AN: Happy spring! Well, here in Michigan, we skipped right to summer, at least for now. Yesterday, the temperature flirted with 90 (Fahrenheit) and more than 70% humidity. That's a jump of more than 30 degrees in a week. Oi vey. At least we won't see snow for a while! Oh, and for my friends a long ways away, happy fall!
This story was prompted and inspired by MicheleChadwick. Thank you for trusting me with your idea!
Each chapter will start with a definition or a short passage from some kind of reference book that gives a vague hint about the chapter. If that's annoying, just skip it. It's just an affectation I enjoy.
Early season one. Baby Winchesters!
Janice had to extra work to help me get my very poor Spanish correct! As always, she is an awesome beta.
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Fratricide / fra' – trə – sīd, / noun
one that murders or kills his or her own brother
or one that murders an individual (such as a countryman) having a relationship like that of a brother or sister
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Dean was acting squirrelly. Sam could tell that even before he was fully awake. It wasn't the worried-as-hell kind of squirrelly that had made frequent appearances right after the fire or even the is-Sam-going-to-leave kind of squirrelly. No, this felt more like the Dean-was-hiding-something kind of squirrelly. And with Dean, that could be anything from a snack he didn't want to share to the launching of a prank war to worrying about Dad but not wanting Sam to know about it.
Sam stretched as much as he could in the confines of the car, purposely hitting Dean's shoulder. His nights were plagued with nightmares, but somehow he slept better in the car with Dean driving, even pretzeled up against the door with the sun shining in brightly. It was a fact he knew made Dean unaccountably smug, like he was still taking care of his little brother. Sam wavered between being annoyed at what he perceived as his brother's mother-henning and being secretly grateful for it and the accompanying feeling of being cared for and protected that he had missed for the past three and a half years.
"Who called?" he asked, his voice still sleep-rough. "We got a lead?"
Dean gave him a slightly surprised glance. "Welcome back to the land of the living. Phone call?"
Sam rolled his eyes. He was a little sleep-deprived, but he wasn't stupid. "Your phone's on the seat instead of in your pocket. I know we stopped for gas, so I'm figuring you took a call then. And, unless global warming's moving a whole lot faster than I thought, there are no tumbleweeds in Minnesota." They'd had vague plans to head north and visit with Pastor Jim in Blue Earth, but seeing that they were heading toward the soon-to-be sunset made it clear that they were on a different path.
The corner of Dean's mouth curled up. "Fine, Sherlock. Caleb called while you were drooling on the upholstery. Not a lead on Dad but...a case. He's got an ex who's a reporter who calls him with weird shit once in a while. Well, there's people and pets going missing in the ass-end of nowhere, Nevada and Caleb's tied up on a nasty voodoo thing somewhere in the Carolinas of all places. I said we'd check it out." He gave Sam a glance that was slightly uncertain. It made Sam a little bit sad that they didn't know each other almost perfectly like they used to and that Dean might almost be worried about his reaction.
"I hope you said 'hi' to him for me," Sam said easily. "You could've woken me to say it myself. Any idea what we're walking into?"
Oddly, Dean didn't entirely relax when Sam didn't argue. "No matter what Jedi mind tricks you're pulling now, you were out cold when he called. Like, there was a little old lady at the next pump practically cooing over how adorable you were." (Sam would bet dollars to donuts that Dean had pumped said little old lady's gas for her, but he didn't interrupt to call him on it.) "And Caleb's gonna email whatever he's got. No ME reports or anything, cuz there's no bodies. As to what it is, there's an old-ass cemetery there with a reputation for hauntings, but who knows." He shrugged. "Caleb said to tell you that it's an enigmatic conundrum."
Sam shook his head, amused. When he was a kid, he'd developed a love for dictionaries. Yes, dictionaries. He'd already loved words when he discovered that there were books full of thousands of words and their definitions. Then, Pastor Jim fed his fascination by buying him a pocket dictionary. Sam had decided he'd learn every single word it held and tried to memorize a new word and its meaning every day. Unfortunately for the people around him who didn't particularly care about the size of his vocabulary, Sam had a tendency to read his beloved definitions aloud. It hadn't taken more than a summer or so for Sam to learn just how little others welcomed his tidbits, but Caleb had never let go of that little foible. Even the emails he'd secretly sent Sam while he attended Stanford usually started like, "Vaunted Scholar" or "Upon your quest for greater elucidation."
"He is never going to let that go," Sam said, unable to keep a smile off his face.
