二
(Two)
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Chiu-Wai appeared to be having a whale of a time, his eyes glued to the antics of Scooby Doo as he slapped at his little knee and giggled helplessly.
Dean, now sitting with his legs out on the bed a few feet from the small boy, kept one eye on him and one eye on the stash of food between them.
"He sure is a happy little guy," Sam observed, having turned sideways in his chair under the window. His laptop was whirring away with a purpose, the Winchester's gigantic feet crossed at the ankles lazily.
"And so far he ain't touch my food," Dean nodded, satisfied. Sam snorted in amusement suddenly and Dean looked over his brother. "What?"
"He's just… He's just so happy," Sam shrugged. "You think we were ever like that?"
"I was. Then Mom died," Dean grunted.
Sam's face fell in an instant. "Dean?" he accused. "Why did you have to-"
"Forget it, Sammy," Dean said wearily, putting a hand up. "Just… forget it. I'm tired."
"Right," Sam allowed, completely unconvinced. He put his hands on the backrest, watching the little boy begin to take more of an interest in his surroundings.
Chiu-Wai's attention wandered from the TV and instead he turned and looked up at Dean. He opened his eyes wide and blinked up at him, studying him acutely.
Dean noticed and looked down at him. "What now?" he asked gruffly.
"你叫咩名, uncle?" he said innocently.
"I have no idea what you just said," Dean shrugged.
"Is he calling you uncle, or is he asking for Jerry?" Sam asked. "Uncle Jerry?" he called hopefully.
Chiu-Wai shook his head. "Uncle," he repeated, putting his finger up and pushing it into Dean's breast pocket on his shirt.
"Dean," he corrected, the idea of being incorrectly identified as some form of relative apparently disturbing him somewhat.
"電?" the boy said.
"Yeah, Dean," Dean nodded. "Wai Jai," he said, pointing at the boy's front, "Dean," he added, indicating his own shirt.
"電?"
"Yeah, Dean."
"Dihn!" the boy laughed.
"Yeah, Dean," he stressed. He looked over at Sam. "Why does he keep repeating my name?"
"Who knows," Sam shrugged. "Wai Jai," he called. The boy stopped giggling and pointing at 'Dihn' to look over at the younger Winchester. "Sam," he said clearly, tapping his own shirt front.
"心?" Chiu-Wai repeated.
He considered the sound and nodded. "Sam," he agreed.
"佢叫做 '電', 你叫做 '心'?" Chiu-Wai asked him.
Sam and Dean shared a baffled look. They turned back to the boy and gave identical shrugs. Chiu-Wai laughed out loud, clapping his hands together and rolling onto his left side on the bed.
"He's nuts," Dean pronounced, picking up the remote and flicking off the TV.
Chiu-Wai laughed himself out before scrambling back upright. He found the TV off and looked up at Dean. "Dihn uncle," he smiled. "我哋一齊畫畫, 好唔好?"
"Just 'Dean'," he corrected grumpily, but Chiu-Wai was already squirming off the bed and heading for his rucksack on Sam's table.
"Sum uncle," he said brightly, pulling at the bag to bring it toward him, "如果 Dihn uncle 唔想畫畫, 你想唔想幫我呀?"
Sam looked down into his tiny face of hope, innocence and complete happiness. He opened his mouth but didn't know what to say. Chiu-Wai gabbled on to himself as he merrily pulled a colouring book free from the bag. Sam caught the canvas rucksack before it could land on the boy's feet, and helped him find the pencil case of colours, all the while listening to the boy's cheerful one-sided conversation.
"I have no idea what he's talking about, but he's certainly very self-sufficient," Sam said, looking over at Dean.
His brother was watching Chiu-Wai with a far away look on his face. Sam did a double-take at the narrowed eyes, the mouth that sloped down, the sheer unhappiness on Dean's face.
"Dude," he managed, in an effort to break both he and Dean's lost moment.
"Yeah," Dean said quickly, looking away quickly and clearing his throat. "See if the little guy wants a drink or something," he added. "I'm gonna check I locked the car up."
Sam watched helplessly as his brother got up off the bed and disappeared out of the motel room door. Chiu-Wai looked over, then back up at Sam.
