A/N: Okay, and here we go, next chapter of Prisoner of War, live. So, time wise, we are now in November, and I am segueing into the episode that was the most popular choice in the poll, After School Special. This is naturally the remix, but let's have some fun, shall we?
In other news, Tuesday's Child updated yesterday morning, still having lots of fun with that project. All The Pretty Monsters also updated yesterday, and the shit is about to hit the fan there, pardon my french. And Friday, How To Fix A Winchester updated, and I continue to get some amazing prompts for that one, so fun-fun-fun.
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EverReader
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Prisoner Of War – Chapter Thirty
"Attack Of The Nerds"
Halloween came and went, the last days of October fading away in a state of uneasy truce between the two youngest Winchesters.
John, not completely unaware of the tension, chose to ignore it, as it was neither aiding or hindering his own personal goals at the moment, of which Dean, still, to his great frustration, remained untold.
With their father and the other hunters coming and going at greater frequency, and the weather getting colder by the day, Sam and Dean began to settle into the rhythm of a steady stream of small salt and burns, week end jobs usually, that had Sam back in school and Dean back at work by Monday.
It should have thrilled Sam, to be in the same place for so long, the same classes, same teachers, getting to start and finish entire actual projects. It should have thrilled him that, despite his refusal to join the basketball team (or, in fact, even try out), people continued to view him as quasi-popular, sitting next to him unexpectedly at lunch, offering to partner with him in class, even including him in party invitations.
It seemed like, the less Sam let himself care about his school and classmates, the more desirable he appeared, his previous loner status now transformed into 'cool' and 'aloof'. He did little with this new power, avoiding the parties, the games and the invitations.
He didn't date, though he certainly could have.
He did, however, get a job. It was part-time, only a couple of hours a week, helping the owner of the local bookstore stock and unload trucks. The owner didn't need much help, but she was growing older, and the heavy lifting that was so easy for Sam was getting to be too much for her. She paid him probably too much, but she had taken a liking to him, with his gentle manners and intelligent eyes.
So, really, Sam should have been thrilled. But inside him was a clock, ticking away the days, the hours and minutes, waiting for...something.
He didn't decorate his bedroom, because what was the point when the clock inside his mind was always screaming at him that he was only moments away from the next tragedy. He didn't take up the offers of friendship or romance.
Some days, the ticking clock inside his head was so loud that just sitting in class was unbearable, and he'd find himself skipping, finally putting good use to his forging abilities when it came to John's name. He was still a good student, polite and obviously well read, and most of the teachers felt sympathetic for the tall young man with the migraines.
So, on every level, Sam should have been thrilled. The same house, the same school, friends, girls, and after school job at a bookstore.
But all he felt was...disconnected. Like he had somehow started viewing his life from the outside, like someone reading the prologue of a book, just waiting for the tragic event to occur that would set the rest of the book into motion.
Sam waited.
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Dean watched.
He made the right noises of frustration, when he wasn't allowed to sit in on John's meetings with the hunters who continued to use their home as a home base of sorts.
And he was frustrated, but whatever John was up to didn't seem as urgent as their normal case. Dean got the sense that the hunters were gathering information more than they were hunting anything.
Dean could care less about the research. When the time came, all he was interested in was the action, so he decided to let that sleeping dog lie for now.
He complained about the job, though secretly he came to enjoy it, the boundaries and edges of a well defined project. A car came in, and he fixed it, and then it left again. There was no doubt, no uncertainty. No fear that he had missed some crucial element, and now someone would die because of it.
They were just cars, just ordinary, boring cars, and though a part of Dean was screaming, demanding the adrenalin rush the po-dunk hunts his father had been assigning them failed to provide, there was a certain charm to fixing something.
But mostly, Dean watched.
Watched John and the other hunters, with their secretive eyes and suddenly cut off sentences. He watched them come and go and wondered sometimes if they were actually chasing their tales, the way it felt to him, on the outside sometimes.
He watched how John interacted with Sam, though, honestly, now that Dean was making a point to try to look at those interactions objectively, it didn't take long.
