New Year's Resolution
JOHN
I'm late, and it's my own fault.
I stayed away more than six hours longer than I said I would, and I know Sammy will be upset.
I sigh as I pull into the parking lot of the motel, grimacing at the cemetary dirt I can feel smudging onto the steering wheel from my hands. I shake my head a bit, lamenting the fact that this car needs a wash badly, and knowing that I'll have to do it tomorrow.
I brake to let a black van pull past me, not in the mood to demand my right of way.
I park in front of the room, seeing the light is on through the curtained window. I can feel my face lightening, my spirits lifting at the prospect of seeing my boys after such a long and tiring hunt. Maybe we can watch a movie together.
I realize I haven't picked up anything to eat. Crap.
I shrug as I lock the car. We'll just order pizza, I guess; the boys love pizza.
I'm at the door now, and even though I have a key, I knock.
The boys aren't supposed to let anyone in with out a password; I want to make sure they're following the rules.
I wait for Dean's voice to sound behind the door, but it doesn't come. I frown slightly, knocking again, louder.
When nobody answers a second time, I start to worry.
"Dean," I call through the door, and even I can hear the impatience in my own voice. It's necessary, I tell myself to wipe away my momentary guilt. I don't want to stand here waiting for them to turn the TV down.
"Dean," I demand, pulling my room key out of my pocket and opening the door myself, concern and anger fighting for dominance over my expression and voice.
The door swings open and I immediately know something's wrong. My Bowie knife is on the floor, blood on the end that's staining the carpet. The lamp across the room is turned over, the bulb flickering on and off, so that the only stable light is the one on the ceiling. The window at the back of the room is shattered, and I can see clearly a stain that is a child's handprint in blood.
"Dean! Sam!" I can feel it, the frantic feelings of shock sweeping through me, the cold stab of fear battling a hot rush of fury at whatever dared to hurt my children. I cross the room swiftly, my gun already drawn, and I turn to see my eldest on the floor behind the bed, bound and gagged with angry tears on his face.
My relief makes me feel lightheaded, and I fall to my knees, but I try to make it look like I was only kneeling to untie Dean. I'm telling him it's okay, that I'm here now, but I hope to god I'm not lying, because I don't actually know if it is going to be okay, I can't see my youngest son anywhere, and I'm trying to focus on the rope around Dean instead of on the fear threatening to send me into a spiraling kind of panic. I pull the tight rope from his arms and legs, and he reaches to pull the gag off himself.
"Dean, what-"
"They took Sammy! Four men with guns and masks, they came through the window and they took him, and I couldn't - I tried, Dad, I'm sorry, but I couldn't f-fight them all," Dean is panicking, I can tell, and I grip his shoulders and make him look at me.
"Dean, calm down, we're going to find him," I say in my firmest voice, surprised I'm able to pull it off considering I feel like I might not be able to breath. I feel the briefest moment of pride when I hear that Dean fought four men, and I try to push away my knee-jerk response to scold him for letting this happen. I know this isn't his fault.
It's mine.
"They took him in a black van, I saw through the window," Dean says in a voice that tells me he's terrified, and I feel my stomach plummet, thinking of the van I saw leaving the lot. No, I think, feeling sickened by the realization, I just let them leave with my son.
I haven't felt like this much of a failure in a long time.
Dean is fumbling to load a gun and I rush to do the same, seeing in my mind how it should be playing out, how I should put a reassuring hand on my eldest son's shoulders that are shaking, how I should comfort him and say it isn't his fault, and his breathing would slow and become less worrisome, how I should double-check him for injuries because even if he was hurt I know he wouldn't say anything if it meant we could find Sam faster.
The things I should do cloud my mind, but I ignore them and slam a mag into my firearm before striding hurriedly from the motel room with Dean following anxiously behind me.
In the Impala it doesn't just feel dirty and cramped, but tense and painfully empty, even though only one small body is missing. The air is thick with the knowledge of it, and even though my eyes are on the road that is horribly empty in front of me, I can tell Dean is clenching his fists and clenching his jaw, furious and scared, guilty and freaking out.
I order him to tell me everything that happened, and I say nothing else.
I wonder if I'm a monster; not the kind we hunt, but the kind that people read about or see in a movie and wonder how a person could be so wrong. I think that maybe I'm the kind of father that children grow up determined not to be, that daughters are frightened of and sons are shut down by and wives are ashamed of. I keep my eyes facing forward as I search intetly for the black van I know carries my youngest son, and I wonder how my oldest can stand to know my blood runs in his veins.
I wonder how either of my boys can bear to love me.
After driving for two hours down every road in a ten mile radius, I begin to feel the vein on my left temple pulsing, and I know I really need to calm down, stop panicking. The tick in my eye frustrates me, but I barely notice because there's an overwhelming pressure in my chest, like my heart might implode if I can't find Sam soon.
