Chapter Text
The jet black Chevrolet Impala had been parked on the hill on the outskirts of town for almost four hours. It was Dean’s favourite place; a hot spot for teens to drive up to at night to party and fuck, but during the day, it was quiet. Dean thought it was the most peaceful place in the world. He didn’t notice the empty beer cans or used condoms scattered across the mossy ground; he only saw the deluge of trees surrounding the area, keeping it hidden from prying eyes, and the unbounded view of the city that he had grown up in, that went on for miles and miles and didn’t stop. It was so vast, that Dean couldn’t help but imagine; when he would watch the sun go down around him, and that ignited orange glow set behind the earth so far away, that he was staring at the end of the world.
God, Dean couldn’t wait to get out of that town.
He thought about it every day; packing a small bag with a few clothes and wads of cash, storing cans of beans and an apple or two—whatever he could get his hands on—and then getting into his car, blasting his Metallica cassette and not looking back as he drove towards that sunset, finally allowing himself to see what the end of the world looked like. Maybe he would say goodbye to Sam, but probably not. Maybe he would punch his father, or twice, or three times… or maybe he would go the whole way and stab him in the heart.
Dean hated his father. He hated him with every fibre of his being, and John loathed and despised him just as equally. Dean hated his entire family, and as soon as he turned eighteen, which was five months away, he was out of there.
Things hadn’t always been like this. There had been a time when Dean was the most popular guy in school, when he was happy, funny, flirty and kind, and everybody loved him. There had been a time when he and his father would drink beer together on the bonnet of the Impala outside their home, and tell each other stories and laugh until they cried. And Dean’s mother would walk out, bleary eyed, telling them that it was two o’clock in the morning, and would they please, for the love of God, go to bed. John would kiss her, which made Dean groan and cover his eyes in embarrassment, and then, without them realising it, Mary would have gotten herself a beer as well, and the three of them would have stayed up all night talking and laughing without a care in the world.
Those days were long gone, now. They were nothing more than memories. And Mary was nothing more than a ghost. She had been dead for half a year, now, although the fire that killed her still felt like yesterday.
Sammy had only been six months old, and was sleeping soundly in his cot which resided in the nursery overlooking the garden. He was a beautiful baby, with his tufts of brown hair enveloping his rosy, chubby face. He also had Mary’s glimmering green eyes. Once upon a time, Dean had liked that about Sammy, but now he shuddered to look at them. It was too much of a reminder that his mother was dead, and it was all Dean’s fault.
John had been out that night, drinking and playing pool with his hunting buddies. Mary was at home with the boys, relaxing in her bed with a much deserved glass of wine and a good book. It was eleven o’clock, and Dean was preparing to sneak out through his bedroom window and make the short bike ride to his girlfriend Lisa’s house. Well, girlfriend was pushing it a bit. They went to school together, and Dean had been sleeping with her for almost four months now, but that was hardly what he would call a relationship.
Although, Dean preferred it that way. He had tried the whole 'committed boyfriend’ thing in the past, but to no avail. Dean didn’t like ‘feelings’, or heart-to-hearts, or dinners with the parents; he liked making out in empty bathroom stalls, fucking in the backseat of the beloved Impala his dad had handed down to him on his fifteenth birthday, and, in Lisa’s case, sneaking through her bedroom window on a Friday night while her parents slept soundly across the hall. Dean liked Lisa. She was smart, and funny, and beautiful as hell. She was a great lay and was friendly and attentive enough without smothering him or getting on his nerves. Yeah, Lisa was sweet—although not sweet enough to make Dean reconsider his current lifestyle and start calling himself a one-woman guy.
As Dean put on his sneakers and opened up his bedroom window, relishing the warm summer air as it seeped through the gap and left a soft, soothing sensation on his skin, he thought to himself that life was good. He was going to graduate high school in a year and be free to do as he pleased. A lot of Dean’s friends were going off to college, but the only thing Dean wanted to do was stay where he was and work with his dad at the garage. He couldn’t believe his luck, being able to work with his dad every day, and then coming home to his mom and the baby brother he adored, maybe even going off to pick Lisa up and take her to the hill to see the sun set as he held her hand.
