I got a request from the wonderful ngregory763 to post the next chapter a bit early, so I've decided to do just that. Your support means a lot and I'm happy to oblige! Enjoy!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chapter 4 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She answers on the second knock.
There's this long moment between those knocks where nothing seems real, where Dean understands exactly where he is and what he's about to do, but he can't fathom why on earth he would've actually shown up to do it. It had seemed so obvious three days ago: Ben needed him to go see Lisa, so he would go see Lisa. They've seen this type of thing before. Ghosts who aren't driven by anger, but by loss. Ghosts who can't move on until they've found a way to say goodbye.
And Dean thought he could do this. He thought he could help Ben say goodbye. But in that brief moment between knocks, he knows he's made a huge mistake.
They've done this so many times, him and Lisa. He's lost track of how often he's knocked on her door and she's opened it and they've looked at each other from across the threshold just like this. Just the way she's looking at him right now. Always the same, but so, so different this time, with all this extra space between them and the invisible ghost of her dead son standing beside him and his not-so-invisible little brother waiting just a few paces behind, not quite sure if Dean meant it when he said Sam should come with.
She looks beautiful, just like he knew she would. Even with the shroud of grief hanging over her.
She doesn't say anything for a long time. Just stares at him and shakes her head. Dean watches as she tries to form words and can't. She finally settles on one:
"You..."
"Hi Lis," he says, same way he's said it those hundred times before, same way he said it in his head when he imagined this moment under such very different circumstances.
Lisa makes a choking noise, a sharp inhale, and then she slams the door in his face so quickly, it almost catches him on the nose. Dean hadn't even realized how far forward he'd been leaning.
There's a moment's pause, and then Ben laughs. Looks right up at Dean and just snickers at him, the same way Sam used to when they were knee deep in a prank war and he'd managed to sew the necks of all Dean's t-shirts closed. Dean's mouth twitches a little, just at the sight of the kid's smile, but that smile fades pretty quickly, and then Ben just looks sad. He looks like he wants to say something, but doesn't know what. He blinks up at Dean and he stares and opens his mouth, and that's about the time the door reopens.
She ushers Sam and Dean inside as though she's the sole chaperone on a school field trip, intent on making sure everyone gets back on the bus. Doesn't say anything, just guides them into the living room and gestures for them to sit down before disappearing, returning moments later with a beer for both of them and one for her. Ben takes a seat on the edge of the couch where Sam and Dean have settled. He doesn't say anything either, just watches as his mom hands off the beers and then steps back, looking at the two of them. Dean squirms under the scrutiny. He can barely meet her eyes. Beside him, Sam is stoic as ever, though there is a hint of the old puppy-dog-eye routine evident in his expression. Dean wonders how the kid can still get away with it, even after all this time.
"Okay," says Lisa, voice only just quavering. She snags the top off her beer and takes a long sip. "Explain."
Dean clears his throat, but it's Sam who speaks first. Dean knows it's because Sam's caught sight of his face. He's not sure what his expression is, but he knows Sam's assuming he couldn't make it through a full sentence at the moment. Hell, Dean's not too sure of that himself.
"Look, Lisa, we know this must be hard for you," Sam begins. "But please just hear us out. Dean and I…"
"I'd like to hear it from him, if you don't mind," Lisa interrupts, jabbing her beer in Dean's direction. Her gaze finds him then, and he can't look away this time. They stare at each other, and Dean feels Sam shift beside him, watches from the corner of his eye as his little brother stands up from the couch.
"I understand," Sam says, shifting gears easily. He has always had a way of reading the room, of seeing what words need to be said next. Dean envies him that. Tries to send a warning with his eyes that he can't actually handle this alone, dammit, but Sam doesn't catch it. Or maybe just doesn't want to. Instead, he continues, "This should be a conversation between just the two of you."
Lisa misses it, but Dean sees the way Sam's eyes hover on Ben for a brief moment, eyebrows slightly raised. Ben sighs, and the two of them leave the room together.
