Running a little behind today, but better late than never I suppose! Enjoy!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ CHAPTER 12 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The house is empty.
Dean knows it the moment they've pulled into the driveway, and he's already at the garage door entrance, gun in his hand before Sam's shifted the car into Park. He opens the door and moves into the house with his gun raised, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. He feels Ben flanking his right side. The kid doesn't ask any questions, just accepts that something's wrong and falls into step beside Dean. There's no sign of a struggle, not a single piece of furniture moved out of place, but that could mean absolutely nothing. They could already be too late.
"Dean?" Sam whispers from behind him. "What the hell's going on?" Dean doesn't have to turn around to know that Sam must also have his gun out, trained on whatever threat the other hunter has possibly sensed. There's comfort in that- that Sam still trusts Dean's instincts enough to go along with him.
"She's gone," Dean whispers back. Beside him, Ben's lip quivers in either anger or fear, Dean can't tell. Gun still raised, Dean reaches for his phone, dialing Lisa. He presses the phone to his ear and keeps moving, searching for any indication of a break-in. The phone rings and rings.
Approximately seven seconds after the call goes to voicemail, the front door opens. Sam, Dean, and Ben all straighten at the same time, as if their spines are all dependent upon the rotation of the door's hinges. Lisa walks through it, keys jangling from her hand, grocery bags slung over both arms. She pauses when she catches sight of the three men in front of her, all frozen; two of them still holding guns. She smiles wide when she sees Ben, immediately opening her arms. Ben walks into them, lets her wrap him into a long hug.
"Oh, Ben," she whispers into his hair. The plastic of the grocery bags swish when the embrace ends. Sam and Dean still haven't moved, though Sam has tucked his gun away. Dean's trembles a little at his side.
"Where the hell did you go?" he asks incredulously. Lisa's eyebrow twitches and she lifts the bags on her arms a little, as if to say isn't it obvious, dummy?
"Groceries," she answers. "Thought I'd beat you back here. Guess I was wrong." She walks into the kitchen, bags swinging at her hips. Dean stares after her, expression a mixture of rage and disbelief. After a brief pause, he stalks after her. Sam and Ben follow.
"Do...do you have any idea how much danger you put yourself in?" Dean growls.
Lisa sets her groceries on the counter. "Dean, calm down," she says softly. "I'm fine. The grocery store isn't even a five-minute walk. Which is good, considering Sammy here commandeered my car for the day."
"I…" Sam sounds like he's about to apologize, but Dean doesn't let him.
"What part of 'monster after you' do you not understand?" he shouts. "I mean how…?"
"Stop," Lisa says, and it's almost a snarl. "Just stop." She looks at Ben, standing between the Winchesters with a face too old to belong to him. The jagged edge of her tone smooths out. "Ben, honey. I need you to go upstairs for a minute."
"Mom…" Ben starts, but it doesn't look like he has it in him to argue.
"Ben. Now," Lisa insists, and Ben goes. She waits, judging how long it will take Ben to walk up the stairs and make his way to his room. There's no real way to listen for his progress anymore, no telltale signs of a teenager stomping his feet or slamming the door behind him. It's easy to forget, sometimes, that Ben's not fully here. That he's dead. But judging by the sudden shift in everyone's expressions, Sam knows that in this particular moment, that fact has hit all three of them square in the face.
"Do you need me to leave, too?" Sam asks when the silence stretches too far. He's tired of feeling like an outsider, constantly trying to reassess his place in these countless, exhausting conversations.
Lisa shakes her head, surprising him. "You can stay," she says. She turns to Dean, face made of stone.
"I need to say something to you, and you're not going to interrupt, do you understand?"
Dean clenches his jaw, hard. He nods.
"Okay, here it is." She takes a breath: "You lost the right to have a say in our lives the day you left us behind in that hospital. I've been calm. This whole time, this whole...fucked up situation, I've kept it together. But you can't react like you and me are still...anything. Like you didn't choose to leave Ben and I behind. You chose Sam, and I understand that." She holds up a hand when it looks like Dean wants to cut in. "Really, I do. I know who you are, and I know what your brother means to you, and I accepted that the day he walked back through my front door. But now you're trying to relive the past and pretend you can come back, and you can't. You left and Ben died and you can't change it or make it better, and sometimes I wish for the monsters to come. Sometimes I'd like to be put out of my goddamn misery."
