Disclaimer: I don't own any of the canonical Supernatural characters, concepts, or story-lines, nor any of the recognizable copyrighted stuff that are referenced. I do own the non-canonical Supernatural things you'll see, like Zoey and this story... and that's about it. Wah.
Author's note: Okay, first off? If this is awful, blame it all on PenMojo; she's the one who bullied me into getting off my butt and writing it. It would've stayed squarely in my head otherwise. This is all your fault, punk-child! :) (If it's good, though... give me all yo' props, baby!)
The story's gonna be pretty long. I've got the whole thing pretty much planned out, except for individual "episodes". (Like the next chapter might take a while, because it's going to be a hunt made from scratch.) I'll try to update as much as I can, but if you really like the story and don't want me to lose inspiration for it, it'd be in your best interest to drop me a nice complimentary review, wink wink, nudge nudge. Also, I'm one of those people who's better at coming up with ideas rather than actually writing them out, so feel free to offer constructive criticism and advice on my writing.
There's gonna be some pretty noticeable AU aspects because of Zoey's presence; these're only gonna start coming into play at the end of Season 1, though, so be patient! (Although you might notice a pretty big AU aspect right here in this chapter.) If there's something different from canon, you can ask about in your review, but I'm going to keep it hush-hush if I think it'll give away a twist... or it's just a mistake I made that I'll pretend is part of a twist. One or the other.
The night everything goes wrong is just like any other. Zoey and Deanie try to stay up as late as they can get away with by playing hide-and-seek around the big tree on the front lawn, but their parents quickly foil them and bring them back inside. Dinner is served (Mommy saws the kids' cheeseburgers into swallow-able cubes for them), Daddy coaxes Mommy into forking over a slice of refrigerated pie for each of them, and then Daddy gives Zoey a bath to clean off her food-smeared face and fingers.
He helps her put her nightgown on, then gives in to her pleas to go back downstairs and watch just a little more 101 Dalmations. She must've seen it fifteen times already, but he can't say no to that face. While Mommy is getting Deanie ready for bed, Daddy pulls Zoey up on his lap to watch movies together. And it's Zoey's favorite movie, but she finds it hard to concentrate on the puppies' escape from the skinny skunk lady and her friends, especially when Zoey already knows there's a happy ending. She keeps thinking about how tense her mommy has been lately. It seems like Mommy's upset about something but trying to pretend she's not. She's been arguing a lot with Daddy, too.
"Are Mommy mad at you?" Zoey suddenly asks, craning her head around to check the expression on her dad's face. He doesn't get mad, but she feels bad regardless because his grin fades. Noticing the look on her face, he drops a kiss on the cheek he scrubbed pink not five minutes ago.
"No, sweetie, Mommy's not mad." he says quietly.
"But you fighting?"
"We're not fighting."
"Oh," Zoey says even though she doesn't get it, then presses, "Why you fighting?"
Daddy lets out a chuckle and hugs her a little tighter. He smells good and safe, and through his shirt she feels his heart beat, slow and steady. Reassuring. "Well, princess, we're not fighting, but if you're asking why Mommy's a little cranky, it's because she was really hoping I'd take you guys out on a little vacation."
"We va'tion?!" Zoey squeals loudly. Her daddy presses a finger against his mouth and goes "shh", and she copies him.
"Not right now," he whispers. "Daddy's got too much work to do at the garage and I'm not sure the car would hold up all the way to the Grand Canyon..."
"Gran' Can'?" she echoes dubiously. She thought their vacation would be to Plucky Pennywhistle's, not a big can. Adults like weird things. She gives an over-exaggerated sigh to let her daddy know his ideas are terrible.
He grins at her as they hear Mommy and Deanie's footsteps in the hallway over the father and daughter's heads. "Don't worry," he says. "Can you keep a secret, Zoe?"
"Uh-huh."
"Pinky-promise?"
She readily hooks her smallest finger around his.
He hugs her closer than ever and stage-whispers in her ear, "I'm going to see if my boss will let me take a whole week off. And then we can all go: you and me and Mommy and Deanie and Sammy. And we'll have a family road-trip."
