First up, we're going to 44th between Broadway & Eighth (you sure?) with Eric & Lindsey. Nice eyepatch, Eric. They sweep the $25 tier... and get $200 going into the Red Light Challenge: four actors who have played Batman since the 1989 Tim Burton film. Say it with me now: Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale. They get... only the first two. But they do sweep the $50 tier. Eric needs to call his father with the mobile shout out on this: who is the legendary record producer who was indicted in 2003 for the murder of Lana Clarkson? Phil Spector... is right for $500. First strike: name the TV series that feature professional child-rearer Jo Frost in action? They go with 'The Nanny'. No that had Fran Drescher. We were going for 'Supernanny.' And we're at Jon's Pizza, meaning they've got $800! Unless they go for the bonus. Which they don't.
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Roderick heads to Prince & Broadway. He needs to call Mr. Pew on the first question: what is commonly referred to as a one-armed bandit? After a war of words, Roderick goes with poker. Not right. It's a slot machine. Second strike: 1980's Miracle on Ice refers to the US gold medal in what sport? 'Ice skating.' Ice hockey. He uses his street shout on an official name of a family of lions. 'A pride.' He goes with that... with AUTHORITY! Next question: in 1927, what aviator became Time's first official Man of the Year? Roderick goes with 'the man that Leonardo DiCaprio just made a movie about.' Good guess... but not right. It was Charles Lindbergh, and Roderick is booted from the Cash Cab.
Going to 46th & Sixth with Mimi & Dick from Minnesota. They have to use the mobile shout out on this for $50: in 1957, Ford introduced a lemon of a car they later regretted. What was it? They go with 'Fairlane'. That was a lemon of a movie. It was the Edsel, and Mimi was right. They get $250 going into a Red Light Challenge: name five of the first six Presidents of the United States. Washington... Adams... Jefferson.. Monroe... and Adams again for $250 more for $500! They get their second strike with the penner of 'O say can you see, by the dawn's early light'. It was Francis Scott Key. But it's okay, because they're winners with $700! But will they risk it? Yep! The question: what benchmark of speed would these pilots break if they were traveling at 761 mph? 'The speed of sound...' ... right for $1400!
Second trip in the Cash Cab begins with Hank & Pat going to 27th & Park. You can hardly tell that they know that they're on a game show. Seriously. They sweep the $25 tier, the $50 tier, and every question thereafter for $500 total! But will they take the Video? No, they take the money. Quoth Ben: 'Decaf?'
Tim & Jim are heading to the ESPNZone, home of one of my cherished college memories. Nothing beats singing 'Hark the Sound' after a Carolina victory at the ESPNZone. They get their first strike when they can't identify the writer of 'Do The Right Thing' (Spike Lee). They use the street shout out on this: what was the name for the people at the Gold Rush. 'The 69ers!' No comment. They do get the 49ers, though. They use the mobile shout out on this: What former Yankee's record did Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa shatter in 1999? 'Roger Maris?' Right for $225. Next strike: according to the Bible, what northern Israeli town was the childhood home of Jesus Christ? They go with Bethlehem. Not right. It was Nazareth... what metric unit equals approximately 2.2 pounds? They guess liter.... Strike three. It was a kilogram. And you're going to have to walk to the Zone...
Night falls as Rachel's group heads to 10th between Third & Fourth. They sweep the first tier for $100. They get their first strike on the nickname of the Strategic Defense Initiative ('Star Wars'). They have to use a mobile on this: what term is used to describe the three dots that indicate an omission? They go with semi-colon... Not right, it was ellipsis. They get $200 going into the Red Light Challenge: what five US airlines carried the most passengers in 2004? Delta, American, Northwest, Southwest... and they miss United. Final question... gotten for $300! So that's theirs... unless they want to risk it. They... don't.
Chapter Twenty Five
Take Her into Your Heart
He'd been to the strip before but never in a group. Maybe if he'd gone to college, joined a fraternity, Vegas as an event would have been something he'd be accustomed to. He'd been there a couple of times with Sam, a few times on his own, but never with a group and of course, never with his entire family in tow. It was like a social experiment gone awry. It was like a reality television show whose premise was: take the adults in a family and plant a spy amongst them. This spy will be one of the children of said adult group. This spy will be treated as one of the adults and the adults will behave exceedingly badly.
He only found solace in the comforting sympathy of Kathy and Missy who both, once or twice, shielded him from the things he knew he'd need brain-bleach for later.
When the Campbells and le Blancs threw a party, they threw a party. If it hadn't also been a baby shower, where there was no alcohol consumed, he could only imagine the next level it would have been taken to.
It started with the dancing. What his parents were doing wasn't qualified to be called 'dancing.' Dean wondered what kind of banned narcotic sex-drug must have been in the tips of Cupid's arrows for them to do what he was seeing. He stood awkwardly in the nightclub, shuffling his feet, avoiding the more than one woman who tried to dance with him, and tried to not to look like a creepy stalker by the way he watched Mary and John Winchester dance.
Then it was the gambling. Missouri would hop from slot machine to slot machine, collecting jackpot after convenient jackpot. Roulette was Grandpa Joe's game, for obvious reasons. Death bet on black and somehow black always won.
John and David, who Dean was surprised to learn during the party, being his dad's best friend, was also baby Dean's godfather, played poker at separate tables and got a crowd of followers. Their win ratio wasn't as overt as the supernatural family members among them, but years in Vietnam left little for Marines to do in their downtime than get really good at card games.
Mary, Diana, and Kathy hit the black jack tables and with a little help from Kathy, somehow consistently won over the house.
The rest of the clan did the same in other endeavors and Dean just stood to the side with Harry feeling an odd confirmation that he came from a distinguished line of sharks.
'Are they all winning?' Harry asked in amazement. The fifty dollars in chips he'd invested in the trip had quickly dwindled to nothing. Harry wasn't cheap, he just knew with confidence he lacked any form of poker face.
'I don't even know what I'm looking at,' Bill Reid said, tending a club soda and watching his pregnant wife win mortgage money for the next three years.
