Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: Please see Chapter 1.

MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP

Chapter 13

Dean Winchester glared furiously at his brother as he jabbed a finger at the 'Regular size' Starbucks® coffee cup in the middle of his hospital bed's food tray. "What the hell is this supposed to be!"

True to Dr Field's word, Dean had been able to start physiotherapy the next day, and it had been unpleasant for all concerned. Despite the good healing progress of his injuries, the fact remained that Dean had been bedridden for nearly two weeks and had ingested only minimal nutrition in that time. In short, he'd been as weak as a day-old kitten, managing less than five minutes standing on his feet and he was so exhausted at the end of the first day that he'd had had to accept the convene/catheter apparatus again because he was too tired for his body to awake him from sleep should he need to use a toilet during the night.

His weakness had been a bad shock to him, even though in true Dean-style he had utterly ignored it; the physiotherapist, a healthy, buff California Surf Dude type named 'Mac' (whether first or last unknown) had not allowed him to continue when Dean kept trying to push it. Mac had told Sam and John that his patients tended to fall into two categories – the defeatist 'I'm never going to get any better' group who had to be pushed and pushed along to make the effort - and the in-serious-denial 'I don't have time for this' types who were so locked into damage control that they tried to force their bodies to react 'properly' within the first two minutes. Since Dean had never backed down from a fight in his life, there was no prize for guessing which group he came into.

After one frustrated outburst at 'Mac' in the Rehab Therapy clinic that Dean secretly knew made him come off like a toddler having a temper tantrum (and which had brought an ominous frown to his father's face like he was seriously considering taking his shoe or his belt to a certain son's butt), Sam had defused the situation by telling Dean – deliberately using the sickly sweet tone and baby-talk of a grown-up addressing a whining three-year-old – that if he was a good little boy and did all his exercises, Sam would persuade nice Nurse Castle to relax the 'no caffeine' rule that was driving Dean crazy; he had only two…not addictions, Dean Winchester didn't need anything ever…but a guy could never have too much caffeine or painkillers on hand…the latter craving wasn't a problem around here, but he needed his pure black Blue Mountain double-cold-pressed fresh-ground super-caffeinated pick-me-up.

Dean had known perfectly well that Sam was deliberately aggravating and tormenting him for the simple reason that an angry mind exists only for itself. As long as Dean was concentrating on getting back into shape so he could beat the crap out of Sam, he wasn't slipping into depression and futile worrying over whether his injuries were more serious or disabling than the doctors were admitting, and so on.

But Sam had promised him coffee not this…this…

"It's a latte," Sam said as if explaining TV to a remote jungle tribesman, taking a sip of his own Super-sized double mocha.

"You promised me coffee!" Dean practically howled the word in anguish.

"It is coffee."

"It's hot milk with flavouring!" yelled Dean in outrage. "I'm not friggin' four!"

"Then stop acting like it!" Sam shot back.

Dean ground his teeth and wished he dared simply throw the thing at his so-dead-as-soon-as-I-can-catch-him brother. However, not only would it be grossly insulting and unfair to Ruth Castle and the staff who had to clean up the mess (and nothing gave you that lingering unpleasant stench of decaying organic matter like milk) but such a spiteful, childishly vindictive display would have had John Winchester hauling him up out the bed and laying a belt across his backside, injuries or no injuries.

"Oh well, if that's how you feel…" Sam sighed exaggeratedly and moved as if to remove the cup, not hiding his grin as Dean bared his teeth at him and curled one hand round the cup defensively…at this point, he'd take what he could get.

An odd noise intruded into their battle of wills, a strange sound, almost rusty like a long unused gate suddenly opened. Dean and Sam turned their heads; seated in the chair by the window, watching the byplay between his sons, John Winchester was chuckling softly. Both younger men were rendered speechless by the sight; their father's two default expressions were either sadness or anger, it had been years – literally – since either could remember him genuinely smiling.

"Do you remember 13th June 1997?" John asked them as he took in their gaping guppy-faces. "It was 3:20pm in the afternoon."

Dean and Sam exchanged mutually questioning glances but came up blank. People who could instantly recall their movements on a particularly day 'six weeks in the past' or on a specified past date remained strictly the purview of TV cop shows and murder-mysteries like Diagnosis Murder, Perry Mason, Columbo, Monk and so forth. In real life people could no more reel off what they were doing six months ago last Thursday than they could sprout wings and fly.

John grinned at their consternation, "We were camping up in the backwoods…of New Hampshire as it happened…" still nothing…"Sam realised he was six feet tall."

Ah. Memory came flooding back and Sam actually laughed at their father's words even as Dean growled. Now he remembered. In June 1997 he'd been a month away from turning fifteen, an eagerly awaited birthday as Dean had been nineteen since that March. They hadn't even had enough money for a night in the sleaziest pay-by-the-minute motel/brothel, so they'd been camping out in the backwoods, keeping out of sight of main roads and officious sheriffs and state troopers eager to wield their minor authority by moving on the vagrants.

