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(1.)
If Cas were home, he probably would’ve seen this coming.
That’s the thought that fixes itself in Dean’s mind. There are a lot of other thoughts, too, that he could be focused on — maybe should be focused on — thoughts like do we need to worry about the rest of the bunker flooding or has anyone checked on Nessie lately or those are some big teeth. But Jack is wriggling in his arms, excited, and Cas would have seen this coming — at the very least, Cas might have the first clue of what to do next.
Jack wriggles again, and stretches out a fat little hand in a wave. “Hewwo!” he says to the plesiosaur in their shooting gallery.
The plesiosaur in their shooting gallery doesn’t wave back.
It does glide closer, though, up the lanes. The water around it is dark, lapping at the barrier; through it, Dean can glimpse the jagged pieces of the concrete floor slab, and more water underneath. How far down it goes, he doesn’t know.
The plesiosaur reaches the barrier and noses over it. Dean takes a sharp step back.
Jack strains in his arms, reaching. And the thing has a long neck, damn it — it’s sliding its head closer. Those are some pointy teeth.
It butts its forehead into Jack’s hand like a very large, long-necked, reptilian, sea-monster sort of a cat.
The force knocks both of them back another step. Jack giggles. Then he looks up at Dean again and announces, “His name is Henry.”
“Henry,” Dean repeats. “Henry the sea monster.”
“He’s a plesiosaur,” says Jack.
---
It all starts because of the grade-inappropriate reading material. It’s Dean’s fault, really.
He remembers picking up Dinotopia in a library one time, years and years ago, waiting on Dad to finish looking through the microfiche for a case. Paging through and getting drawn into the color — a secret world where dinosaurs and humans lived in harmony. Where teenagers rode pterosaurs, and velociraptors danced their footprints into writing. He remembers thinking, Sammy would love this shit. But Sam was two counties over, alone in the motel, nine years old and already chafing to hunt. And then John needed something and Dean got distracted and forgot to lift the book.
So, sue him if he saw it mentioned on a blog the other day and thought, oh, fuck yeah, and ordered the whole set. And sue him if it’s supposed to be for grades four and up. Jack’s a precocious kid; besides, half the fun is looking at the art.
“See,” says Sam, “this is why — just because Jack’s superpowered doesn’t mean — look, we need to pay more attention to the stages of child development, not less. He hasn’t learned to tell fact from fiction yet.”
Bite me, Dean doesn’t say. “Maybe I want a sea monster-infested swimming pool in my basement,” he counters. “You don’t know. You don’t live here anymore; you don’t get a say.”
Sam heaves a sigh. “Dean — Eileen and I are five minutes away. I’m here all the time working on research. It’s very much my business if the archives get flooded. Also, if you get eaten by a plesiosaur.”
Dean says, “His name’s Henry.”
---
The thing is — Dean’s not sure if telling fact from fiction is really Jack’s problem here.
He wants to talk to Cas about it. He doesn’t want to bother Cas; Cas is off spending time with Claire, his monthly Jody-appointed spitting-image-of-your-dead-father visitation routine. Dean shouldn’t rely on Cas to solve all his problems. He’s not gonna bug Cas. He’s gonna — research what plesiosaurs eat.
About five minutes later, his phone rings.
Dean sighs when he sees the caller ID. He picks it up. “I prayed, didn’t I.”
Cas’s voice is warm. “I sensed a longing.”
Dean rolls his eyes. “Yeah, well, that’s not news, hotshot. How’s it going up there?”
It soothes him, hearing Cas talk. It calms the prickles of tension he didn’t know he had; he closes his eyes and lets it roll over him. Cas talks about taking Claire and Kaia to a movie, and out to eat; about how Claire rolls her eyes at them doing what she calls Kid Stuff together instead of working on a hunt, but how she clearly secretly loves it. Dean gets that. He’s been talking to a therapist lately — Mia Vallens, that shifter they helped out in Madison — about his own crap from back when he was little; there’s a lot of Kid Stuff to catch up on when you’ve grown up like Claire.
“How is everything at home?” Cas asks then, and Dean still can’t get over Cas calling it home; it still makes him want to laugh and kiss Cas and cry, not cry like he’s sad but like — We did it. I can’t believe we actually did it. We made a home.
Sometimes he thinks they should have a real home, a house, with windows, like Eileen does. Sam now, too, since he moved in. But then — he hates the idea of the bunker empty. He hates the idea of leaving the first place Cas learned to belong.
