Happy Easter to those that celebrate it! Or Happy Sunday if you don't :)
Thanks for all the reviews for the last chapter. Sorry I can't personally thank the guest reviews, but I do appreciate them!
This is the tiniest of tiny chapters. Just a little something until the next big one comes out!
/
Sam was munching on half of a ham and cheese panini as he made his way through the corridors towards Henry's office/lab. Turns out he liked the grilled sandwiches just as much as his brother did and it pleased Mrs. Butters to no end to provide them to him as often as she could. In his other hand he held a file folder and there was an excited lilt in his step as he walked.
Ever since arriving at the bunker a few weeks ago, Sam had been gleefully immersing himself in the archives and making daily new discoveries that were just flooring him from an intellectual standpoint. He was beginning to understand why his always confident and unassumingly knowledgeable hunter brother was feeling a little out of his depth with all the lore they now had access to that went far beyond anything they had ever studied under their father's tutelage.
Even Dad was spending a lot of his time at the bunker reading and Sam was amazed because growing up he'd always felt pretty sure that his father knew everything there was to know about monsters and myths.
Honestly Sam would be the first one to admit that he could have spent the entire summer just holed up in the library and scouring the books for pure educational purposes alone, but he wasn't so unobservant that he hadn't noticed Henry working on a special project of his own. So, trying hard to convince his grandfather that he was a helpful and courteous boy, despite Henry's current views to the contrary, a few days ago he'd put aside his own books and offered his assistance.
It had just been the two of them in the bunker for almost a week now, with only Mrs. Butters to keep them company and she more or less stayed out of their way unless she was feeding them. John and Dean were out hunting a Black Dog in the Yellowwood State Forest in Indiana. Although there were other hunters closer, it came as no surprise to anyone that Dean was calling dibs on anything supernatural going on in that particular state. Unwilling to allow someone else the opportunity to fall down on the job and fail to kill any fugly that could potentially threaten Lisa and her son as well as taking advantage of the opportunity to swing by and visit them.
Sam had wanted to go with his brother.
He was confident that they could do this as their first real hunt together, without the added pressure of their father breathing over their shoulders. His occasional musings at school on what kind of team the two them could make was rearing its head with possibilities and he was more than a little curious about whether or not he'd like the job if it was just him and Dean on their own.
And maybe he was also a little eager to quiet the voice in his head that nagged him to prove to Dean how well he could have his brother's back when John wasn't on both of theirs.
But because Dad still insisted on treating him like a child, predictably he hadn't been exactly subtle in his insistence that Sam stay in Lebanon, safe and sound, for the time being. Making an argument that there was no need to risk a retaliatory demon entanglement when he could just remain in the protective confines of the bunker's security.
As one could imagine, Sam didn't take that very well.
The argument between them that ensued was much more loud and bitter than Sam would have ever dared before he went off to Stanford. Each one of them shouting and throwing around barbed comments guaranteed to hurt the other. It got really ugly, really fast and once upon a time, in the not too distant past, John would have just grabbed his kid and hauled him off to his room for a refresher course in respecting the chain of command.
But Sam was newly nineteen now and still in that weird place between childhood and adulthood. Too old to get whipped for that smart mouth of his, but not old enough for an enraged John to retaliate after Sam made the colossally stupid mistake of getting in his father's face and shoving him to emphasize a point.
It was safe to say that the other three Winchester men were not entirely happy to see how pleased Sam was with his superior height that now allowed him to tower over his father.
It had taken Dean wedging himself between them, grabbing Sam by the shirt to push his stupid little brother behind him while simultaneously pleading with John to calm down. Sam had finally taken a good look at his father's face and realized how wildly he'd crossed a line and the fight drained out of him a little. It didn't help that Henry, who had been quietly observing the battle of wills, was glaring at Sam disapprovingly.
Now embarrassed but still angry, Sam had stormed off to sulk in his new room while the others wordlessly watched him go.
Used to being placated and comforted after a run-in with their father, Sam had half-expected his brother to come and play peacemaker, but to his shock this time Dean didn't.
Which was really the first indication to Sam that maybe he had been the one in the wrong. At least in the way he'd handled the situation. Before, Dean would always try and smooth things over when their father had overreacted and ripped Sam a new one. Asking his brother to be reasonable and understand that John was under a lot of stress and just worried about his kids.
But not this time.
An hour passed. And then two. Until finally Sam realized that his brother was also annoyed enough with him to let him ride the fallout on his own. If he didn't know that John and Dean were probably getting ready to head out at any minute, he might just have stayed in his room and stewed, but he didn't want his brother to leave for a job with any unpleasantness between them when anything could happen in the field.
He also was honest enough to realize that he probably definitely owed his father an apology and he should just go out there and take his licks.
There was relief on Dean's face when Sam skulked into the crow's nest to say good-bye, so Sam knew he'd made the right decision to make peace. Surprisingly, Dad just accepted his apology without further admonishment, even going so far as to give Sam a brief one-armed hug before telling him to mind his grandfather while they were gone. Sam suspected that his brother had been working a little magic while he was seething alone in his room, for which he was grateful, because he wouldn't want his last words with his father to be ones of anger.
Suppressing the annoyance of being benched, he walked them both outside, like he had done hundreds of times growing up. Because being left behind wasn't new to him, even though he liked it even less now than he had as a young boy.
Of course, in true Winchester fashion, the parting didn't go entirely smoothly, because John felt the need to reiterate his earlier statement that Sam should probably keep to the bunker until they returned, safe within its walls.
Although his father had stopped short of making it an order, the restraint it took him to do so clearly etched in his worried eyes, Sam couldn't stop the protest that bubbled up in his mouth. Because there just seemed to be something in his genetic makeup that made him incapable of obeying his father without question like Dean always could.
Within seconds he was fighting mad again and at that point Dean had had enough. He grabbed Sam by the back of his neck and shoved him a little down the driveway.
