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The Supernatural characters belong to Kripke Enterprises and the CW, not me. No money is being made from this story. It is for entertainment only.
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A Wandering Boy
Chapter 6
A New Day
Sam stood out on the front steps and watched as Carson Wyne pulled out of Bobby's yard. Carson was on his way home, head stuffed full of new ideas. Sam nodded and waved his beer as Carson blew the horn and took off.
"So there he goes," Bobby stood next to Sam. "Good kid. He made you a good partner there for a while."
"I agree," Sam said quietly "but he's needed up around the Great Lakes. He told me he's going home to Minnesota for a while, visiting his sister and her kids then he's off to meet up with Nelson in Green Bay. We'll hear from him again, I'm pretty sure."
Sam sat down on the step and drank his beer. He thought for a while about how Carson had a step up on him. Carson had some family left. He was an Uncle and a Brother. Sam envied that. He wanted a place to belong. He was all that was left of the Winchesters. Everyone else was in the ground now. His thoughts turned to Dean and he wondered if he should ever tell Dean that they were brothers. Sam craved the connection to blood,
He considered talking the whole thing over with Castiel. If he could keep Dean safe maybe sometime in the future Dean could provide Sam with family. If he could keep Dean in school, keep him alive and away from the Hunt perhaps Dean could marry and have kids. Sam savored the idea of being someone's Uncle. He had long ago given up the idea of having kids himself. Those dreams turned to dust when he walked away from Stanford and the opportunity of a safe life. Occasionally he felt the cold breeze of eternity wrapping around him and he had accepted the idea of spending it alone. Dean offered perhaps just a tiny light in the dark for Sam Winchester.
Speaking of the Devil, Dean rattled out of the house. It was early morning and the second day of school. The kid had grudgingly rolled out of bed an hour ago and now he was ready to go.
"Who's taking me to school today?" Dean eyed Sam's beer. "Just a little early in the morning for that, isn't it Sam?" Dean resolutely refused to call Sam 'Dad' when there were no strangers around.
Sam stood up. "I'll drive you in but this afternoon you'll have to figure out how to catch the bus home. Here."
Sam handed the boy a fist full of ones. "At this rate, I'm going to have to get a job." Sam grumbled.
"Between me and the alcohol, it might not be a bad idea." Dean answered back. "Who was it that taught you to brush your teeth with beer? Your Dad?"
Sam stared at the ten year old. "You know, Dean, you're going to say something sooner or later that going to encourage me to put you on your ass. If I wanted to talk about my father, I would. Otherwise keep your thoughts to yourself."
Dean knew he had hit a nerve and bent over pretending to adjust his bank pack to avoid the actual pain he could see in Sam's eyes.
Bobby spoke up. "You want me to drive him, Sam?"
Sam started down the stairs. "No, it's alright Bobby. Dean and I will get along fine. We'll get along as long as he's smarter than he looks."
Dean snorted but recognized a flag of truce when it was waved in front of his face and the ride into Discovery Elementary was peaceful.
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Bobby watched the tail of the Impala disappear down the driveway and silence descended on the scrap yard. Silly birds were tweeting in the early morning air. They perched on the stacks of derelict cars as if they were hanging out in the trees. Bobby reached into the coffee can nailed on the porch wall and scooped out a cup of bird seed. He scattered it off the end of the porch then watched the feathered hooligans congregate and fight over choice morsels.
"Idjits" Bobby muttered and went back in the house. From the kitchen he gathered up a couple of mugs of coffee and then headed down stairs to talk to his newest house guest.
Bobby tapped on the door of the panic room with his boot and called out, "Castiel, you in there?"
The heavy door creaked open and Bobby entered. "I brought you some coffee," he said to the peaceful figure seated on the other side of the room. He didn't even wonder how the door had opened. He had a freaking Angel of the Lord as a house guest. He wasn't going to ask silly questions.
"Thank you very much Mr. Singer," the Angel spoke in his low heavy voice. "It is not necessary. I do not require either food or drink."
"It's not a question of requiring it," Bobby said. "It's a question of sharing with a human. I guarantee you it puts the human more at ease. You should try accepting a beer from Sam sometime. It will help the boy trust you. By the way, call me Bobby. Only the cops and the IRS call me Mr. Singer."
Castiel stood and accepted the mug from Bobby. "Very well. Then you should call me Cas. You may feel more relaxed with the diminutive form."
