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Our best defense is living like we do not know what cancer is
Fight it if you have it and pray that there's something after this
Tom McDonald - Cancer
He walked with heavy steps towards the gate, cringing at the sound of the rusty hinges.
he paused briefly, throwing a look up at the iron script, before looking away again.
Downs Cemetery
Shaking his head, while pulling his cap further down to keep the sun out of his eyes, he briefly turned his head, calling “Are you coming Dean?”
He stood where he was and kept the small gate open.
John felt his lips pull up in a sad smile, as he watched the now 8-year-old boy jump out of the car and run halfway to John before being stopped, “Didn’t you forget something bud?” he asked and raised a single eyebrow.
Dean frowned, for a moment confused, until John walked back to him and gently took him by his shoulders and turned him around, so he was facing the Impala again.
“You forgot the door,” he told the boy, and watched as he ran back to the car and carefully closed the door to his beloved Impala, before running back up to his father’s side, and gripping his arm tightly, and nodding.
John nodded to himself, whispering, “You can do this, come on old man”
Carefully he laid his left hand on top of Dean’s jumper and pulled him son close to him and let his other hand push the gate open again.
He gave Dean a gentle push while he pulled an old, weathered comic book from a pocket inside his jacket. The comic was from when he was a child himself, “Go on, why don’t you find your brother, read to him? He always did like spiderman didn’t he?” He carefully asked because if he was being honest with himself, he couldn’t remember his youngest son’ favorite superhero.
Dean pulled out of his grasp and turned around to look up at him, his too large eyes squinting against the sharp May sun, making John snort and take off his own cap and putting it on Dean, almost laughing at the sheer size of it on the small head.
Dean frowned again before he righted the cap but gave a shake of his head, making Johns heart plummet in his chest, because Fuck, why couldn’t he remember Sam’s favorite superhero.
He was pulled out of his panic by Dean tugging on his sleeve. When the young boy had gotten his attention, John saw that he pointed at him.
“Me?” he asked and blinked a few times, not quite knowing if he should believe what he had just heard.
Dean gave a firm nod, almost dislodging the cap on his head, but didn’t move otherwise, so John sighed deeply, “Go on, he’s waiting for you Dean.”
But his son remained where he was; both feet planted firmly in the small stones of the cemetery.
John sighed, thinking to himself, ‘yeah, like that was gonna work on him. Too smart for his own good, too much like his father.’
He sighed again and kneeled before his son, laying his hands on the slender shoulders, fingers kneading the thin fabric under them.
“I need you to listen really good to me bud, think you can do that?”
Dean looked at him with big, suddenly wide eyes and shook his head, stomping the ground and taking a step backwards, shaking his head almost violently.
John made a frustrated sound. He knew what the problem was. Dean had never visited Sam alone before. In truth, the boy had rarely been alone since that night four years ago, only at school and at most nights. But it was never without a fight. Dean crying hysterically every time John dropped him off at school. Bedtime was the worst, the boy refusing to calm down, making him wish that Mary was still there, that the fire hadn’t taken her.
It tested him, making him want to do things that he knew would make Dean stop, but he refused to become that person, he was better than that. So instead of yelling at his screaming son, he always took a deep breath before scooping the boy up in his arms and rocking him until he calmed down, humming old classics while doing so.
Changing tactic before a tantrum could break out, he halfway turned and pointed with his left hand over to another part of the cemetery.
“You see bud, I got a friend here to, in fact I too, have a brother here, and I think I owe him a few visits, been a while since I last paid him a visit” he said quietly, “I bet he misses me just as much as Sam misses you,” he continued, ignoring the old lady that had to step around them, to get properly into the cemetery. Not that he believed she minded, seeing as she tried to be as quiet as possible.
He spared her a brief nod in thanks.
Looking back at his son, Dean’s face had suddenly grown understanding and he wiped the tears that had fallen from his eyes and took a step forward again and into his father’s embrace, before stepping back and pointing to where Sam was and then to where John had pointed and shot his father a look.
And like any father, John didn’t need words to know what his son had asked.
“Yeah,” he swallowed and blinked a sudden tear away, “It took him too, bud”
He didn’t mention that the fire in Lawrence had very likely shortened little Sam’s life.
Dean made a firm nod before he clutched the worn comic tighter and ran off down the path of gravel, and out of his father’s ever concerned and worried eyes.
He rose with a groan and dusted lose graved off his pants and began walking down the path of gravel and over to the grave of his dearly departed brother, who’s grave at that point in the day was resting in the shade of an evergreen tree.
Finn Winchester
1950 – 1962
Beloved son and brother
Our brave angel
He slowly sat down on the bench that was beside the hedge and ran a hand over his face.
“You would have been 37 years today.” He chuckled without humor, “Mother always said to me that God wasn’t cruel, that He was generous and kind and that he was watching over us all.
When you started getting ill, she prayed to God every night, father did too.
They went to church every Sunday, praying for a cure, for a miracle.
I didn’t, neither the praying nor the church going, preferring instead staying with you, keeping you company. I think that back then I was a bit too young to realize the severity of what was wrong with you, but I was marked by it none the less.
The doctors’ visits became more and more frequent, until I could no longer remember a time where you hadn’t been in that white grown, and I began to slowly hate then color white and everything that it stood for.
