Chapter 3
Disclaimer: Still don't own.
Thanks to Soar, JuliaAurelia, and Sinead-Conlan for all their help, and an extra thank you to Soar for the beta job.
AN: Special thank you to PADavis who let me use her skunk apes from her story Canaveral. If you haven't read it, I would highly recommend it.
"Are you sure you really want to know this, Sam?"
"Yeah," Sam said firmly. "You said that there were a couple of times when Dean really stood out. Does that have anything to do with us ending up in foster care?"
"Yeah, it does," John said with a touch of anger in his voice.
Sam misread it. "Don't you dare tell me you're blaming Dean," Sam growled.
"Never, Sammy. It wasn't Dean's fault. It was mine. I got sloppy," John admitted. "I know your brother blamed himself, though."
"What happened?" Sam insisted.
"Once of Dean's teacher's, Grace Albright, saw right through his act."
--
"Alright class," Grace Albright addressed her class of sixth grade students. "That's it for today. I'll see you all tomorrow, and Dean, I need to see you for a minute please."
11 year old Dean Winchester, or Dean Willman as he was known at this school, groaned as he halted his exit out of the classroom. He couldn't think of a thing that he had done wrong, there were no failed tests and none of his assignments were late. He just hoped that she wasn't going to keep him long, as he had to meet Sammy and walk him home. Sammy got upset if Dean wasn't there waiting for him.
"Yes, Mrs. Albright," Dean said politely and gave her his most charming smile.
"I didn't receive a reply from either of your parents to say whether or not they were coming to our awards ceremony."
Dean resisted the urge to groan out loud. It was coming up to the end of the term and instead of having a regular parent/teacher night, Grace liked to have an award ceremony to recognize all her students' hard work. She made sure that each student got an award, so no one felt left out. She had sent home letters to each parent and asked them to RSVP if they had planned to attend. So far, each of her students had one or both parents attending, except for the one standing in front of her.
Dean shrugged as if it was no big deal. "My dad has to work," he replied.
"What about your mother?" she inquired.
Grace watched her young student, and he suddenly appeared to have had the rug pulled out from under his feet. His smile disappeared and an air of sadness suddenly enveloped the young boy. Grace really wanted to smack herself as Dean's eyes misted up, and his gaze dropped to the floor.
As fast as it happened, Dean firmly settled his mask back in place and looked back at his teacher. He didn't answer.
"I'm sorry," Grace said sincerely.
"It happened a long time ago," he muttered.
"I don't usually tell students this, Dean, as I prefer it to be a surprise, but your history essay is getting an award tomorrow for creativity, and having the highest mark in the class."
Dean's smile reached his eyes and he flushed slightly at the comment. "Thanks," he said, pleased with his accomplishment. He had put a lot of work into that essay.
"You should ask your dad to reconsider."
"I will, Mrs. Albright," Dean said although he had no intentions of doing so. He would have loved to have his father there, but he was on a hunt and Dean knew for sure that even if his dad had been home, he still wouldn't have come. It was just him and Sammy. Speaking of which... "Is that all?"
"Yes Dean, you can go," she said.
Grace watched her newest student walk out the door and a short time later, she could see him through the window, escorting a little boy down the walkway by the hand.
Dean had joined her class about two months ago. He was a quiet kid who sat in the back of the class and didn't cause trouble, yet she was still curious about him. His work was average, Cs mainly, and the occasional B and an A in math where he appeared to excel. She had a feeling the boy was working far below his potential, though. There wasn't any concrete proof, it was just a gut feeling that came about after being a teacher for almost 20 years.
They had read The Outsiders by SE Hinton in English class, and Dean's observations on the relationships between the characters would have been something she would have expected from a high school student, yet the book report he had turned in had only earned a C. Any question she asked Dean in class, he almost always knew the answer to, no matter how tough the question or subject, yet on tests and written assignments that were graded, Dean didn't often get higher than a C. From what she could tell, his abilities in math were scarily good, and then there was the history essay that he had just turned in that Grace was giving him an award for.
They had been studying the colonies, and had been talking about Roanoke and the disappearance of the settlers, with only a single word, Croatoan, carved into a tree. Her students had discussed different theories for what had happened to the colonists, and Grace had smiled at Dean's theory that Croatoan was a demon.
