Chapter Twenty-Two

So This is What It's Like to Find Out You're Related to The Children of the Corn.

Cal was sore enough to fully expect sterile white hospital room walls and various beeping machines plugged into her body. What she found couldn't be farther from expectation. Apparently she'd fallen asleep in the grass, wherever Malcolm had led them to. Someone had covered her with a utility blanket and shielded her from the morning dew with a big green tarp. There was a dozing man on either side of her, which was nice but a little odd considering the two had been gnashing at each other pretty consistently from the moment Dean had to park his Impala.

The man of the hour lay to her right, not quite spooning with the one hand on her hip as if none of the past year had happened. Cal wasn't sure if she wanted to relax into him and just breathe or shove him off for overstepping. The throbbing of her foot made the choice for her instead, better to lay still and do nothing for now.

Malcolm was on her left facing away from where she'd been sleeping. He was close enough to share body heat but far enough away that they weren't touching; both respectful and protective all at once. If she were more of a girl there might have been opportunity to use the term 'gentleman'. Thankfully there would be no such embarrassing admissions because Cal was a bad ass who didn't need those kinds of niceties. Well, that was the story she was sticking with anyway. Besides, pain or no there were definitely worse ways of greeting the day.

Dean always had this boyish quality to him when he slept. It was as if somehow he'd managed to retain a little innocence regardless of all the years he'd spent growing up a hunter's son. The sharp angles softened and the hard edges blurred enough that he didn't look angry or worried. No, she was not melting at the sight of him like some silly sixteen year old, thank you very much. She did like the sight of him though, and the momentary illusion there might be a little innocence left in the man yet. You deserve a little peace, Winchester, even if you're a pain in the ass when you're awake.

Malcolm, on the other hand, had an air of mischief about him in sleep. It's not that it wasn't there when he was awake. It was just that having a secret like his brought with it a seriousness that tended to make a mischievous personality a liability. Great, I'm surrounded by adorably innocent and sin incarnate and I'm too beat up to be able to do anything about it either way. Fantastic. Well, none of that for you this morning Cal. Alright girl, enough with the lying around. At the very least she needed to rummage around Dean's bag for a bottle of Ibuprofen. Her injuries were healing but they were still fresh enough to be excruciating and itchy without the Advil.

Her pride kept her from waking the men on either side of her just yet. They'd been doting on her for days already, trying to anticipate her every need before she actually needed it. It had been especially difficult to take in the confines of the car. Close confines like that and two overbearingly protective men had left her a little cranky.

Cal wasn't exactly well known for being gracious when injured and she'd been trying really hard to change that but sometimes a girl just needed to do something for herself. If only to remind herself she still could. The plan was to shimmy out from between the two guys without waking them. First step: turning over onto her back without jostling the sleeping bear that was Dean.

Shifting her weight wasn't as bad an experience as she'd anticipated. Her shoulder was doing okay, the swelling had gone and the tenderness at a minimum. If Dean hadn't slid it back into joint she probably would have temporarily lost the use of that hand. Thank you, powers that be, for small mercies. Cal had spent a good deal of the time she'd spent conscious on the drive out from the O'Sulivan compound afraid she'd have to relearn how to throw a knife or possibly lose the use of that hand entirely. No such worries now. She could think what she wanted of him but Dean was always there when it counted.

The current issues were that foot and ankle that had never quite stopped swelling. It just wasn't getting any better. Every time the blanket brushed against the huge wool sock that covered the bandage wrapped around her foot it triggered a chain reaction. The muscles around her ankle would spasm and cause a burning to shoot right up past her knee, through her thigh and past her hip to her lower back. Clearly there was a ways to go before that would set itself straight again. Could there be a broken bone causing all this discomfort? Maybe, but with all the moving around they'd been doing it was really hard to tell.

She'd managed to push herself up a bit with her good foot when Dean's hand flexed on her abdomen where it had drifted. "Where you goin' SheRa?" He mumbled into the sleeve of the arm he'd tucked under his head. "Ibuprofen, I think." Malcolm growled groggily from the other side. "Slept right through so hasn't had any since yesterday." Great. There went any illusion that she could still move stealthily. And now she couldn't even give her own answers. Well, she'd be damned if they stopped her from getting her own damned painkillers. "No worries guys, I'll grab what I need. You've done more than enough for me the last few days." For the moment she was going to ignore the fact that the raw, ragged edged voice that came from her mouth was hardly recognizable as her own.

