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The first memory David has is being thrown in the air by a tall man with long hair and strong arms when he’s about three or four. The tall man always smiled and laughed when he did this, and he always caught him, and hugged David to his chest and rubbed his cheek on David’s head. David can’t remember anything before the tall man, but he feels, strangely, that there is much more to remember, although it couldn’t have been anything too exciting in only a few years.
The tall man is gone now. David doesn’t know whether he died or whether he just left, but the woman who takes care of him (her name is Krissy) says that they’ll probably see him again one day. David doesn’t know why Krissy won’t just tell him if the tall man is dead (honestly, he’s twelve, he’s a grown-up, he knows what death is) but all she’ll tell him is “his name was Sam, he loved you a lot, now go to bed and stop asking me questions”. David doesn't get angry at her when she says this because as annoying as it is, she takes care of him really well and he loves her.
He’s been having what he refers to as “The Dreams” for a while. He doesn’t tell Krissy, but he does tell Josephine, just because she’s more understanding of weird stuff and doesn’t freak out, like Krissy does. She tells him that it’s normal for someone like him, and when he asks, “What does that mean, someone like me?” she stammers and suggests he go watch TV. They don’t often tell David to go watch TV, so when they do he knows it’s because there’s something they don’t want to talk about.
And there’s a lot they won’t talk about. David has been asking since he can remember, “why can’t we leave the bunker?” “why don’t I go to school like the kids I see on TV?” “ why don’t I have a mom, or a dad, or anyone? who gave me to you?” They all have different responses. Josephine bites her lip and says, “There’re things out there that might hurt you, David.” Aiden makes jokes about how he’s a superhero with hidden powers and this is the Batcave. Krissy puts her hand on his shoulder and says, “You are special. It’s important we keep you safe.”
While they never leave him completely alone, they look after him in shifts, each of them leaving for long stretches of time without telling him anything about it. Sometimes they come back hurt, too-- once Krissy came back with a broken arm, and one night, Josephine comes back moaning, her hair caked with blood, and she screams when Krissy and Aiden have to sit on her and reset a break in her arm. David is struck with the inexplicable desire to lay a hand on her shoulder, as if that would help.
That night, he has the dreams, and they are as sharp as ever. Dreams about fighting, he has a lot of those. Dreams that are just flashes of incredible light, or rolling waves or falling towers. Dreams about flying kites. Just before he wakes up, he dreams about a pair of green eyes fringed with long lashes. They seem to know him; they seem fond. They blink, and then they’re gone. David wakes up with words on his tongue: I’ll see you again, soon. I’ll wait. Don’t worry.
On the day of his thirteenth birthday, Krissy, Josephine, and Aiden gift him with his first taste of world. He runs around the field outside of the bunker for what feels like hours, and his legs are so tired that Josephine has to carry him to the car to take him into town. They have lunch at a diner that David loves; Aiden has brought him take-out from there before, but it’s a whole new experience ordering a cheeseburger from a waitress and having her ask him whether he wants pickles and onions.
They’re eating and sipping their milkshakes when David asks, “Can I have one more birthday present?”
“Of course,” Krissy says, sitting forward and folding her arms on the table. “What’s up?”
David fiddles with his straw. “I was wondering... if I could go to school. Or not school, but just... come with you when you go places.”
David doesn’t miss the look shared between Josephine and Aiden over his head, but Krissy doesn’t break eye contact with him.
“You know what?” she says, easy. “We’ll talk about it. I think you’re right, it’s time you got out in the world.”
David overhears them talking in low voices in the study one night.
“He’s starting to remember, that’s what this is all about,” Aiden says. “They said this would happen, they said his sense of duty would start to take over.”
“He has been having the dreams more frequently,” Josephine adds, twisting her hair around her finger.
“That’s it, then,” Krissy says. “We’ll take him to Garth. I guess it’s time.”
David cries himself to sleep that night, because it sounds like they’re getting rid of him. In the morning, they can tell something’s wrong, and when they tell him they’re taking him to see a friend, he starts sobbing into his cereal. Krissy swoops over to him and pulls him into her arms.
“It’s not forever,” she tells him, rocking him back and forth. “Soon, you’ll get to come home to us, okay, David? Okay? I promise. Garth is just going to help you out with some stuff, he’s going to tell you all about why you grew up in the bunker and how special you are, okay?”
Krissy holds his hand the entire car ride. When they get to what David assumes is Garth’s house, a skinny, grizzled man in a trucker hat comes bounding out the front door and pulls them all into big bear hugs.
“Hey, there, travelers!” he says. “I am sure glad to see you all here safe and sound, especially you!” He thumbs David’s nose, and David rubs it frowning.
“Not anymore smiley than you were the last time I saw ya, huh?” Garth plants his hands on his hips and grins.
“Well, he doesn’t remember that,” Krissy says through gritted teeth.
“Oh, shoot, course not,” Garth says. “My mistake. Well, come on in, kids! Just put some barbeque on the grill, we’re gonna have ourselves a picnic!”
He strides back into the house on skinny chicken legs and Krissy urges him to follow.
“If he breaks out the sock puppets,” David hears Josephine mutter to Aiden, “I am out.”
They eat pulled pork in the big backyard of Garth’s house with Garth and a young woman Krissy’s age named Claire. She and Krissy nod at each other and keep a wide berth the whole afternoon, but they keep looking at each other when the other looks away and David isn’t sure why. At the end of the day, Krissy and Aiden and Josephine all hug him tightly and say “see you soon” and pile into the car, and David fights back bitter, bitter tears when the car disappears around the bend.
