FIC: SPN/BTVS - Slayer's Kin - PG13 - 1/1
May. 21st, 2007 04:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
laniew1Right… I have, well I don’t have any idea where this came from.
He was five years old when they found him wandering the streets.
RATING: PG13
PAIRING: Gen
AUTHOR: Melanie
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, they’re all owned by men more powerful then I am.
SUMMARY: He was five years old when they found him wandering the streets.
Slayer’s Kin
He was five years old when they found him wandering the streets.
The female cop sat with him in the back of the patrol car, holding him in her lap, stroking his hair as her partner flew down streets, lights and sirens going.
He’d been bleeding from a gash on his right arm, his left had hurt and he tried not to move it.
The ER doctors took over as soon as they arrived, although the female didn’t leave his side.
Announced that he was in shock, dehydrated, malnutrition. Rattling off words and the female looked as if she wanted to cry.
When they asked him what his name was he had to think about it for a long time.
A long enough time that he’d heard other words being bandied about.
“Dean,” he mumbled softly. “My name is Dean.”
He couldn’t remember the last name. Remembered part of it but what he remembered wasn’t right he knew and besides daddy had always told him to not talk to strangers.
They said amnesia, memory loss due to severe emotional trauma; they said that it was possible that he was just young enough that he didn’t know it.
They asked him question after question about his family but he had nothing to tell them.
Nothing that would help them find them anyway, he thought they might all be gone because he’d been bad and left the room.
He remembered them though.
His mother with long blonde hair and a happy smile and the smell of smoke and fire. His father with strong arms and a stern voice and desperation and panic. His brother, his Sammy who had squirmed in his arms and been his to protect because that was what his father had told him to do.
They were all gone, and now it was just him.
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Later when people would ask what he remembered about his childhood he would tell them that the first thing that he could vividly remember (besides smoke and fire and Sammy, Sammy, Sammy) was his mother kneeling in front of him smelling like wildflowers.
They’d sent him to a state home after the hospital, as they futilely searched for his family.
He’d been there a year when the woman who would be his mother had come.
She’d taken one look at him and kneeled beside his bed, he was sitting in the middle of it, knees pulled up to his chest arms wrapped around them.
A young girl came up beside her, peering at him curiously as the woman reached out to touch his arm.
She smiled at him and Dean smiled back, a soft, cautious smile.
“Mrs. Summers?” the woman that ran the facility moved up alongside the bed, clipboard in hand, looking frazzled and out of sorts.
There’d been all sorts of commotion for most of the month. Kids leaving and no new ones coming in. Dean was only still there because he’d been deemed a ‘troubled child’ after his first month because of the horrific nightmares that he had and no one would take him.
“Would you like to come home with us?” she asked and Dean glanced at the young girl uncertainly. She smiled at him, a wide open grin with two teeth missing in the front and he nodded once.
“Okay.”
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They gave Dean and Buffy the same birthday. Privately the two thought it was just to save on the number of times they had to buy birthday presents. Because two kids, with birthdays on two separate days meant gifts for the birthday child and then something for the child whose birthday it wasn’t but who would throw a tantrum because they hadn’t gotten anything.
For their fifteenth birthday they got matching gift certificates to their favorite stores, Buffy got kicked out of school and Dean got to find out that his sister was the Slayer.
All things considered Dean thought that he might have gotten the better end of the deal there.
Two months later Buffy and mom would be gone, and it would be dad and Dean alone in the house.
Or mostly Dean alone in the house as dad traveled for business with the secretary that he thought Dean didn’t know about.
He talked to Buffy and mom on the phone, sometimes just mom because Buffy had made friends and was seldom there. He wondered when mom had cut the leash that she’d sworn she was going to wrap around Buffy’s neck to keep her out of trouble.
At the beginning dad would go pick Buffy up and she’d come to LA for the weekend, once a month just like the custody agreement had said. Sometimes Dean wondered why he never got the opportunity to go to Sunnydale to spend time there with his mom and sister.
Sometimes he didn’t care.
Or tried not to. He’d been replaced and he tried not to care, but Buffy and mom and dad were all he had and they weren’t even his.
Times like that he would remember his Sammy, little Sammy who had smelled like baby powder and smoke and the last impression that Dean had of him was crying and then eerie silence.
It had been a month since the last time he’d talked to his sister, she was never there when he called to talk to mom, mom said she was just busy. With school and her friends, Dean knew the truth though and it twisted something inside him every time Buffy wasn’t there to talk to him.
He filled his time with school, Buffy’s escapades before she’d been expelled had reflected badly on him and it had taken some hard work and sweet talking to repair his reputation.
He took self-defense lessons at the local gym with a couple of guys from school.
