Chapter Text
Dean was four when his mom died and a year later, he’s losing his dad. His dad hasn’t died, or at least Dean doesn’t think he has, but what walks in the door that night isn’t his father and it doesn’t take him more then a few seconds to figure that out. He doesn’t need the pitch black eyes. It’s in the smile. It’s the way the thing leans in the doorway of the apartment, not for support from one too many beers, but because it’s watching him where he’s laying on the floor where Sammy and he had fallen asleep earlier, waiting for Dad to come back.
It watches them for minutes, just standing in the open doorway and then it smiles, wide and lazy. When it walks, it saunters. Dean’s only five and he doesn’t know a lot, but he knows more than most five year olds. He knows his mother burned, pinned over his brother’s crib. His Dad doesn’t hold any punches with the truth. Sometimes, Dean wishes he would, but mostly, he’s glad he doesn’t. Especially now, because when the thing crouches in front of him and it’s eyes go from brown to beetle black, maybe Dean’s chest seizes up in panic and he wants to scream, but he doesn’t, because he remembers what these things can do and he doesn’t want to end up like his mom. He doesn’t want to leave Sammy alone.
They stare at each other for what feels like hours, but it’s probably only minutes. Then the black bleeds away and the brown of his Dad’s eyes are back. It puts one callused finger up to its own mouth and glances at Sammy, asleep and covered in a thin blanket. Dean nods, because he doesn’t know what else to do. It reaches out, ruffling his hair.
Dean does flinch away, but it doesn’t look upset or angry. It looks amused as it gets up and walks past him into the bathroom, shutting the door behind it. The idea of running out the front door almost makes him wake up Sammy, but… but he’s five and Sammy’s barely a year old. He doesn’t know how far they’d get on their own – not far – or, if they go for help, what the thing will do to whoever helps them.
His dad says demons have black eyes. If it’s a demon then it’s possessing him and possession means his Dad’s still in there somewhere. Probably. That’s Dad’s theory, anyway and he can’t leave Dad to that, so he presses his back to the sofa and tries to remember everything Dad told him about demons in the last year.
*****
“Christo!”
Dean stays up all night. He sits next to Sammy and watches the door where the thing possessing his father is… okay, well, he isn’t sure what it's doing, but it hasn’t come out all night.
Somewhere between four and five, he manages to convince himself that it might not be a demon. Dad always says there are other things out there, lots of them, and while he hasn’t mentioned anything else that had black eyes like that, he’d readily admitted he didn’t know even half the things that were out there, so maybe it isn’t Dad at all, maybe it’s just something that looks like him. Or maybe it’s worse. Maybe something has done something to him and his dad isn’t human anymore. Either way, he has to be sure. Dad says demons can be forced to reveal themselves under certain circumstances – salt, holy, water, Christo. Dean can’t reach the salt without climbing the counters and that would be too obvious. The holy water is in the room the maybe-demon’s been occupying all night, but he still has his voice.
He can’t do it right away, though. At breakfast, Sammy’s right there and if it is a demon, it might get pissed enough to hurt them. So, he waits until Sammy goes down for his nap in their bedroom and the demon is standing in the kitchen, watching Dean pour himself a glass of water. He waits until it has its head tilted back, one hand on the bottle, the other resting against the counter top and he says it. No point in being subtle, so he’s loud and it’s just one word, but as soon as it’s out, he regrets it, because it chokes on the beer and twitches it’s head down at him, eyes stuttering to black as it shakes off the affects of whatever the word does to it.
Dean backs up a few steps before his back hits the table, but it isn’t moving for him, in fact, once the twitching stops, it smiles. “Aren’t you just a clever little boy. Daddy taught you well.”
He glares at the mention of his dad, trapped behind black and the faint smell of sulfur, but there. Has to be there somewhere. The thing twitches, its face warping subtly into something pained and desperate for a moment before settling back into an angry sneer.
