For four whole months, life at the Braeden home followed relatively the same routine. For Dean, it mostly consisted of copious amounts of alcohol to drown out the crushing pain in his chest. He was depressed for several reasons, but the biggest ones were the fact that his baby brother was in Lucifer's cage in Hell and his angel had ditched him right after healing him and resurrecting Mack and Bobby. He would wake up each morning and head straight to the local bar and wouldn't come home until late at night. That's when he would either yell and argue with Lisa over his behavior, or he would pass out on the couch reeking of whiskey.
For Mack, those four months were a bit different. With her father essentially checked out of her life, Lisa essentially had become her parent. Lisa was kind and caring toward her, treating her as if she were her own daughter. Lisa had a son five years older than Mack, Ben. The dynamic between them was weird at best, awful at worst. They never really clicked, and Mack figured it was because they had basically been forced into a sibling-esque relationship after each being only children to single parents for their entire lives.
She and Dean had shown up too late for her to be enrolled in school since they came to the Braeden's at the beginning of May, which was the end of the school year. So, instead she got to participate in other activities during the day as summer vacation rolled around. Lisa got her enrolled in swim lessons, wanting her to make some friends her age. She hated it. The other kids at the pool would tease her mercilessly about being the 'daughter of the bastard drunk'. It was all stuff they had heard from their parents.
"What are you looking at, freak?" Skye, one of the main instigators, spat at her. She hadn't even been looking at her. Not really. She'd just glanced in that general direction briefly while she was getting ready for practice. "Nobody likes you, freak," Skye persisted. "Why don't you just quit, already?" Behind Skye, the other girls giggled and whispered, a few of them echoing her suggestion of quitting. Mack wanted to quit swim so badly, but that would require giving Lisa a reason why she wanted to quit, and she didn't want anyone to know about the bullying.
If she told anyone about the bullying, it could get back to her father, and that absolutely could not happen. Mack had become very scared of her father during their short time at the Braeden's home thus far. She heard him yelling at Lisa most nights and she hated that side of him. It was a side she had never really seen before. Ever since she came into his life, Dean had been a lot more conservative with his drinking habits. However, that vow seemed to have gone out the window when Uncle Sammy went to Hell and Cas ditched them.
"How was swim today, sweetheart?" Lisa asked her when she picked her up. "Fine," she mumbled, not wanting to talk about it. The pair drove back to the house in silence. That was something Mack could never get used to… Even though they'd technically been living there for several months, she could never think of the Braeden house as 'home'. 'Home' was the backseat of the Impala, a car which had been locked up and covered in the garage ever since Dean had decided he couldn't stand driving it around anymore and had gotten himself a pickup truck instead. 'Home' was some musty motel room where they watched crappy cable while her father and uncle did research for whatever case they were working on at the time.
The Braeden house was not home. When they arrived, Mack hurried straight up to her room while Lisa headed into the kitchen to start dinner. As soon as her door was shut, she threw herself onto her bed and started sobbing into the pillow. "Cas, please," she began like she'd done so many times before. "If you can hear me at all, please come back. We need you." Just like every other time, he didn't respond. He never responded to any of her prayers. Ever since he just up and ditched her and her father after… what happened… he hadn't shown his face once. Not once.
She cried until she fell asleep. That's when the nightmares began. She saw flashes of the hallucinations he'd given her to trick her into saying yes. Her uncle, father, and Cas bleeding out and/or dead… Her father ditching her on the side of the road, claiming she was an awful daughter and he didn't love her anymore… The world burning around her… And then the flashes of her time possessed by him started. She could still feel the blood dripping down her chin, taste its metallic tang as it hit her tongue and went down her throat… Her body had started rejecting the demon blood after a while, but by the time it did, it didn't matter.