He was just starting to relax, things going well between him and dad, they’d had a few rough months where Dean blamed dad for mom and Buffy leaving and dad didn’t know how to handle a teen-age son who was angry at him.
It was on a Friday, school had been a half day and he’d spent some time at the gym with Brian and David. Sparring and just goofing off, he was a half hour late and he had his excuse ready so when his dad launched at him he’d be prepared.
He never got to say it.
Walked into the living room and found his dad on the floor, blood pooling around him and he dropped his bag and dropped to his knees.
“Dad? Dad,” he touched his arm, squeezing it and shaking gently. Dad groaned and Dean sprang into motion, calling 911, calling for help.
All the while hovering over his dad, telling him to hold on, to not let go.
“Don’t leave dad, don’t leave.”
******************************************************************************
Dean was in the waiting room when mom and Buffy showed up; he’d washed his hands, scrubbing them for 30 minutes in the rest room because the nurses and doctors had insisted.
There were stains on the knees of his jeans and he probably should have gone back home and changed but he hadn’t. Didn’t want to leave the hospital while things with his dad were still so precarious.
There were no visible signs of injury; the doctors didn’t know why he was bleeding out. Wounds all along his back and chest, open wounds like they’d never seen before and he’d overheard one doctor saying that it looked like the wounds had come from inside his body.
Dean didn’t understand and when mom sank into the chair beside him, hand gripping his tightly and Buffy stood in front of him staring down at him, he didn’t know what to tell them.
The doctor came out and took mom away, leading her to a room behind closed doors and Buffy took her seat, linking their hands together and squeezing tightly.
Dean didn’t look at her, even though he knew that was what the whole Slayer grip thing had been for. Instead he stared at his mom and the doctor. Mom was crying and Dean squeezed Buffy’s hand back and closed his eyes.
******************************************************************************
The funeral was a somber affair; people that Buffy and mom knew had come down from Sunnydale.
There was Willow and her mom and Xander had come with them, no family of his own tagging along. Cordelia, who Buffy had grumbled wasn’t even a friend so she wasn’t sure why she’d come and Oz. The librarian Mr. Giles who Dean figured was the guy that had replaced Merrick (who Dean wasn’t supposed to know about) as Buffy’s Watcher and Ms. Calendar who might or might not be Mr. Giles’ girlfriend.
There were all these new people and all Dean really wanted them to do was go away, dad was dead and he hadn’t seen Buffy and mom in months and all he wanted to do was be alone with his family.
But no one left so he did, waiting until Buffy and mom were both occupied entertaining and he’d gone to his room.
There was a picture on his bookcase of mom and dad and him and Buffy, taken a month after mom had taken him home with them.
They were smiling, happy. Dad had his arms wrapped around him and mom was holding Buffy tightly and he couldn’t remember the last time his family had been that happy.
“Dean?” the door opened slowly and Buffy’s head peaked around the corner. Smiling wanly at him and Dean looked away.
She was his sister, when he’d first come home with them he’d made the promise to protect her, like he hadn’t been able to protect Sammy.
Except she didn’t need his protection, hadn’t ever needed it.
And now with all her new friends she didn’t even need him.
******************************************************************************
Dean thought Sunnydale High was the oddest high school on the face of the planet. And that possibly all the students were either heavily medicated or taking massive amounts of drugs.
It was the only explanation for how no one seemed to notice the weekly disappearances of at least 2 kids, the vampire attacks and werewolf attacks and the just general weirdness of the entire town.
Buffy had explained when they’d first brought him here that Sunnydale was on top of a Hellmouth, Dean hadn’t cared. He’d still been numb from dads’ murder (because that had been what it was even though he was pretty sure that wasn’t what had ended up on the death certificate) and while Buffy and mom had been overjoyed that he was coming home with them he just couldn’t feel the joy.
Not when he was leaving the only home that he had really ever remembered.
******************************************************************************
Angel kind of freaked him out the first time he met him. And not just because he kept staring at him with something that looked like recognition in his eyes.
But also because he was a vampire… and his sister was apparently in love with him.
The irony alone might kill him sometimes he thought. A vampire Slayer in love with a vampire, a vampire with a soul and Dean couldn’t even figure out how that was possible. Even though there’d been a long winded explanation about curses and Gypsies and Dean had tuned Giles out about fifteen seconds in.
It didn’t matter for long because it was a month and half between the time he came to Sunnydale to the time that Buffy and Angel got horizontal and Angel’s soul took a fast train out of town.
Then they were all just trying to survive.
Because Angel with no soul was vicious and cruel and took great delight in tormenting Buffy, using her friends and family to do it.
It was about this time that him and Xander began bonding over the fact that they were ordinary. Normal.
