A/N: For the record, I want to make it clear that Jimmy is really the main character of this story. Dean and Sam (and John and Castiel) are still important, very much so, but it's definitely a Jimmy fic. So...let that shape your expectations, I guess. I didn't expect him to become the main character when I started writing the story, but that's how it panned out. Thanks for your reviews!
1984
John hadn't been sure how Dean would react to waking up with a strange child in bed with him, but the boy was oddly calm about it all. The next morning John saw him stir and wake, rolling over under the weight of Jimmy's arm, and then he turned and stared at the stranger still asleep beside him, taking him in. The fever flush had receded, John was glad to see, and the five-year-old's eyes were bright with curiosity.
He saw John watching, sitting on the other bed giving Sammy his bottle, and sat up to look at him questioningly. It was too bad that he still barely talked, but he managed to communicate pretty well without it. John gave his son a cautious smile. "His name is Jimmy. He came yesterday."
Dean nodded and looked down at the boy beside him, the blankets bunching around his waist as he wiggled to a more comfortable spot. He reached out and gently, cautiously patted Jimmy's arm. Jimmy twitched and pulled away, fear crossing his face even in his sleep. He turned his back on Dean and curled up, protecting himself. Dean frowned.
He climbed down from the bed and circled around to climb up by John so he could watch Sammy, which was his favorite activity. Next to John where he could lean on his arm, he alternately stared at Sammy, then at Jimmy. The feeding was taking too long for Dean's patience, though. He kept looking back at Jimmy, then up at John.
"What is it?" John asked, mystified. Dean obviously wanted him to do something, but he couldn't figure it out. Sammy mewled a protest when his hand drooped, making the milk harder to suck, and John lifted his hand again.
Dean shook his head in a fit of (admittedly adorable) toddler exasperation, then pushed himself down from the bed and crossed over to stand by Jimmy. Chubby little hands tugged on the blankets, straightening them out where they had gotten disarranged around the sleeping boy. He pulled them up around Jimmy's chin and smoothed them to his satisfaction, then finally crossed back over to John and climbed up next to him again.
"Oh. Good job, buddy. We don't want him to get cold, huh?"
Dean nodded and leaned his head on John's arm, pressing almost painfully into the bicep, which made it more difficult to hold the bottle steady. John grunted slightly but didn't try to dislodge him. Dean yawned cavernously, and John could feel his eyelashes flicking against his arm.
"You hungry, Dean?" John asked. The boy had had very little appetite over the course of his cold, but the coughing seemed to have stopped sometime last night and he seemed much more alert and energetic. He nodded toward the table in the kitchenette. "I got Cheerios. That sound good?"
Dean nodded and turned his head to wipe his nose along his father's arm, leaving a strip of yellow slime. John bore it with a grimace. "Okay. Sammy's almost done with his bottle, and then I'll get your milk. Think you can pour a bowl of Cheerios for yourself?"
Dean nodded again, more firmly. He sat up, then slipped down the edge of the bed and padded across the carpet in his cowboy pajamas. He had to kneel on the chair and lean his whole body over the table to snag the box of cereal and a bowl, but he managed the task with great competence for such a small boy.
Sammy finished the bottle, alerting John with the hollow, sucking sound of emptiness, then squirmed to be let down. John took a few minutes to burp him, then let him toddle across the floor, and he lost himself in the morning routine of caring for his boys. There were tiny garments to draw over fragile limbs, bellies to feed, teeth and hair to brush. Through it all, Jimmy slept, a round lump of uncertainty and questions coiled under blankets smoothed by a little child's hand.
John had seen a library in this town and had planned to go there this afternoon. Libraries were good—he could let Dean and Sammy play in the children's section and keep an eye on them while he read. And eventually, someday, one of these libraries would have to hold some information that he needed. But now this little boy had come, and plans would have to change.
He hadn't forgotten what this strange child had promised, either. I know what killed your wife.
At last, he tired of waiting for the boy to wake on his own. John stepped over to the bed and crouched down so he wouldn't loom over him, then carefully shook a blanket-wrapped shoulder. Jimmy had burrowed even further under the covers while he slept, but at the touch he jerked up, staring, blue eyes wide and panicked.
"It's okay, it's okay," John said. He glanced over his shoulder to Dean, stomach-down on the floor coloring in a dog-eared coloring book, Sammy pulling himself up on the kitchen chair and swaying on his fat baby legs. They were all right, wouldn't be able to hear low murmurs from all the way over here. "I need you to tell me now. What's going on? What do you know?"
