𝚂𝙷𝙴𝙴𝚁 , 𝙳𝚄𝙼𝙱 𝙻𝚄𝙲𝙺 𝙸𝚂 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙾𝙽𝙻𝚈 𝚃𝙷𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝚃𝙷𝙰𝚃 𝙷𝙰𝚂 𝙷𝙸𝙼 𝚃𝚄𝚁𝙽𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝙷𝙸𝚂 𝙷𝙴𝙰𝙳 ; the sight of a sleek black truck ringing all too familiar as his dad’s new chosen ride. replacement is an ugly word for what he considers home , but he never quite manages to escape the curdling in his stomach when forced to acknowledge his dad’s outgrowing of the impala ⸻ of him. he HATES the damn truck , but it still has him scanning the area around it for traces of his dad , for any sort of recognition from the darkened back alley.
the scene that greets him almost makes him wish he hadn’t , the squeal from the brakes causing him to wince in apology to baby even as he’s throwing himself out the door. ❛ DAD ⸻ ? ❜ a blood soaked broken body , and underneath the gore of it all : his father. he hits the ground hard enough to jolt hit knees , but the pain barely registers through the shock of panicpanicpanic. hands everywhere and nowhere all at once as he tried to prop his dad up without truly touching , out of fear of further hurting. ❛ dad we gotta ⸻ we gotta get you to a hospital. ❜ they’ve seen their fair share of hunts gone wrong , the blood of the father and the blood of the son , but this is worse , this is so much worse.
There’s no shape of the god in the child’s eye, nor is there a biblical stance on who is the righteous saviour. Dean had, however, clung to John’s legs for a month after the fire. This has nothing to do with god, and everything to do with god. A different belief in John was shown than Dean had before. This was raw, disfigured fear - a panic that his father was bound to burst into flames as well. He doubts he ever grew out of that. Does one simply leave that terror behind them? Do they step out of it like overgrown skin? Is that what trauma is? Something sticky enough to keep the skin on them, loose and ragged as it hangs off the jawbone? There wasn’t anything beautiful in that reverence of his son, it was desperation, and sorely misguided. John knew there was nothing ethereal inside him, certainly knew that his bones were only bones and not meant to be any shelter of sort. Mary had always been the foundation. She laid the brick of the house, she kept the mortar and pestle moving, continuously blending their warmth and faults into an infant to nurture in the womb. Now here their baby has had twenty six years out in the world, not really with any experience of being in a war, no umbilical cord, no goddamn haystack of a hut to protect him. The baby wailed when he was born and he was nothing like John, and yet, everything like him. The shadow moves with the father, after all, even at night - especially at night. Had John truly given him nothing? Was he unprepared? Did he fail them both? Mary’s oldest son is grown now, wealthy in knowledge, but all he had inherited were the clothes on his back and the lessons he learned - and god, he learned them all. Every single one of them. Bright eyed and eager, it didn't matter if he was about to kill a hare or a vampire, he was just content to sit wearing John’s old plaid and polish a knife. Suppose it’s odd to think back to that when his body is misshapen into a crooked weapon, half-dead, half-rage. The king turns to the knight on the board and wonders what happened to that little rook sometimes. Instances like this he realizes that his small boy hadn’t ever left. He still has a son clinging to his legs, following him into the deep dark woods. There’s a lump in his throat and he’s swallowing the heavy metallic taste of his own blood, although he knows that the newly swelling emotion that joins the anger in his stomach is sweeter. Brown sugar coating of the love of a father, albeit a bit sour in taste, certainly doesn’t hold the ordinary shape of love. This isn’t shown in the words, but the tone is aimed for only his son’s eardrums. A whispered out order, mouth twitching with ghosts of pain rippling through him. ‘ No [. . .] no hospital. No time. Gotta’ get Sammy. ‘ Hand with the knuckles scraped to the pink tissue below moves to grab onto Dean’s shoulder, an animal-like grunt as he pulls himself to a sitting position. Breath wheezing and the nausea in his belly almost dizzying, an urge to spill his guts is bitten down on until it quells. He moves robotically to a kneel, dead arm dangling by his side like a boar tied up to drain. ‘ Help me to the car, Dean. ‘