Chapter Eleven- Good Little Soldier- It's Raining, It's Pouring…
GUYS! GUESS WHAT! YOU GET TWO CHAPTERS!
Thank you all so much for supporting me and waiting! I took the test at 3 today, and I don't know what my results are yet, but I think I did pretty well. Your reviews are a huge confidence booster- I'm glad you all think so highly of my writing! So, as a huge thanks, here's double the child abuse fic to make up for lost time. J
Trigger Warning: mentions of rape/ child abuse (metaphors in nightmares only), disturbing imagery
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"Son of a bitch," Bobby says calmly. Then he stands up and kicks his chair over, fury written over every inch of him. I flinch a little too hard, enough for him to notice. Which makes him angrier. "I'll KILL HIM!"
Doctor Roberts sighs and looks down at his clipboard. "Sir, if you could please calm down, there's something-"
"Calm down? CALM DOWN? This is as calm as I'm getting. That bastard… I can't believe… how long?" Bobby finally decides on a sentence and looks over at me. Again, right at me. Straight through the cracks in my glass box. I clench my fists tighter.
"Since Mom," I mumble, watching the rain.
"Son of a bitch…"
"Mister Singer," the doctor says pointedly. "Would you please come with me?"
Bobby sighs and follows Doctor Roberts out the door, leaving me alone to let the full weight of what I've done sink in. And it weighs a lot; feels like someone's lowering an anchor on my chest. The doctors need to let the rain in; I think it's gonna die soon. The sky's clearing up, and then the sun's going to come out and kill everything.
Jesus Christ, I told them.
I told them about Dad. There's no turning back now. And if he finds out and kills Sam, it'll be all my fault. He will find out, eventually; Bobby's more than likely going to call every hunter he knows. Things are gonna be a lot different now, aren't they? Different doesn't mean better, I remind myself, glancing out at the hallway. Bobby's never been anything but nice, but he knew Dad. He was friends with Dad. And friends of John Winchester aren't the kind of people who treat John Winchester's kids right. I should trust him. But I haven't trusted someone since I was four and thought my dad was a superhero. I stopped putting faith in anyone living nine years ago.
The rain stopped. No one ever tried to help it. I decide that falling asleep is worth the risk of Dad coming back while I'm out and close my eyes.
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A/N: IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO DISTURBING IMAGERY, SKIP THE NEXT SECTION. I'M SERIOUS. SKIP IT.
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"Dean…"
I turn towards the sound of the voice, Mom's voice, but it's too dark to see anything. She calls again; it sounds like she's hurt.
"Mom?"
"Dean…"
I take a step forward and run into a wall. The glass is so transparent it seems like the air decided it doesn't want me to move. It's the box again; I don't even bother checking the other four walls. Mom falls out of the darkness, clutching her side. God, there's blood everywhere. And it's getting under the bottom of the box. I know it's not going to do any good, but I keep banging on the glass.
"MOM!"
She smiles at me and bursts into flames. I scream again, heart pounding and breaking and splintering, and take a step backwards into the box. The fire dies down a little, leaving Dad standing in Mom's place. Very much alive. He looks at me and smiles. I flinch; it's the smile he had when he tried to kill me. The exact same one.
A hand clamps down on my shoulder. I can't see who- or what- it's attached to, it's too dark, but now there's another hand covering my eyes, and then another grabbing my wrist, and now they're everywhere. Everywhere, and I can't move, or anything, and they're everywhere everywhere everywhere. I scream again, through the hands over my mouth, but no one hears me. Of course no one hears me; I'm still in my box. A coffin full of hands that only I can see. Every time I move the hands get tighter, until I can hardly breathe. Not that I could breathe to begin with-
And then they go away. Slowly, far too slowly, fingers tracing over me like a starving child on his last bite of food. Dad's standing there, blood dripping from the knife in his hand.
"Let's show everyone what you really are," he whispers, his voice too soft, running a finger over the scars on my stomach. "No one's going to see it here." now his voice is too loud. Dad shoves me against the wall of the box and grabs my wrist, yanking it out at a strange angle that hurts but doesn't break.
W.O.R.T.H.L.E.S.S.
And then on my other wrist.
P.A.T.H.E.T.I.C.