Now that Sam was no longer combating John at every step, John seemed to take him into consideration very little. Sam went to school, Sam went on the assigned hunts, Sam stayed out of the other hunters way.
John seemed...not pleased, if John were honest. Relieved, perhaps. Like Sam had been a problem he had doubted he could fix, but now that he apparently had, John could move onto more important things.
Dean found himself trying to pinpoint the shift, just when this...non-relationship between the oldest and youngest Winchester had occurred. They didn't fight, there was no battle of wills. There was no yelling and bitter, unhappy looks, no threatened orders.
Sam did his training now everyday without so much as word to the contrary, even when it rained, even when Dean found himself thinking of creative excuses to avoid his own.
Instead, between them there was...well, nothing.
Dean could remember when it had been different, when Sam had been younger.
He could remember their father rocking Sam softly, when he was sick, one or two perhaps, still too little for Dean to have taken over full responsibility of him.
He could remember John smiling when Dean showed him that Sammy could walk. He could remember the laundry list of instructions John had given Dean when Dean had first taken over the day to day care of his little brother, as John's hunts took him further and further afield.
First and foremost, watch out for Sammy.
But when had it changed?
Dean could still remember the horrible night the Striga attacked, how panicked and furious John had been at the time.
But as he searched his memory, he found himself harder and harder pressed to come up with more instances like that.
John had never been overly affectionate, but Dean had never doubted for a second that John loved them.
But now, looking back, he found he believed it possible that Sam might not realize it. He'd been younger when John had been involved in his care, most of his memories were probably of Dean.
Dean had always been okay with that, had always felt slightly proprietary about Sam. Had, if he were honest with himself, always felt a little threatened when another adult, like Bobby or Pastor Jim, had tried to step in and help with Sam's day to day care and needs, because Sam was Dean's little brother.
He had always assumed that John and Sam's distance had to do with the fact that Dean provided for most of Sam's needs, and Sam was to little to hunt, so the distance seemed natural.
Then, when Sam had started hunting, the fighting had started, and the distance had seemed even more natural.
But now, here they were, in the same house for weeks, no fighting, no prolonged absences, and Dean was forced to admit that Sam and John were...well, they weren't anything.
John didn't talk about Sam unless he needed Sam to do something, and Sam seemed perfectly happy to save nothing at all about John period.
Dean felt like, once again, the fragile bridge between the two of them, but this time he wasn't trying to break up the fights.
He was trying to break the silence.
And the more he watched Sam, the more alarmed he became.
Because Sam seemed so...normal.
He went to school and he went to work and he went to hunts, but it was like, underneath it all, the real Sam was asleep, his body just on auto-pilot. He ate when someone cooked, he showered and did his homework and dug up graves, all with the same, absent demeanor.
Dean wondered if Sam was just waiting for the shoe to drop.
Was he waiting for Dean to get mad and try to continue their argument? Was he waiting to see if Dean was going to get John involved?
Sam didn't talk about the fight, didn't talk about school, didn't talk about John, didn't talk about anything.
It was like he had locked all his words away for some reason, and now he'd lost the key to finding them again.
Dean felt like screaming, some days, as they frog-marched through their make-believe lives, John going one way silently, and Sam the other just as wordlessly, and Dean felt like the fragile cord stretched between his family.
And all he could do was wait.
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Sam was in class when it happened. He had almost missed it, in fact, had only been moments away from begging off for the rest of the day with another 'migraine'.
He was sitting in science class, at one of the lab tables, writing up the last of his notes on their finished experiment. Rebecca, his lab partner, kept shooting him flirty looks under lowered eyes, but they only made him more uncomfortable. He'd partnered with her to be polite, and in all fairness, she was much better than some at the lab work, she'd done her part. But Sam felt uncomfortable just the same, and he had started writing a little more quickly, when he felt the temperature suddenly drop.
Startled, he looked up, glancing automatically to the windows, even though the tingling, buzzing sense of something screaming in his head told him this was no draft.
