AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hello Dear Reader, my apologies for such a long time between updates. I haven't forgotten about Aly, but a certain other little girl has been demanding all of my time and attention (That would be our dear Charlie I'm speaking of!). I'm planning on trying to regularly update all of my multi-chapter stories soon. Thanks for your patience, and sticking with me! This chapter references the short story "Alyson Winchester: At the Mall" and chapter 28 of "The Adventures of Alyson Winchester".
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"Well, since ya had a good night, I think it's safe to say that you can move outta the hospital room," Calvin said to me. We were all eating breakfast in the kitchen the next morning.
"I've got to start seein' patients again, so I need to ward up the medical wing real well and we need to make sure the house is all buttoned up too," Calvin was a hunter and also a doctor who treated hunters, and they would come here for treatment of injuries and illnesses.
"That's fine," Dad said. He looked at me. "Well, Aly, do you want to go look at your room?"
"Uh...okay," I said, unsure of why he was asking me that. I had just figured that I'd be in the same room I had been in before.
My brothers and I got up from the table and I followed behind Dad as we walked to the hallway with all the bedrooms.
Sam was walking next to me. "You're in between me and Dean, and Dad is at the end of the hall," he told me.
Dad pushed open a door and went into the room. I walked in behind him and looked around. The room smelled faintly of fresh paint, and the walls were a very light blue. The sheets and comforter were a matched set, a light blue blending to darker shades of blue, with light yellow stars and crescent moons all over the fabric, and the curtains were a darker blue with the same moons and stars. It also said, 'Love you to the moon and back' on the comforter in different places among the stars. There were two throw pillows on the bed that matched, one was a star shape and the other was a full moon that said 'love you to the moon and back'. There was a nightlight plugged into the wall that had the same design on it as the sheets, and there was a hanging mobile of stars and crescent moons that were made of faceted crystals.
"I didn't want to get you sheets that would look like they were for a kids' room, but the salesperson said that this is popular with teen girls right now," Dad said hesitantly. He looked at me, and it looked like he was nervous.
"We painted it right after you woke up," Dean told me.
"And I remembered that you said you had always wanted a bedroom where stuff matched, because we never had that in any of the rental houses," Sam said to me. "We wanted to make it look nice for you."
I walked over to Dad and hugged him. "Thanks," I said, and I felt tears come to my eyes. Dad hugged me back, and I stepped back when he let me go.
"I don't...I feel like I don't deserve any of this though," I said, wiping my eyes.
"Why not?" Sam asked.
"Because of all the stuff I did-"
"No, that has nothing to do with what you deserve-" Dad interrupted me.
"No, listen!" I said louder. "I did a lot of bad things! There's more that I haven't told you yet! And I want to talk about it, I'm ready to tell you now...and face the music," I said, and took a deep breath.
"All right," Dad said. "Do you want to go back to the living room and talk again?"
I nodded, and we all walked to the living room and sat down. Dad went and got Calvin, and Bobby came in behind him.
"Now listen, I know y'all may hear some upsetting stuff, but you need to remember that Aly needs to get this out, and she needs to feel safe while she's talkin', and she can't feel safe if she's scared of getting' yelled at." Calvin said, looking at my family.
Dean held his hand up. "I promise not to yell and be an ass."
Sam scoffed, and Dean gave him a little shove.
"All right," I said, and I took another deep breath. "Now I don't know where to start."
"When did you first notice your powers?" Sam asked me.
"It was after one of the first parties, and I had a hangover," I said.
Dean chuckled and shook his head.
"Meg wanted me to go to another party and I didn't want to, and we had an argument about it and I was mad...I threw my cup of coffee and then I remembered when I threw the mug when we were here, and somehow I just made it stop in mid-air. And then I got a migraine, it was horrible."
I looked over at Sam. "And then you and I connected, and I felt your presence," I took his hand and squeezed it and tears came to my eyes.
"I remember that, it was like one AM or something and I was the only one awake at the time...I thought I was losing my mind or something at first," Sam said with a smile.