He clears his throat. “It’s good, I guess. Jack, uh — Jack made a plesiosaur. Or —”
And he tells Cas his theory. About how plesiosaurs are hardly even a big part of Dinotopia; how there’s one small illustration on one page. But how as he flipped onto the next page, Jack wriggled in his arms and pointed at the floor and said, “We have one too! Please a saur.”
Kids say shit like that all the time. Dean shouldn’t read into it. Or, he didn’t, at the time. But —
“I’ve been reading about the fossils around here,” he blurts, “and I think — do you think — Jack maybe didn’t make a plesiosaur, so much as — bring it back to life?”
(2.)
The plesiosaur isn’t doing very much.
Dean watches carefully from behind the railing. Henry is sitting motionless, mostly submerged, his neck arching out of the water. He’s got his head tilted almost like Cas does when he’s confused or intrigued or pissed off or — a lot of emotions, really. He looks like he’s watching the water’s surface.
Cas says he should be home by Jack’s bedtime. That’s good; they can all put their heads together about what to do. Maybe they can ship him off to Scotland somehow; Nessie might be lonely, right? Though — that does raise the issue of plesiosaur babies.
A sudden flash of movement makes Dean jump. Henry’s head strikes out too fast for his eye to follow — and then it’s drawing back again, something wriggling between his teeth. It’s — a fish, though it’s not like any fish Dean’s ever seen.
Well. Okay. That solves the problem of what to feed him. Though they might have a new problem if Jack’s also resurrecting fossil fish.
Dean watches Henry fish for what might be an hour. It’s kind of fascinating, the coil of muscles in his neck — the way his scales ripple. Would he always have been an ambush predator like this, lying in wait? Or is it just because of the cramped quarters of his makeshift home? They should really find him somewhere open-air to swim around — not Loch Ness, maybe, but there’s always the lake where they go swimming, just half an hour’s drive away.
The moment Dean has that thought, he knows it’s a no-go. Nessie might be able to hide out in Loch Ness; Champ even has plenty of room in Lake Champlain. The Lovewell Lake Monster isn’t gonna fly.
He feels Cas come in before he speaks. There’s something that changes in the air, something that loosens in Dean the moment Cas enters a room; there always has been, even before they were — this. Even the very first time, in that barn, Cas stepped inside and Dean felt — disarmed.
It’s stupid of Cas to drive all the way back on short notice. Henry’s fine for now, far as Dean can tell. But he won’t deny he’s glad about it.
There are a few quiet footsteps, then Cas’s voice, behind him: “Hello, Dean.”
Dean shifts back half a step to let his shoulderblades bump against Cas’s chest. Cas takes his cue and touches Dean’s hips, then kisses the skin at the curve of his neck; Dean shivers. Cas still needs reminding, sometimes, that he’s allowed to do this stuff. Invited, even.
Once he remembers, though, he’s good at it. He wraps his arms around Dean’s waist and tucks his chin into Dean’s shoulder and remarks, “So. That’s Henry.”
“That’s Henry,” Dean agrees. He twists to kiss Cas, once, and pulls back. “You talk to Jack yet?”
“I wanted to see you first.” Cas’s gaze is on Dean’s eyes, then his mouth; Dean kisses him again. “And Henry.”
“Henry’s doing great,” Dean tells him. “Henry’s at the all-you-can-eat sushi buffet.”
Cas glances over Dean’s shoulder, distracted; he touches his thumb to the corner of Dean’s mouth. “Those fish species are Mesozoic.”
“Yeah, kinda figured.” Cas’s fingers are resting at the pulse of his throat; that always makes Dean crazy. He turns his head a fraction to kiss the pad of Cas’s thumb, then nip it lightly. “You wanna distract me, or you wanna go talk to the kid?”
“I’d like to do both,” Cas says gravely. “Preferably in that order. Maybe not here, though.”
Cas’s eyes are on him again. Looking through him. Against all odds, every day, they seem to like what they see.
“Sorry, Henry,” Dean says over his shoulder as he follows Cas from the room.
---
By the time they make it back out to the bunker library, fully dressed and — in Dean’s case, anyway — a little red-faced, Sam and Eileen have already put Jack to bed. Sam’s doing his best to hide a grin; Eileen’s making no such attempts. “You two should be glad I’m Deaf,” she signs.
Dean flips her off half-heartedly. That’s all right; Jack and Henry can wait until morning.
When Cas explains about Dean’s theory, Sam has questions. “So — this plesiosaur fossil. You think it was under the bunker?”