Living with Garth isn’t that bad. It’s strange, but it’s not bad. Garth starts teaching him how to tie knots and then, how to untie them when they’re around his wrists. He hurts himself pretty bad the first couple times, rubbing his skin raw, but there’s pride in Garth’s eyes the first time he manages to loosen the rope on his wrists and get free from the chair he’s tied to.
Besides what Garth calls “training”, which is for four hours a day between the hours of one and five, David is allowed free reign of the house and the yard, both of which are huge. He reads a lot of Garth’s books (he’s told to stay away from the top shelf, he’ll read them eventually after more “training”, but the bottom ones are good enough to keep him occupied). The only ones he shies away from are the Bibles; he read the Bible once when he was very young, and it made him angry right down to his bones. He knows that many find God to be an engaging, even lovable, character, but David doesn’t see it. As fair as he’s concerned, God doesn’t care about anyone.
What David loves to do is explore the yard, which is full of old junk. He invents stories and plays among the old tires, stacks them up and makes forts and battle stations and safe zones. He pretends that he’s a general and orders around imaginary troops. He’s playing deserter-soldier when he stumbles upon the car. It’s huge and black and doesn’t look anything like other cars he’s seen on TV or the ones driven by people he knows. It’s dusty and dirty but it looks beautiful to David anyway.
“Can I play in it?” he begs Garth at dinner.
Garth scrunches up his face, but acquiesces.
“You gotta be real careful, though, bud,” he says, dabbing sauce off his face with his napkin. “That car’s real important, you hear? I don’t want to go out there to see you takin’ it apart, okay?”
David shakes his head vehemently. “No, no, I just want to play racecar in it. Does it go real fast?"
Garth’s eyes sparkle when he answers, “It did. Once.”
After that, David plays in the car every day. Sometimes he plays racecar in the driver’s seat, but for some reason that feels weird, so mostly he sits in the passenger seat and pretends that he and the imaginary driver are in a high speed chase. He sometimes takes naps in the backseat, and he’s never felt safer than he does stretched out in the back, the afternoon sun leaning through the window. There’s a little army man stuck in the ashtray, and David wiggles it but never pulls it free.
One day, he’s training in the kitchen (Garth has advanced to teaching him how to make bullets) when the door slams open and a tall man with black hair and almond eyes bursts into the room.
“Garth,” he says. “I need that book on exor-”
“Kevin!” Garth snaps, and eyes David.
Kevin sets his sights on David and immediately snaps his mouth shut and straightens up. Unlike most of the people he’s met so far in his life, Kevin does not look happy or excited to see him. He looks angry and confused and a little scared.
“I’ll get you that book, Kev,” Garth says, heading into the library. He shoots Kevin another look as he goes, and Kevin shrugs.
There’s a long silence in the kitchen as Kevin scuffs his shoes on the linoleum. David feels very uncomfortable.
“I’m David,” he says, extending his hand. “I’m thirteen. I live here.”
Kevin hesitates, but shakes his hand quickly. “I’m Kevin,” he says shortly. “I’m a friend of Garth’s.”
“You can sit down next to me,” David says.
Kevin’s spine gets, if possible, a little straighter.
“No, thank you,” he says coldly.
David is taken aback (he’s never been disliked before, and this Kevin person doesn’t even know him) so he bows his head and gets back to making bullets.
Garth comes back with the book and, sensing the discomfort in the room, says, “Everything all right in here?”
“Fine,” Kevin says.
David doesn’t say anything.
“You on a hunt?” Garth asks.
“No,” Kevin says.
“Good, then you’re not in a hurry,” Garth says, keeping the book tucked under his arm and breezing out of the kitchen. “Sit at that table and make sure that kid is making good-sized bullets. You know how important a good-sized bullet is.”
Kevin heaves an unbelievable sigh and throws himself in a chair next to David. He examines the bullets David has already made and gives a snort of acceptance.
“Looking good,” he says gruffly.
They sit in silence for a moment before David asks, carefully, “Did you... know Sam?”
Kevin probably gets whiplash the way he turns his neck to bore his eyes into David’s.
“How do you know about Sam?” he asks.
David shrugs. “I sort of remember him,” he admits. “I remember being a baby, and he threw me in the air.” He pauses. “Is that why you don’t like me? Did you meet me when I was a baby, too?”
“I’m sorry,” Kevin says. “I... I do like you. It’s just, there are things you don’t know about your past, and these things make me sad. And looking at you... I guess you reminded me of those sad things. And yes, Sam.” He pauses, looks away, and adds softly, “Looking at you reminds me of Sam.”
“I’m sorry,” David says. Kevin’s eyes snap back to his.
“Don’t be,” he says. “It’s not your fault. It’s just, Sam and Dean--”
“Who’s Dean?” David asks.
Kevin’s eyes almost bug out of his head.
“Garth!” he shouts.
Garth comes bustling in, chewing on a stalk of celery. “What?”
Kevin points at David. “He doesn’t know about Dean? He knows about Sam, but not Dean?”
Garth takes Kevin by the upper arm and leads him out of the kitchen-- “Ow! Ow, lemme go, old man!” “Kevin Tran, I known you for a long time but I will not hesitate to smack you!”-- leaving David at the table, mostly confused but intrigued, the name Dean bouncing around his brain, making him feel excited and happy without knowing why.
That night, when Garth comes in to turn off his light and take his reading flashlight away, David asks, “Who’s Dean?”
Garth shakes his head and chuckles, rubbing his scratchy face.
“I thought you were going to be a lot older before I had to explain this to you,” he says. “In the morning, remind me to get you a book. After you read the books, you and I will have to have a talk.”