'Are they trying to get kicked out?' Dean replied with a question of his own. He didn't even try to hit the slots or tables; as soon as he moved to settle in he saw the score. It was almost too much. Almost. Mostly it was just educational.
'Cheese it!' Missy called to those closest to her. The word went around like wild fire and games were quickly wrapped up and chips cashed in just in time for the group to exit to a new casino with security on their tails. A round of satisfied laughter passed and the events repeated until the resident mommy to be was tuckered out.
Beds were collapsed on, shoes were half kicked off, and sleep welcomed them.
Dean found himself sharing a room in the hotel with Grandpa Joe at Joe's insistence.
'Great,' Dean said, toeing off his boots.
'I know you're flattered,' Joe said with a grin. 'But of course you're the only one who'll understand if I disappear for a minute or two . . . or the entire night.'
Right. This was his time and he was still the Archangel Michael. He had concurrent duties.
'Before you,' Dean smiled a little mischievously, 'flutter off—' Joe sighed and ignored him. 'Did you feel the ring when I came over last year?'
'Of course.' He could see Dean's unspoken follow up question. 'I occasionally travel through time. When I do, of course there will be two of me in the same reality. I don't register it as anything. When it moves in the proximity of those under my care then I get a little more curious.'
'You figure you came to change something?'
'Which is an absurd prospect. Once something happens it has happened. Moving forward is a glimpse to one of an infinite number if possibilities, nothing is set so it's equivalent to playing in a sandbox. Moving backward is only active if it is to lead to what is considered fixed events. It would be foolish of me to even think I could alter the past unless I was an agent of it as well.'
'Like this trip I'm on right now?' 'Exactly. This is the past for them in relation to the current timeline. It has already happened. It is also your personal current timeline. From what you've told me about her, Penelope is who she is because of this journey you, Sam, and Spencer are on. She already existed in your timeline; you simply came back to close the paradox.'
Dean thought of the other actions they'd taken in this journey. Saving Mani and Sara. Ensuring Nini was in Whitechapel to save Churchill. And Marie? Perhaps not saving her from that night, but being there to get her away that morning. Closing the paradox. It was a weird way to see time. To know everything they'd done in the past was to ensure a future they already existed in.
'I still don't understand why we had to take Penelope from Marie,' Dean said, only imagining how impossible it would have been for him to let her go. Marie's heartache echoed through him at the thought.
'Because she's a part of you; that was never her time to begin with,' Michael said as if it were obvious.
'I get that, but only because we made it that way. What does Spencer call it? Um, right. Circular.'
'No, you don't understand. The same way Aeshma can impart his angelic aspect through reproduction with humans, the same way I can use your body as my vessel because you are the child of my vessel, we leave markers in the blood of our hosts that they pass down through their children. It's why Azazel had to receive permission to get access to Sam and why he fed Sam his blood. Azazel is Lucifer's child. His angelic aspect is Lucifer's.'
'But, come on that was like two drops—'
'To start. And then Sam's possession by one of Azazel's own creations—you called her Meg.'
Dean's stomach dropped. 'They were serious about that? I mean, the whole dad, kid thing?'
'Nephilim. Born human to a fallen father, human mother, twisted in life, deformed in death. Azazel created most of them with Lilith before her death. Throughout time he made several others. Alistair is one—' Unconsciously, Dean shivered. 'Your Ruby was one as well.'
Shit. Fuck. 'That's why she got Sam on the blood. Her blood was Azazel's. His was Lucifer's.' He already knew that though, right? They had been building Lucifer's ultimate vessel but that was the missing branch in the story wasn't it? Neither Dean nor Adam needed to ingest 'angel blood' to play house to Michael, it just was. It just happened. They were ready-made because of John, because of the marker in John's blood.
If Sam was really Lucifer's vessel then why did they need to prep him so much? Why would Azazel have to go into the nursery that night at all? Why feed him the blood if the bloodline already existed? None of it had to start off as some elaborate plan, did it? Not in the beginning.
Create a vessel for Lucy, get Dean down to Hell, and jack Spencer up on the side. Wouldn't it all have been much easier if they hadn't created a vengeful badass in John Winchester? Wouldn't it have been easier if the three of them had grown up as disparate people like Harry and Marc? Dean, because of his time with the Djinn, had already seen what life could have been if he and Sam hadn't been raised calling the Impala home. It was a shadow of their connection but the tradeoff was a white picket fence and their mother's smiling face.
Shit.
'So, with Penny you're saying it's the same?'
'Yes. Just as Aeshma and René were one being when Penelope and Jean Louise were conceived, you and Marie were one. Your aspect, the current version of the entity you now are, created Penelope. Your blood runs through her.' He touched the side of his nose and said, 'I can tell.'
Dean had to sit down but he was already seated on the bed. He decided to lie down. Staring at the ceiling Dean said nothing, thought nothing, was absolutely nothing for a while. Of course he didn't feel any differently, Marie had ensured that. He didn't feel more of a dad now that he was faced with the confirmation that he in fact was in the most technical sense. Or was he still her mom, just twice over? Was she Aeshma and his, or his and Marie's? That thought broke through the emptiness of the night and he looked around. He was alone.
It had been a long day that had led to a longer night but he suddenly felt his separation from her so sharply that he slipped his feet back into his boots and he was writing a note to Kathy before he knew. Getting his bag, Dean slipped the note under the door to the room Kathy and Missy shared.
He was downstairs and hailing a cab just as the witching hour rang through Sin City. He couldn't explain exactly all the thoughts and feelings that occupied him on the drive to the Reid home. He didn't have to wake anyone as the key from Chuck was always on him and it opened the screen and front door with ease. The elder hunters camped out in the living room only momentarily raised weapons to him before he stepped in and over the chalk Devil's trap etched on the floor. One of the witches evaluated his intent then yawned at the lack of evil she found there. They fell back to sleep.
Damn, his family was one character after another.