The Hunter and the Angel sat in collegial silence, each interested in sharing information about the other's world. Bobby asked about the powers of Angels. The Angel wished to understand how humans I brought into being new ideas through the power of imagination. Bobby's thirst for knowledge was unquenchable. Cas's desire to understand creativity was real and true but seemingly beyond his grasp.
The gift to humans by God of free will seemed to violate every rule of heaven. They sat and talked while Bobby's coffee got cold and Cas's mug was unexplored. When Bobby's phone rang he slid out of his scholarly persona and became the scrap yard owner. Promising to talk again Bobby headed back upstairs.
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Sam used the 'kissing' lane to drop Dean at the side of the school. There was no kissing involved in the Impala. Dean scooted out the passenger door and remembered to shout "Bye, Dad." to the tall Hunter.
One of the teacher monitors did give Sam the evil eye. It was obvious that she had her doubts that this was really Dean's Dad. She scribbled a note on her clipboard. "Name?" she barked.
"Dean Winchester, 5th grade." Dean answered and fled.
He again lined up for the metal detector but Sam had him there early and there were only a couple of kids around.
He hit his locker and pulled out the books he needed for his morning classes. He checked his list; English, Phys. Ed., Math and Social Science. The list reminded him to take his gym shorts with him.
Off down the hall to English he noticed the looks he was garnering from a few students. Arriving at the English classroom before anyone else he sat down and gave thought to perhaps developing a gang. If he had a couple of wing men they could watch his back. Currently he felt like we was walking through the woods and was being tracked by predators. Sooner or later someone would try to take him down.
If he had a couple of pack members he would feel a lot safer. This line of thought led him again to consider just what kind of life he had before. He was pretty sure that developing a pack was not a normal train of thought for a ten year old. Then he considered the fact that his contemporaries were doing just that, running in packs. They just never thought about it; they just did it.
He stopped for a minute and stared at the blank board in front of him. Far back in his skull he thought he could hear a voice; a voice telling him to "Run, Dean run." There was fire and noise and a black star-lite sky over head. He snapped out of the partial memory when he recognized Sam's Impala. He was running for the Impala like it was his personal safe harbor.
These fragments of memory were happening more and more. Maybe the wall that was blocking his past life away was leaking a bit. He couldn't understand how Sam's Impala fit into his memories. The image of the car made him doubt that these memories were real. How could Sam's car be there inside his head?
Other students finally began to appear and since Dean was in the last row of seats everyone who felt brave enough tried to annoy the new kid. They bumped into his chair, pretend to run into the back of his head and used all the childish 'look at me' tricks found in any elementary school. Dean refused to let them bother him. He was concentrating on trying to find potential candidates for his pack. The kids moved together like clots in a blood stream, each one trying to cling to his group. Dean marked down the loners.
Dean was concentrating so hard on picking out possible candidates he missed Mr. Martinez entering the room from the front. When the teacher started his introduction to the class his voice buzzed around Dean's ear like the hum of a bee on a lazy afternoon. By the time Dean had evaluated his whole class the man was deep into his prepared speech…"analyze how story structure, point of view, visual elements and figurative language contribute to the meaning or tone of texts."
"Crap," Dean thought and scrambled for his notebook. He had already been given his marching orders. He had to pull good grades or Sam would refuse to take him hunting. By the time he had his material assembled Mr. Martinez had moved on…."learn rules for grammar and usage, capitalization, punctuation and spelling."
Dean looked d at his somewhat incoherent notes. It looked like the fifth grade might be harder than he thought. He also noticed that he was only one of about five people taking notes and the other four were girls.
Finally the bell range and Mr. Martinez shouted out the pages in their text he wanted read and reminded them all they had to bring in a piece of literature to analyze for the next class. Dean snickered and wondered if he should bring in the Iliad in Latin. Then he froze. Why did he think he could read Latin? Besides, wasn't the Iliad written in Greek. Whoa, why did he know that? Was his wall leaking again? He stuffed his back pack and took off for the gym.
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Dean waited, as usual, for the halls to clear. It wasn't that he was that afraid of the fifth grade bullies as he was afraid that the little kids could get hurt if he ended up in a fight. He hadn't gotten thrown out of school on the first day so Sam's instructions had been followed. Sam hadn't said jack squat about the second day.