And then he's gone, leaving the glass box filling up with blood. My blood, for once. I look up at the ceiling; you can see the stars through it. They form a picture of Mom, locked up by the angels. Moments after I see it clouds come and cover them- her- up. It starts to rain. And then the rain starts to scream, in Sammy's voice. It's my fault, it's all my fault; I'm killing the rain. No matter how hard I bang on the glass, I can't help it.
The box is gone, but the hands are back and they're shouting at me. I don't know what I did this time. So I scream again and find that fighting works with these ones, that I can get free if I pull hard enough. I break away and rush to stand up, to run away, but Dad comes back and stabs me, over and over and everywhere. Mom is nowhere to be found, no matter how much I shout her name.
Somebody's shouting my name. I can't tell who; they're too far away and there's still a pair of hands on my shoulders. Smaller than the others. I look down; they're Sam's hands.
Sam.
"Dean?"
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A/N: It should be okay from here on out. That was very no just to write. Eesh. Enjoy the rest of the chapter.
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"Dean!"
I look up and stare at Sam's tear-streaked face and turn all my energy to not looking away. Sam. He's here, he's alive, and I'm okay. Kind of. I think I'm on fire. But I'm okay, besides the fire. Dad's not here yet. Is Dad coming? He promised he would, I ever did it. Wait- ever did what? What did I do? There's beeping coming from somewhere, and it keeps getting faster. I take a deep breath; I think everything underneath my ribcage moved somewhere else. There's nothing but empty space in there.
"Sammy." I finally manage to get my vocal chords working. Where am I? And what the hell did I do?
He wraps his arms around me, and I bury my face in his hair because if I don't then I'll have to see what's behind him. And I really don't want to right now. "It was just a dream," he whispers. It takes me a minute to turn the string of words into a sentence, and even longer to process it.
It was just a dream.
There's other voices in the room. I don't know who they are. Maybe there's no one there; maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I'm just imagining this whole thing, and I'll wake up in a motel room with Sam and Dad and-
I told them. That's what I did. I told them.
"Dean, I swear to god, I'm going to kill the six-year-old brat behind that door if you tell anyone. I swear. I will, if you do."
The beeping gets louder, and faster, and the fire gets hotter. I pull away from Sam, and start to get up and run away. I need to get out of here, wherever here is, and find Dad, and make up an excuse and lie until the things I've lied about are true and I need to talk to Mom because she'll understand. She knows what happened, and even though the angels won't let her come back with me I can at least say something to her or ask her to take me back because this was all a huge mistake and someone's trying to hold me back. There's more hands there's hands everywhere and screaming isn't helping all that much goddamnit let me out let me go see Mom!
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"Do you know where you are?"
"A hospital. I'm not an idiot."
"Can you tell me what happened?"
No, I think. I have no idea what happened. I'm told I broke someone's nose. And I ripped almost all my stitches. And I was insane. Not much else, though. Something with Mom. And rain. I told them about Dad, I can remember that pretty clearly. God, the past week has just been full of moronic decisions involving me and Dad, hasn't it? Saying no to him. Coming back to the world he lives in. Telling people about him. I glance up at Dr. Roberts and realize it's been at least five minutes since I said anything. "You can't tell him I'm alive," I mumble.
"Dean, we're not going to tell him anything. We don't have any way to contact him."
"Keep it that way." I glance towards the door, waiting for it to open. For Dad to walk in and… do something. I don't know. I've been on edge since the moment I came back to life. Well, more on edge than usual.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"Which it?"
"Your father."
"No," I practically shout. I hate this. Being broken. There's no way to get out of this room. By the looks of it, there's no way to get the doctor out of this room, either.
"There's just a few questions we have for-"
"I said no, I'm not going to answer any questions, and I think we're done."
He looks at me. I stare at my hands. Great job, Winchester. You've gone and made him mad. Watch what happens next.
"Okay," Doctor Roberts says. Then he stands up and walks to the door. "Your brother's pretty eager to see you."
That was the most anticlimactic thing that's happened since I woke up. And I don't trust it. I've said it before, I don't trust anything, but this was too… normal.
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"Hey, Sam," I say with the best smile I can manage.
"Hi."