Grace liked to try and make projects fun for her students, rather than just doing straight research. She had assigned an essay that would be marked on both facts and creativity. She wanted her students to research one of the strange happenings in history. It didn't have to strictly relate to American history, though. Then, she said for fun, she wanted her students to come up with a way to solve it. Their explanations didn't have to have any facts to support the conclusions, and would be graded on originality.
A week later, when her students handed in their assignments, Grace had spent the better part of two hours reading regurgitations of every urban legend there was on vampires, mummies, werewolves, and alien abductions. Then she read Dean's.
He had apparently used an unsolved mystery to solve an unsolved mystery. He had actually used a legend she had never heard of and had to really dig to find information on. He had picked something called the Devil's Hole Cave. In a small town in Arkansas called Self, that presumably could not be found on any maps, there was a large, unexplored cavern. One day, a man decided to go spelunking and climbed about 200 hundred feet down into the cave when he hard a strange hissing. He got out of there as quickly as he could. Several men had tried throwing inanimate objects down the well, and everything came back either damaged, or it disappeared altogether. No one else was brave enough to try and climb down, and rumors about what was there began to grow, everything from some undiscovered animal to the devil himself.
Dean had then taken another urban legend, Florida's version of big foot, called a Skunk Ape, who lived in caves and were rumored to be behind the disappearance of tourists. It was said that they ate them. Her young student had theorised that it was a skunk ape living in the cave in Arkansas. The only weakness in Dean's essay was that he didn't explain how a Skunk Ape from Florida ended up in an Arkansas cave system.
Still, Grace was impressed at the amount of research Dean must have done to find two unsolved mysteries that fit together almost seamlessly.
Grace decided that she would head to the office and look at Dean's file, so that she wouldn't make a mistake like she had earlier. Pulling the records, Grace discovered that Dean had been in 9 schools in 6 years, and she wondered if that was why his grades were so erratic. Schools differed from state to state. As she had suspected, his mother was deceased, and he lived with his father and younger brother, Samuel, who was a student in Mr. Kennison's second grade class. That must have been the little boy she had seen Dean with earlier. His father was a mechanic who worked in a local garage, and as luck would have it, her husband was good friend with the owner. She was going to give Inglett's Garage a call. Dean's essay was better than a lot of her husband's high school students could have done, and she hated the thought of no one being there to see him get his well deserved award.
--
Present
"They took us because you weren't there for a school ceremony?" Sam asked his father in disbelief.
"No," John replied. "Dean told me about the subject of his essay. Solving the legend of the Devil's Hole Cave was like the holy grail among hunters, that and the Morton Mansion," John said, naming one of the most haunted houses in America. "When Dean told me his theory about the cave, it sounded plausible, so I gave Dean the usual instructions and took off on the hunt."
"Did you get it?" Sam asked.
John grinned. "Yup, Dean's theory was right on the money. I have no idea how it ended up there, but the legend's been taken care of."
"What happened next?" Sam said trying to get back on topic.
"It was just my luck that Dean's teacher was best friends with the owner of the garage I had said I was working at. I had put on your school records that I was working in town at a local place called Inglett's Garage. I put my cell down so the garage wouldn't look for me if the school called. I picked that one because there was a garage in the next town called Ingman's Garage. If they called and found out that I didn't work at Inglett's, I could easily cover and say it was a simple mix up, but the truth was that I never worked at either place, Sam, the job was bogus."
"They called and tried to get a hold of you."
"Yeah, but the ruse worked. No, it was still another couple of weeks before CPS showed up, and Winchester luck reared its ugly head."
"Now I'm really confused."
"That essay convinced Dean's teacher that he was a lot smarter than he was letting on."
--
1990
Grace first tried calling John's cell phone. It went straight to voicemail as he was 100 feet underground at the time. She then had her husband call his friend.
"Willman, John Willman," Grace's husband Keith repeated into the phone to his best friend and golf partner, Brett Inglett.
"Nobody works for me by that name," Brett confirmed. "He actually might be an employee of Ingman's in the next town over, thought," Brett said, playing right into John's cover.
"Okay, might have been a simple mix up," Keith said. He told his wife what his friend had said, and neither of them knew anyone at the other garage, so they didn't feel comfortable calling over there.
"It's too bad Dean's father can't be there," Grace said. "I really wanted to talk to him."
