Title: Little Souls (1/1)
Author: Silverkit
Summary: WeeDean and John have a job to do, Sam's attentions are elsewhere.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Weechesters. Six year old Sam, 10 year old Dean, John POV
Disclaimer: The Winchesters do not belong to me. No money was made from this.
Author's Note: Thanks to lj users samcandoit and kitiaria for their wonderful beta jobs.
He hit a rabbit while pulling into the church parking lot.
There was a thump, a quick scream that made the hairs on the back of John's neck stand up, and then nothing but the sound of the Impala's engine growling like a pleased panther with a fresh kill.
"Is it dead?"
It wasn't the first time the car had delivered a swift execution to an unsuspecting forest animal, but it was the first time it had ever happened within spitting distance of holy ground, and John wondered if he should get out and kick the body into the grass.
"If it's not dead we should take it to the vet. Don't you think we should take it to the vet?"
John pressed his foot against the accelerator, and maneuvered their boat of a car around an illegally parked red sedan.
"Daddy, what if it's not dead? What if it's just hurt?"
"Sammy, it's dead. Shut up about it."
"I don't want to leave it if it's just hurt!"
The lot was, surprisingly, full for a Saturday night mass, the narrow chalk rectangles corralling minivans, station wagons, and the occasional truck. Most of the cars showed off a decent amount of wear and tear, and John guessed more than one of them was hemorrhaging oil.
"It's dead, Sammy." Dean said firmly as John spun the Impala's wheel and turned into one of the last open spaces. "He went real quick."
"Oh."
John killed the engine with a twist of the key. After being cocooned in the hum of the Impala's engin for the last 100 miles the silence that followed was unnerving and cold. The tie he'd fastened around his neck already felt too tight, and he shoved two fingers down the collar of the white button up dress shirt he'd liberated from the Goodwill for some relief.
"We're going to bury him, right? Since he's dead, we're going to bury him? Or her? It might be a her. Girl bunnies are called does, so if it's a doe we'll bury her right? Or if it's a buck, those are boy bunnies, we'll bury him? Right?"
John wondered if he could remove the question mark from Sam's arsenal, and visions of leaving his six-year-old in the car momentarily danced through his mind.
"Sammy, it's road kill. We're not going to bury road kill." Dean scuffed his shoes, the only things John hadn't been able to replace from his hunt through the Goodwill against the tar and tugged at his own tie.
The trunk opened with a creak that rivaled that of the Impala's doors, and John hunched over the opening as he rooted through the full canvas duffle one last time.
"But we can't just leave it there. We're not just going to leave it there, are we? Dean?"
He was glad that his youngest was now firing his questions in Dean's direction. The only other person better at keeping a civil tongue in their mouths when dealing with Sam's ponderings on life, the universe and everything was sitting pretty 300 miles away in the opposite direction. Putting Sammy on the phone with the pastor was a better distraction than turning on the boy's favorite TV show.
Shouldering the full bag, John slammed the trunk closed and laid a hand on Sam's shoulder, a bad move since it brought Sam's focus back to his old man.
"We can ask the priest for a cross, can't we? They'll give us one and I can dig the grave. I'll even salt it and burn it so he can't come back. Can we bury it if I do that?"
Shepherding the boys across the lot, John dropped the bag in the bushes that flanked either side of the church's backdoor. He could see the rabbit carcass from here. The center of its body pounded flat against the ground. The guts had spilled out both ends.
Leaning over to grab Sam's hand, John pulled the protesting child up the cement stairs that led to the entrance.
The church was old. Humming florescent lights filled with dead lady bugs and spiders illuminated the cracked linoleum tile of the hallways with a dull yellow light. There were classrooms hanging off the sides of the hall, and John saw burnt orange rugs and olive green chairs through the square of glass located at the top of each door.
Dean had taken over Sam handling, and he had a firm grip on his brother's hand. His head swiveled from one side to the other as he took note of his surroundings, his eyes assessing the darker corners and empty classrooms for possible threats.
They slid into the back pew a hair's breathe before the organ music swelled, and the voices of the faithful rose in time with their standing bodies to being the first hymn. John felt a twinge of unease at almost entering a Catholic service after the priest. The Marines weren't the only organization to beat a strict dogma into him as a younger man.
