Turning Points - 10
Disclaimer: Nothing 'Supernatural' belongs to me. I've just borrowed and not for profit.
Summary: A series of snapshots about turning points in the lives of the Winchesters
Author's Note: This is the tenth in a series of snapshots of the Winchesters – A look at some of John's experiences.
Please review.
As John seemed to turn out quite bad in the last few chapters, I decided it was time to re-write some of those events from John's point of view, to give an insight into his motivation and the bits that Sam missed out on (teenagers often misread parents – perhaps John wasn't quite as bad as it seemed in the last chapter, plus Sam didn't hear the entire conversation between Dean and John). Now some of you will know more about John than I do, as I have only seen as far as 'Shadow', so I don't know what happens with John and what sort of person he turns out to be (so forgive me if I'm wide of the mark). If it's really bad let me know and I'll remove this chapter.
Turning Points – John
He'd been wrong; he knew that now, could admit it now but only to himself and that didn't help. It just made him feel more guilty and that didn't do any good. He had once heard Dean say to Sam that guilt was useless and would get you nowhere and action speaks louder than words. He couldn't remember what they'd actually been talking about before and after but those words had stuck with him. Dean was remarkably perceptive at times, more so than his father that was for sure.
He regretted it, most of it anyway but it was too late to change it. You can't go back. So even if he admitted to the boys what he'd done, it wasn't going to change what he'd done and what had happened. He would just be seeking out some level of forgiveness – something he no longer believed he deserved. The chances to change their paths had been there and he'd ignored them, forcing the boys down this one road, hellish as it was.
He had loved his boys, still did with what little was left of his soul, his beautiful baby boys and now they were grown, handsome, strong, righteous and broken. And the only part he could really lay claim to was the broken. The rest they had done for themselves, for each other and for the memory of their mother.
It had started the night Mary died. He knew that all along he and Mary had told Dean he had to be a great big brother and look out for Sammy, taking care of him but that night when he had wanted to run screaming into the flames to join Mary, but instead had sat outside watching in desolation knowing he couldn't leave the boys, she wouldn't let him, he broke Dean for the first time. He hadn't known what else to do because he knew he himself had been broken and he was hoping that somehow, maybe, just maybe, Dean would be able to fill the gap for Sammy. It was wrong, he should have let Dean cry and be the little boy he still was, instead he told him he had to be strong and look out for his brother and he had reminded him of the promise he made to his mom the day Sammy was born.
From there on in, he had broken the pieces smaller and smaller, he had taken years to do it because Dean was remarkably resilient but he'd been a persistent son of a bitch and he was a firm believer that he had finally done it. He thinks it's amazing that Dean lasted so long but that's probably down to the first break or maybe the promise he's not really sure, because they're almost the same thing. Dean is strong for Sam that fact is undeniable, absolutely incontrovertible, while Sammy was there, there was nothing that Dean wouldn't do or withstand or fight so long as he could protect Sam.
He'd carried on chipping away throughout Dean's childhood, except Dean hadn't had a childhood really. He'd dragged him round the country, place to place, motel to motel, hunt to hunt, never letting him settle anywhere, never letting him make lasting friendships, never letting him see what it really meant to be normal, how normal people lived, never letting other adults into their little world in case they really saw what he was doing. School to school, hovel to hovel, heaping more and more responsibility onto his shoulders, 'Look after Sammy for an hour, Dean.' 'Look after Sammy for the afternoon, Dean and get some dinner in.' 'Take Sammy with you to the Laundromat. Dean.' 'We need some shopping getting from the store on your way home from school and don't forget to pick up your brother.'
He'd nearly stopped when he got back from that werewolf hunt. He still remembered walking in the house and seeing Dean there when he should have been at school. His first reaction not what it should have been 'What exactly are you doing at home, young man? I've told you before, there's to be no skipping school when I'm not here. It's a bad example to set to Sammy and I won't have it.' Not 'What's the matter, Dean, what are you doing at home?' Not 'Are you okay, sport?' but an accusation of skiving, a declaration of 'I don't trust you to do the right thing, Dean' but just phrased in different terms. Then the discovery, Sammy in bed with a bout of measles, and a cold-ridden Dean exhausted from three days of non-stop care for his brother. He'd made a silent promise to the boys that day that he would pay more attention, see the warning signs, believe them when they said they were ill but unlike the promise Dean had made when Sam was born, he'd broken it time and again, each time breaking his boys a little more, but they hadn't known about that promise. Dean had still believed promises couldn't be broken and it had kept him strong. His promise was like a shield protecting both himself and his brother.
John wondered if that was when he broke Sammy for the first time or if maybe he'd done it earlier. It was harder to know with Sammy. Thinking back, he couldn't really remember a time when Sam had not wanted to be with Dean. When he was ill or tired, he had always wanted Dean by him, and as soon as Dean had been able to read, it was Dean who told him bedtime stories. It was Dean's food he wanted, Dean's time he wanted. At some point, he became his brother's shadow.