"And then the next day you sent me that memory. I still had a headache, but I got up and went about my business. And I sent you some images...did you get them?"
"You were all dressed up and your face was all made up, you looked older," Sam said.
I felt my face get red. "Yeah, I was trying to...show off, I guess, show you that I was doing well without you..." I looked down at my lap.
"And then we actually connected, remember?" Sam asked me. "You were calling to me and I sent you the image of the ATM footage."
"Oh yeah..." I chuckled, and then I got serious. "And then...well... I went out with the girls for makeovers at the mall, and they... a couple of them decided to, you know, take some stuff and we got caught...we got separated, and I got shut in the manager's office to wait for the police, but I managed to unlock the door with my powers and sneak out-"
"So that did happen." Sam looked at Dean. "Remember, Dad got sent that footage and we weren't sure-"
"Shoplifting again, Aly?" Dean asked sternly, and I shrank down in the sofa, feeling my face get red again. I glanced at Sam and he had the same stern, annoyed look on his face that Dean had.
I felt a sudden rush of shame, because it brought back the time that I'd been caught with a friend who was shoplifting when I was younger. Dean had yelled at me because he'd had to bribe the store manager to take my name off of the police Winchesters and police don't mix, and he was worried they would run my name through their system and their records would show up. The night had ended with me getting a spanking, but also with the promise of a cell phone so I could call my brothers in the future if I ever got into a jam.
"What do you mean, again?" Dad asked, and he looked stern as well. He looked from me, to Dean, and then to Sam. "Somebody want to fill me in?"
"Uh-" I started.
"A couple years ago, Aly got caught up at the mall with one of her friends who had sticky fingers." Dean said. "She didn't steal anything, but the store manager nabbed all the girls- what was it, four of you?" he asked me, and I nodded. "I had to go down to the mall and do some sweet talking with the manager and I bribed him to take her name off of the report, because he had called the police."
Dad looked angry now. "Alyson was caught with a friend who was shoplifting and the police were called and none of you saw fit to mention this to me?" he barked.
"The police were called because this girl had done it before at that mall," Dean explained, trying to sound soothing. "There wasn't any chance of Aly getting in trouble."
"The hell there wasn't!" Dad said, folding his arms.
"Dad, Dean spanked me for it," I told him.
"We took care of it, so we figured we didn't need to let you know-" Sam said.
"What else happened that you all 'figured I didn't need to know about'?" Dad glowered at Sam and Dean. "How much are you hiding?"
"Dad, it's not like that!" I protested. "Dean-"
"Look, Dad, at that point you were out of the house more than you were home, and Sam and I were taking care of Aly a lot...and you and her were starting to, you know, not see eye-to-eye, and I figured that if I told you, you'd blow a gasket, and it would make things even more difficult between you two," Dean looked uncomfortable with this admission.
"So you took it upon yourself to decided that there were certain things about my daughter's behavior that I didn't need to know?" Dad asked tightly. "Who gave you that right?"
"You did, Dad," Sam sat up straight and leaned forward. "You did, when you kept leaving to chase after that damn demon and were gone for weeks at a time. Remember? Remember when I left college and came back, how long you'd been gone at that point? And she had been having those nighma-"
"Oh, don't throw that in my face again, Sam," Dad said in a bitter voice.
"Well, Dad, you asked who gave you the right, and Sam's right, you did, you gave me and Sammy the right, when you decided that hunting the fuglies was more important than raising your kids," Dean looked even more uncomfortable. "I mean, hell, I was there for a lot more of Aly's firsts than you were."
"All right, I don't think we're getting anywhere dredging up what sounds like ancient history. Y'all are movin' backwards instead of forwards," Calvin said.
"But this is stuff that needs to be said," Uncle Bobby said. "'Cause it's true, John did leave 'em to raise each other an awful lot, and it was for longer and longer times the older Aly got."
"Well, for God's sake, I would have appreciated if someone had told me that my kid was caught shoplifting!" Dad snapped.