As the priest greeted the congregation, John found himself slipping into a state of relaxation; the structure of the mass familiar and soothing. Next to him, Dean loosened his tie, and Sam paged through the thick blue leather hymn book.
His original plan had been to leave Sam in the somewhat safe hands of the church congregation while he took Dean into the bowels of building. It was an easy job. No fires, no demons, no spirits, just a statue that needed to be cleansed and left in more than one piece. He was even going to let Dean do the smashing. His 10-year-old would love that. Still, now he was waffling at the prospect of leaving Sam behind. He had no doubt that the moment he and Dean were out of sight Sam would march back outside, shoo away the flies, and bury the dead little fluffer. Sammy's sudden interest in church music was probably even linked to the idea that the rabbit should be sent out to meet his maker with the perfect hymn as background music, and the fact that Sammy couldn't carry a tune in his back pocket wouldn't keep his son from trying. When the priest announced that all the children were welcome to come to the front, and attend their special children's mass, under the watchful eyes of a visiting Father and several smiling mothers, he felt he'd hit the jackpot.
Removing the hymn book from Sam's hands, he nudged his son into the aisle and motioned for him to go join the rest of the weefaithful. All of them seemed pretty eager to go off and listen to a kindler, gentler version of the Bible until their parents were done being properly shamed.
Sam scowled at him from under his bangs. He planted his feet, and did his best imitation of a deep-rooted tree when John glared and motioned him forward again. Sam's jaw clenched, and the dark wood of the pew groaned as John's hand gripped the edge. For a moment John was sure that World War III was going to start in the middle of mass when Sam's eyes slid past him.
Turning to see exactly what tactics Dean used to get his brother moving would have meant a loss of eye contact, and John was not about to be the loser of the staring match Sam had orchestrated. Sam's scowl deepened, his eyes suspiciously fire bright. His youngest suddenly made a crisp about face, and went stomping up the aisle. When the cheerful looking Father led the line of little ones out the side door, Sam turned, stuck out his tongue, and huffed.
The church basement reeked of stale cigarette smoke. Some forward looking soul had left the windows open, and the cold autumn breeze brought in the sound of wind chimes, but failed to remove the scent of nicotine and tar.
John moved silently past water-stained tables, and gray metal chairs. Dean was only a step behind, and his fingers were tight around fraying straps of the bag they'd retrieved from the bushes outside. The gun in John's hands was warming by the second, and as they picked their way past stacks of Bingo cards and paper leaflets holding prayers John was struck by a wave of warm memories the smells, noises, and sights the church created. He could remember afternoons where he'd been forced to help the less fortunate by carrying paper sacks filled with groceries out to their cars. Nights of playing ghost in the graveyard with his sisters, while their father confessed and their mother helped bake bread in the church basement. Sundays where he'd done his best to scuff his fine polished black shoes. Mary hadn't been Catholic. Hadn't even really been a church-goer despite her strong faith in higher powers, and it had been over a decade sine he'd last set foot in Catholic church. It was a surprising treat, the reviewing of these good memories.
"Dad."
Dean's voice was soft, but his voice carried in the empty room.
John glanced back with a raised eyebrow, and Dean flushed. Rather than speaking, his eldest pointed to a table piled high with knick-knacks that John guessed were used as Bingo prizes.
The statue was a tiny glass thing, barely taller than John's thumb, in the shape of a belting sheep. John heard the thunk of the bag hitting the ground behind him, and then the quick buzz of the zipper.
Without bothering to check, John opened his hand expectantly. Dean smacked the flask full of holy water against his palm. He ran the water down the dusty sheep's back, and a drop hung off the sheep's nose before joining the growing puddle forming under its delicate glass hooves. The herbs came next. Rosemary that he'd let Dean crushed into powder stuck to the wet lamb like green snow while Dean recited the Latin passage he'd memorized the day before. The old words echoed and made the basement seem less like a once a week Bingo spot and more like a tomb.
When neither the chant nor the holy water caused sparks to shoot out of the thing's ass or an angry spirit to appear John picked the trinket up and handed it to Dean.