"Don' move." Dean managed to slur out as he propped himself up on his elbows. Lids not quite open, he glanced wearily through slitted lids around the clearing they were in looking for the most likely place for the Advil bottle to have ended up. "I'll get it." Malcolm was already up and moving across the clearing toward the pile of bags he'd set between the caravan and the train car.

"I can get it, really." She was adamant about wanting to do something for herself, but like most of Cal's protest lately it went largely ignored. Dean's acknowledgement that she probably could do for herself amounted to nothing more than a pat on her good knee. Hm. A little patronizing much?

"Coffee's going to take a bit. There's a wood stove in the caravan but it's only been used once or twice since 1876. It'll have to be cleaned out before we can use it to cook." Well, wasn't Malcolm just the bearer of fantastic news today? Dean scowled his agreement with her silent assessment, the heels of his palms digging into his eyelids. "Wasn't there a jar of instant somewhere in that shopping cart full of crap you made us stop for?" Grouching is what Winchester does best, after all. Not that he could be blamed. They were facing the morning without caffeine after all.

"Hey, if you want to put together a fire and boil some water then go for it." Malcolm wasn't going to help the coffee situation along, apparently. It seemed he was of the impression that the wood stove would take less time, cleaning and all. This was doing nothing for Cal's mood either.

Cal, for her part, had changed her mind about getting up. The more awake she became the more everything throbbed. Damn. Okay, so maybe it was just as well the guys weren't letting her do a thing for herself. Maybe it was better to just lie where she was. Pulling the blanket back up to her chin she rolled over on to her good side, tucked a corner of the blanket between her arm and her face and curled into a semi-fetal position.

She hadn't been this awake in days and the reality of their situation had just begun to really sink in. Worse than the physical pain she was in, which on its own was difficult enough to handle with or without a little Ibuprofen, was the knowledge that her newly found relatives were certifiably insane.

It took a special kind of special to torture and maim readily over a bunch of old books. Lord only knew what was in the things that made these people want them so bad. When Malcolm had first told her about the family her father had kept secret, Cal had harbored hope that there might be a chance at reconciliation. Her cousins had done away with that bit of nonsense quickly enough, which in itself hadn't been completely unexpected. Lord only knew Malcolm had tried to warn her. It was the crushing sense of loss that had really done her in. Cal had never missed her father more, and that was saying an awful lot.

"Hey, you okay over there?" Malcolm had been watching Cal carefully. His heart sank ever time she went from defiant and wanting to do for herself to that little girl he'd helped tuck in to the backseat of her father's truck decades before. Pale and sallow, the ever-present dark circles around her eyes giving her a haunted quality that just didn't fit. "Mhm." Her weak answer in a small voice that had Dean taking notice too. Judging from the dark look sent up like buckshot at the sky, the guy wasn't happy with what he'd heard.

Glancing over his shoulder at Malcolm to see if he'd caught it too. Satisfied that he wasn't the only one concerned, Dean began what had become the usual line of questioning. "What's the matter?" It was the only question, repeated so many times over such a short time that it had become annoying even to the person asking it. Not at all surprising at this point considering it had been necessary about every thirty seconds or so since her shoulder had been reset. Cal didn't even bother with an answer, though, just shut her eyes and pretended to drift off again. Malcolm, who had dug out the bottle of Advil, was shrugging at him from across the way. What did you expect? They'd thought for a moment that maybe Cal had finally come back to her usual self. Clearly they'd been wrong.

From then on Cal slept, pretended to sleep or didn't sleep at all but faked it anyway. She was quiet, too quiet, and just let them take care of her. It was freaky. It was wrong. Dean didn't like it at all, but what was he supposed to do about it? Chick flick moments just aren't my thing, man. Not that one of those caring-and-sharing moments were likely to do much good anyway.

He couldn't get into her head to see what was rattling around in there, messing her up so badly she'd become almost catatonic with it. Malcolm wasn't any kind of help in that department either. He'd gone just as quiet as Cal, though at least the guy was doing something with his time. Dean wasn't thrilled at the manual labor involved. Cleaning had never been something he was passionate about but it did feel better to be doing something productive instead of sitting around waiting for the other shoe to drop.

