Chapter Text
September comes with a premeditated swift kick in the last dying breaths of summer--one final gasp of heat-soaked air, one final week of the cicada's song, and then September comes with her leaves and her cool breezes, and the world turns from decayed to oversaturated with death and color. A beautiful paradox.
Schools back too, well-established by now, everyone's got their classes, and their friends, and their enemies figured out for the next few months, and the aches of the morning coolness is smoothed over by the balmy afternoon slanting sun. Not a bad exchange, a few violent shivers in the cold of the morning isn't all that bad, as long as they got to shuck off those jackets in the warm sun in the afternoon, tossing a football on the way back from school. Leaves crackle and fall in a myriad of colors, and fathers complain to each other, over the tops of fences and on each other's porches over a can of beer, how their yards are going to die under all the leaves, and mothers are pulling out their children's coats from storage, airing them out for the bitter months ahead.
Idyllic. A picture-perfect town, in middle of nowhere Wisconsin.
The town's small, only houses a traffic light, that blinks a warning yellow at the faded intersection, and a school that crams all of 36 kids together because that's as many as they got. Some old corner store that's been around since the founding of the town, and an owner, who locals swear been around since the beginning of the town, stands right of the flickering traffic light, and if he's persuaded enough, he'll dish out a sourball or two to one of those thirty-six kids. It's a close-knit community--something happens to them; they all feel the vibrations circulate. Most of them, grew up with each other, sitting next to each other in the hard pews on church, or sending their kids off to the school they graduated from. It's not a town they can leave from easily, people just sort of end up living and dying here.
There's more dead than living here, all sorts of crowded and slumped into each other in the fall smeared church cemetery. Generations of lives--all born, and lived, and died, right here, and never quite was able to wander out.
Skeletons of unlived lives.
And they were content in their own personal static wave lines. No deviations, no flickers from the monotone blips of life, until---
1996. September.
------
The first disturbance in town, was the disappearance of Daryl Mathers.
It was announced by his mother flying into the small town in her husband's beat-up truck, and slamming the door of the store open, and demanding where the fuck her son was. The Mathers family were not welcome in town, and the patriarch of the family, too proud to uproot his family from where he had lived for generations, kept them on the rotted piece of land up in the mountains a few miles away, only coming in, when a true emergency declared it. As the woman, stormed around the store, a still smoking cigarette dangling from her fingers, the owner yelled at her, phone already pressed to his ear. He accused her of many things, of stealing, of being drunk, and she cursed him, eyes still wild as she left, truck hiccupping a foul diesel smoke into the windows.
Daryl was never found, and as such happens, no one gave a shit either. The local police, a whole two officers, half-heartedly listened to his hysteric mother, and convinced the boy had run off again to escape his family, searched the surrounding woods for a day, before declaring him a runaway, and putting his case to rest.
That was in January.
In March, the next child went missing.
It was almost a strange sense of deja vu, the way the door to the store slammed open, the way the mother ran in, and the way she wailed for her missing child. Her shaking fingers gripped the edge of the worn wooden counter, tears trailing down her face, and she fed a nearly burnt-out cigarette to her lips, hands shaking.
Cynthia Woods. Eight years old.
The two police were more empathetic towards the mother, and searched for the missing child for a week, before deeming her missing, and putting her case to rest as well. Flyers with the child's face littered the town, the mother begging people passing by if they had seen her little girl. Weeks passed, and she stopped haunting the streets, and the flyers got torn down. Cynthia never came back either.
Two's a coincidence, but three's a trend, so when five-year-old Danny disappeared from his grandmother's car, the whole town turned quiet. Three children just gone from town, was almost entirely unheard of, and the police were suddenly feeling a tad overwhelmed. Three missing faces pinned up by their families, turned into four, turned into five, and by the time September rolled around, seven kids in all had gone missing from that town. If you were under the age of thirteen, there wasn't a chance in hell, you were leaving the house by yourself. Something was haunting the town of Drewey.
September rolled around, and with it the descent of the death of the year, and misery ran high in the bones of the town.