"Smash it, dude."
He heard Sam before he saw him. He imagined that everyone, from the adults with their butts still glued to their pews, to the robins nesting in the trees outside could hear Sam at the volume his howling had reached. John was up the basement stairs, and barreling down the hallway before he remembered that the gun was back in his hip holster, and what he was holding was a flask of holy water. Possibly useful, but not as deadly as he might need it to be.
He rounded the corner in time to see Sam's small shoe connect with a rather frazzled looking priest's shin. The expression the man carried was a familiar one. John has seen it on countless adults he'd left his youngest with for more than a fifteen minute span. Putting Sam and his 265,000 questions in a room with any figure of power was always a bad idea. Teachers were at least prepared for this sort of shit, but, other than Jim, John had yet to meet a man of the cloth who was willing to engage in an intelligent debate with his six-year-old.
The shin kick had done its work, and while the young faced priest was busy clutching his leg, Sam darted away. The priest made swipe for him, but missed partly due to Sam's jackrabbit speed, but mostly because Dean's foot delivered another kick to the man's leg.
"Don't touch him!"
The priest swore, or John guessed he swore. He'd never been one to shelf "God bless it!" and "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" with the four letter words Mary had been famous of dropping. The priest's hand lashed out to push Dean away, but found John instead.
"Is there a problem, Father?"
"No. Yes." The man gave his head a shake. He wavered uncertainly, and John steadied him with a hand on the shoulder. "I'm afraid that I may have upset one of the children."
"That would be my son who you've upset. I believe I can handle it from here."
John's lips smiled, but his grip tighten.
"Of course. Of course."
Breaking his contact with the eldest Winchester, the priest skirted around Dean, and walked briskly down the hall, his back straight and his shoulders tense.
Sam had squeezed himself into a hole between the wall, and a red leather couch that looked as though it was a breath away form collapsing. The center dipped dangerously low to the ground and bits of foam spilled out of both ends. Sam had curled into a tight ball, and pulled a number of chairs in front of him, making it almost impossible for anyone to grab him. John had a flash of pride at his son's resourcefulness.
"No! No! Go away! I hate you. I don't like you, and I hate your church, and I hate your story, and I wanna be Buddhist!"
John supposed he had Jim to thank for Sam's apparent knowledge in Eastern religions.
"Sammy?"
Sam's head snapped up, but the sight of John only seemed to augment his misery.
"I won't apologize. He said it was going to Hell! You can't make me."
"He said who was going to Hell, Sam?"
Sam shook his head, his hands whipping his wet face. "You can't make me."
There was no noise coming from outside of the classroom, the hallway was empty, but if John strained he could hear the thin thread of organ music and human voices heading in their direction. Mass was almost over, and their bag of weapons was back behind the row of bushes near the parking lot. Hidden, but not invisible.
"Sammy, you don't have to apologize."
Sam sniffled, and swallowed twice before speaking. "Dean?"
"I swear you don't have to, but you have to come out right now. We need to go."
Sam hesitated. "You're sure?"
"I'm positive."
There was high pitched screech as Sam pushed the barricade of chairs out of his way before crawling out. He allowed Dean to help him to his feet. Sam clung to his brother's waist, but didn't fight John when he pulled him away, and lifted him up. Sam buried his running nose into John's shoulder. "He said it was going to Hell, and that it didn't have a soul."
Motioning Dean along, John set a quick pace as they hurried down the dimly lit corridors, and past the empty classrooms. When they passed by the darkened stain glass window, John was filled with another memory, a warm Easter Sunday when he had spent the mass tuning out the dull monotone voice of the priest and instead had watched as the new sun shone through the stain glass that covered the walls in the church of his childhood. He remembered how it had made the room glow.
"Daddy, do rabbits have souls?"
John mentally cringed. He let his shoulder muscle the backdoor open, and led his family out into the chilly autumn night.
"Yes, Sammy," Dean said firmly. "Rabbits have souls. We'll call Pastor Jim later, and you can ask him too. He can tell you about all that other stuff that priest got wrong. Right dad?"
John felt relief rush through his body.
"Of course."