He'd had her consume enough that her body wouldn't explode from having to contain him. And then they'd headed to Detroit, where her father and uncle showed up… Her uncle said yes, taking him from her… And then she could barely function anymore. She remembered clinging weakly to her father… clinging to Cas' trench coat with what little strength she still possessed… laying half-dead in the backseat of the Impala while her father drove to Kansas to try and stop Michael and him from fighting… She remembered dying… And she remembered when Cas brought her back to life…
"Hey, freak. It's time for dinner," Ben Braeden's voice snapped her out of the dream. He had made sure to keep it quiet enough that his mom didn't hear downstairs, but it was loud enough that it made her flinch awake. Ben had been angry and hateful to her ever since she and her father had arrived. Word had gotten out that the bastard drunk and his daughter were staying with him and his mom, and his friends had begun to tease him about it. So, he took out his frustration on Mack, usually in the privacy of her bedroom where Lisa wouldn't be able to hear his cruel words.
"'M coming," she mumbled, forcing herself to get out of the bed. The older boy scoffed, rolling his eyes and muttering something derogatory about her, before clomping downstairs ahead of her. Mack kept her eyes downcast as she made the slow trek down to the dining table. It had been two months of this already, and she didn't know how much longer she could survive it. As per usual those days, it was just Mack, Lisa and Ben at the table for dinner. Dean showed up halfway through the meal.
Lisa quickly intercepted him in the hall before he could get too far into the house. "Dean, can we please not do this tonight," she begged him quietly, keeping her voice down so the kids wouldn't hear in the other room. Dean, in his drunken state, didn't bother doing the same. "Do what, Lisa? I just want to eat some dinner. I've had a long day." Lisa frowned, "I don't want you near Mack and Ben right now." That made Dean's anger flare. "You're keeping me from my own daughter?! Who do you think you are?!"
In the dining room, Ben was sneering across the table at Mack. She was trying her best to ignore him, but he kept sending well aimed kicks to her legs under the table, making her wince every time. He seemed to think it was hilarious as tears sprang to her eyes due to the pain of how hard he was kicking her. They could still hear Dean yelling at Lisa and Lisa's muffled voice trying to calm him down. "What's wrong, freak?" Ben asked her, kicking her again. "Why are you crying?" She didn't grace him with a response, closing her eyes tightly and flinching again as he kicked her harder.
Four months into Dean and Mack's stay, school had begun. The bullying that Mack had received over the summer carried over onto the playground. Groups of kids would gang up on her in far corners during recess away from where any of the adults could see. She would cower as they jeered and hurt her. When the bell rang to go inside, she waited until they had all left and then she would drag herself up as well. Whenever the teacher would ask her what had happened when she came in with cuts and scrapes, she would say she just fell outside. Her father couldn't find out about the bullying.
At the Braeden house it was more of the same. She and Ben would sit at the table doing homework after school, and he'd kick her hard under the table whenever his mom wasn't paying attention. She clenched her jaw and tried not to flinch too obviously, which of course, made him kick her harder to try and get a reaction. Internally, she was praying to Cas again. Please, Cas, I need your help. I need you to save me from this place. I hate it here. Of course, there was still no response from the angel. "Nobody cares about you, freak," Ben hissed at her. "Not me. Not my mom. Especially not that bastard dad of yours. You don't have any friends. Why don't you just do us all a favor and run away?"
Run away. Run away. Run away. Those two words seemed to stick in her mind. Even if she could run away, where would she run away to? "Here you go, guys," Lisa said, coming into the room and placing a platter of cheese and crackers on the table for them to have for an after school snack. "Thanks, mom," Ben told her enthusiastically. Mack didn't say anything, just tried to focus on her work during the short respite from Ben's kicking. Run away. Run away. Run away. Could she even do that? Would her dad even notice, or care? He'd been so absent in her life the past four months, she didn't think he would.
Every once in a while, in the middle of the night while she was having her regular nightmares, she thought she felt someone there, stroking her hair gently, and the smell of whiskey would fill her nose. However, when she opened her eyes, there was never anyone there. Run away. Run away. Run away. She supposed if she did decide to take Ben up on his suggestion, she could head to Bobby's house. She didn't know the exact address, but she knew it was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. That was a start, at least. The only other real issue was figuring out when to do it.