The panic didn't just fade—it vanished abruptly. Jimmy's face seemed to shut down, just like that, from wide-eyed fear to a cool, blank slate. "I know quite a lot, Mr. Winchester."
John rubbed a hand over his face. "Yeah, like that. How do you know my name? How did you find me and follow me from the last motel?"
Jimmy sat up, cautiously, moving slowly as if every muscle ached. Which it probably did, John thought, remembering the bruises and welts that marked this boy. Jimmy leaned back against the headboard and sat cross-legged, his hands hanging limply in his lap. "I know things. I know the future. Terrible events are going to occur, and you have the power to mitigate them."
"You're a psychic?" John rose to sit on the edge of the bed, facing the child. He hunched his shoulders consciously, aware of how large and broad he was. He remembered Missouri Mosely, who had given him his first glimpse into the darkness that crowded the world. If this boy was like her...
Jimmy was watching him, still with caution, his slight young body tense against the headboard, but also with a kind of calculation that was strange to see in someone so young. Had John had any room in him for anything but worry about his own family, his own sons, he would have felt grief for this boy, made so old before his time by the horrors he'd been forced to endure. As it was he only gazed back, similarly calculating.
"Something like that," Jimmy said at last.
"But it's more than that," John said. "You can do things, too. Unless you hitched a ride just after I left that last motel, one that took youexactly where you needed to go to follow me, there was no way you could have caught up with me that quick. What, can you fly?"
He said it jokingly, but the response he saw in those blue eyes, the shuttered flick of a dark, trembling eyelash, made him sit back with a gasp, unbelieving. Unconsciously, his hand began to inch toward the gun he always kept in the back of his belt.
Jimmy's arms wrapped around his belly, his breath coming a little faster, the fear returning. "You don't need that."
"Don't I?" John huffed out a laugh, heard how menacing it sounded and was not sorry. "Tell me what you are."
The quiet noises of Dean and Sammy playing had ceased. John noticed Jimmy staring over his shoulder and flicked his eyes over to his boys, saw them staring and silent. The room felt too tight and close, the air thick and heavy.
Jimmy's heels and hands dug into the mattress as he crab-walked away, slowly, toward the other side of the bed. He kept his eyes on John for every second, not even blinking. "I'll tell you, but not here."
John nodded, followed the boy and stood up next to him, large hand circling the boy's upper arm before he thought about it. Jimmy startled at the touch, and John could see the pulse pounding in his throat, could feel the weakness of the boy's slender limbs and fluttering chest. He didn't lighten his grip, just walked them into the bathroom and shut the door.
Bringing them into even closer quarters was a mistake, he saw instantly. Maybe they should have gone outside, even though it was still raining. Sat in the Impala, maybe, something, anything besides this closet-sized room where the kid obviously felt even more trapped, more out of control. The instant the door shut behind them Jimmy wrenched his arm free of John's hand and shrank back against the wall, as far as he could go—which wasn't very far at all—arms automatically rising to shield his face from a blow.
John lifted his hands, open, conciliatory, and sat on the edge of the tub. It made Jimmy slightly taller than him and also put the boy between him and the door, so he could escape if he felt the need. Jimmy slid away along the wall, brushing over the towel racks as he went, and pressed his back to the door where he bumped his head painfully on a garment hook. His hand fell on the knob, and John thought that was it. He was going to get out of there, run away, never come back, and John would lose the first lead he'd had on what really happened to his wife. But the boy stood there, panting, watching John but not running yet.
"Okay," John said, low and soothing. "Okay. Dean and Sammy can't hear us now. Tell me what you need me to know."
A spasm of frustration crossed the young face. "You won't believe me."
"I have no reason not to believe you." John rested his hands on his knees. "I don't know anything about what's out there, anything at all. You obviously do. I have no preconceived notions. And you...you know my name, and you say you're here to help me. You say you know what killed my wife and you look at my children as if you know them, as if you love them. So... I will listen to you. Whatever you have to say, I will listen. And I'll do my best to believe you. I promise."
Jimmy still shook, but John could see the struggle in his face, the calm mask fighting to smooth over his terror. At last the calm won, and the boy stood up straight, removing his hand from the doorknob. He still trembled lightly, but it seemed to be a purely physical reaction, completely out of his control.
"My name is Jimmy," he said. "That is the body I wear, the child James Novak of Illinois. But I am also Castiel, angel of the Lord."
John felt frozen. Only his eyes moved, widening and widening.
"Angels aren't real," he whispered.
"I assure you that we are," Jimmy...Castiel...Jimmy said firmly. "You believe now that monsters are real, that ghosts are real, that darkness is real. Why not the light as well? The woman Missouri does not know everything in creation. She couldn't even tell you for certain what it is that killed Mary Winchester."