Along with the brisk cool mornings, and beautiful dying leaves, a classic muscle car purred and roared its way through the cracked roads. It caught the eye of almost everyone--no one ever visited here, they were too out of the way of any major federal roads--and this car, this car-- they all drove beaters anyways. Men gathered around the store, muttered under their breath, narrowed eyes following the car, dirt smeared fingers gripping their cheap beers tighter. It stalled for a moment, before pulling to park, and the driver's door popped open.
All hard lines, and steel--that was what the driver was made up of as he examined the outer front of the store. Worn down clothes, and the acrid scent of smoke clung to him, and the men lounging out front relaxed a bit, as his gaze swept across him. One of them, perhaps. The firm rod of iron in his spine bent and he popped the side door open, and he leaned in talking low under his breath, before slamming the door closed again, and glancing again at the men quiet on the front stoop of the store, opened the store with a strangled jangle of the door, and stepped in.
A static rendition of the Beach Boys reached him faintly, skipping and jumping around. The man glanced around, swiping a few cans of soup from the shelves into his jacket, and meandering around the sparse aisles until he came up front, where the music originated. No one was up front, just the old half-broken record player that played the same strain of Good Vibrations, over and over again. Peeved, he lifted the needle, and the music jolted to a stop. Behind the counter, torn flyers with young faces stared back, and he examined them closely, chewing his lip, hands pressed close to the counter as he stared, eyes narrowed.
The owner came from the back, frowning as the music stilled. "Hey," he said, noticing the stranger. "Hey," he said again, taken aback, as he realized, that this was, in fact, a stranger. He settled on the far side of the counter, watching the man study the faces of the missing children, and pretended not to be creeped out by it. "Can I help ya?"
The man just slammed down a toothbrush, and a box of gauze. "All this year?" He said, pointing up to the flyers. The owner paused, and glanced behind him, as if he had forgotten the faces.
"Oh, well," he flipped the toothbrush over, typing in the UPC. "We've had a bad sort of luck here, y'know, the mountains, here, never been too friendly--"
"They find any trace of them?"
The owner swallowed. "No." He shook out a paper bag quickly, eager to get rid of the strange man. "What're you doin' here anyway? Not many people wander into Drewey."
The man smiled, extending a hand. "S'John, just moved up here with my boys. Lookin' for a fresh start, and I was wondering if this was it."
The owner nodded. "Dollar, fifty. I don't know if this is the place for you an' your boys right now. But welcome anyway." He extended the bag, and John took it.
"Thanks," John laughed. "I'll keep it in mind." He turned on his heel, glancing once more around the store, before walking quickly out.
"Poor bastard." The store owner sighed.
-----
John Winchester had been driving his two boys all over the continental states for the past five years. Living out of motels, and sleeping on the side of the road, was all too familiar to them, and John knew how to make a five-dollar bill stretch far. Old acquaintances that had once known them, back when they were a family, back when they were stable in Lawrence, Kansas, often sat around their safe, warm family dinner table, and would bring up the strange disappearances of the Winchester family. For a while, they were a local legend--the disappearance of the whole family. Many believe that John killed Mary, and then took his boys and ran. Those that knew John, stood by him, but secretly believed he just couldn't stick around and fled.
They wouldn't have ever been able to guess the reality.
For his oldest, Dean, living life on the road, became an unsettled normal. Something in the back of his mind told him, he had, once upon a time, had something more, and his soul craved the touch of his mother badly.
(and when he would feel the touch of his mother again, all he would feel is anger. and sadness.)
For his youngest, Sam, life on the road, was all he ever knew. For the longest time, he thought all children lived their life counting miles. Stability, a sense of something he had never known, but wanted so bad, it turned out, was his biggest craving in the end.
(he would long so desperately, and so quietly, his very bones would creak and groan under his anguish)
The motel that John sequestered his family at, was hidden behind a stand of trees, and was more campsite than traditional motel. Half-functional cabins, with a path to a bath house trodden out woven between the thick pines was all that made it up, and John settled them in house number four, tucked far from the road, and into the trees.
He would come to regret this decision.
