Entry tags:

a thin chain of next moments, fic: spn

A Thin Chain of Next Moments (4/4), Gen, PG-13, AU
Title: A Thin Chain of Next Moments (4/4)
Authors: batyatoon and dotfic
Rating: Gen, AU, PG-13
Warning: Character death
Word count: ~22,000 (total)
Characters/pairings: Sam, Dean, John, Bobby and others (both canon and our own), Sam/Ava, Dean/CRD, Dean/OFC, Jo/OMC
Disclaimer: Sadly, none of them belong to us except the OC's.

a/n: Follows canon up to Crossroad Blues. Puts season two canon in the blender, diverges completely from season three. It took us a while to write this; during the process we got Jossed and Kripked so many times our heads were spinning. Many thanks to our beta reader destina for her patience and her careful editing above and beyond the call of beta-dom. Title is from Bruce Springsteen.

Summary: Dean makes a deal, and lives a life.



YEAR NINE

Dean spends a month on the road while Sam’s wrapping things up in Europe. No specific hunting job, though he brings the arsenal along as a matter of course, just a road trip. Looking people up: hey, I’m in your neighborhood, how’ve you been?

He doesn’t think too hard about why he’s doing this, just turns up the music a little louder. Hail, hail to the good times / 'Cause rock has got the right of way / We ain't no legend, ain't no cause / We're just livin' for today...

Utah is Deacon, happy to see him; getting up there in years, starting to think about retiring. Stands him a round of drinks, asks after Sam and Dad, gets him telling old hunt stories.

Indiana is Lisa Braeden, more startled to see him than anything else, but cautiously pleased. She’s got a kid, a son named Ben, about fifteen years old. Dean does the math, and wonders, but can’t make himself ask.

Kansas is Missouri, who sits him down at her kitchen table and gives him oatmeal cookies, and doesn’t ask him a single question in two hours of conversation, and doesn’t smile when she says goodbye.

Nebraska is Harvelle’s Roadhouse, where Ash buys him a PBR and looks mournful but spares Dean any commentary on the situation. He knows Ash has been running research for Sam -- some weird computer programming shit that analyzes arcane texts or something.

Ellen runs quiet interference between him and the regulars.When it's time for him to go, Ash sniffs hard and stares at the ceiling while Ellen puts her arms around Dean and kisses him on the cheek.

South Dakota is Singer’s Salvage Yard. For Bobby he calls ahead, both to make sure he’s there and to give him a chance to tell him not to come. Bobby tells him not to be an idiot. When Dean arrives, he’s a little unsettled by how tired Bobby looks, and tries to ignore the empty space on the table where some piece of research has been hastily cleared away.

Ron Resnick in Wisconsin, Jim Daw in Illinois, Larry Foster in Iowa; it’s bizarre, he thinks sometimes, that he’s got this many friends still alive.

There are dead friends’ graves he could visit, too damn many of those, but he doesn’t. The only grave he goes to is his mother’s, and he doesn’t think too hard about the why of that either.

Sometime since this time last year, his mind stopped counting the remaining time in years and started counting it in months.

For those about to rock, the speakers sing, we salute you.

Tennessee, the last stop before home, is Jo. The bar where she works isn’t too crowded tonight, and the workload is light enough that she can take a few minutes out of her shift to sit and have a drink with friends when they come in.

"Claws out to here," Jo's laughing, gesturing an improbable distance away from her outstretched fingers, "and you would not believe how bad that thing stank."

"I would," says Alan cheerfully as he sets down a bottle in front of Dean, another in front of Jo, and sits down next to her with his own.

Jo elbows him in the ribs, affectionately. "Well yeah, you were there."

"I was. And I did what any red-blooded American man would do on seeing a beautiful woman fighting for her life against a hideous stink monster." Alan takes a swallow of beer, and grins. "I took pictures. Very exciting."

