Work Text:
Death of a Goldfish
WARNING: This is an English translation of one of my older fanfictions. You can read the original Italian version at this link.
On July 24th, 1982, three and a half years after he was born, Dean won a goldfish at the fair.
It was handed to him in a small, knotted plastic bag by a sweating carnival worker in New Orleans, who shoved it into his hands rudely, as if Dean had wronged him by winning the fish. It seemed to be just another bad moment in his day, judging by his mood.
Well, to be honest, the fish didn’t seem particularly thrilled to go home with him either. It was the first fish in a crowded tank to end up in the carnival worker's net, after a frantic chase among the other fish, thrashing their long tails in a desperate attempt to escape. Dean thought it was cruel.
When he lifted the bag to his eyes, the fish began to shake its entire body as if in a fit of uncontrollable fury, a blinding rage that overwhelmed its mind to the point where it didn’t realize that its constantly moving mouth wasn’t making any sound. At least, not any that Dean could hear.
“Give him a name, Dean.” His mom gently patted his golden hair, her tenderness seeming out of place in the moment. The boy looked up, his brow furrowed as he searched her face. “Didn’t his mom give him a name?”
“I don’t know…” Mary crouched down beside her son, teasing the water bag with her finger now at eye level. “Did you try asking him?”
Dean turned back to the little fish with the disturbed look. “I can’t hear what he’s saying…” Even if he could, Dean was sure the fish wouldn’t be saying anything he wanted to hear.
“What if we took him out of the water?”
Mary laughed.
“You can’t, sweetheart. He’s a fish. He can’t live out of water…” she explained with gentle regret.
If it were possible, Dean would have frowned even more.
Then, an idea struck him.
“Is it possible he can only be heard by other fish, Mom?”
“Hmm. Yes. That sounds like an interesting idea…” Mary stood up, smiling, her face showing a fake approval.
“So how will we ever know what his real name is?”
“We could call him Jeffrey. He looks like a Jeffrey, don’t you think?”
“Jeffrey?” The boy made a face of disgust. “Is your name Jeffrey?”
The fish continued pressing its snout against the taut plastic, its expression unchanged.
“I don’t think that’s his name, Mom…”
‘Jeffrey’ died two months later, apparently without reason.
John found him floating motionless on the water’s surface around six in the morning on a mild September day, exactly twenty-six minutes after finding his wife bent over the toilet, vomiting her guts out. He had helped her clean up and get back to bed. Naturally, not without holding her close for a few minutes, comforting her, kissing her blonde hair and tired face. He would’ve been a terrible husband if he hadn’t, come on now.
When he went into the kitchen looking for the phone to call the doctor, he made the sad discovery in the glass bowl.
“Jeffrey left, Dean. He packed his bags and left.”
After all, why tell a three-and-a-half-year-old that his goldfish had died on the very day his mom was going to tell him he was getting a baby brother?
Anyway, standing in front of the fishbowl now devoid of its only inhabitant, Dean believed for a long time that the fish had left because it was offended. First by the name, and then by his poor ability to understand what it had been desperately trying to tell him since the first moment they met.
On his next visits to the fair, he avoided the goldfish stall.
---
When his brother was born, Dean didn’t find him all that different from Jeffrey.
The baby made disjointed sounds that had no meaning, but not without intention. Sometimes, when no one understood his requests the easy way, his round little face would contort painfully, becoming a mass of purplish wrinkles; then his hands would clench into tight fists, his chubby little legs would kick with force, and at that point, his small pink lips would part to let out piercing cries so full of rage and frustration that Dean wondered just how important the message could be.
Maybe he was trying to warn Mom about what would happen on November 2nd, 1983—who could say?
---
Paradoxically, Dean learned to communicate with his brother when the fire that killed their mother changed him.
For others, the flames didn’t touch him that night.
Not physically, at least. The change occurred on a deeper level, a place within himself where his very nature was stored, and it was engulfed by the flames and reshaped. What emerged was something wondrous. Dean became a hybrid being, half-human and half-fish. He didn’t have gills, but the earthly world was no longer the element of his inner self, and the way he began to drift through the days, expressionless, gave him anything but the characteristics of a child.
And then there was the silence. The great, deep silence that had enveloped him.
There were moments when his lips still moved, but no sound came from his mouth, not even a distant whisper.
“It’s okay, Sammy.” Those were the last words, before his immersion into those invisible waters.
And it was true. For Sammy, everything was okay.
He spent his days watching Dean and smiling with his toothless mouth, sucking his fists and rolling on his belly. He made sounds that didn’t ask for any response other than the silence that Dean could give him, and none of his basic needs were met through the use of voice—at least, not oral speech. And everything really was okay.
From time to time, Dean would press two fingers into the soft skin of Sammy’s little belly and mimic footsteps walking up it, a gesture that made Sam laugh so hard it seemed like there was nothing he would ever want more in life.