With the other Winchester men looking on from where John was packing the truck, Dean quietly but harshly reminded his little brother that he'd promised to try and get along better with their father. If for no other reason than to have less tension between them when the time came to talk about Sam's return to school, which technically John had not yet agreed to. Not that Sam needed his father's permission to go back, but he didn't necessarily want another year of radio silence from John either and Dean had asked for time to get him accustomed to the idea.
Sam had gritted his teeth and balled his fists, but he had to admit that Dean had a point, so he backed down. The two of them returned to the truck and made their good-byes before John and Dean took off and left Sam alone with Henry who was looking decidedly cross with his younger grandson as they made their way back into the crow's nest.
"I'm sorry, Grandpa," Sam had apologized, buttering up his clearly peeved grandfather by using the term of affection that he'd noticed Henry seemed to enjoy. "It's just that Dad can be such a control freak sometimes."
Henry had pursed his mouth into a frown, giving Sam a look of extreme consternation, before deciding to lay into him.
"You should be grateful that your father cares for you very much," he said tersely as he indicated that Sam should take a seat at the map table. "He's been extremely worried about your safety, with good reason I might add. You need to really think about that before you say such terrible things to him."
Stung, Sam's ire was immediately raised, because who was Henry to give Sam a lesson on how to deal with the hard ass drill sergeant that was John Winchester? Sam was the one who'd spent his entire life being ordered around by the man.
"You don't know what you're talking about," Sam protested as he moved to get up from the chair he'd just sat down in.
"Sit down, young man," Henry ordered as he racked his shoulders back and gave Sam his first glimpse of the sterner side of the new family patriarch. The unyielding backbone of steel that was usually covered with tailored clothes and beautiful manners.
Shocked into silence by his grandfather's scarily authoritative tone, Sam obediently slid back down in his chair. The thought occurring to him that John and Henry were a lot more alike than he'd originally thought.
"In my day," Henry started, sounding exactly like a character from a black and white classic movie, "sons showed their fathers the proper respect. No matter how old, or how tall, they were."
Sam bristled and huffed, determined to not be the bad guy here. Seconds away from telling Henry where he could shove his disapproval.
"I respect my father, Henry," he retorted sharply, dropping the more intimate moniker intentionally and ignoring the hurt look he got back.
"But no matter what I do, it's never good enough for him. Dad's always been disappointed in me. Because I didn't wanna bow hunt or hustle pool. Because I wanted to go to school and live my life, which, in our whacked-out family, made me the freak. He's been on my ass my entire life to embrace hunting, and the minute I do he benches me."
While Henry was prepared to concede a small part of that statement as being true, because he was quite aware of just how insistent his son had been in making sure his own children were trained, Sam was missing the most critical part of this argument.
"How many demons did you go up against when you went hunting with your father and brother?"
The question stopped Sam short for a second as his mind scrambled for an appropriate rebuttal. In truth they'd never faced a demon in the field when they had gone out together. Demon encounters on the whole were extremely rare and each time his father had encountered one it had not gone well. Even before Sam's experience at Stanford, John would never have let his boys go anywhere near one.
"We went up against things we'd never seen before lots of times," he finally countered. "Hunters never know what they're getting into until they're on the job."
Point to Sam.
"That's very true." Henry nodded and took a seat of his own, lessening his authoritative vantage point. "But in this particular case, you already know the risks, don't you? I think it's fair to say that you have first hand knowledge of how easy it would be to get to you if a demon wanted to?"
Sam sighed and hung his head a little. The very fresh memory of his time with his demonic fake professor etched into his mind for eternity.
Point to Henry.
"Yes, sir."
Mollified somewhat by his grandson's response, Henry's irritation receded a fraction. He remembered what it had been like to be Samuel's age and thinking that he already knew everything there was to know. However, he also knew what it was like to lose his own father and all evidence to the contrary, how crushed the boy would be if anything happened to John after they fought.
Sam would never forgive himself.
"Samuel, your father is always going to worry about you. No matter how old you are."
The use of his full name made Sam flinch, but since he'd been the one to curtail the more relaxed nature of their burgeoning relationship, he didn't have anyone else but himself to blame. Deep down he knew that Henry was right but it didn't mean he had to like it.
"Perhaps he doesn't express it as well as he should," Henry continued, gratified to see that he finally had his grandson's attention. "But all fathers are far from perfect. Some day when you have a child of your own, you'll be amazed at what you are willing to do and say to keep them safe."
Sam sat up straighter and made sure to look his grandfather straight in the eye when he responded. Ensuring that the man knew he was deadly serious when he spoke.
"I will never raise my kids the way Dean and I were raised."
There was finality in his voice and ice in his eyes as Henry assessed him. Ah to be young again and so certain of yourself.
"You say that now," he responded calmly. "Yet no one knows what this life will bring them. What I do know is that your father doesn't take your safety and well being lightly. For all your unorthodox upbringing, John has sheltered you in many other ways, Samuel."
He stood and beckoned with his index finger for Sam to follow him.
"Come with me, young man."
Chafing at the condescending tone but having promised just moments earlier to defer to Henry in his father's absence, Sam reluctantly rose and trailed behind his grandfather as they made their way to the archive room. Once inside Sam heeded Henry's direction to take a seat at the table and waited impatiently while the older man pulled several antique leather bound books from the shelves. One by one he piled them next to Sam.
"Since we arrived here, your father and your brother have read through all of these and have adapted their hunting styles accordingly. I suggest you do the same. If you don't want to be treated like a child, then stop acting like one. This is no game we are playing right now."
Sam bit back a retort that was on the tip of his tongue to remind his grandfather that he'd been neck deep in this world since infancy, but he also wasn't a rude person normally even if it was hard to be chastised by someone he was starting to respect. Looking at the books he saw that they were all rare volumes of lore on demonology. As much as it annoyed him, he had to admit that Henry had a point.
"Yes, sir," he muttered grudgingly as he pulled the first one towards him and opened it.