"I'm guessing you want to tell him about Eden Academy?" her husband asked.
"Yeah," Grace said. "I think it could really help Dean develop his potential. I think he's bored in my classes."
Eden Academy was a small, private school for gifted children. It was an alternative school that allowed students to progress at their own pace. It had an excellent reputation and about 96 of its graduating students went on to Ivy League universities. It was an extremely exclusive school that only admitted its pupils on the recommendation of teachers, and a thorough testing process.
"You really think he has a chance at being accepted?" Keith asked his wife.
"I do," Grace said firmly.
--
Dean sat at his desk, brooding. He would never admit it, but he hated the fact that he was the only person here that didn't have someone watching him get an award. He was really proud of his essay, and even prouder that his father had used it for the basis of his latest hunt. If he was successful, it would make him a legend among other hunters, and Dean was proud that he had done the research on it.
"Hey Dean," a small voice greeted him. "Mrs. Albright said you're getting an award," the voice said in awe as if Dean were about to be named president.
Dean looked up in surprise. He'd know that voice anywhere. "Sammy, what are you doing here?"
"Your teacher said I could come watch."
Dean looked up and saw his teacher standing behind his brother. "I thought you might like some company," she said sincerely.
"Thanks," Dean said softly, suddenly excited at the thought of receiving his award.
The awards ceremony passed with Dean not only getting an award for his essay, but one for his work in math class as well. He appreciated the fact that his teacher had gotten Sam out of his own class. It was kind of nice have someone cheer for him. Dean thought his day was looking up until Mrs. Albright asked him to remain behind once again. She asked him to have his father get in touch with her, that there was something she needed to discuss with him.
His father was still going to be away for at least another week. Dean managed to make a few excuses to his teacher when she asked during the following week where his dad was, like he had forgotten to tell his father, that John was extremely busy at work and couldn't get time off, or he was sick. Then Grace took it upon herself to make contact with Dean's father. She called Ingman's Garage and got the same answer. They had never heard of John Willman.
She drove to the address listed on their files and found herself at run down motel that was located in a neighbourhood that most people avoided.
Not surprisingly, there was no answer when she knocked on the door, so she went to the motel office and inquired about the Willmans. She found out that the motel manager saw the two boys leave for school every morning, and the adult that had been with them had left two weeks ago and he hadn't been back since.
A bad feeling was starting to come over the teacher. The first thing she did was share her suspicions with her husband and the two of them contacted social services.
Social Services showed up at the motel the following day with a warrant and the cops. The motel manager opened up door to room 3 with his master key.
--
Present Day
"How'd you know about all that?" Sam wanted to know.
"At the court house, they called Dean's teacher to testify."
"I remember the day CPS came to the door," Sam said. "Dean threw himself in front of me. He tried to tell them you had gone to the store, but they found the shotgun and they, um, took us," Sam said with a shiver. He could still remember how scared he had been that day.
"Yeah," John said bitterly. "I got home a few hours later and almost had a heart attack when I couldn't find you boys."
--
1990
John Winchester was smiling when he pulled the Impala into the parking lot of the motel he and the boys were staying at. His son was a certified genius. He had killed the skunk apes in the Devil's Hole Cave and secured himself a place among the hunting elite. He didn't even care that he had turned out to be allergic to skunk ape fur, and had spent the last week sneezing. Afterwards, he'd run into an old friend in a bar and had been offered a paying job. He had accepted it and called the boys to let them know he would be another week. Now, he had a pocket full of cash and he was planning to take his boys out for the night. They were going to a real restaurant, not a fast food place. He would buy them new clothes for school, then get them each a treat, something they wanted, not something they needed.
"Sam, Dean, I'm home," he called when he entered the room. His smile disappeared instantly. Something was seriously wrong. He couldn't see his boys anywhere. There was a half eaten dinner on the table, and the shotgun was missing. Had something attacked them? Then he noticed the piece of paper on his table. It was a summons. Something much worse than the supernatural had his sons. They were in the custody of Child Protective Services.
He ran out of the room as fast as he could. He never remembered driving downtown, he just remembered arriving at his destination.
He ran in and pushed the four people ahead of him away from the counter.
"Give me my boys back. NOW!" He demanded.