Yeah, life was good, he thought, as he perched on the window ledge, preparing to climb down using the vines that grew, weed-like, on the sides of the house.
Dean put a hand on the plant, and then, without knowing why, he froze.
His body was suddenly tense and rigid, and he was alert—perhaps waiting for something. There was silence for a few moments, until there wasn’t. He heard someone scream his name.
“Dean!”
It was his mother.
Mary had said his name a thousand times before, but this time was different. He had never heard her sound so panicked and hysterical before. Something was dreadfully wrong; he knew that for certain.
“Mom?” he called, pulling himself back through the window and into his room. That was when he noticed it—the smell.
Dean instinctively ran for the door—and yelped at its touch. The doorknob was red hot, and Dean threw his hand back instantly and cradled it to his chest. Swallowing back the pain, Dean grabbed a small towel that was hanging off the end of his bed, and covered his hand with it as he opened the door.
For a moment he saw nothing. There was no colour, only grey, and it was thick and it stung his eyes and made them water. The grey thickness entered his lungs and at once Dean felt as if he was choking. He coughed loudly and coarsely into the towel, and did not dare remove it when he had recovered. Before he had a chance to think what his next move was, he suddenly felt the right side of his body get warmer, and heard a sound that was hard to describe; like the violent crinkling of paper in a thousand brutish hands. Dean did not need to look to know that his house was on fire.
The far end of the hall was emblazoned in orange. Dean was transfixed to where he stood. For a moment, Dean felt like he had finally reached the end of the world, and was only metres away from the setting sun that he had watched every day for two years on the top of that hill. And yet, this sun wasn’t setting, if anything, it was rising, engulfing everything around it in a blinding wave of colour and heat; angry, violent and hungry.
This was nothing like the sun he was used to. Where was the peace? The tranquility? The still, contented moment of watching a day end, and knowing that it would appear tomorrow, lighting up the sky and reminding you that yesterday was in the past? And then Dean remembered that he wasn’t watching the sun from his car on the hill; he was watching a fire burning down his home.
Dean sprang into action. Sam and his parents’ rooms were right down that hallway, where the fire was approaching fast. Mary had only called his name a few moments ago, but where was she? And where was Sammy?
“Mom?” Dean called again, although his voice was muffled by the towel.
Suddenly, a section of the roof beside him caved in and fell, engulfing the mid-section of the staircase. Well, escaping downstairs wasn’t an option anymore, but Dean cared little about that at the moment; he needed to get to his family.
“Mom?” Dean called out a third time, removing the towel from his face and letting his voice surge over the sound of blazing fire.
“Dean!” he heard a muffled voice say ahead of him. Mary was behind one of the two doors, and so was his little brother.
Looking ahead of him, Dean noticed that the fire was still quite high, so, getting down on his hands and knees, he crawled, one-handed, to the far end of the hallway.
You’re meeting the sun, he found himself thinking.
The heat was unbearable, and he could barely see anything through the smoke. Even with the towel covering his nose and mouth, Dean’s chest still felt tight and blocked, and he was finding it difficult to breathe.
“Where are you?” Dean shouted, although his voice was hoarse.
“We’re in the nursery!” he heard his mother say from behind the door. “We’re locked in, I don’t know how!”
Sam’s nursery didn’t have a lock, but Dean didn’t have time to question it.
“Stand back!” he shouted, getting to his feet. “I’m going to kick the door down!”
Mary took Sam to the far end of the room, and told Dean that it was clear.