Because there was Buffy with her whole Slayer gig and Willow with her whole Wicca thing and Oz with the Werewolf and then him and Xander who were human and were probably considered oddities because of that.
******************************************************************************
Buffy running away from home meant that mom focused all her time and energy on Dean.
Which wasn’t a good thing. Not when that time and energy came with mom’s betrayal at being kept in the dark about his sisters extracurricular activities.
It helped that mom thought they were all insane, because even after Giles gave her the Slayer speech, she still thought it was a job that Buffy could quit if it interfered with her schoolwork.
******************************************************************************
Things didn’t return to normal when Buffy came home, mostly because Buffy coming home coincided with the Slayer replacing Kendra, Faith coming to town and the realization that Angel was alive and Buffy had been hiding him.
******************************************************************************
Graduation day was supposed to be a happy event; Dean just remembered it because of the epic battle, the mayor turning into a big snake and a bunch of vampires.
Oh and Angel leaving town and Buffy locking herself in her room and alternating between anger and crying for weeks.
At least she didn’t run away again.
So there was that.
******************************************************************************
College was an experience and a half.
There were classes yeah, but there were also boys and girls and kissing and sex and Dean just sort of soaked it in.
And tried not to let Buffy rain on his parade, trust his sister to attempt to date the guy that was a member of some top-secret military organization.
Of course there was good too, namely the chip in Spike’s head and him and Xander could get hours of enjoyment taunting the vampire.
There was nothing Spike could do either, because he’d come to them for help.
******************************************************************************
Dean didn’t like his mind being messed with. He loved Dawn but the thought that someone had been messing around in his mind, rearranging memories to suit themselves freaked him out.
He’d listed out all the important ones, barely remembered memories of Sammy and dad and mom and it was the only time that he really sat down and thought about the fact that Buffy and mom (and Dawn) were not his family by blood.
He tried not to think that again. Because mom had been dead and then Sammy and dad had been gone and now all he had was Buffy and mom and Dawn, and he wouldn’t lose them the way he couldn’t remember losing Sammy and dad.
******************************************************************************
Years flew by, most of his memories of the intervening years were focused on the demons that they’d fought and killed, his despair over mom dying and the God that Buffy had fought and been killed by.
He’d been grateful for her return, even though he’d been angry that Willow, Xander, Anya and Tara hadn’t even included him and Dawn in the discussion.
******************************************************************************
Spike had a soul. Dean tuned out explanations by Buffy and just wondered if that was supposed to make things okay now.
******************************************************************************
Spike and Buffy were sleeping together.
He’d known Buffy was in a bad place, but he hadn’t thought it was that bad.
******************************************************************************
The day his entire life was turned upside down they had a house full of Slayer wannabe’s that were being hunted and killed by a creature that even Buffy and Faith had trouble bringing down.
The knock at the door had come as a surprise and Buffy had gone to answer it, Faith falling in a defensive position behind her. The others out of sight because they were the only people stupid enough to still be in town and the bad guys certainly wouldn’t knock.
They’d just knock the door down and waltz in like they owned the place.
“Angel,” Buffy’s voice was pleased and warm. Across the room Spike was scowling deeply.
“Can we come in?”
“You don’t need an invite,” Buffy held the door open and Angel walked through, Faith still held her position back and off to the side. Dean stood just out of sight, watching because Angel wasn’t supposed to be here. He’d already been and gone, Buffy had seemed resigned to the fact that Angel wouldn’t be fighting this battle with them.
And now he was here again.
Two men followed him in, obviously a father and son pair.
Buffy and Angel were conversing softly, Spike had come across the room and was standing directly behind him now and Dean fought to not turn and scowl at him. He could have asked Spike what they were talking about; he had to be hearing them after all.
He didn’t though; he and Spike had a love hate relationship. He liked that the vampire took care of Buffy when she wouldn’t accept Dean and Dawn’s help, he hated that Buffy would take Spike’s help instead of his and Dawn’s.
Buffy glanced over at him; the two men’s gazes followed hers.
The older one stiffened, recognition of some sort evident and Dean stepped into the hallway fully. Spike behind him, hand pressed against his back like he was going to hold him in place if he tried to flee.
“I thought you weren’t staying to help out,” Dean said pointedly to Angel before he looked at the two men. And the longer he looked the more the older man seemed familiar.
They stared at each other, the younger of the pair looking between them. Spike’s hand still firm against his back.
It came to him suddenly, like a flash of light and he suddenly smelled smoke and fear and he felt his face drain of color as he comprehended just who these two men were. Just as Angel opened his mouth to most likely introduce them.
“Dad?” he sounded like a scared five-year old, his knees didn’t feel like they were going to hold him up any longer and Spike’s hand moved from his back to his arm. Buffy moving to stand at his other side.