She squeals and bats his face away. "Too ticky!" she says, undercutting her accusation with a helpless giggle.
Her dad feels his face with one hand. "'Too ticky'? But I just shaved!" he says innocently.
"No, too ticky!"
"Really? Check again." And he picks her up and starts carrying her up the stairs, tickling her with his freshly-shaven face the whole time.
She's still giggling when he walks into the bedroom she shares with Sammy, and they find Deanie and Mommy saying goodnight to Sammy.
"Hey, Dean," Daddy says, causing the little boy to scamper over to him with the happy cry of "Daddy!". The man cradles Zoey in the crook of his left arm before he scoops Dean up with his right, grunting a little as he does.
"They're getting a lot bigger, aren't they?" Mommy says as she walks over. "I think I'll take this one off your hands," she adds, plucking Zoey out of her dad's arm and carrying her over to the crib.
Zoey checks Mommy's expression and finds a fond smile, before throwing her arms around Mommy's neck and cuddling up to her. Mommy cuddles her back.
"So, what were you two giggling about when you were coming up here?" Mommy asks playfully.
"Dad'ey too ticky!"
That wrings a surprised laugh out of her mother, who gives her a kiss on the temple. "I love you, Zoe," she says softly, as if afraid someone might hear. "I love you all so much." And then she gives Zoey another kiss.
"Eww!" the little girl whines as she tries to wipe off the place her mom keeps kissing her. "Mommy, no, all wet!"
"Say goodnight to Sammy," her mommy instructs.
Zoey pouts. She doesn't like her little brother too much. He's messy and boring and takes up everybody's time. When he was born, her parents tried to move her to Deanie's room, but she just kept sneaking back into her old bedroom with a bunch of pillows and blankets until they agreed to let her share the room until she got tired of the baby waking her up all the time. So far, she's been amazingly stubborn. It hasn't endeared Sammy to her, though.
She bends over as if to kiss the baby goodnight, but instead spits all over his cheek. "'Night, Sammy," she growls. Her mommy raises her eyebrows and gives the toddler A Look, but Zoey just ignores her. The sibling rivalry has gone on long enough for it to be too commonplace for anyone to really react to anymore.
After her mommy wipes off the baby's cheek, she picks Zoey back up. "Okay then, are you going to be nicer to your daddy and your big brother?" Mommy asks as she carries Zoey back over to the door-frame.
"Daddy, don't let her spit on me!" Deanie says as he eyes his little sister distrustfully. She purses her lips and blows a spit-bubble in reply.
The father sacrifices himself with a sigh, offering up his own cheek. A gleeful Zoey kisses it and blows a stream of spit on his face before he jerks away and starts rubbing at the affected area.
"'Night, Daddy!" she laughs.
"Little Zoey's gross!" Dean announces to the room. The girl in question is too busy cackling to take offense.
She blinks sleepily and rubs her eyes with her fists. She sees him silhouetted by moonlight through the fluttery curtains of the window. Even from there, he looms over her; a big, blocky, black outline of an adult man. Not her mom, then. "Da'ey?" she mumbles, then snuggles down deeper into her blanket, and whines, "Go away! Tired!"
He tsks. "Bad girl," he says. She can tell by his voice that he's not her dad. At the same time, though, they sound kinda similar; deep, warm, and ready to laugh. "You really should treat your guests with more hospitality, Zoey. Even when they drop by unexpectedly. Especially if you're expecting them. Didn't your mommy tell you she knew I was coming?"
"My mommy?"
"Sorry, princess, wrong again."
The man's sarcasm flies over Zoey's head. After all, she's only a handful of months shy of her second birthday. She takes everything she hears at face value.
She sits up and squints at the figure pacing in the dark, who stops to regard her. Her mouth falls open in a gasp when she notices his eyes. They're bright yellow with black slits, just like those that belong to the Winchesters' pet cat. (Zoey doesn't like to call her by her name, which is the same as her own. Her family calls the cat Big Zoey and the little girl Little Zoey, because they got the cat first. Little Zoey stomps her feet and starts whining that it's her name and she's bigger anyway, when she hears them calling the cat.)