But for now, he's driving down the bumpy pine-strewn dirt road, the Impala groaning as he consoles her over roots and sticks. Dean sits in the passenger seat, eyes wide as he sits quiet, arms crossed watching the trees creep by. His bag is packed neatly by his feet, he's got a knife in the dash compartment in front of him. Every nerve is on high alert, and he swears he can see the maliciousness in the trees. One vicious jolt of the car, and Sam shocks awake, heart racing, before glancing up front and seeing the whiteness of his dad's knuckles, the slope of his brother's shoulders and he slumps back down again, and stares into the looming trees.
Cabin four has no semblance of electricity or power, and John spends a good while grumbling while snapping at the two boys to bring in firewood, and they scramble away, mindful to bring in good firewood this time 'round, wood that'll burn, and not smolder.
Sam pouts, and drags, and Dean gets snappy, and then they both get distracted by the panicked racing of a yellow-striped lizard, and they both race it, firewood forgotten, until it hides under a rock. Dean feels the weight of responsibility once again, and pulls Sam by his shirt, until he finds a suitable piece of firewood.
Dean ends up collecting most of it, not trusting Sam to get wood that won't smolder, and Sam's just too distracted by the wildlife around them.
Look Dean, he says, pointing, knees to chest, nose and cheeks red with the cold. I found a li'l mushroom.
And Dean always looked.
The wood didn't smolder, and that night John didn't drink, and they even ate dinner around the fire together, hot cans of soup that John had lifted from the store, and Dean felt something like hope stir in his soul. Sam didn't yell, and John didn't yell, and Dean didn't feel suffocated watching the two he loved most slowly kill each other.
"Tomorrow," John said, addressing the fire. "I'm gonna talk to the police, get an idea of what's happened to the kids 'round here."
Sam shifted, and Dean could read the plea in his brain, before he opened in his mouth, and quietly he tried to beam to his little brother to just let it go.
"Dad?" Sam didn't address John either, but stared into the fire, like it held his answers too. "Can I enroll here?"
The silence hung heavy, and John didn't answer him. Sam didn't back down, one finger nervously working its way up to his mouth, chewing on the nail, like he did when he got overwhelmed with nerves. Dean wanted to tell him to stop, wanted to revert them all back to when they were calmly eating, and wanted to tell his dad to just let Sam go to school already, but instead he stared into the tin of his can, watching his fingers dent the side, as he heard his father sigh deeply.
"I rather you stay here, Sam," he started, and Sam ruffled up, gathering himself for an argument. "You know how I feel 'bout these things."
"Dad--"
"I wasn't finished." John said sharply, and Sam's mouth snapped shut, and he sank down, eyes flickering to the ground.
"Sorry, sir." He muttered.
"I'd like you to stay here, help carry the load here, help me with the case here, but fine--" And John heaved a deep sigh, as he frowned. "You can go 'head and go to school. Me'n'Dean can do everything here, I guess." He sounded self-righteous, as if allowing Sam to go to school, was extremely sacrificial of him, but Sam still beamed into the floor, ecstatic.
"Thank you, Dad," he said, excited. John didn't answer him, ignoring his youngest son's eagerness. Sam glanced over at Dean, instead, grinning wide, and Dean gave him a crooked grin back. He dropped out earlier that year, too exhausted to pursue both hunting and school full time, and besides, he didn't see himself moving up the ladder rung much further than some homeless hunter anyways. John had pushed for it anyway, and Dean hadn't--well, he'd seen John's side of things more clearly than his own most days, anyways. He didn't try to understand Sam's eagerness with school, it made him too uncomfortable to try to puzzle out exactly why his little brother would prefer to spend hours at school instead of back at--wherever they were at.
But yeah.
He'd push for Sammy to go to school. In the early years, back when Sam was still little and clingy, he took on the responsibility of getting the kid to school, pulling him out of bed, all tired, and forcing him into worn clothes, and giving him his little lunch and sending him off. It fell on Sam later, to do it all himself, but Dean was always lingering, a call away, to aid whenever he could to help his little brother's future. He'd at least ensure the kid to see a high school graduation.