Dean's still looking at Lisa, and Lisa's still looking at Dean. He fiddles with the sticker on his beer bottle, thinks about taking a sip. Doesn't.
"I don't really know where to start," he admits, voice low.
Lisa's eyes harden, voice steely. "How about you start with why you left. And how you...how I forgot about you the second you walked out the door."
Dean's head drops and he closes his eyes with a sigh. This is everything he never wanted. To come back into her life like this. To raise questions he could never explain to her. To desecrate whatever she'd begun to rebuild after he'd left.
"I...I heard about Ben." It's as if the news is hitting him all over again. Sitting here, talking with her, Ben invisible and pale and so very dead in the next room over. It makes it all the more real. He chokes a little on the next words, eyes stinging. "I'm so sorry."
Lisa shakes her head, lip quivering. "No," she hisses. "No. You don't get to do that. We're not doing that yet. We're not...you answer my questions first. You owe me that."
Dean tries to raise his head, ends up having to look away again just as quickly. Can't handle her eyes peering into his. She's always seen past his bullshit, into all the things he'd rather keep hidden. She never pushed him with anything but those eyes. Let him wallow in grief when he lost Sam. Let him drink until he passed out. Let him sit at the dinner table with her son, trading stories about their days and not making a big thing of it when all Dean could do was stare at his food and nod along. Never tried to coax a damn word out of him, but Dean always ended up spilling a few too many of them anyway. And now she's pushing, actually pushing for something, and there's no way he won't give it. There's no way he can deny her at least a little bit of what he's taken from her.
"You almost died," he says. He takes a breath, detaches himself from the words that come next. It's easier if he doesn't think about it. If he just reads it off like an exorcism; something he memorized without knowing the meaning behind all the words.
"A demon kidnapped you and Ben. Possessed you. Drove a screwdriver into your stomach and left you to bleed out. At the hospital, they said you wouldn't wake up. And then someone…. someone healed you. Someone from my world. Someone with powers. I asked him to wipe your memories of me so that you could go back to having a normal life. So that you wouldn't be looking over your shoulder all the time, afraid to let Ben walk down the street by himself. I did it to protect you. And then I left."
"You did it to protect me?"
Dean meets her eyes again and nods, hoping she can see the truth there. "Yes."
"Okay," says Lisa. She is deceptively calm, but Dean recognizes the tone from the time Ben had forgotten to call to say he'd made plans with a friend after school and had taken a different bus. "And why did you believe you had the right to take those memories from me?"
"Lis…"
"No, Dean. No." Lisa starts pacing, making a line from the fireplace before cutting back to Dean. He hears half of what she says without seeing her face, just watches each rotation she makes and listens to the words come. They hit like bricks, and he knows he deserves every one of them. "You can't imagine. You cannot imagine the confusion. All this time, feeling like there's a part of me that's missing. Not understanding why. Not being able to fill this pit in my stomach, this feeling that I've lost someone."
"I do," Dean says, finally. He thinks of Cas. Of Sam, more than once. Of all the other names and faces that sit behind his eyelids and haunt his dreams, his every waking moment. "I know what it is to lose someone."
"Not like this," Lisa insists, though she stops pacing, and her eyes have softened a bit when she looks at him, that crippling understanding reflecting off from the dark brown of her pupils. "I'm not denying that you've lost people- too many people- but you were able to grieve them. You were able to say goodbye. I never got that, Dean. Just the vague notion that a vital piece was gone. That I would never be whole again."
Dean shakes his head, runs both hands up over his nose. "I didn't know…" he starts. And he's going to tell her he always knew he needed her more than they needed him, that he was charity and even if it became more than that, it would've never been enough for her. But she stops him and now she's yelling and all Dean can think is that Ben is probably catching some of the words when he shouldn't have to, but there's no way to stop her, so he just takes it.