That had been six days ago.
After pouring through his required reading, which wasn't exactly a chore since Sam loved to read anyway, he understood the point Henry had been trying to make. He'd been wildly unprepared for the cunning and devious natures of demons. Thinking of them only as creatures of evil and chaos. But of course he'd already been roped in by one with smiles and a beautiful body and while he would like to think he wouldn't have been so susceptible again, he couldn't guarantee it when it was clear that the ones allowed topside were very skilled persuaders.
Although they hadn't talked about it much, Sam knew that his father had the demon riding Amanda's body locked up in a cabin in Tennessee and Sam was being given the choice as to whether or not he would be the one to end its life. As much as the need for revenge appealed to him, he wasn't sure yet whether he could make himself do the deed. There were a lot of conflicting emotions going into that decision.
While Caleb had assured him that the real Amanda Stilner was long dead, there was just too much baggage between him and the demon who had been able to get so deep under his skin that he'd been persuaded to almost become another person. There was a lot of shame and fear that encompassed their time together and history like that didn't just go away in a few weeks. Besides, his father had made it clear that the demon wasn't going anywhere anytime soon and that was no immediate time frame to dispose of her.
However, Hell had surely noted her absence, hence the elevated safety precautions that he'd so cavalierly dismissed.
Sam got it now. He did. Which is why he hadn't protested being locked down in the bunker since the day his father and brother took off. Especially after the reprimand his grandfather gave him that made him feel about three inches tall.
Besides, having spent a couple of days watching Caleb dispatch the hunts, Sam easily got the gist of the monster radar and the hunting schedule. Of course he was still incredulous about its existence and the valuable tool it was for the hunting community, and he was more than impressed that his own grandfather had been instrumental in designing it. As long as he was confined to the bunker, for the foreseeable future anyway, he volunteered to monitor it while he read through his books so the other men who were expected to come in for their shifts at the wheel could go take care of their other professional obligations without having to worry about hurrying back.
In truth he was happy to do it because it made him feel like he was contributing something to their jobs without actually being able to go back out into the field himself. It took away some of the ironic sting from being relegated to the sidelines.
Pleased with his grandson's shift in attitude, Henry put him on Hunter Corp's payroll for the summer as his own assistant. A nice perk considering that Sam had originally been planning on saving up money from working at the restaurant during his school break. A job he no longer had. Not that he was entirely concerned about his living expenses for the moment because even though his father hadn't gone into detail about Sam's access to his trust fund, he did know enough about it to feel confident that his basic needs would continue to be covered upon his return to California whether he had a job or not.
In all fairness, the bunker's resources were amazing and there were worse ways to spend his vacation than by reading and helping out his family and other hunters and getting to know his grandfather. Especially when the alternative would have been more months of lonely separation from them and grueling physical labor.
So after a few days of enthusiastic book diving, he finally got curious about how Henry was spending his time when he wasn't checking up on Sam's progress and that's when his grandfather had told him about his plan to track down any remaining legacy who might have been spared Abbadon's purge.
Sam had to admit that Henry was pretty savvy regarding computer design and technology, if a little outdated, but his research skills using the internet were sadly pathetic and to spare him hours of frustration Sam was more than happy to take over the reins in that area. Unfortunately it had led to several hours of dead ends and false hopes as the two of them dealt with the scale of the massacre. Sam hadn't been in the loop long enough to understand the scope of what had been wiped out the day his grandfather traveled through time, but now, seeing it all on paper, the loss was palpable.
Entire family lines just wiped off the map, and Sam felt the heavy burden of survivor's guilt when it was more than clear just how lucky the Winchesters were to still be around.
Up until this morning he'd found exactly nothing to indicate that anyone was still kicking that could lay claim to being a legacy. Most of the members, if they had families at all, had small ones and it had been easy to wipe out their numbers. But then Sam came across a roster for members who were part of a small delegation sent to Europe and he decided, on a hunch, to give these men and their families a closer look.
Finally hitting pay dirt with Member number 056794-5-DE-762-2.
Edward Durban II had been born in Ireland but then emigrated to the US as a young man to attend university at Princeton. A gifted scholar, he was recruited by the Men of Letters and then inducted into the organization on September 12th 1939. One of his areas of expertise was Celtic legend and lore and soon after his induction he was sent back to Ireland as part of a contingent to investigate File No. 58904-R.
It took Sam some time to track down the appropriate file, but when he did he saw that File No. 58904-R was a report on the possible location of the Lúin Celtchair, sometimes also known as the Spear of Lugh. The flaming sword that was one of the Four Treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann and was said to be impossible to defeat in battle.
A handy little item to have in your possession with a World War raging.
Whether or not the sword was ever found was unclear, as Durban's last report from his posting regarding the artifact was sent on December 4th 1941, just a few days before Pearl Harbor was bombed. With the US now embroiled in the war, assets in the field were redistributed to areas of immediate concern. Durban worked for the Men of Letters in Europe at various posts for the duration of the war until the ceasefire was declared before deciding to return to Galway where he retired under mysterious circumstances.
He wasn't cast out from the organization, but he was officially classified as inactive.
What Sam did know, with a little help from Ash the IT guy, was that Durban had married his childhood sweetheart during his time in Galway and then went on to father a son named Liam and then later a daughter named Maura years after the war was over. Always a quiet and studious man, he ultimately chose to live a simple life in Ireland with his family and spent his time writing books that no one bought.
Sadly a series of tragedies followed the Durban family.
Liam drowned when he was twelve years old during a family outing to the beach. Just weeks later, his distraught mother died of a massive self-inflicted head injury. After that Durban apparently took his daughter and went to ground. There were no further records for Maura Durban until years later when she started practicing law and then again for her marriage to a man named Padraic Leahy.
In 1985 Maura and Padraic also died during what the police described as a home invasion, but what Sam and Ash both agreed was likely to be way more than that.