David can hardly sleep for excitement.
In the morning, over the breakfast table, Garth hands him a slim paperback and says, “I was gonna save these for your birthday, but plans change. Start reading, kid.”
The books are cheaply made, the writing merely-fine, the illustrations on the covers cringe-worthy, but David eats them up like cheeseburgers. They’re ridiculous and funny and they’re about monster-hunting-brothers, for goodness’ sake, but David finds them better and more enjoyable than any of the classics he read at the bunker. There’s something about Sam and Dean (especially Dean, though David hates to pick favorites in books) that feel familiar, like he knows them, even though he knows that’s crazy. He wonders as he reads them why Garth said these were important-- were his Sam and Dean, the ones he knew (or is supposed to know), were they named after these book characters? Were the characters based on them? David has never heard of Carver Edlund before, but he would like to meet him.
When he puts down No Rest For The Wicked and holds out his hand for the next one, Garth shrugs and says, “That’s it.”
“That’s it? But--” David’s head is swimming. He has more questions than answers. “But Dean is in Hell!”
“I know,” Garth says.
“But... how does he get out? Does he get out? What happens to Sam? What about Lillith?”
“Slow down,” Garth puts his hands on David’s shoulders, which are quivering. “Do you really want to know what happened to Dean and Sam?”
David nods fervidly.
Garth sits him down on the couch in the living room and puts an arm around his shoulders.
“An angel pulled Dean out,” Garth says gently.
“Angels aren’t real,” David says automatically.
There’s something in Garth’s eye, but he sighs and says, “Let’s say for sake of argument that they are.”
“But how do you know?” David demands. “Did Carver Edlund write something? Did he say that?”
“I know,” Garth says slowly, “because it really happened.”
David shrugs Garth’s arm off his shoulder angrily. “That’s not funny.”
Garth is looking directly into his eyes, and David can’t look away.
“I’m not trying to be funny,” Garth says, in the most deathly serious tone David has ever heard him use. “I need you to understand this, David. It’s so important. It’s the most important thing I will ever tell you. The Dean and Sam that you just read about were real, and those things really happened to them.”
“Those things?” David repeats softly, his voice shaking. “You mean the monsters? The vampires, the ghosts, the demons, it’s all... it’s all real?”
“Those and plenty more,” Garth says gravely. “They’re all real. That’s what we’re doin’ here, kid.”
David’s eyes dart around the room, at the old tomes on the top shelf, at the shotgun on the hall table, at every place in the room he knows the silver knives are hidden.
“That’s what you do,” he says faintly. “You and Kevin, and... and Krissy and Josephine and Aiden, I’m, I’m..” His breathing is coming faster and Garth is hurrying him to the bathroom, where he collapses in front of the toilet and empties his stomach. He’s aware that there are tears streaming down his face, and he doesn’t try to stop him when Garth gently wipes his mouth and takes him up to his room and tucks him into bed, saying, “I know, it’s a shock, I’ve seen this happen to a lot of kids, don’t worry about it, just get some rest, David,” He shuts off the light, and murmurs, as he closes the door, “Good night, Castiel,” and when he says that, despite that terror and horror and shame and betrayal he feels, something lights up inside him and he falls asleep feeling very, very different.
----
The next morning, drowsy with old tears but fueled by anger and excitement, he asks, “So that’s what I’m doing here, right? Learning how to be a hunter?”
Garth looks up from his cereal and nods.
“Okay, then,” David says. “Teach me.”
Garth chuckles. “What d’ya think I’ve been doin’?”
Spurred by new information, David dives into training with miles more fervor than before. He reads all the books on lore, he learns how to trap and kill every creature and monster Garth knows about, and he becomes extremely familiar with every weapon in Garth’s arsenal. His last weapons lesson, he fingers two separate blades in Garth’s place of honor.
“This,” Garth says proudly, pointing to a knife with a wooden handle and a jagged, scalloped edge, “can kill demons. It’s the only thing that can. There ain’t many demons around anymore, since the gates got closed, so I keep it here in case of emergencies. And this,” Garth hesitates for a moment with the second blade. It’s long and sharp and looks like it’s made of glass or diamonds. “This is an angel sword. Can kill near just about everything, but it was made for killing angels. Each one is special to the angel it belongs to.”
“Well, where’d you get this one, then?” David asks, pushing down the urge inside him to reach out, grab it, and run.
Garth’s eyes are sad, but his tone is light when he says, “Nicked it off an angel, whaddaya think?” He ruffles David’s hair, and says, “Now go again.”
David feels like he’s eating, breathing, and sleeping hunting. He’s starting to have dreams about it, although he can’t tell the difference between The Dreams and just dreams, because Dean is in both of them, and they’re hunting together, with Sam, taking down demons and ghosts and other weird anomalies.
On his fourteenth birthday, he says, “I want to go on a hunt.”
Garth immediately shakes his head. “No way,” he says. “You’re too young. Fourteen? No. Krissy would kill me, and she is not the only one. The dear departed would rise and have my head if I let you hunt at fourteen.”
“I’m ready,” David begs. “I’ve been studying for a year, I know how to do this!”
“A year?” Garth barks, and he looks really angry, and it’s oddly frightening. “Kid, I seen hunters who been at the game for twenty years get killed on the job. You will never, ever be really ready. It’s my job to get you prepared, and that’s gonna take you at least four more years, kid.”
David pouts until lunch, when Krissy and Aiden and Josephine show up with a huge birthday cake in tow. David forgives them for lying to him for thirteen years when they hand him all manner of knives and guns and weaponry for his future career in hunting.