"Well, don't you know how to make a guy feel special," the man says mockingly as she keeps staring at him, entranced.
"Kitty?" she asks in a hushed whisper, eyes round with wonder.
The man puts his hands up in mock defeat. His teeth flash white at her. "Dammit. You figured me out. I should've known I'd never be able to pull one over on you, Sherlock."
Zoey starts to slid out of bed so she can go investigate, hugging her 101 Dalmations blanket around herself like a cocoon, desperate for any scrap of warmth she can get in her suddenly ice–cold, night–dark room. She's already sticking her bare little feet over the edge of the bed when she imagines a big, scaly, slimy claw grabbing her and pulling her under her bed before she can scream. She pulls her feet back up in a hurry.
The man makes a sound that means he's either getting annoyed with her or he thinks she's being funny. "You're scared about monsters under your bed? Cupcake, I assure you there's nothing under your bed that wants to take a bite out of you. Even if there was... you're too scrawny to bother."
The last part confuses Zoey. She's not assured at all but she nods anyway. It's easier to let adults think you believe them. Mommy and Daddy and Deanie and everyone else tell her that monsters aren't real and she wants them to be right, but they're not; Zoey thinks her parents and her brother know almost everything, but she knows with terrifying certainty that they're wrongwrongwrong about this. They aren't the ones alone in the dark with a monster under their bed that wants to eat their feet away and drag the rest of them away forever, are they?
But, she thinks, she's not alone. The man will save her if the monster gets her.
She'll turn into a chicken if she waits much longer (that's what Dean always tells her anyway), so she hops out of bed as fast as she can, lands as far away from beneath the bed as she can, and scurries over to the man. The whole time, she tries not to trip on her blanket, which drags on the floor after her like a dress' train.
As she gets closer to the man and farther away from under the bed, though, she slows down. She thinks about waking her parents up to bring them in here. She's used to waking up in the middle of the night because of Sammy crying, and she's still curious about the man—why he's here, what's he talking about, his eyes, if he's really their cat (who she thought was a girl)—but she's not used to strangers being in her room at night. And this is one strange stranger...
The man squats down next to her with his hands dangling between his thighs. "Howdy, cutie-pie," he says, nice enough (even if his voice is a little raspy). "Aren't you a suprise? I wasn't expecting another ankle-biter. But I'm very happy to meet you."
"Who're you?" she asks, peering at him with suspicion.
"Like I said, kiddo, I'm an old friend of your mom's," he tells her. Zoey mistakes his sneer for a smile. "I did a favor for her a while ago and she promised to pay me back, but..." His gaze briefly flicked to the rug he stands on. He'd look angry if he weren't smiling. "Well. She'll pay, one way or another. You can bet your ass on that." He eyes her confused expression with amusement. "Pardon my French," he adds dryly.
Zoey doesn't understand what he's saying. Something about her mommy? "I geh her?" she ventures.
"Nah, don't worry, I'll get her later myself. Right now, I'd rather talk to you. You're just such a witty conversationalist." Before she can ask what that means, he asks, syrup-sweet, "Do you believe in magic, Zoey?"
She forgets what he'd been saying about her mom, and bobs her head enthusiastically, finally answering his smile with a sunny, gap-toothed one of her one. He chuckles and ruffles her hair, making her duck her head.
"Of course you do! Well, guess what, Little Zoey?" He stands up and spreads his hands out with a flourish. "I'm magic."
She lets out a loud, shrill squeal before he shushs her by pressing a finger against her lips. She pushes it away, too excited to get mad, and demands, "Ma'ick!"
His eyes narrowed when the toddler brushed him off (like how one might swat a fly), but he keeps up his grin (the one that shows too many teeth). Right now, it doesn't look happy in the least. It looks like the kind a cage-bound tiger might wear as it paces and rages and wants to rip everything that crosses it to shreds.
"You mean, you want me to show you exactly what I'm capable of?" he asks.