He was pretty confident, that after school, and after graduating, that Sam would calm down, would take in stride that this was his life now, and he'd grasp onto it with both hands, and he'd have a hunting partner, and they could maybe split off from dad, and forge their own path, their own destinies, and not be under someone else's vengeful agenda. It felt nice, whenever Dean allowed himself to dwell on it.
So maybe Dean dreamed some.
As Sam wandered off to figure out what supplies they had left over from the last stint in school they were last in, Dean grabbed John's can, trashing the rest of the dinner.
"Didn't have to act like that." He said softly, almost under his breath.
"Don't." John said, hard. "He's lucky he gets to go at all, don't you damn start. Sam's still gonna pull his goddamn weight, he ain't getting out of anything."
Dean studied his father's shadow, hard and angular, and sighed. "He's jus' a kid, Dad."
"No, he isn't." John said. "He's a hunter. And he'll remember it, 'fore long."
-----
The two police officers, Officer Harton, and Officer Lyton were used to domestic calls, and directing traffic flow on Labor Day parades. Not the systematic disappearance of children. They had called in state troops, directed miles wide search and rescues, and had combed the rivers that snaked through their mountains, and hadn't come up with any sign that the children had existed. The only reminder of them, was the seven posters, and seven misaligned families that felt unbalanced.
Officer Harton sat at his desk, sipping hours old coffee, and staring out at the town, the light blinking slower than usual. He'd have to do something about that, or someone was going to run it again. Lyton shifted at the desk next to him, writing up a report.
Slow morning, phones didn't ring, no missing children. Good day so far, in the scale of days these past few months.
Harton was just considering wandering across the street to the corner store and grabbing him and his partner some breakfast, when the door opened. His feet slammed to the ground, and he set the cup down, readjusting his uniform, as a stranger walked into what the two referred to as the bullpen.
"Hey, hey, you--this is--hey." Harton threw a hand up, and the man stopped glancing around. "This is--can I help you?" They should really hire Crystal for that receptionist job, keep people like this guy out of their official business.
The stranger fumbled in his jacket, and Harton let his hand float by his holster until he pulled out a badge.
"Sorry, guys," he said casually, like he didn't just send the two of them into near cardiac arrest. "Head office must not have called ahead-- I'm here because of the missing kids?"
"Oh." Harton pulled his badge closer, inspecting it. FBI, "oh damn, uh--they didn't call, no."
"Huh," The man, Agent Campbell the badge read, shrugged. "Should have called you, you can call my boss if you want, or I can--we've been busy." He extended a business card toward the two men, shaking it when they didn't move right away.
"No, that's fine." Harton said quickly. "What do you need?"
"Everything on the case 'bout these kids," the agent said smiling. "Ground up."
Harton looked at Lyton dubiously, before pushing a box toward him. "That's 'bout it, and more'n half of it, is the Mather's record."
The agent nodded, picking the box up. "Gentlemen." He pried the lid off, shuffling through a few papers, frowning. "Never found anything, huh."
"Naw," Lyton said, hands clasped on his desk. "Figured that Mather's kid ran away, but the rest? Wasn't much reason for them to get up and leave. They didn't have perfect families, but--" The shrug he tossed out told the rest: not perfect, but perfect enough to hide the cracks.
"Uh huh," he spun a map around, a finger jammed into the thick trees surrounding the town. "And you've marked their last known locations?"
The officers nodded. "Got their families in there too. Most of them are tired of hashin' it all up again but--"
The agent slammed the lid back on and grabbed the map back. "I'll be back," he said over his shoulder. The two officers watched him slide the box into a sleek black car, and then slip in, the car rumbling away.
"Goddamn, that car," Harton admired.
-----
They spent two weeks in Drewey, the rough wall of Cabin four turned into an evidence board, that John would spend nights in front of, muttering and flipping through heavy books. He'd hike back into town, and call up hunters in terse conversations about theories, and ended them swiftly. He'd send Dean out on hunches and would strongarm Sam into interrogating the children at the school.
"C'mon, Sam." He'd say, big and angry. "Do you want more kids to die on your watch?"