“It seems likely.” Cas leans back to study the ceiling as he speaks. “Before the extinction of the dinosaurs, this whole region was underwater. Everything you know as the Great Plains — it was a vast seaway stretching from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico. There are —” his eyes lose focus for a moment — “many creatures that lived there, entombed in these hills.”
“Many,” Dean echoes. “Like — how many?”
Cas looks down to meet his gaze. “Many.”
“Okay, so.” Sam leans forward. “What I don’t understand is —”
And Cas explains; how the Rocky Mountains weighed down the crust of the earth when they first formed, letting the ocean spill across the breadth of the continent. How North America spent sixty million years divided in two, and how the dinosaurs on each side of the ocean evolved strange new colorful forms. About the creatures that lived in the sea, the aquatic reptiles and the ammonites in their floating shells and the enormous sharks; about how they died and sank and got buried in sediment that turned into rock. About the paleontologists that warred over their fossils in the days of the Wild West.
“But they only ever found the fossils exposed at the earth’s surface,” Cas adds. “If Jack’s plesiosaur — and its prey — lay somewhere beneath —”
“We’re sitting in the middle of a boneyard,” Eileen summarizes. “And Jack is waking the dead.”
“Ticking time bomb for a prehistoric zombie apocalypse,” Dean says. “Okay, well. Can you put ‘em back?”
Cas shakes his head, troubled. “I don’t think so. Jack’s power far outstrips mine. We’ll have to — ask him to do it.”
It doesn’t feel great. Dean chews on the side of his tongue. Sorry, Henry, he thinks. It’s what’s gotta be done.
(3.)
In the morning, Dean makes pancakes. Might as well get your toddler god in a good mood before you ask him to start destroying his creations.
They’ve got maple syrup and blueberry preserves and lemon curd, and Jack has to have a pancake with each. Predictably, his face is sticky with syrup by the time he’s done. Cas wipes it distractedly with a damp cloth before he says, “So, Jack. Dean showed me your plesiosaur last night.”
Jack squirms in his chair. “You met Henry? Did he like you? Dean said he might need to eat so I got him some fish.”
Cas trades a look with Dean. Carefully, he says, “Yes, I met Henry. And that was very wise of you, making sure he had something to eat. But have you thought — about what other things a plesiosaur might need?”
Jack’s face scrunches up in concentration. “Like what?”
“Well. When Henry was alive, he had an enormous ocean to swim across. He had lots of food, and lots of plesiosaur friends if he wanted them, and lots of space to himself if he wanted to be alone. He could watch the sun and the stars.”
“Henry is alive.” There’s pink in Jack’s cheeks, a frown forming between his eyebrows.
Cas strokes his hair. “Yes, I know. I know. But he’s had a long, full life already. We need to think about whether we can give him a long, full life here. Where is he going to live? I think he might be sad, down there in the basement.”
“He can live in the pond.”
“Oh, Jack.” Cas thumbs at a spot of syrup that somehow made it onto Jack’s forehead. “What about all the other creatures that live in the pond? There would be no room for them.”
“He can live in the lake.”
“Don’t you think all the people who go swimming in the lake might be scared of him?”
Pink is grading toward red now. “I’ll make them not be scared!”
“I told you we shoulda just shown him Jurassic Park and let him figure it out,” Dean mutters.
Cas shoots him a stern look, then gentles as he turns back to the kid. “Jack. We know that you only wanted to do a good thing. But we need to ask you to put Henry back where you found him.”
Jack’s chin is trembling. “But,” he says, “but — where I found him was — dead.”
Dean sighs. He swings out a stool and sits, leaning in to face Jack. “Exactly. And what’s dead should stay dead. That’s how it works, kid; I’m sorry.”
But Jack’s shaking harder now, his tiny hands balled up into fists. There’s a gleam of tears in his eyes — or is that gold? Cas takes in a deep breath, turning to Dean like, Now see what you’ve done. But — that’s not just Jack shaking — it’s the bunker floor, too. The lights are rattling in their fixtures —
There’s an enormous bang. Another one. When Dean starts to rise, the ground rocks him on his feet, and he nearly stumbles. “Jack,” he manages, “what —”
“I hate you!” Jack shouts, and he’s off and running, slipping through Cas’s grasp and out into the hallway — they both lurch after him. His footsteps are clattering up the metal staircase; the door is banging open, then closed again, and he’s gone.
Dean trades a horrified look with Cas. They hurry to follow.
When they stumble out the front door of the bunker, though, it’s — not the front of the bunker anymore.
There’s water stretching out to the horizon. It laps at the bunker’s front steps, but doesn’t spill down the stairs. In the middle distance, Dean sees a plesiosaur head rise up out of the water, and consider the sky.