"Yes!" Zoey chirps. She starts bouncing in excitement, chanting, "Ma'ick, ma'ick, ma'ick—"
"Shut up," the man hisses, grabbing her tight by the head and holding her still. His grip tightens as if her skull were one big pimple he wants to pop. She stills immediately, her eyes wide, and he loosens his grip just a tad. He smiles again. "You know what? I think we started off on the wrong foot here, Zoe. I think me and you could become real good friends if we just got to know each other. Would you like to be my friend, sweetheart? My very bestest little pal?"
She's afraid of saying anything that might make him mad again, so she just gives a few quick little nods. To be honest, though, she's not that sure she likes him that much. He's magic and he smiles a lot and he looks a little like her daddy, but she wishes he weren't in her room tonight. She wishes someone else were here with her, because she's getting kind of scared.
But she can tell the man won't leave until she does what he wants her to.
"Alrighty, Zoey, all you have to do for me is one very simple little thing," he says. He stares at her very intently; his eyes burn as they bore into her, the way a snake might hypnotize a mouse. "Now, scratch off some of the paint on the bottom of this rug for your new best friend, huh? And then I'll call your mommy in and show you both a few neat tricks. You wanna do that?"
Her mommy will be with her? Instantly, Zoey's chest-clenching fear about the stranger dissolves away. She starts smiling again and says, "Uh-huh!"
The man laughs and ruffles her hair again before he finally lets go of her. "'Atta girl," he says with an identical grin. "Have at it, darlin'!"
Dropping to her knees, she flips the edge of the rug the man's standing on back, and sees a thick stripe of blood-red paint dried on the bottom. And it's weird and she doesn't remember seeing that before on a rug, but then again, she doesn't think about it because she doesn't care why the paint's there; she only cares about doing what the man told her to so that she can watch him put on a magic show for her, sitting in her mommy's lap the whole time. She hopes it'll make her mommy laugh and clap; her mommy's been so crabby lately... Zoey wants to make her mommy be happy again.
That's why she scratches away at the red paint, making it come off in crumbling little chips that sting under her nails. The man tells her to keep scratching until the stripe is broken.
The second it is, magic starts to happen. But it's not what she expects. It's not what she wants.
Her stomach twists in on itself, and suddenly vomit bubbles up into her mouth, fills it up all thick and sour and hot, and then it's all over the rug. She's still throwing up and crying on the floor when the man strides past her. He passes her night-light, and her night-light fills up with light before it goes out just as fast. The mobile over the crib whirls, the clock stops ticking, and the baby monitor blows out as the man comes closer.
Then he taps the monitor, and it crackles back to life. "Paging, Mrs. Mary Winchester," he sing-songs. "Wakey, wakey, Mary, your children need their mama to save them from the very unwise choice she made to go back on her deal!"
Zoey is still gagging and retching, clutching her belly in misery, when he scoops her up from behind, lifting her out of the pool of acrid, stinking vomit as if she were nothing. She shudders in his grasp, and her head rolls limply in the crook of his arms. She feels feverish. She feels like she's dying. She doesn't want a magic show anymore; she just wants to go back to sleep. That's all.
The man may well be magic after all. He may well have read her mind, because he takes her back to her bed. But he doesn't put her down. He keeps holding her, and for the first time, she realizes how he emits an overpowering heat that makes her skin crawl and makes her tingle unpleasantly. She can smell him now: on top, like how her dad smells, but beneath that is bad eggs and smoke. She whimpers and puts her hands over her mouth as her stomach churns again. She's too sick to wriggle away, so she just sniffles and blinks away her tears.
She's afraid that she'll throw up again if she tries to call for someone, but she wants her mommy, and she hopes her mommy gets here soon. (She hears footsteps hammering down the hallway. Mommy's coming, she thinks in overwhelming relief. Everything's gonna be okay.)
The man cups Zoey's cheek and turns it to make her look at him. He pets her damp face, ignoring the flecks of vomit that get on his hand because of it. He is grinning down at her almost as brightly as his eyes. "Listen up, Little Zoey, little pal; let's have ourselves a chat before the calvary arrives to save your sorry ass," he cooes. "Sadly, I know that when you get older, you're gonna forget about me and your mom and everything else about tonight. About our... special friendship." He laughs a little bit. "Oh well. I'm sure we'll still be buds when I see you again. Who knows? If you grow up to be half as hot as your mommy, we might even decide to take our relationship to the next level.
