AN: This is my first published SPN fic, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated ^_^
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Kripke and gang. I'm just playing with them.
John knew there was a witch somewhere in the woods – the rampant curses and impossibilities in town were hard to miss. There was evidence that she was going for the complete traditionalist package, even. Sky-dancing around the fire in the woods while she sacrificed animals to the dark gods, that kind of thing.
He found the middle-aged woman in a clearing, not a stitch of clothing covering her wrinkled old body. Rust covered symbols covered her arms and legs, a small sacrificial fire crackling in the middle of the clearing. She was chanting loudly as he approached, her voice easily muffling his near silent steps.
She was hunched over something, her back to John. He raised his gun, aiming for what his youngest had come to call a "mercy shot." Sammy had watched Bambi at one of his school-friend's houses and ever since the hunts had to be "humane." No, he wasn't here to witness this one, but that didn't mean his little voice wasn't whining in John's head as he pulled the trigger.
The bullet passed through her skull like a knife through hot butter, and she crumpled. John approached her slowly, eyes darting around the clearing for a possible partner or familiar. He reached for her pulse, just to be safe.
He didn't realize until he was sure she was dead. He just hadn't looked to see what she'd been hunched over.
"Dean!" he cried, panic seizing as he kicked the old hag's body out of the way and knelt by his son's prone form.
Dean was blinking hard into the night, slowly levering himself back to a sitting position. The leaves of the forest floor clung to his hair, his shivering form covered in dirt smudges and a healthy splash of the same rusty liquid that had covered the witch.
"You alright?" John asked, voice cautious as he watched his son's hands flex against the forest floor.
Dean didn't reply, eyes blinking rapidly in the darkness. He raked a hand angrily across them, his breath sharpening as he struggled to clear invisible cobwebs from his face.
"Dean?"
Between frantic blinking and scrubbing John could see something different in the glint of Dean's eyes. Something was wrong.
John pulled the boy's hand away, reaching to tip his head up for further inspection.
Dean jumped like he'd been bitten, rapid breathing turning into panicked gasps as he scrambled blindly back.
"What's wrong?"
He tried again, hands on his son's shoulders. Dean flailed backward once more, scrambling awkwardly in the dirt.
"Get the fuck away from me," Dean growled, face twisted in fear. At the words he paused, whole body trembling as he pressed a hand to his throat.
"What?" he asked, voice louder than before. "Hello?"
John reached forward and touched his son's shoulder once more.
Dean flinched away.
"Damnit Boy," John growled, setting his gun aside. "What did she do to you?"
This time John locked his hands around Dean's shoulders for real. His grip left no room for escape.
His panicked mind forgot exactly who he was dealing with.
"Get off," Dean growled, arms flailing as he struggled to find purchase on the slick forest floor. After several forceless wiggles his foot found a solid root and his body bucked properly, nearly tossing John across the clearing.
"Shit," John cussed, dodging wild limbs as he struggled to get Dean under control. Even panicking the pre-teen had good instincts and his off-kilter punches still packed a lot of power. His desperate bucks alone were enough to cause John more than his fair share of struggle.
But the elder Winchester had strength, size, and relative calmness on his side as he finally pinned Dean into the ground.
For a moment the boy coughed into the dust, his desperate struggles bruising only himself. John opened his mouth to try and reason with the boy.
"FUCK," Dean screamed, voice odd as his struggles began to slow. Another noise slowly crawled from his throat – a noise that had nothing to do with speech. John felt his stomach roll with fear as his eldest whimpered –WHIMPERED - into the dirt. His struggles ceased slowly, sinking as he gave in to the hold.
"Son, listen to me," John commanded, grip never faltering. "You need to calm down."
For a few tense moments they sat there, John perched on top of his eldest effectively pinning the boy to the ground. Dean shook and whimpered into the dust, his clearly petrified figure too different from the sarcastic, self-proclaimed chick-magnet that John had brought into the woods not two hours previous.
"Dean?" John asked again, slowly easing the weight off his son's arms. "Can you hear me?"
As the weight lessened, Dean quieted. John's hands lifted slowly, cautiously off his back.
"Dad?" he asked, voice muffled in the dirt.
John reached out and touched Dean on the shoulder again, waiting as the boy jumped back from the contact. This time he paused, hand hovering just over Dean's arm. Dean slowly pushed up onto his side and groped forward. It took a moment for his trembling white fingers to wrap around his father's.
"Dad?" he asked again, eyebrows pinched, "'zat you?"
"Yeah," John answered with the softest hint of relief, "It's me."
"Dad?"
All hint of a smile disappeared as Dean's quivering voice echoed around the clearing.
"Dad?"
John slowly pulled Dean's hand to his face, nodding into the boy's palm.
Dean drew a shaky breath, struggling to a sitting position.
"What the fuck is going on?" Dean muttered, reaching his free hand up toward his father's face. John stilled under his touch, waiting as Dean's fingers roamed clumsily over his features. One finger pressed too sharply in his eye, another nearly picking his nose, a third finding the old battle scar by his ear.
"I don't know," John answered as Dean's fingers roamed over his lips, and Dean's hands flew back like they'd been burned.
His face crumpled in a frown as he put his fingers over his own mouth.
"I'm talking?" he asked, the words muffled through his fingers.
John placed one of Dean's hands beside his head and nodded.
What little color remained in Dean's face drained, leaving little more than a ghost in its wake. The hand next to his father's head slowly slid down to his arm and latched on.
John waited for the scream, the anger, the cussing. He waited for Dean to start badmouthing the old hag in every way possible, and maybe a few new ones of his own invention.
The words didn't come.
Dean sat silently before his father, hand wrapped around his arm in a death grip while his dirt-encrusted body shivered on the forest floor.
John felt the world fall away as he stared into the petrified face of his eldest. He hadn't seen that stricken, petrified face since Dean was a mute little boy in an anonymous hotel room – tear tracks drawn through ash on his cheeks, body too-still as he lay next to his screaming baby brother.
"We'll fix this," John promised, though to whom he isn't sure, and shuffled slowly to his feet. "We will."
He pulled Dean up after him, supporting much of the boy's weight. Dean appeared dizzy and disoriented, hands digging tightly into his father's arm as he swayed unsteadily on his feet.
John didn't stop to think how far they were from the Impala or how dark the forest before them was. Without so much as a glance at his fallen sawed-off, John half-led, half-dragged Dean out into the black.
