Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by the writers, producers, et al of the television show 'Supernatural'. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.
A/N: Though we only heard from or about Caleb a couple of times on Show (and one of those times being when that Meg bitch slit his throat), I've always wanted to know more about him. This is my attempt to fill in the great, gaping chasm that is his backstory. This is set in my Run for Your Life 'verse, but you don't really need to have read that in order to understand this (though, for readers of RFYL, I'll more than likely wind up making reference to this story at some point, so you should probably go ahead and read this).
Unbetaed, so any and all mistakes are my own – was originally written to be a lengthy onefer, but I decided to break it into chapters for stylistic reasons. There are eight chapters in total.
Caleb Forrester
September 17, 1970
Bryant Forrester pulled the aging station wagon to a halt in the driveway of a small, one-story white clapboard house in which he had spent the last six years living with his wife. He shut the engine off and slumped forwards, resting his head on the steering wheel. He wasn't all too sure what he was supposed to do now. Corrine had always been the one to make the decisions – where they lived, what sort of work he did, when the lawn needed mowing – and now…well, now he was just lost; his compass didn't have a north anymore. The needle was spinning, sometimes slowly like it had been shaken, and sometimes quickly like if it was sitting on an iron plate.
The sound of the baby fussing in the back seat brought him out of…it wasn't thinking that he'd been doing, exactly. His thoughts had been swirling around so fast that none of them had made much of an impression and so he had no idea just how long he'd been sitting there, propped against the steering wheel. He sighed and levered himself out of the seat.
The driver's door opened with a harsh squeal – one of the many things on Corrine's Fix-It list that was perpetually mounted on the refrigerator door – and his boots made an interesting crunching noise on the gravel of the drive. He opened the back door of the station wagon as he shut the front and hoisted the overflowing bag of whatnot from the floorboards before undoing the seatbelt holding the heavy plastic carrier to the bench. The infant was not happy at all, if the noise was anything to go by.
He made his way through air that smelled of burning leaves to the front door and suddenly found himself lacking hands. He sat the carrier down on the porch and hurriedly dug into his pocket for his keys, only to find that he must have left them in the ignition. Sighing again, he turned around and headed back to the car, rubbing his temples in a vain attempt to ward off the headache that was trying like hell to ambush him.
Keys retrieved, he unlocked the door and picked up the carrier with its howling contents and headed for the kitchen at the back of the house. Wracking his brain for the information the nurse at the hospital had told him about mixing up formula, he stumbled his way through the process. It took him three tries: the first time, the powder didn't mix with the water and sat in a lumpy mass in the bottom of the bottle – he then reread the instructions and saw that he should have used warm water; the second try was somewhat more successful, and probably would have been right, but the bottle slipped his grip when he went to screw the nipple into place and it spilled down his jeans and across the faded yellow linoleum. Finally, he managed to get a bottle put together and tried to get the baby to eat by holding it over the carrier which was sitting on the table.
It didn't work, and the infant only cried louder. His face was screwed up, red with blotches of an alarming purple color, and his hands (covered by the ends of sleeves that were just a shade too long for him) vibrated to either side of his head.
Bryant could feel hopeless frustration mounting quickly. "Come on, just eat already," he grumbled, moving the nipple on the bottle to between his son's open lips.
The baby wasn't interested, and simply continued to scream.
Much like with how he'd lost track of time while sitting in the car, Bryant had no idea how long he sat there, bottle in hand, begging and pleading with the baby to just shut up and eat already, but it felt like hours. The noise of the doorbell was what interrupted him before he could work himself up to either infanticide or suicide (both were equally likely in his current mental state).
Guiltily thankful for the diversion, he sat the bottle down on the table next to the carrier and all but ran to the door. Even a Jehovah's Witness would be appreciated, though he felt he could settle for a decent salesman or even a guy who just needed the telephone. As fate would have it, his visitor was none of these things. It was Chastitine Montgomery.
Bryant's headache doubled in its efforts to remove his brain by way of his ears.
He opened the door and stared at the woman as though to say 'what the hell do you want'. She was dressed as usual, in a very outdated dark gray suit, with the brown leather shoes that Bryant had only ever seen worn by creaking librarians, and an extremely large hat with a wide brim, festooned with enough sheer white ribbon and silk flowers that it was barely noticeable that it exactly matched the wool of her skirt and jacket.
Mrs. Montgomery ignored the fact that Bryant had yet to say anything to her and began speaking. "I heard about what happened with your dear Corrine," she said, stepping closer to Bryant. "And it occurs to me," she continued both speaking and moving until, somehow, the elderly woman had managed to get them both inside the living room with the door shut behind them, "that though darling Corrine surely must have spent time learning how to deal with a baby, she never once mentioned that you had done the same."
Of course I hadn't. I work nights at the mill and most evenings and weekends at the bar. When the hell would I have had time to learn all that crap?
Again, ignoring the silence emanating from her host, Mrs. Montgomery continued as though he'd given her a proper reply. She also managed her subtle herding trick to maneuver Bryant back towards the air-raid siren sitting on the kitchen table. "You have my deepest sympathies, of course," she said as they passed through the hallway that also led to the house's two bedrooms (the Jack'n'Jill bath connected the two bedrooms as well). "Dear Corrine will be most sincerely missed, though I daresay June Carlson and I might just have a chance at winning the bridge championship at church this year." As they arrived in the kitchen, her voice didn't seem to change in volume any but was still clearly audible, despite his son's best efforts. "Oh, forgive me. Perhaps it is rather too soon to attempt to inject any levity into the gravity of the situation. Of course, it is. How silly of me."
Mrs. Montgomery removed her flower-bedecked hat and sat it on the pile of dishes still sitting in the drying rack where Corrine had left them after supper four days earlier. She eyed the open container of formula powder on the counter, as well as the scattering of powdered mix surrounding it and the large puddle slowly congealing on the floor while continuing to talk. "I saw you drive past two hours ago," she unbuttoned her suit jacket and hung it on the back of one of the metal-and-vinyl chairs, "and thought to give you a little time to settle in before dropping by. But, from the looks of things, I ought to have come a little sooner."
Still locked in a state of brain-melting I-don't-know-what-to-do-please-make-it-stop-Corrine inertia, Bryant stood in the doorway and watched while Mrs. Montgomery and her tightly-curled, blue-rinsed hair reached down with carefully manicured hands and unbuckled the weirdly-colored, horribly upset, screeching baby from the car seat and picked him up as though she didn't notice the wailing. Making shushing noises, she still managed to continue talking. Bryant had the fleeting thought that Chastitine Montgomery would still be talking in her grave.
Regardless of his personal dislike for the woman, he did know he needed help. And so, he listened, burying his dislike under a veritable mountain of helpful knowledge the woman imparted. Since she'd had seven children of her own, Bryant figured she knew what she was doing. His supposition was proven absolutely correct when, less than twenty minutes later, the house was blessedly free of squalling infant noise.
His son had needed his diaper changed.
Bryant simultaneously felt monumentally stupid for not having even thought about the possibility, and inordinately grateful that Mrs. Montgomery had shown him the 'right' way to change a boy's diaper so as to avoid extremely unpleasant side-effects.
By the time that Mrs. Montgomery headed back home at nearly midnight that night, for the first time since the doctor had come to the waiting room three days ago and said there's bad news and good news with a too-serious expression on his face, Bryant felt as though he might, just might, be able to go on.
He stood, exhausted, in the darkened green-and-yellow-pastel nursery and peered down at his son. "Yeah," he whispered, "I think we just might make it after all, Caleb."