She squeezes the countertop behind her, letting it dig into her palms. "I felt it again, today. The grief. The overwhelming horror of losing him. And I don't want to go through it all over again. And I know it's coming. Inevitably. So yeah, I went grocery shopping. And if I hadn't come back, that would've been okay. At least I would've been with my son."
Dean can't talk. He just blinks at her, mouth slightly open and eyebrows pulled down and face pale like he's about to be sick, like her words are a poison he has to actively force out of every pore. Because this is the thing he had seen in her eyes the other day when he had asked her if she was worried about being left alone, added protection symbols or not. The truth of it had only graced her features for a moment, but it had been enough, and it is more than enough now.
Sam doesn't talk. He could if he wanted to, but he knows it's not his place. A selfish part of him wishes Lisa had made him leave, too. So he wouldn't have to be stuck in the middle of this shitstorm. He wonders, disturbed, if this is how Dean felt throughout their childhood- always shoved between him and their Dad, always searching for a way to make things right. Watching people flinging words at each other, unable to change a single thing. He aches for his brother. He aches for Lisa and for Ben and for the life he pushed his brother headlong into with his dying wish. He lets the guilt pour in, knows it's his fault that any of this is happening. But they hadn't known. They hadn't known what would come next. Sam was planning on an eternity in Hell. Sam was planning on a happily ever after for one of them, at least.
"You can talk now. If you want to," Lisa says, pulling Sam back into the room and his brother's stricken face. Dean opens his mouth.
"I…" he closes it again. Shakes his head and works his throat. "Sorry, I can't."
"You can't?" she sounds disappointed, as if after all this time playing peacemaker, staying on the rational side of things for the sake of her kid, she's ready for a real fight. Sam can't say that he blames her. He knows what it's like to have that kind of rage inside you. That kind of irrepressible grief pummeling against your ribs.
"There's nothing I can say," Dean continues, suddenly and deceptively placid. He knows grief, too. "I mean there's nothing. I know that. I know what that feels like…" Dean stops, blinks in Sam's direction and can't make it anywhere close to making real eye contact, but Sam sees enough to understand what his brother is thinking. What he's remembering.
Dean shrugs then, and Sam thinks he just might cry at the slant of his brother's shoulders, the look on his face. Sam knows Dean wants nothing more than to leave, to get as far away from the air in the room and the ugliness of loss that hangs in it, corrosive and nauseating. But he doesn't. He just stands there, waiting for more. Lisa must see it too, because her own shoulders slump. The fight goes out of her, and she sighs.
"I'm going to bed," she mutters. "Make yourselves at home."
She leaves the room, and then it's just Sam and Dean.
"Dean…" Sam starts to say.
"I'm gonna go for a drive," Dean interrupts.
"It's late," Sam answers stupidly. It's all he can think to say.
"Sure is," Dean says with something close to sarcasm. Sam barely recognizes it underneath all the other layers of emotion. He sighs.
"Okay. Just. Don't go too far. Ben might not be able to stay…"
"I know. I won't go far," Dean says, cutting him off again. "Just need...you know."
Sam nods. He knows.
The good news here is that Dean is prepared. And in this case, 'prepared', translates to 'full bottle of some kind of alcohol in the Impala.' He can't remember if it's Jimmy or Jose, and he honestly doesn't care. The drive will just be around the neighborhood, because he truly needs to be alone right now, and he doesn't feel like dragging Ben along against his will. Seems like too big of an ugly metaphor to contemplate at the moment.
Halfway to the car, Dean remembers he left his blade on Sam's bed. It feels strange not having it on him, but it would feel worse to have to go back into that house and face anyone right now, so he ignores the uneasiness. He's just driving around the goddamn neighborhood, and when the hell did he get so paranoid?