"Bullshit you didn't know!" she growls. "You meant the world to us. Me and Ben…" she stutters a little over the name. Restarts. "...and he worshipped you. Even when he didn't remember what he was worshipping. It's what got him killed. You're part of what got him killed and I can't forgive you for that. And I don't care why you came back—I need you to go. I need to never see you again."
Dean stands up from the couch as she talks, spreading his arms in apology. "Lisa, please…"
"No, you and your brother need to leave," she says, stepping away from him. "This is me saying goodbye, you understand? So let me. Let me grieve you like I should've been able to years ago. Let me let you go, and never come back."
"I wish it were that simple," Dean says, trying to soften his tone, trying to make himself seem small somehow. Because he sees the way she's positioning herself, the way she's slowly creating distance. He stops leaning towards her, tries to just stand there with his hands at his sides, uncurling empty fists. He's scaring her. He's back after all this time and he knows Lisa might not have all the pieces together yet, but somehow she still knows he's different than he was. Somehow, she can see it.
"It is. It is that simple," Lisa insists, eyes just a little too wide. She thrusts a finger over his shoulder. "You just walk out the door and you don't turn around."
"Lisa. I need you to listen for a second," he tries again. He'd follow her instructions if he could. He doesn't want to stay here in this room, watching her watch him so warily. He doesn't want to be the one doling out more pain for her. "I did come back for a reason, and I can't leave until it's done. It's my job. And it's about Ben."
Lisa makes this face, and it's the worst thing Dean's ever seen. It's a look that says how dare you. How dare you mention his name to me again. And it's just so wrong. Because Dean used to say his name all the time. In another life, a million millennia ago. It was: what time should I pick Ben up today? And: I'll swing by to catch Ben's game after work and: We've got a couple hours before Ben gets home…
And now he's looking at Lisa and he's remembering it all like it never happened to him, and it's ruining everything and he really, really shouldn't have come.
"Ben is gone, and I don't know what killed him," Lisa says, voice like gravel under the Impala's tires. "I've tried to find it. Believe me, I've tried. So if you're looking for answers…"
"I know what got him, Lisa," he interrupts, trying not to think about her seeking out revenge. Marking maps and drawing lines and losing sleep, searching for the monster that took everything from her. He's trying not to think about who that sounds just like. "And it's already been taken care of."
"You killed it?" she asks, voice misleadingly neutral. Dean thinks she's going to start pacing again, but she doesn't She just rests her beer on top of the mantle and turns around to face him.
"Yes," Dean answers, just as coolly.
"Good," she nods, tone hardening. She folds her hands across her chest. "Then there should be nothing left for you to find here."
Dean sighs. He knows he's lost her. Probably lost her before she shut the door behind them. Probably never had her to begin with. "Lisa, I'm trying to explain. Please…"
"Mom?"
The air slides out of the room on that one word.
Dean's breath catches with it and he almost chokes, turns his head slowly to see Ben as he appears in the entryway. There's an instant where Dean thinks maybe Lisa didn't hear it, this tiny moment where she doesn't move at all. And then the moment ends and Dean knows they're really screwed now because he can't even begin to describe the look on her face, and he'd have thought that after a year of living with her, he had learned to calculate each and every one. She turns, too, to meet that voice, and it is with the dramatic slowness usually reserved for the infamous bullet-dodge scene in a movie. She's turning and she's turning and she's turning and then she's there, looking at her dead son where he stands in the small, curving hallway between the living room and the kitchen.
He's staring at her and she's staring at him and it might've gone on forever that way if not for Sam stumbling into the hall, a look of panic on his face. He skids to a stop almost comically when he sees what's unfolded in his absence (returning from an ill-timed bathroom break, Dean's willing to guess) and it seems as though it's the jolt Lisa needs to finally find her voice.
If Dean could label what heartbreak sounds like, it is the way she says Ben's name.
Thanks for reading. I will post Chapter 5 this Wednesday as per usual! Enjoy the rest of your weekend, everybody.