Fantastic. Now my brother thinks I'm a time bomb, too. "I'm okay," I tell him, even though I hate lying. He glances out the window, then back at his shoes.
"Okay. You scared me, though."
"I know. I'm sorry." And I'm sorry for never telling you, and for still not telling you, and for letting you think that Dad and hunting and any of that is a good idea ever.
"Bobby said we're gonna stay with him for a while," he says softly, sitting on the edge of the bed.
I smile. "That's great." Great, until Dad finds out I'm there and comes to get me. Bobby might be planning on it.
"He says I'll get my own room."
"Wow. Awesome. Did he say anything about when Dad's going to come back?"
"When I asked him he got mad and said 'I hope never.' Did Bobby and Dad have a fight about something?"
"Um, yeah. Yeah, they had a big fight. And now Dad won't even call Bobby."
Sam looks down again and sighs. I could tell him the truth. Right now. But he's already scared enough after whatever happened with the nightmare/panic attack/I-broke-a-guy's-nose-because-I-thought-he-was-one-of-Dad's-friends. And that's the last thing I want. So instead I let him talk about the book he's reading and I churn out answers to all of his questions because it's a hell of a lot easier than thinking.
Is staying at Bobby's even a good idea? It makes the most sense. But Dad knows how to get there from any city in the country. And it's the first place he's going to look. If it were up to me, I'd take Sam and run. To Mexico. How do I even know I can trust Bobby? He's helped Dad out more times than I can count. He's the reason Dad met so many of his friends. Not that he's been anything but okay to me… for now. But I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. And I don't think I'm ever going to relax.
Why would he even want to let us stay with him? Sam, I get. He's the poster child of good children. But me? I can't even sleep without hurting someone anymore. I talk to my dead mom. I break everything I touch. I couldn't start hunting again for at least a month. I could start earlier, but he's definitely not going to let me. God, I shouldn't have told them. Now I'm the poor little kid whose dad tried to kill him. The pathetic abused kid with nowhere else to go. And that's not who I want to be, even if it's what I am.
Bobby walks in and smiles at me like you smile at a dying baby. I stare at the clock and start counting the seconds of tense silence that follow. One. Two. Three.
Sam gets up and leaves.
Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
"So, did Sammy tell you?" he finally asks.
"About moving in with you? Yeah, he did. But I don't know-"
Bobby sighs. "Kid, there's no way in hell I'm letting you go back to John."
"That's not what I meant."
"Where else could you go? Ellen's? That's five states away, Dean."
"I know. I just… he knows where you live." It sounds even more scared out loud. And it was pretty damn paranoid in my head.
"He sets one foot on my property and he dies. Especially if you're there," he says emphatically, glaring at the armrest of his chair.
"How did you not know?" I ask, the words flying out of me before I can even process them. "I mean, I thought it was obvious. I stayed up every night wondering if anyone had put two and two together. And we're at your house every other weekend. How did you not know?"
Another sigh from Bobby. "I wondered."
"And you didn't say anything?" This is why you shouldn't trust him.
"No." He stands up and walks slowly towards the door. "No, I didn't."
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The ride home from the hospital is almost silent. After almost three weeks of lying in a bed it's nice to be moving. In a direction that isn't down a spiral of crazy and claustrophobia. And I'm fine with the silence; it's better than the constant noise of people and heart monitors. Even though we haven't seen another car on the road for miles, I can't help but twist around in my seat and scan the empty road behind us, a long slippery ribbon someone dropped over the countryside. How long would it take for Dad to find out I told someone? And how long would it take for him to catch up? I can't shake the cold-fingers-on-my-spine feeling that someone's watching me, and Sammy's asleep in the backseat.
"Calm down, Dean. He doesn't know," says Bobby when he sees what I'm doing.
"Yeah. Okay." I turn back to the front, moving my shoulders around to see if the sensation goes away. It doesn't. And neither does the flight-or-fight feeling that's been in my chest since I woke up from the nightmare thing almost a week ago.
"He's not going to find you. I'm not going to let that happen."
We'll see, I think.
"You trust me, don't you?" he asks.
I glance at him, then at Sam in the backseat, and spend the next half hour staring intently at the rearview mirror.
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