Net Knots Chapter 9, a supernatural fanfic

Disclaimer etc, see Chapter 1

NET KNOTS

Chapter 9

"He already knows about it." Sam replied soberly.

"And he was okay with it?" Dean enquired drolly.

"Hardly," Sam conceded, "but once I'd laid it on the line about the Men in Grey and unravelling sweaters he got the point. Especially when I asked him how effective did he think we'd be hunting down badass evil with mobility scooters and Zimmer frames?"

"Huh?"

"Twenty-five to life, Dean," Sam repeated. "If we got sent to San Quentin tomorrow, dad would be 75 when we got out, you'd be 52 and I'd be a sprightly 48-year-old. Not exactly the sort of Young Turks to cope with being regularly hurled into walls by desperate Shtrigas, or battered with household appliances by angry poltergeists."

"Nnh," Dean made the soft sound as he blew out a surprised breath, having never considered such ramifications, admitting, "Dad is a logical guy when he's not fixating on the obsession."

Sam nodded agreement. He had in fact said a great deal more to John Winchester that Dean would never know about when he was telling – not asking – their father about the website he was setting up. Way back at Stanford, another life ago, he had had an Ethics class based around a long ago court case in Africa, where a small plane had crashed on the central African plains and the injured crew had been killed by Pygmy Bushmen. Easily captured, the tiny warriors had freely admitted their guilt in court but, perhaps made uncomfortable by their resemblance to children, the Judge had shown leniency by commuting their execution by lethal injection to life imprisonment.

Or so he had probably thought. Within a year, all the Pygmies had been dead. Not through illness or injury, murder or even suicide. Not for any identifiable reason. Their tiny bodies had simply stopped. The reason had been simple. They were a nomadic people of the great plains and open sky, they were of wild things; perpetual confinement in a six foot by nine foot concrete box had for them been the equivalent of literal torture and beatings. The Ethics professor's debate had been about how, because the trial judge had no understanding of their cultural norms or social mores, his fondly imagined 'clemency' had in fact been an act of cruelty far greater than the, on the surface, harsher penalty of execution.

Sam had pointed out to his father that Dean was the same; imprisoned with Sam and John, or even more horrifically likely, far from Sam and John, Dean would be dead within a year, because he would just 'stop'. Sam knew his brother, and Dean was from wild things. He was an eagle, or a tiger. Put such in confinement, whether it be a literal prison of concrete and iron bars or a metaphorical gilded cage encrusted with glittering 'jewel-like' trappings, and it would just destroy everything that they were.

In hindsight Sam had realised that Dean's statement in Oasis Plains about blowing his brains out if faced with normality of 'white picket fence' and manicured lawns hadn't been condescending scorn or macho bravado, but a straightforward, self-understanding acknowledgement of fact. He wasn't unwilling but actually incapable of that sort of life, and unlike most people who didn't know their own mind about anything Dean had always been one of the most self-aware people Sam had ever met.

By that time he'd had John Winchester on board, if not happily, but to hammer the point home, he'd reminded their father of the hint the demon had taunted them with when it was possessing John himself, that it had plans for all the psychically gifted children like Sam. Then Sam had pointed out that by getting them put in prison, and furthermore by getting Sam separated from John and Dean, the demon would be assured of keeping one of its prize victims securely yet totally defencelessly in one place until it was ready, like a man keeping a jewel locked in a safe until he wanted it.

Continued in Chapter 10…