“I do think it’s a little early,” Krissy says as he unsheathes a machete the length of his arm, perfect for vampire beheading. “But this is... well, it’s who you are.”
They have a party that night with all the hunters Garth knows. Kevin is there, looking much more friendly, along with Claire and her partner, Ben, who gives David a curious look when they first meet, but doesn’t push. The sheriff of the town even shows up; apparently she knows all about hunters and even helps them out once in a while. She’s lugging along her daughter, who is exactly David’s age. The sheriff’s daughter spends the entire night standing very close to him and batting her eyelashes and speaking to him in a low, sultry voice, but David takes every opportunity he can to run from her. Krissy must realize that he’s uncomfortable, because she eventually beckons him inside, and they have a long talk about David’s favorite parts of the Supernatural books.
“I think Dean is my favorite,” David admits to her.
Krissy grins at him. “Me, too,” she said conspiratorially. “But don’t tell Kevin, he’ll freak out and give you his whole Sam speech.”
Later that night, David examines his face in the mirror. Dark hair that sweeps across his forehead but curls weirdly by his ears. Lanky body from running around Garth’s backyard for the past year. His nose is sharp, his chin strong. His eyes are big and blue, and he wonders if they’re the reason the sheriff’s daughter was so set on him. He blinks, once, and wonders why he doesn’t seem to have those feelings. He knows he hasn’t met too many people yet and that he’s still young, but he’s never even had a crush on someone he’s seen on TV, or a book character or anything. Well...
David pushes that thought out of his head. He’s only fourteen. He has time. He’s not going to worry about why he didn’t want to kiss the sheriff’s daughter.
The year passes quickly, full of weapons training and sparring. Garth may be old, but he’s scrappy and he knocks David to the ground more than once (more than ten times) the year between his fourteenth and fifteenth birthdays. He sees a lot more of Kevin, but very little of Krissy, Aiden, and Josephine, to his disappointment. Garth consoles him-- the bunker is close enough for visits, but his three childhood caretakers are most often on opposite ends of the country hunting. David sees a lot more of the other hunters who drop in on Garth to ask questions. A couple months before his birthday, Garth puts him in charge of answering the cell phones (not the F.B.I. one, he still sounds too young) but he loves the excitement of participating in the hunt by looking up antidotes to venom and spell-breakers and research on creatures. It is through many phone calls that David becomes close to Claire Novak, who starts popping in on her off days to have lunch with him and tease him about going through puberty.
One day, they’re sitting together eating bologna sandwiches on the front porch when David notices that she’s looking at him kind of funny.
“What?” he asks, rubbing his mouth.
Claire gives a short laugh. “Nothing,” she says, but when David glares at her, she says, “It’s nothing, really, David. You just... you’re starting to remind me a lot of my dad. I’ve seen pictures of him when he was a kid, and you look just like him.”
David raises a hand to flatten his hair nervously. He’s never been told he looks like anybody before; he’s not related to anyone he knows so he doesn’t resemble any of the people that raised him. He bites his lips and blurts out, “What’s your father like?”
Claire twists her mouth and fiddles with her sandwich. “He’s dead now,” she says. “He left when I was younger than you. But he was... he was a good man.” She grins at him. “It was a compliment, by the way. You’re growing up to be a very handsome man.”
David blushes and throws a potato chip at her. He’s positive, the way he was positive the night of his fourteenth birthday, that he should be feeling something right now. Claire is beautiful, tall and blonde, and while she’s not exactly flirting with him (her attitude towards him seems to be more like little-brother-I-never-had) she just called him handsome and shouldn’t he be feeling something?
The night of his fifteenth birthday is the first night he touches himself, trying desperately to think of women, men, anyone he knows, everyone he’s met, but he can’t finish. It is only the unbidden thought of the green eyes of his dreams that has him choking and spilling into his hand, and he’s so upset that he doesn’t even get up to clean himself off, just wipes his hands on his sheets and presses his face into his pillow angrily.
The next day, he asks Garth about it (without the details, of course). “Why aren’t I... interested in anyone? I’m fifteen, I should be--” he makes a frustrated noise in his throat. “Is something wrong with me?”
“No, of course not,” Garth says. “You... well, listen, kid, there’s something out there for everybody. You got somebody waiting for you out there. Don’t worry about it in the meantime. You’ll find them.”
“Are you sure?” David asks miserably. Garth reaches out and ruffles his hair.
“Positive,” he says.
After that. Garth puts him through even more training, presumably to distract him, which David appreciates. He’s getting pretty good, too, and he wins more fights than he loses.
“Nice job,” Garth chuckles, as David beams at him, flushed with victory. “But you know vamps and weres are gonna have faster moves than this old man.”
David wilts slightly, and Garth goes to make some calls. Within the week, two of Garth’s hunters show up to spar with him. One is Ben, who sometimes partners with Claire, but is currently flying solo. He’s tall and brown-haired and serious and mostly seems to have a bad attitude about everything, but David sometimes catches him smiling when David manages to beat him in a fight. The other is Aaron, a lanky man with dark skin who is goofy and seems to find talking to him hilarious. They’re all taking a break, lounging in the sun with sweaty bottles of coke, when David asks, “How did you both get into hunting?”
Aaron seems to find this question hilarious, and he dissolves into laughter as Ben answers, “Demons attacked my family when I was fifteen. Been hunting ever since. Aaron, stop giggling, it’s so annoying.”
Aaron stops snorting enough to whack Ben on the shoulder, but he answers David with a straight face. “I sold my soul to an angel,” he says. “Bad move on my part, but I’m here, I guess.”
