Title: We Fools of Nature
Author: Wynn
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Supernatural. They are owned by Eric Kripke, the WB, the CW, etc. and are used for non-profit, entertainment purposes only.
AN: Supernatural, Hamlet style.
The ghost walked beside him and spun a tale of revenge. Dean walked the length of his high school gym, his gaze flicking from table to table, each piled high with signs for local colleges and trade schools, and the ghost whispered scenes of poured fire and flames like poison in his ear.
Dean pictured them like memories in his mind as he ambled by.
He stopped before a table loaded with pamphlets for a trade school two counties away. Two years for auto repair or interior design, more for criminal justice or hotel management. The ghost hovered behind him, peering down over his shoulder at the information in his hands. He smelled ash and vanilla as she leaned in, felt soft sweet heat as she laid a hand on his arm and one high on his hip.
I should be here with you, she said. I should be here to help you.
Dean looked away.
But you're not.
I'm not.
No. You're not.
You know why.
"Interested in auto repair, son?"
Dean blinked and looked up. The man behind the table shot him a wide grin and gestured to his still open pamphlet. Dean felt her behind him, felt her touch on his arm linger cool in the hot gym.
"I don't know," he said.
"Well, take a pamphlet just in case. The last application deadline's in April, months away. You've got plenty of time to decide."
He had plenty of time to decide.
You already know what you need to do.
…………
October leaves crunched under his boots as Dean walked the streets to their apartment. Sam shuffled along beside him, his head bent and fixed on a book, European history by the look of the back cover. He drew a finger beneath the words as he read, one long and thin and pale like his wrist that jutted from the cuff of his denim jacket. He needed a new one for winter. They both did.
Dean stopped at the intersection. He held out a hand to keep Sam from crossing, and Sam looked up, wide-eyed, blinking at the passing cars. He glanced at Dean, eased back, and then bent his head to his book again. Dean dropped his hand to his side.
"So, did you find any places that you liked?"
Sam mumbled the question into his book, but his eyes flicked to Dean beneath his hair. Two inches taller this year, cheeks still round and pink. Dean shrugged and turned back to the street. "I wasn't looking."
"Why not? You were there."
I was.
You were.
The light turned green to cross. Dean tugged on Sam's jacket, and she followed behind, her eyes on Sam. "Everyone was there, Sam, whether we wanted to be or not," he said. "It's not like I chose to go."
"So. You still could have looked. You might have—"
"Didn't you have a test today or something? In biology?"
Sam peered up at him, silent. He watched Dean a moment and then dropped his eyes to the concrete beneath their feet. "Yes," he said. "And I did fine. I finished first."
First.
The wind whipped by the passing cars smelled burnt. It pricked Dean's skin, stung it red, but she walked pale beside them, still in the rush.
It came for him first. Came for Sammy.
A dog barked at them from behind a crooked fence. The sun spun gold through autumn trees. She stared at Sam like leaves to the shade, and Dean felt the pamphlet in his back pocket as he walked down the road. She looked at him, and he knew that she felt the slick crumpled paper like burnt wind against her skin.
Someday, she said, it will come again.
…………
The apartment reeked. Stale air thick with sweat and mud, the remnants of a hunt and windows long nailed shut, it sucker punched Dean as he walked inside. Sam froze at the threshold, his nose wrinkled and mouth pinched, and then he backed away, his book clutched to his chest.
"Sammy—"
"I'll be at the library."
He stared at Dean, chin lifted, and Dean sighed. "Fine," he said. "Just, just be back before sundown, all right?"
Sam nodded and spun around. He stomped back down the stairs, and she watched him disappear through the exit. The broken door banged shut on a siren's howl, swallowing Sam into the din. A sliver of light shone bright around the frame, and she stared at it while he stared at her. Dean felt her need to follow Sam high in his chest.
He turned away and cast a glance back into the apartment. The quiet inside waited, under chairs and low by the floorboards. He saw the closed door at the end of the hall, noted the cockeyed boots in a pile by his feet. Dean doubted his father remembered to buy more milk and bread before he returned; he hoped that he remembered to leave money on the counter for Dean to shop. They all needed something to eat tonight.
Dean stared and she ascended, white gown swirling in the gloom. Her eyes shone bright like the light through the door, her steps swept silent and smooth up the stairs, and she stopped at the threshold beside Dean. Her hand brushed his; the cold closed his throat, caused him to shiver. He eased closer.
She peered inside the apartment. Her body swayed into the frame and she said, We had a home, once. We used to have a home. All of us together.
I remember.
She ducked her head and looked at him; the light pooled like tears in her eyes.
Do you?
The pamphlet burned in his back pocket. Dean looked away.
She reached out a hand and stepped inside. The quiet welcomed her as one of its own, crept up from the corners and curled around legs bare and pale and stark against the shadows. She stopped in the center of the room, craned her neck and her eyes rose to the ceiling, fixed on the crack that ran crossways over the dirty cream spackle.
Heat swept across his bones. The door at the end of the hall opened. She dropped her eyes to Dean, and he saw his father shining through, red.