The lore on banshees included several references to victims dying of self inflicted head trauma. A response to their piercing screams that compelled the unfortunate people to bash their own brains in, in a desperate attempt to make the sound stop. They also tended to go after people who were emotionally compromised. In Mrs. Durban's case it was the death of her son, whereas with Mr. Leahy, he was recovering from a nervous breakdown.
Neither Sam nor Ash thought it was a coincidence that Mrs. Leahy had lost both her mother and her husband to the same type of temporary mania of self harm.
The crime scene at the Leahys' home had obviously been covered up by an experienced hunter, although enough signs had been left behind that Ash could make an educated guess as to what really happened. Then, after uncovering the fact that the Leahys had an infant daughter who somehow wound up in the care of a woman that was almost assuredly a hunter, he was sure that his suspicions were true.
Recent records on Eileen Leahy showed her to be alive and well and living on a farm on the Dingle Penisula.
Sam knocked on Henry's door for the fourth time and was finally invited in. As usual, his grandfather was perched over his books and files, an air of intense concentration on his face. It's not that the older man was being rude by making his grandson wait. Sam understood completely what it was like to get deep into your work to the point that you more or less tune out the world around you.
Walking over to Henry's desk, Sam triumphantly placed the file in front of him with a huge smile on his face.
"I have something."
/
There was nothing like the sound of happy children in the air. One of those things that John had almost forgotten about, but something that had once brought him such joy in the early years when Dean was just a little guy and he and Mary would take their rambunctious toddler to the neighborhood park. Dean had loved the merry-go-round, breathlessly screaming faster Daddy faster as John spun the wheel for his boy who was gripping tightly to the rails while peals of laughter rang from his little mouth.
They'd even managed to take baby Sammy a couple of times that first summer when they still had hopes of being a normal little family. Already solicitous of his tiny brother's happiness and welfare, Dean would often run back to them from wherever he was playing just to check on the baby and make sure that Sammy was enjoying himself too.
Although John tried when he could, there hadn't been a lot of trips to the playground after Mary died.
So the sight of his firstborn on the shiny, spinning carousel, holding on tight to Ben as he rode the fierce looking tiger moving up and down on the pole, brought a huge smile to John's face.
He was sitting on a bench across from the carousel and eating a soft pretzel while Lisa took photo after photo of Dean and Ben. It was a nice June afternoon. Not too hot and not too humid yet, the dog days of summer still a few weeks off. The Indianapolis Zoo was crowded with families all enjoying the warm sunshine and pleasant breeze as they visited the animal exhibits and ate too much junk food and then got sick on the rides. Just a regular rite of passage for a family outing.
John had been inordinately pleased to be invited to join in the fun today. While he and Dean had traveled together to the hunt, after it was over he would have been fine to hole up in a hotel room for the day to update his journal while Dean spent a few hours with his girl and her son. By the way Dean spoke of them, it was clear that he'd become quite attached and although the idea of that scared John from a safety point of view, the proud father inside of him was pleased that his boy was showing signs of looking to a life in the future after their decades-long quest was done.
But then Dean had tentatively asked him to come along. Almost shy, but obviously hoping. John could see that this was a big deal to his boy and he was happy to be included because his love 'em and leave 'em son didn't seem to be leaving this time.
Contrary to what most people thought of him, there was nothing John wanted more than to get justice for his wife and then see both of his boys settle down to a normal life.
A peaceful life.
With a family and a permanent home and everything they deserved after losing so much.
As far as he was concerned, this was a big step in that direction for Dean. One John was happy to have him take in light of the fact that the end of the road of their quest seemed to be drawing nearer every day.
Contrary to telling his boy to steer far clear of any emotional attachments, like he had all of Dean's and Sam's lives, with Caleb working on the weapon that could end it once and for all, it was nice to see his firstborn exploring the option of something more than just the hunt.
He'd only spent a few hours with Lisa and her son, but John had already taken to both of them immediately, and no wonder considering what both his hunter and his parental instincts were telling him.
Putting her camera away for a few minutes, Lisa sat down on the bench next to him and took a sip of her freshly squeezed lemonade as she just watched both of their boys enjoying themselves on the carousel. She'd been nothing but polite and warm to John, a really sweet girl who easily welcomed someone who could routinely put people on their guard.
"They seem to be having a good time, don't they?" John smiled at her and she returned it, happiness lighting up her very pretty face.
"Yeah," she laughed, almost wistfully. "Ben adores Dean so much. Dean is always so good with him. I can't tell you how excited he was when I told him that you both were meeting us here for the day. He practically ran to the car before I could get him dressed."
John joined in the laughter, memories of the eagerness of his own boys rushing back at him. It had been so simple once to make his children happy. He didn't know when he'd forgotten how to do it as the years rolled by.
"The feeling is mutual." He jerked his chin in Dean's direction and they both looked to see the huge grin on his face and the clear signs of easy laughter as he chatted animatedly to Ben. "You don't often see him like that."
Lisa beamed and lifted her camera again to take another shot. She reminded John a lot of Mary who had been a terror with her Polaroid after the boys were born. He waited until she set the camera back down again before asking the question that had been on his mind since he first laid eyes on Ben.
"So when are you going to tell my son that he's a father?"
She stilled as she was about to reach for her lemonade again. Like a deer caught in the headlights, she needed a few seconds to get her composure back, and while she did, John continued now that he knew his suspicions were correct.
"I may not be the world's best dad," he admitted, "but like most parents, I've known every detail of my sons' faces since the day they were born. Every curve, every expression. Ben may have your coloring, but I know my son's face when I see it."
Lisa sighed deeply, unable to look him in the eye. Instead choosing to stare at the two on the carousel where Dean had just paid for another ride because Ben apparently wanted to try the lion this time. John could see the longing on her face, no doubt dreaming of the possibilities for her son if Dean was in the picture full time.
"When I know he's with us because he wants to be," she finally replied. "And not because he feels obligated to be. That kind of pressure never works out well."