“You’ve met an angel?” David asks eagerly, leaning forward.
Aaron laughs again, his eyes shining, and Ben rolls his eyes at him.
“Yeah, David,” Aaron says finally. “I’ve met an angel.”
“What are they like?” David asks. “They’re the only thing I haven’t learned much about. Garth doesn’t like talking about them.”
“Well,” Aaron begins.
“They’re mostly not very nice,” Ben interrupts, glaring at Aaron. “There are exceptions, of course. I’m sure Garth will tell you all about them eventually, he’s just waiting for the right time.” He directs these last words at Aaron, who immediately sobers.
David isn’t sure what just happened, whether Aaron revealed too much or why Ben stopped him, but his curiosity is piqued, and his desire to learn all the secrets of hunting only grows so he can begin as soon as possible.
He finally approaches Garth again at sixteen years old. He’s getting to be almost as tall as the old man, and he’s been studying his face in the mirror, watching it grow and develop and mature. He’s been training hard now for two years, his arm muscles becoming more defined, his stamina lengthening.
“I think I’m ready,” he tells Garth at dinner. “I really think I am.”
Garth considers him, then finally tosses down his fork.
“All right,” he says. “I’ll admit, Ben and Aaron have been giving me pretty good feedback. And Claire says you’re a natural.” He picks up the phone, sighing. “Krissy is gonna kill me.”
The next day brings Krissy to the door, and she stomps into the house with her big boots and almost shoves Garth through the wall. David watches from the stairwell.
“A hunt?” she screams in his face. “He is sixteen years old, Garth! You want him to get killed, you want all our hard work to be for nothing? He was trusted to us, you want to throw all that away?”
“Don’t act like this is all me, Krissy,” Garth says, prying her fists off his jacket. “It’s what he wants, and he’s good.”
“He’s just a kid!” Krissy shouts, tears in her eyes.
“No,” Garth says gently, almost too quiet for David to pick up. “No, he’s not. I know it’s easy to forget, Krissy, but he’s not just a kid.”
At that, David sucks in a breath and sneaks back up the stairs to his room. He spends the morning in front of the mirror, trying to find something, anything, in his face or his body that makes him special, the way he was always told he was. But he can’t find anything-- ordinary face, ordinary body. The only thing they could possibly mean is The Dreams, but David doesn’t see anything special about those. They’re just dreams.
Krissy comes to bring him lunch, and she sits on his bed with him while he eats, stroking his hair.
“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” she says.
“I won’t,” David says. “I’ve been training so hard, Krissy. Aaron and Ben say I’m really good!”
“Well, it’s probably going to be Aaron and Ben that take you on this hunt,” Krissy says. “So listen to them, okay? They’re going to be trying their best to protect you, but if it goes wrong, and they say run, I want you to run. All right?
David nods, and she pulls him into her arms and presses a kiss to his hair.
It is Ben and Aaron, as well as Claire and Kevin, and David tries not to feel too insulted that they’re basically sending four people to babysit him while he conducts a very simple salt and burn. He obviously can’t interview witnesses or impersonate police officers, but he can sneak into the old house with Ben, find the old scraps of the dress the ghost was buried in, and burn them before she can kill any more people. After that, Claire takes him to the graveyard where they dig up the body just to be sure, and David is shocked by how unaffected he is by the acrid stench of a burning body.
“Should this bother me more?” he asks Claire, her face lit up by the flame.
She gives him a sideways look. “Nah,” she says. “You’re special.”
David smiles all the way home.
After the first hunt, it’s like he can’t get enough. Every time Ben or Aaron or Kevin or Claire drop by, he begs them to come along. Sometimes, when Garth permits it, they do take him, and these are David’s favorite days. Ben especially loves having him around, because a sixteen year old kid can be used for a hell of a lot of scams, and while David isn’t thrilled about being bait or pretending to be injured to get money, he’s happy to help however he can.
When he’s seventeen, Garth takes him to Texas to meet his family. Garth hasn’t seen them since David moved in, mostly because they’re not hunters and he hates to put his family in danger by involving them in what he does. Garth’s wife, Annabelle, lives in Monahans, and they take a nice long road trip down in April.
“This is Robbie and this is Erin,” Garth says. “They’re my step-kids.”
They both beam at him. “I remember when you were a baby!” Erin says. “You used to love being thrown in the air. Almost like you liked flying!”
Annabelle pulls Garth aside to whisper in his ear, but David hears her anyway.
“Jessica said she was going to drop by later,” she says under her breath. “Is that... is that all right?”
Garth shoots a look at David, who pretends to be occupied by what Robbie is saying.
“It should be fine,” Garth says.
David learns who Jessica is at lunchtime when the doorbell rings and in bounds a tall girl who’s probably about his age.
“David!” she squeals when she sees him, and launches herself at him.
“Hello,” he says, patting her back. He’s not sure how he’s supposed to know her.
“Oh, sorry,” she says, pulling back and blushing. “I forgot you don’t know me like I know you. Well, I don’t know you, but we used to play when we were babies.”
“Jessica,” Garth says carefully, “is Sam’s daughter.”
David gapes at her. “You’re Sam’s daughter?” he asks, knowing his voice sounds awestruck, but he’s never met someone related to Sam or Dean before.
Jessica smiles a bit sadly and nods.
“He used to play with us both all the time,” she says. “Before he died, I mean.”
David feels a lump in his throat. He knew Sam was probably dead, judging from the way everybody talked about him, but it was another thing completely to hear it spoken so frankly by someone who was close to him.