The kids were split up among the two bedrooms and the small nursery. In Diana and Bill's room he found Jess, Harvey, baby Dean, and Penny curled up on the queen-sized bed. Penny's arm was thrown over Dean and she held him like a teddy bear. Harvey and Jess flanked either side to make sure neither rolled off the mattress. Dean quietly entered and sat in Diana's easy chair by what seemed to be a reading nook. Victorian novels were well loved and worn to one side and fifteenth-century tomes were neatly organized on the side under a pen and legal pad. With this perch to watch over the children, he fell asleep.
He woke up the next morning to tiny hands squishing his face.
'Daaaaaddyyy.'
'Pennnyyy.'
'Morning, Daddy,' she said before climbing up into his lap.
'Hey, Baby Girl.'
He felt even smaller hands tapping his kneecaps. Dean squinted down to see the toddler version of himself waving good morning. He hadn't seen his hair that long in a while. God, he was blond.
'Wanna come up?' He asked himself.
Baby Dean nodded. Dean lifted him up and set him opposite Penny.
'His name's Dean too,' Penny informed him.
'Well think about that.' Dean looked to the kid. 'Pleased to meet you, Dean.' He gave him a little wave that baby Dean mimicked with a pudgy-cheeked giggle.
'Morning, Dean,' Harvey called from his reclined spot on the bed. Jess was already up and sitting cross-legged and looking in their direction. She waved good morning.
'You guys been up a while?' Dean asked.
They all shook their heads 'no' but he could see they were lying. 'What's the sitch?'
'Christian,' Jess said. 'They shoulda named him Anti-Christian 'cause he's awful.'
'That's why you're in here? Hiding out?'
Harvey seemed imminently insulted. 'Am not,' he protested.
Jess thumbed to Harvey and said, 'Yeah, he is.'
'And you?' Dean asked her.
'We're family and I'm a head taller than the kid. If I go at him it's over.'
'So this is you being diplomatic?'
She pointed to him, 'Exactly. See? You and me? Same page.'
'Okay, I'm awake. Go get washed up and I'll see what the ancients have planned for breakfast.'
They all bolted for the bathroom, most doing the pee-pee dance.
'Seriously?' Dean asked no one in particular. He stretched out his legs, by now so well used to sleeping in a comfortable and proper bed that the easy chair did him no favors. He did a quick headcount of all the munchkins in attendance and wondered once more just how many of them were around in three decades.
Cereal looked to be Bill and Annie Reid's breakfast of choice. In a few grocery bags left on the counter was some pancake mix and a gallon bottle of mapleish corn syrup. The ancients had whipped out a stack of bowls, a stack of spoons, and had gone out to the backyard to play Dominoes and Hearts.
'Damned hunters,' he muttered. Dean scoured the entire kitchen and rummaged up some supplies. With as many kids as there were he'd have to get creative. The problem with kids though is if they liked something enough and they were hungry enough they'd go for seconds, thirds, etc. He hated the prospect of not having enough food for them.
'How many fish and loaves of bread does it take to feed a houseful of kids?' He groaned, looking at the dearth of edible kid-food.
'You want to feed them fish and bread for breakfast?' Dean jumped at the voice and turned to see Grandpa Joe standing by the kitchen door.
'What are you—?'
'I came back to the hotel room and you were gone. I waited, imagining since it was Vegas—'
'Can't you track me? The ring?'
'I can sense the ring, not track it. It's from a different point in time so the energy is hard to pinpoint outside of general area. I'd felt it was in London when you went to David and Nishtha but beyond that,' he shrugged. 'As for you, not since Castiel etched that little warding on your ribcage.'
Oh. Right.
'So, they're up yet?' He asked, regarding the adults.
'Hardly. I doubt it'll happen before noon.'
Dean sighed. 'Think you can help?' He asked, gesturing to the counter.
'What? Cook?'
'Don't look like I'm about to mow you. And please tell me you fed my dad more than—manna from heaven every morning like it was oatmeal.'
A beat.
'Manna is actually quite nutritious—'
'For Chuck's sake—'
'It was a joke,' Joe said. 'You don't actually need to cook. I can just get what you want.'
'Eggs, bacon, self-rising flour—'
'Or I can do what I usually do and raid a diner—'
'Unsalted butter, real maple syrup, strawberry jam—'
'You're insisting on this?' He asked, looking around the kitchen like it was a disease.
'Are you writing it down?' Joe waved his hand and the table was stocked. There was enough food there to feed a platoon. 'I'm going to play Hearts,' he turned and headed out back.
Dean looked around for something to cover up with and found one of the shower gifts tucked away out of sight. Diana had called it an ironic symbol of the patriarchy . . . but funny. It was a waist apron that said, 'Kiss the Cook, Kill the Monster.'
Tying it around him he tackled breakfast. With a word and a whisper he set the eggs beating, the bacon frying, the pancakes flipping and the biscuits rising all at the same time. Being a telekinetic helped when you had a million little mouths to feed. In nearly no time at all, the platters were filled and he was laying everything out. A few of the kids ran in and the call went out that breakfast, a real breakfast, was waiting for them.
Cheers and whoops were sounded and they all stacked their plates high and found spaces to sit and eat. His three munchkins gave him the thumbs up after digging in. Dean retreated back to the kitchen where he was dreading doing the dishes but was surprised to find it spotless. A steaming mug of coffee and a piece of apple pie waited for him on the table.
He smiled. 'Thanks, gramps.'
Dean sat down and closed his eyes taking in the sounds around him. Happy children beyond one wall, contented adults beyond the other. There was a point in time when his family consisted of more than his heartbroken father and his disenchanted little brother. This was that point in time.
He savored it.
He savored it.
It would never be like this again.
They were headed out, saying their goodbyes. Dean had, as Missouri had done in her avoidance of John, kept himself as much away from his Aunt Diana as he could which was easy enough given the size of the party. Kathy had been right, in the end he'd only been a face in the crowd.
Dean stepped out with the kids as there were a few taxis at the curb picking up those family members who were headed to the airport. Harry and Kathy were saying extended goodbyes. Dave squeezed out the front door and waved Dean over.
'Wow, I think I had to actually climb over people just now,' he said with a laugh.
'Me and the kids dropped and crabwalked. Seemed easiest.'