There are pterosaurs gliding overhead. Ammonites in spiral shells floating in the water at their feet. A rustling, off to their right, in the vegetation at the water’s edge, and Dean catches a glimpse of color, a crested head — a dinosaur?
Jack is sitting under the old oak tree up the hill. He’s crying. The hill by the bunker is still dry land; everywhere else is water, as far as the eye can see.
“Well, that could’ve gone better,” Dean says.
(4.)
Sam and Eileen arrive about an hour later, in Sam’s truck, which seems to have turned into a boat. They both look rather soggy.
“The house is underwater,” Eileen explains. Her hair is dripping; she grimaces and wrings it out. “But the inside is dry. I never expected sharks outside my windows.”
“What about town?” Dean asks, gut clenching.
“We checked,” says Sam. “It’s fine. The water stops short of it. People seem pretty puzzled by what’s going on — I think the US Geological Survey is officially saying an earthquake opened up an aquifer — but they’ve said no one was hurt. I don’t think anyone’s spotted anything truly weird yet, either.” He sighs, and runs a hand through his hair. “How’s Jack?”
Dean turns to glance up the hill. Jack is still sitting under the old oak tree, still hunched in on himself, but he’s let Cas approach, at least. They’re sitting a few feet away from each other, Cas looking out serenely across the water. They don’t look like they’re talking. Dean shrugs. “You game to find out?”
As they approach, though, Jack straightens, fists balling up again and eyes bright. “You can’t kill them. I’ll just bring them back if you do. I’ll just do it again and again and again and again and again an’ —”
Dean holds his hands up in surrender. “All right, kid. All right. I get it.”
For a minute, everyone’s quiet. Jack’s breathing hard, his little chest heaving in and out, but when Dean comes closer, moving to sit down, Jack scrambles for him. He crawls into Dean’s lap and buries his face in Dean’s shirt, and Dean spreads a palm across his back, holding him close. He can feel the heartbeat there, calming now. Love surges, fierce and stubborn, in his chest. If Jack wants to live in the middle of a prehistoric ocean, then he can live in the middle of a prehistoric ocean, and everyone else can get fucked.
That’s probably not practical. “Hey,” he murmurs to Jack, “so Sam and Eileen’s house is underwater now. You got a plan for that?”
Jack’s words, spoken into his chest, are almost inaudible. “Their truck can swim now.”
“You better not make my Baby swim.”
Jack’s silent.
“What about if they want to sit on their porch? Or grow vegetables in their garden?”
Jack’s silent.
“We’re gonna have to talk about this later, okay?”
For a long moment, Jack still doesn’t answer. Then he mumbles, “Okay,” into Dean’s shirt.
Everyone’s looking at them. Cas with something soft in his eyes; Eileen with a small crooked smile. Sam clears his throat. “Okay. So, what now?”
Eileen turns and makes an expansive gesture. “We’ve got the truck-boat,” she signs. “What do you say we go for a tour?”
---
They all pile into the pickup truck bed. Jack still seems quiet, closed in on himself, but he perks up a little when Cas hoists him on one shoulder, twisting to look around. Sam gets behind the wheel, and Eileen kisses him on the cheek but climbs into the bed rather than the cab. “Where the fun is,” she says.
Whatever Jack did to turn the truck amphibious, it seems to have worked pretty well. The walls of the bed make good gunwales. Dean leans over to peer down into the water, and catches a glimpse of a school of enormous fish, then something even bigger — darker — moving through them, propelled by an enormous tail.
“That’s a mosasaur,” Cas tells him when Dean points it out. “One of the ecosystem’s top predators.”
Dean shivers. “Seems like an ecosystem with a lot of predators.”
After a few minutes, Jack squirms down from Cas’s shoulder. He leans over the side of the truck instead, reaching out to skim a hand through the water — and as he reaches, the creatures come to him.
There are fish of all shapes and sizes: some tiny and darting, others enormous. There are sharks, like Eileen said — some of them shaped like great whites, some with long awkward-looking noses that Cas calls goblin sharks. One shark, with an enormous block of a head, veers off from the boat before Jack has a chance to pet it, and crunches down on an ammonite floating nearby.
There are birds, too, though they’re nothing like any birds Dean’s ever seen. The first one he glimpses is swimming underwater, propelled by powerful feet. When Jack reaches for it, it surfaces, and chatters at him through a clacking bill — a bill that has teeth. Dean blinks and shakes himself. Yep, those are teeth.