"你幫我畫畫, Sum uncle?" he asked cheerfully, thrusting the sketchbook at him.
"Let's do some colouring then," Sam guessed, trying to shrug off the unease. Chiu-Wai simply waited for him to put the large sketchbook on the table before grabbing his jeans and trying to climb up. Sam picked him up and sat him on his lap, and Chiu-Wai wriggled to get comfortable before reaching for the colour pencils.
"藍色, 唔該," he said, rippling his little fingers at Sam.
"Sorry, what?" he managed, aware his mind was several blocks away. Or at least out in the parking lot with an Impala and a certain inner peace-challenged brother. He looked down to find a little hand trying to grasp a pencil too far out of his reach. "Blue?" he guessed, picking it up and handing it to him.
"唔該, Sum uncle!" he beamed.
"You're welcome," Sam muttered automatically. He made himself push all the baggage from his mind and just helped the little lad go through the colours on the table one by one.
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Dean opened the car door and climbed in, squeaking the door closed again quietly. He rifled through the glovebox and came out with a tape, pushing it in the player and his key in the ignition barrel. He turned it one step and the tape player hissed into life. He turned it right down and leaned his elbow on the window block, wiping his eyes over slowly.
As Journey picked up from where they had been rudely ejected a week ago, he did his best to stop the flood of images of baby Sam course through his mind's eye.
"Don't you know that I'm alive for you, I'm your seventh son. And when lightning strikes the family, have faith, believe-"
Dean reached out to snap the volume off, but something made him pause. The song fought on, louder and stronger, beating the walls down around his memories so easily it hurt.
"With dreams he tried, lost his pride, he drinks his life away. One photograph, in broken glass, it should not end this way…"
He shrank back, staring at the radio with anger at its betrayal.
"Through bitter tears and wounded years, those ties of blood were strong… So much to say, those yesterdays… So now don't you turn away-"
His hand shot out and the radio went dead. He sat back, wiping his mouth and staring at the driver's window with malice.
"I can't believe I'm sat here," he grumped to himself. "Getting old, that's what it is." He looked at the ceiling, stopped fighting the memories, and instead let them come.
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"Red," Sam said happily, lifting the pencil.
"Leh!" Chiu-Wai repeated, taking the colouring implement and getting busy with it. He chatted away to himself quite cheerfully, either not realising or not caring that Sam could not even guess as to his meaning. Every time Sam picked up a colour to help, Chiu-Wai politely took it off him, preferring to do all the colouring himself. Instead, Sam kept his hand on the boy's tiny shoulder lest he topple off his knee, watching his colouring and inserting names of colours as the small hand grasped them with a purpose.
Chiu-Wai stopped suddenly, his little eyes darting to the right as he realised Sam was watching his progress. He turned slowly, finding Sam leaning over his shoulder, lost in his thoughts as his eyes followed the boy's pencil.
"點解你有噉長頭髮?" he asked with a cheeky smile, putting the pencil down.
"Sorry?" Sam blinked. Chiu-Wai reached up and put his finger to one long side of Sam's fringe, flipping it up and letting it drop. Sam waited, unsure, and the boy did it again. He giggled and turned on Sam's lap, putting both hands in Sam's hair and pushing it up and down over his ears.
Sam let himself smile, taking the boy's hands from his head. But Chiu-Wai squealed with apparent delight, freeing his hands and then sliding them down through the brown hair. He ruffled it and Sam just let him, bemused, before Chiu-Wai changed tactics and instead started smoothing it straight again, bouncing on his lap. Sam heard the motel door open and held the little wrists still, looking around at the entrance.
Dean appeared, his face set into an expression of carefully-contrived blandness as he closed the door behind him.
"Hey, you ok?" Sam called.
Chiu-Wai slewed round Sam's shoulder to see. "Dihn uncle!" he cried happily. He shifted and threw himself off Sam's knee, pulling the sketchbook with him.
As Dean slung his keys at the table, Chiu-Wai bounced into his legs and began jabbering at him.
"Hey, woah there, slow your roll," Dean said irritably. Chiu-Wai waved the sketchbook at him and Sam sighed.
"He's been chatting to himself and just drawing," he shrugged. "I think he said your name a few times, but I can't be sure."