“Dean,” familiar voice and Dean closed his eyes.
“Take your brother outside as fast as you can. Now Dean, go!”
“Dad,” he breathed.
Fire and fear and a demon standing in front of him, grass against his bare feet, “my daddy is going to hurt you,” mumbled, the first words that he’d spoken in months, even as he was shoved down to the ground inside the symbol that he didn’t know.
He could hear daddy yelling for him, knew that Sammy would be in his arms because if Dean wasn’t there Sammy would want dad and Dean reached out for them, opened his mouth to call for them, to scream and cry even though daddy said he was a big boy and big boys didn’t cry and he wouldn’t even mind getting in trouble for going outside the motel room to get ice for daddy who wouldn’t get it for himself even though he was hurt and then the grass and the demon and daddy and Sammy were gone.
His father was staring at him, had moved right in front of him when he opened his eyes again.
“Dean, oh my god, Dean,” a tight hug and Buffy and Spike fell back and Dean didn’t know how to respond.
Didn’t know what to do when Sammy who wasn’t little anymore came up beside them and wrapped long arms around both of them.
******************************************************************************
They were sitting at the dining room table, dad sitting in the spot that mom used to sit in. Buffy and Dawn sitting on either side of him, both had latched onto his hands, Xander and Spike stood behind them like they were guarding them against the Winchesters up and trying to walk out of the house with Dean and they really had more important things they should be worrying about (like the battle coming up) but…
“We couldn’t find you,” dad kept repeating it. Sammy sat across from them, staring at Dean like he was a favored possession that he’d misplaced and suddenly found.
Which probably wasn’t so wrong.
The others were scattered around the room. Angel sat between Dawn and John Winchester.
“I told you that I recognized him,” Angel said to Buffy, obviously reminding her of a conversation that they’d had that she’d never shared with Dean.
“You said his ‘scent’ was familiar…”
“Scent is a form of recognition for a vampire. I’d worked with John before, just once but I’d met both the boys before Dean was taken,” Angel looked over at him. “You were five or so, less then a month after your mothers’ murder. You weren’t even talking…”
“He disappeared from a motel in Chicago,” John said softly, eyes locked on Dean. Dean couldn’t meet his gaze, just stared at the table and tried to wish that he was anywhere but there.
Buffy’s hand gripped his tighter and Dean bit his lower lip and didn’t wince.
“You were hurt,” Dean said softly, the tablecloth needed to be washed he thought suddenly, insanely. “You were hurt and I went to get you ice because…”
“I heard you cry out, knew that it couldn’t be good. I brought Sammy with me because I couldn’t leave him alone and…” John took a deep breath. “I don’t know what the demon was, I’ve never seen another one like it, I’ve never been able to find anything on the symbol that he put you in. The translations that we were able to get later were a mixture of four languages and nothing comprehensible at that. And you were just gone, gone and I couldn’t find you…”
Dean took a deep breath; squeezed Buffy and Dawn’s hands then looked up and met his fathers’ eyes.
“I was in LA…” he started and he told his story.
******************************************************************************
The battle was fierce, worse then pretty much every other battle he’d been in. And since Buffy was his sister that was saying something.
Anya was dead; they’d lost some of the Slayers-to-be.
Spike had sacrificed himself and he thought Angel might have been happy that Buffy had already given the pendant to Spike and thus he wasn’t the one wearing it at the end.
Dean was just really glad it was over, their house was gone but Angel had already said that they were all welcome to stay at his hotel to recover and Dean though that a great idea.
Until he saw Sammy and dad staring at him like this had been the moment they were waiting for and Dawn was hovering next to his side glaring at Sammy like if he took a step closer she might claw his face up with her nails.
Probably the only reason that Buffy wasn’t right there with Dawn was because she was bit distracted by the fight being over and not being dead.
******************************************************************************
His room in the Hyperion was really the only room that was quiet. Considering that something like 95% of the current residents of the hotel were female that was saying something. Because if you got two or more of those girls in the same room their voices carried like nothing Dean had ever experienced before.
His room was also the only place where he was safe from the custody battle that had seemingly crept up between Buffy and Dawn and Dad and Sammy over breakfast their first morning.
Everyone wanted him to take sides and how he was supposed to tell one or the other of them that he preferred one over the other…
He couldn’t, so he kept his mouth shut and locked himself in his room for as long as he could get away. Which was about 19 hours a day and he’d gotten good over the years at creeping past Buffy and Dawn into the kitchen (they could be vicious during that time of the month, especially if they thought Dean was eating all the ice cream).