'I wanted to ask you, um,' he gestured Dean away from the earshot of the kids. 'Well, I figure you know your stuff, after what you did with the fish—'
'That was nothing—'
'See, that's what I thought since I'm still so green but everybody who knows the score was talking like they just saw the first Easter.'
'Dave—'
'I get it; you're out but just tell me, do you know your stuff? Honest question.'
Dean couldn't lie to him. 'I guess I know enough. Why?'
'Well, none of them will help with the idea, you know? I never knew a prouder set of mules.'
'Ha. Wait 'til you meet my dad.'
Sammy Fire Drift Slot Machine Manual
Dave understood the sentiment as his own father was nearly impossible to deal with. 'What I'm asking is can you be my contact? Most of them already respect you which is more than I can say about me, black sheep and all. I'd fax you the files, you sort it and act as a distributor. Kathy's got everybody's number.'
Dean had already investigated who Dave Rossi was in Penny, Spencer, and Derek's lives. He was one of their teammates. Both Spencer and Penelope looked up to him more than anything. He was even teaching Penny to cook which seemed almost to be as big a challenge as Dean had faced.
Dave was a good man with a good heart and a life-saving, radical idea. Dean had wondered the purpose of going to Spencer's baby shower in terms of the great scheme of things and he had no doubt he'd just found it. Hadn't he always pictured his retirement, if he had lived to retire, as a hunter in the vein of Bobby? A homesteader. An organizer. To be in their world just enough to know he was still saving people, hunting things, but having the anonymity to live a regular life.
'I think I'm gonna have to get my own fax line,' he said.
Dave couldn't hide his excitement. 'That's a yes?' Dean nodded. 'Yes! Excellent. Perfect. Here's my card,' he pulled out a business card and a pen. On the back of the card he wrote his home number and handed it to Dean. Dean looked at it and flipped it over. Special Agent David Rossi. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Quantico, Virginia. 'I'll call tomorrow afternoon, eveningish, set it all up. Okay?'
'Okay.' Dave took Dean's hand in a shake and a thirty year friendship was born.
A new phone and fax line was set up in the attic. Harry, eternally at work, plotting to inaugurate the digital age, observed very little in terms of home life. The fact that his driver/au pair was moonlighting as a supernatural Watchtower was lost on him. Kathy appreciated having some ties back to the life she grew up in even though most of her time was busy with case law and not the Wendigo that was thought to be a serial kidnapper in West Virginia or the mysterious disappearances that were actually caused by a Vampire nest outside Salt Lake City and not human traffickers. Those were the kinds of cases Dave sent to what was now known in the hunting world as the San Francisco Home Office.
Even hunters Dean knew in the future would sometimes call in for cases. Rufus Turner was a crotchety old bastard even as a young man. Pastor Jim Murphy hadn't always been a pastor but had always been a monk. Bill Harvelle took the bulk of the cases that dealt with the Midwest as he was in charge of the Central hub out of Nebraska.
During all this, the kids were thriving in school. Jessica joined mock trial and she signed up for archery club after receiving multiple assurances from Dean that she wouldn't make a fool of herself. Dhanurveda was still in his blood and in his bones. Sara's lifetime of memories learning the bow was as with him as Marie's magic was with him. Once he trained his muscles to work the way he knew they should, after a lifetime of using a crossbow and now realizing what a travesty that weapon was as compared to either a short or longbow, he was teaching Jess how to hit a bull's eye before Christmas.
Harvey wanted to be bothered with nothing but baseball, baseball, and more baseball. Nearly every day was spent in the yard throwing the ball around. He joined his local little league and Dean was made assistant coach.
Penny however didn't take to outside sports. Penelope loved puzzles. All kinds of puzzles. Crosswords, sliding tiles, Rubik's Cubes, but most of all jigsaw puzzles. There wasn't floor space for all of them so she moved into her own room and the walls were made into canvases. Dean whipped out his inner carpenter and after the first few splinters and curses, frames started to go up. When the supply of puzzles she hadn't yet worked dwindled to nothing, Harry, coming out of his coding daze long enough to recognize something he could help with, decided to make a little something to tide her over.
Setting Penny up at the family computer, he showed her a jigsaw game he'd developed where a choice of shapes was split into pieces and she could reassemble them. That pleased her to no end. It was in the following spring, at five years old, that she surprised everyone but Dean by developing a rudimentary sequel to her favorite game by digitizing new, more complex shapes for the game world.
It was then, in that instant, that Harold Specter realized how much he'd been overlooking that first year they'd lived in San Francisco. How could he not notice that not only was Penny apparently a computer genius, but Harve was his team's MVP and Jess could shoot the O from the Cola in Coca Cola from fifty feet.
'The rest I get. They're good and they work hard, but Penny? Even a prodigy needs guidance,' Harry said to Kathy one night they both came in after bedtime. Dean had left dinner covered in the oven and Kathy knew he would be in the attic acting as dispatcher until after midnight.
'Guidance?' Kathy asked. 'Oh, God, the polenta is amazing.'
'I knew this didn't taste like mashed potatoes,' he said, teasing her. 'Dean? No, he's practically a Luddite.'
'She does go to school now, Harry.'
'That must be an excellent school.'
'It better be. It costs a fortune,' she said, laughing.
Harold was astonished and grateful. The kids were alright. More than alright. Their cobbled together family was just about perfect. That Christmas Harry got Penny her own machine and a book on coding that was just kid-friendly enough to keep her attention. Penelope Maria Garcia had the best Christmas ever! By New Year's of 1983 it felt like life couldn't get any better.
Dean dreaded the countdown to midnight leading into that New Year. Nearly every part of him was glad to know his little brother was on his way but that was shaded with the knowledge of what the rest of the year would bring and how it would end.
1983 would be a wonderful, terrible time for the family Winchester.
'What's wrong?' Kathy asked as the kids fought to keep their eyes open watching the festivities on TV. Twelve was not an hour they were used to. Dean was insistent on the health benefits of a good night's sleep.
'Wrong?' He asked. He tried to fix his face but he'd lived under the same roof with Kathy for almost three years. She could read him almost as well as Missouri could.