"Is that really fair to Dean?" John asked, the need to defend his son's position in his own son's life paramount in his mind. "How can you expect him to make that kind of decision without having all the facts?
Lisa huffed a sad little laugh and then finally turned to him, a knowing look on her face.
"How can I make that kind of decision when he's clearly keeping something from me?"
Impressed by her skills of observation, John had no answer to that. Dean must have truly let down his guard for her to have even the faintest hint that he was more than he was sharing with her.
"My son is a lot of things," John said quietly after a few moments of silence between them. "But he's the best man I know. Better than me by far. Strong, kind, caring. You'll never find a better role model for Ben."
"I want to believe that," Lisa said as a tear slid down her cheek. "I mean, he's someone I never thought I'd see again, you know? I had no way to contact him to tell him about Ben. I never expected him to just show up on our doorstep. How do I know he won't leave again? I can't do that. Not to Ben."
John nodded sadly, the remorse of forcing his son into a life where one night stands were the norm for replacing a love life. Dean had been deprived of experiencing the kind of love his parents had shared with each other and that was so far from being fair for his steadfast son that John would never forgive himself.
"I understand that. I do," John assured her. "All I'm saying is that both Dean and Ben deserve the truth. Nothing good comes from keeping secrets like that. Trust me."
Lisa sniffled and then looked up to where Ben was cheerfully calling to her to watch him on the lion. Both her son and the man she was growing to love looked like they were having the time of their lives and it brought a genuine smile to her face.
"I'll think about it," she promised as she waved to them.
John would take that answer for the time being, but he truly hoped the day didn't come when he had to be the one to share the news with his son instead of it coming from Lisa herself. Because nothing was more important than family, and he had the resources now to ensure that his grandson knew his father.
It wasn't the road he wanted to go down, but he was nothing if not ruthless when he had an objective in mind. He'd failed Dean is so many other ways that he wasn't going to fail him in this when it mattered most of all.
/
Eileen could tell by the steam rising from the electric kettle that the water was ready.
Moving mechanically, because it was far too early to be awake and coherent, she shuffled across the kitchen and prepared her tea. The sun was just creeping up into the sky and really she should still be sleeping, but the nightmares weren't giving her a lot of respite lately.
It had been that way since Lillian's death five months ago.
As a caregiver, Lillian hadn't exactly been the mother-of-the-year type, decidedly more prone to dispensing lectures over affection, but her strong, steady presence had always at least given Eileen a sense of security, even if it hadn't been exactly nurturing.
There were times when Eileen wondered if she wouldn't have been better off just being a normal girl. Raised hopefully by a warm adoptive family in place of the cold, indifference of a hunter who'd lost the ability to love a child after her own was taken from her. But most of the time Eileen was at least grateful for the skills drilled into her that would mean she could someday exact revenge for her murdered parents.
She knew that she was lucky in a lot of ways that Lillian took her in instead of leaving her, deaf and helpless, in the care of the state where she may or may not have fared any better than she did with the hunter. Lillian made sure that she was fed and clothed. Educated for a while at a special school in Dublin where she learned the necessary skills to cope in a silent world. Eileen wasn't neglected or abused. In fact Lillian never laid a hand on her at all, whether in anger or in love, and they spent countless hours together as the older woman taught her everything she could about the supernatural.
Eileen's lawyer mother had been a meticulous woman who'd left behind a life insurance policy that ultimately paid for her daughter's special education for a few years, but when the money had run out, Lillian had unfortunately been forced to take Eileen out of school and back to her family's sheep farm on the Dingle Peninsula that was her home base between hunts.
For several years the little stone cottage on the windy bluff, set far away from the main farmhouse, was where Eileen had more or less grown up with her guardian.
It wasn't much. An ancient structure with a couple of common rooms, two small bedrooms and a bath. It had a stone slab step to the entry door that Lillian would sit on with her morning tea and watch the ocean waves roll beneath her. Sometimes Eileen would be allowed to join her, but usually the older woman liked her privacy and Eileen would sit at the tiny kitchen table and just watch through the window as the ever present wind blew on Lillian's sharp, angular face and through her fiery red hair, making her look dangerously ethereal.
The young girl had a salvaged photo of her parents, worn down over time by repeated viewings, and she often looked at the image of her red haired mother, with her beautiful smile and soft eyes and marveled about how different Maura Leahy was from the woman that was raising her daughter.
The relative privacy of the farm meant that Lillian could train her to be a hunter without a lot of prying eyes watching them. It was on these rolling green hills that Eileen learned how to fight and defend, utilizing her other senses to compensate for her deafness in a situation where her life would be on the line. As a very young girl she would often cry herself to sleep at night over the seemingly cruel methods and behavior that her guardian always employed with her, but as she grew up she began to understand that the job that Lillian did was incredibly dangerous.
Dangerous for someone with all their senses and years of training and certainly even more so for a young deaf girl.
Lillian never really treated her like a disabled child, which in some ways was hard, but in others worked to Eileen's advantage. She knew early on what had happened to her parents and who was responsible for their deaths. At a time when children should be getting read bedtime stories of mystical creatures, Eileen knew they existed and that most of them were not the wonderfully magical beings that the books made them out to be. It might have made for a cold life lesson, but Eileen was a practical young girl who decided that she'd prefer to know the truth than to live in ignorance.
Now Lillian was gone. A victim to cancer of all things when she'd spent the better part of her adult life hunting and fighting what most people would consider monsters. Eileen knew better. After months of watching her guardian suffer and shrivel away to nothing but skin and bones, it was clear that cancer was just as big of a monster as any supernatural creature.
More so, probably.
Because at least the creatures didn't usually torture their victims for months before finally sending them off to their deaths.
As the disease had progressed, Eileen had cared for the older woman as best as she could under the circumstances. Lillian was stubborn, absolutely refusing to be hospitalized. She knew a losing cause when she saw it and accepted her fate early on, unwilling to linger even one minute more than necessary when her lover and their daughter were waiting for her in the afterlife.