They were about halfway through clearing out the squirrels and dirt from the train car when Malcolm changed his mind. "We should really get the wagon ready before dark. The ticking should be aired out enough by now to fix Cal up a decent place to prop up her foot." But that didn't make much sense. The prehistoric futon was big, by modern standards, but it still would only sleep one comfortably. Okay, maybe one and a half. The floor of the wagon was too narrow to lay more than one grown man. Granted, one of them would be keeping watch at all times on the off chance those freaky kids managed to track them down to the middle of nowhere. Sure, the caravan had the wood stove and a place to sit, but it still didn't make much sense.

"Uh, why? Seems to me the train car's got more room. We're not all going to fit in that crowded little wagon. I mean, it makes more sense we sleep here. It wouldn't take much to move the wood stove over from the wagon, set up the mattress in the back and…" Malcolm shook his head like Dean was missing something and just turned to walk away. "Hey!" Dean followed close behind, ready to start arguing the logic behind his idea, when he realized Malcolm was leading him into the wagon. Fantastic! When did I get roped in to a game of 'Follow the Leader' anyway?

Now, Dean Winchester wasn't generally the type of guy to just follow along, especially knowing that Cal was sleeping out in the grass all broken and in need of protection. No matter how comfortable they'd made her, she deserved better. They needed to get her somewhere she'd be safe from the elements, the wildlife and where they could hold their ground if her family were to show up again. The caravan was quite a bit smaller and that's the only way Malcolm's move made any kind of sense. Less time spent with the clean up meant more time to put defenses in place.

So they cleaned out the caravan as best they could with what they had. It turned out that having a centuries-old Scotsman who had done his fair share of roughing it was a real advantage in that department. By nightfall there was water boiling on the woodstove for coffee and the stuff Malcolm had insisted they bring with them had been stashed away in various doll sized cupboards and drawers. Cal was comfortably ensconced in the bed area at the very back of the wagon. Her sleeping form half hidden in blankets and shaded from the candle light by the sheet Malcolm had draped from the ceiling to give her some privacy. For the first time any of them could remember in a long while they were warm and cozy. The Bohemian relic of the older man's past was working some sort of magic on them regardless of what was out there waiting to pounce.

"Sun's setting. Feels like it'll be a cold one tonight." So far there had been no sign that they might have been followed but that didn't stop that feeling from creeping under Cal's skin. The one that reminded a person that nothing was certain. The deep shadows of the night were the preferred hiding places of monsters and crazy folk, and one or the other could jump out at them at any given moment. Given her families tendencies they couldn't rule out the possibility of both at the same time either.

"We take it in shifts again tonight?" Whether Dean meant keeping Cal warm, sleeping or keeping watch Malcolm couldn't say.

"Yeah, I'll take first watch." He was too full of coffee to be able to think, too full of his own thoughts to be able to drift off even if he'd wanted to.

"You sure?" It was nice that Dean felt the need to be certain but it was also just a courtesy. The poor kid was dead on his feet, eyes at half mast and dragging his feet from an exhausting day.

"Yeah. Go on, I'll wake you when it's your turn." Dean didn't argue for once. Toeing off his boots by the edge of the bed, he carefully crawled across the blankets trying hard not to wake Cal. The man was snoring before he was horizontal. That damned hand was on Cal's hip again and Malcolm was having a much harder time convincing himself that the jealousy of an old man was out of line.

She's Jake's daughter and she's got a life outside of the twisted family crap you just brought down on her head. You don't have any right to feel any kind of anything for the girl. There was no denying that Dean was good for her, at least as far as Mal had been able see. But Dean hadn't known the eight year old who would have preferred to die trying to behead a vampire three times her size than sit back and watch a stranger bleed out on her watch. Dean Winchester might have one hell of a track record but Malcolm wasn't so sure he truly understood and appreciated Cal's determination. He knew the woman she'd become inside and out but there would always be a part of her out of his reach; a part that only she and Malcolm were still around to remember.

She's gorgeous Jake, and so damned incredible. You did good. Lust aside she'd grown up to be a formidable woman. Would Jacob have wanted to kick his ass for having impure thoughts about his daughter? Probably. He'd have thrown a few punches, made Malcolm order a couple of pints and then Jake would've likely given his blessing. Well, provided his daughter felt the same way for Mal.