Then there are more birds surrounding them, black and white and brown and tern-like, calling in high voices. They have teeth, too. One of them swoops low to the water and catches a small fish. It gulps it down on the wing.
Cas is studying the water with an out-of-focus look in his eyes. When Dean nudges him questioningly, he says, “Jack raised the plankton, too.”
Dean leans over as if he’s going to be able to see anything. But that’s stupid; plankton are microscopic. He’s just starting to lean back when Jack scrambles to his side, glowing with pride, and reaches out a hand.
A ball of water rises from the sea. It swirls briefly in the air, then rises, and — starts to expand.
And there are all sorts of forms inside it, catching the sun as they swell and grow. Magical, intricate forms, like snowflakes, or blown glass — they’re beautiful. Some look like little globes armored in ornamented plates. Others are long and spindly, bedecked in spines. And they’re all living — Dean can see the spark of life in them, illuminated in Jack’s gold.
Jack laughs and sends them spinning above their heads, little baubles in the sky. Dean thinks of solar systems. Then Jack drops his hand, and the plankton scatter in a spray of water, shrinking back to their microscopic size.
The truck is approaching the shore now — a dense treeline of green. Some of the plants look familiar to Dean, but others seem exotic and strange. And there — peering through the trees —
It’s a dinosaur. Long and armored and low to the ground — an ankylosaur; Dean remembers those from the movies. It’s more colorful than in the movies, though, pink and turquoise, and it lifts its head to watch them as they pass.
And there are more of them — a whole herd, hidden among the bushes. Everyone in the truck-boat watches them silently as they glide by.
When they pass by the road that leads into town, there are cars parked there. Some DOT trucks, surveyors scratching their heads, but people are also spreading out blankets on the nearby grass, unfurling sun umbrellas. Someone’s in swim trunks. Somebody else is driving up with a boat on a trailer — getting it turned around, preparing to back it down into the lake.
Dean glances down into the water. Another mosasaur is circling below them.
He trades a glance with Cas and Eileen. None of them need to say it.
This can’t hold.
(5.)
They wait to talk about it until they get back to the bunker. Jack looks drained, a little sunburned from the ride in the back of the truck; Dean should’ve thought to bring sunscreen. Oh, well. Cas can probably heal it, if Jack doesn’t himself.
This time it’s Sam who broaches the subject. He does it head-on; hands folded, eyes steady. “Jack. Can you put them back?”
Jack squirms and looks down.
“They’re going to hurt someone. Probably sooner rather than later. I need you to put them back.”
Jack turns his head away. “They won’t hurt anyone. I can make them not hurt anyone. I can make them all stay away from people.”
Cas reaches out to touch his temple. “Yes, but it’s exhausting you. Sooner or later, you’ll lose control. You need to put them back, Jack.”
Jack’s lower lip trembles. Eileen says, suddenly, “Jack. Will you talk with me for a minute?”
Even Jack looks surprised. But he nods his head, and follows Eileen down the steps to the map room table.
---
Dean tries not to spy on their conversation. Jack’s pretty good with ASL; often better, Eileen tells them, than in English. There’s vibrant conversation flying back and forth, though, and he can’t help but catch a few words; the signs for Deaf, for mother. Finally, Jack looks shame-faced, and Eileen reaches out to put one hand on his shoulder. She gives him a smile.
When Jack comes back up the steps to the library, he’s blushing redder than his sunburn. He looks at the floor when he says, “I can’t put them back. I don’t — I don’t think I’m strong enough.”
Sam glances at Cas. “Maybe — the two of you together?”
“Cas can’t either.”
“He’s right,” Cas murmurs. “I’m sorry to say it.”
“I’m-sorry-for-scaring-you-and-not-listening-when-you-told-me-to-not-resurrect-dinosaurs,” Jack says, all in a rush. “I’m sorry I can’t fix it.”
Sam glances at Dean. “Well. We’ll just have to find another way.”
---
“We’ll call up every witch we know,” Sam’s saying. “Between them they should at least be able to create a bubble around the lake, if not deal with the problem itself. I’ll check Rowena’s spellbooks to see if there’s anything worth trying. If Jack’s willing to go along with it, we’ve got as good a chance as any. What did you say to him, anyway?”
Eileen shrugs. “I asked him what else he would change. If there’s any people he would bring back to life.”
Sam does a double-take, then gapes. “You — what?”
“Well, that’s the question, right? I asked him if he’d bring his mother back. I asked him if he’d bring my mother back. I asked him if he’d make me hear again.”
“I — did —” Sam stops, stunned. “Would you want him to?”
