Chapter Text
Name forsaken when they get asked and they remember right enough so as to just say the things that others want hearing. People always asking and asking. “Where are you boys from?” and the like. And those days, those things said, they be most always the same anyway. Dig will tell them “Kansas” and give them smile for miles and that’s what they’ll remember, them folks who ask for the where and when and whatfor and how they came to be where they are.
But Kansas ain’t it. Not for true.
“No matter, East, tell ‘em what they want to hear.”
And they’ve been doing that for a long damned time. ‘Cause of what their daddy done they ain’t all the way flatlanders. They can play at it, though. They can play at being most anything.
***
Sam was just a kid when his father loaded him and Dean into a truck and headed up into the Ozarks where they settled in an old log cabin style house with creaky floorboards and musty furniture. The TV only worked when it was in a good mood and the closest neighbors where a couple of miles down some rutted dirt track.
Dad was unusually quiet the whole way there and wouldn’t talk about what had happened at Bobby’s. Dean sat mostly staring out the window and Sam felt the draw in the undercurrents between his brother and his father and knew better than to try getting an explanation. He had his head in a book most of the way and the sky got dark fast. Eventually the glowing sweep of streetlights put him to sleep with the way they zoomed past in metronomic intervals.
If he’d known then what would come later he would have paid better attention. He didn’t, so he wasn’t. It was hard sometimes, feeling like they knew so much more than he did. Especially when they didn’t talk to him.
The first long days were mostly just them cleaning out the place they would be living in, Sam trying not to complain because it was clear by then that something big had happened and he didn’t know how bad it really was, but it was bad enough that Dean didn’t ask any questions, so Sam didn’t either.
It was early spring and Sam wasn’t used to the way the air smelled, or how much noise the wind made, or how they had to cut wood for the fireplace.
Dad went out and brought back groceries, cans of soup and spaghetti and cereal. Dad went out again and came back late in the evening looking kind of dark faced and angry. Dean didn’t say anything when dad didn’t want the dinner they had saved for him and Sam went to bed after washing up in cold water. He and Dean were sleeping in the one big bed that was up the stairs, close to the roof. It was a little warmer up there once the fire had been going for a while, but he still had on his flannel pajamas and was glad when Dean shoved into bed next to him.
Dad must have stayed up late that night because they found him sleeping in the musty recliner in front of the fire with a half empty bottle placed carelessly next to the back leg and his leather bound journal open on his lap. Dean made that worried face that made Sam’s stomach hurt before hustling them both out the door with just cold poptarts for breakfast.
They poked about in the little shed next to the house for a while and then walked around, trying to get “the lay of the land” as Dean said.
Years later Sam thinks they were so green back then it almost hurts to think about. They would learn, though. They sure would.
***
It was a Wendigo.
They found that out later.
Dad had brought them into the mountains the same way he hustled them everywhere, not really knowing what he was walking them into. What he was walking himself into, come to that.
There are lots of old mines in hill country. Lead, zinc, iron. Barite. That’s why land is all there is if you want to be rich in the mountains. The ones who didn’t sell to mining companies or logging were smart. Stubborn as all unholy hell, but smart. They sit pretty now on riches untold. But that’s nothing to John Winchester who only came for one thing – to hunt.
There’s good hunting in the Ozarks. Good fishing too, if you know the way of it. Not the kind of hunting that interested John. He was just after one thing.
Too bad it got him first.
***
When spring comes on there’s wood sorrel and sweet rocket and heal-all. There are oxeye daisies. There are bugs everywhere. The weather’s airish, but not too bad. Dean sniffles and Sam buries his nose in the scarf Dean wrapped around him. They’ve been alone for two months and things are new and strange.
At first Sam isn’t worried like Dean is. Dean paces and waits and talks about how dad will be back soon. It seems like that’s the way it’s been for years and Sam doesn’t really think it’s different this time. Dean gets short, his temper waxing and waning. Then they start running low on food. Dean stretches it. Dean eats less than Sam does and he’s always cold. Sam thinks they have to do something. Call someone. But then it’s like something takes Dean over and he sits them down on the couch and says “Sammy” in this wrecked tone that makes Sam’s eyes water before he even starts really talking.
It all comes out then. Dad’s a hero. Dad hunts things like what killed mom. Dad has been training Dean to do the same. Dad has been telling Dean secrets that Sam wasn’t part of. Sam hates him for it and then cries until his eyes run dry and his nose is so snotty he can’t breathe and then Dean says “I don’t know if he’s coming back” and starts crying too.