"Super," Dean grumped. He put his hand out for the sketchbook Chiu-Wai was waving at him, and lifted it to see. Sam watched his brother's face drain of colour. He got up slowly, ready for something he could not predict. Dean looked down at the small boy, his face thunderous. "What is this?" he demanded.
Chiu-Wai's smile disappeared and he backed away one.
"You're scaring him," Sam said forcefully. "Wai Jai," he called. "It's ok, buddy."
But the small boy put his hands round Dean's knee, pulling on it with purpose as he tried to explain something at speed in a language Dean didn't speak.
"D'you wanna let go?" Dean warned with a snap.
"Dean!" Sam chided, aghast at the ferocity. "He just drew you a picture, that's all-"
"Just a picture, Sam?" he demanded. He turned the book around and splayed it out for his brother to see. "Just a picture?"
Sam stared, unable to comprehend what was upsetting his brother. "I don't see anything," he admitted, the whirls and swirls of colour blending nicely but not actually forming any coherent shape he could detect.
"Here!" Dean accused, jabbing a finger at the yellow swirls.
"I don't-"
"Mom's fire, Sam! He's drawing the friggin' fire the night Mom died!" He pulled the book back to look at it in anger. "And apparently you and me are on fire, too!"
Chiu-Wai made a small noise of fright and worry. Sam, confused as all Hell, decided to advance on the pair and rescue the small artist from his brother's inexplicable wrath. He scooped up the young boy and sat him on his arm, peering round at the book.
"I don't see-." He stopped dead, his unfocused eyes having picked up on a shape. Then another, and another. Finally he realised the dark circles and oblongs at the bottom of the picture were a very tiny baby in the arms of a small figure. The light and fire was around them too, the giant swirls and yellow and orange strikes of bold lines shining out from behind them. "Oh."
"Yeah. Oh," Dean accused. He snapped the book shut and turned on the small boy currently clinging to Sam in stunned silence. "This ain't funny, Wai Jai," he snapped. "You don't go round painting what's in people's heads, just cos you can." He tossed the book at his bed before going back for his keys.
"Dean, where are you going?" Sam called across the room.
"Somewhere little Da Vinci here can't go poking around my head," he growled, slamming the door behind him.
Chiu-Wai looked up at Sam and bit his lip. His eyes began to fill with water and Sam felt his shoulders sag.
"C'mon, Wai Jai," he allowed, moving to the bed and sitting down slowly. "He didn't mean to be mad, he's just… complicated," he sighed.
The boy gripped Sam's shirt and his tiny eyebrows fought with each other admirably. They appeared to win whatever battle they needed to before the little boy's face began to look much less like a water leak waiting to happen.
"Good boy," Sam smiled, unable to help himself. "TV?"
Chiu-Wai turned and pointed at the empty bed, still littered with untouched candy bars.
"You're hungry?" Sam asked. He mimed spooning food into his mouth but Chiu-Wai shook his head.
"Dihn uncle," he moaned.
Sam let a long sigh escape him. "He'll come back," he said, patting the boy's back in what he hoped was a soothing manner. "He'll come back."
Chiu-Wai launched into a long, unhappy tirade that sounded like railing against unfairness.
"I'm sure it's not your fault, Wai Jai," Sam sighed, patting and trying to soothe him.
Sam's Blackberry began to ring.
"Dihn-wah!" Chiu-Wai suddenly called.
"Dean what?"
"Dihn-wah," Chiu-Wai corrected, pointing at the vibrating, trilling item.
"Phone?" Sam wondered, already crossing to it and picking it up. "Hello?"
"S-Sam?" came a very unsteady voice.
"Jerry. What's wrong?"
"Trouble. Not - not good."
"Where are you, we'll come get you!"
"N-no - don't bring Chiu-Wai," he spluttered. "I need a hospital. Can't - can't move my-."
The line went dead. Sam stared at the phone in horror, then looked at the small boy on his arm. "Battle stations," he nodded at the lad, before going to the laptop and ripping it open. Chiu-Wai just watched, too frightened to speak, as his newly adopted Uncle Sam sat them down and went about tracing the location of Jerry's mobile phone.
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Song is 'Mother, Father' by Journey.
Thanks for reading so far, folks!