Dean felt the tickle of a flame on his back. The pain was nothing like he had quite experienced before. The quick, sharp heat felt like electricity somehow, like freezing cold water dripping from the ceiling and staining through his clothes. Dean braced himself, and went in for a kick. The force almost made him fall backwards, but he steadied himself. The sound of Sammy crying from behind the door, and the electric, ice-cold heat that was emanating from his back only intensified his determination to get through. He tried for a second kick. It did not open, but he saw the wood begin to crack. The moment the fire had begun to engulf the nursery door, Dean went in for a third, final kick, and the door swung open.
He saw his mother, beautiful, scared and fragile, clutching on to his baby brother as he wailed in fear and confusion. He rushed over to them.
“Are you okay?” he asked urgently. “We need to get out of here.”
Mary seemed not to have heard him, and instead only looked at him with the eyes of a woman who had lost all hope.
“It’s happening,” she whispered, tears rolling down her smooth, pale cheeks. “Like he said it would.”
“Like who said?” Dean asked, wide-eyed and frantic.
For a moment Mary seemed lost in his eyes, looking at him as if for the first time. Or perhaps she was looking at him like that because she knew she would never get the chance to again.
“Mom,” Dean said, grabbing her shoulders and breaking her out of her trance. “We need to go. Now.”
Mary blinked, then nodded—suddenly alert.
“Take Sam,” she said, giving the wailing baby to Dean. “Climb out of this window, and don’t stop until you’ve reached the bottom.”
Mary had stopped crying. Her voice was authoritative and calm, as if she were disciplining a small child.
“Use the vines to help you get down,” she continued, urging Dean towards the window. “I know it’ll be hard, using only one arm, but God knows you’ve had enough practice sneaking out of that room of yours every weekend.”
If the circumstances hadn’t been so dire, Dean may have laughed.
“You go first, Mom,” Dean said, but Mary shook her head rapidly.
“No, you children are the most important thing. Do it now, Dean!”
Dean clenched his teeth. He felt vulnerable, like he was a little boy again. “I can’t leave you here, Mommy.”
His words may have softened her in any other situation, but in this one, Mary had made up her mind.
“Go now. That’s an order, Dean.”
Mary reminded Dean of his father in that moment. It was an odd thing for his mother to say, but Dean understood that Mary wasn’t playing around. He had to obey her.
Dean breathed in gravely, and clutched Sam close to him and perched on the side of the window ledge. With his left hand occupied, Dean swung himself right to the vines and grabbed tightly. His mom was right; this was going to be hard.
Bracing himself for the unknown, Dean kicked off the ledge, and caught the wall with his feet so he wouldn’t crush Sammy through the force. Holding Sam tightly against his chest, Dean managed to use both hands to grab the vines, and lower both of them to the ground. Amidst the sound of falling rooftop and the roaring of flames, Dean could hear his mother shouting from above.
“Promise me you’ll always keep your brother safe!” she said. “Promise me you’ll love him and protect him. Don’t let this day change who you are, Dean!” Mary stopped talking as she began to cough violently from the fumes.
“You can do it, Dean!” she began to shout once more, although she sounded quieter, weaker. “You’re chosen, you and Sammy! He told me that you’d—“
But Mary was never able to finish what she was trying to tell Dean, for at that moment, an explosion erupted inside the house, and as Dean’s feet hit the ground, with a still crying Sam in his arms, he saw the rooftop of his beautiful home crumble, and collapse.
“Mom!” he screamed, but he knew she could not hear him, not anymore.
Her body was still and lifeless under the ruin of brick and debris, her mouth slightly open, as if she was still trying to warn Dean of the horrors that would soon be upon him and his brother, even though she had no voice.
The beating of her heart began to lull into silence, although the cries of her children echoed far louder than the roar of the flames, or the wail of distant sirens.
As her eyes finally dimmed, she saw him, stood at the far side of the room. It had been years since she had last seen his face, but she recognised him instantly.
He walked over to her, and bent beside her broken form. He put a finger to her face, and brushed away a lock of her hair.
“Thank you, Mary,” the man said, smiling kindly at her. “You’ve fulfilled your destiny.”
She tried to speak, if only to ask him one thing, but her throat was filled with blood.
