AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hello Dear Readers! If this is your first time reading one of my fanfics, please check out my profile for more stories with Alyson Winchester. The main story is called 'The Adventures of Alyson Winchester', and there is a sequel called 'Winchester Interrupted: The Further Adventures of Alyson Winchester'. There are also several one-shots about Aly at different ages. I hope you enjoy them- please leave me a review and let me know what you like!
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John Winchester turned onto the side street and pulled the car up to the curb in front of the small ranch house that was two houses in from the corner. It was an early- fall day, it been hot in the morning, but it was cooling down now. It was at the point in the season where people turned off their air conditioners and opened their windows to let the breezes in. As he rolled up the window in his car, he could hear a voice drift outside, "Daddy's home!"
The front door of the house opened, and Sam came rushing out, his soccer ball tucked under his arm. His hair flopped in his face as he set the ball down on the sidewalk- the kid badly needed a haircut, but he preferred to keep it long. Dean followed, carrying the baby on his hip. He walked down the porch steps and stood there waiting as John got out of the car and walked up to them.
Dean put the baby down- who wasn't really a baby any more, but they still called her that- and she toddled her way over to John, holding her arms out for balance. Her face lit up when he looked down at her, and she screeched, "Da!" and gave him a big grin.
"Dad, watch!" Sam called proudly, "I learned how to dribble the ball!" and he started to kick the soccer ball across the lawn, staying right behind it all the way.
"That's great, Sammy," John said, with a tired smile. His muscles hurt- his whole body hurt; and he was still shaken by the hunt that he'd just been on, but he had to hide it from his kids.
Sam dribbled the ball back over to them and John ruffled his hair, then leaned down and picked Aly up. She had squatted down and started pulling at pieces of grass and was currently trying to put a handful in her mouth. John removed the grass from her chubby fist.
"No-no, baby," he said, "We don't eat grass."
"Dad, listen," Sam said with a grin. "Hey, Aly, what does a cow say?"
Aly looked at Sam, and said, "Moooo!" and laughed.
"Good job! What does a sheep say?" Sam asked her.
"Baaaa," Aly replied, with another giggle.
"Now watch, Dad," Sam said gleefully. "Aly, what does a lion say?"
Aly held her hand up so that it was curled like a cat's paw, and said, "Waaaahhh!" in her best approximation of a lion's roar.
Sam burst out laughing, and Aly laughed, and John couldn't help but join in.
"Good job, pumpkin," John said, kissing Aly's cheek. They walked up the porch stairs and John looked at Dean. "How's it going, kiddo?" John asked him.
"Uh, you're gonna have to find a new sitter for Aly," Dean told him regretfully. "Mrs. Wallace fell and broke her hip yesterday."
"Oh no, that's terrible!" John said as they went inside. Mrs. Wallace was the elderly woman who lived up the street and watched Aly during the day.
"I'll have to find out what's happening with her," John said.
"What do you mean, Dad, she broke her hip," Sam said.
"Well, with old people, sometimes their bones don't heal well and they have to go into a rehab center while they're healing up. She might not be home for weeks." John explained.
"Oh. I guess you better find someone younger to watch Aly then!" Sam went back to his bedroom. John set Aly down and went to get himself a couple fingers of whiskey.
After he had poured the drink, he sat down in the armchair with a deep sigh, and closed his eyes for a moment. He had a sudden flash of being in the abandoned warehouse with Bobby Singer, holding a knife and a crucifix in front of a man who had been possessed by a demon. He felt that it had been a million years ago; he felt like he was a changed man since the confrontation that had happened only last night. He sighed again, heavily, and opened his eyes.
Dean came over to him, and put his hand on John's shoulder. "It's okay, Dad," he said comfortingly, "It'll be okay."
John looked up at his oldest, wondering how the hell the kid could always read his moods. Dean held his own emotions close and didn't show much, but he could read others like a book, and he always knew what John's mood was when he came back from a hunt.
"I know, son," John said, and he put his hand on top of Dean's, and squeezed it for a moment. He smiled at Dean, but he knew it didn't reach his eyes.
Aly toddled over to him and held her arms up.
"Up, Da! Up!" she demanded, and he picked her up and put her on his lap. She got on her knees and turned towards him, putting her hand up and rubbing his beard. "Why do you like my beard so much, huh?" he asked her, and she smiled at him. She settled on her bottom, leaned on his chest, and stuck her thumb in her mouth with a contented sigh. She picked up the tail of his flannel shirt with her other hand and began to rub the fabric between her thumb and forefinger.
He could hear Dean bustling around in the kitchen, and called, "What's for dinner?"
"Just pasta and meat sauce, again, sorry," Dean replied.
"That's fine by me," John said. He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds around him- he could hear Aly sucking her thumb, the clicking of the gas stove before the burner caught, the sounds of birds chirping outside and a lawn mower droning in the distance- and he was so thankful for the normalcy that he had right this moment. What he had learned on this hunt had shaken him to his core, and he didn't know if he would ever be the same. Being in the presence of pure evil changed a person.
He had to put the hunt out of his mind for now as he attended to his children; Sam needed for him to sign a permission slip for a movie his class was going to be watching; the baby needed a diaper change; he had to call the neighbor and find out what had happened to Aly's sitter.