The days Dean was able to drive Sam to school, Sam stared moodily out the window at the cloudy sky overhead. Dean would glance over at him, gnawing worriedly at his bottom lip, not knowing quite how to fix any of this. Sam had a unique way of pulling the subtle rebellious card towards John that made him absolutely furious. Even Sam's attempts at respect, felt like a direct slap in the face to the older man, and Dean was tired of straddling the fence between the two, of explaining sides and smoothing stormy waters. They were headed toward a furious blowup, one with fists and blackeyes, and Dean wasn't thrilled about that conclusion.
C'mon Dean, his brain threw unhelpful at him, you gotta pull somethin' here, make him see that it's not bad.
"He's just trying to help." He said one day, out of the blue, tired of staring at the back of his brother's head and wishing he could shake him into reason.
Sam snorted. Tears pricked the insides of his eyes, and mortified at himself, he buried his head in his arms and spoke into Dean's old sweatshirt. "No, he isn't."
"Yeah, Sam, he's--lookin' for those kids, he's helping them." Rain spotted against the windshield, and he groaned, slowing down, tires slick against the pavement. It would really be his luck, if he wiped out right now, of all times. "He needs our help, Sam, why can't you see that?"
Sam sniffed, working one finger out, tracing a sad droplet down the window. "What about us?"
"What about us?" Dean said, a bitter annoyance seeping into his words, and Sam knew he couldn't get Dean to understand. Not how he needed him to understand so badly.
"Never mind."
"You--" Sam could feel Dean falter, knew his brother was trying to pave the cracks with experiences he did not have. "You just gotta listen to him, Sammy."
Sam tucked his hands back into his arms, the rain too fast for him to follow. "Sure Dean." He sounded hollow, all too familiar to Dean, and suddenly enraged, Dean gripped the wheel, knuckles white.
"What the fuck do you want me to do, Sam?"
And there it was, Sam thought, the anger that blanketed Dean so frequently these days. A cold comfort, knowing it wasn't directed at him, but he hated it all the more for knowing it was John that put that anger on Dean.
"Nothing," he mumbled. Everything, everything, please. "Sorry."
"Just--" the anger bled out into a dull acceptance, and Dean flattened his hands against the steering wheel, brain racking with ways to comfort his brother. "Just, he let you enroll, can't you help him here? With this? Talking to a few kids, 'bout the disappearances maybe?"
"That's weird, Dean. I can't just do that."
"Well too bad, Sam." Dean said, and Sam hated how he sounded like John. "You gotta."
For two weeks, he tried with a bitter acceptance, to balance it all out, late nights that should have been spent studying for his upcoming tests, spent flipping through books and scribbling down notes for John instead. John either didn't notice Sam's half-hearted attempts at soothing John's tenacious grip on the hunt, or he just didn't care that Sam had finally caved to him. It didn't even matter in the end anyways, because on the last day of the second week, another kid went missing, a kid from Sam's class, a girl named Marcie.
Marcie irked at Sam's soul, she was quiet, a depth to her murky eyes that Sam could understand when he glanced over at her, and her disappearance tacked on guilt to the silent sins he kept tally of in his soul. John wasn't pleased either, and the two of them were at continued odds, the vague unpleasantness of the unknown of the disappearances pulling at John's paper thin patience, and Sam's own guilty complex of his own tallied sins butted heads, chipping slivers off of each other, warping and damaging.
The obsessiveness of John swamped him, single-mindedly latching onto this case, like he could save these families from obliteration the way he couldn't save his. In the aftermath, of course, he'd realize, he'd ruin his own family in his desperation to save others, but he'd realize it in his last breath, eyes falling shut, regret bitter in his mouth, that it wasn't worth it.
One night, John had come back, drunk and angry. Some long-shot theory of his, a fairy circle, had been shot down, and he--tired and bitter, had fallen into old comforting arms. The burn of whiskey burned away long ago any such warmth left in John Winchester's eyes, and the smell roiled off of him, thick and curling, almost tangible in the way it slithered through the air and knotted around his neck. Dean watched with weary eyes, as his father slipped down, hands faltering against the wall constructed with his time, and his energy, and, goddamn it, his soul, and with Sam's notes, and research and precious time, and he watched his father tear it all away, a gruff huff of disappointment.