Dean snorts, but he's grinning too. It’s shaping up to be a pretty good night. The company’s good, the beer’s cold, and the digital jukebox is playing something loud and defiant: And I ain't in it for the power / And I ain't in it for my health / I ain't in it for the glory of anything at all / And I sure ain't in it for the wealth / But I'm in it till it's over and I just won't stop / If you want to get it done, you got to do it yourself... Meat Loaf’s usually a guilty pleasure at best, but tonight it sounds right.

"You probably saved my ass with that flash," Jo tells Alan, very matter-of-fact. "You know that, right?"

"Well, I'm very fond of your ass," says Alan reasonably. She laughs, and elbows him again.

Hours later, when Alan’s up getting the next (fifth? sixth?) round, Dean finds himself staring moodily at the reddish light reflecting off one of the empty bottles. Jo’s gone quiet, toying with a pretzel stick, clearly with no intention of eating it.

"Hey," he says abruptly. "Ask you something?"

"Yeah?" Her glance is cool and casual, and brief.

"You still think I made the right call?"

Jo’s silent for a moment, turning the pretzel stick in her fingers. Finally, in a cool dry tone unnervingly like her mother’s, she says "I’m not the one you need to be asking that, Dean."

Even in the bar's dim light Dean can see it: there are lines around her eyes and an old scar down her left cheekbone, and for a moment he's almost sure there are threads of gray in her short-cropped hair. How the hell did it get so late so fast?

---

Mary frowns in concentration at the sheet of yellow construction paper, slowly covering it with swooping scribbles of alternating blue and purple crayon.

"How you doin' there, munchkin?" Dean sits down on the edge of the waiting-room chair, and leans forward with elbows on his knees.

"I'm making a picture for the baby." She puts down the blue crayon and picks up the purple one again.

"Look at that. Hasn't even been born yet and he's already got his first birthday present." Dean grins, and ruffles her hair.

She tolerates it for a moment, then gives a little shake of her head as though to dislodge a fly and continues coloring. "Can you draw his name? When I'm finished?"

"Sure."

She puts down the purple crayon, and reaches for the red one.

He watches Mary in silence for another few seconds. The straight brown hair that falls into her eyes could be from either of her parents, but the studious little frown wrinkle between her eyebrows is exactly Sam's.

"You gonna be a good big sister, Mare?" he asks, studying her down-turned profile. "Take care of your baby brother?"

She nods confidently, without looking up from her drawing. "Uh-huh."

"That's my best girl."

---

Little James (he's already Jimmy by now) is just starting to sleep through the night, an advantage offset somewhat by the fact that Mary is just starting to argue about her own bedtime -- especially when Uncle Dean is over for dinner.

Even in summer, the evenings aren't long enough. "Love to stick around," Dean says, pushing back his chair with half his after-dinner coffee unfinished, "but I got a haunting in the next county, and I gotta get going if I want to get there before dark." Ava asks what kind of haunting, in semi-professional curiosity, and the ensuing conversation carries them through clearing the table.

On impulse, as he's shrugging into his jacket, Dean turns to Sam and says "Wanna come with?"

Five hours and one cleansing ritual later, they're walking back to the car. Sam's brushing uselessly at the stinking slime on his shirt and making wordless noises of frustration. Dean, with cobwebs in his hair and more of that same gunk all over his shoes, is in no position to make fun of him.

"Okay," Sam finally says, "what kind of move was that?"

"Which, the one where I cleverly distracted Casper, or the one where my amazing footwork saved both of our asses?"

"I mean the one where you waved your arms in the air and yelled insults at the ghost to get it to chase you." Sam pulls a long stretch of cobweb, dripping with ectoplasm, from his sleeve, and makes a face at it before chucking it in the bushes.

"Oh, that move." Hitching the strap of the duffel bag higher on his shoulder, Dean smirks. "Yeah, worked pretty good, didn't it?"

