Under a Haystack
By EB
©2006
3. Old Father Baldpate
That afternoon, sequestered in their room, Dean practices with the throwing knives.
It's creepy, watching a little kid handle a razor-sharp knife as competently as he does. Sam's supposed to be doing research – boning up on killing ghuls, along with, oh yeah, by the way, figuring out a way to break the curse currently affecting his previously older brother – but instead he's studying Dean, watching him whisper near-inaudible admonishments to himself.
"See it go in," Dean murmurs, eyes closed. "That's what he said."
There's a chalked circle on the motel-room door, and Sam draws a breath to tell Dean that defacing motel property will be expensive and therefore a no-way-Jose, and blinks when the knife thuds home. Not the absolute center of the circle, but inside, and it's a solid hit, more solid than he'd have thought a seven-year-old could do.
"Dean?" Sam asks.
Dean looks at him, already hefting the second knife in his hand.
"You don't have to do that. Dad's not here."
Dean gives him a lofty, disinterested look, and goes back to not-staring at the door target. "I'll find him," he says. This time the knife hits almost dead center.
Sam pushes the laptop aside and stands. "Wow," he says slowly. "You're pretty good at that."
Dean retrieves the knives and rubs his fingers over the divots in the fake wood. He doesn't reply.
"What else can you do?"
Dean shrugs as he walks back to stand by the dresser. "Lots of stuff. Dad says I need to practice more."
"What kinds of stuff, Dean? Here, give me those." He takes the knives, and endures Dean's offended scowl, sitting on the edge of the bed. "What about school?"
Dean's full mouth draws into a familiar frown. "School's boring," he says. "It's not the important stuff."
"School's not boring. School's important, too."
"It won't help," Dean tells him indifferently.
Sam swallows and says, "Come over here."
Dean sits where he's told, his face still studiously blank, and Sam reaches out to turn the laptop to face them. "Here. Read this."
Dean glances at the laptop and frowns. "What's that?"
"It's a computer. A portable computer."
"There's no such thing. Dad said –"
"Don't think about what Dad says. Just for a second, okay? Just read it to me."
Dean squints at the screen, and then looks at him. "That's boring, too."
"I can't put you in school right now. So think of it as – homeschooling, okay? Wait, most kids in 1986 didn't -- Never mind. Just read it, Dean."
Dean's eyes narrow. "You're not my dad," he says. "You can't tell me what to do."
Sam nods, and says, "That's right, I'm not Dad. But right now I am your older brother. And that means I get to say, right? I'm in charge."
"I don't got an older brother," Dean whispers.
"I don't HAVE an older brother, and right now, you do. I'm Sammy, and I'm older than you are, and I want you to read that to me. Can you read?"
"Course I can read. I'm not a baby."
"Then read me that. Out loud, please."
Dean's face has gone a dull pink, and he looks back at the screen with a flicker of dread, colored with shame. That's when Sam knows Dean hasn't learned to read yet. He's seven, and seven-year-olds should be reading, but Dean's gazing at the laptop like Sam's told him to translate a wall of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Anger boils up in him like lava. THIS is Dean's childhood. Priorities that have nothing to do with him, that have everything to do with John Winchester's quixotic demon quest, screw a little kid's education, social skills, anything but what's needed to hunt, to kill. Does Dad even know – did he know – that Dean doesn't know how to read yet? What about math?
"I can do it," Dean says, sounding shakily defiant. "I can."
Sam blinks, and pushes at his rage, a familiar feeling of packing a suitcase, zipping it up over too many things he can't say aloud. "That one's kinda complicated, anyway," he mutters, nodding. "I'm not sure I could pronounce all those words very well, either. It's okay, buddy."
"Daddy says –"
"Dean, right now I don't want to hear about what Dad says," Sam interrupts, launching himself to his feet and pacing over to the other side of the room. "Okay? Just -- Let's leave Dad out of it for a while."
"You're mean," Dean says. "You're not Sammy."
He wants to snap at him: No, I'm not Sammy, I'm SAM, stop calling me by that stupid nickname, and would you just shut up and leave me alone for two minutes, is it too much to ask? Except that's too close to what Dad would say, isn't it? He's all for leaving Dad out when he wants to but when it comes down to it, he's doing the same goddamn things.
Sam draws a deep breath and comes back over. Dean's looking at him with wall-eyed uncertainty, doesn't smile when Sam does. "Hey, sorry," Sam says gruffly. "Look, let's go grab some dinner, okay? I want to be back before sundown."
"Not hungry," Dean says, dropping his eyes to stare at his lap.
"Liar. You're always hungry."
Dean shrugs.
"Okay, come on."
He's made some kind of critical error, because the tenuous trust established yesterday has mostly disappeared. Dean's silent, uncooperative, and just pokes his food with his fork, doesn't eat much. Sam's feeble attempts to draw him out over the dinner table are met with the return of the lizard stare, but now Sam sees through that, knows Dean is pining for his father, for the life that's familiar, and there is nothing he can do to restore that, even if he wanted to. He isn't sure he does. The anger is still there, banked like good coals but ready to flare up again when he lets it, and he can't stop thinking about all the things he never knew, never saw, because he was too young to know what it was. It had never been Dad who encouraged his studies; always Dean. Dean, who went over homework with him, Dean who when he didn't know, either, consulted dictionaries and notes over his shoulder until they both got it. Hell, Dean was sometimes the only one who saw Sam's report cards, read his letters from teachers or whatever. Dad was too damn busy, and when he wasn't, he was too distracted, and sometimes he wasn't either one, but drunk or getting there, and Sam wonders now just who Dean was, anyway, his brother or his goddamn REAL father after all.