“Fred’s got some sort of presentation set up downstairs,” Xander was standing in the doorway, looking confused, probably wondering how he’d gotten there and why he’d been the one sent.
Dean didn’t make the pirate comment that was on the tip of his tongue, he also didn’t say that he thought that the patch made Xander look rakishly handsome and that he should have no problems picking up girls if he wanted to.
The man was still grieving for Anya after all. Besides he was almost positive that Xander wouldn’t take the comment in the manner that he wanted him to.
Dean huffed a sigh to himself and rolled off his bed. Followed Xander down the hallway and there was Fred with a big whiteboard with a whole slew of incomprehensible squiggles scrawled across it.
Dawn and Buffy were on one side of the room, Dad and Sammy on the other. A sea of teen-age Slayers and Angel’s group were between them.
“Dean,” Fred grinned at him and Dean grinned back, because it was Fred. And he couldn’t help himself her cheerfulness was almost always contagious.
“What’s up?”
“So your sisters and your dad and brother have been having all these long-winded arguments about who has more rights to you even though you’re well over 18 and fully able to choose for yourself who you want to go with,” Angel cleared his throat and then looked surprised when everyone glanced at him.
“Sorry,” he muttered. Dean smirked.
“Right, so you’re able to choose who you want to go with but you haven’t yet, which led me to believe that maybe you just couldn’t decide between them and really you’ve spent more time with Buffy and Dawn so why would you want to leave them anyway, they’re your sisters. But I started working on the formula anyway.”
“I took into account how much time each of you has lived with him awarding a specific point value for years, months and days. I didn’t go so far as to figure in hours because that would be taking it a bit far,” Fred ignored the muffled laughs. “In order to be fair I had to only award points to Dawn from the time of her creation to present time and do the same for Sam, giving him points from his time of birth to present.”
She glanced back at the white board, tilted her head to the right.
“Going by the formula, Buffy and Dawn will have him for 10 months and two days. John and Sam will have him for 1 month and 28 days.”
Dean nodded once, to show he understood, so she wouldn’t try to explain it again.
“You created a formula to show us how much time each of us will be spending with Dean?” Sam was squinting at the board, he didn’t look pleased and his dad looked like he was going to blow a gasket. “That’s pretty ingenious.”
“Well you know,” Fred flushed. “I had some free time.”
Dean shook his head, in his free time he trained with Buffy and tried not to die. He certainly didn’t create complex mathematical formula’s that required footnotes to explain.
He’d barely passed math when he was in high school and forced to take it.
And they lived happily ever after… except for the fist fights that burst up periodically between Dawn and Sam that Buffy and John kept having to break up, that Dean stayed out of because that would be taking sides.
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He was five years old when they found him wandering the streets.
RATING: PG13
PAIRING: Gen
AUTHOR: Melanie
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, they’re all owned by men more powerful then I am.
SUMMARY: He was five years old when they found him wandering the streets.
Slayer’s Kin
He was five years old when they found him wandering the streets.
The female cop sat with him in the back of the patrol car, holding him in her lap, stroking his hair as her partner flew down streets, lights and sirens going.
He’d been bleeding from a gash on his right arm, his left had hurt and he tried not to move it.
The ER doctors took over as soon as they arrived, although the female didn’t leave his side.
Announced that he was in shock, dehydrated, malnutrition. Rattling off words and the female looked as if she wanted to cry.
When they asked him what his name was he had to think about it for a long time.
A long enough time that he’d heard other words being bandied about.
“Dean,” he mumbled softly. “My name is Dean.”
He couldn’t remember the last name. Remembered part of it but what he remembered wasn’t right he knew and besides daddy had always told him to not talk to strangers.
They said amnesia, memory loss due to severe emotional trauma; they said that it was possible that he was just young enough that he didn’t know it.
They asked him question after question about his family but he had nothing to tell them.
Nothing that would help them find them anyway, he thought they might all be gone because he’d been bad and left the room.
He remembered them though.
His mother with long blonde hair and a happy smile and the smell of smoke and fire. His father with strong arms and a stern voice and desperation and panic. His brother, his Sammy who had squirmed in his arms and been his to protect because that was what his father had told him to do.
They were all gone, and now it was just him.
Later when people would ask what he remembered about his childhood he would tell them that the first thing that he could vividly remember (besides smoke and fire and Sammy, Sammy, Sammy) was his mother kneeling in front of him smelling like wildflowers.
They’d sent him to a state home after the hospital, as they futilely searched for his family.
He’d been there a year when the woman who would be his mother had come.
She’d taken one look at him and kneeled beside his bed, he was sitting in the middle of it, knees pulled up to his chest arms wrapped around them.
A young girl came up beside her, peering at him curiously as the woman reached out to touch his arm.