It chugs the last of the beer and says nothing as it storms into Dad’s bedroom, slams the door hard enough that seconds later Sammy starts crying. Dean isn’t sure what just happened, but he thinks maybe it was Dad, just for a second, so he can’t give up. If Dad can fight, he can stay.
*****
Sometimes he’s sees Dad. Not for very long, just seconds at a time and if he says anything, it’s usually just Dean’s or Sammy’s name, broken and choked up, and then he’s gone. Dean tries Christo one more time. He’s desperate for his dad, desperate for someone to tell him what to do. This thing doesn’t hurt them, it feeds them, it watches Dean, and it doesn’t seem to care about Sammy as long as Dean keeps him out from under its feet, but it looks like his dad. His dad is in there somewhere and he thinks there has to be a way to help. There has to be someone he can call. He remembers names Dad said a few times, an old army buddy of his, a pastor, and a guy named Bobby that Dean met once, and a psychic back in Lawrence. He doesn’t know anymore than that, though. He doesn’t have numbers, or addresses. What he does have is Sammy and something that looks like his father, but isn’t.
So, when it’s been a week since his father has managed to push through and Dean is desperate enough to not care if it hurts him, he says it. Sammy is asleep and he’s looking at the empty plates at the table while the thing drinks beer and watches him, like it’s been doing for a month now. Dean looks at it and says, “Christo,” soft and as defiantly as he can manage with only five years and a world of fear behind it.
It twitches at him, eyes going black and lips curling into a snarl for just a second before it rights itself. Dean waits and he hopes. But it only crouches down in front of him. There’s nothing of his father in those black eyes and they aren’t wavering. They stare at him and he ticks off the seconds in his head until it reaches out and ruffles his hair, still smiling before going to the couch and kicking its feet up onto the coffee table to watch television.
*****
If his father’s still in there – and Dean has to believe he is, he has to or he’ll start crying and he doesn’t think he can stop and Sammy will ask why and Dean doesn’t know how to answer that – he can’t get through. Dean knows his dad well enough to know he’s still fighting, but he must have already lost or is losing whatever war is going on in there, because it’s been months. He thinks about running all the time. He thinks about how bad an idea that is, but he thinks maybe if he waits a few years, maybe when Sammy’s a little older.
He does the math and makes plans that he isn’t even sure he’ll be able to follow through with, but it’s better then doing nothing.
*****
The first day of school, Dean doesn’t talk to anyone, mostly because he doesn’t have anything to say, but also because he isn’t sure what he’s allowed to say. He’d been terrified when they were enrolling him that the demon intended to watch Sammy. He can’t imagine leaving his not even two year old brother alone with it for hours. He doesn’t understand why he’s being forced to go, because the one forcing him is a demon. What does it care if he has an education? Why can’t he just stay home and take care of Sammy like he’s been doing?
Except every time he tried to ask, it said, “You’re going,” and walked away, like that’s the end of it and Dean realized it was. He couldn’t say no, because he’s six and John isn’t his father, except that he is and no one is going to look twice, even if John drags Dean kicking and screaming into that elementary school.
It watches him closely for the last few days preceding the start of school. It watches him watching it, alternating between glaring and shaking in something that borders fear and defiance while he hugs Sammy a little closer. It doesn’t even look at Sammy most days. Will it bother feeding him? Will it notice if he gets into something he isn’t supposed to? If Sammy throws a temper tantrum… what if it gets so annoyed it hurts him or worse and Dean isn’t there?
By the time the first day of school rolls around Dean is so stressed that he almost hugs the demon as he’s so stupidly grateful when it walks them down to the other end of the small complex of apartments they live in and Dean meets Ms. Alverez, the retired widow that takes care of her grandkids after school and is absolutely delighted to watch Sammy during the day. Instead, he hugs Sammy and after the door closes and they’re in the safety of the car, Dean chokes out, “Thank you,” and hates himself for it at the same time, but if it keeps Sammy safe, he can say thank you and he can mean it. He already does.