Sam makes a small choked noise. "Oh, yeah, it worked great, except it pissed the spirit off so much it almost overshot the trap."

"It worked about as well as the other twenty times we've used that move." It was an old technique of Dad's, one that always made Pastor Jim sigh heavily and Bobby mutter things under his breath.

"Can we find someplace to get cleaned off? Ava's not gonna let me back in the house like this."

Dean makes a rude noise. "Man, you are so whipped."

Sam glares at him sourly. "Jerk."

"Bitch," Dean responds agreeably. He opens the car door and slides in behind the wheel, wincing a little at the thought of gunk getting on the upholstery.

"Was kind of fun, though," Sam says, after a while.

"Yeah."

Neither of them says the words hanging between them: for old times' sake.

---

YEAR TEN

"You're giving up?" Sam's shouting, heedless that he might wake up the kids. He leans back in his chair, folds his arms, and rolls his eyes, and for a moment it's a decade ago. "God, I can't believe this." He slaps another sheet of paper covered with his neat handwriting down on the table. "There are things we haven't tried yet." He drops that piece of paper and grabs another one. "This ritual. Or this one. What the fuck did I do all that traveling and research for?"

Dad's sitting with his elbows on the table, his forehead resting in his hands.

"Deal's a deal," Dean says flatly.

"Bullshit. We don't have to play by their rules."

"It's done, Sam."

If Ava's hearing any of the argument, she's giving no sign, staying tactfully upstairs. Dean imagines Ava crouched in her bathrobe in the darkness, clutching the railings as she eavesdrops, because that's something Ava would do.

She knows Dean's leaving in the morning. She’s known what's been coming for years. That’s probably why she's made such a point to take care that little Jim knows Dean's name, why she's asked Dean to babysit Mary more frequently in the past year or so. It's almost like she's trying to imprint him on her kids.

Or maybe it's the other way around.

"You could hide," Sam’s saying, fiercely. "Buy some time. Salt rings, goofer dust--"

"That's not how it works. It'll find me. No matter how far I run."

The papers crumple in Sam's big hand. Then he leans forward and says, low, "I could offer myself in your place."

Dean slams one hand palm down on the table. "No. Jesus, Sammy, don’t even joke about that –"

"I’m serious --"

"So am I. Not an option."

"Goddamn it, Dean --"

"Stop." Dad says it quiet but he might as well have thundered out the word.

The house is so still Dean hears the kitchen clock tick, hears the crickets outside the window.

"Last year," Dad says, lowering his hands. "Last year, I went out to a crossroads."

Sam inhales sharply.

"Wasn't the first time I'd gone to one in the past ten years," Dad goes on, and Dean doesn't want to hear this, doesn't want to think about this. He feels like he can't breathe; but a part of him already knew, knew it already that night last year, from the moment Dad stepped out of the car. Had a nightmare.

"Those other times," Dad goes on, his voice level and calm, "those other times I'd get there and I couldn't dig." He leans forward, rests his arms on the table. His fingers clench and unclench. "Couldn't bring myself to dig, because I remembered Hell. But then I finally got more scared of losing you than going back there. So I summoned up the demon. Told her what I wanted."

Dad stops, and all Dean can hear is all three of them breathing.

"How long?" Sam says, his voice choked. "How long did you get?"

But Dad lets out a short, bitter laugh. "Nothing. She refused the deal." His mouth twists with a strangely gentle cynicism as he glances from Dean to Sam. "Said she knew all about us Winchesters and how sneaky we were, and she had one in the hand and wasn't going to give that up. Unless she could get all three of us, now that...that was a deal worth having."

Dean remembers Dad's words, I didn't want this gift from you. "It's okay," he says. "Really, I..."

"No, it's not okay, Dean," Dad says. "It's not. It's really not."

"Tomorrow morning," Sam says, voice thick. "We're going with you."

"You can't..."