"Excuse me," the woman behind the counter said to John without even flinching. They were used to dealing with distraught parts. She motioned for the security guard. He didn't come right over, but he wasn't far from John's side.
"Where are my sons?" John said desperately.
"What's your name?"
"Willman, my boys are Dean and Sam."
The woman looked up his name in her computer. "Their case worker is Tammy Nickerson. Arnold here will show you to her office," the lady said with a nod toward the security guard. "Any funny business and you'll be arrested. Is that understood?"
"Just give me my boys," John repeated. Once they were back in his custody, nobody in this town would ever see or hear from them again.
John followed the security officer silently down the hall. He really couldn't afford to get arrested and chance his real identity being discovered. He was seated behind a desk and told that Tammy would be along soon. The only thing he could concentrate on was trying to get his beating heart under control.
"John Willman," a voice from behind him called.
He turned toward the woman. "You must be Tammy Nickerson. Where are Sam and Dean?" he was ready to beg, he wanted to see his boys so badly.
"They're at the hospital," she answered.
John's heartbeat sped up to about 300 beats a minute, along with his breathing. "Are they hurt? Are they okay?"
"We're making sure of that," Tammy said.
"What's that supposed to mean?" John said angrily. Then exactly what she had said dawned on him. "You think I hurt them," he said in disbelief. "I've never laid a hand on them."
"I'm waiting for a doctor's report," Tammy said, ignoring John.
"Which hospital?" John demanded.
"Why were they left alone in a motel room with a shot gun?" Tammy ignored his demand and responded with her own question.
"Which hospital?" John repeated.
"I'm not going to let you see them until we determine if you're a danger to them," Tammy said firmly.
John knew she was serious. "I was at work. I'm a single father, Dean looks after Sammy until I get home."
"Where do you work, and consider your answer carefully, Mr. Willman," Tammy cautioned. "We've been in contact with both Inglett's and Ingman's garages and neither of them have heard of you."
John knew he was busted. "It's been tough to find a job. I've just been doing odd jobs here and there," he tried to cover. His worry over his boys was making it hard to come up with a convincing lie.
"Can you provide me with some of the names? So I can check."
"Yeah," John replied. "Bobby Singer and Jim Murphy." They had been hunters for so long that even a strange phone call from someone they had never heard of wouldn't faze them.
Tammy picked up the phone and dialled them right there and then. It was unfortunate that they were both on hunts because it made John look like a liar.
"We'll come back to work in to moment. What about the shotgun?"
"Work is hard to come by," John replied in frustration. "We don't live in the best neighbourhood."
"So you're admitting you deliberately put your boys at risk," Tammy accused.
"No," John growled and ran his hands through his hair. He was digging himself in deeper. "It's all I can afford. There are other parents in that motel, are you planning to take their kids too? Sam and Dean know not to touch to the shotgun."
"The other parents aren't the issue. How do you explain the fact that you weren't around for the last two weeks?"
"I was looking for steady work. I was home in the evenings," John insisted.
"We have a witness who saw you leave two weeks ago and not come back once."
"Who?" John demanded even though he knew they wouldn't answer it.
"We're not going to tell you," Tammy confirmed. "Sam and Dean will go to our children's shelter for tonight. Tomorrow, there will be a preliminary hearing in the family court at 10 am, where a judge will decide if we return Sam and Dean to you, or if they be put into temporary placement until our investigation is complete."
"Please, they're all I have," John said and for the first time in years he was near tears.
"10 am," she said refusing to give in.
--
Present
"I got sloppy," John admitted. "I should never have taken that second hunt."
"Dad, it was just a series of circumstances that you couldn't control," Sam tried to reason.
"The next day, they ruled that you and Dean were to remain at the children's shelter until the investigation was complete. 48 hours later, they put you and your brother into foster care. As long as I live, Sam, I'll never forget the look on Dean's face when the judge assigned you to separate homes. You started yelling, and I was almost arrested because I almost decked someone when they tried to pull you two apart."
"So Dean blamed his essay for CPS finding us," Sam wondered.
John nodded silently.
"What the hell have you been telling him?" an angry voice suddenly demanded.
Sam and John looked up. They had been so busy talking that they never heard the door open, and there was a furious Dean standing in the doorway.
TBC
A/N: I decided to bring Dean back because I figured his time in foster care was his story to tell, that is if Sam and John can convince him to.
Please read and review.