"But I want you to always remember what I'm going to tell you. No matter how old you get or what you forget about tonight, you'll remember this, forever and ever." He pauses to make sure that the terrified toddler is listening before he breathes, "What happens next is all your fault."
Then Zoey's wild-eyed mom bursts through the door with a knife in her hand, and she's slinging water at the man and he laughs, and she's—
Screaming. Such shrill, awful screaming. Zoey has heard lots of screaming, when her parents argue, or when Dean throws a fit, or when the baby's hungry or needs to be changed or when she's pelting him with Cheerios. She's screamed plenty herself when she's upset. She never heard screaming like this. Raw agony she couldn't have possibly imagined. It hurts her throat just to hear it.
(Put her down, now.
Long time, no see, Mary. How's life been treatin' you? How've your folks been?... oops.
You son of a bitch, how the hell did you get past the salt?
C'mon, doll, you don't honestly think that works on me, do ya?)
It drowns out the other sound, the dripdripdrip. (She's soaked. Throw-up and—) Dripping like a faucet. Like a faucet someone forgot to turn off. Before, it was a faster, thicker pitter-patter, and now it's just a leaky faucet.
There's screaming, right? Yes, if she listens real hard, she hears screaming. Someone's crying. It'll wake the baby. Or is he already awake? Is he the one making all the noise, or is it—
"mommy!mommy!mommy!"
come down, Zoey begs. The worst part is that she can't see her anymore; before—before was bad and she didn't wanna look, but now she—she wants to see her mommy. She needs to see her mommy looking back at her. She needs her mommy to come back down and grab her and carry her out of this place, this cold dark place, because Zoey doesn't wanna be here anymore, she wants to go and she wants to go with Mommy.
"mommymommymommy!"
Her throat burns. Who's screaming? Stop it. Just stop. You'll wake Sammy. You'll wake everybody.
(But the—
Devil's trap? Well, I did need some help with that... which your dull-witted doting daughter here all too willingly provided.
Zoey—)
Please stop.
It's too dark and her eyes are stinging too much and everything's too blurry. All she sees is one big smear of blackness, whether her eyes are open or shut. Before, this would've been a relief, because she didn't want to see what the man was doing to her mom.
But then the room explodes with light, and she has to shut her streaming eyes, cover them with her hands. Now it's too bright.
Zoey grew up in a house in which her food was cut up into bite-sized pieces for her. The water in the bathtub ran warm, not hot or cold. Her daddy held her hands when she wanted to walk, because he thought she'd fall down and hurt herself, and when she did, her mommy cleaned it up and pressed a kiss on the Band-Aid.
Zoey's not used to her heart thumping in her throat, tight and thick no matter how hard she wants to swallow it back down, threatening to choke her to death with terror. To the sensation of (blood) vomit soaking through her nightgown and dripping (dripdripdrip) in her hair. To the (blood) rotten eggs and smoke she still smells even after the man has melted into the shadows, his laughter melting away with him.
She didn't use to cringe when someone tried to grab her, but she does now. It's a man. The man?
"zoey!zoeybabywhereareyouhurt?!ohmygodbaby—"
"nononono!"
She can't look away from her mommy, who's stretched out on the ceiling with her arms thrown out and her mouth hanging open, a dark pained hole against too-pale skin that tries to move, tries to suck in a breath, to say something (to Zoey? What will she say to the daughter who did this to her?). Pretty blonde curls and long lacy white gown (like Zoey's) dripping off the ceiling, dripdripdrip, just like the tiny dark beads of red dripdripdripping into the crib. (Why isn't Sammy crying yet? He always cries. Is he screaming, or is it Mommy?)
Zoey doesn't want to see her mom look like that. She doesn't want her mom to look at her like that. She doesn't know what her mom is thinking, what she's trying to say to her.
sorryimsorryimsosososorrymommyimsorrycomebackdow npleasepleaseplease, Zoey thinks. Her world narrows down to the nightmarish image of Mommy bleeding on the ceiling and looking down at her with wide, horrified (hateful) eyes as all Zoey can hear is screaming and crying and sorrys and begging her to come back down. Zoey will never be a bad girl again if her mommy will just come down and stop looking (at her) like that.