Sometimes, when she let her guard down, she would tell Eileen about Rory and Aiofe and it was clear by the devastation in her eyes that she'd never moved on after losing them.
Rory had been a freedom fighter who was killed in a skirmish in Belfast when Lillian was six months pregnant with their daughter. His death had rocked her, but she'd found the strength to keep going because of the life growing inside of her that needed her more than she needed to drown her sorrows in the bottom of a bottle. She'd given birth to Aiofe in the very cottage where Eileen would be raised and Lillian herself died, with a local midwife helping to bring her daughter into the world.
For the far too short few years of Aiofe's life, she was the very center of Lillian's universe and Eileen could see the love and happiness on her guardian's face as she remembered all the fun and laughter with her child.
But, like most hunters, Lillian had gotten into The Life for a reason.
A month after Aiofe's fifth birthday, Lillian had taken her on holiday to Lough Leane to visit Rory's mother Saoirse. She had a sweet little home right on the lake that Lillian had always felt was a safer place for her daughter who loved to play outside where there was no rolling tide that could sweep her away.
In the afternoons Lillian and Saoirse would sit in the shade of a large tree and drink a whisky in Rory's honor while Aiofe played along the lake shore with Rory's ancient terrier Clancy. On that one fateful day the two women, deep in their shared grief, didn't even realize what was happening until they heard Clancy's weak barks indicating distress instead of playfulness.
It was only then did they see the impossibly large otter looking creature feasting on what used to be Lillian's little girl.
Unsurprisingly, after witnessing something so inexplicably horrific, Saoirse had a massive stroke from the shock. She lingered for a few weeks before passing away and was never able to communicate what she saw to anyone who asked.
But Lillian, once she'd gotten through the unbearable ordeal of burying her only child, became determined to figure out exactly what had happened. It was the first, but not the last time she saw the lengths that the average person would go to in order to discount the inexplicable. The authorities' explanation of a rare puma attack being responsible for her little girl's gruesome death made sense to no one, but it didn't stop them from listing it as the official cause.
Lillian had seen the thing for herself for a brief moment before it vanished back into the water. It was no puma and the dismissive way her daughter's death was being treated enraged her. Not usually one to suffer fool's lightly, especially the ones who espoused the more mythical aspects of the Emerald Isle, Lillian found herself diving head first into legend and lore where she eventually learned about the Dobhar-chú. A large otter-ish creature that feasted on human flesh.
She knew immediately exactly what had taken her child away from her.
Killing the Dobhar-chú was her first hunt and from there she never stopped.
She also never loved anything or anyone again. Her heart irreparably broken after her losses.
Lillian's next large hunt actually hunted her first and it didn't really come as a surprise when she realized that she was being targeted by a banshee. She wasn't an ignorant woman by any means, and now firmly rooted in the hunting life, she had been studiously educating herself in all manner of monsters that she might have to encounter someday. With her grief so plainly on display it was only natural that a thing that preys on people who are emotionally broken in some way should find its way to her doorstep.
When it came, she was ready, and one gold knife to the heart later, it was gone.
That was the moment that she decided that banshees were the worst of the worst. Finding their victims in people who are already at their lowest. They were no better than emotional scavengers and it sickened her to think that other grieving parents might suffer even further if they were to lose their lives or their spouses when they'd already lost a child.
Lillian made it her business to be the one to track them down and end them before they could do further harm.
Sadly she was too late to save Mr. and Mrs. Leahy that night when the banshee she was tracking got to them first, but fortunately Mrs. Leahy had at least a rudimentary working knowledge of spell work that allowed her to banish the banshee before it took their little girl. Years later, Lillian would learn about Mrs. Leahy's father and his membership in what she told Eileen was a defunct organization of scholars on the supernatural. It was clear then where Maura had learned the spell.
And while Eileen may have lost her hearing during the attack, she lived. Like she had on so many previous occasions, Lillian cleaned up the mess and made it look like a garden variety break-in gone wrong before she called the Garda and considered her work there done when she returned to tracking the banshee once again.
Not one to get involved with any surviving victims, Lillian initially just planned to walk away from Eileen Leahy, because surely the baby girl had other family who would be anxious to take her in. But something was nagging the back of her mind, and on a hunch she checked with the Garda a week later and found out that there was no one to claim her. So, using some political connections of Rory's from years earlier, she managed to get herself named guardian of the little deaf orphan and became determined to raise her with the full knowledge of what had happened to her parents and to Aiofe and so many other innocent people.
She ultimately brought Eileen back to the family farm and gave her Aiofe's old room, even if she never found it in herself to give Eileen the love reserved solely for her long deceased daughter.
Now Eileen was seventeen and again alone in the world.
It could have been worse, she supposed. Lillian's brother Sean, the owner of the family farm who lived in the big house with his wife and his own kids, was civil to her if not overly kind. He'd made a promise to his only sister during her last days that Eileen would always have a home in the cottage, but Eileen knew him well enough to know that her presence there was merely tolerated and not particularly welcome. Sean wasn't mean to her in any way, but he didn't go out of his way to see or speak to her either.
She lived in the cottage for free and bought her necessities with the monthly government stipend provided to her because of her disability. It wasn't much but she didn't need much. Occasionally she would wash dishes at one of the pubs in town for some extra cash, driving there on the moped Lillian had bought second hand as a gift when Eileen turned sixteen, just before the cancer really took hold.
Sooner or later she knew she would be out hunting again as soon as she summoned up the courage to do it solo. There were people in the hunting community that she could have gone to for help, but she didn't.
After a lifetime of being taught to question everything and everyone she came across, it was safe to say that Eileen had trust issues.
Like Lillian used to do, Eileen took her tea outside to sit on the step and stare out across the rolling sea. There was a brisk fresh breeze on her face that was helping to wake her up. The usual scents of saltwater, sheep and grass wafting up from the hills around her. Out in the distance she saw a flock of seagulls riding lazily on the air. It was a peaceful way to start her day.