******
There’s John and there’s Dad. Dean has to make that distinction, it’s easier to separate the two if he has a name for it but he can’t give it a different name because it would be too confusing. It introduces itself as John, everyone calls it John or sometimes Mr. Winchester, but whether because it doesn’t like it or because it notices that Dean flinches when they do, it always corrects them, “Just John,” and Dean figures it could be worse.
He doesn’t know what it wants, but it isn’t hurting them, not in any physical way. Sammy’s about to turn two and doesn’t pay any attention to John anymore. He goes immediately to Dean for everything and sometimes when he looks at John, it’s like he isn’t sure why he’s there. They’ve moved a few times already – new schools for Dean, new sitters for Sammy. Dean hasn’t been anywhere long enough to make real friends, but then he doesn’t really want to.
Sammy is a toddler and he doesn’t remember being a toddler, but he sees other toddlers and they usually smile at each other, wave at each other. Sammy doesn’t do any of that. His eyes are always firmly on Dean, like Dean is the only thing that matters and if Dean points to other kids, Sammy shakes his head and says, “No!” before laughing, like it’s the best joke ever, like it’s a game.
Dean might only be six, but he knows that isn’t normal, but then he can’t really hope for normal, not yet. He can hope for maybe safe and unhurt and not hungry and a lot of things, but normal is another galaxy away. Normal is a place where he’s got his brother away from this thing, or maybe he’s found a way to get it out of his father, or his father manages to kick it out all on his own, but it isn’t here and it isn’t now.
“Dean!” Dean smiles at Sammy and reaches up, pulling the hood down over his brother’s face. Sammy squeals hysterically pulling it back with a loud, “Dean!” that gets them smiles from other people in the store.
John frowns, but doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t like attention drawn to them, but he seems to have given into the idea that there are different kinds of attention and laughing happy Sammy gets them a better kind then crying fussing Sammy. Dean pushes his luck and does it again and Sam falls forward over the bar of shopping cart, laughing, then bites the rail, looking at Dean through a thick fringe of tousled brown hair and it’s Dean’s turn to laugh.
Two more years.
*****
Two years ago, eight had seemed impossibly old. Dean had thought he’d have it figured out by then, but he doesn’t. Not even a little. He knows that as young as they are right now, he has to have somewhere to run to. If he doesn’t, they’ll get dragged right back. So, he listens when they’re out, because he remembers Dad saying something about Hunters, people who kill monsters, and he thinks maybe if he could find one, he’d have somewhere to run to.
Sometimes, he thinks John knows what he’s doing, because he doesn’t take them out often. Most of the year, he locks them in and does the shopping on his own, but around the holidays, people get nosier than usual and John’s keyed into that enough that he takes them shopping with him for those two months out of the year.
The hardest part, he thinks, is that he still doesn’t know what it wants. It clearly hates sitting around playing homemaker with them. It drinks all the time, mumbles to itself, spends hours out on the town. Sometimes it brings back a random drunk woman in that time between late night and early morning and Dean covers his head with a pillow so he doesn’t have to listen.
It still hasn’t raised a hand to them. It hasn’t even raised its voice. Dean’s used Christo four more times, just to remind himself that John isn’t his father, because sometimes… sometimes it feels like there aren’t a lot of differences. Like it could be his father sitting at the table with him.
He’s used salt once, too, across the front door and the window sills when John went out one night and sat on the sofa, waiting to see what would happen. It didn’t say anything, didn’t make threats or promises, didn’t go to get reinforcements and eventually, Dean got up and obscured the line on his own, because he wasn’t sure what he’d intended to accomplish with that anyway. Even if he could keep it out, that didn’t help anything - it locked them in as much as it locked the demon out. The only repercussion he’s faced is now John doesn’t buy salt and he makes sure none of the previous tenants have left any in the cupboards when they move in. Dean can always steal salt shakers from the diners they visit between towns, but he figures he’ll save that trick for later, when he knows what to do with it.
It’s confusing and complicated and Dean wishes he was older then eight, so maybe he’d understand what and why and how and when they’ll be able to get away, but for now, he can’t do anything more then wait and worry about Sammy.