'Come on,' she said, leading him out of the family room where Harry and the kids were nursing sparkling cider and wishing they lived in New York so they could be in bed already. 'What is it?'
He'd have to lie and lie well. The best fabrications were truths. It seemed circular but it was a fact. You could lie better with the truth than with a lie. He would have to tell her something real, something he honestly felt down to his core to shake her attention from what he was feeling at the moment about his mom.
'Well, now that you know my mom is pregnant—'
'And has finally agreed on having a shower, thank God. I knew she couldn't abstain twice in a row,' Kathy rejoiced. Dean exhaled. 'Sorry. Excited. Continue.'
'Now that you know,' he repeated. 'It's not a spoiler to tell you that I miss him.' He let that settle in. Kathy sobered. 'I've got twenty seven years to go. His whole lifetime, you know?' Dean didn't expect going down this road would dig up legitimate feelings but he had to control his breathing not to let the memories of Sam shake him apart. He'd lived through a forty year stretch without his brother and that part of his heart now had a lock on it that he could open and shut at will. It might seem to be a strange thing to consider but it had been a survival mechanism he'd developed in Hell. It had been the only way he'd been able to survive at Lisa's for three months without going insane: he had to close down the parts of him that ached for Sam.
'I didn't even think about it like that. Oh, Dean I'm so sorry,' she said as she took his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.
'It's okay. Just memories, you know? And then there's Cas—' Dean also didn't expect those feelings to bubble up under his words but the moment he said Cas' name they pushed against his heart. That part of him had no lock; he hadn't had to create one.
In that flickering instant he remembered a girl clinging to her guardian angel the morning after she'd been ripped apart, the morning after she'd been broken down to practically nothing. She remembered that angel holding her so tight, completely understanding that in that moment she needed a rock to lean against. For all the things Cas didn't understand about the human experience it said a lot that he understood that.
Dean hadn't ever told Kathy about Cas. He generally kept a tight lid on the people and events of the future. She hadn't been told much about Spencer beyond what he'd revealed for the baby shower. When his mom called Kathy to tell her she was pregnant with Sam, Dean only revealed his name and broad interests. He never had an opportunity to discuss Castiel with her and the prospect of explaining an angel to her wasn't something he could visualize doing. The time travel he had allowed her to associate with his own innate abilities, only explaining something had gone wrong to stick him in the past but also allowing the hand of fate had deemed it necessary. How could he go into angels and Heaven and being on a first name basis with God who was also the potato to his bud? It was odd enough without bringing in all the baggage. He hadn't even told her about Jess's resemblance to Marie and what it could mean.
'Cas?' She asked. 'Cassie?'
That made him laugh and the melancholy dropped a little away from him. 'Nah, Cassie was the name of my first girlfriend. Cas is . . . well, my friend. He's—'
'Oh, he.'
'Yeah. He's like, I guess . . . I don't know.' Wow. How could he define Cas? Weird. Who was Cas to him? More than just a friend, right?
'Best friend?'
'Other than my brother and Spencer?'
'It's different with family. If you had a good relationship growing up, best friends is just the default position. It doesn't even really need to be defined, you know?'
'I guess?'
'It's like, absorbing someone else into the fold is a different dynamic. I mean, Mary's my best friend, she's my best buddy, but we grew up together, we knew each other's secrets before they became secrets. Family's like an extension of yourself. Like with Harry, in the beginning it was different. I had to actually choose to trust him; it didn't just come with the relationship. We had to get to know one another and trust one another. Disappointments feel bigger and it's harder work to forgive shortcomings but once you get there its . . . perfect. It becomes that relationship you recognize having with your family. That person becomes family.'
'Best friend,' he said, thinking over the phrase. A person who wasn't family, who he hadn't grown up with as family, who he had absorbed into his circle? 'Yeah. Cas is my best friend. He's like a little brother and a big brother rolled into one. He's socially awkward, deadly shy, completely lost all the time, but then he's always saving my ass.'
'Dean, you just described Lennie from Of Mice And Men,' she said with a smile.
'That's my story and I'm sticking to it.' She laughed, rolling her eyes at him.
Shouts of 'Happy New Year!' rang through the house. Dean poked her towards the family room.
'Go on. Kiss him.' 'Shut up,' she said, poking him right back.
'Need mistletoe this time?' He asked. A week earlier, an encounter under a sprig of mistletoe at the family Christmas party caused a stilted kiss on the cheek between Harry and Kathy. What made it notable was that for the last few Christmases, the friendly pecks weren't half so awkward. The kids all 'ooohhed.'
Dave, who had spent the holiday with them, suggested a do over that earned him the Katherine Pearson evil-eye. Marc, who had finally gotten back onto speaking terms with his brother if not with Kathy, had also been in attendance. He seconded Dave's suggestion but Dean had to block Kathy's evil-eye with neutralizing magic as she nearly covered Marc's entire body with shingles. Dave and Marc's dates didn't get the joke as they assumed, as almost everyone did, that Kathy and Harry were already a couple. Dave's date, Carolyn, thought the entire thing was 'adorable.' The only stranger at the party who accurately read their relationship was Dave's partner and friend at the BSU, Jason Gideon.
Dean had been familiar with Jason's name for years through Spencer in his own timeline and he saw in him the same thing that affected Hill over a hundred years ago: Jason Gideon was an empath. Dave explained to Dean that Jason didn't really understand his ability and took it for granted that other people felt evil in the same tactile way he felt it. It made him excellent at his job but it also stretched him emotionally thin. Dave was afraid the job would break Jason down if he wasn't careful. It was one of the reasons he invited him to spend their Christmas furlough in California, away from murder and insanity.
Taking a moment's stock of Kathy and Harry, Jason declared with a characteristic shrug, 'Don't think about it in those terms.' The only people who even began to understand him were the two people under the mistletoe.
Kathy looked to Dean as New Year's welcomed them and she said in a playful, childlike voice, 'Who's turning four in a few weeks? My baby Dean's turning four in a few weeks!'
'Kathy—'
'Who's my little man? Who's my little—'
Dean escaped to the family room and she couldn't stop laughing.