She smiled at him and Dean smiled back, a soft, cautious smile.
“Mrs. Summers?” the woman that ran the facility moved up alongside the bed, clipboard in hand, looking frazzled and out of sorts.
There’d been all sorts of commotion for most of the month. Kids leaving and no new ones coming in. Dean was only still there because he’d been deemed a ‘troubled child’ after his first month because of the horrific nightmares that he had and no one would take him.
“Would you like to come home with us?” she asked and Dean glanced at the young girl uncertainly. She smiled at him, a wide open grin with two teeth missing in the front and he nodded once.
“Okay.”
They gave Dean and Buffy the same birthday. Privately the two thought it was just to save on the number of times they had to buy birthday presents. Because two kids, with birthdays on two separate days meant gifts for the birthday child and then something for the child whose birthday it wasn’t but who would throw a tantrum because they hadn’t gotten anything.
For their fifteenth birthday they got matching gift certificates to their favorite stores, Buffy got kicked out of school and Dean got to find out that his sister was the Slayer.
All things considered Dean thought that he might have gotten the better end of the deal there.
Two months later Buffy and mom would be gone, and it would be dad and Dean alone in the house.
Or mostly Dean alone in the house as dad traveled for business with the secretary that he thought Dean didn’t know about.
He talked to Buffy and mom on the phone, sometimes just mom because Buffy had made friends and was seldom there. He wondered when mom had cut the leash that she’d sworn she was going to wrap around Buffy’s neck to keep her out of trouble.
At the beginning dad would go pick Buffy up and she’d come to LA for the weekend, once a month just like the custody agreement had said. Sometimes Dean wondered why he never got the opportunity to go to Sunnydale to spend time there with his mom and sister.
Sometimes he didn’t care.
Or tried not to. He’d been replaced and he tried not to care, but Buffy and mom and dad were all he had and they weren’t even his.
Times like that he would remember his Sammy, little Sammy who had smelled like baby powder and smoke and the last impression that Dean had of him was crying and then eerie silence.
It had been a month since the last time he’d talked to his sister, she was never there when he called to talk to mom, mom said she was just busy. With school and her friends, Dean knew the truth though and it twisted something inside him every time Buffy wasn’t there to talk to him.
He filled his time with school, Buffy’s escapades before she’d been expelled had reflected badly on him and it had taken some hard work and sweet talking to repair his reputation.
He took self-defense lessons at the local gym with a couple of guys from school.
He was just starting to relax, things going well between him and dad, they’d had a few rough months where Dean blamed dad for mom and Buffy leaving and dad didn’t know how to handle a teen-age son who was angry at him.
It was on a Friday, school had been a half day and he’d spent some time at the gym with Brian and David. Sparring and just goofing off, he was a half hour late and he had his excuse ready so when his dad launched at him he’d be prepared.
He never got to say it.
Walked into the living room and found his dad on the floor, blood pooling around him and he dropped his bag and dropped to his knees.
“Dad? Dad,” he touched his arm, squeezing it and shaking gently. Dad groaned and Dean sprang into motion, calling 911, calling for help.
All the while hovering over his dad, telling him to hold on, to not let go.
“Don’t leave dad, don’t leave.”
Dean was in the waiting room when mom and Buffy showed up; he’d washed his hands, scrubbing them for 30 minutes in the rest room because the nurses and doctors had insisted.
There were stains on the knees of his jeans and he probably should have gone back home and changed but he hadn’t. Didn’t want to leave the hospital while things with his dad were still so precarious.
There were no visible signs of injury; the doctors didn’t know why he was bleeding out. Wounds all along his back and chest, open wounds like they’d never seen before and he’d overheard one doctor saying that it looked like the wounds had come from inside his body.
Dean didn’t understand and when mom sank into the chair beside him, hand gripping his tightly and Buffy stood in front of him staring down at him, he didn’t know what to tell them.
The doctor came out and took mom away, leading her to a room behind closed doors and Buffy took her seat, linking their hands together and squeezing tightly.
Dean didn’t look at her, even though he knew that was what the whole Slayer grip thing had been for. Instead he stared at his mom and the doctor. Mom was crying and Dean squeezed Buffy’s hand back and closed his eyes.
The funeral was a somber affair; people that Buffy and mom knew had come down from Sunnydale.
There was Willow and her mom and Xander had come with them, no family of his own tagging along. Cordelia, who Buffy had grumbled wasn’t even a friend so she wasn’t sure why she’d come and Oz. The librarian Mr. Giles who Dean figured was the guy that had replaced Merrick (who Dean wasn’t supposed to know about) as Buffy’s Watcher and Ms. Calendar who might or might not be Mr. Giles’ girlfriend.