He swore he could feel his heart crack.
"Fuckin' useless," John swore, spitting on the work Dean had complied, and Dean stared, small, in the corner, at the wreck. John swore again, listing dangerously to the side, before righting himself, hand on the wall, bottle in the other, and let out a laugh too close to a sob, shoulders shaking.
Dean didn't dare move; his heart was beating fast in his chest.
It wasn't quite fair, he decided, that he could fight all the monsters in the world, but his own father, drunk and angry, was the one thing that made him, Dean Winchester, freeze.
He played it big instead, puffed out his chest to hide how small he was, and ignored the torn-up pieces fluttering sadly at him. "Dad?"
"S'jus' useless," John said slipping down the wall to fall heavily, hands falling on his knees, bottle in his hands, as he stared up at his son. "All of it, jus'--fuck."
Dean edged forward, slowly getting to his knees, and taking the bottle from his father. When his father didn't move, he drank some himself, too strung out to handle anything right now entirely sober.
Maybe, he figured, as he sat across from his father, bottle swinging loose from his fingers, if you can't beat them, you just end up joining them.
"Jus' needed to fuckin' save--" John slammed his fist into the ground, and Dean swallowed hard. "Just once, just goddamn once." His hand curled around a notebook, Sam's biology notebook, Dean recognized, before John hurled it hard across the room, the pages fluttering as it landed crooked. "You--Sam--"
Dean glanced away, not wanting to hear anything more. "C'mon Dad, let's hit the hay, 'kay? I'll get you some Advil, you're gonna have a hell of a hangover tomorrow."
His father's hand curled around his wrist, fingers denting into skin, and taken back, he glanced down. Bloodless, white, his father clung to him, and Dean felt fear creep up the back of his throat, acrid and bitter, and he decided, that he hated the taste of fear.
"Dean--that demon, that demon, we have to get it."
Dean shook his head, slowly prying his fingers off. "Yeah, Dad, I know. We're gonna, but--"
"No, no, it's huntin' Sammy, Dean." John stared up in Dean's face, blissfully too drunk to realize the affect his words had on his oldest. "He wants him back."
"What--"
"You don't fuckin' get it," John shoved Dean back, anger flowing through him, and Dean landed with a panicked umph. "He's not right, Sam's not right, he's--" He ran sprawled fingers down his face, shaky and angry, and Dean could only watch from where he landed, a dull pain sprawling through his back. It didn't really compare to the pain in his chest, not all that much.
"Dad, stop," Dean couldn't stop his voice from shaking. "You're drunk, okay? You're--you're just drunk, and I really need for you to go to bed, now, so--please Dad. Please." His voice pitched high, and he knew he sounded scared and young, but damn it, he was, and John stopped, clarity creeping back into his eyes, a weight settling back onto his shoulders, and he stepped back from Dean.
"Okay," he said at last, and Dean nodded slowly, staring up at him from where he froze cold on the floor. "Okay, but this--" and John's hands slowly spread away from him, shaking away his guilt, and Dean followed them with his eyes. "I'm right about all of it."
Dean didn't tell Sam about that night.
He might have, if he knew Sam wouldn't come home by the end of that week.
-----
It was cruel sunny day the day Sam didn't come back home.
School had been out, and Dean was waiting for Sam to show up, moody and annoyed, at the little corner store, where his little brother would air every grievance as they picked that night's dinner, paying for it with some poor bastard's credit card. He would bitch, and Dean would hum, listening, and then bitch right back at him that he needs to listen to dad more, and then buy him a soda. It was a routine, and Dean knew Sam craved routine.
So, when Sammy didn't show after an hour and Dean was left waiting, hands shoved into his oversized jacket, bumming smokes off of the old men swapping gossip on the front of the store, something began to flag for him. He didn't raise the alarm yet, still sitting, boots comfortable in the dust of the road, smoke rotting in his lungs, and eyes watching the decaying leaves flutter down. By the time shadows lengthened out, stretched out and dying across the road, he could feel the first twinges of wrong in his chest, and jumping up, he plowed his way to the school, praying that Sam was just stupid enough to get stuck talking to some girl.