She couldn't run off during the day. The school would call Lisa before she could even get a head start. Which meant she would most likely have to sneak out in the middle of the night.
Across town, Dean sat in the bar, throwing back glass after glass of whiskey, completely and blissfully unaware of what his daughter was planning. For four months, he'd been living with a raw, gaping wound inside his chest. For four months, he'd been plagued with the weight of knowledge that his brother was stuck in Hell and the angel he loved had ditched him. The whiskey was his only solution to his problems. He had promised Sam before they got to Detroit that he would take Mack and get out of the life, that he wouldn't go poking around the cage.
Which is why, after Cas ditched to go back to Heaven, he had thought to come to Cicero, and see if Lisa would take him and Mack in. He didn't want to. Every fiber in his being wanted to either die or find Sam, but he had made a promise. Granted, he hadn't kept that promise exactly. Sam had told him to go off and marry Cas, to raise Mack with him away from hunting. But that wasn't going to happen after Cas became a full-fledged angel again and committed to return to Heaven. He often wondered what Cas was doing up there… wondered if he had succeeded in getting things under control. Cas had said with Michael in the cage, Heaven would be a mess.
He threw back some more whiskey, feeling the familiar burn against the back of his throat as it went down. He was starting to feel all warm and fuzzy thanks to the alcohol, but the pain in his chest still didn't go away. If anything, it felt worse. It always felt worse. But he still drank. He couldn't help it. He would rather drown his sorrows that way than to have to deal with the pain sober. "Alright, man, you've had enough," the bartender announced, refusing to give him any more whiskey. Dean just grumbled to himself, stumbling off the barstool. This had been the routine every day for the past four months for him.
Arrive at the bar, drink until the bartender cut him off, and then return to the house. His next door neighbor, Sid, usually was the one who drove him home. Sid was a good friend. He always made sure Dean didn't kill himself while he was drunk. He would usually lecture him about how he needed to clean up his act, stop drinking so much. But Dean never really listened, so Sid would drop it after a little while. That night, just like every other night, he stumbled through the front door. The house was quiet- he'd gotten home a little later tonight- and dark.
He made his way up the stairs and into the room where Mack slept. She laid there, whimpering and crying out in her sleep, just like she did every night. "No… No… Please, let me go. Let me go," she cried. He shuffled drunkenly closer to her, pushing a lock of her long brown hair behind her ear. Tear tracks stained her perfect cheeks and her brow was furrowed as she continued to whimper. It didn't take a genius, drunk or not, to figure out what she dreamed about every night. It was just another thing to add to the weight on his chest. He kissed her temple sloppily, and then stumbled out of the room before she could wake up and see him.
He had been a horrible father for her these past four months. He had no idea what was going on in her life, how she was adjusting to going to school and having normal kid experiences for the first time ever. He headed into Lisa's room, hoping maybe tonight would be different and she would allow him in the bed with her. "No, Dean," she mumbled as he pulled back the covers. "Downstairs. Now." He swallowed, putting the blanket back and hanging his head in defeat. He didn't bother opening his mouth to respond for fear that he would say something hurtful again.
He didn't blame her for exiling him to the couch. If the roles were reversed, he would do the same. As he collapsed onto the furniture that was too small for him to fully stretch out comfortably and succumbed to a drunk stupor, upstairs Mack climbed quietly out of bed. She grabbed her backpack, quickly and silently throwing some clothes inside. Slinging it onto her back, she opened her bedroom door and slipped out into the hall. She looked down in the direction of Ben and Lisa's rooms. Lisa's door was opened a crack from Dean's short visit and Ben's was shut completely.
She tiptoed stealthily down the stairs, passing the living room where she could hear her father's snores, and headed out the front door into the night. She had stolen some of Ben's allowance money, a small act of revenge for all the times he hurt her, to use for the bus. What she didn't realize as she escaped the Braeden household, was something Dean hadn't realized either: It was September eighteenth. The anniversary of when Cas pulled him from Hell.