Dean closed his eyes and ran.
…………
The jacket burned in the window. Dean watched the fire rage in the glass, the orange-red tinged yellow undulate over the leather, half price for the next three days. Sirens whooped and water rushed thick from hoses sliding sideways on the ground. Dean watched the firemen run through the jacket to the burning building with axes in hand.
His fingers slipped over the folds of the pamphlet, pages stained blood and bone white from the warning lights. Sam needed a new jacket and food for dinner, a home not a library, and Dean. Dean needed. He needed.
He found his reflection in the glass. The fire shone around him, flickered, little yellow tongues licking at his head. He stared at the mid-autumn slice, need burning high in his chest.
"Dean?"
Dean blinked. His gaze slid from the window to Sam. He stood by the sidewalk's edge, his shoulders hunched and hair a mess. His eyes darted from Dean to the window, and he took in the fire, the jacket, mouth twisting down as he stared at the leather.
"You're not gonna get that, are you?" he asked. "It looks just like Dad's."
Just like Dad's.
She glided past, grey in the sun.
Sam looked at him again. His scowl softened as he looked, and he eased closer. "Dean? Dean, what—"
"Come on."
Dean reached out a hand and tugged Sam forward. Sam stumbled into him, looked back over his shoulder, tried to follow Dean's gaze, but there was nothing to see.
There was nothing to see.
Dean closed his eyes, breathed out and then in. The air felt cool in his lungs, clear and fresh. He looked again, found nothing, then he started down the street with Sam by his side. Sam peered up at him and shook his head, and Dean loped an arm around his neck. He mashed a hand into Sam's hair, and Sam squirmed, grumbled, dug an elbow into Dean's side, bony and hard. They staggered down the street, falling into each other, laughter drifting high like the clouds in the sky, and Dean knew now what he had to do.
…………
He laid a hand against the wall, grey in the dark, grit under his palm from the cheap faded paint. Sam slept behind and his father lay before, and Dean stood in the hall suspended, air thick in his throat.
He looked at the door down the hall and swallowed. Light like gauze covered the threshold, draped the space between the here and the there in a hazy yellow glow. The quiet inside seethed, swelled and pressed against him, and Dean closed his eyes, focused on the slow thud of his heart, on the rasp of breath into and out of his lungs. His feet ached in his boots, and his stomach churned, pizza for dinner, pineapple and pepperoni instead of sausage and mushrooms because of Sam and the way he lit up and smiled.
He had a pamphlet and Sam, fourteen years of transience and vengeance burning slow, and a need for a want he knew once, long ago.
His father had her.
The breath left his body in a long soft rush, and Dean opened his eyes. He made a plan to present, points A and B and all contingencies between, and then he started down the hall to the open door, stopping at the edge of the light. He heard no sound inside save silence; then the faint clink of metal on glass reached him and he eased up to the door.
His father sat on the floor, his back to the bed, one knee drawn to his chest and a hand on his forehead. His guns lay stripped and oiled across the wrinkled sheets; a full bottle of bourbon sat unopened by his hip. He pressed a few buttons on the calculator by his side and then scribbled a figure onto the small pad of paper resting on his thigh.
Dean watched him swallow, watched him lean his head back and sigh. His pen dropped from his hand and he wrapped loose fingers around the bottleneck. She stared down from the dresser, from a sepia photo at Christmastime, her smile wide, her belly swollen, round and pregnant with Dean inside. Sam preened next to her in black and white, his face dirty and eyes crossed at Dean as he snapped the picture at the park by the church. Dean remembered that day, the camera heavy in his hands, loaned by Pastor Jim with the solemn promise to return it unharmed. Dean photographed the church, his shoes, the trunk of their car; caught his father eating macaroni and cheese and his brother laughing at the park. He broke the camera that night, startled by a spirit as it materialized beside him to kneel at the altar. The man stared at the Virgin, and Dean stared at the gunshot wound in his head. She stared down at them both, solemn and pale. The man flickered twice, bent his head and crossed himself with thin white hands, and then he lifted dark eyes to Dean, held his gaze as the quiet inside hummed around them, and disappeared.
Dean left the camera behind as he ran from the church. Pastor Jim collected the film the next day, tossed the camera, developed the pictures. Dean gave them all to his father and worked odd jobs for six months to buy Pastor Jim a new camera to replace the one that he broke.
Now his father stared at the pictures and Dean stared at him. The bottle flashed in his hands, cast gleams across the number strewn papers and the pen deserted on the floor, and when Dean turned around, the pamphlet heavy in his pocket, she stood at the end of the hall, white in the moonlight, and said, Now you know what you have to do.
…………
The leather slid over his skin, pulled and bunched, and his body molded to the jacket. Smoke drifted from blackened windows across the street, and the wind smelled burnt as he passed. Dean lifted his collar, cradled it against his neck, and then he dropped the pamphlet into the trash before stepping by her side.
The ghost walked beside him and spun a tale of revenge, and beneath the pale October light, Dean listened.
…………
end.