“What about Dean?” he asks to keep himself from crying. “Does he have kids?”
“Dean?” Jessica laughs then, a lovely sound. “No, Uncle Dean never had kids. He never got married.”
David is ashamed by the relief that spreads through his body at that statement. He knows full well that he has no claim on Dean, that the man is dead and has been since before David was even born, but it doesn’t keep him from wanting to dance around knowing that he’s not going to meet one of Dean’s kids or, god forbid, Dean’s widow.
He and Jessica are practically attached at the hip for the rest of his and Garth’s vacation, and while she can be slightly exuberant, which he’s unused to, it’s nice to spend time with someone who has known him for so long. David is sad to say goodbye to her when it’s time to go back home, and he hugs her for a long time before he gets back into Garth’s old Ford Ranchero.
The rest of the year leading up to David’s eighteenth birthday is slow but anything but boring. He’s constantly tagging along on hunts with Aaron, Ben, and Claire, and he even goes on one with Krissy and Aiden. They all comment on his prowess and how far he’s come, and they even start referring to him as a member of their team. David glows basking in their attentions; he should have known it was too good to last.
Two weeks shy of his eighteenth birthday, David is captured, snatched right out from under Claire’s nose, by three witches. They lock him in their basement (chained, not rope-bound, so all his knot-slipping skills are useless) and he’s tied up at such a terrible angle he can’t reach the lock-pick in his shoe. He’s afraid to try and wiggle it free lest it fall on the floor and be discovered, so he spends the next several hours feeling disappointed and angry with himself, hoping that Claire finds the basement soon so she can save him and he can go home and sulk.
Claire does find him, but unfortunately it’s in the hands of the three witches. They drag her in, handcuffed, by her ponytail and throw her on the floor in front of David.
“Hunters,” one of the witches snarls. “The most repellent form of rodent, wouldn’t you say?”
“You will not get away with his,” Claire snaps.
David nudges her and mouths my lock-pick. Claire’s eyes widen and she nods quickly while the witches have their backs turned. David begins to toe off his shoe close to Claire’s face so she can grab the lock-pick when it slides out. Just as he can feel it sliding free, Claire suddenly convulses and screams, blood pouring out of her mouth.
The witches laugh from the altar where their herbs are burning, the spell clearly pulling all the blood from Claire’s body as David watches helplessly.
“Stop!” he screams. “Stop it! I mean it! I’ll--”
“You’ll what, brat?” one of the witches snaps. “You’ll unchain yourself and come over here and stab us with one of your little knives? I’d like to see you try.”
David wriggles in his binds but it’s no use. The amount of blood leaving Claire’s body has got to be lethal and he can see her eyelids fluttering and he knows she must be close to passing out and he can feel something huge building in his chest when he shouts, “STOP.”
One of the witches actually looks up, her eyebrows furrowing.
“Virginia,” she says shakily. “I thought you said he was just an ordinary boy--”
“He is,” Virginia snaps. “I did all the tests. He’s just a boy. Nothing special about him.”
There’s a buzzing in David’s ears and he feels like he’s not in control of his own voice when it emerges, low and terrible, from his throat. “LET. ME. GO.”
The other witch looks up now, and now they’re definitely paying attention. Virginia scowls.
“It’s a trick,” she says, although her voice sounds less sure. “The boy is playing a trick, and you’re falling for it, you vapid idiots--”
David is trembling, but he sees Claire cough, just once before her breathing stills, and something inside him explodes.
Whatever it is, it’s painful, and David screams, but around his screams he can hear something even more piercing and powerful, louder than anything he’s ever heard before. He squeezes his eyes shut, but something forces them open, something golden and bright and it hurts so much and David doesn’t understand how something can destroy him and complete him at the same time, but it’s here now, in his body. The witches scream, too, but the sound barely registers over the wild noise pouring out of David’s throat.
And then, it’s over. David slumps to the ground, the chains on his arms and legs mysteriously broken. His nose is bleeding, and he’s pretty sure his ears are, too. Claire has blood all over her face, and he has no idea what’s left over from the witches and what’s due to whatever just happened, but Claire needs medical help immediately so he digs his phone out of his pocket and dials Garth.
“Hey, you finish that witch thing?” comes Garth’s cheery voice over the line.
David tries to speak but nothing comes out. His throat is burning.
“David? David?” Garth definitely sounds panicked.
David manages to squeeze out a small, pitiful, “help” before the phone falls out of his hand and he succumbs to darkness.
He wakes to raised voices. He’s in his own bed, blankets wrapped tight around him. He can hear Garth’s voice downstairs, as well as Krissy, Kevin, Josephine, and (he breathes a sigh of relief) Claire.
He tries to stand, and immediately slumps, winded. It takes three tries to get out of bed, and then he has to hobble like an old man across the room and down the stairs, leaning on walls and doorways and bannisters for support.
When he enters the kitchen, Krissy and Josephine leap to their feet, spouting variations of “you should be in bed, you should be resting, let me help you to the couch, let me get you some food.” He bats them away.
“What happened,” he croaks. His hand flies to his throat. He sounds like he’s been smoking for twenty years.
“Something... incredible,” Claire says, smiling weakly at him.
“What,” David repeats.
Garth sighs. “Sit down, buddy.”
David lands in a chair at the kitchen table. Krissy and Josephine sit back in their seats and David notices with a smile that Krissy and Claire lace their fingers together.
“So, you know how Josie and I and Aiden always told you that you were special?” Krissy says, plaing her other hand on top of David’s.
David nods.
“Well, you are,” Krissy smiles, her eyes getting glassy. “You’re very special and you saved yourself and Claire with the power you have inside you.”