Twenty minutes later she was up and moving around. Rooting around the kitchen she came to the conclusion that she didn't have much on hand so she'd need to go into town and pick up some supplies. Besides, she probably had a little money waiting for her at the pub from her last shift and the cook Dierdre would be baking fresh rolls if she hurried. She could also stop by the post and check to see if the lore books she'd found online from an antique dealer had arrived yet.
The ride into town took about fifteen minutes more less, depending on whether or not the sheep had chosen that moment to block the road as they searched for the best grass for their morning meal. Since leaving school for good to care for Lillian, Eileen didn't spend a lot of time in town unless she was working.
She also didn't have any particularly close friends.
Her deafness tended to make people uneasy and she wasn't exactly the friendliest person herself considering who had raised her. Besides, she was very aware of the talk behind her back about who she was and how she was brought to live at the farm all those years ago.
Lillian had always been looked on as odd by the locals and her ward was treated no differently.
Not that it mattered to Eileen. Knowing what she did and years of doing what she did wasn't exactly conducive to a healthy teen girl social life.
At the pub she picked up thirty-three Euros and a small bag of warm rolls, one of which she nibbled on while she made her way to the post office. She ignored the stares of the less polite people and strolled along the sidewalk enjoying the sunshine on her face.
Sadly, her books hadn't arrived yet, but she did receive a mysterious letter stamped with a symbol she knew to be the Aquarian star.
Something she recognized immediately from the small box of things she'd inherited from her real mother.
/
"Dad, c'mon."
"No."
"I'm not a child anymore."
"Yeah, well, you're still my child and I said no."
"We'll be perfectly safe."
"I don't care Sam. I'm not letting you go."
"Let me go? How are you going to stop me?"
"Oh kiddo. Believe me. I can stop you."
"Oh really?"
"Yes, really."
"I'd like to see you.."
"Okay enough!" Dean yelled, throwing his hands up in the air and getting into between his father and brother.
Again.
"Enough, both of you. I'm sick of hearing it already."
Dean was exhausted. Truly he was. The hunt had been relatively easy from a technical point of view but there had been a lot of walking and then a lot of running in terror involved before the Black Dog went down. Followed by the fun filled day with a rambunctious toddler before the long drive back to the bunker.
He needed booze, food and sleep, and not necessarily in that order.
What he didn't need was his father and brother at each other's throats the minute they walked in the door.
On the other side of the room Henry was looking decidedly guilty, as well he should, considering this whole mess was his fault in the first place. Where he got the idea that he should jump on a damn plane of all things with Dean's little brother and fly across the ocean to meet an unknown hunter escaped Dean. He didn't particularly care that the hunter in question was a tiny, deaf girl.
Dean had seen plenty of lethal things that came in pint-sized over the years.
Contrary to popular belief, when it came to trained killers, size did not matter.
"I'm going with Henry," Sam snapped at his brother, his bitch face in full blossom. "This girl is the only legacy we've found alive. She has the same right to this place that we do."
"Henry can go on his own, Sam," Dean snapped back. "The man traveled through time. I think he can handle a couple of flights on Air Lingo."
"Aer Lingus."
"Whatever." Dean was simply done. "You don't need to go with him. Hell, you don't even know if she'll be willing to see you. Can't you just call?"
"Yeah," Sam snorted. "What part of 'she's deaf' did you not get, Dean?"
Dean glared. "Deaf people have phones, Sammy. Even I know that."
"Maybe," Sam conceded reluctantly, his forehead wrinkled in a scowl. "But Ash couldn't find a number for her. All he had was a post office box. Henry sent a letter by express mail yesterday but we thought it might just be easier to talk to her in person."
"I don't care what Henry thought," John interjected. "He can do what he wants, but you're staying here, Samuel. Some girl over in Ireland isn't going to be the reason you have demons on your ass where we can't get to you in a hurry."
Sam's face flushed with anger. He was getting pretty tired of his father and brother trying to run his life. Especially when neither of them knew how important this was to Henry, as well as to Sam.
"I'm going whether you like it or not, Dad."
With that he stalked out of the library and down the stairs towards his bedroom before he said something he would regret. John turned around to his own father and leveled a murderous glare in his direction.
"I hope you're happy."
Henry sighed and held out his hands in a placating gesture. "Son, I wouldn't let anything happen to Samuel. I'm not entirely unskilled, you know. There are many ways I can protect him."
"Yeah?" John sneered. "How? You can't take guns or blades on the plane. And I don't happen to have any weapons connections in Ireland, so unless you do?"
"Don't be such a hunter, John," Henry admonished. "Honestly, the gaps in your knowledge are my biggest shame."
It was absolutely the wrong thing to say. Henry knew it the minute the words came out of his mouth and by the darkening red color of his son's face, John knew it too. Off to Henry's side Dean's eyes went wide and he subtly shifted his stance to back his father up out of instinct. Not that Henry posed any threat, but the loyalty line was clearly drawn.
"Oh really?" John laughed incredulously. "The gaps in my knowledge? Not you abandoning us? Well, that's good to know, Pop."
"My deepest apologies, Son," Henry said quietly. "Of course that isn't true. You know I take full blame for everything."
John sneered and shook his head. The ice in his eyes cold enough to freeze anything in the room.
"Oh you do, huh? When my kid gets hurt because you decided to drag him off on a little adventure across the ocean where there's no back up to keep him safe, are you going to take full blame for that too?"
"You've made your position perfectly clear, John. I'm sure Samuel understands that he's not to go with me."
"Yeah," John shook his head, disgusted. "Because the son that took off for a year without a word is going to give a damn about what I want. So, thanks, Henry. You've only given him another reason to do exactly what I don't want him to."
With that John stalked off to his own office leaving both his father and son behind.