She shakes her head, lips curved in a tiny smile. “Maybe I’m the last person who should argue against resurrection. But — I like being Deaf. It’s who I am. And it’s one thing when you’re repairing the acts of a cruel God. It’s another when you are God. Right?”
Sam looks a little shell-shocked. “That’s — pretty heavy stuff for a four-year-old.”
Eileen shrugs. “He’s a four-year-old who’s God. Anyway, shouldn’t you add that wood nymph who lived here to your list of people to contact? What was her name — Mrs. Butters?”
---
Mrs. Butters, in the end, is all they need.
She arrives in a puff of green smoke, a smile already on her face and her carpetbag clutched in her hands. She tilts her head and says, “Oh, dear. Oh, I do see the trouble. Rather different around here, isn’t it?”
Dean takes her on the tour. He shows her the shooting gallery, abandoned now by its former inhabitant. It still has a watery tunnel leading downward into unknown depths, though; Mrs. Butters dips a finger in the water and tastes it, then nods approvingly.
They take her out in the truck-boat to show her the sea from above. She sighs at leaving the land — “I am not a water nymph” — and looks distinctly green until they redeposit her on shore. Then she smooths her skirt and harrumphs slightly. “The things I do for you boys.”
“So,” says Dean, anxious. “So — do you think you can fix it? Can you put it back?”
“Put it back?” She raises her eyebrows. “Oh, I doubt it. But I imagine I can put it — away.”
Dean blinks. Cas says, “What do you mean, away?”
Mrs. Butters gives him a look that reminds Dean of an English schoolmarm in some old movie. “You boys upstairs always think you’re the only ones with the tricks. You might not be able to create pocket dimensions anymore — but I can.”
“Of course,” says Sam. “The lore is full of people getting lost in the woods — whole armies going missing, or someone falling asleep beneath a tree and waking up a century later. Journeys to strange realms, fairy kingdoms, places where time passes differently — that sort of thing. That’s your specialty, isn’t it? That’s what your magic is for.”
For a moment, Mrs. Butters’ smile seems to have teeth in it. “There’s a lot you can hide by slipping it between the trees. Of course, I’m no expert in oceans, but I’ve picked up a trick or two in my day.”
“Okay,” says Sam. “So, that’s the plan, then. What do you need? Ingredients, spellbooks —”
“Oh, dear,” says Mrs. Butters, “I don’t require any of that. In fact, it’s already done.”
---
When they go spilling out of the bunker again, the road is back. Sam and Eileen’s truck, parked by the front steps, looks like a truck again. Things aren’t totally back to normal, though — down at the dip in the road, where the bridge over their muddy little river used to be, there’s a parking lot instead. There’s a sign that says, Lake Lebanon Recreation Area.
“I thought you might like to keep a little of it,” Mrs. Butters says. “People did seem to be having fun.”
And there’s a lake. It’s much smaller than Jack’s sea; it doesn’t extend nearly to the horizon. There’s a nice sandy beach, though, and a lifeguard’s chair looking over it, and Dean doesn’t have to look twice at Jack to know where he wants to be.
There are a couple precarious moments as Jack climbs the over-large wooden rungs to the seat at the top. Dean steadies him, though, and then he’s squirming back into the seat, shading his eyes dramatically to look out over the water. It’s a nice sized lake, Dean thinks. Big enough to have a couple little islands, places to explore in a boat; small enough to feel safe. “Any dinosaurs?” he asks Jack.
Jack makes a show of looking around. Then he puffs out his chest importantly and reports, “No dinosaurs. They’re all underneaf.”
“Underneath?” Cas asks, frowning.
“Oh, don’t get your wings ruffled,” Mrs. Butters scolds him. “None of your creatures will be slipping in or out. I’ll show you.”
She leads them back into the bunker. Down the stairs, and into the shooting gallery. It’s changed, too. Where there used to be a dark chasm in the floor, now there’s a tiled archway, and a stone ramp leading down into it. Parked there is an old-fashioned glass bubble of a submarine.
Mrs. Butters says, “For slipping between the trees.”
(6.)
Mrs. Butters leaves them with a kitchenful of freshly baked cookies. She makes a smoothie for Jack, who looks at her with enormous eyes and guzzles it down; she’s watching him the whole time with such indulgence that Dean doesn’t even fret. She tuts over Dean’s apron collection — some of them are a little saucy — and later, when everyone else is wrapped up in conversation, puts a hand on his arm. “Come here. I want to show you something.”
