The day they brought Jack home from Washington, while Sam was helping him settle into the bunker, Dean left for an hour or two to spread Cas’s ashes. Sam offered to go with him, but Dean shook his head, throwing a dark glance at Jack, who was reading the nutritional facts label on his bottle of Sprite. “I’ll do it by myself,” Dean said, and left alone with the cardboard box of ashes in his arms. It had originally held a lamp that Kelly had bought for the lake house. They hadn’t had anything else to hold him in.
When it seemed safe to do so, Sam asked Dean where he’d laid Cas to rest. He wanted to go himself and pay his respects, maybe take Jack along. Dean told him it was a meadow outside of town, with wildflowers and a birdhouse and “a nice little brook.” “Nature, you know. Someplace peaceful,” he said, eyes on his laptop as he typed.
“He would have liked that,” Sam said. Dean made no reply.
But Dean didn’t explain how to get there, to the spot, and he didn’t show Sam where it was. “You don’t have to,” Sam told him, the next time the subject came up. “No, no, I will,” Dean said. “Just remind me.” But whenever Sam reminded him—when they were driving into town, or back to the bunker—it was never the right time. There was always something more urgent, Dean would say, frozen food melting in the grocery bag or a call he was expecting or Jack to check on.
Those weeks were difficult. Summer came on hot and bright, identical days of blinding sun with cool gusts of prairie wind that emptied the warmth away. The trees, the sky, and the blooming flowers all seemed too vivid and colorful, and Sam felt so far away from it—like it was the bright distorted world above the water, and he couldn’t get up to the surface. Some days it seemed the outside world was flaunting how alive it was when he was struggling to mourn his mother and his friend; other days, better days, he thought it was so vivid because he was seeing it through Jack’s eyes. Sam clung to his routine inside the bunker, integrating Jack into it with great deliberation: structure, he felt, was the most important thing to give a child. Sam didn’t like leaving the house. He felt intimidated by the outside world, and preferred to concern himself with Jack. Dean, on the other hand, left often, not wanting to be in the empty bunker, not wanting to be around Jack. Sam was fairly certain that Dean went to visit Cas’s grave by himself, sometimes, but he had no proof.
One morning, after a night when Dean had gotten drunk, Jack was looking particularly wilted at breakfast. He told Sam that he missed Kelly and Castiel. Their names were rarely spoken in the house. Sam could hear Dean in the shower, down the hall, safely out of earshot. He asked Jack what he meant, trying to prompt him to say more.
“I miss them,” Jack repeated, looking down at his cereal bowl with a frown that was almost angry. “There keep being things I want to—ask them about, or tell them. But I can’t.”
“I know,” Sam said. He tried to speak gently. This was one of the few times Jack had opened up to him—he wasn’t going to mess it up. “It’s hard. I miss my mom too. There’s things I wish I could talk to her about... All kinds of things.”
“What about your dad?” Jack asked.
Sam let out a laugh, an unhappy one. “Don’t miss him as much, no.” Sam sighed, sitting down across from Jack. “He and I, we used to fight a lot. He wanted the best for me, but... he wasn’t good at showing it,” Sam finished, lamely, looking down at the wood grain on the table. It was much too early in the morning for a John conversation. Down the hall, the pipes clanked.
“Does Dean hate me?”
Sam looked up quickly. Jack was looking at the table.
“No,” said Sam. “No, Jack. What makes you say that?”
Jack scratched at the wood with his fingernail.
“He won’t look at me.”
Sam swallowed a lump in his throat, chastising himself for getting so worked up.
“He doesn’t hate you, Jack,” Sam said. “It’s not you that Dean is having a hard time with. He’s just... having a hard time. He’s not really himself right now. I’m sorry,” he added.
Jack went on picking at the table.
“Listen. I didn’t know your mom for that long, but she was a very kind person. When I look at you, that’s who I see. And Cas, too.” Sometimes, Jack would say or do something that was so Cas that it made Sam smile despite himself. Maybe that, Sam realized, was the problem. “I know you miss him. I miss him too. A lot. And maybe he’s gone, but he isn’t... gone, from the world. There’s a lot of Cas in you.”
Eyes on the table, Jack nodded a little.
Sam had yet to detect any trace of Jack’s real father in him, and he knew him a lot better than he knew Cas.
That didn’t stop Sam from looking. It never would.
Finally, three weeks after their return, Dean unexpectedly jerked his head out his window one afternoon while they were driving home. “This is it.” They were passing a field, screened by a windbreak and wild shrubs.
“Here?” Sam said. “Oh. I was thinking of a different spot.”
“No, this is it,” Dean said, turning on his blinker even though the road was empty. They turned left onto the dusty access road.
“What is it?” Jack asked from the back seat.
“Uh—” Sam glanced at Dean, to see if he was going to answer, then said, “This is where Dean spread Cas’s ashes.”
“Oh,” said Jack, looking out his window. They had a better view, now. It was a wide, sunny field, dotted with yellow wildflowers. A thin stream divided it from the road.
“Son of a bitch,” Dean growled, slowing down. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
Next to the wooden footbridge, a large yellow backhoe and a big truck full of dirt were parked. A little sign had been stuck in the mud next to the bridge.
Future Site of the Bill Davis Memorial Playing Fields. “For the love of the game!”
