Solitary Man chpt 4

by sifi

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"For all the times Dean has been there for you, at least hear me out," John asked, actually asked instead of ordered his youngest son. He stepped over the line of salt and closed the door behind himself, shrugging out of his jacket and hanging it on the back of the chair at the table.

He motioned to a chair looking askance at Sam who nodded, stunned speechless by this unusual behavior. He almost wanted to stick a thermometer into his mouth or shoot some holy water up his nose while shouting "Christo," still he stayed those impulses and sat across from his dad, phone in his casted hand while he reached into a bag with his left and pulled out two bottles of beer.

"Thanks…" John nodded, "lemme get that," he offered opening Sam's bottle while his eyes flicked over the green and dark blue bars across his throat.

"Don't make me shoot you with one of the Red Bird bullets… they work y'know…" Sam huffed good-naturedly but watched John's expression intensely. His father simply gave a half smile similar to the one his eldest son had perfected.

"Dean left me a message thanks…" he nodded, "Listen Sam I know you want to call him, I know you think he should be here, that he has a right to know what you're doing, and under normal circumstances I'd agree with you, no question about it…"

"But?" Sam asking knowing it fit perfectly there.

"But… you don't know the whole story either…" he began.

"You told Shep to send that clip to me, you told him to persuade me to check this out alone didn't you?" Sam asked. He didn't need John to confirm, he knew all too well how his father operated.

"I did," John admitted.

Sam could barely hear his father for the rushing in his ears, with his heart rate nearing 'speed metal' levels he took a deep breath, literally clamped down on his tongue and bored his consternation into John's eyes. He took a sip from his beer, set it down carefully and worked hard to choose his words just right and keep his tone as neutral as possible, "Do you have any idea what we've been through in the last week?"

John looked at the cast on Sam's right hand, "Only the basics and what the hospitals know," he admitted softly.

"You want me to continue to lie to my brother… it wasn't bad enough I lied for a year and a half to the woman I was going to ask to marry me, now you want me to lie to my own brother… I hope this is good," he invited John to begin his story.

"I don't have all the details myself Sam, but I know that something is trying to… I don't know… break your brother… drive him crazy… I don't know for sure…" John stopped, none of this was coming out the way he needed it to, he needed to convince his youngest that the greatest good would be served by working behind his brothers back but damn! Sammy's really got 'the look' down… or maybe he's just…right.

"I'm listening… unless you want me to get Dean on the phone so you can explain it to us both?" he asked.

John shook his head and swigged on the beer then dropped his eyes, barely able to meet Sam's gaze, in all the fights, all the near knock down drag outs we've had… I've never seen him look like this… "The body you went to see yesterday, that lady, Carol Guinardi? There was something about her that must've meant something to your brother… Something that got their attention… Bobby called me not long after you called him and told him your suspicions… None of us knew it was possible but Bobby found… well you know what he found, he's the one who told you to go back and re-translate the ritual into the earliest known Latin so…"

Sam took a sip from his bottle then set it down on the table and looked at his father with a mixture of accusation and suspicion that cut John to the quick. He thought, he'd hoped that they'd been making progress over the last few months, especially considering how much they'd lost to Big Bad and his kin, and how much they'd both been slapped in the face with nearly losing.

John had only recently found out that it was Laura and her gift of influence that had probably saved both his and Dean's life, and he'd witnessed with his own eyes just what she was willing to sacrifice for his children. He'd watched his youngest son, albeit possessed by some young Demon-ling slowly, millimeter by millimeter force a dagger through her throat until he, Dean and Bobby all thought she was certainly dead. He'd felt the energy between her and Dean and its tag was unmistakable even if his son refused to acknowledge it for as long as he lived, and now something was about to try and tear his boy apart from within.

"Dad…" Sam snapped bringing John back from his reverie.

