A/N: Only one more chapter left, I'm afraid. Can't really stretch this out anymore. If you guys want a sequel, I might try to think up something.

Under the Bed
by
Deanie McQueen

Chapter Eleven - Sparkly Tiaras

Employees Only. No Trespassing. Beware of Dog. It's always some kind of sign hung to fend off intruders who might take something that's not theirs. Or see something that's not theirs to see. John always looks for these signs, and he never heeds them because they often hold the cause and/or solution to the problem at hand.

He keeps a frenetic pace through the fair, looking for these signs, bumping into people left and right, his big, booted feet stomping discarded popcorn and paper food containers into the ground. The carnival music is jaunty and disturbing and loud and it's fucking with John's already thoroughly fucked-with head, makes him feel like he's on drugs, waiting to come down from a high. Not that John knows what that...okay, yeah. Yeah, he does. He knows what that feels like. He was a teenager through some portion of the 70s, you know. Can't expect a man just to discard the times in which he lives for the sake of being some kind of epitome of morality, which John has never been, not even when he went to war, not even in '79 when Dean was...

His heart jolts when he remembers his wife on the table, her feet in the stirrups, his son coming tumbling out into the world in a gooey, screaming mess.

He remembers how he held Mary's hand and told her how good she did while a nurse cleaned their baby, how Mary, exhausted and perspiring, told him to fuck off, how Dean was soft and beautiful and looked like a little alien. John remembers holding him, cooing, calling himself Daddy, promising to be the best daddy in the whole world, because there he was. There he was with life in his hands, his and Dean's - and in that moment, with the echoes of shot-down brothers dying in war-trodden grass ringing in his head, he promised he'd never let this one go.

And then Sam came along, and he did it again.

They're gone, though. They're gone right now, and this is the reason he kept them locked up so tight when they were little, told them not to answer the door, and when they did...sometimes he came down hard, he admits it, but there are strange people and strange things in this world and John knows about all of them. And he's never there with them now, even though he should be, while they're hunting and hurting and dreaming terrible dreams. He's not there to save them, or to feel that life bleeding out of his hands.

John isn't the best daddy in the whole world. John isn't a lot of things.

That doesn't mean that he's not a huge fucking wreck right now, opening the doors of random buildings on the fairgrounds, redialing Dean over and over again, his head whirling far faster than that stupid fucking ferris wheel and there are little girls again, little girls running, giggling, past his legs who are wearing far too much make-up. He's back where he started. He's back at the Little Miss Peanut Pageant and the corpse he left can't be that far off, people probably saw him leave with the bastard, they'll know, and he can't find his kids, and he's calling Dean and calling Dean and calling Dean...

And that's Metallica. It's low and it's muffled and he can barely hear it, but he hears it. He hears Metallica. Dean's ringtone. He's not making this up, he swears it, and he follows the sound, sick with a parent's worry, his heart drumming like a maniac against his ribs.

His eldest's cell phone is in the grass by a tent pole and John picks it up. The backlight is a soft glow amidst the audacious effulgence of the fair. Dad, it says. It's singing and vibrating in his hand and it's slick with something. It's slick with blood.

"Fuck."

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

But it's here. If it's here, then maybe they're here. They're somewhere around here. Cummings, whatever the fuck he was, wasn't the only one...

She's not coming out until the very end. She's still getting ready.

I'm a very old man with a very young wife and very young daughter.

John needs to learn to listen. John needs to learn patience. He kills too soon, sometimes. He just wanted it to be over, wanted to see the blood, wanted it all back to the way it was.

Still getting ready. The pageant participants must get ready somewhere close by, lest their dresses tear or their makeup smudges or one of their mothers suddenly experiences a crisis of conscience.

But they wouldn't be there. Not all of these kids are evil sons of bitches, not even all of their parents, and John scans the area, his eyes roaming over game tents and competition tents and tents with no discernible purpose, willing them to see something and it's only when he looks away from the fair, into the wooded thicket in the distance, that he succeeds.

