One-Shot. Prologue to "Two Families". How a young Italian-American Izabel Vitti left her family and life in New York, and met James Winchester. The man that was going to give her a son, John E. Vitti-Winchester.
Warnings : Alternate Universe. No Demons.
This is a concept I've been toying with for a few weeks. And now I grew balls and actually started publishing it 8'D. So give it a try, "Two Families" will concentrate on John's rising through the ladders of the Family while hunting the people responsible for the slaughter of most of his family and trying to raise his two kids. Yeah, he's not going to get it easy.
Izabel
Izabel Vitti looked on with a solemn and grave face as the black casket was lowered into the fresh grave.
She ignored the bishop praying in Italian and Latin. She ignored her mother crying brokenly as they laid her baby boy to rest. She ignored the painful, almost unbearable crushing in her heart as half her soul, half her mind, was put into the deep grave.
She was 15, a dark haired, dark eyed, olive skinned Italian beauty with no worries in the world, when a group of enforcers for a jealous man took away her twin brother, in an attempt to incapacitate her father, the infamous mafia boss Paul Vitti.
But on that bright day of June, she made a promise to herself that would change many a thing. Whatever the cost, she would leave as soon as she could; leave the promise of a cozy life as the wife of some man his father may favor; leave the dread of having your life in the balance everyday; leave the blood and the money and the misery. She would leave it all behind, with her parents consent, or not.
Years went by as she got in and out of Nursing school, deaf but not ignorant of her father's disappointment. Her mother, god rest her soul, died in another of the bloody scuffles the mafia was prone to provoke. Her father spent months restlessly chasing her killers, hell-bent on having them tortured within inches of their lives. And finally at 22, she did it, she left the Family, she left New York altogether with a diploma and a waning smile.
She got as far as Lawrence, Texas, in a broken down car. She worked for a few months as a waitress, to make ends meet and maybe repair that car and get away; waiting with baited breath to see if any sleek Italian man was seen in town, to see if her father had sent anyone to get her back. But no one came.
So she started relaxing again and started thinking of settling in Lawrence. It was a nice, average sized town with all the pros and cons of such a town.
Another year passed and she started working part-time at the walk-in clinic of the hospital. That's where she met James Winchester, a charming, non-assuming man with warm eyes and a dimpled smile. He was a young soldier stationed outside of Houston that came back home to his family every time he could spare the time.
And from that point on, she nearly forgot everything about her past, in a rush of picnics in the park and movie nights.
Another year passed before she moved to Houston to be closer to James, and yet another one before he popped the question. She was so overjoyed, the question needn't be answered, of course it was a yes. But in the midst of a rushed wedding (neither was willing to wait all that long, even if they'd shared each other's life for the last 2 years, just a few days was still too long a time spent apart.) she started thinking about family, about her family. Putting aside the slight disappointment that her father hadn't taken the first flight to Texas as the news she was getting married got out (and she was realistic enough to know it had gotten out, even to New York by now), she'd gone on with her life.
Life as a soldier's wife, even a simple Corporal, wasn't easy, but they were in love and they made it work. She was working as a mid-wife in a small private clinic when the symptoms started. And she knew them well by now. There was a little Winchester Junior on its way.
The news overjoyed James who started talking about college fund and football star when she wasn't even showing yet.
During her 4th month, James was honorably discharged and they moved back to Lawrence, fully intent on building a life there.
But as the mood swings took hold and moving around started becoming "waddling" rather than walking, she started thinking about her family again.
And by the time her 8th month was starting, she knew what she had to do, as painful as it was. So she told her husband, her soldier, everything she could about her family, without risking his or their lives. Thankfully, the angels heard her prayers and James just shrugged it off, saying he already knew, had known for some time, but respected her silence. The second part was trickier, she had to cash in old, nearly forgotten promises, but she sent word to New York, asked that her father called her back (she had no delusion that he didn't know her phone number by heart).
Within a week of waiting in angst, the phone rang in her cozy house with her white picket fence.
Her father had called. The conversation was a long one, full of yelling, threats of cutting parts of James she happened to like attached, tears and laughter, and ended with a promise to be there for the baby's baptism (because no respectable Vitti would live their life as heathen!).
And then the baby was here, her little miracle of life, her little John Ernesto. He was a fighter from day one. There had been a complication during his birth that rendered her unable to bear any more children and he was so weak. But he survived, he fought, he cried and cried. But he was alive and that was all that counted.
James was just as happy as she was even if he did what all male usually did and hid it behind loud bragging that his son was going to be a looker when he'd be a man.
The first time Paul Vitti held his grandson into his arms as she told him that his name was John (after James' father) Ernesto (after her own twin brother), was the only time she ever saw the hard, sometimes as affable as an ice block, man cry. Just a few silent tears, but it warmed her heart. Knowing that her progeny would always be loved.
And that was how John Ernesto Vitti-Winchester started his life.
Despite her father's best tries, she refused to move back to New York, refused to go back to a life she'd escaped so long ago. And her father understood (or maybe he hid his men better than she thought) and left her alone.
Sure there was the annual visit for John's birthdays and the regular letters but he mostly let them play happy family, looking on from afar and Izabel would be eternally grateful for that. Even if sometimes, money was tight or her job as a nurse got exhausting, she never accepted any of the money her father tried to send at first. In the end, she told him to simply put the money away for his grandchild to inherit if he really wanted to give them money. She knew she'd hurt him on some levels but she had the pride of the Vitti's and no one would ever find her begging to anyone for anything and her husband was just as bad.
And life went on for the little family. John grew up and chose the Marines Corp over college angering his father and soon enough he eloped with a sweet little blonde that he looked at like she was the sun in his rainy days.
She had the chance to be there when John's Mary gave birth to a healthy little boy with a cute red bum. To be there when her father gruffly cuffed his grandson on the side of the head, when he chose to call his son Dean Ettore, instead of choosing an Italian first name. And to be there when the same Paul Vitti, holding the hand of a 3 years-old Dean and smiling at a very pregnant Mary, stated categorically that, "that one was going to be an Ezzelin".
Of course she should have known, 30 odd years without a single blood bath coming her way? That was way to nice for anyone from the Vitti family.
And then one night, a jealous old man made the same decision that killed his predecessor years before, unknowingly changing more than a few lives, as he simultaneously sent his capo and enforcers to gun down every single member of Paul Vitti's family. Izabel Winchester née Vitti kept her head held high, as she stood in front of her husband fallen and bloody form, sending prayers to the angels that at least her John and his family be safe from the bastardi, on the other side of town. But this time, the angels turned a deaf ear to her plea.
N/A : You know in SPN facts, they say that John's full name is John E. Winchester, supposedly E. for Eric, so I thought, 'cuz he's half Italian, why not give him an Italian middle name |D Therein came Ernesto meaning "battle (to the death) and serious business" as it's Izabel's twin's name, I thought I could see a mafia boss calling his first born that XD
Then I thought heck, I gave John a middle name, why not the boys 8D and here goes X3
Ettore is the Italian for Hector meaning "to defend, hold fast" totally appropriate to Dean. Sam being the youngest, and therefore the spoilt one, he is Ezzelin meaning "little noble one" 8D.