"Yeah, Dean, I guess we can," Dad says, rising to his feet. "I guess me and Sam, we can do anything we fucking please, and if you want you can drive off alone in your car tomorrow and there's not a damn thing you can do to stop us from following you in Sam's car."

Wrapped in his own particular kind of silence, Dad walks out. The screen door bangs shut behind him.

---

Ava and Sam's living room is dark except for the flickering of black and light shadows from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari playing on the big flat-panel TV screen.

"Man, your ass would've so been toast if I hadn't been there." Sam takes another swallow of beer. He'd started the evening in the arm chair, but now he's sitting on the floor with his back against the couch, long legs sprawled out.

"My ass? Who figured out what the symbol was and saved your precious neck from being strangled? For the, what was it, tenth time?"

The movie's on mute; they're not really watching it, except to glance at the TV now and again. Dean's seen it about ten times already and he'd rather watch Evil Dead but it doesn't matter. Right now, he doesn't care, it could be Bambi and it'd be okay. He's a little buzzed from the beer and junk food -- stuff he hasn't been eating the last few years because he's become aware that it's started to affect his body badly.

Screw that.

Sam seemed surprised when Dean turned down Sam's offer of a big party. He even hinted at a live band and Dean's pretty sure he could've gotten Sam to agree to hire strippers.

Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go / I wanna be sedated / Nothin' to do and nowhere to go-o-oh... Damn lame-ass song's stuck in his head. It's not even an earworm because he hasn't heard it recently. With an effort, he tries to replace it with Johnny Cash: And I sent for the mayor but he's out to lunch / I've got twenty more minutes to go...

"We're keeping score?" Sam bends one knee, nudging the coffee table and making an empty beer bottle tip over. "If we're keeping score, I've saved your life twenty-seven and a half times."

"Dude." Dean scoops up more salsa onto another corn chip. Strippers would be great, but this -- this is okay too. He slides down off the couch to sit on the floor next to Sam. There's popcorn all over the rug; idly Dean thinks about Ava having to clean it up and being pissed off at them, then figures, no, she won't be. "How can you save someone's life by a half? You either save them or you don't."

Sam glances at the TV, the shadows playing over his face making him look even older than he usually does, and Dean again marvels that his little brother could ever look old. "That time when you were in high school. In Milwaukee, remember? You'd already gotten yourself out of the killer vines by the time I showed up. So technically, I guess you could've saved yourself if I hadn't shown up."

He remembers that, slashing with his knife, leaves in his face and mouth and ear, frantic because a ridiculous killer weed, like something from a low-budget horror movie, had turned out to be more than he could handle by himself. The fact is, he probably would be dead if Sam hadn't decided to check up on him, even though Sam was supposed to stay safe at home, with Dad out of town.

Killer weed. Sure as shit, he's had a kind of colorful life. Maybe he should've written a memoir. Turn him into a legend. Like fuckin' Jack Kerouac. Maybe that's what life is, a wink of the eye. But Dean's never really gotten Kerouac. People are mad, not always in a good way, and the open road isn't the best way to live, it's just the only way Dean thought he knew how. But he's been in one place for a few years, going out on hunts but knowing he's always welcome in Sam and Ava's house. Dean's there more than he is in the tiny apartment across town that he calls headquarters.

"One of us should've been able to save you. I should've figured out how to save you," Sam says, his voice so soft Dean would think he's imagining the words except that Sam's put the beer bottle down and he's looking right at Dean like someone's kicked his lost sick puppy.

Crap, he hates it when Sam looks like that. Dean reaches for more chips and salsa and crunches loudly. He swallows. "You did everything you could," he says. The movie ends and the screen goes blank, leaving them in a weird half-darkness.

Sam's voice is hard with a stubborn note. "But we haven't..."

"Are you starting that again?" Dean pushes himself up, sitting up straighter and rubs his hand over his face, trying to clear his head, to say this just right, to think.