They were two goldfish in the same tank. Neither of them communicated with the outside world; neither of them used words. Neither of them felt the need to leave that muffled world, and really, it was fine. They were in such perfect harmony that it almost seemed cruel to everyone else.
The frown that John gave him every day was the same one Dean had given Jeffrey throughout the fish’s short life. And the funny thing was that look didn’t stir any emotion in him at all. John searched those empty eyes for an answer, but Dean honestly felt nothing, just total, complete indifference.
Jeffrey docet.
--
“Reactive mutism.”
That’s what a self-proclaimed child psychiatrist with a hooked nose and an overly affected tone at Sioux Falls General Hospital had called it. She added more explanations, but Sam’s timely cry drowned out most of those words that John (in fact, all three of them) had already dismissed as useless, senseless, and the same as all the others, and Dean, standing outside the room, didn’t hear anything else.
His father didn’t last more than ten minutes in there before bursting out with a booming, “Enough!” that made Sam cry even harder in his arms and startled the woman behind the desk.
When he flung the door open, Dean didn’t even flinch, too accustomed to such scenes lately. He let himself be taken by the hand and led away without a word.
“No one is taking my children. Not a demon, and certainly not some damn shrinks. To hell with all of them.” John muttered, staring at a vague point in front of him.
Dean held Sam in his arms when he sat in the back seat of the Impala; the baby was still crying.
“There’s milk in the bag. Feed your brother, Dean.”
But Sam wasn’t hungry, and Dean knew it. Sam was in the same tank as him, and that was the unmistakable cry of a fish that had just seen his brother narrowly escape a net that would’ve taken him far away. It was the cry of a little one who had tasted what it was like to be the only fish in a tank, surrounded by beings incapable of understanding him.
Dean pressed his face close to his, holding him tight.
«I’m not going anywhere.» His arms and tear-stained cheeks said.
« I’m not going anywhere, Sammy.» His silent lips screamed as they pressed against his smooth forehead over and over, until the crying stopped, and Sam fell asleep drooling on his brother’s chest.
Sam fell asleep that night with tears crusted in his eyes; just like John, who swore, just before lying down on the front seats, that he would never again let any so-called psychiatrist near Dean within a mile.
Never again.
---
“Why? What’s so strange about my kids?”
Actually, words weren’t necessary. The way John lifted his head from the Impala’s hood and looked at Bobby was more than enough.
Bobby pressed his lips together, sighed deeply, and took a few hesitant steps closer, holding a screwdriver that he was lazily cleaning off grease, perhaps hoping the movement would give the conversation a touch of spontaneity. But the truth was that nothing would have convinced John that Bobby hadn’t carefully thought through every word he was about to say before showing up and asking, “Don’t you think you should do something for your kids?”
“How long has it been since Dean stopped talking, John?”
John shook his head in disbelief and went back to working on the car's broken engine.
“And Sam? Sam’s going to be three next May, and he still hasn’t said a single wo—”
“What do you expect me to do, huh!? Dump my kids in an institution and forget about them?!”
He snapped, realizing that the alternative would have been to start ripping pieces off the engine and hurling them at him, one by one.
There wasn’t a cell in his body that didn’t want to grab his kids and run far away. Not from Bobby, or from Sioux Falls, or even South Dakota—not even from the United States, actually.
He wanted to escape to a place where there were no demons, no hunts, no wives burning on ceilings above their pre-school, no stinking motels serving as homes for weeks on end; a place where his kids could grow up in a family—a real one—where they could go to preschool without him having to fight the social workers to get them back at the end of the day, where Dean’s nagging voice would be ringing in his ears every day, every moment. But John knew he wouldn’t find any of that in this universe. And so, all his frustration was expressed in the image of a man, growling like a dog, grabbing a half-empty whiskey bottle resting against the car's wheels and downing even the last drops in a single gulp.
Bobby couldn’t bear that sight. He preferred to turn his gaze toward the two kids hidden in the rusty carcass of the old van at the far end of the fence.
“You’re disgusting, John. Your kids need help, and what are you doing?”
“I’m doing the only thing that’ll let them reach their tenth birthday on their own two feet, Bobby. And I don’t think I need to remind you of that!”
“And how?! By leaving them alone in a motel for seven damn days?! Pointing a fucking gun at the social workers called by the manager when he realized you left a mute six-year-old to take care of his younger brother all alone for an entire week?! You know they’ll come back armed to the teeth next time, right, John?! You know what’ll happen!”
“What’ll happen is I’ll change their faces so much that even those whores they call mothers won’t recognize them. No one’s taking my kids.”
John was foaming at the mouth like one of those beasts he used to hunt, but he wasn’t yelling. Not anymore. The alcohol had started to do its job, and it didn’t take long for it to suggest more creative alternatives to shouting and roaring.