"Huh… sorry…"

"Either give me a GOOD reason or I will call him… I know he'll forgive me… can you say the same?" Sam asked playing his hand more ruthlessly than either had known him capable of. But this was Dean they were talking about, not some petty hierarchal grievance that called for a testosterone hosing.

"Right… all I can say for sure is that this last case you two worked started some kind of… alert… among the malevolent entities out there…You told Shep that this Edward Jacob Simons was a serial killer who basically got you two to use the ritual Romano to open some kind of channel it used to imbue itself with demonic power right?" he asked needing to make sure he knew what he thought he knew.

Sam nodded, "That's what we figured yeah…"

"Okay so once it achieved what it apparently wanted, which was status as a demon it tried to raise another spirit, another serial killer? This Aaron Beyers right?" he asked.

"Yeah," Sam acknowledged keeping his cards as close to the vest as he could. It had taken him literally being in Eddy Jay's hands, being exposed to the tormented screams and pleas of the only person who mattered more to him than life, for him to even realize that there were pieces to put together let alone actually get most of the puzzle done. He'd meant it when he'd told Dean he didn't need to know. What he found out was enough, what he'd pieced together was enough. One of the first defensive moves John had taught his boys was a palm strike to the nose to force the septum back into the brain, another was the strike that would dislodge the jawbone of the enemy and leave it pressed against that vital artery that fed the brain its oxygen supply. Somehow though, it surprised him that John showed no sign of really realizing what might have happened during that summer.

"Well, you boys lured both spirits to Aaron's grave and torched them both, right?" he double checked his facts.

Sam nodded, "Right,"

"Okay so… you saw this woman's body right? This Carol Guinardi? She was the one who was a victim of this Edward Simons right? So… when you boys were trying to exorcise him from her house, he must've gotten something off you or your brother, something that made him focus on you two rather than her…"

"Well, it's definitely possible…" Sam shook his head, "He was just a spirit, I thought he was a poltergeist… you know the malevolence… but we found out later he was just a spirit… I don't know how long Dean was out, it could've sensed something in him while he was unconscious… or me after it…" he stopped and shrugged.

"Hung you?" John finished.

"Yeah… felt like forever… I thought Dean was a dream… I…" he stopped and looked down surprised by just how close he'd really come to dying… again. "When he cut me down I couldn't feel anything… I thought it…wasn't real…"

John smiled and laid his hand on Sam's shoulder, "Thank God it was."

"Yeah… sooooo…" he prodded with a 'give me more' motion.

"A friend of a friend told Shep about the scribing, Told him it was some numbers and the letters DW… even told him the name of the deceased… so much for HIPPA huh?" he sighed, "So…"

"Shep recognized the name from our case, recognized the DW, put one and one together and decided to ask you how to handle it since it concerned us…" Sam finished with just a hint of bite in his voice.

"Right…and I told him to set you on the trail…I figured someone out there had finally decided it was time to take out your brother…" John pursed his lips around his beer bottle, his eyes never leaving Sam's. His youngest needed to know why he'd asked him to betray his brother and God help him, he hoped his logic could stand up in the stark light of Sam's own reasoning.

"Why would you even come anywhere NEAR making an assumption like that? What aren't you telling us Dad?" Sam asked trying to contain his anger which still boiled just under the surface. This Need-To-Know crap has got to stop! He's gonna get us killed one day! Sam fumed but shoved it down deep, knowing that at this moment information was more important than opinion.

John finished his beer and opened another for each of them, "The Demon," he said softly.

"The Demon? OUR Demon?" Sam asked.