Somewhere along the line that had changed, John was sure that now although they still acted as though Dean led the way and made the decisions, that somehow Sam was the one who was still solid and that Dean was the shadow. They were no longer two people, that much was for sure, they had become one unit, only able to function when they knew where the other was. He just wondered what would happen when they couldn't be together anymore, because the time was coming, he could see it in Sam's eyes. He wondered if Dean knew and what he would do. Would he lose them both?
He knew Sammy had never liked the fighting, the guns and knives and practise. He knew he had done well at it to please Dean, to be like Dean, his hero. All the things he had wanted to be for his boys when they were first born, their own home-grown hero he had failed to be but Dean had somehow managed to do and be them for Sam.
And Dean… had he liked the fighting, the weapons, the hunt…? No, in honesty, John knew he hadn't the fact that Dean believed he did like it now was testament to Dean's dedication and loyalty to his undeserving father and John's tenacious denial of any other options. At first convincing him had been easy. All it took was 'If you do this, you'll find it easier to protect Sammy.' Deceit. If John had chosen to protect his boys, instead of seeking vengeance, Dean wouldn't have needed to protect Sam in the way he did.
Dragging Dean into the hunt had nearly killed him. John still had nightmares about the first time he had taken Dean with him to hunt down a poltergeist. He had not prepared his son well enough for the situation, he hadn't been old enough at barely 13 but John had bullied him into it. He had accused him of cowardice before they had left, when if he had truly listened to him, he would have heard the spoken and the unspoken messages Dean had been giving. The spoken message was a genuine concern that Sammy shouldn't be left alone in the car, even though he at the same age had been not only left in the car, but left at the motel and any other place John saw fit and looking after his brother, but they both agreed on one thing Sammy was different to Dean, they just didn't agree on how to deal with it. The unspoken message, clear in his body language, the amount of times he had cleaned his weapons and checked that Sammy had everything he needed, was screaming to be heard 'Dad, I don't feel ready, I'm afraid of what is going to happen, I don't want to do this.' Ignoring the messages; you would think that one experience like that would have been enough to teach a man of John Winchester's intelligence that listening and heeding his sons was something he needed to do but no, some things he had just refused to learn.
In truth, he wasn't sure whether it had damaged his relationship with Dean more or whether in actual fact it was Sam who had been ultimately more broken by the experience. He remembered dragging Dean back to the car, the blood, his baby boy's blood, oozing, seeping, covering his hands, Dean's t-shirt, slipping down Dean's face, his boy getting weaker moment by moment. He remembered covering the worst of the wounds as he left him in the back of the car in his brother's arms. He drove recklessly, eyes barely on the road; more time spent watching his sons in the rear-view mirror. His youngest clinging on, a lifeline for his brother. He remembered carrying Dean into the motel room, laying him on the bed, the relief once he'd removed Dean's t-shirt that although there were lots of cuts across his front, they were shallow, nothing life threatening. He remembered how he had bound his ribs and sewn stitches into his forehead – the first time of many. It should have been the first and the last, it should have been the point at which it stopped but it wasn't, he'd kept on dragging his boys down.
He remembered leaning over his son as he had slept and the thoughts that had run through his mind and come out softly, forlornly into the air above his sleeping form. 'Dean, you're going to have to toughen up. You can't afford to make those sorts of mistakes again. You've got away lightly this time but if I hadn't been there, or had been further away, things could have been worse.' And what he had wanted to say, 'Dean, I need you to be strong for me, because I can't see you hurt like this. I shouldn't have taken you there, you weren't ready, you should be a child and I'm ruining you. We've been lucky this time, you will be okay but I could have lost you in there.' The words he should have said, if not then, when they spoke in the morning.
The morning had not gone well, he had woken to find Sammy sleeping in Dean's bed. Instead of carefully waking and moving him, in anger he had dragged him out of the bed, afraid that his usual restless snuggling would aggravate Dean's injuries. He had frightened his youngest and woken his eldest who could have done with more sleep, only to find that Dean had wanted Sam with him. He wasn't convinced that Sam hadn't gone to Dean first but Dean had wanted him to stay, needing the comfort and reassurance he got from being the big brother, they were one another's constant.
He had sent Sam out and tried to talk with Dean about the previous evening's events. 'Dean, I need to talk to you about last night. I'm sorry you got hurt. The poltergeist was bad, it was hard. I need you to know something, when we fight something like that you can't be looking out for me, trust me to look out for myself, don't divide your attention. You can't allow yourself to lose focus like that.' John remembered how Dean had tried to apologise and explain how he was worried about him. He had knelt by his son's bed earnestly. 'Dean, you mustn't look out for me. You need to keep all your wits about you. Poltergeists are tricky bastards. You let it get your knife, Dean; it threw that at you, amongst everything else. They'll use anything that isn't fixed against you.'