He follows her, down through the corridors and into the garage. Baby gleams there, no longer half-boat — when Dean saw that Jack’s magic had affected her too, he made a noise Sam said sounded like a dying baby crow — but Mrs. Butters walks right past her. She indicates a staircase that Dean’s never noticed before.
He frowns and starts up it. It spirals to a door set high on the garage wall; when Mrs. Butters nods, he reaches out and opens it, and steps into —
He’s in the cellar of a house.
Mrs. Butters comes up behind him. “Go on, then,” she says, pointing to the next set of stairs.
Dean moves cautiously. Houses have never been home turf for him, not since he was small; usually when he’s moving through them, he’s hunting something, trying to save someone, looking for clues. He avoids the creaky steps by instinct. His fingers are light on the doorknob.
There are no ghosts or monsters waiting for him, though. Just a simple little cottage, curtains drifting around the open windows. Sunlight falls across the wooden floor. There’s a small kitchen, and what looks like a bedroom, and a staircase leading up to more bedrooms. Outside the windows is an enormous wraparound porch, already outfitted with rocking chairs, and beyond — the shore and the glittering water of the lake.
He can see the sandy beach of the recreation area, partly masked by the trees, off to the right. There are a few swimmers in colorful bathing suits. They’re still on this side of the portal, then. He’s in a real life house, sitting on their real life lake.
There are emotions crowding up Dean’s throat. He croaks, “You —”
“I remembered a lot of things, when I got back to my forest,” Mrs. Butters says gently. “Things like the wind and the sun in my hair. I missed the Men of Letters bunker, terribly — but I realized how much I’d forgotten, living underground. I wanted you boys to have both.”
Dean blinks, hard. “I — thank you.”
“I should be thanking you,” she tells him. “For convincing me to spare that boy’s life. This world he made — it’s a better one.”
“He’s a pretty great kid,” Dean tells her. “I mean. Resurrection habits aside.”
Hell, he can’t even complain too much about Jack’s resurrection habits. They’re the reason he’s got Cas. And he’s been getting fond of Henry, anyway.
Later, over dinner — Dean made burgers, ‘cause he’s not about to be outdone in the kitchen by some wood nymph, thank you — Jack says chattily, “I remember her. Mrs. Butters. I had a dream about her. She wanted to kill me, but she didn’t.”
Dean freezes. He glances at Eileen, who glances at Cas; but Cas just answers, unruffled, “That sounds like a frightening dream.”
“Not really.” Jack wriggles in his seat. “She was nice in the end. Can I have another cookie?”
(7.)
They go most days to visit Henry the plesiosaur. They take the submarine, which has started looking more and more like the one in Dinotopia, with all sorts of fins and contraptions attached that Dean doesn’t think actually serve any role. Jack likes it, though, and it’s cool to be able to watch the fish swim by through the glass. Henry mostly ignores them when they following him around on his hunting trips, but occasionally he’ll nuzzle the submarine affectionately, which is kind of a jarring experience.
Dean avoids thinking about what’s going to happen when Jack gets old enough to think of trying to ride him.
When they pop out above the water, the glass retracts, turning the submarine into an open boat. Jack likes to toss food to the pterosaurs so they swoop low to catch it; or really, he likes Dean or Cas to do it while he watches and claps his hands. The sky in Cretaceous World looks a little different, somehow; it doesn’t look quite real. But the sunsets are beautiful.
It’s a week or so before they try sleeping in the new house. Dean has a lot of complicated emotions about it; it feels like betraying the bunker, a little. It also reminds him of the house Jack was born in — the house Cas chose for him to be born in. The place Cas died.
Cas is alive, though, and right here at Dean’s side.
Jack hasn’t shown any more signs of remembering his previous life. They’re all on alert, though. Dean can see it in the way Cas watches him; in the looks Eileen trades with Sam. “Do you think,” he asks Cas, that first night, curled close together under the covers, “do you think he remembers — other stuff, too?”
Jack’s faint snoring is audible from the next room. Cas snugs an arm tighter around Dean’s ribs and answers, “I had wondered. After all, Jack called me back to life twice. It’s no surprise he might be touchy about resurrection.”
Emotion squeezes Dean’s chest; he turns to bury his nose in the crook of Cas’s neck. It’s a lot to deal with. It’s a lot for anyone to deal with, never mind a kid. “Do you think he remembers me almost killing him?”
Cas’s arms tighten again. “If he does,” he says after a moment, “he remembers that you didn’t.”
That’s not as comforting as Dean might like it to be. Or maybe it is; maybe it’s good to feel uncomfortable enough to do better. To grow.