John nodded and scrubbed his face with his hands, "For about a month after your mother was killed Dean had nightmares… terrible, horrible nightmares, he'd wake up screaming and crying and … so… tormented… he couldn't sleep unless exhaustion forced him to… he was… almost scary... especially when it came to you… I mean if I went to change a diaper he watched me like a hawk… like I might… hurt you or something…"

Sam frowned looking at John then kinda shrugged with his head, "Well… huge trauma… and from what he told me, he actually carried me out of the house that night…"

John nodded, "He did… and he was never the same after that night…" he looked up into his youngest sons' clear green eyes, "Part of me thinks he saw what killed your mother that night…" he hastened to add after seeing Sam's jaw drop in disbelief, "…he never said anything about having seen anything… he never said he didn't though either… all I know is that something was tearing him apart, something inside of him was hurting my little boy…"

Sam watched as John's eyes filled and he sniffed back hard, remembering how intensely Raw his entire world had been back then, an open exposed nerve that sang with agony in the gentlest of breezes.

"…and I couldn't stop it…" he admitted.

Sam nodded, silently urging him on.

"By then I'd already met Missouri… she knew Dean was tormented but I didn't know she knew until a few weeks later… I was bringing a book back to her when she gave me something for him, she told me to tell him it would take away the nightmares, the worst ones anyway… She told me it had a power and that it's power had a purpose… but she never told me what that purpose was…and to be honest… I didn't care…"

"The pendant?" Sam asked and watched John nod silently, "What was the purpose dad?"

"I didn't really find out until years later…" he shook his head, "I don't know if it was because I didn't want to know, or because I really didn't make the connection… by then I was already so accustomed to his protectiveness…" he sighed and met Sam's inquisitive gaze, "…the night I gave it to him… he saw me standing at your crib…" he smiled and his eyes filled with pride, "… he came out of bed swinging like a mad man… I guess in the shadows he didn't recognize me…I told him how proud of him I was… and it was true Sam… and that I had a gift for him… I tied the pendant around his neck and told him it was a good luck charm to take away the bad dreams… most of them anyway… and he looked at me, the way he does sometimes?" he asked and Sam nodded knowing exactly what he was talking about, that innocence, that child-like honesty that never failed to shine through Dean's eyes no matter what his mouth was saying, "… he asked… god I can hear his voice ask it even now… he asked if the pendant could mean that he was a protector too…" John's breath hitched hard, "…I thought it was just a child's need to feel special Sam…"

"What dad?" Sam prodded after a long silent moment began to yawn between them.

"Do you remember in the cabin, what the Demon said to him?" John asked. He could never forget the horrible things that creature had said to his boy, those vicious lies that were meant to disable and weather away at even the most stoic of hearts.

"Which thing?" Sam asked.

"When it said to him, 'you need them more than they need you...'?"

Sam's head instantly bowed and his eyes lowered as he wet his suddenly parched mouth, "Yeah… I remember that…"

"We both know it was the worst kind of lie…" John said softly and thought about all the times Dean had come between him and Sam, how many times he'd sacrificed his needs, his pride, his very will for the good of their tiny, broken, but still good, family.

"Yeah…" Sam nodded, "…the kind he might believe…"

"Yeah…" John nodded.

"So… you're saying that talisman, the meaning that had power… what? It came to power because Dean wanted to feel special as a child?" Sam asked.

John shrugged, "I'm saying, that power had a purpose… and something in your brother… activated that power AND that purpose…"

"You're saying the pendant changed him…" Sam surmised.

"NO! No Sam… not at all… it… it augmented him…he already felt responsible for your safety, he felt like he should be able to be my right hand… he felt such… horrible responsibility… and I don't know if I can ever be forgiven for it… but I fed it in him… and now… he's so much his own man… I look at both of you and wonder how I ever deserved…" he stopped once more, squeezing his eyes shut against the tears that threatened as they had on that long ago night, to overspill. He could almost feel Dean's four year old hand wiping the recalcitrant drop away and trying to give comfort, "It's okay daddy… don't cry…" he heard in the back of his head and wanted nothing more than to hold his young son against him once more, as innocent as he'd been that night.

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tbc – I won't ask whether it should or not anymore

I'm hope this is engaging, but if it's boring please advise and I'll

wrap up the rest of the expo quickly in chpt 5.

thanks

sifi