He’s being watched by a Ms. Carter across the street from their apartment. She has a small daycare, ten children maximum and she’s nice enough. Dean likes her because with ten kids, Sammy can make friends. Except that Sammy doesn’t want to. Ms. Carter says Sammy’s quiet, well behaved, he has good table manners for someone his age, but he doesn’t really socialize with the other kids there. He’s not mean, or anything. In fact, if they talk to him, he talks back and he’s polite and nice enough, he just isn’t interested. According to Ms. Carter, he isn’t interested in anything until Dean gets there in the afternoon.
John plays the sympathy card when she approaches him about it – their mother died four years ago and his job moves them around a lot, he’s so grateful for everything she does with Sammy, it means a lot to him – with a smile that makes her cheeks and neck pink and makes Dean feel uncomfortable.
Dean waits till they’re alone later that night to talk to Sammy. He asks if Sammy has friends and Sammy says, “No.” like it doesn’t mean anything.
“They’re nice to you, right? They don’t make fun of you or anything?” Because he’s well aware that kids can be mean and they walk around in second hand clothes that don’t fit right.
“No, they’re nice.”
“Then… Sammy, do you want to be friends with them?”
“No.” He’s still paying more attention on the coloring book than Dean, because Sammy doesn’t see this as a serious conversation and Dean isn’t sure what that means, but he’s heard the concern, not just in Ms. Carter’s voice, but in their other babysitters as well. Sammy not making friends is something to be concerned about, it’s something serious.
“Why not?”
Sammy shrugs and his lips quirk and he stops coloring for just a second, a small hesitation like he’s thinking about it and then he says, “You don’t.”
“I don’t what?”
“Have friends.”
And of course he doesn’t. Dean doesn’t have time for friends and even if he did, it’s not like he can go over to their house to play – leave Sammy alone with John or just alone if John decides to go out. Kids his age don’t understand him. Dean’s responsible for his brother, in more ways then he can count and he has a literal demon breathing down his neck every day and he lives in a constant state of flux where he doesn’t know when they’ll move again or when John will get tired of having them around and what that’s going to mean and if he can get Sammy out before that happens. He’s afraid and confused and worried and overwhelmed nearly all the time and he doesn’t feel like adding to that by pretending to play games like the other kids, which means that, no, he doesn’t have friends.
But Sammy… Sammy should have friends. Dean takes the brunt of this alone because he doesn’t want Sammy scared – he wants his brother happy and part of that is having friends. If it’s for Sammy, Dean figures, he can do anything, even make friends. Or, well, pretend to.
*****
Tommy is the only other kid Dean’s age that goes to Ms. Carter’s. He’s quiet and he likes books, superheroes, and Pac-man. Dean isn’t sure about books, he doesn’t like superheroes because they’re lies, but he can get behind Pac-man. Ms. Carter has an Atari set up to a small television in one of the back bedrooms and Tommy doesn’t seem to mind Dean joining him.
Dean has no intention of excluding Sammy from anything. He makes more then enough room for Sammy to join them and even gives him the controller a few times. This isn’t about pushing Sammy away; it’s about showing him that they can make friends, that it’s okay to play with other friends outside of Dean.
Even if it’s what he wants, when Dean looks back one afternoon and sees Sammy isn’t on the bed with them anymore, his chest seizes up. He excuses himself and finds Sammy in the living room playing blocks with one of the other kids – a little girl with curly pigtails and a pink and brown dress – and it shouldn’t make him upset. This is what he’s been trying to get at. Sammy should play with other kids. The way Ms. Carter is beaming down at the two of them, asking what their building, says this is what she wanted. This is good, so why does it hurt? And why, when they move a week later, does he feel so relieved that Sam doesn’t care about leaving Bridgette behind?
*****
“I’ve got a job. You’re coming with me.”