He doesn't get the chance, though, because Sam's on his feet. "I know just how Dad feels." He switches on a lamp and the sudden light is blinding and unwelcome. It casts light upward onto Sam's face and it actually softens his features now, making him look more like the little boy who used to follow Dean around everywhere. "I should've traded myself."

"Don't be an ass," Dean says.

"Takes one to know one."

"It wouldn't work anyway. You heard Dad."

"But I should have tried. I should have."

"You couldn't possibly. Never. Okay? You got that?" Now Dean's on his feet too, a bit unsteady, but that's from sitting for so many hours, not from the beers. He can still hold his liquor, just maybe not the way he once could. "You've got Ava, the kids, they all need you."

Sam is silent, his hands curling into fists and he takes a step towards Dean.

"What," Dean says, bracing himself. "You finally going to take that rain check?"

"Maybe I should," says Sam. "You need someone to punch you. "

He feels the tug, the one he's tried to ignore for years, the undertow of regret. If he gives into it, it'll devour him whole. Stepping closer to Sam, he holds up his hands. "Hey," he says. "Can we not do this? Can we not fight?"

In the darkness, Sam goes frighteningly still for a moment, then gives a slow nod. He turns away, wiping his sleeve across his face.

Dean lets himself go under, only a for a moment. He lets himself think about working on car engines and standing in the rain at free outdoor rock concerts and the strange flame that consumes spirits when they go, about french fries and Jill and afternoons spent with Sam's kids. Then he shuts it off.

He's not going to torment Sam more by saying out loud what he's finally admitted to himself, and lets the words I don't want to go stay unspoken and safe.

The argument seems to be over; Sam starts throwing a few empty beer bottles into a trash can. Dean lets out an inward sigh of relief when Sam stops cleaning up and nods at the TV. "You want to watch another movie?" His voice sounds a little too thick.

"Sure." Dean sits back down on the floor, aims the remote, and selects Evil Dead from the list of movies on the screen.

They watch for a while and Dean finishes off the bottle of beer he was working on, then decides he's had enough. He stares at Bruce Campbell battling cheesy horror effects and keeps thinking about his father standing alone at a crossroads in the middle of the night and the look on Sam's face, ten years ago when Dean showed up at the motel with Dad.

---

A patch of morning sun coming in through the living room windows wakes Dean up. He's lying on the floor with a blanket over him, but he doesn't remember getting one. There's a sour taste in the back of his throat. The TV is off, the rest of the trash has been thrown away, and when Dean glances over at his brother lying a few yards away, he sees there's a blanket over Sam as well.

Dad's asleep on the couch, fully clothed with his boots neatly arranged on the floor, one arm flung across his face.

Dean gets up and puts his blanket over his father. He'll let Dad and Sam sleep a while.

He makes a pot of coffee and pours himself a mug, inhaling the scent, drinking as slowly as he can.

---

Dean's got Mary held in the curve of one arm, her arms tight around his neck. Mary thinks Uncle Dean's going on one of his many trips.

Ava holds Jim up to him, and he plants a kiss on Jim's curly head and starts to detach Mary. She pulls her head back and stares at him, right into his eyes. It's like she's staring down through all the layers right into his soul.

He breaks the look first. "Look after Jimmy," he says to her, and she nods seriously, her small brow looking uncannily adult for a moment. Dean touches her nose, and she giggles, becoming a normal little girl again.

He puts her down and Ava, Jim tucked on one hip, stands on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. "Sam's right about you," she says, pursing her lips.

"About what?"

"You're a stubborn bastard." There are unshed tears standing in her eyes. She looks away quick, busying herself with her children, ushering them towards the kitchen.

Dean wonders what Jill is doing right at that moment.

Out in the car, Sam and Dad are waiting for him.

"You sure about this?" Dad says, as Dean gets in the driver's seat.

"Yeah." Kind of late in the game not to be sure. And it’s weird, but he is. Sure’s not the same thing as happy, or even accepting, but ...