“But why?” David demands. “Was I born this way? What am I? Am I human?” When no one answers him, he asks, “What happened to the witches?”
“They were found in the same room as you,” Garth answers. “Their... their eyes were burned out.”
“Dead?” David asks. They all nod.
David feels like he’s going to throw up. He’s killed things before, but it’s been his hand, his knife, his finger squeezing the trigger. He’s never committed murder before with this strange, involuntary power, and even though he’s glad it saved Claire’s life, he wants to reach inside himself and cut whatever it is out.
“I killed them,” he states flatly. “How?”
They all exchange glances, lost for words, and it’s Kevin that speaks up.
“David, what do you know about angels?” he asks.
Krissy whacks him in the chest. “He’s still too young,” she hisses.
“No, he’s not,” Kevin says to her firmly. “He’ll always be too young to you. This is the sign we’ve been waiting for. This means it’s time.” He turns back to David.
“Um,” David says. “Only what I’ve read in Garth’s books. And I know... Aaron sold his soul to one once. Ben says they’re mostly not very nice.”
“He’s right,” Kevin says. “Mostly they suck. But there was this one who really didn’t. His name was Castiel.”
Castiel.
That name again. It’s like a spark on a puddle of oil in his belly and suddenly he’s ignited. He can’t explain it, but that name, he can’t explain why, is true.
“When angels want to fall,” Kevin says very slowly. “They rip out their grace, and it falls to Earth like a falling star. And the angel is reborn as a baby.”
“What does this have to do with me?” David cries. “I don’t understand.”
“The angel Castiel did a lot for humanity,” Kevin continues. “And he... he fell in love with a human. And when that human died, Castiel decided that he wanted to have a human soul so that he and the human could be in Heaven together. So he pulled out his Grace and was reborn as a baby.”
“And...” David registers his words with a growing horror. “And you’re saying... you’re saying that’s me? That I’m, what, a fallen angel?”
“You are,” Claire says softly. “You’re the angel Castiel. You were friends with Sam and Dean Winchester, and they asked us to take care of you when they passed. The bunker is theirs. We’ve been waiting to tell you since you first started remembering. We were just waiting for... a sign.” She reaches across the table to him. “Don’t you remember? They used to call you Cas. It’s short for Castiel.”
Castiel. Cas.
David squeezes his eyes shut against the hysteria building inside him.
“No,” he whispers. “No, no, no...”
“David,” Josephine says, reaching for him.
“No!” he shouts, ripping his hands away from Claire and Krissy. “No, get away from me, I have to... I have to--”
He tears out of the house, Krissy shouting after him, Kevin saying, “Let him go. He needs some time.”
Hours later, Kevin finds him curled up in the backseat of the Impala.
“Mind if I join you?” he asks.
David shakes his head, and Kevin cracks the door open and slides into the driver’s seat.
“Man, I used to want to punch Dean,” Kevin says, grabbing ahold of the wheel. “He never let me drive this thing. I begged him, but he called me a spaz and gave me a noogie.” He steals a glance at David, still wrapped up in a little ball. “Hell of a guy to fall in love with.”
“I don’t remember,” David says miserably. “I want to. I think I remember little things, like my name and his eyes and... and maybe a little bit from before, but I don’t remember the big things. I don’t remember Sam or Dean, or being friends with them, or loving them. And I don’t remember why I chose this, this forgetting.” David bites his arm to keep from crying. “I hate it.”
“Well,” Kevin says, turning around and resting an arm on the back of the bench seat. “There is a way to remember.”
David sits up a little. “There is?”
Kevin nods. “We think so. From Sam’s journals, we can tell that they met one other fallen angel named Anna, back around the time they met you. Apparently they just thought she was a prophet until a psychic went digging around in her brain and unearthed the angel part of her.”
“And then she was an angel again?” David asks.
“No,” Kevin frowns. “I think she just... remembered everything. The millions of years she’d been born, and why she ripped out her grace.”
“I want that,” David say, sitting up fully. “I want to remember.”
Kevin nods at him.
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll see what I can do.”
----
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Krissy asks, hovering, as Charlie places her fingertips on David’s temples.
Charlie nods. “When I was younger, I was one of the best computer and internet hackers of my generation,” she says, studying David’s face. “Turns out, hacking into a human brain follows many of the same principles.”
David can feel himself shaking, but he forces himself to look into Charlie’s sweet brown eyes. A lock of grey-streaked red hair falls into her eyes and she tucks it away, smiling softly at him.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” she says gently. “This will probably hurt. I’ve uncovered things from people’s heads before and it always hurts a little, but this is a big job. This angel stuff is probably buried pretty deep and it might take some time and serious work to get it out. Are you prepared for that?”
David nods nervously, his adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. Krissy is making worried, whining noises behind Charlie and pacing and Claire hums at her to make her stop.
“Okay,” Charlie says, massaging his temples slightly. “Are you ready?”
Kevin and Krissy are immediately at his arms, holding out hands for him to take. He accepts them both, gripping their fingers tightly, and he nods. Charlie nods back, and he eyes flutter closed.
Immediately, David is engulfed with fierce pain. He tries to push it down, tries not to feel it, but Charlie murmurs, “don’t fight me, Cas,” and he relaxes, breathing into the pain and trying his best to let Charlie do her work.