Dad had gone into the woods to get some rabbits or woodcocks for the evening stew while Dean and Sam had been securing their battered old veteran of a tent (a holdover from John's time in the Marine Corps), collecting firewood and preparing the foodstuffs they'd collected that morning – some mushrooms, sweet potatoes, Bilberries and Loganberries with a few strips of willow bark for 'roughage'. Also of course, willow bark was the 'active ingredient' in aspirin, but cost 99.9 less than what you plucked off the supermarket shelf in the pretty packaging.

The Winchesters had eaten stranger concoctions. In fact, spending their lives travelling around the continental United States, raiding orchards, barns and poultry coops, working on Indian Reservations and foraging for whatever fauna and flora they could in America's deep forests and rivers and ocean sandbanks, meant that their diet had probably been vastly healthier and more nutritious than that of the average white American. Their food had not been pumped full of antibiotics and pesticides and growth promoters and preservatives nor bulked with flavourings and emulsifiers and artificial sugars. Nor had the two boys ever been really, deeply, gnawingly hungry, despite the odd missed meal, even when there had been no money. To people used to hunting things seven-feet tall with six-inch razor talons and a mouth like Jaws, bagging a deer, snaring hares and freshwater salmon and wood pigeons wasn't exactly the ultimate challenge of Man versus Beast.

Sam couldn't even remember what he'd been fiddling with when he happened to glance over towards Dean and he suddenly realised that he was in fact an inch taller than his brother. For a moment the shock had frozen him immobile and then with a gleeful whoop he had launched himself full at Dean. Knocked back on his ass with all the air forced out of his lungs by the impact of a hefty teenager colliding with him at speed, it had thus been the work of an instant for Sam to straddle his gasping sibling and use his (slightly) greater reach to pin Dean's arms as he crowed in delight about his height advantage.

Victory had only lasted a fleeting second until Dean got his breath back and unceremoniously heaved Sam off of him to deliver some payback, but that had not been the point, the point had been taller. No matter how unmercifully Dean had tickled the screeching Sam, that inch of height was there to stay. The two boys' roughhousing had come to an end when they looked around and found Dad, who had come back unnoticed, standing there watching them with an almost unique expression – a broad grin that had made him look, fleetingly, like the ordinary, average man-in-the-street John Winchester of Lawrence, Kansas, before Evil had made the mistake of killing his beloved and adored wife.

Chapter 14

That night had been one the best Sam had ever spent – a sort of silent camaraderie had enveloped the camp fire and John Winchester and his two children became, subtly, the 'Winchester men' instead. Dad had almost apologetically suggested that Dean took after the Winchester side – the Winchesters were shorter, but built for stamina and strength; Mary's side had been the 'gazelle guys', taller, leaner, built for speed.

Since Dean had been the same height at nineteen as he'd reached at fifteen, the truth of this surmise had been more or less already proven then. He was also and still remained, physically stronger than Sam. Sam had obsessively measured his height and each new inch resulted in a sparring match with Dean, who always won the wrestling match after recovering from the initial sneaky pounce-and-pin attempt by his tenacious brother.

Now Sam grinned even more broadly as he looked at Dean in the hospital bed, his brother, almost uniquely, glaring at Dad who was still chuckling. His finest hour had come when he was fifteen and 2.7 inches taller than Dean. The two boys had been at some Country Goose Fair, mainly because the otherwise suspicious-of-strangers rural folk couldn't exercise this normal trait at such a large gathering and they could score plentiful quantities of free food. Sam had soon found himself making some seriously significant eye contact with a pretty brunette of a similar age, one of those milk-skinned, corn-fed buxom types reared on a diet of wholesome country air who would pop out 15 kids like shelling peas and still live to be 190 or something.

He could still remember the sheer terrifying glee of strolling up to where Dean was awaiting his turn at the rifle range, with his arm through that of Miss Country Fair and expansively introducing her to, '…and this is my little brother, Dean.' The nuances had completely gone over her head and she had automatically assumed Sam to be speaking in a genealogical rather than literal context. Sam's finishing touch to his 'let's thump the starving grizzly in the face' game had been to reach out and playfully ruffle Dean's hair.

After that, Sam had made sure to spend the next couple of hours as Limpet Boy to Miss Country Fair. The good manners and social courtesies that John Winchester had rigorously instilled into both his sons with more than words constrained Dean's retaliation to the point where he could only seethe silently as he stalked his brother and tried to make it appear he wasn't doing so.

Already having second thoughts about the wisdom of goading the moody tiger that was his brother, Sam was ready for him and the instant he successfully offloaded Miss Country Fair into the waiting arms of her equally buxom corn-fed mama and sisters, he had taken to his heels, with Dean hot on his. Only when both were gasping and panting had he stopped long enough for Dean to catch him, and for several moments they had simply stood in the middle of some hilly meadow in Nowhere, Illinois, bracing their arms on their upper legs like marathon runners as they recuperated, their breath white puffs in the surprisingly chilly summer night air.