But there had been no one to play that role for Dean himself, and it shows now, shows in Dean's reluctance to trust, in his reliance on himself even at this absurdly young age. Sam has no doubt that Dean could probably do okay in a lot of respects if Sam – grown-up Sam – weren't here at all. He'd remember to brush his teeth, bathe, clean his goddamn weapons. For Dean, childhood is a matter of height and outside perception, not fact; for Dean, childhood is pretty much over already, and that makes it hard for Sam to eat, too, his overdone fish sticking in his throat like a wad of wet newspaper.
"I gotta do some things tonight," he says, after swigging half a glass of water to push the swallow down.
Dean looks alert suddenly, fork sagging in his grip. "Are we hunting?"
Sam regards him soberly. "I'm going hunting," he says carefully. "You're staying in the room."
Dean's mouth turns down. "I can help. Dad lets me help. I'm good at it."
"I know you are. And maybe you can help me next time. But not this one, Dean. I mean it. This one's different."
Dean stares at him, the distant façade vanished. "Is it – that one? The one that made Mommy catch on fire?"
"No." Sam pushes his plate away with something like revulsion. "No, not that one. But this one -- It hurts people, Dean, especially little kids. I need to know you're safe, so I can do what I need to do."
"I can take care of myself."
"Okay. And I'm gonna trust you to do that, okay? But you're staying at the motel." He nods, more to himself than Dean, who is glaring at him anyway like he wants to argue some more. "Come on, I need to make a stop on the way back."
He buys books at the local Barnes and Noble, the most basic ones he can. Primers, really. The Rosetta Stones for Dean's impaired learning. Dean wanders around the children's section, and when Sam comes over to get him he sees Dean watching the group of children sitting listening to a woman reading aloud, something about a china rabbit named Edward. Dean's face is a study in silent conflict, and while Sam watches Dean presses his lips together, then creeps forward, sitting Indian-style on the edge of the carpet, outside the circle but close enough to listen.
They need to get going. But Sam doesn't have the heart. He stands motionless, arms full of books that aren't very entertaining but quite educational, while Dean listens to the woman read the story, edges a little closer until he's almost inside the group of children. All of the too-adult look has gone from Dean's face: he's rapt, caught by the story and the knowledge of other kids like him around him, strangers but not, and he blends. He really blends, he's a child listening to a story, that's all.
The woman finishes, the other children start clapping, and Dean scrambles to his feet, his eyes wide as if he's realized he's done something wrong. There's worry in his eyes when he reaches Sam's side, only relaxing when Sam smiles down at him, touches his bright hair.
"Good story?"
Dean hesitates, then nods. "Do we have to go?"
"Yeah. Hey, give me a minute."
He catches the woman as she's talking with a parent, shuffles his feet awkwardly and meets her smile. "What book was that?" Sam asks.
"The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane." The woman cocks her head slightly. "Kate Dicamillo is a marvelous writer, isn't she? Newbery Medal winner." She looks at Dean, who's standing uncertainly waiting. "Might be a little old for him, though."
Sam spots the stack of books nearby. "He's precocious." He adds the book to his stack, and gives the woman another fast grin before heading to collect Dean.
The missing boy hasn't been found yet. If asked, Sam could have told the authorities there would be very little, if anything, to find by this point anyway. Ghuls eat everything. That little boy – and Sam feels his stomach clench every time he says it in his mind – is long gone, permanently, and there will be another child victim tonight if he doesn't succeed in stopping it.
So at sunset he puts together his version of the mutant Winchester Care Package, and keeps himself from recoiling while Dean silently assists him. Checking what he can, the seal on the holy water Sam will almost certainly not need, the ammo cartridges he will definitely need, coiling the rope into a neat circle while Sam hunts for the firestarters. Dean is silent and efficient; he's done this much more than once, and Sam is grateful and stricken with sharp, awful yearning for his older brother.
He zips the bag. "Good work," he tells Dean, who nods gravely. "Now listen." Sam sits on the edge of the bed. "You know the drill. You stay here. No matter what. No matter what you hear, or see, or think you see or hear. Right?"
"But what if you need me?" Dean says.
"I'll be fine. Trust me. Nothing's gonna happen, it's all under control." He smiles, and hopes he doesn't sound too much like a liar. He has never, ever done this by himself. Never without the safety net, somewhere, of Dean, or their father, or both. He feels like the world's biggest impostor, in front of a really tough crowd of one.
"When everything's okay again, I'll be back. Won't take that long."
"Promise me," Dean whispers.
"Promise what?"
"You'll come back."
Sam swallows. "I promise, Dean. Okay?"
"Pinky swear?"
Sam smiles and pinky swears. "Lock the deadbolt," he says, slinging the bag over his shoulder and touching the doorknob. "And when I come back, I'll say – uh – it's Edward. Like the rabbit in the book. How's that?"
"Dad just says, Let me in, Dean."
That makes Sam laugh. "Okay, but this way we'll have our own code. That's what brothers do, right? You have code words with Sammy, right?"
"Yeah," Dean says doubtfully.
"Okay. So this way, if I ever say, It's Sam, let me in, you'll know NOT to. Just in case."
"O-kay."
"So Edward gets me in the room, and Sam doesn't. Got it?"
Dean nods vigorously.
Sam pauses. "And don't touch the guns. Okay?"
"Dad let me –"
"Don't care what Dad did. This is Sam's rules now."
Dean gives a tiny twitch of his lips, almost a smile. "You mean Edward, right?"
"Right," Sam agrees, smiling slowly. "Edward it is."
"Come back," Dean says.
"I will."
He turns the knob, and the door flies inward, a waft of putrid air smacking him in the face before the impact sends him sprawling back. Sam thinks distantly, Well, no need for secret passwords and pinky swears this time, and the ghul snarls and flattens him with one clawed foot.