That took a while; Sue was a stay-at-home mom with four little kids, who didn't get out that much, and as a result, talked the ear off of any adult she came in contact with. She was a great resource of the goings-on in the neighborhood though, she knew what was going on with several different families, but she always kept her talk kind, so you couldn't say she was a gossip. She told John that Mrs. Wallace's daughter was going to fly in to take care of her bills and things, until they were certain what was going to happen with her. She didn't know of anyone off the top of her head who could watch Aly, but he was welcome to drop her off at her house, what's one more kid anyway? John said he would let her know, and then said his goodbye.
The red sauce on the pasta at dinner made John think of the blood that had poured out of the demon's nose after Bobby Singer had hit him; the demon had laughed and laughed at the damage being done to its 'meatsuit'. That was what demons called the humans that they were possessing, and John guessed it was true- the demon was 'wearing' the human body like it was a suit. His shoulders shook for a moment, and Sam asked, "What's wrong, Dad?"
"Nothing, just got a chill for a second," he kept his voice light. He had to try and keep all the darkness and evil he witnessed away from his kids for as long as possible. He himself had had no idea what was out there, and since his wife's death, he had been discovering bit by bit how much dwelt in the shadows.
Aly grabbed at the spoon again as he attempted to feed her a bite of pasta.
"Let go, Aly," he said to her, and she let go of the spoon and slapped her hand into the shallow plastic bowl, causing sauce to splatter all over.
"Aw man! She got some on my shirt!" Dean complained, getting up and going over to the sink.
"Rinse it in cold water, and I'll put some stain remover on it later," John told him. Aly had droplets of tomato sauce all over her face and arms now, and it made him think of how the blood had dripped down off of the demon's hand, onto the floor, after it had gotten its hand loose and bitten the wrist of its meatsuit.
Aly had a fistful of chopped up pasta, and she lifted her hand like she was going to put it in her mouth, but instead she put it on the tray of the high chair and began to spread the bits of noodle around.
"All right, I think you're done, little girl," he said to her. "Hey Sammy, would you mind getting me some damp paper towels?"
"Sure Dad," Sam said, stepping next to Dean at the sink, who had stripped off his shirt and was rubbing at the tomato sauce stains. His Led Zeppelin t-shirt was one of his prized possessions and he was fanatical about keeping it clean.
Sam handed John two towels, and John wiped as much sauce and pasta off of Aly as he could. She had liberally coated her face and arms with sauce, there was even some in her eyebrows. He had forgotten, in the years since Sam had been a toddler, how messy it was feeding a child of Aly's age. She was at the stage where she couldn't quite feed herself, but she wanted to try, so half the time there was a battle for the utensil as she grabbed for it.
John put the messy towels on the tray and stood up. "I'm putting her straight in the tub, would one of you get this?" he motioned to the high chair as he pulled Aly out of the chair and put her on his hip.
A warm bath, a clean diaper, then lotion, then pajamas, and a bottle of milk— and John read Goodnight Moon as Aly lounged on his lap sucking down her bed- time bottle. Then he picked her up and found each of the boys so they could say good night to her.
Sam was laying on his bad reading a book about space. He sat up and Aly leaned off of John's hip to hug Sam and give him a noisy kiss.
"Night-night, Alybug," Sam said with a grin.
"Ny-ny, Bah," she said. 'Bah' was what she called Sam.
"What does a cow say?" Sam asked, and Aly said, "Moooo!" and they both laughed.
Dean was in the living room in front of the t.v., and he stood up and tickled Aly's neck as he hugged her. She kicked her legs as she giggled, and John said, "All right, that's enough of that, Dean."
"Night-night, short stuff," Dean said, and she replied, "Ny-ny, De."
John laid her down in her crib, handing her the floppy pink bunny she slept with. He kissed his hand and then pressed his hand to her forehead.
"Good night, baby girl," he said quietly.
"Ny-ny, Da," she said around her thumb. Amazingly enough, her eyelids were drooping already, and she wasn't fighting sleep this time. He said a silent prayer of thanks for that, as he didn't think he had it in him to deal with a fussy toddler who fought going to sleep for a hour or more, most nights.
A demon will 'wear' a human as its 'meatsuit', during which time the demon is in control of the human's body, John wrote in his journal, They can let the human out if they want, and the human will feel the pain of what has been done to the body. The demon, however, does not feel pain the same way that the human does. The demon will goad its captor into hurting its meatsuit until the meatsuit is damaged almost to death.
He thought about the encounter with the demon- they had not been able to get its name, but at one point, it had looked at him as if it recognized him, and had said, "Winchester...why is that name familiar to me...it seems that I heard tell of something that occurred recently between one of my brethren and a Winchester..."
But that had been all it would say. He had asked again and again what the demon meant, getting more and more frantic. Bobby Singer had had to pull him aside and remind him to not get so emotional over it, that the demon would use it against him. He'd had to tuck that burning desire to find out what killed his wife deep down again, and face the demon with as little emotion as possible. John was aware that he had a lot to learn when it came to dealing with supernatural entities.
In the end, the demon proved to be more stubborn than them, and it had escaped out of its meatsuit. It had taunted each of them about their hunting abilities, somehow knowing that John was a newbie, but said nothing of real importance. But what John took away from it was that there was a strong possibility that what had killed Mary had been some kind of demon, and he was more than willing to kill as many demons and other supernatural creatures as he could, to find out for sure. He would find what had killed Mary, and he would send it back to hell.