“I see what you mean, though,” Cas adds. “The trauma Jack has endured…”
Dean swallows. “Mia says that sometimes we need to be kind to our inner child,” he offers. “Like, give ourselves what we didn’t get when we were kids. Maybe Jack is… maybe Jack’s doing that literally.”
Cas nods against his hair. “He’s giving us a chance, too. To give him everything he deserves.”
“What if we fuck up, though?” The fear is tight and acute in his chest. “What if we’re being too harsh? Or not harsh enough? I mean, like — my dad. He was a shitty, shitty dad. But he was still trying his best. I mean, he really was. I think he was. If someone’s best can be that bad, then —”
Cas levers himself up onto one elbow and kisses Dean into silence. “Haven’t you been told,” he asks, and kisses him again, “that you are ten times the man your father ever was? Because you are.” Another kiss. “And of course we’ll fuck up. No parents are perfect. But I’m grateful Jack has you.”
He’s looking down at Dean with exasperated love in his eyes. He’s looking right through him again. Like he can see all the small shameful bones of Dean’s fears, and he loves him, and he loves them too.
“Oh,” says Dean, quiet.
“Yes, oh,” Cas agrees, dropping heavily back onto the mattress. “Now are you going to sleep, or do I need to make you?”
“‘M gonna sleep,” Dean mumbles, and turns into Cas’s chest once again.
---
There’s a little freshwater stream runs into the lake, right below the house. Most of the time, it’s only a trickle, but enough to fill up a little frog pond before it spills down to the beach. People have exclaimed over how there’s a saltwater lake fed entirely by streams in the middle of Kansas; apparently, it has the exact chemistry of seawater. A hydrogeologist visited recently and declared that it must be due to evaporation. Jack followed her around and asked her questions about her instruments the whole time.
People find weird things in the lake sometimes. Seashells and shark teeth and strange bird feathers no one’s ever seen before; occasionally an unusual fish bone. So far, though, the creatures all stay on their side of the divide. They’re thriving — some of the hadrosaurs recently hatched a nest of eggs. Dean and Jack watched for hours in perfect silence as one after another chipped its way out of its shell.
The three of them have been sleeping in the house more often lately. It’s nice to have a morning coffee on the porch and watch the sun rise; Dean still uses the bunker kitchen for most of his cooking, but he did finally move his memory foam mattress upstairs. Jack’s starting pre-K soon; it’ll be weird having him out of the house so much. But for now, they’re spending every spare moment on the beach they can.
Dean squints out from under his sunglasses. Jack and Cas are working on a sandcastle, or at least Dean thinks it’s a sandcastle — it seems to be designed specifically for the use of plesiosaurs. Jack will probably be full of stories about his pocket universe of prehistoric animals when he meets his new teacher. Kids are like that, though; she probably won’t blink an eye.
They haven’t been hunting too much lately. The younger generation’s got a lot of that stuff on lock, and the older Jack gets, the harder it seems to leave him for a weekend, even if it’s just with Sam and Eileen. Mostly, though — Dean doesn’t want Jack to have to worry about resurrecting anyone again. Not anyone who died bloody, anyway.
There’s a lot they can do. Use the bunker’s resources to help other hunters — Sam’s spearheading that. Dean doesn’t mind inviting other people in so much now that he’s got a space of his own.
Jack hasn’t mentioned any other memories — or dreams, for that matter — but maybe it’s a matter of time. That’s what Cas thinks. Cas thinks they just have to love him, and help him be ready to reckon with that when it comes.
Out of the corner of his eye, Dean glimpses a gold shimmer. A stream of sand rises and spires. Another forms itself into a round globe, etched with unfamiliar continents. Jack’s eyes gleam, and the sandcastle is transforming itself: walls, rambling streets, river channels, the surrounding cliffs — it’s the city from Dinotopia.
“Get the water! Get the water!” Jack shouts, gleeful, and Cas scrambles to his feet, hurrying down to the shoreline with a bucket as if he couldn’t just make it fly through the air. When he gets back, Jack guides him — where to pour, how fast — and it looks for a moment like a fully functioning Waterfall City before the sand loses all integrity, crumbles, and washes away.
Dean shakes his head, smiling. He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. “Again!” Jack’s saying, but it’s Cas’s turn to get run ragged; the sun is warm, and all is well, and Dean’s got his family around him.
Somewhere, baby dinosaurs are dreaming. Somewhere, Mrs. Butters is feeling the wind in her hair. Somewhere, Henry the plesiosaur is snacking on fish. Right here, though? Right here is where Dean wants to be.