Dean isn’t sure what that means, but he knows it isn’t good, because John is staring at him like he expects Dean to argue, which means he should. It’s the first time John’s ever mentioned a job or work of any kind. Dean’s considered asking what he does for money, because he keeps them in food and hand-me-down clothes. Sometimes they sleep in the car between cities, but not always, so he has to get cash from somewhere. In the long run, though, Dean isn’t sure he wants to know.
“You hear me?”
He looks up from the table where he’s doing a word search and stares back, thinking about what it means that John wants him there. The only thing his mind runs up against is Sammy, asleep in one of the beds behind a decorative barrier. The television is on and Tom and Jerry are chasing each other in the background. Dean casts a glance back to make sure they aren’t bothering Sammy, but he’s still sound asleep, curled up under the scratchy comforter. “What about Sammy?”
“He can stay here.”
Sammy’s barely five. School let out a week ago and as Dean expected, John immediately packed them into the car and started the summer road trip. They won’t settle anywhere for more then a few weeks over the next three months and Dean usually hates it, but this time around, it means he gets Sammy all to himself. He likes that his brother makes friends so easily and that little kids are so naturally trusting of each other, but he can’t help feeling a little lost when it feels like Sammy needs him just a little bit less.
This new town is just large enough to have a wrong side of the tracks and that’s where they’ve settled. The rest of the motel John’s got them in is full of drug addicts, transients, and prostitutes turning a quick buck. In fact, it’s bad enough that just this last week, Dean found out what a prostitute is.
The point is, they can’t leave Sammy alone here. He’s five living in a motel room surrounded on both sides by what Dean is pretty sure are crack addicts that would slit their own mother’s throat for their next fix, let alone some scrawny five year old they don’t know.
John’s still watching him, waiting for a response and Dean manages to choke out, “You can’t… he’s only five. He can’t stay alone.”
“You stayed alone.”
For a full two seconds, Dean can’t draw breath, but it feels longer. He’s forgotten he was five when Dad left to go talk to someone about information on the thing that killed Dean’s mom and came back possessed by a demon. He can’t remember what it was like being that young, because he isn’t sure he ever was. Maybe before his mom died, but seeing her pinned to the ceiling, her stomach bleeding out, knowing what’s out there and what it wants to do to them, what it already has done…
“No. I’m not leaving Sammy.” He gets out of his chair and tries to make himself bigger then he actually is, knows he’s failing, but doesn’t care. He’s not leaving Sammy.
John’s shoulders stiffen, his eyes narrow, and Dean knows saying no to this thing isn’t a good idea. It’s why he hasn’t done it before. He’s begged and pleaded and reasoned, but he’s never outright said no. This, though? This is too important to bargain for. He has to draw a line. He has to…
It doesn’t move to touch him. He barely has time to see its eyes flash black for a second before Dean finds himself shoved back with what feels like the force of a small car crashing into his chest. His side cracks against the table, which collapses under him. A moment later something collides with the side of his face. He blinks several times but all he can see is faded blacks and greys and he can’t seem to move his suddenly very heavy arms and legs.
Somewhere behind a roar in his head, he can hear Sammy yelling, asking what’s going on and calling for Dean. Dean finally manages to force his arms to move, to push him up. He slips down onto the floor again, but the second attempt is more successful. He manages to get a grip on a chair and pull himself up only to see what he can barely make out as the open door. His mind registers this as something very bad about the same time his ears fill with the roar of a car engine that can only be his dad’s car.
He stumbles a few steps, gets hold of the wall and the door frame. Everything is spinning and he can’t think, because the car is already driving off. He can’t see Sammy, but he knows he’s in there. If he could run fast enough, he’d chase them down, but he can barely stand. He stays in the open doorway for a while; long enough for one of the crack whores to shake her head at him like he’s something to pity. When he finally manages to move he slams the door, but doesn’t bother to lock it, because he doesn’t know if John is coming back or if Sammy will be with him when he does. Whatever’s out there that might try to get in doesn’t matter.
Dean presses his back to the door and lets the dizziness drive him down. He cradles his throbbing head in his hands and shakes with the urge to cry until he can feel the tears wetting his face and he lets it go.