He'd seen tears welling in his son's eyes, and Dean's voice spoke of his conviction that he had failed and let his father down. 'I know it was the first time you'd been on a hunt, but that's no excuse, there are more different types of evil out there than we know about, you can't let yourself get injured every time you come across something new.' It was a harsh truth, evil gave no quarter, and evil wouldn't sit back and take it easy until Dean had gained experience. John needed him to be strong.
Dean had made another promise, adding it to the protection of Sammy, that he would train hard and get better, and the first of the tears spilled over onto his cheek, tears that John had never known how to handle and so had always squashed at the first sign, hoping it would make his son stronger. 'Yes, you had better be better next time, otherwise you're worse than useless. I've spent years training you, I expect you to be an asset on a job not something else for me to worry about. If you've been paying attention… don't interrupt me, boy… if you've been paying attention, you should be able to handle this sort of thing without me, that wasn't even a vicious poltergeist as these things go.' He felt like a bastard when he treated his son like this but if he coddled him now, it wouldn't protect him in the face of evil.
'Yes, I know you're sorry and so am I. But I am counting on you. You have to be a good soldier Dean, Sammy and I need this from you. Sammy and I love you too much to let you die; we need you to be focussed in the fight because we can't risk losing you.' He hoped it was enough to bolster his son's spirit.
He'd done it differently with Sam, it probably wasn't any better really but it had been safer. He had picked an easier first job and he had taught the boys to fight together and had sent them in together, they were a unit, Dean's experience and focus guiding his brother. They had all come out unscathed. He did learn from some mistakes. It didn't solve the problem he had now though – a son who was leaving and a son who was left, half of a fighting unit, half of his sons, an empty shell of what used to be his first-born boy. Where had the life and vitality that epitomised the child Dean gone?
He'd managed to keep Dean with him all this time by using the promise like a binding spell. Dean would never leave Sammy. He'd used it to stop him finishing school although that had never been his intention. He could remember the shock and fear when he found out that Dean was thinking of leaving to go to University. If Dean left, the family would be broken, even John knew Dean was the glue, the one part of the family that truly worked as it should, holding father and brother together, looking after them, Dean made wherever they were 'home'. It hadn't been until much later that he'd realised how amazing Dean must have been in school, how despite being dragged round the country, never at the same school for long, they'd manage to keep him at the last one for almost the year and that had been a first. His teachers had believed in him, wanted to help him, were willing to go out on a limb for him and John had destroyed that and Dean's future in one single conversation and he had used an unknowing Sam to do it.
He wondered now if Sam knew what had happened, had Dean ever told him or smart as he was had he worked it out. One thing was certain, Dean's unfailing loyalty to his father was not reflected in Sam's eyes. Sam's eyes showed disgust now when they looked at his father. When he was younger, it had been disappointment as if he had been waiting for John to change and make things right, John had never done it and Sam no longer waited for it. In fact, John no longer counted. As far as Sam was concerned, family was Dean: mother, father and brother rolled into one.
When Dean had returned home, the morning after that conversation, leaving Sam at school, they had talked. John could see the disappointment in his eyes, matched by the resignation in the lines of his body. He should have taken that opportunity to put it right, but he didn't, he let Dean walk out on school and into a job that wasn't enough for him. John had filled the gap between what Dean was and what he could be with the hunt and Dean had become a formidable warrior but when he came home for Sam, he was still there in the ways his brother needed. Looking back, John was amazed, it was what he should have striven for, but he hadn't managed it at all.
Dean hadn't let him do the same to his brother. Dean had protected Sam and let him keep his dreams, had cherished and nourished those dreams. John knew what was going on, he knew that each time he denied Sam a future, Dean took another step to pave Sam's way to that future, to make sure that it could happen. John was proud of them both. They had done it all despite him but even now he wouldn't say it and he would continue to fight it.
Sam was leaving that much was certain, it had always just been a matter of when. Dean and John both knew he was going. The only question remaining that really mattered was what would Dean do. The better part of John hoped he would go too, the bigger part wasn't going to let go so easily. He had started to watch both boys closely for a clue. He knew that Sam had looked into ways to take Dean with him, ways Dean could finish school, training courses Dean could try but he also knew that Dean hadn't committed to going with him yet. John wondered why.
Dean had stayed. It was a long time since he'd been as truthful as he had tonight when John had found him in the bar. He watched him as his body relaxed into sleep, finally giving in. The fact that he was sleeping on the couch and not in his room said volumes. Dean didn't know who to be, how to be without Sam. He couldn't even face their room without his brother.
It was time to move on. Dean would focus on the job, the memory of Sam would fade at least for a while and John knew that he was lying to himself if he thought it would be alright. He had broken his boys and he'd never meant to do it, but once he'd started he hadn't known how to stop and make it right, he just didn't have the strength to do it on his own.
Author's Note: I know there is very little new about this chapter but I wanted to try and mellow John a little. There is one more 'chapter' to go. Posting that very soon.