'Daddy?' Penny called to him one day in March. He was out in the garden harvesting butternut squash for a soup he planned on making for dinner. Standing on the back porch, Penny stood with her homework composition notebook in one hand and with her other hand she rubbed her eyes. 'My head hurts.'
'Really?' He said, peeling off his gloves and dropping them into his basket. Penny didn't complain about much unless she was in serious distress. It was a challenge for Dean to make sure she was okay because she was usually bouncing around so much that even when she had the flu last September she kept insisting she was fine so she wouldn't have to stay in her room and rest. He went to her and crouched down. 'Where's it hurt?'
'Here,' she pointed to her eyes and then her forehead. 'Everything's blurrier.'
'Blurrier? It was blurry before?' She looked like she had just confessed to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby. 'Penny?'
'It wasn't bad before.'
'How long? '. . . since Turkey Day it was a little bad. Now it's really bad,' she said with a big frown.
'November? Penny—' he said, putting his hand on her head and stroking her hair. She started crying. Dean pulled her close. 'It's okay. Let's go get it checked out.' She nodded, tears falling off her chin. He wiped her face and kissed her forehead. 'Put on your sweater.' Nodding, she turned and went back into the house. Dean sighed. He remembered the photo of her from her FBI personnel file and recalled the pair of 50's-styled glasses that framed her face. It answered his question on whether they were a fashion choice or prescriptions.
He turned to the half-tilled garden and waved a hand. The squash uprooted themselves and dropped into his harvest basket. He waved to himself and the basket went to him.
'Harve? Jess?' Dean called. Going into the house on that Wednesday afternoon, he dropped the basket to the counter and washed his hands.
'Yeah?' Harvey called from the living room.
'Yeah?' Jessica called from her bedroom. 'We're going out. I've gotta take Penny to the doctor.'
'Is she okay?' Harvey asked, coming into the kitchen. Dean heard Jess's door open and heard her walking across the hall to Penny's bedroom.
'I think she might need glasses,' Dean said. He pictured Spencer in his glasses. The kid loved the classic black wayfarer frames but Dean had a feeling that Penny's choice would be a completely different definition of 'retro' than Spencer's. It was strange that they were two incarnations separated from their sibling connection and raised in separate places but both essentially had the same style. Penny loved the fifties and 'twirly skirts' as she called them. As she got older Dean imagined she'd graduate to pencil skirts. She added color to everything vintage and wouldn't wear anything she saw on television unless the show was in black and white. Spencer mostly dressed as if he were just stuck in the fifties . . .
'Do they make glasses with glitter?' Harvey asked with a grin.
'I'd say you were a wise guy if I wasn't hoping they do.' Dean gestured out the kitchen. 'It's chilly. Get a sweater.'
Harvey heaved a sigh and went out groaning, 'Okay, mom.'
'Yeah, yeah, but when was the last time you got a cold?' Dean asked. He wrote a note for Kathy and Harry just in case, though that was never likely, that they would be home before they returned.
'Oh my gosh,' Jess said, blinking behind Penny's new glittery hot pink kitten-framed glasses. 'You can see with these on?' She asked, handing them back to Penny.
'Why?' Penny asked, slipping them on her face and looking like she was viewing the world from under water. She blinked.
Dean, Harvey, and Jessica looked to one another.
'It's so . . . shiny . . .' Jess said lamely.
'Glare,' Harvey said.
'Blingy,' Dean nodded in agreement. The three of them looked at him, frowning. 'What? It'll be a word.'
Penny put her hands on her little hips and singsonged, 'Diamonds are a girl's best friend.'
'Okay, Norma Jeane,' Dean said.
Something passed over Penny's face just then and Dean realized he'd just opened up a drawer that had been closed for nearly three years.
'Johnny . . .' she whispered. Penny would often dream about that other little person who was just like her. Her memory would present the other as a mirror image of herself. Penny went to Dean and she leaned against his leg. 'I miss Johnny.'
Harve and Jess glanced to one another, then to Penny, then up to Dean for explanation.
'You'll see her again,' he promised. He knew he could say that without feeling like he was lying. She would meet Johnny again one day. Of course she wouldn't know that her boy genius teammate Spencer Reid would be her sister Johnny but when all was said and done and there was no more threat to her from that which wanted to destroy their world, Dean would tell her the truth. All of it.
'Who's Johnny?' Jess asked.
'My friend,' Penny said before he could come up with something convincing. She had said it clearly, honestly, and she was lying. Dean sighed and accepted that he'd taught by example. His little girl was learning to hide the truth in well-placed fabrications.
'What are we getting for dinner?' He asked.
Another family reunion, this time in Lawrence, Kansas. The weekend after Easter the Campbells and le Blancs joined up to celebrate the impending birth of Mary and John's second child. She would be Samantha or he would be Samuel and either way, Sammy was going to be a beautiful, happy baby.
There was less debauchery at this baby shower as the last was Diana Reid's own personal version of a grand sendoff. Now that she was the mother of an eighteen month old she knew all her fears had been correct and she vowed to never have another, though she would always admit that the one she had was absolutely perfect but likely couldn't be improved upon.
Early April in Kansas wasn't September in Nevada but despite persistent rain clouds, that Saturday remained dry and Mike and John worked the grill like two pros. Missy told Kate to focus on rounding up the kids as she deputized Dean to work the kitchen with her instead.
Penny played big sister to baby Dean even though he was four now and proud of it and she watched over Spencer like a hen over her chick. Harvey and Jess hung out with a few older kids who hadn't been able to go to Diana's shower.
The event was DJ'd by Harry who instantly received the respect of his adopted family by exhibiting his excellent taste in music. Dave introduced Carolyn to the family as his fiancée and another celebratory cheer rang through the party.
Grandpa Joe Winchester was conspicuously absent. John explained it as his dad being hit with a bad flu. Dean wondered if Michael was planning his exit before the events of November. Dean didn't have any memories of his grandfather so he knew Michael checked out before Mary died, not after. He wasn't sure what he felt about the impending abandonment but he knew his dad had been raised by Joe, had considered Joe his father; he was the only parent he had. To John, Michael was the only person he'd ever known in that role and now he was setting him up to what? Suffer through two funerals in one year? That was bullshit. That was some serious bullshit. It was no wonder his dad became a recluse.