This was a ghost.
In his damn science class.
What, were they coming to him now?
"Wow, who opened the window?" Rebecca said, shivering a little, and Sam knew the ghost was strong, because she wasn't the only one shifting uncomfortably.
Sam looked around quickly, knowing the ghost must be trying to manifest somehow, but seeing no overt sign of it.
What was it trying to do?
Suddenly, Alex, one of the smaller (and younger) kids in the class, launched himself at Tyler, whom he had been partnered with.
Sam knew Tyler tended to bully the other kids a little, but everyone had quickly picked up on the fact that Sam disliked it, so they didn't tend to do it in front of him.
Obviously, though, it was still happening in his absence.
"I'll kill you!" Alex shrieked, picked up the microscope and slamming it into Tyler's surprised face.
The entire class was stunned, motionless in disbelief, even the teacher, a twenty-year veteran.
Everyone but Sam.
Lunging forward, he wrapped his arms in a bear hug around Alex, just as the boy was about to start dumping lab chemicals on their fallen classmates.
Girls were screaming now, the teacher frantically calling the office, and one or two other guys had stepped forward to help Sam, and honestly, he needed it. Sam was in the best shape of his life, but Alex was thrashing wildly, like a man possessed, and Sam had a feeling that was exactly what was happening.
Finally, the three of them managed to wrestle Alex to the ground, and then suddenly the boy went limp, sobbing uncontrollably.
"What's...what's happening?" Tyler asked, as Rebecca held paper towels to his bleeding face.
The teacher knelt beside them. "Tyler, an ambulance is on it's way. The office has called the police, also, so anyone not hurt will need to stay at talk to the officers very quickly. Sam, that was quick thinking, thank you. He could have hump Tyler badly, those were acids he was going for. I don't think I could have stopped him." Her voice was shaking, badly, and Sam had a suspicion her retirement date had just jumped forward by a few years.
"Sam, you saved Tyler." Rebecca said, a thread of awe in her voice, as uniformed officers stormed into the room, quickly cuffing the still crying Alex.
Sam shook his head, uncomfortable with the attention most of his classmates were focusing on him.
"Nah, the other guys were right behind me..." He said, walking over gratefully to give his statement to the officer, glad to get away.
He gave his statement as quickly and succinctly as possible, though he did his best to make it sound like an emotional break down on Alex's part. The poor kid's life was probably ruined now, and it wasn't his fault, but Sam couldn't exactly explain that a ghost had made his classmate do it.
The best Alex could hope for now was that the authorities decided it was a mental issue that required treatment, instead of punishment.
Sam begged off the rest of the day, the teacher practically giving him her pass book, she was still so shaken and grateful.
Just as Sam was walking down the steps, trying to decide whether he should call Dean now, the Impala screeched to a halt in front of him.
Sam blinked, a little nonplussed.
Well, that was fast.
Never let it be said that Dean let grass grow under him.
"Sam, you okay? Police scanner said officers had been dispatched, some kid attacking others?" Dean said anxiously, openly examining his younger brother.
"Uh...well." Sam said, feeling the weirdness of the hunt coming to them, for once.
He sighed. "My school's haunted." He said, feeling a little morose.
Dean just looked at him for a moment.
"You're kidding, right?" He said finally.
Sam just stared at him with one arched brow.
"Oh." Dean said, realizing Sam was, indeed serious. "Okay, that's new. It is new, right? Cause Dad is gonna skin us alive if it's been haunted this whole time and we're just now noticing."
Sam just shrugged.
"Well, classmates trying to burn other classmates faces off with acid is new." He offered.
Dean pressed his lips together, breathing out deeply. "Of course. Acid. Yeah, they didn't mention that at parent teacher conferences."
"Library?" Sam asked, nearly smiling at getting to ask the one question that never failed to bring that absolutely constipated look to his brother's face.
"Library." Dean grumbled in morose agreement. "You would take the AP classes. This stuff didn't happen in remedial science, I'm just letting you know."