There were all these new people and all Dean really wanted them to do was go away, dad was dead and he hadn’t seen Buffy and mom in months and all he wanted to do was be alone with his family.
But no one left so he did, waiting until Buffy and mom were both occupied entertaining and he’d gone to his room.
There was a picture on his bookcase of mom and dad and him and Buffy, taken a month after mom had taken him home with them.
They were smiling, happy. Dad had his arms wrapped around him and mom was holding Buffy tightly and he couldn’t remember the last time his family had been that happy.
“Dean?” the door opened slowly and Buffy’s head peaked around the corner. Smiling wanly at him and Dean looked away.
She was his sister, when he’d first come home with them he’d made the promise to protect her, like he hadn’t been able to protect Sammy.
Except she didn’t need his protection, hadn’t ever needed it.
And now with all her new friends she didn’t even need him.
Dean thought Sunnydale High was the oddest high school on the face of the planet. And that possibly all the students were either heavily medicated or taking massive amounts of drugs.
It was the only explanation for how no one seemed to notice the weekly disappearances of at least 2 kids, the vampire attacks and werewolf attacks and the just general weirdness of the entire town.
Buffy had explained when they’d first brought him here that Sunnydale was on top of a Hellmouth, Dean hadn’t cared. He’d still been numb from dads’ murder (because that had been what it was even though he was pretty sure that wasn’t what had ended up on the death certificate) and while Buffy and mom had been overjoyed that he was coming home with them he just couldn’t feel the joy.
Not when he was leaving the only home that he had really ever remembered.
Angel kind of freaked him out the first time he met him. And not just because he kept staring at him with something that looked like recognition in his eyes.
But also because he was a vampire… and his sister was apparently in love with him.
The irony alone might kill him sometimes he thought. A vampire Slayer in love with a vampire, a vampire with a soul and Dean couldn’t even figure out how that was possible. Even though there’d been a long winded explanation about curses and Gypsies and Dean had tuned Giles out about fifteen seconds in.
It didn’t matter for long because it was a month and half between the time he came to Sunnydale to the time that Buffy and Angel got horizontal and Angel’s soul took a fast train out of town.
Then they were all just trying to survive.
Because Angel with no soul was vicious and cruel and took great delight in tormenting Buffy, using her friends and family to do it.
It was about this time that him and Xander began bonding over the fact that they were ordinary. Normal.
Because there was Buffy with her whole Slayer gig and Willow with her whole Wicca thing and Oz with the Werewolf and then him and Xander who were human and were probably considered oddities because of that.
Buffy running away from home meant that mom focused all her time and energy on Dean.
Which wasn’t a good thing. Not when that time and energy came with mom’s betrayal at being kept in the dark about his sisters extracurricular activities.
It helped that mom thought they were all insane, because even after Giles gave her the Slayer speech, she still thought it was a job that Buffy could quit if it interfered with her schoolwork.
Things didn’t return to normal when Buffy came home, mostly because Buffy coming home coincided with the Slayer replacing Kendra, Faith coming to town and the realization that Angel was alive and Buffy had been hiding him.
Graduation day was supposed to be a happy event; Dean just remembered it because of the epic battle, the mayor turning into a big snake and a bunch of vampires.
Oh and Angel leaving town and Buffy locking herself in her room and alternating between anger and crying for weeks.
At least she didn’t run away again.
So there was that.
College was an experience and a half.
There were classes yeah, but there were also boys and girls and kissing and sex and Dean just sort of soaked it in.
And tried not to let Buffy rain on his parade, trust his sister to attempt to date the guy that was a member of some top-secret military organization.
Of course there was good too, namely the chip in Spike’s head and him and Xander could get hours of enjoyment taunting the vampire.
There was nothing Spike could do either, because he’d come to them for help.
Dean didn’t like his mind being messed with. He loved Dawn but the thought that someone had been messing around in his mind, rearranging memories to suit themselves freaked him out.
He’d listed out all the important ones, barely remembered memories of Sammy and dad and mom and it was the only time that he really sat down and thought about the fact that Buffy and mom (and Dawn) were not his family by blood.
He tried not to think that again. Because mom had been dead and then Sammy and dad had been gone and now all he had was Buffy and mom and Dawn, and he wouldn’t lose them the way he couldn’t remember losing Sammy and dad.
Years flew by, most of his memories of the intervening years were focused on the demons that they’d fought and killed, his despair over mom dying and the God that Buffy had fought and been killed by.
He’d been grateful for her return, even though he’d been angry that Willow, Xander, Anya and Tara hadn’t even included him and Dawn in the discussion.
Spike had a soul. Dean tuned out explanations by Buffy and just wondered if that was supposed to make things okay now.
Spike and Buffy were sleeping together.