What are you going to do about this, Old Man? That was a good question. Would he act on these impulses and the mixed signals she kept tossing his way? No. Malcolm was more subtle than that. He'd take his cues from Cal is what he'd do. If she kept clinging to Dean like he was all there was to life, then Malcolm would let them be. Should there be any change in that closeness or should Cal begin to show a serious interest in Malcolm though… well, he'd just have to ante up and hedge his bets now wouldn't he?


"Why do we have to stay inside again today?" Jason whispered to Fran. The first day or two of being cooped up had been fun. Fran and Sam weren't usually okay with him spending the day in front of the tv or playing video games. He'd even spent an entire afternoon reading. The problem was that he was used to being sent outside to play. He liked running through Cal's cornfields and playing in the muck. Sam had bought him a bike the week before and it was calling to him from the barn out back. There were adventures to be had. Not being able to get out to have them was really starting to suck.

"We've been through this Jace. Sam says it's not safe to leave the house. After everything we've been through together I'm inclined to trust him. You should too." They hadn't gone into any detail about what they were facing this time but the kids had experienced enough of the supernatural to be able to draw their own conclusions. Sam figured it was best not to feed their fears by telling them that this time it wasn't a ghost or a demon but actual human beings. No need to risk raising all the old fears of their father would waltz back into their lives and take everything away from them.

"But it's the middle of the day! Don't those things mostly come out at night?" He was a smart kid, that one. No one could ever say otherwise. Unfortunately Fran was starting to feel like maybe she'd had her fill of trying to fend him off.

"Sam, you want to field this one? I've got to check on our anti-social, grouchy resident teenager." This solution being the equivalent of dumping a crying baby in Sam's bewildered arms. With all the time he'd spent away with Cal looking for Dean, the routine had changed. Sam had become a novelty rather than just another adult who was allowed to make and enforce the rules.

"Come on, Sasquatch. I just want to go ride my bike." It was Dean all over. Jason sure knew what buttons to push. "Sorry kiddo. Not today. Tell you what though, how about we dig into Dean's Godzilla movie collection?" Yeah, that would hold off that jittery cabin fever for a little while. Add a bowl of popcorn and some soda and maybe Maggie would join the party too.

"Can't we even just go out to the barn? There's always something cool in the barn…" Lots to see and touch and do, the kids always loved to poke around in there. Any other time and it would have been an excellent idea. Jace was smart, he knew that if Sam said no there was a really good reason for it. He also knew what he wanted and wasn't afraid to ask for it… again, and again and again. The kid had stamina, they had to give him that much.

"Nope." Sam stayed firm, much to Jason's dismay. "How long are we going to have to stay in the stupid farmhouse anyway?" He pouted moodily, trying hard to hide his excitement when Sam pulled out the air popper for the popcorn. "I wish I knew buddy. Hopefully not too much longer." And wouldn't it be awesome if for once nothing happened at all?

If they were lucky, Cal would heal up quickly and Dean would make it back safely with her sooner rather than later. Maybe then they'd see trouble coming before it was right on them. Until then they were all on lockdown and flying blind. It was just a matter of time before something happened; he could only hope they'd be prepared when that happened.

"So what do you think kiddo, Godzilla vs Mothra? Maybe a little Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla? Or… maybe we could watch your favorite…" And there's where Jason was hooked. "Cloverfield?" The movie was guaranteed to put a smile on the kid's face. He'd watched it zillions of times already, probably because it was the last thing he'd watched with Dean before… well, just before.

"Alright, alright, calm down. Go let Franny and your sister know the popcorn's ready."

"Maggie! Franny! Popcorn!" Jason was shouting up the stairs before he was even half way up, voice bouncing through the house and echoing around them. As Sam bent to the task of getting the movie ready he had his cell to one ear. "Hey Dean. I, uh, just wanted to check in. So far there hasn't been any trouble on our end. The kids are getting a little antsy but we're managing. Bobby said he'd check in sometime tonight. No change there either. So, uh, yeah. Call us, you know, if anything changes." There wasn't much else to say. That didn't stop his mind from running through all the possible things that could go wrong while everyone else watched the movie. There was no shaking that feeling that something big was brewing. All they could do was hope they all came out of it in one piece this time.