Again last to the locker room Dean put on his black shorts and a plain black T-Shirt. Out on the gym floor he walked to the bleachers and sprawled out. He figured if he was going to pick up potential pack members this would be the place. Looking over the kids running up and down the court in an impromptu game of 'knock you on your ass' basketball he noticed a tall skinny black kid trying to bump his way through to the ball. The semi-feral 'packs' fought back and double teamed the kid.
Finally someone tripped him and he went down. The teacher blew his whistle and sent the kid to the bleachers with a towel to wrap around his bleeding elbow.
The kid sat down in front of Dean and ignored him.
"Hey," Dean said and the kid turned around. Dean extended his hand. "I'm Dean. You were going pretty good out there until they decided to play dirty. Is your elbow going to be alright?"
The kid clasped Dean's hand. "Kerman Terry," he muttered then pulled off the towel to look at his elbow. "I think it's going to be alright. Hurts like the devil though."
"I'm new here," Dean said "what was that all about out there?"
"I'm not welcome," said Kerman. "We just moved here too. My Dad's company moved up here and we moved with them. It's been kind of hard. I had to leave my friends behind in Minneapolis and you might have noticed I'm the wrong color for South Dakota."
Dean looked out at the kids still banging around on the court and noticed that one of the ring leaders of the group that took Kerman down was that Larry Ross kid that Dean had taken down in the hallway on his first day.
"Really, that's what they're like?" Dean said.
"Hey, I looked it up before we moved here," Kerman said, leaning back against the bleachers. "Sioux Falls is eighty seven percent white and just over four percent black. The Latinos out number us and the Native Americans are gaining fast. I'm in a minority of a minority and these guys figure that means I'm just going to take it."
"I'm with you man," Dean responded. "That asshole out there, Larry Ross, tried to take me down on the first day of school and I set him on his ass. Let's make our own team and see if I can do it again. Here, let's see the elbow first."
Dean didn't have any supplies on him but he knew that Sam had tucked a first aid kit in one of the pockets of his back pack. While the teacher was tending to another kid that the pack of bullies had knocked down Dean and Kerman split for the locker room. Once in there Dean did an excellent patch job on Kerman's elbow and the two of them went out breathing fire.
By the time they came back the teacher had regained control of the floor and was letting the kids break up into two teams. Dean and Kerman headed automatically to the team where Larry and his posse were not and at the whistle Kerman took the jump shot and the carnage was on. By the time Kerman sank the shot there were kids down all over half of the court. The teacher practically had an aneurism blowing his whistle and decided that maybe team sports were over for the day.
Dean wandered over by the teacher, Mr. Bernstein and, while casually tossing perfect baskets told the adult that he needed to control the bullies in the class. Dean promised if the teacher needed help he would get it from Dean and Kerman but the kids were going to get hurt if the Larry Ross gang was not controlled.
Mr Bernstein looked into the bright green eyes of this cocky ten year old and decided the kid meant what he said. He remembered that this was the kid that cleared the climbing rope in under a minute yesterday and the teacher felt that Dean Winchester could do what he promised.
"OK, kid. See what you can do with the little barbarians." Bernstein said. "No permanent damage and you take the blame if you get caught."
Dean tipped the teacher a salute and Mr. Bernstein lined the boys up to take free shots for the rest of the class.
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Dean climbed on a bus at the end of the day, waved goodbye to his first pack member and settled in for the ride out to Singer Salvage. He felt like he was getting the fifth grade under control even if the homework was ridiculous. Now he was going 'home' to maybe talk to that Angel and keep his defenses up against the random demon and occasional feathered dick.
He was tired. If had been a long day but a productive one. He had a new friend and they watched each other's backs. Even if they were in different classes they met in the hallways every chance they could and walking the Elementary school halls took on less of a jungle atmosphere for both of them. Dean already had his eye on another guy from Science class and was trying to get teamed up with him as a lab partner. That was a job for another day.
The bus dropped him off at the bottom of Bobby's driveway and Dean trudged up the asphalt hoping for a quiet night and a good dinner.
As he neared the house he looked up to see Sam sitting in the porch swing with his ever present bottle of beer. Dean chewed his lip and wondered if he could possibly figure out how to pry that bottle out of the man's hands. He didn't know why but he wasn't comfortable around a potential drunk. Once again there was a tickle in his memory but no picture emerged this time, only the sensation of fear.