Yeah. He’s sure.

He could go to any crossroads, but he chose the one where it all started because it takes a few days to drive there.

A few days, but driving there feels like one long day, stretching like summer.

They use back roads, stop for meals, stretch their legs. The three of them use the hood of the car as a table, looking at golden fields or red clay riverbanks or truck stops. They argue over who gets the last french fry, over what should be playing on the now barely functioning tape deck -- it’s friendly arguing, pleasantly abrasive like a good backscratch, and irrelevant anyway since they’d probably let Dean play what he wants even if he weren’t driving.

One long day, slowly drawing to a close.

Sunset colors fan up from the horizon all around, and the road’s wide and open in front of them, and the Impala sings to him: Oh, I did somebody some good, somebody some good / Oh, did somebody some good, I must have did somebody some good....

---

Like that, they arrive.

Dean stands on the dirt of the crossroads. It's almost midnight, and Dean's got the lyrics of that old song stuck in his head again, I do pretty well, till after sundown, suppertime I'm feelin' sad...

Dad turns slowly, watching the trees, body tense. For a blink he's like he was before, it's like they're on a hunt together.

Ten minutes.

"You need to go."

"We're staying with you." Sam takes a step closer; Dean knows that body language, when Sam using his height on purpose. Damn him and his looming.

"No. You're not."

Without any warning at all, Dad grabs Dean, pulls him into a hug, holding him so hard he pushes the breath from Dean's body. Dean holds on tight, as his father whispers his ear, "You should have let me stay in Hell."

Five minutes.

He grabs Sam's wrist, pushes the keys to the Impala against his palm, closes Sam's reluctant fingers around the keys and lets go. Sam stares down at his fist, and when he looks up, his mouth is set in a grim line and his eyes are damp.

Dean starts wondering if he'll have to take out both Dad and Sam if it comes to that, if he even could, but he doesn't get the chance to finish that train of thought.

Sam's embrace is like Dad's, bone-crushing and all-encompassing. For a moment he's so startled his arms hang at his sides, pinioned, and then he hugs Sam back. He feels his brother's hand curl into a fist, digging into his shoulder through the leather jacket, feels the tremor that shakes through Sam's wiry body before Sam stumbles back out of Dean's arms.

"You're such a stubborn sonuvabitch."

"Huh," Dean says. "Your wife said you thought I was a stubborn bastard."

"That too." Sam sniffs hard, then gives a shaky laugh.

One minute.

The wind picks up, tossing the tree branches violently against the sky. Sam and Dad move to flank him, one on either side.

In the moonlight, details stand out sharply etched: the lines at the corners of Sam's eyes, the old crease of a scar on his father's face. Dean wonders if he'll remember these things in Hell, how long he'll still be himself before he forgets the words to Stairway to Heaven, forgets what beer tastes like, how a woman feels, what his brother's laugh sounds like, what his father's smile looks like, how the Impala's engine sounds going eighty on a dark highway. How long before he goes insane.

He makes up his mind not to go insane and instead thinks about how Mary looks when she's curious, how Jim looks when he's sleepy. How Sam looked, two years old, his crying subsiding to hiccups and then to giggles as Dean made goofy faces.

White fabric flutters in the darkness. There's a curve of bare legs, a flash of red eyes. A low growl from the shadows.

The old song's still running through his head, ...feelin' sad, really gets bad, round, round, round midnight..., and the wind kicks up the dust as Sam tenses beside him, as Dad takes a step forward.


~end



+ Lyrics taken from:
"Die With Your Boots On", Iron Maiden
"For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)", AC/DC
"Everything Louder Than Everything Else," Meat Loaf
"I Wanna Be Sedated," The Ramones
"Twenty-Five Minutes To Go," Johnny Cash/Shel Silverstein
"In My Time Of Dying," Led Zeppelin
"Round Midnight," Thelonius Monk




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