"And then what, Dad? You would have yelled and whipped Aly's butt and she'd be all hurt and pissed off at you even more than usual because you'd probably be out the door the next day. It was better to just not say anything. I took care of it, and we got her a cell phone so she could call us if anything like that happened again," Dean said.
Sam stood up suddenly. "And who the hell are you to get on us about lying, when you've kept a bunch of information from us over the years? You kept what you knew about that yellow-eyed bastard to yourself, and maybe if you hadn't, maybe if you'd been honest with all of us from the beginning, we could have tried to- to fight against him, and keep a better watch out and protect Aly better! So in reality, all of this that's happened is your fault!" Sam's voice was a loud yell by the end of this speech, and I shrank down into the sofa from the anger that was there.
Dad stood up and walked over to him, his face angry. "Don't raise your voice to me, boy!" he started low, but his voice was that deep growl that meant he was angry. I glanced at Dean, who had sat forward and tensed up.
"I did what I thought was right at the time!" Dad said. "I needed to protect you, all of you, from the evil that was out there. It had come into our home and taken my wife, your mother, and I wasn't going to let it touch any of you if I could help it. Once you were old enough I wanted to train you so that you'd be able to protect yourselves from things- and Dean just took to it like a duck takes to water, so I thought I should train him to work with me."
Sam made a scoffing sound. "And you dragged me into it too, even though I didn't want to."
"I wanted you to have training to protect-"
"It wasn't about protecting, it was about killing as many of the fuglies out there as possible so you could find the one that got Mom! You had your own little war to wage and you made us your little army, and now look, Aly's paid the price!" Sam gestured at me.
"What does that mean? There was no 'price' to be paid-"
"She got kidnapped by the same demon who killed Mom and he was gonna kill her too, Dad! He was gonna use her life force up and suck her dry! If we hadn't gotten there when we did-" Sam stopped and glanced at me.
I was staring up at him in horror, and then it was like a door opened in my mind, and memories started tumbling out-
Being strapped down to the altar and bled...seeing the scores of black-eyed people come into the room and realizing that they were all demons... hearing the chanting... feeling Azazel's power- and then-""Isn't it obvious? He needs your soul, Alyson. Your pure, untainted by sin, yet partially demon-tainted soul... While my blood ensures that your soul will recognize Lucifer's, the special abilities that you are hiding from us will give your soul almost unlimited energy. When it is time for Him to return to us, your soul will give Him the power He needs to do so. Of course, the way we'll need to remove it means your body will be obliterated. It'll be like you never existed, Alyson. A little side effect that I'm sure your family will secretly be happy about."
Azazel's words came back to me, and I felt fully the terror and betrayal and anguish that I had not allowed myself to feel back then. I had had to detach from my emotions to just get through what was happening, I didn't have time to feel the feelings because I was focused on trying to stay alive.
"I had no control over Aly, she ran away!" Dad was saying to Sam. "I couldn't have predicted any of what happened-"
"But if you had been honest and told her what was really out there, what was really after her, then she could have been more aware of things and kept herself safer-"
"Sam, you know I tried to train her, but she wasn't-" Dad interrupted Sam and Sam talked over him-
"I'm not talking about training, I'm talking about telling her- communicating with her instead of barking orders all the time and expecting them to be obeyed-"
"Oh, now we're back to that-" Dad huffed angrily.
Dean sprang up and stepped between Sam and Dad, holding his hands up like he used to when I was a kid. "Hey, hey, let's cool it-" he started, trying to defuse the tension in the situation.
I had started to curl up into a ball and rock back and forth. This was all too much, feeling all the emotions I had held inside, and now hearing my brother and father shouting at each other, their long held-feelings finally coming to the surface-
I couldn't deal with it any more. I jumped up and I ran. Somehow I found myself at the front door and I twisted the deadbolt and yanked the door open, and then I was running- running up the road, away from everything, away from my past, from my family, from all the pain and fear and betrayal and secrets-