'What is that?' Missy pulled Dean out of his thoughts as she hovered over a simmering pot of something delicious. Dean had set a wooden spoon to self-spin and it hovered and turned in the pot on its own as he chopped chives.
'Like it?'
'I wanna swim in it,' she declared.
'Here,' he said gesturing to the fridge where a pen started to write on a notepad the recipe for Fish and Corn Chowder.
'I wish I knew how to do that,' she said, looking around the kitchen to the automation.
'And I wish I could read minds. Greener grass.'
She granted him that. 'Yep.'
Kathy poked her head in the kitchen. 'Annabel is looking for Christian—'
Missy pointed to her without looking up from the carrots she was chopping, 'Wasp nest over at the neighbor's yard.' Kathy looked panicked and turned to go when Missy shrugged and said, 'Oops. Too late.' A sudden, loud screaming could be heard outside.
'Missy!' Kathy chastised, knowing Missouri had seen it happen with enough time to stop it.
'Those who don't listen, feel.'
Kathy couldn't help a guilty grin. 'Should we attribute that pearl of wisdom to Confucius?' She asked, already knowing the answer.
'Try my mama before she whooped my ass.'
'Mine too.' Kathy looked to Dean as if expecting him to have shared in the moment. It took a second for Dean to realize what she was asking but though he had a few examples like that from his dad he had none from his mom.
'I wasn't trouble,' he said looking playfully indignant at the suggestion but hoping they wouldn't hover over the topic. He gestured to the door leading to the living room. 'Go and look. Angel. Certified.'
'Mmmhmm,' Kathy hummed, smiling. 'We are gonna need a gallon of calamine lotion,' she groaned, heading back out of the kitchen and following the pained shouts of Christian Campbell.
The decompression of the day happened that night once everyone was asleep. With the house he grew up in so still and quiet after having so much life and activity was like existing in a dream and waking up in another. It was exactly as his few threads of memory had recalled it. He even recalled vague impressions of that party from when he was a child. He wasn't sure if the tall sparkly girl was a real memory or a figment but he smiled, pretty sure it was real.
Most of the family lived in Lawrence so the only overnighters were his set, David and Carolyn, and Diana, Bill, and Spencer. Even at eighteen months it was clear the kid was a genius. He was reading, talking clearly. Dean wondered how much of this future Spencer would remember. Would he recall Penelope if he knew it was her he'd been interacting with all that time? Maybe not. Hadn't Spencer said most of what he recalled were things he read?
Rising from his spot on the couch where Penny was lying across him, drooling on his shirt, he repositioned her and stepped away.
He looked around, finally able to take it all in. He was home and it wasn't a dream or a nightmare. That was saying a lot as Dean's reality had always been some version of one and never the other. There were pictures in the wall unit and on the walls depicting events he didn't remember. The whole house smelled like the incense his mother used to burn. Floral and fruity with just a little power behind it, he knew now, to keep things away.
He went to the foot of the stairs and looked up to where the nursery was still in progress. Just over six months from now . . .
A cool spring breeze hit his face. He was through the backdoor and out into the yard before he could tell his legs to escape. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and shook as he fought to breathe. He couldn't do this. He couldn't just let her go to her death. She deserved more from life and a hell of a lot more from him. He had tried and failed twice to save her. Was the third time supposed to be a charm or what causes her to walk into Sam's nursery? He felt sick. No matter what, in his heart, no matter his choice in this situation, it would ruin her.
He leaned back against the wall and looked up to the sky wanting to drown himself in the grey cloud cover.
'Dean?' Her voice called to him.
He was startled but hid it as best he could as he straightened up and looked over to her. She was in the same long white gauzy nightgown she wore when she died, only now her stomach was eight months along with Sam. She wore fuzzy pink slippers. He laughed just a little when he saw those. He'd forgotten all about them.
'What?' She said with a grin looking down to her slippers but being obstructed by her belly.
'Big bird's girlfriend,' he said which was such an odd thing to say much less blurt out that he immediately chastised himself.
Mary looked astonished. 'Dean calls them that. He loves Big Bird.'
'Penny too,' he said, hoping that covered him.
'That's so funny. Can't sleep either?'
'It'll come. Fresh air clears my head.'
She pointed up to the sky, 'But no stars. What's a girl supposed to do without any constellations?'
The tension and pressure behind his eyes wouldn't relent. 'Constellations?'
'Don't you think they're a great way to just jumble all the other stuff out? John thinks it's weird but heck; he sleeps the second his head hits anything resembling a pillow. Funny how civilians train their fighters, don't you think? Hunters know the dangers of sleeping too fast and too easy.' She gestured to the house behind him. 'I stay up like a half hour before I can fall asleep. I can hear everything that happens in the whole house. Once heard a mouse running around in the basement.'
'From your room?' He asked, astonished.
'Yep. You know, things don't have a lot of patience so you just pretend to sleep and if a boogey tries something, you can jump on it.'
Damn. How do you tell the woman protecting her cubs to protect her cubs less? Could he if he heard something in Penny's bedroom, even knowing how it would all go down for him if he did?
'What?' She asked. He didn't say anything. His voice wasn't working just then. 'You know what's funny? Every time you see me, it's like you're looking at an old friend from a long time ago but I can't even call you out on it because every time I see you it feels the same. Weird, right?' She shrugged. 'Maybe we knew each other in a past life.'
'What are you clearing your head about?' He asked wanting desperately to have a new topic of conversation.
'Other than the watermelon kicking around in there?' She asked touching her belly.
He could tell she was both lying and telling the truth. She knew all his tricks. It was like she invented them. He knew that look in her face because it was his own; it was exactly what he put on whenever he was absolutely, to his core, terrified. She was scared.
He felt an overwhelming need to just hug her. It amazed him both with how strong the sentiment was and how, in the last two visits to the past he'd never felt it before. Each time he distanced himself from those kinds of emotions because that's just who he had to be so he didn't fall apart. He had to face his mother as a client and her life as a case and that distance, that analytical distance . . . had it ever helped?