"Still less annoying than being followed by a shrimp going 'Listen to this one, D. Pissant: an obnoxious little brother who won't stop reading from the freaking dictionary.'" Dean had pitched his voice higher for the imitation, managing to sound like a prissy little kid.
Sam laughed in spite of himself. "You do recall that my love for dictionaries saved your ass once, don't you? In New Mexico, remember? You're lucky I'm a logophile and a polyglot." He deliberately used what Bobby used to call 'five-dollar words' just to irk his brother.
"Ugh! Don't call yourself that. Either of those things. They make it sound like you do the nasty with dead bodies and have more than one wife! And you didn't save me, you just butt in to show off how smart you are," Dean snapped back, true to form, laughter in his voice.
Thirteen-year-old Sam picked through the 'free' bin at a used book sale at the local library. Dad had long ago told him he was only allowed to take half a dozen books from place to place when they moved, so he knew if he found anything, he'd have to pick one he already had to give up. Of course, he actually had eleven books, since he'd successfully argued that Dean wasn't using more than one of his own book allowance (and that was for magazines, like Popular Mechanics and a few less innocent ones). Dean grumbled about it, but always let Sam store half his book stash in his duffel.
Sam came up with a Spanish / English dictionary and paused, remembering his not-so-long-ago abandoned obsession with regular dictionaries. He paged through it a little, noting immediately that the language had even more in common with Latin than he'd realized. Like his dad and brother, he had a slight knowledge of the language simply from all the time they'd spent in areas of the U.S. with a large Hispanic population. He couldn't help himself from getting drawn in – he liked words and everything about them, including etymology.
After a minimum of figuring (Murder on the Orient Express was falling apart anyway, and the rest of pickings were pretty slim), Sam selected it.
Two months and four states later, Sam put his semi-covert studying of the language to good use.
They were hunting a poltergeist near Artesia, New Mexico where it was "hotter than the devil's armpit" even in the middle of the night. Bobby was there, too, and he and Dad were inside the gigantic mausoleum where the nasty spirit had trapped a bunch of people. Dean and Sam were tasked with staying outside and making sure the victims were okay as the adults sent them out. One young Latina seemed in a state of shock.
"You're okay now," Dean comforted her. "If you aren't too hurt, head home. We'll take care of the ghost." A crash and a pained yell came from inside the mausoleum, and Dean instantly went on alert. "Stay here, Sammy. I need to help Dad and Bobby."
That seemed to shake the woman out of her stupor. "No es una fantasma," she said tearfully, desperately. "Es una bruja!"
"Wait, Dean," Sam grabbed Dean's shirt, slowing him down. To the woman, he repeated, "Una bruja? Estás segura?" When the woman nodded vigorously, Sam pulled on Dean's shirt again. "She swears it's a witch."
Dean frowned at Sam, clearly wondering if he understood Spanish as well as he thought he did.
It turned out Sam was right. Dean trusted him and found the chick's altar behind the building and burned it, taking away her power just in time. She'd found Dad and Bobby freeing her unwilling sacrifices and had been using a spell to close the door while the men tried desperately to keep it open. If Dean had run in, he would have been trapped inside with them or crushed when the door slammed shut. Sam had gotten an 'atta boy' from Dad, a smile from Bobby, and a brand new Spanish dictionary from Dean.
Sam chuckled, though he knew Dean would consider that a win. He had missed this, the effortless by-play, the complete ease they had, even in the way they pestered each other, more than anything else, he thought. "Eres un cretino," he said, knowing that, while Dean claimed that una cerveza más, por favor and hola, bonita were the extent of his Spanish, he actually knew quite a bit now.
"Puta," Dean answered promptly, proving Sam's point exactly.
In retrospect, Sam should not have let the familiar banter distract him from how squirrely Dean was still acting. Or the way he never said exactly where they were going or what he knew about the case. Because exactly two hours and fifty-six minutes after recalling the witch hunt in New Mexico, Sam stared in horror at just where Dean had brought him and seriously contemplated murdering his brother.
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AN: Why does Spanish pop up in my stories so often? Especially insults? No sé. I don't know. Translations below, though it's entirely possible I got something wrong, in which case lo siento (I'm sorry.)
No es una fantasma = It isn't a ghost
Es una bruja = It's a witch
Estás segura = Are you sure
Eres un cretino = You're a jerk
Una cerveza más, por favor = One more beer, please
Hola, bonita = Hello, beautiful
Puta = Bitch