There's the tiniest of glows in the trees, could be a flashlight or even a candle flame, or even a figment of John's imagination. There are a lot of things in John's life that could be a figment of his imagination, but he doesn't dismiss them. He kills them. Just like he's going to kill whoever took Sam and Dean.

So he goes into the woods, and it's dark, and there is no glow, but he keeps on keeping on, just like he always does, battling the branches that scrape his skin and the spider webs that insist on hanging from them. He must be in there for at least five minutes, losing hope with every passing moment, and then he steps on it.

Wood, not earth. Under his feet. A door.

There's a fucking cellar in the woods.

John steps off of it quickly and kneels into the grass, pries it open with rough hands trying to be delicate, trying to be quiet. Warm, yellow light shoots up from the hole in the ground, bringing voices along with it.

"It's almost over, Mother!" The voice is that of a very young girl. Six, maybe seven years old. "I'll never win if I don't even show up!"

"Hush, Regina. They're not ready, yet and you know your father likes you to show up looking youthful and fresh-faced, so don't complain. Besides, you're thirty-two years old. You should be able to handle the wait with some grace at this point."

John hears the sound of a small foot stomping on a concrete floor. "Well, why aren't they ready, yet? They're scared, I can tell."

"Not scared enough. They're big boys." There's a pause, and then the woman's voice goes low and sultry and not at all to John's liking, "Aren't you a big boy?"

A little huff. "I'm gonna tell Daddy you're cheating on him with the food. Again."

Shit. She's...well, she's gonna cut their hearts out and that's reason to kill her in itself, but the last thing John needs is for some monster to be touching his boys in a way only partners of their choosing should touch them. He pulls his blade out of his jacket again.

"Oh, sweetheart. You've lived so long but you still don't know what it feels like to be a woman."

"And you don't know what it feels like to have over two thousand sparkly tiaras, but you don't see me rubbing it in."

Okay, John's heard enough. There's a staircase and he touches down softly on the first step, then the second, then the third, stopping when they pause in their discussion, sneaking along when they resume their arguments. Ever the hunter is John Winchester.

They're close by when he reaches the ground floor, but he's able to hide behind the stairwell wall, and he does, sneaking peeks past it to see his sons shirtless and restrained on two surgical tables covered in princess pink sheets, wriggling in their ropes, their mouths gagged. Their heads are resting on decorative pillows - pink polka dots and purple floral, and John has to remember to try not to snap if they tease each other about it later.

Later, when they're still alive, of course, because John's going to get them out of this.

He can't see the woman or the child.

He stands there for a few more moments before he hears one of his boys' muffled screams. He doesn't know if it's Sam or Dean, but he knows its time to get moving when the girl says, "Mother, I think this one's ready."

"Which one?"

"The one with the pretty hair."

Sammy. That's all John needs to hear, to think, before he goes charging out there, a knife in one hand, a gun in the other and he's half-startled to see a perfectly normal-looking suburban mom-type and a little girl standing over his youngest with a scalpel.

Women and children. His finger freezes on the trigger.

Their heads whipped in his direction as soon as he came out, and now they're smiling, smirking, and the mom says, "Look, boys, your daddy's come to play." And with those words, she cuts into John's screaming son.

And John shoots her in the head.

The body collapses, the scalpel clatters to the floor. The little girl, Regina, stares at the body of her dead mother, at the blood pooling from the skull.

"That was really easy for you," she says to John in a soft voice, her eyes not leaving the corpse.

"I'm..." John's not sorry. But the girl's little. She's little and he just killed her mother.

He shakes his head. She isn't a she. She's an it. She's a monster. She's thirty-two years old and a monster.

He tries to tell himself this, wills himself to pull the trigger again, and even though it's only a few seconds, the wait is too long. The woman's body starts twitching and then she gets up and the bullet works its own way out, falls to the floor next to the scalpel.

"Took you long enough," Regina mutters, but her mother pays her no mind. She's too busy smiling proudly at John.

"I've eaten about five million hearts in my day," she brags.

Regina makes a noise of frustration and stomps her foot. "That's a gross exaggeration. Stop grossly exaggerating."