I can hear Dean's leg bouncing impatiently. He pulled out my cell phone about an hour ago and began making calls: the police station, the mission down the road, the bar ten minutes away, asking them all if they've seen a black van, a small boy, my brother Sam please call me if you see him he's short and kinda chubby with brown hair and a blue t-shirt and I grip the steering wheel so hard that I'm bruising my hands everytime Dean hangs up with someone who hasn't seen Sam.
We stop the car near the far edge of town and pull out the map to decide what buildings we're going to search.
Dean mentions that the kidnappers - oh god, kidnappers, they've kidnapped my son - would probably be expecting me to look for them, probably know I would find them. I agree that this could be a trap.
I have plenty of enemies after all.
My throat still feels clogged and my eyes are stil burning when we speed off toward the other side of town where a long road of decrepit warehouses and storagehouses might be the perfect place for a hideout. Dean goes back to bouncing and clenching and trying not to cry and I try desperately not to think about what the kidnappers - kidnappers, the word is a bad taste in my mouth, too real, too human, too frightening - might be doing to Sam. I know the stories like everyone else does about what some sick people do to little boys.
At one point, I nearly pull over to be sick.
The only thing that keeps me from doing just that is the knowledge that every second I pause is a second my Sammy might not have to spare.
The warehouses take hours to search. The sky is graying when we finally come upon the black van pulled inside one of the smaller storage areas.
Dean makes a small kind of choking sound, like he wants to say something but can't get it out. I can relate, because I can't make words adequate enough to describe my absolute relief and outright fury knowing that the people who took my Sammy are near.
I immediately head for the underground levels, thinking that they would be easier to guard and more soundproof. I know the walls and structures are stronger closer to the foundation, and so I think the kidnappers - they took him, they have him, please Sammy hold on - are holing up in the basement.
I'm right.
The fight is quick but violent. I call for Sammy, I don't care that I sound desperate and my shout is really closer to a frantic scream. Dean shouts that he doesn't see his brother. The details get muddled, but I realize that as me and my eldest son stand panting, only three of the four men are unconscious.
Dean has killed the fourth.
The knowledge is thick and it hurts in a strange way; like a tetanus shot, sharp but uncertain as to the centermost point of pain. My mind automaticaly tells me my son just killed a man instead of saying my son just murdered a man.
Killed, not murdered.
After all, we kill things all the time, right? My mind screams monsters, not people, but then I scream silently back at myself as I nod shakily to Dean and begin to comb the large basement these men are as bad as monsters and he didn't mean for it to happen and this is all my fault.
I find the door of a small freezer, and I don't know how I know that Sam is inside of it. I pound on the door, calling his name, and I'm so relieved that the freezer isn't on, that the lock is easlily broken, that I can see my son when I wrench the door open and look inside the too small space.
My youngest son is inside, sitting cramped in the corner with blood all over him and visible bruises rising on his face, arms, and legs.
"Sammy!" I stumble as I squeeze inside. I trip over my own feet, and I don't care, I'm not embarrassed, because Sam isn't moving, and I can't tell if he's breathing or not, and his eyes are closed and he looks, oh god he looks -
"Sammy, I'm here, it's okay Sammy! Sam? Sam, answer me, please answer me, son! Sam? Sammy, can you hear me?" I've got him in my arms now, and I can tell he's breathing, and I think I might cry, because I can hear Dean behind me, standing stock still in the doorway.
"Dad? Is he...Dad, he-he's not..." Dean chokes the words out in a voice that seems four years old, and before I can answer him in a voice that would be very similar, Sam takes away the pressure in my chest by interrupting.
"D-d-d..." he says. I'm not sure whether he's trying to call me or Dean.
It doesn't matter.
Dean nearly collapses when he realizes Sam isn't dead, but he manages to keep pace with me as I rush out of the warehouse to the Impala, and begin the drive to the hospital at a thoroughly illegal speed.
Dean is crying. I'm crying. Sam screams and passes out.
The sun is rising as we get to the hospital.
They take Sam away.
Dean and I wait with coffee in our trembling hands, and I'm barely keeping it together. Dean still has tears streaming down his face.
"Dad," Dean says in a voice that's shaky and horribly small, "don't tell Sammy."
I know what he's talking about; I know he doesn't want Sam to know about the man his big brother murd...killed last night.
There's a moment of silence, during which we both sit quietly and let the realization flow over us again. It aches.
I can only say one word.
"Okay."
I shut my eyes against the emotion, but a single tear slips out. At least it's not on the side of my face where Dean can see it.
Some part of my brain reminds me that it's now January 1. I've just spent all of New Year's Eve searching frantically for one of my sons.
I acknowledge the fact that I've actually just made a New Year's Resolution. Most people resolve to stops bad habits at the beginning of the new year.Mine is to begin one.
In the midst of the pain and worry and relief and fear in this hospital with my eldest beside me and my youngest in surgery, I still have room somewhere in my head to find it ironic that my New Year's Resolution will be to keep Dean's actions last night a secret from his brother, to lie if I have to in order to keep this secret hidden.
It's ironic that my resolution is start lying to Sam.
I doubt anyone has ever had a New Year's Eve worse than this one.