Finally Sam had reached out and hooked an arm round Dean's neck, taking a step closer. You're the best big brother in the world…corny but it had worked, because it had also been whispered with unmistakeable sincerity. Dean had growled low in his throat, like papa lion still undecided as to whether he was going to swat the cub, but after a moment had reached his arm around Sam's waist and returned the loose embrace. For a few minutes they had simply stood in silence, mutually sheltering in the warmth of the human contact, before Dean had pulled away and called him a jerk - in the gentlest and most tender tone.

It had been one of the last good memories of Sam's teenage years. Miss Country Fair and the whole deal had refuelled Sam's ever-smouldering desire for a 'normal', settled life, but his growing maturity had made him realise that he was in essence holding Dean back from the childhood and youth that Dean had never been able to have because he had always been responsible for Sam's safety, his welfare, his wellbeing. Without Sam in the picture, Dean would finally be able to actually live a little, instead of spending his nights at twenty like a forty-year-old basic-wage factory worker with a wife, 6 kids, and arrears on the mortgage.

Now he offered, "Look, I'll go and see Ruth Castle and see if we can your dinner bumped up to something a bit more substantial than broth and a roll, huh?"

"Steak pie and fries…" Dean's eyes lit up, ready to – almost – forgive Sam the latte for real man's food.

"Chicken salad," Sam countered firmly as he left the room, ignoring the way Dean blobbed his tongue out at him.

For a moment after the door swung shut behind him John remained immersed in the memories, until Dean spoke very softly.

"Will you tell me why it killed Jessica?"

John's eyes flew to his son's face in shock at the question. Dean regarded him sombrely and unflinchingly. Will you tell me…always the good son, always the obedient son; acknowledgement of his father's knowledge, but the question phrased in such a way as to submissively accept a negative reply – even when he had considerable right to demand an explanation, having far more than earned one in his short but grim life.

As John continued to stare at him Dean raised his right hand and brushed his first and second fingertips against the silver charm of his necklace in a nervous, autonomic gesture, an unconscious desire for reassurance. The reflex action made John Winchester's heart clench hard within his chest. He was achingly familiar with that charm, and knew that nothing this side of hell would make Dean voluntarily remove it under any circumstances.

Most small children were content with Velcro-strip fastening sneakers. But Dean wore lace-ups, so three-year-old Sammy flatly refused to wear anything other than lace ups, even though he couldn't lace up. Having spent Sam's babyhood dealing with Dean – the perfect child whose response to any direction was silent, unquestioning and above all unhesitating obedience – John had been unprepared for the obstinacy of the toddler who could barely walk and who had only just learned to talk.

If Sam wouldn't wear Velcro sneakers, he could go barefoot until he learned his lesson. Even at this moment of taut tension, part of John's mind wryly mused that in hindsight, he should have recognised that first butting of heads as the shape of things to come. But despite sharp gravel or too hot blacktop or wet grass that had irritated his baby feet, Sam's only response was to grit his milk teeth, jut out his lower lip and stubbornly refuse to back down in the silent war of wills between him and daddy.

It had been Dean who had brought peace, again the first instance of a pattern that remained to this day – ever the buffer and bridge between his father and his brother. From some trash heap Dean had found a battered old Army boot and a length of leather string, which he had given to Sam so he could practice his knots…whilst persuading the toddler to wear the Velcro sneakers in the meantime. John, consumed entirely by his obsession to the virtual exclusion of all peripherals at that point, had barely noticed his baby son's – apparent – capitulation, nor appreciated the nights of peaceful silence as Sam sat with the boot in front of him, laboriously but determinedly practising lacing the boot.

Eventually, he'd succeeded, and the next time they'd had money for clothing, Dean had quietly picked a pair of lace-ups off the shelf in Sam's size. The boot was long since a memory...but one night Sam had picked up Dean's precious silver charm and carefully threaded the leather string through it. Toddling over to Dean he had imperiously clambered up on the startled boy's lap and put the leather around his neck. Dean had bent his head docilely, remaining patiently unmoving while Sam laboriously tied the leather string into a small knot at his nape, the little face deeply scowling with the effort and his tiny pink tongue sticking out comically from between his lips slightly as he concentrated.

And Dean had never taken the necklace off of his own volition since - shower, sleep, sickness…the necklace remained around his neck, and remained the visible, though subtle, symbol of Sam's dominance over his older brother. But on that night, as he watched the three-year-old tying that knot, John Winchester had finally recalled Missouri Moseley's tart advice along with the explanations she had provided about what was really out there, in the dark. Things that had been overlooked or meaningless at the time coalesced before his Mind's Eye. He had been so scared for his baby boy and yet as he'd watched the scene he had finally realised how that terror and anxiety had made him overlook the danger to his never-troubling obedient son, the great threat to Dean

Sam.

Continued in Chapter 15…

© 2006, Catherine D Stewart