The little sign was held up by a flimsy bamboo stick. They stood in front of it for a second, behind Dean, who was running a hand through his hair. Then he yanked the sign up and stalked off over the bridge with it in his fist. Jack and Sam exchanged a look, and followed.
In the meadow, the grass was high and soft, unmowed still, and the wind chased irregular currents over it. The birdhouse stood in the middle like a lighthouse. Swallows dove off and dipped over the waves, catching bugs, and others perched on the little islands of shrubbery. The late afternoon sun was warm on their ears and the backs of their necks, and the wind was cool on their faces. Sam counted thistles, black-eyed susan, even a few wild sunflowers. Dean had crossed the field, and was disappearing into a dip in the land—the brook, presumably.
“Is that a hummingbird?” Jack asked, pointing.
“Yeah,” said Sam. “Well spotted.”
It flitted away from the sunflower and disappeared before they could get a good look at it.
“Dean’s upset,” Jack said. The top of his head was visible in the distance.
“Yeah,” said Sam. “When you bury someone, you want them to have a peaceful resting place, right? But when they start bulldozing this field...”
“It won’t be peaceful anymore,” Jack said. “He wouldn’t hear it, though, would he?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean Castiel. He can’t—hear things? From here?”
“No,” Sam said, suddenly inexplicably sad. “He can’t. But. That doesn’t mean you can’t talk to him. If it helps you. Tell him some of the things you want to tell him.”
“Is that what Dean’s doing?” Jack asked.
Sam nodded, looking for him by the brook.
“Yeah. I think so,” said Sam. He patted the kid on the back. “Give me a minute, okay?”
Sam walked into the field. The birdhouse seemed as good a spot as any, so he stopped beside it, put his hands in his pockets and—with a self-conscious glance in Dean’s direction—bowed his head and closed his eyes. We miss you, Cas, he thought. Me, Jack, Dean. Jack’s a good kid. You’d love him. He reminds me a lot of you. I think he reminds Dean of you, too. And maybe that’s why he has a hard time with him. ... He’s having a really hard time with everything. He misses you. So if you’re listening, if you’re out there, you know... I don’t know where angels go when they die. But I hope you’re watching over us. Dean and Jack, especially.
Amen.
When Dean came back, Jack and Sam were examining the swallows’ nest in the birdhouse. “Don’t get too close,” Sam reminded him, as Jack peered in, trying to see the babies.
“How old are they?” Jack asked.
Sam looked up as Dean arrived, and gave him a nod. If he’d been crying, Sam couldn’t tell. “I don’t know, probably less than a month. Swallows grow pretty fast. They have to migrate at the end of September.”
“Okay, bird nerd,” Dean said, but his heart wasn’t in it.
“Where’s the sign?” Jack asked him.
“I threw it in the stream,” Dean said.
“You picked a beautiful spot, Dean,” Sam said. “Cas would have really liked it here. It’s really nice.”
“It’s stupid, is what it is,” Dean said, gesturing at the trucks. “Is nothing sacred?” He shook his head. “I picked a stupid spot. I should have just—should have just buried him close to the bunker where we could keep an eye on him.”
Sadness tugged at Sam’s heart, directionless and deep. Nothing they did ever turned out right, and here they were, alone again. More alone than they’d been in a long, long time.
Jack closed his eyes, and inhaled. Thinking he was about to tear up, Sam reached for him, but then a low rumble growled in the earth below their feet. The wind picked up around the edge of the field, rustling the leaves and the grass.
“Whoa—” Dean grabbed Jack by the arm. “Hey. What the hell are you doing?”
Jack breathed out, and opened his eyes. The gold glimmer winked away.
“Blackberries,” he said.
Sam looked. Thick, thorny purple blackberry brambles had sprouted all around the edges of the field, clawing into the green grass. Dean looked too, mouth slightly open.
“They’re hard to cut,” Jack said, in explanation.
“Yeah,” said Sam, a little breathless. “Really hard. And they grow fast.”
“Yes,” said Jack, stoutly. “That will slow them down.” He looked at Dean. “At least a little.”
* * *
excerpt from this, still a wip but soon to begin updating i swear. Happy Tombstone Tuesday to you & yours!
The process begins with the individual woman's acceptance that . . . women, without exception, are socialized to be racist, classist and sexist, in varying degrees, and that labelling ourselves feminists does not change the fact that we must consciously work to rid ourselves of the legacy of negative socialization. It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation I choose to reappropriate the term 'feminism,' to focus on the fact that to be 'feminist' in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression.
bell hooks, “Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism” (1981)
Be like the ant in hard work, patience and perseverance.
Always keep trying, and keep repenting. If you go back to sin, then repent again.
Memorize Qur' an, and if you forget it, go back and memorize it again and again.
The main thing is that you should never feel defeated or frustrated, because rationally speaking there is no such thing as the last word or the bitter end, rather there is always trial and error, and learning from your mistakes.
Life is like a body that may undergo cosmetic surgery; it is like a building that can be renovated and rebuilt from scratch, with new decor and paint.
Do away with all thoughts of failure, and stop thinking of calamities and problems, for Allah, the Almighty, says:
( .. and put your trust in Allah if you are indeed believers) (Qur 'an 5: 23)