That was true, John thought, though the world was buzzing in his ears and everything seemed to float.
"And you promised you would try to believe me," the boy added, plaintively. "You promised."
"I'm trying," John muttered. He gripped the tub on either side of him to steady and ground himself.
The kid's hand was on the doorknob again.
"If you're an angel, why do you need this Jimmy kid?" he asked, trying to regain his footing. "Shouldn't you just be yourself...Castiel? Like the angels who go visiting in the Bible?"
"Those visited by angels in the Bible feared them greatly," Jimmy said. "And only certain humans can see our true selves without burning at the sight. This vessel is for your benefit, not mine."
"But this kid...Jimmy... Jimmy's hurt and in trouble. You think I can't see that? Why are you using a child who's obviously been beat up enough? He can't possibly want this. He should be in a hospital. Or...or in a court room somewhere, testifying against whoever did this to him. Why are you using him?" John felt righteous anger rising in him again, and it felt good, it felt right. If there really was some kind of creature inside this boy, he couldn't possibly be a good guy.
Jimmy-Castiel slumped at this, misery pouring over his face. His knees, trembling for the entirety of this conversation, buckled at last, and he slid down to the floor, staring up at John with those big blue eyes as if asking for something he couldn't say aloud. "I know. I know Jimmy is hurt, and frightened, and I am unable to help him. But, Mr. Winchester... Mr. Winchester, I am also injured. I was wounded in the journey that brought me here and I...I am trapped. I cannot leave Jimmy's body. He deserves much better, and I deeply regret that this has happened, but there's nothing I can do about it. We're...stuck with each other."
John wasn't sure he should trust his perceptions about it, but the creature, the angel, the kid, whatever it was sitting there on the bathroom floor looking up at him with those enormous eyes...he seemed sincerely unhappy about this. John saw pain there, sadness, and a guilt so deep and overwhelming that it made him catch his breath.
"Can I...can I talk to Jimmy?" he asked. "The real Jimmy? Is he still in there?"
The boy nodded, and a change swept over his face. The thin edge of calm he had maintained was swept away in a flood of all-too-human fear and grief and weariness. His body language changed, too, arms wrapping around his chest to hug himself, and he held himself differently, more loose-limbed and more tense at the same time. He looked like a little boy, instead of a supernatural creature inside of a little boy, and John believed Castiel's story just that little bit more.
"I'm Jimmy Novak," he said softly, and his voice was different, too, higher, more emotional. And shaking with nerves. "Everything Castiel said is true. I can...I can see inside his mind, and he can see inside mine. We're...bound together. I was...I was locked in the closet again, Mr. Baker put me there, and then Castiel came and saved me. I was scared at first but I can...I can see him, Mr. Winchester. I can see everything about him. He's weak and hurt and scared, and he's not used to that, he's never been weak and hurt and scared before. But he's also brave and strong and righteous, and he wants to save your son from dying."
"My son?" John whispered. "My son is dying?" He didn't bother to ask which one. Either would destroy him. He could barely think, he... What was he supposed to do? It couldn't happen, it couldn't, it couldn't...
"Not now," Jimmy said hastily, seeing the terror in John's face. "But someday, yeah, things are going to happen... But, but we can change the future! That's what Castiel wants, that's why he came back here, came back in time from way far in the future. That's why he's here, that's why I'm here. To change things. To make them better." His arms unwrapped from around his chest and he lifted his hands as if in supplication, pleading for John to believe, to accept. "I want this, I do. We're stuck like this, but I want to help Castiel. I want to help you and your sons. Please don't send us away."
John buried his face in his hands, trying to breathe through it. He smelled the generic soap and shampoo of this tiny motel bathroom, and under it the smell of mildew and rot barely buried in bleach. He heard the soft, aching pants of this desperate boy, and he wanted to believe. Oh, he wanted to believe.
At last he pulled his hands down his face, looked at Jimmy over the long tan blobs of his fingers. The boy stared back at him, wary and hopeful in equal measure.
"So what you're saying..." He chuckled, deep and soft, and rubbed his hands over his face before giving the kid a slow smile. "What you're saying is that you really did fly, huh?"
Jimmy caught his breath, and then he laughed, broad white grin splitting his face. It was a little too hysterical, but it was real, genuine and joyful with relief, so young and sweet and true that it made John's heart ache in his chest. "Kind of, yeah. I mean, it hurts like everything, but it does feel a little like flying. Castiel can't do it very much, though. He's too hurt. But yeah. Flying."
John smiled. It felt good.
~*~