The man carried on stroking Mary’s face; long after her eyes had closed and she had let out her final breath, and Sam’s nursery had been totally engulfed by the flames. He caressed her cheek for a long while, all with that same, kind smile on his face—unfaltering, genuine, and content.
Dean did not realise he had been crying until he felt the tears land on his hand, and soak the photograph he had found himself holding.
He had not shed a tear for his mother since the night she had died. It wasn’t that he didn’t miss her, because he missed her every single day of his goddamned life. It was because he felt that he did not deserve to cry for Mary. He was the reason that she was dead, after all. He had climbed down from that window first, and left her in that nursery to be killed.
A guilty man is not allowed to cry.
His father’s voice rang inside his head, like an echo, or a broken record. That’s what his father had said to him on the day of Mary’s funeral.
John had not uttered a word to Dean since the fire, and then, at her funeral, as they stood side by side, father and son, and Dean had felt his chest tighten, and his eyes begin to blur, John had looked at him with eyes so cold they almost saw right through him, and had told him that guilty men were not allowed to cry—and Dean was the guiltiest man of all.
John blamed Dean for Mary’s death, and so did he.
The fire department had told them that the fire had been caused by a small electrical explosion; completely accidental. Accidental didn’t matter. Dean had had a chance to save his mother, and he hadn’t taken it.
Dean wiped the tears away from the photograph he had been holding. It had only been taken a few weeks before the fire, and it was a horrible reminder of a life Dean would never have again.
His mother: beautiful and happy, sat on the bonnet of the Impala, with baby Sammy on her lap, smiling and waving. And then Dean, sat to their right, holding Sam’s hand and grinning at the camera.
Dean turned the photograph around. On the back, Mary had written a message:
Two Brothers; Two Princes.
Mary had always called Dean and Sam princes. John had teased her for it, but she had never let that phase her.
Dean remembered the story Mary used to tell him when he was growing up, about two brothers who were princes, but belonged to a different world, and although they loved each other, one was always meant to betray the other, and they would have to fight each other for the land to which they truly belonged.
Dean had loved hearing it when he was a child, despite how dark and twisted it really was. Two brothers loving each other, and then stabbing each other in the back? All to fight for some mystical fucking land that meant nothing to them anyway? How could he have enjoyed that shit when he was younger?
A lot had changed since then. He wasn’t a boy anymore. He was a man, almost; a sad, lonely man who had murdered his mother and gotten away with it.
He stared at Sam, laughing at the camera—innocent, and without a care in the world.
Dean hated him for it.
His eyes began to tear up once more, and he gritted his teeth in anger.
“If it wasn’t for you,” he said, glaring at the child. “Mom would have gotten out first, she’d have been safe, and I would have been the one left inside.”
He crumpled the photograph in his hands, and threw it to the ground.
“If you hadn’t been born, my mother would still be alive.”
The sun was setting in the north, but this time it did not give Dean peace. All it did was remind him of the fire.
Dean looked away, feeling as if he might choke. To his right, a snowy-white barn owl was watching him from a branch. It stood out proudly against the darkened bark and leaves, and usually Dean might have found it beautiful, but not today.
“The fuck you lookin’ at?” he said, harshly. The owl remained still, but kept its startlingly blue eyes on him.
“The fuck you lookin’ at, huh?” Dean said again, louder. Again, the owl just stared. It was unnerving.
Dean sighed, and rubbed his eyes. The coldness of his watch against his cheek made him blink abruptly. Half-heartedly he checked the time: five minutes to seven.
“Shit!” rasped Dean, remembering, rummaging for his car keys and placing them in the ignition.
He had promised to babysit Sam at seven o’clock for when John went out drinking. There was no way he was going to get home in time, and he could sure as hell bet that his father wouldn’t be pleased with him for being late.
As the Chevrolet Impala disappeared down the mossy hill, past the dozens of trees and back into town, the white barn owl watched it until it had completely disappeared from view.
After a few moments, it flew away.