If dad’s a hero and dad’s the best and dad’s been doing this the whole time, then why isn’t he back yet?
It’s a hard pill to swallow.
There are some things, Dean says, that are going to be trouble.
They’re in the mountains in a cabin someone dad knows got for them. No one is expecting them anywhere. No one is waiting for them to call. No one knows anything about them. Dad doesn’t have many friends. Dad took the car. Dad left his emergency money and one shotgun loaded with rock salt for Dean.
Dad might not be coming back.
It hits Sam like hail - dad isn’t coming back. He can feel that knowledge reverberate in his bones, strike by strike along with his heartbeat.
***
They meet Crow and Lynn a while after that. Crow is about Dean’s age, dark-haired and flat jawed. He has deep set eyes that gleam pale blue and he’s wearing a Cardinals ball cap. Lynn is taller than Dean, a little older, dressed in a man’s shirt and jeans. Her hair goes all the way down to her waist and there’s a knife in her belt. When she smiles she shows one crooked incisor, but it just makes her smile better.
They live “yander”. They don’t seem too fussed about the fact that Sam and Dean’s mom and dad aren’t around. Seems like that’s not something anyone is going to be fussed about. Lynn says something like “daddy goes off to work too”. She can drive their rust bucket pickup and Dean is quick to negotiate some kind of deal with her for a ride to Wal-Mart.
Dean buys value packs. He buys rice and beans and elbows. He buys cans of tomato sauce and ravioli and milk. He buys a big bag of apples. He buys chocolate sauce. He buys peanut butter and bread. He buys a bag of candy bars. When Sam goes outside to help him lug it all in Lynn is sitting behind the wheel of the pale green pickup and Sam has this sudden thought that she looks like a kid, just another little kid playing at being grown up. Too young to drive and too young to be helping them out like this. Then she smiles and gives Dean a little salute and Sam thinks they’ve all stopped being kids.
“’M I gonna go to school, Dean?” Sam asks when they’re sitting in front of the fire later.
“You want to?” Dean asks and he’s looking so tired all of a sudden.
Sam shrugs. He started, kind of, last semester and he was already moved ahead so he figures it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t go for a while, just until the rest of the kids his age catch up.
“You gonna go?” Sam asks.
“Don’t see how I can when dad’s not around. Don’t know how to work that out.”
Sam is sitting next to him and it’s gotten real dark outside and it’s kind of cold and kind of impossible to wrap his head around all this. He leans against Dean’s shoulder instead.
“What are we going to do?” he asks.
“I don’t know, Sammy. I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.”
Eventually they do.
They don’t have any other choice.
***
Here’s the thing – every place is different. Every town is its own little microcosm. The rules don’t always apply the same. Some rules are more important than others. Like… Lynn isn’t supposed to be driving the pickup but there’s no one else to do it and they need to get to the store and they need to go places sometimes. So Lynn drives and the county sheriff doesn’t really care. On the other hand you watch closely for the conservation agent when you go hunting, because they do care.
A lot of folks are on disability and food stamps, but that doesn’t mean they’re not proud and smart and thrifty.
Sam and Dean are too damned young to be on their own. Sam doesn’t understand how they’re going to make it. They need some things that they have to have a grownup for.
Ten years later he thinks him and his brother are strange blessed and cursed creatures. They survive the first year. They survive the second year.
By the third year the Sam and Dean that rode into the hills under their father’s care are gone.
They’re entirely new creatures now, with the hills in their blood just as much as anything Winchester.
***
Sam became East somewhere in there. It came about like this: Dad used to call him Sammy and Sam doesn’t want to hear it no more. Not from anyone other than Dean. He bloodied some noses over it until Dean put a stop to that and then somehow he was “the littlest brother” for a while and then he was just “littlest”, but that got too long too, so then it got whittled down to “Est”, but when they say it is always sounds like “East”.
And Dean was Big Brother D until that got switched around so he was Bigger D which soon went into Digger Be and that slammed into Digger and then just Dig.
If Sam was East then Dean was Dig and that was all there was to it. It’s not like Crow’s name is really Crow. And Lynn has something pretty in front that she won’t ever say, like Vera or Mary or Mabel. They don’t really know and it ain’t polite to ask after other folks’ business.
Family carries scars. Names carry meaning. That they understand.