One day two doctors came and took them to another room without me, their faces were filled with fear and horror and when mother and father came out again, neither of them prayed ever again. They shed so many tears the I remember thinking that they could fill a small river.”
He swallowed and had to look away and met the eyes of the groundkeeper, who was pruning a flowerbed by another grave, who nodded to him before continuing with his duties.
“I didn’t understand back then what was wrong, why you were so very ill, that no food would stay down. I remember that you were so brave, and that one night, not long before you left us, you whispered to me, ‘Don’t be too sad Johnny boy, I’m going to a better place, a place where this thing won’t hurt me anymore’
I had grown a bit more up at that point and the thought that my brother was going to die and that there was nothing that I could do to stop it. no amount of tears or pleading could make you stay.”
He looked up to the sky and shook his head, thinking briefly about Dean before turning his attention back to the grave in front of him.
He put his hand in the left pocket of his thin summer jacket, and pulled out a small, faded photo, its edges folded and one corner of it was rubbed thin, like someone had rubbed it too many times.
“I took this in the hospital. Sam is the one in the bed, tiny little man, and Dean is the one beside him, the one with the blonde hair, not so blonde now, but back then he looked just like my Mary,” His breath hitched, and he leaned forwards and sat the picture up against the gray granite stone, taking the time to really look at it again himself.
His youngest had looked so small in that huge bed, all those things connected to his little boy. It was not made better by Dean sitting right beside him, smiling up at the camara. He took a shuddering breath and said to himself, ‘You were so sick back then tiny man, you had just turned 3 years old, some time ago.’
The doctors hadn’t believed it, no one had, John hadn’t believed it himself either, but somehow there were bound to be a price for his youngest sudden strength.
And there were, oh boy, the price there had been.
Shortly after the picture had been taken, he had taken Dean home, wanting the boy to get some sleep before he had school the next day. He had barely closed the door and turned on the light, Dean running in front of him, chattering like mad about a friend that he had made in the school, before John’s phone rang, sending his heart down his stomach and galloping with fear, even without knowing who was calling.
He had taken it, his right hand picking the keys to the car up again.
Flashback
“Winchester,” he whispered, and blinked tears out of his eyes.
“Hallo Mr. Winchester, this is nurse Annie from Downs children hospital.” Here the voice hesitated before going on “Sam’s not well and the doctors would like to talk with you.”
His breath hitched and he replied “Yeah, I can come over again.”
The nurse thanked him, and the phone went quiet again.
He rolled his shoulders and called out in a wavering voice, “Hey Dean, come here,” he blinked his tears out of his eyes in the hope that his son hadn’t seen them when he came running.
“What is it dad? My show was just coming on.” He asked over the sound of the TV
He couldn’t stop his small chuckle and shook his head fondly, “Get some shoes on those feet bud, I’m dropping you off at Molly’s. I must go back to Sam; he’s not doing too well.”
Drean’s face fell, and he turned fully away from the TV. He blinked a few times.
“No.”
“I’m sorry,” he replied.
“I wanna come with you,” Dean said, his mouth forming into a pout, his green eyes gaining a glint that John didn’t want to see at that moment, he didn’t have time for this.
He took a deep breath and counted to ten, before reaching for Dean and lifting him up in one arm and walked out of the door, his son kicking and biting all the while.
Ignoring the cold, he gently pushed Dean into the car and got into the driver’s seat and started the car.
End flashback
He shook his head out of the memories and began standing, “Goodbey Finn, watch out for Sammy up there, he’s a wild thing sometimes.”
He began walking over to where his sons where, thinking back to when his still had two sons.
The news at the hospital hadn’t been good, the cancer had spread, and he was told that it was terminal, that there was nothing more they could do but try to take his pain away and make him comfortable.
He had broken down there, right in the hallway of the hospital. He had cried and cried and done it so hard that he had lost the ability to breathe. One of the nurses had laid a hand on his shoulder, likely to comfort him, but it was hopeless.
Dean had gotten out of the Impala, so when John raised his head and tried to get himself under control, his eyes met those of his son, his son who was standing in the pristine white hallway, no jacket and no shoes, fingers curled around an old ratty blanket. His son whose eyes were brimming with unshed tears.
He had watched as Dean turned around and attempted to run, only to run into a nurse.
“God Mary, if you could see us now.” He whispered as the gravel crunched under his feet, nodding his head to a pair laying flowers at another grave.
Finally, as he turned a corner, he spotted Dean sitting on his jacket on the ground and he snorted a little, a smile curling the corners of his mouth upwards,
“Dean, you know there’s a bench right beside you, right?”
His son jerked and scrambled around to face his father before he jumped to his legs, his hands making motions at a furious speed that John almost couldn’t keep up with, the comic laying forgotten in the gravel on the ground.
“I read to Sammy; he loves the new spiderman.”
“Does he now?” he laughed and shook his head fondly, reaching down to pat Dean’s head, taking the time to also slip a small pair of sunglasses on him.
“There, now you look just as cool as me, champ.”
A small giggle got out of Dean’s mouth, and he bent down to pick up the abandoned comic book and took his father’s hand and together they left the cemetery.