Chapter Text
Most kids have happy memories of their childhoods, chasing younger siblings or daemons around the house or garden or park and shrieking with laughter, throwing themselves into the grass or the couch cushions and play-fighting wildly with a little brother who giggled when you tickled him in the ribs or a daemon who delighted in seeing how fast she could change shape or how many different things she could become when she did, and then wandering back home to a warm house and a kitchen full of delicious smells and a mother who laughed and ruffled your hair.
Dean knows he had those things, even thinks he remembers them sometimes, but mostly what he remembers is the screaming, inhuman howl of his mother’s daemon from the nursery, his father shoving Sammy into his arms and telling him to go, his wolfhound-daemon Tristram herding Dean towards the stairs and the weird, stomach-twisting wrongness of her head butting against his back, urging him forward, while his own Tsalia darted ahead as a bird to show him the way, little body faltering and falling every time she and Dean felt Tristram’s touch.
Pretty much as soon as he’d been old enough to understand what Dad did when he went away and why, he’d realised there was nothing stopping the same thing from happening to him too, and Tsalia had spent the nights as another wolfhound, curled up tight to him and licking away his tears. Each time time John left them, Tsalia stayed a wolfhound until he came back, then pretended she’d been a cat or a hawk or a dragon, Dean too embarrassed to admit that he had worried for his father and already knowing that John wanted to see him as the strong one, the one he could trust with Sammy’s care.
When Dean was about ten, Tsalia started spending more and more time as a wolf, flicking to other shapes but always reverting to that one like she was already halfway-settled. A few months or so later it was an Alsatian, then a lioness, and then Dean woke up on the first day after his twelfth birthday they started a new school and found her as a cougar, testing her claws on the cheap motel carpet. At the end of school they found Sammy in the middle of a circle of other kids, their daemons all bristling as they taunted him and Iope pacing restlessly in front of Sam as a wildcat, knowing they’d get into trouble if she attacked.
Tsalia had had no such reservations and thrown herself at them, bowling the other daemons over left and right and catching them with claws and paws, teeth bared, while Dean stormed over to the kids and pretty much did the same. They’d gotten a detention and a warning from the principal about fighting younger kids, but it was fucking worth it to watch Iope whaling on some kid’s crocodile-daemon as an eagle, stabbing at its eyes, and feel Sam’s arms wrapped tight round him as a thank you.
The kids left Sam alone after that, and two months later when they moved again, Tsalia stayed as she was. Dean watched Jessie Tyler’s daemon change from beagle to budgie to hummingbird to try and catch Tsalia’s attention in class, and realised that he couldn’t remember the last time Tsalia had changed.
"I’m good like this," she whispered back, when he asked her under cover of Sam watching cartoons that evening, licking a paw and scrubbing it over her ear. "We’re good, like this. People won’t fuck with us, and we can take care of Sammy. Chicks’ll think you’re all mature and shit cause I settled early, and everyone knows people with cat daemons are all mysterious and seductive." She’d flashed him a grin, all sharp teeth. "Try not to let ‘em down too much."
Dean shoved at her head with one hand, her fur soft under his palm. "Shut up, I’m fuckin’ awesome."