AN: Wow, thanks for all of the feels. I had enjoyed writing the last chapter. The comments this week really moved me. taytay127 I never would have thought that I was broadening anyone's horizons. Thank you. Aloutte, I so agree, but Dean is more enjoyable to write when he is a little ridiculous. smalls907, I kind of think of the song titles as my own personal soundtrack for the chapter, so I am glad that fate helped us be on the same page. Thanks Daydur for the encouragement. I have a decent number of chapters left in me, so I guess I'll keep going. Lastly, Master's daughter, "the pie of chapters." I am still tickled by this. Thank you. So, now for the chapter that I have been struggling with for over a week now. Enjoy.
Bobby was at the table peeling potatoes and humming a little tune. Dean reached the door first and stopped abruptly. Cas stood behind him. "Well, you boys going to just stand there or are you going to help me?" Bobby looked up at them then back at his potatoes.
Cas moved past Dean then, "What do you want me to do?"
'Whip up some of those eggs over there and get them going on the stove." Then he turned his eyes to Dean, "You get out the bacon and get that going."
Dean seemed to be frozen in place. Cas moved back to him and gave his arm a gentle push, "Come on, Dean. You heard the man. Chop, chop." Dean seemed to snap out of his stupor and moved over to the fridge to get the bacon. Cas walked over to the counter and opened the carton of eggs. He began cracking them into a bowl that was already on the counter. Dean reached past Cas and turned on the stove to heat the pan that Cas was going to use.
"Why don't you help Bobby prep the potatoes. I can do the eggs and bacon." Dean plucked the bowl from Cas' hand and continued stirring the eggs.
Cas sat across from Bobby. Bobby was peeling the potatoes over a garbage can that he had pulled over to himself. He had a cutting board on the table with a peeled potato sitting on it. Cas pulled over the cutting board and began cutting up the potato into little chunks. "So, are you going to be helping Dean with the bike today?" Bobby glanced up at Cas when he asked the question then he looked back down at his peeling.
"I'm not much help, but I might keep him company a little. I am not so good at the mechanical stuff. That is probably all kinds of heresy here, huh." Cas smiled over at Bobby.
"Nah, its people like you that keeps people like me in business." Bobby set another potato on the cutting board for Cas to cut up. The sizzle of bacon kicked up from the stove and Cas glanced over at Dean's back for just a second. "So, you sleep okay? I don't get much company except for the boys here on occasion, and they don't really get to complain."
"Yeah, I slept fine, Bobby. Your house is very comfortable." Cas smiled over at him, and took the next potato from Bobby.
"The boys lived with me for, what was it Dean, three years?" Bobby cast back to Dean at the stove.
"Was more than that if you count all the off and on times." Dean muttered without turning around.
"Yeah, suppose that counts too. I was thinking about the steady living though." Bobby stopped peeling for a moment and leaned back in his seat.
"When did they come to live with you?" Cas fished while slowing down his work at the cutting board.
"Well, Mary died when Dean, here, was thirteen, and Sam was what, nine, I think. That sound right, Dean?"
"Close enough." Dean's response was quiet. He was resisting the conversation.
"Well, John lost it when Mary died. As you can imagine, it was rough on the boys too. John left. Said he was going to find the bastard that done it. Said he wasn't going to stop until he found him. Left the kids with me not long after the funeral. He would pop back in from time to time. He'd stay a month here and there, but nothing long term. The department put him on a long-term leave. He started living on his insurance money and seemed in danger of exhausting that. I was pretty worried about him, but I couldn't do much. I had to think about the boys." Bobby began peeling the last potato then.
Cas looked over at him and said, "You're a good man, Bobby. I'm glad that Sam and Dean had you."
"Too bad it was necessary. Should have had their actual parents." Bobby glanced back at Dean. "I love those boys though. I never had kids of my own. They are the closest I'll ever get. Sometimes I worry that I didn't give 'em enough."
Dean turned then and cast a quick glance at Bobby and said, "When did you get all sentimental?"
"Round about the time you did." Bobby chucked a long strand of potato peel at him.