All of the sudden, the pain is white-hot and David feels like he’s on fire. He knows he’s screaming, but he can’t hear himself. He can feel bones cracking underneath his hands and he knows he’s squeezing too hard, but he can’t think and he can’t breathe, all he can do is scream. He thinks can hear Charlie saying “so close, I’m so close to it, I can feel it my fingertips, hold him down, hold him down” and then even worse pain than before, he didn’t know it could get worse, but it has, and it’s eating him up inside and he tries to say “stop, stop, you’re killing me this will kill me” but the only thing his voice can do is scream and scream and scream
and then there it is. Like a book taken off a shelf, like a trunk opened, like a song playing on the radio, it’s all there, clear as a day, like it was never buried.
Castiel opens his eyes.
The world looks the same. Charlie is smiling at him, rubbing her hands together as if to rid herself of residual power on her fingers. Castiel turns his head to see Krissy and Kevin at the table, their hands being wrapped up in splints by Garth.
“Oh,” he says. “I’m sorry. I--”
“Don’t worry about it,” Kevin smiles at him. “It was painful for you, David, or, uh... Cas. It’s...” he squints at him. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Castiel says, looking down at his arms. “Yes, I’m... me, I suppose. I remember everything.” He laughs shortly. “That’s not the first time I’ve said that.”
Krissy rises from the table, her eyes wet. Castiel opens his arms to her and she comes into them, squeezing him tightly. She’s so much smaller than him, both in stature and in his mind (with millions of years to remember, she’s no more than a short blip at the end of a long timeline) but he is relieved to realize that he still loves her, with fierce protectiveness, the way a son loves a mother. She releases him and thumbs his cheek.
“I know you’re a million years old,” she says. “But I have loved raising you.”
“Thank you,” Castiel says. “Thank you for taking care of me.” He looks around at all of them. “To all of you. Thank you for... for everything.”
His eyes fall on Claire, and he opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.
“Hey,” Claire says. “Don’t. I know you’re about to apologize for my dad, but don’t. Don’t. It’s... it’s okay.”
“You have grown,” he says finally, “into a wonderful, brave, strong woman. Your father would have been proud of you.”
Tears spill out of her eyes as she bites her lip, but she nods and mouths, thank you.
Castiel wonders if it’s odd for them to hear his voice, see his mannerisms on the body of the young boy they knew, and he hopes that, despite the weirdness, he will manage to keep this little family.
“I think you and I need to have a talk,” Garth says. “Krissy, Kevin, make sure those splints are working okay. Everyone else, there’s fixins’ for sandwiches in the fridge, help yourselves.” He beckons to Castiel, who rises on shaky legs and follows him to the library.
“All right then,” Garth says, reaching into his desk and unearthing a huge stack of papers as well as what Castiel immediately recognizes as John Winchester’s journal.
“Here’s some stuff they wanted you to have,” Garth says, handing it over. “Oh, and...” He reaches into the large bottom drawer and pulls out a large, tan mess of fabric, folded like a flag. Castiel can’t help the grin that spreads across his face as he takes it from Garth and tucks it under his arm.
Garth strokes the scratchy stubble on his chin. “You’ll be eighteen soon, technically, and we can set you up doing basically whatever you want. So read through all this crap, think it over, and let me know what you decide.” He places a hand on Castiel’s shoulder and grins. “You may have all your angelic knowledge, Cas, but you’re still human. And so we’re all going to be here to take care of you for as long as you want. Okay?”
Castiel nods, and he lets himself be wrapped up in one of Garth’s classic bear hugs. Garth exits back into the kitchen, and Castiel sinks into a chair to read the letter on top of the stack of papers.
Dear Cas (it reads),
Dean would be the one writing you this letter, but he’s really close now and it’s getting hard for him to write. He told me that the two of you discussed what you were going to do even before he got sick, and if a human soul is what you really want, we absolutely support you. We’ve got friends now, a lot of friends, who we trust to take care of you and raise you, and the bunker is the perfect place to do that. We hope you’ll forgive us and them for keeping you in the dark about who you are until you turn a certain age-- I know from experience that it’s hard living up to expectations when you’ve got people telling you who you are when you’re young. Hopefully, you’ll get more of a childhood than Dean and I had before you discover the truth.
Dean and I understand if you want to hunt once you find out, but we encourage you to explore your other options. Dean wants you to live a long and healthy life, full of people and experiences you can tell him about when you come back to us. Travel! Go to college! Get married! No, actually, Dean is telling me to cross out that last part do NOT get married if you want to get any in Heaven, he says.
Dean is about to fall asleep, so he wants me to tell you that he loves you so much and he can’t wait to see you in two minutes when you come back from eating lunch, and again in many, many years when you join us in Heaven. We’ve all been promised the good seats, so take your time getting here. Once you’re with us, we’ll have all the time in the universe.
Take care, Castiel.
Your friend, Sam.
Castiel smiles to himself. That sounds like Dean, his beautiful, weird, goofy Dean. The only terrible thing about remembering is that it makes him miss Dean with a constant emptiness that didn’t exist when he was just David, just the eighteen year old kid. The emptiness was there, he supposes; he just couldn’t name it. Now it has a name, and a face, and a date of expiration, when Cas dies and joins his friends, human soul and all, back in his old home.
He folds up the letter and sticks it in the pocket of the trenchcoat. Maybe he will go to college. It would certainly be an experience. Maybe he’ll go spend a year in Europe. It would be far different as a presumably normal eighteen-year-old, rather than a wave of celestial intent. Maybe he’ll keep hunting. Maybe he’ll just relax.
All he knows is he’s ready to enjoy life as a human, knowing he’s got the best of prizes waiting for him when he’s finished, that someday he will fade away in his sleep, and wake to green eyes, to a “Hey, Cas” and a kiss, and an eternity spent being no one but himself.