Chapter 16.
Sarah went into the kitchen. Dean followed. She started to prepare a meal. "Can I help?" he said.
"If you like." she said, "I bet you're good at chopping onions."
"The best." he said.
She gave him a knife. "The onions are hanging from the shelf to your right. We'll need two. Cut them fine for me."
As he started cutting, he kept having a piece of a song flashing through his head, "A time to kill, a time to heal, A time to laugh, a time to weep."
Sarah looked concerned. "Is something wrong?" she said.
"I just have a song by the Byrds running through my head." he said.
"Unusual choice for you." she said.
"Very. I don't hate it, but it's not my thing. Folk rock is more Sam's style. He has the hair for it."
"I won't hear a word against his beautiful hair." said Sarah.
"I'm amazed he can hear a word through it." said Dean.
She smiled. "I should tell your brother what you say behind his back."
"I say far worse to his face." said Dean with a grin, "The onions are done."
"Now slice me some mushrooms from the basket." said Sarah. As he gathered up a handful of mushrooms, she said, "So what do you think the song means?"
"Probably nothing." he said, "When you have as few thoughts as I do, the empty spaces in your brain tend to fill with music."
"Why do you talk like that?" she said, "You have the most active mind I've ever found. Well, apart from Castiel's and I think angels have a lot more processing power than we do."
"I think a lot, I think, but most of it, like 94 percent is dumb."
"No, it isn't." she said.
"Sam's the clever one." he said, "I'm the brawn."
"Sam's not far behind you there and you're not stupid. From what you've told me, you never got much of a formal education."
"No, but turns out you don't need one to gank monsters and save the world."
"And you grew up seeing yourself as a high school dropout with a brilliant brother." She took some ground beef from the refrigerator. "Dean, before I met Castiel, the people around here drove me crazy. You can't talk philosophy, theology or literature with them, because they just don't get it, or they don't get the appeal. Castiel was like a deep well to someone who had been drinking out of puddles. You're the same."
"As Castiel? I doubt that."
"I can talk to you about anything. You get it. Half the time, I don't need to explain things to you, because you've figured out what I'm saying by the end of the first sentence."
I'm clever enough to know how dumb I am." he said, "And that's it."
"Your vocabulary of self-deprecation alone is indicative of a high level of intelligence. It evinces a volitional education, acquired on the road."
"We agreed I had no education to speak of."
"We agreed you had no formal education. Someone as clever as you educates himself, whatever his circumstances." She smiled and added, "And I just used a lot of long words, which you effortlessly understood."
"Was that a test?" he asked.
"No, because I knew you'd understand them. That was a demonstration."
"Sarah, why do you care if I think I'm stupid?"
"Because I care about you. I know how all this started. You were scared of getting things wrong and your father, for whom I have a lot of respect, was equally afraid of a single mistake. So he taught you to be perfect and when you did things perfectly, he didn't say anything, because that was his baseline for you and when you got things wrong, he rebuked you, because he wanted you to be more careful in future."
"To be fair to him, I screwed up a lot."
"Did you? In a dangerous life, you kept Sam and yourself alive. You heard a lot of criticism, not much praise and from a man you considered infallible. We parents write in stone on our children's hearts and they live with that inscription until they chisel it out or they get another one on a less metaphorical stone. Yours has the word 'stupid', though your father would never have chosen that word to describe you."
"I ... " he began, then his voice failed.
"I suspect you've cooked a lot of pasta over the years."
"Yeah." he croaked.
"Cook enough spaghetti for two. You'll find a blue pan in that cupboard in the corner."
He went to get it, grateful for the chance to look out of the window as he filled it with water.
"Add a drop of oil to keep it from sticking." she said, "And the salt is on that shelf over there."
"You should have a lot more salt than that around the place." he said.
"Three sacks in the cellar." she said, "Castiel insists."
"Iron?" he said, putting the water on the hob to boil.
"Not good with spaghetti." she said.
"Great against ghosts." he said.
"I have plenty of iron pokers and farm implements and I can throw a horseshoe a fair distance." she said.
"You know how to banish angels and draw a devil's trap?"
She moved the rug. "You mean like this one?"
"Cas again?"
"There is not a room he hasn't warded and there are three devil's traps. One here, one in the barn and one in the cellar. As for banishing angels, I could draw that sigil in my sleep. He's never allowed me to do it in blood, though. Sometimes, it's like being followed around by a broody hen."
"Tell me about it!" said Dean, "He guards my room sometimes."
"He did that to me at first. Now we have a rule that he stays in his own room most of the night."
He wanted to go back to the bunker. Being around Sarah was dredging up stuff he had kept hidden for years. The pain was less raw than it had been at the cabin with Cas, but it was also older and deeper and a much more fundamental flaw, woven into the fabric of his soul.
If she had spoken harshly of his father, he would have made that his reason to leave; his excuse for running away, but she spoke of his father the same way she spoke of him, with compassion and understanding. She knew John Winchester had loved both his sons. She knew how little he had intended the deep scars they both bore.
"He wants to protect those he loves." said Sarah and it took him a moment to realise she was still talking about Cas. "We understand that need, don't we, my dear? And that same need drove your father to make his mistakes. And you, in your heart, forgave him a long time ago, but still you allow his ill-chosen words to haunt you and you can't forgive yourself. Maybe you need that pain, because it's all he left you, apart from a car and an order to protect a brother you would have protected anyway."
"Maybe you're right." he said.
"But of course, that's not all he left you. He left you his strength and courage. He left you his love."
"He left me." said Dean, hearing the bitterness in the words.
"He died for you." she said gently, neither blame nor criticism in her tone, but only love and understanding.
"I can't talk about this now." he said.
She smiled sadly. "Then we'll talk about something else, anything else."
"Thanks." he said.
"I know this hurts. I wish I could make it less painful."
"I know." he said, "I understand."
"I also know that you will always love your father and you are right to do so. He was a good man."
"How can you be sure?" he said.
"Your mother told me a lot about him and I know both of his sons. Now, I hear you play pranks on Sam. Tell me about those."