“In fact,” he said suddenly, throwing the wrench he was working with to the ground, “you know what? Enough work for today. I’ve decided. I’m taking Dean to the zoo right now. He deserves some time alone with his father, doesn’t he?”
He wiped his greasy hands on his jeans and walked over to the rusty van. Bobby said nothing. He just took a deep breath.
Dean took only a couple of steps before shaking his arm free from his father’s grip and turning back, like a magnet attracted to the opposite pole. There was no strength in those movements; he knew his father wouldn’t resist. And in fact, John didn’t say a word. He just watched as Dean silently climbed onto the rusty body of the van and joined his brother, who was crouched on the dusty front seats amid scattered Lego pieces.
“Don’t you want to go to the zoo with your dad, Dean?”
Dean lay down on the steering wheel, stretching his arms to grip the top with his thin fingers. He closed his eyes, bowing his head. Sam had started to stack Lego squares by color, surrounded by a disarming silence. Neither of them seemed to notice their father’s presence. To be honest, neither of them seemed to care.
“We’ll leave Sammy here with Uncle Bobby to rest, and you and I will go to the zoo, okay? Like real men.” John’s lips curled into a pathetic, disfigured smile.
“How long has it been since you and I went to the zoo? Last time, you weren’t even a year old, probably don’t even remember. Mom was there too...”
Without moving an inch, Dean reopened his eyes and looked at him. Sam had just finished the red tower.
“Come on, let’s go.” John made a move to pick him up, but Dean slipped away from those hands like a fish escaping a child who dips theirs into an aquarium.
“You really don’t want to come?”
Dean picked up the yellow bricks that had fallen onto the dashboard.
“Then tell me!” It happened in an instant. Dean was yanked down by strong—truly strong—hands and stood face-to-face with his father. Stiff as a soldier.
Sam’s eyes widened in innocent amazement as the brutality of the movement caused all the towers he’d built to collapse. “Do you want to go to the zoo with me or not, Dean?” John shook him. Once, twice, three times. Until Dean bent backward and yanked his arm away, reclaiming it. He didn’t make a sound, not a whimper. Nothing. All John got from him was a strange look; it wasn’t hate—it was annoyance. The same annoyance you’d feel realizing you had a stain on your shirt at the end of the day, or that a goldfish might feel bumping its nose against the glass bowl.
Then he turned, and he would have repeated the movement from a few minutes earlier if John hadn’t blocked his way.
“Dean! You’re not going anywhere until you answer my question! Do you want to go to the zoo with me or not?! Dean!”
Anyone would have misunderstood, it was only natural. And it was no surprise when Bobby came running from a distance, seeing John shaking the boy’s shoulders and shouting unintelligible words at him. They were powerful, calloused hands; when they finally stopped shaking him, Dean took a good look at them.
He slowly turned his head, first to the right, then to the left. Then he looked at his father’s face. He inspected it with a bored gaze, moving his green irises, taking in every feature. He lived in an invisible water to the naked eye, a dimension difficult for others to comprehend. And the absence of this awareness was evident in every wrinkle on that twisted face, every feature uglified by the late afternoon light. If only he had been outside that aquarium, he might have felt a deep tenderness for him.
“Oh, God... Dean...”
Bobby pretended not to see the way John collapsed in tears in front of his son, holding his little inhuman child with a desperation that pierced his gut like a sharp blade. He changed direction, heading toward the garage, clumsily pretending to go get something he no longer remembered. But he didn’t reach him.
---
It happened in just a few moments, a real twist of fate.
No one could have predicted that morning that Sam would wake up with a high fever and that the last bottle of Tylenol would have already been downed by John a few days earlier to deal with the awful migraine from yet another, deadly hangover. (The bottle found in Bobby’s first aid kit, however, had an expiration date of 1981. Not an option.)
Sam drank in big gulps, struggling with the glass Bobby held. In those glazed-over eyes, half-covered by his eyelids, the man could see the silent plea to be put back under the covers as soon as possible, but the fever had cooked him all night, and he was so dehydrated that, after finishing the first glass of water, Bobby handed him a second one, despite the child’s groaning protest, and Sam quickly drank that one too.
“See? You’re already doing better. If you ask me, medicine’s a bit overrated these days...” he said in a reassuring tone as he laid the boy back under the covers.
In reality, Bobby knew he was talking nonsense: Sam’s body was a mass of shivers and gasps, and he’d already mentally prepared himself for the idea of a two-year-old kid having seizures if John didn’t show up with the right medicine within the next twenty minutes.
Now the fever had spiked even higher, and Sam could hardly hold back the small whimpers that escaped his lips with every breath.
When there was a knock at the door, Bobby felt relieved. He couldn’t have imagined that two social workers would choose to show up in those ten minutes when John had gone to get the medicine, taking Dean with him.