The school was dark by the time he got there, only a janitor slowly pushing a mop in scuffed halls attempted to answer his question about a scrawny kid, worn-out clothes, eyes that told too much.
"Yeah," the janitor said, leaning on the mop, shrugging. "He didn't stick out, real quiet, kept his head down, left here same time every day, like goddamn clockwork."
"Today too?" Dean prodded, his chest squeezing, fear swamping him. Because swear to god if--
Janitor rolled his eyes, pulling a cigarette out. "I dunno, probably, he wasn't eager to stick around. Don't see why he would."
Oh fuck.
It was like the world dropped out from under Dean's feet, and he was left gasping, mind tilting and swirling as he tried to figure out what to possibly do next. How he made it out of the school, and back to that corner store, he'll never know, he was too busy trying to convince himself that this was some horrific dream.
Sam was no idiot, he knows this. Sam would have come straight to him. Sam would have never pushed his luck, not when children go missing on the turn of a dime, and definitely not when their father had been laying into him so badly lately.
The pieces are clicking far too quickly, and Dean feels a pain in his chest as he stomps back to the store, heart racing far faster than it ought to. The men on the patio, stop their drawling, and smoking, and hacking and eye him. He must look horrendous, and shaking, he turns away from their apathetic stares, hands shoved back into his jacket.
"Oh my god," he muttered as he caught glimpse of himself in the window. Pure fear stares back. "Oh, my fucking god. Sam, god, Sam--" the thought of telling his father terrified him, but his father would know better than him, maybe what to do, and he jolted off, panic fueling his bones.
He will never remember that race home, but he will always remember the eternity between his stuttered proclamation of Sam's gone, and his father's fist hitting him straight under his left eye.
And he will always remember the searing words: why didn't you look out for him.
The weeks following pass in a blur, John's drunk, Dean's half-way there, and no one gives a shit that they just lost a son, a brother. The evidence that John tore down collects dust, and Dean spends more nights beating the woods, shouting until his throat is near raw, for Sam, for Sammy, praying to he doesn't know what, that his baby brother will pop up, scared and hungry, but whole and--Dean throws up, the burn of whiskey pulses with the blooming of green under his eye.
Sammy, he sobs, hand clenched around that beautifully stupid amulet that hangs so heavy now. It digs into his hands, and he's on his knees, and he's yelling, and crying, and even the trees that sweep over him, are quiet and remorseful, because he can't, he can't--not without--the amulet stings deep, and a single drop of blood stains the metal red.
The trees have never witnessed such destruction.
They don't leave for weeks, something pins them here, something comes up, Dean's convinced he can find Sam, that Sam's just out of reach, that he can just goddamn find him, just give him one more week, one more week, one more--
John cuts it off three months after Sam disappears. Snow blankets the town, and already there are Christmas lights up in town, and Dean hates them with every bit of his soul.
"So, you just gonna give up on him?" Dean accuses, his newfound escape into the arms of whiskey opens him up more, and he can appreciate why his father has turned to it so often in the years past. The dull burn offers his brain a numbing that allows words usually kept back so diligently, to slip and slide all over, falling right out into the open air. Still, that deep seeded respect for John lingers, and as soon as the words leave, he regrets them.
"What're you sayin'?" John growls, anger sparking in his eyes. "Those kids never come back, Dean. He's dead. Or worse, that sonovabitch demon gottim."
"He's your son," Dean bites back. "That's gotta mean somethin'."
John scoffs hard, and full of disgust, and Dean's got little warning bells in his head telling him STOP, but he's too amped up and he's full of guilt, and John's just given up on Sam, and by all rights that doesn't track with what the man's hammered into Dean since he was barely cognizant to understand words.
"He's your son," he says again, low and bitter, and something like terror grips his stomach, at the way John finally brings himself to look at him.
There's no spark of life in his eyes, not even the obsessive gleam, and Dean can feel the way his life changes, right there, with that one movement of his father's head. It's over, he realizes, and his heart shatters.
"I lost." John says simply, and droops back down, no explanation.
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