Except that's a stupid question he definitely knows the answer to.
He slides into the driver's seat like it's home (because it is, always will be) and shifts her into gear, nice and easy. Takes it slow for a while, just driving and turning, making small loops around the neighborhood, cutting back. When he's far enough away (but not nearly far enough away), he stops and reaches beneath the passenger seat for the bottle he knows will be there. It's Jose, and he'd prefer whiskey right now, but this'll do. Might even get him there a little quicker, which is just fine by him. He slides out of the Impala and contemplates sitting on the hood, but it feels like sacred ground he shouldn't be treading right now, so he just props himself on the grass beside her front wheel and leans back against her body, unscrewing the cap on the fifth in his hand and getting to work.
He drinks and he keeps drinking, and it's the first time he's really let himself since Purgatory. It starts to feel good after a while. That old, familiar heat in his stomach; artificial warmth against the cool night sky with its flickering stars and unanswered questions. He's not really spending much time looking at the sky tonight, though. For one thing, he's not interested in the questions, and for another, there's a very specific goal in mind here.
Namely, getting absolutely goddamn annihilated.
Dean understands it for the coping mechanism it is, and as much as Sam has tried to police his brother's methods over the years, Dean's always been pretty good at doing that himself. He has his rules, his regulations when it comes to getting smashed like this, the way he needs to every once in a while, and he sticks to them like religion.
Rule Number One: Get outta dodge.
Check.
Rule Number Two: No girls (besides Baby, obviously).
In hindsight, this one seems pretty obvious, but there was a time when Dean truly believed that an unhealthy amount of alcohol coupled with some company was the only way to chase certain things away. History has proven him wrong, and even if he'd found success, Dean's no longer inclined to drag other people into this kind of ritual (see Rule Number One).
Check.
And finally, Rule Number Three: Don't drive Baby once drinking has commenced.
He's planning on sleeping in the car or possibly in the grass tonight (because honestly, sitting here in the dirt is the most at home he's felt in a long time). So, check.
The bottle's a little more than halfway gone and he's definitely feeling it. Just letting himself drift and sway beneath the sky, light and airy and weightless and free. It's the most serene state of mind he's had in a long, long time, so it's only appropriate that the moment is broken not too long afterwards.
There are four of them, and they come out of the dark, and they are on him so fast, he barely has time to slam the bottle of tequila against the first one's face. But he does, and it barely has any effect.
"Christo!" Dean yells, simultaneously maneuvering himself against the car in a sloppy attempt to get vertical. He feels a stray piece of glass from the bottle slice across the palm of his hand, but he doesn't have time to dwell on it. He's too busy watching all four of the figures in front of him flinch.
Even halfway past hammered, Ruby's knife is in his hand in the next second. As it is, Dean thinks he does a pretty good job. Odd stacked against him, as always, and the whole time he's wondering how long these asshole demons were hanging out in the bushes, watching him slowly drink himself into a blackout. He'd practically done all the work for them, and it pisses him off enough that he manages to take out two of the four. Not bad, considering.
The first one to meet Ruby's knife is the same one he'd wasted the rest of his perfectly good tequila on, so that's satisfying. He's managed to keep the Impala at his back so far, and the three remaining demons are having a hard time flanking him. He smiles, knife clenched in his fist.
"Who's next?" he glowers, and it sounds a lot cooler in his head, because in reality he knows he slurs the words a little.
Doesn't stop him from slicing the throat of the next demon that comes at him, staining her gray shirt crimson. She's barely slumped all the way at his feet before the two remaining demons fly at him. They're all unarmed, and Dean's pretty sure that's the only reason he's still alive right now. The thought panics him, because demons without weapons probably don't want him dead. And while that might soothe the minds of others, Dean knows there are things a lot worse than death, and he's not willing to explore any of them more thoroughly than he already has.
He knows it's over as soon as his head slams into Baby's side mirror, and the last conscious thought he has before someone pull his head back and slams it into something else is that he and Sam should invest in those cyanide pills the villains always have in the movies.
See y'all next week. Thanks for reading!