"Well, you don't have over two thousand tiaras."

"I do so! I counted them just the other day. Two thousand and twenty-six, thank you very much. I'm a national champion fifty times over."

"Regina, you haven't been alive long enough for that to be true."

"And you haven't been alive long enough to consume five million hearts! You're only ninety-five, Mother. If that is your real name."

And their argument continues, much to John's bewilderment.

Sam and Dean fight against their restraints. John can see their eyes, he can see that it's not just their mouths that are screaming.

"S'okay, boys," he says. "I'm here. I've got this."

And he raises his blade, only to have two heads turn in his direction, one fun-sized, one adult, and they don't have human faces anymore. Their faces are all grey skin and holes, no eyes, no mouth, no nose, but the little one still has her wig in place and the mother has her hair and they're moving so fucking fast towards John. The tables screech across the floor as the boys fight harder and John't thinking oh, fuck.

But he's been doing this shit for well over twenty years, this killing shit, human and otherwise, whether he should or not. And it's okay. His boys are okay because he's here and he's got this.

He gets slammed into a wall. A few times, actually. But his weapon-work has always been on point and he stabs and slices and there are limbs on the floor and blood on John's clothes, his face, his hands. John wins. If monster-killing were a beauty pageant, John, too, would have two thousand and twenty-six sparkly tiaras.

When all is said and done, he get ups and kicks a child-shaped head against the wall.

And then he cuts the ropes pinning his sons to the tables. They smell like sweat and sickly sweet perfume. He immediately turns them around and checks their backs to find that the marks are gone.

"Dad?" Dean croaks, and he's still trembling, just like his little brother. It's over, John's certain. The curse is over, and this is just...this is just the aftermath, the trauma, and John will stay for it. John will take them back to the motel and get them in bed. And then he'll pack their fucking bags so they can leave as soon as they wake up.

"I'm right here," he tells his sons. Sam reaches out and grabs one of his arms, looks like he wants a hug. That's fine. John will give it to him, he will. He'll hug the kid as much as he needs...but the boy just squeezes the appendage and pulls back awkwardly.

"Thanks," Sam mumbles.

The boys both stand there for a few seconds, breathing heavily, closing their eyes and trying to forget the fear that was so rampant in their veins just a few minutes ago.

It's too quiet.

"I'm sorry about earlier," John tells them, because the room needs more than awkward silence and hacked-up bodies. "I shouldn't have-"

"It's okay, Dad," Dean interrupts him. "Sometimes Sam requires a firm hand."

"Hey," Sam protests.

The smile is slow, but it takes form on Dean's face and he says, "Sammy got a spanking."

And Sam goes red and huffs in that Sam way of his, shoves his brother with one, irritated hand. Dean skids in the blood on the floor, lifts his foot and crinkles his nose in disgust.

"Gross."

"Boys," John says.

"Dad, Sam pushed me in the gore."

John doesn't care. He can't find their shirts, though, and he's desperate to get out of this hellhole, so he places his hands on their backs and pushes them up the stairs, tries to keep them on the outskirts of the fair on the way back to the Impala. He doesn't need for people to think his kids were raised in a barn. And he doesn't need them to see the fact that he, himself, is covered from head to toe in monster blood.

They make it.

The boys still haven't completely pulled themselves together, though, and they stand there and blink while John opens their doors.

"Come on," he grunts. "Lets get the hell out of here."

Their response is to suffocate him. Or not really, but that's sure what it feels like when his two twenty-somethings decide they need to cling like their lives depend on it, their bodies shaking with the remnants of bad magic. He manages to get his arms at least a little bit around both of them, to rub coarse palms up and down their shoulder blades until they man up and clear their throats and get in the car. It was nice for that moment, though. For that moment, he felt like a decent father.

He drives. They press their heads against the windows and close their eyes, trusting him to get them to their next destination. Just like they used to when they were small.

Sad little boys pretending to be big, big men.

The words ring in John's ears all the way back to the motel, and try as he might, he can't get them to leave.

TBC

Thanks again for all the encouragement!