'I know you're scared,' he admitted very quietly. They came from a line of witches and psychics. He didn't have to give up the farm to say that to her, right?
She hesitated and he could see her debate on whether to raise her shields or to trust him. She was so tired of being strong all the time and he was the first person who had ever said that to her, who saw that in her. Diana was tearing through every book available trying to save her baby sister but Diana Reid was the kind of person who blocked fear, who denied it in herself and was blind to it in others. She was just so driven that Mary had to wear a mask to simply exist near her. It was the same mask she'd worn with her dad. Samuel Campbell died thinking his daughter Annie was his polar opposite. They didn't ever realize they were the same people.
Mary gestured to the bench she was sitting on and he sat next to her. She turned to him in the dim porch lights. Every time she took a good look at him there was just something about him she couldn't place. Was it his eyes? Probably. Just something so familiar . . .
'Why do you think that?' She asked, drawing him out. She needed somebody to talk to and even the man she'd only met twice so far would do. She just had to answer for herself if she could trust him.
'I don't think it, I know it,' he said. He was stretching this very thin and very far.
'Know, or you can tell?' She smiled. She was getting cold feet. Her defenses were rising.
Dean took her hand. Her smile was gone. She looked like a child, scared and alone. He did what he felt he should have done a long time ago. Instead of going back and warning her of the future, making her dread and fear it more, he should have at least tried to take the fear away.
'I made a deal once, a long time ago. It was to save my brother. See, I promised I'd always take care of him and I felt that I had to. He was my responsibility. I gave up my soul to save him and they gave me a year.'
'One year?' She asked, color fading from her face.
'I spent that year trying to figure things out, trying to fix what I'd done—but I couldn't. There's no going quietly and I was scared. My brother, he tried everything but it wouldn't help. I sometimes wish I'd spent that year differently. Making better memories.'
'But you're right here—'
'I died. The debt was collected. I spent a long time wishing I had good things to hold onto but everything I had was the job. None of that helped when I was down there. It didn't make me stronger.' He looked down to her hand in his. The tiny, cotton-white bells of Lilies of the Valley were twined about their palms and down their wrists. He saw that this frightened her but she didn't pull away. She stared at him, perfectly frozen in shock.
'Your eyes—'
Dean blinked and looked away, the flowers releasing them and falling to the bench in between.
She took the flowers up and blankly looked them over to see if they were real. How could they be real? 'I know . . . I know I should scream,' she said. The color of the flower buds blended into the lightness of her nightgown. 'But I'm so tired.' She looked up to him with tears in her eyes. 'And it doesn't matter anymore, does it? It'll be ten years next month. That's when they died, when I made the deal. He's coming for my baby isn't he? And I can't stop it, can I? It's my fault and I'm so sorry.' She fell against his shoulder. Dean wrapped his arms around his mother and just let her get it all out.
'This isn't your fault,' he said. They were words that should have been said a lifetime ago. She'd been carrying too much, more than anyone he knew. In one night she'd lost her mother, her father, and the man she loved only to be faced with an impossible decision. It was always a decision she would have to make, ordained by those pulling the strings in their lives.
Once her tears stopped and she wiped her eyes he said to her, 'Don't worry about Sammy. He'll be okay.'
She laughed a little. 'Now you can tell Sammy'll be a boy?' She looked to the flowers in her hands. 'Well, I guess you can.' She looked up to him. 'But how can you promise he'll be okay?'
'Daddy?' They looked around to see Penny by the backdoor. She was swaying from side to side a little. She waved to Mary. 'Hi Auntie Mary.'
'What are you doing up?' Dean asked her. Penny took that as an invitation to go over to them and take the seat on the bench between them.
'You were missing,' she said very matter-of-factly. 'I came to find you.'
'And here I am. You should work for the FBI,' he said, only partially teasing.
'What are you doing up?' She reversed the question to them both.
'Stalking squirrels,' he said. She giggled at that. She looked to Mary.
'Oh, baby won't sleep,' she said.
'Oh, oh, I know. I know what to do,' Penny curled up against Mary and with small fingers lightly touched her tummy. 'Daddy says his mommy used to sing this to him when he was little. When I'm sick he sings it for me and it makes me feel better.'
'Really? Then I think it should work like a charm,' Mary said, stroking the little girl's hair.
Dean felt that hole open up again but he couldn't do anything about it. His daughter and his mother were sharing a moment he felt he had no right to interrupt despite the emotions being triggered inside of him.
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'Hey, Jude, don't make it bad. Take a sad song and make it better. Remember to let her into your heart, then you can start to make it better . . .'
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Mary Winchester laughed a little to herself. How odd that Dean should sing 'Hey, Jude' to his little girl. She thought she was the only one who did that. But . . . that was so strange. The song came out in, what? '68? That was fifteen years ago. There was no chance Dean's mother could have sung that song to him when he was little. She looked over to him and the way he looked at them, the sadness in his eyes—his eyes.
'Oh my God—' she whispered. Dean?
'Hey, Jude, don't be afraid. You were made to go out and get her. The minute you let her under your skin, then you begin to make it better,' Penny continued to gently sing.
Dean saw the recognition in her face and he didn't deny it. He was tired too. He was tired of her death overshadowing everything in his life when her life was so much more vibrant and beautiful than any he'd known. She was a person much more than the icon he'd avenged and mourned and it was this person, the person sitting next to him, that he wanted to remember.
'And anytime you feel the pain, hey, Jude, refrain. Don't carry the world upon your shoulder, for well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder.'
With a fevered intensity, Mary clutched his hand, the one that rested against the back of the bench and he held her too, both making sure not to disturb Penny who was starting to drift off. He lifted her hand to his forehead and he leaned against it in a gesture he used to do when he was little.
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'Hey, Jude, don't let me down. You have found her, now go and get her. Remember to let her into your heart, then you can start to make it better . . .' Penny sighed before getting to her favorite part and was fast asleep.
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They didn't know what to say and so they said nothing at all.