Henry sadly watched his son go before turning to Dean. "I don't think I handled that very well."
"Yeah," Dean snorted. "No kidding. What the hell, Henry? You know Dad didn't want Sammy going anywhere we haven't warded up to the teeth. Seriously. What the hell?"
"I know. I realize now that I should have consulted your father before I made the suggestion," Henry admitted sorrowfully before trying to explain himself to his annoyed grandson.
"But I was just so excited about finding a living legacy that I wasn't thinking straight. And then when we found out that Eileen was deaf and your brother had just taken a class in sign language, it seemed only prudent to bring him with me. As well as the fact that they are not that far apart in age. I just thought it all might go smoother if it came from her peer instead of a strange man."
He had a point. Even Dean had to admit that. But it didn't change anything as far as his desire to not have his little brother leave the safety of either of their homes to go wandering off to a foreign country where Dean couldn't protect him.
But Dad was right too. Sammy had a terrible need to dig his heels in when their father tried to prohibit him from doing something he felt strongly about. John's opposition to the idea was only going to make Sam's insistence on going stronger.
Shaking his head, Dean waved away the start of another explanation before Henry could finish forming the words. All he needed right now was a third bull headed Winchester to manage when he already had his hands overly full with his father and brother.
John was, predictably, simmering as he pretended to be engrossed in a lore book in his office when Dean walked in unannounced. Unlike Henry, who could be incredibly secretive about his research, John kept an open door for his kids. Years of reading with one eye while keeping the other one on his sometimes mischievous boys was a longtime habit.
"You here to plead your brother's case?"
His father didn't even bother to look up at Dean to see the answer to his question. They both knew that's exactly what Dean was going to try and do. He had longtime habits of his own.
"Is it any consolation to know that I don't like the idea either?"
That brought a small smile to John's face as he finally pushed the book aside to take in Dean's also worried expression. If there was one thing he could count on with his firstborn is that they were usually on the same page when it came to Sammy's safety.
"Maybe." John shook his head and rubbed a hand down his face. Fatigue over fighting with his youngest again overwhelming him.
"He's going to go whether either of us like it or not, Dad," Dean said as he shrugged. "Please don't push him away again. I can't..I can't go through it..."
"I know," John assured his worried son. "I can't either. My oblivious father doesn't get what we went through last year. Or he doesn't care. I can't decide which."
The two of them shared a couple of minutes of wordless conversation between them before John nodded and stood up to palm the back of Dean's neck.
"I'll take care of it, kiddo. I promise. You go get some sleep. You look dead on your feet."
Nodding, Dean gave his father an affectionate slap on the shoulder before heading out of the room and towards the bedrooms. A plan of action already formulating in his head.
/
Sam hadn't brought a lot of stuff with him from home when they came down to the bunker, but what he had he was packing when there was a short knock on his door. Assuming it was his brother coming in to try and strong arm him into giving up on his plans, he growled out a terse invitation. Fully intending on unloading on Dean with both barrels for never being on his side.
Instead, his father slowly entered and stood in the doorway for a moment before stalking over to him.
Muscle memory had Sam swallowing hard and his pulse racing before he remembered that he was no longer a child that had been sent to his room to wait for punishment after a fight with his father. Not that he'd ever really been scared of John, but the man just had a way of filling the room and intimidating people. Even his sons.
Especially his sons.
Pausing his movements as he folded a shirt for his go-bag, Sam squared his shoulders and looked his father in the eye, determined to hold his ground.
John took a deep breath, seemingly resigning himself to whatever it was that had his forehead wrinkled in thought, and then pulled out his wallet.
"I've called the company and told them that you'll be traveling in Europe for a few days," he said without preamble as he handed Sam a black credit card. "So you shouldn't have any trouble using this."
Sam took it and looked up in surprise when he saw that it was a Centurion card like the one Dean had, only this one was in Sam's name.
"Pastor Jim has a contact in Dublin," John continued, ignoring the incredulous look on his son's face as he was also handed a slip of paper. "You get into any kind of trouble, you call him, understand me?"
"Yes, sir."
Taking another deep breath, John reached out to grasp his son by both shoulders and held him firmly. "I don't like this, Sam. Not even a little bit. But if you're determined to go, you go safe. I want a call in the morning before you leave to go out and a call when you get back in for the night. I don't care what time it is here."
Sam's eyes softened as he took in the worried look on his father's face. He wasn't trying to be difficult. Really he wasn't, and the memory of everything Henry had said during that lecture a week earlier came flooding back.
"Yes, sir," he said quietly. "Thanks, Dad."
John shook his head and pulled Sam into a hug and held him close for a minute. Sam's body lost its rigid posture from earlier and he melted against his father's chest, happy that they weren't fighting again.
It seemed the older Sam got, the more he could see that his dad was just trying to do the best he could in a messed up world. As a parent, John had been forced to deal with much crazier things that the average father ever did, and Sam swore to himself that he was going to try harder to remember that once he was back from this trip.
The next morning, Sam and Henry were making their final preparations before they left the bunker. A courier from the shadow bankers had met John in Smith Center an hour ago with a package containing the emergency passports that they had arranged through their various connections. For all of their intimidation tactics, John appreciated having them in the wings when his family needed something and needed it fast.
Dean hadn't emerged from his room yet and Sam tried to hide the sadness he was feeling that he'd be taking off again with his brother upset with him. John could see that his younger son was upset, but he didn't say anything. Trying hard to keep the small smile off his face so he didn't spoil the surprise.
With a loud clomping of his steel toed boots, Dean suddenly appeared in the crow's nest, his go-bag slung over his shoulder and a scowl on his face.
"Alright, campers. Let's get this show on the road," he grumbled as he jerked his head in the direction of the wrought iron stairs.
Sam was staring at him like he'd suddenly grown a second head, making Dean roll his eyes, because sometimes his too-smart-for-his-own-good kid brother could be incredibly dumb.
"You didn't think you were going without me, did you?"