The man falls down and then he starts screaming too, and then there's fire everywhere. Burning Mommy, burning her and burning her and it's all Zoey's fault.
"Mommy!" Zoey screams, screams even as the man grabs her and grabs Sammy and then he's shoving them at Deanie, who is wide-eyed and pale-faced under his mop of blond hair (just like Mommy). Zoey's hands tighten into tight little fists around her big brother's pajama sleeve.
Then the man is yelling at them and they're running down the hallway, Dean trying to go as fast as he can on short legs, with a wailing baby in his arms and a hysterical toddler clinging to his sleeve like a lifeline.
And for all his legs are short, Zoey's are shorter. She was a tiny baby who grew into a tiny toddler, and she can't run as well as he can, she can't keep up with him, so she lets go of Dean and falls down.
It's so much worse than even the most miserable summer day in here. Invisible, heavy heat wraps around her like the Dalmations blanket she'd left in her room; even the carpet is baking. She coughs on smoke and (rotten eggs and blood) tears, and curls up in her disgustingly (sweat-, vomit-, blood-)soaked nightgown and waits to start burning up like Mommy.
Zoey is only a handful of months shy of her second birthday, but she somehow knows that if she just stays here, all her fear and guilt will vanish.
She wants it all to just stop.
Dean doesn't let her stop, though. He keeps saying, "C'mon! C'mon!" and yanks her wrist painfully until she's up. He tries to keep an iron-clad grip on her wrist and hold Sammy up with one arm, but he can't. Zoey sees him struggling, but she also sees a horrible vacancy in his expression as if he too might just stop.
It breaks something inside of her, that look. She reaches over and slides her hands under the heavy bundle of blankets that contains their round-faced, wobbly-lipped baby brother, who depends on them to carry him to safety. He'd be too heavy for her to carry by herself, but Dean is already holding up most of it.
Her fingers find Dean's beneath Sam's blankets. He blinks like he's either sleepy or getting ready to cry, but he doesn't do either—he repeats, "C'mon!" and then they're going again.
Fleeing their rapidly burning house is worse now that she's helping Dean carry Sam instead of acting as deadweight to her big brother. It seems like the fire is chasing them, trying to trap them in the house so that they'll all burn up like their mommy. The ceiling caves in over their ducking heads, the floor comes apart under their scrambling feet, and the heat presses in on them more than ever as flames lick at their heels. They find themselves out the front door, into a blast of clean, cool air and the sounds of crickets chirping, as their feet go over rough stone front steps and then dew-sprinkled grass. They're barely outside when Dean turns to stare back at the house even with Zoey trying to tug him away and screaming, "C'mon! C'mon!" at him.
The man—no, not the stranger, it's Daddy—barrels out the door and scoops them all up from behind with a grunt. He mutters, "I got'cha," and Zoey trembles against his drumming heartbeat, and their house burns up behind them.
She remembers with a jolt that their cat is still inside, with Mommy. Knowing that is almost worse than everything else that's happening.
Neighbors pool around them in a blur of concern and horror, pressing in on them as if to pick up on the smoke's job and finish strangling them. The children's dad stumbles towards his car on shaky legs, presses his back against the bumper, sits down as if in a dream. His tired arms loosen easily enough from Zoey's squirming, and she crawls out of his grip. Dean grabs her when she almost falls off the car. He still has that blank look on his face as if he's running on autopilot, and his hands stay clamped on her even after he pulls her away from the edge and back towards their dad, who rocks Sammy to soothe him as he stares at the house with hollow, shattered eyes. For once, the baby is silent. (Zoey thinks of how, on any other night, this would mean everyone wakes up well-rested and cheerful, and Mommy would cook pancakes for breakfast, and the cat would jump up on the table and try to lick the syrup off their plates before they could.)
(No matter how old you get or what you forget about tonight, you'll remember this, forever and ever. What happens next is all your fault.)