It would have been, really, the most ridiculous joke fate could have played on him.
If only John had arrived two minutes earlier—exactly ninety seconds earlier—he would have taken just thirty seconds to wrap Sam up like a burrito, load him into the car with Dean, and hit the I-229 at the speed of sound, heading for Duluth. (Because who the hell would think to look for them in the heart of Minnesota? The same people who had come looking for him in Sioux Falls, he would have answered himself right after.)
But he arrived two minutes later, and what he found was a black Volkswagen parked in front of the house and the realization that if he grabbed the rifle in the trunk, this place would one day be the site of a massacre memorial.
“Go to the garage, find a hiding spot, and stay there until I tell you to. Run!” He took Dean’s face in his hands and hoped the urgency in his voice was enough to convince him to obey. Dean was a good soldier; he did it immediately. Or at least, that’s what John believed when he entered the house, prepared to face his new battle with a broken breath and trembling hands.
It’s often said that goldfish have nothing to live for because they lack the brain area that responds to feelings of pleasure and pain.
And for Dean, maybe that was one of the reasons why he felt so at ease as a fish.
He had lost interest in the world around him, shut down his pain receptors along with those for pleasure, and stored them away in a corner of his charred self, now cushioned by water.
Not once had he regretted it. They were there, and they were fine where they were.
There was an exception, of course. Because deep down, his human nature still played a fundamental role in his being—he had never denied that. But it had never been a problem, because his only reason for living was an integral part of his aquarium.
So he kept quiet about that small flaw, let it leave a blemish on his existence, and didn’t even mind.
His aquatic brain didn’t know how to.
Anyway, now it was different. He couldn’t say how, he couldn’t say why. But he couldn’t find any reason to continue staying under that dismantled semi-truck where he’d taken refuge at his father’s request. Not when part of his world—that part of his world—was elsewhere, and all the outside people were gathered around it.
He reached the back door just in time to hear Bobby hush his father, and the social workers talking in incomprehensible terms.
“He’s sick, damn it. Can’t you see that? He’ll get pneumonia if you take him away now!”
“We’re just doing our job, Mr. Winchester.”
“Let me speak to your superior. Now.”
“The number’s on the card we gave you. You can call from 9:30 to 1:00 and from—”
“No, I demand to speak to him right now! And you’re not taking my son anywhere until I’ve spoken to him!”
“John, calm down. We’ll ask Pastor Jim for help; we’ll get him back tomorrow, the day after at the latest. But you have to stay calm or you’ll make everything worse.”
“Sam? Hey, Sammy?”
They say fish have no awareness of time and space because they don’t even know they’re swimming.
Awareness only comes when they find themselves out of the water.
When the air dries their gills and their bodies are shaken by uncontrollable tremors, there’s a moment just before they die of asphyxiation when their brain perceives the nature of their entire existence, the revelation of a secret they wouldn’t have been able to share with any of their kind.
Pressed against the heavy wooden door, Dean couldn’t immediately tell if what rose in his throat when he heard the social workers call his brother 'Sammy' was similar to the feeling fish have when they vomit water just before dying.
He covered his mouth with both hands as a spasm in his esophagus brought more bile up.
His brother’s soft cries as he was woken by strange voices first rose in sobs, then in increasingly louder wails.
Maybe if he had seen with his own eyes the moment one of the agents lifted his brother from the bed and gently cradled him against his chest, Dean wouldn’t have conjured such a horrible image as the one that raced through his mind in those moments.
Or maybe he would have anyway. Because perhaps it wasn’t the way that turned his heartbeat into a noise more like a hum than a pulse, but the concept: they were taking Sammy away.
Sammy. The other fish from his aquarium.
And his body trembled, his cheeks emptied the bile that had risen past their capacity, and Dean gasped, just like a fish exposed to air.
Fish have only a thirty-second memory; soon, he would forget everything. That’s why, when he looked at Sammy, it always felt like he was seeing him for the first time. At night, he would hold him close with his arms and legs to feel his presence deep inside and renew the memory, and when he kissed that thick hair, the human sensation of joy blended with his aquatic self, and Dean became a perfect being, complete in his contradiction.
But a minute had passed, or maybe the seconds had stretched out. Because Sammy wouldn’t stop crying, and Dean’s legs were trembling; by then, they both should have forgotten, only God knew what was preventing it. Dean looked up, and water left his face. He was crying. But fish don’t cry.
“Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeean!”
It all happened in just a few, very few moments. And no one could have really predicted it.
Sam had left the aquarium, and now he was calling his name in human language. He had packed his bags and left. Just like Jeffrey did when he was no longer afraid of the air.
“Sa—” Dean gasped. The air was burning everything. “—mmy.”
The aquarium broke, the tears exploded, the shards injured his atrophied vocal cords, and the fish died.
“Sammy!” he shouted.
And Dean shed his skin.
The end.