Cas interrupted their moment and asked, "Would it be okay if I asked why John thought that Mary had been killed? What made him think that it wasn't an accident?"
"She had been investigating something and it got hairy." Bobby started. Dean pulled the pan off of the stove and came over to retrieve the potatoes. He seemed to be taking over all of the breakfast prep now.
"You gotta go back farther than that, Bobby." Dean said with his back to them.
"Well, you tell it then." Bobby got up and gathered the plates and utensils.
"Okay then, umm, get comfortable, Cas." Dean glanced back at him. Cas gave him a nod. "So, there was this kid from the neighborhood, Little Tommy Marcus. He was this kid I knew from school. We were almost thirteen when the shit went down. We'd, Sammy and I, kinda looking out for him for awhile by then. I think that we started hanging out with him when he was maybe eleven. Anyway, he came from this family. Mom and Dad always fighting. Everyone expected to hear that they were going to get a divorce, and then Little Tommy would be shuffling off back and forth from one house to the next. Funny thing though, they never did break up. Kind of too bad, since it really did a number on this kid. He was one of those quiet kids, that gets picked on and stuff. Well, one summer he gets this majorly impressive growth spurt. Damn near six feet tall when school started up. People still called him Little Tommy though. However, they didn't pick on him. Dude was scary big."
Dean brought the eggs and bacon over to the table while the potatoes were still cooking. "So, anyway, like I said, the name stuck. And it kind of fit him, since he was kind of little in a different way. Seems like all that stuff at home made him just sort of curl up on himself. His brain just kind of stopped working right. I don't know if that is a thing, but maybe there was something more. Like maybe he was getting some other abuse or something. Never found out, but anyways, Sam and I kinda took to watchin' out for him, like I said before. We tried to keep kids from picking on him back when he couldn't do much for himself. Later when he was bigger, we just kinda felt like we needed to make sure he was okay. We would walk with him to school and sometimes back to his house."
"Well, things had been getting pretty bad at his house. Little Tommy had started withdrawing even more. There were whole days where he wouldn't even speak. Sam was good with him then. He would try to distract him with one of his stupid magic tricks. It was this weird phase he was going through. Thought that he was going to be David Copperfield or some shit. Anyways, Sam would do this thing with a coin where he would make it flow back and forth from one knuckle to the next across his hand. Little Tommy could have stared at that for hours. After doing that for a little bit, Sam might do a card trick or some such thing. Usually, that would lead to talking, but only a little."
Cas interrupted, "Sam has always been good at drawing people out."
"Yeah, I guess he always has had some people skills." Dean responded.
"He got that from your mom," Bobby offered up.
"Well, he certainly didn't get it from dad," Dean said. "Somedays I would skip class, hang out on the back lawn with the loser kids. I was kinda not good at the school thing. Sometimes Little Tommy would go with me. We would pick up Sam after he got out then we would go home. One day, one stupid day, I decided not to go hang out on the back lawn. I didn't even check up on Little Tommy. He must have gone out to the back field to look for me or maybe even Sam. Bunch of the usual crowd were hanging out there. They usually just smoked some pot or cigarettes, not much to write home about. I guess though, that on that day, some of them had gotten a hold of something new, and they wanted to see what it would do. Now, Little Tommy was a giant, so they must have thought that he could handle a lot more than what he could. I never would have guessed that they would have taken advantage of him. What he got from them was bad. It wasn't a drug that any of them could have understood."
Cas leaned forward in his seat and asked, "What happened to him?"
"Well, he burst into a classroom. It was empty except for the teacher. She said that he had blood coming from his eyes, like he was crying blood or something. She called 911. Little Tommy just kept going on about how beautiful it was, how he could see heaven. They got him to the hospital, but he didn't make it. Mom worked the case. She was pretty upset about it. She pretty much ignored everything else, but this. She was determined."
"Did your dad work on this one too?" Cas asked. Bobby took his seat again and Dean gave the potatoes one final stir before deciding that they were done.
"Not really. She talked to him about the case, a lot, but he mostly picked up the slack on the cases that she couldn't work anymore. This became everything to her. It was like she could see Sam and I when she looked at what happened to Little Tommy."
