said, his voice gentler than it had been since he had seen John. “They only did what you did, what you were the best at. Imagine what they could be once they got themselves trained up. The two of them, together? If you helped, they could be better than the best.”
“It’s not safe. They could - they will get hurt.”
“They’re going to get hurt whatever they do or don’t do about this. Even if they decide to live normal lives, eventually something will find them. And if they’re not trained, if they don’t know what they’re doing, they’re definitely going to get hurt. They could die. But if they know what they’re doing, if they’re good enough to hunt? They could survive. They could help people. You could show them how to do it.”
Dad looked from Dean to Sam to Bobby. He saw the determination mirrored on his sons’ faces. He nodded in defeat. “I guess I’m probably a little rusty right now. What do you say to going over the ropes with me, Bobby? This summer? And then we can get on with it.”
Bobby nodded and clapped Dad heartily on the shoulder. “After Sam finishes school then? We’ll make a good team. And when they’re ready, those boys of yours might be the best that there ever was.”
Dean grinned at Sam, the relief that he didn’t have to fight Dad on this again clear on his face, and hitched Sam’s arm over his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get a better look at your leg. We can’t have the best there ever was taken down before his time by a little salt.”
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So even after John gives up the hunt, tries to give the boys a home and a normal life, destiny finds a way to put them back on that path.
I really enjoyed this - thanks for posting.
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really interesting AU
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At least he's vindicated in the end.
I liked your MOW, too. And the process by which the brothers wound up finding their way back to hunting. Nice work.
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*adds to memories*
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Great job.
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Loved Bobby, too. Awesome as ever.
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