"So, what did she find out?" Cas asked.
"I think, and dad thought, that she found out everything. There was a drug that the stoner boys called Alpha. It was supposed to be this crazy hallucinogenic deal. Mom said that it didn't seem like something that you get from a small-timer. It was pharmaceutical grade stuff. Well, at least that is what dad told me she said." Dean set the pan of potatoes on the table and the three of them started scooping up the food onto their plates. "So, most of what I knew about the case came from dad remembering and researching and sharing stuff. Dad didn't share most of this though until years later, when I was an adult. So, who knows how much of it is accurate."
The details of the story were gnawing at Cas' head, in a way that was familiar, and not, all at once. "So, you think that she found out where the drugs came from and that someone set the fire?" Cas asked.
"Absolutely." Dean said as he started to eat. He glanced over at Bobby and he nodded in agreement.
"So, was anyone ever arrested?" Cas probed.
"No, there was no evidence left. Mom's office was disturbed that night. Dad said that although there was no evidence of a break in or tampering, he knew where her work was stored and it was gone. He had to start researching from scratch."
"Course, he did more than research. He found religion too. He got all kinds of tied up in lofty ideas about retribution and vengeance. He was looking for justice either on this plane or the next." Bobby said with a huff.
"Yeah, there was that." Dean seemed uncomfortable with this strand of the conversation. Cas recalled just how much this part of Dean's father's life impacted his son. He put his hand on Dean's for just a moment then withdrew it when he felt Dean tense up. Bobby looked at them and then back down to his plate of food.
"So, who was responsible? Did he ever find out?" Cas asked.
"Dad never quite found out, but I think I am close." Dean seemed to hesitate, as if he was not going to finish the story.
"Well, I have to know more." Cas prodded again.
"I'm afraid that I can't tell the rest of the story." Dean leveled his gaze on Cas.
"Why not? I know that I can't talk about this." Cas really wanted to know more. He had decided that mysteries just weren't his thing at all.
"It isn't that, Cas. It is because it wouldn't be safe." Dean turned back to his food.
"What do you mean? Why wouldn't it be safe?"
Bobby chimed in then. "Sometimes, Cas it is better not to know everything. Until Dean can get this bastard, it would be best if he kept some things to himself."
"So, you are actively investigating you own mom's murder? As a lawyer, I think that I can safely say that that is not allowed." Cas leveled his gaze at Dean.
"I'm not investigating her murder. I'm investigating the trafficking of a new drug and a rising presence of organized crime." Dean said this in a manner that sounded rehearsed. It was almost like he was testing out the story for use at a future time.
"So, this drug is still out there after all of these years?" Cas wondered how something that causes eye bleeding and death could become popular.
"It is, only it has other names, and there is a different strain of it that is even used medically to treat stroke victims. The recreational version is 'safer' now. I think that Little Tommy took a lot of it. Over the years it has become much more popular than it should have. You may have heard of it by one of its other names. The most unusual ones are Bat or Venom. Those names stem from its source. The drug was derived from bat venom or saliva."
"Why would someone want to put this out there? It should all be about profit, right? Why not just distribute the legitimate drug to hospitals and such, and not the more damaging street drug?"
"I'm working on figuring that out. I am close." Dean looked up at Cas then. "I feel like all of the answers are just right there and I'm just not looking closely enough." Dean stood from the table then. "Enough of this. I need to clear my head and work on your ride home." Dean stalked over to the sink and put his plate in it. "Feel free to come out to the shop later after I get some work started out there." Dean left in a rush. Cas looked up at Bobby who seemed unfazed by the abrupt departure.
"Sometimes I feel like my life got a whole lot more intense once I met the Winchesters." Cas slid his chair back and stretched out.
"I know just what you mean." Bobby nodded in agreement. Then they each sat in silence with their thoughts and a world of information swirling about noisily in their minds. The look on Cas' face betraying just how much all of it troubled him. It is all too familiar.
Review, Fav., Follow. I may be taking a tiny break here this weekend. I am going to try to not do that, but if it happens, sorry. I will get back to the daily schedule soon.