He’d known Buffy was in a bad place, but he hadn’t thought it was that bad.
The day his entire life was turned upside down they had a house full of Slayer wannabe’s that were being hunted and killed by a creature that even Buffy and Faith had trouble bringing down.
The knock at the door had come as a surprise and Buffy had gone to answer it, Faith falling in a defensive position behind her. The others out of sight because they were the only people stupid enough to still be in town and the bad guys certainly wouldn’t knock.
They’d just knock the door down and waltz in like they owned the place.
“Angel,” Buffy’s voice was pleased and warm. Across the room Spike was scowling deeply.
“Can we come in?”
“You don’t need an invite,” Buffy held the door open and Angel walked through, Faith still held her position back and off to the side. Dean stood just out of sight, watching because Angel wasn’t supposed to be here. He’d already been and gone, Buffy had seemed resigned to the fact that Angel wouldn’t be fighting this battle with them.
And now he was here again.
Two men followed him in, obviously a father and son pair.
Buffy and Angel were conversing softly, Spike had come across the room and was standing directly behind him now and Dean fought to not turn and scowl at him. He could have asked Spike what they were talking about; he had to be hearing them after all.
He didn’t though; he and Spike had a love hate relationship. He liked that the vampire took care of Buffy when she wouldn’t accept Dean and Dawn’s help, he hated that Buffy would take Spike’s help instead of his and Dawn’s.
Buffy glanced over at him; the two men’s gazes followed hers.
The older one stiffened, recognition of some sort evident and Dean stepped into the hallway fully. Spike behind him, hand pressed against his back like he was going to hold him in place if he tried to flee.
“I thought you weren’t staying to help out,” Dean said pointedly to Angel before he looked at the two men. And the longer he looked the more the older man seemed familiar.
They stared at each other, the younger of the pair looking between them. Spike’s hand still firm against his back.
It came to him suddenly, like a flash of light and he suddenly smelled smoke and fear and he felt his face drain of color as he comprehended just who these two men were. Just as Angel opened his mouth to most likely introduce them.
“Dad?” he sounded like a scared five-year old, his knees didn’t feel like they were going to hold him up any longer and Spike’s hand moved from his back to his arm. Buffy moving to stand at his other side.
“Dean,” familiar voice and Dean closed his eyes.
“Take your brother outside as fast as you can. Now Dean, go!”
“Dad,” he breathed.
Fire and fear and a demon standing in front of him, grass against his bare feet, “my daddy is going to hurt you,” mumbled, the first words that he’d spoken in months, even as he was shoved down to the ground inside the symbol that he didn’t know.
He could hear daddy yelling for him, knew that Sammy would be in his arms because if Dean wasn’t there Sammy would want dad and Dean reached out for them, opened his mouth to call for them, to scream and cry even though daddy said he was a big boy and big boys didn’t cry and he wouldn’t even mind getting in trouble for going outside the motel room to get ice for daddy who wouldn’t get it for himself even though he was hurt and then the grass and the demon and daddy and Sammy were gone.
His father was staring at him, had moved right in front of him when he opened his eyes again.
“Dean, oh my god, Dean,” a tight hug and Buffy and Spike fell back and Dean didn’t know how to respond.
Didn’t know what to do when Sammy who wasn’t little anymore came up beside them and wrapped long arms around both of them.
They were sitting at the dining room table, dad sitting in the spot that mom used to sit in. Buffy and Dawn sitting on either side of him, both had latched onto his hands, Xander and Spike stood behind them like they were guarding them against the Winchesters up and trying to walk out of the house with Dean and they really had more important things they should be worrying about (like the battle coming up) but…
“We couldn’t find you,” dad kept repeating it. Sammy sat across from them, staring at Dean like he was a favored possession that he’d misplaced and suddenly found.
Which probably wasn’t so wrong.
The others were scattered around the room. Angel sat between Dawn and John Winchester.
“I told you that I recognized him,” Angel said to Buffy, obviously reminding her of a conversation that they’d had that she’d never shared with Dean.
“You said his ‘scent’ was familiar…”
“Scent is a form of recognition for a vampire. I’d worked with John before, just once but I’d met both the boys before Dean was taken,” Angel looked over at him. “You were five or so, less then a month after your mothers’ murder. You weren’t even talking…”
“He disappeared from a motel in Chicago,” John said softly, eyes locked on Dean. Dean couldn’t meet his gaze, just stared at the table and tried to wish that he was anywhere but there.
Buffy’s hand gripped his tighter and Dean bit his lower lip and didn’t wince.
“You were hurt,” Dean said softly, the tablecloth needed to be washed he thought suddenly, insanely. “You were hurt and I went to get you ice because…”
“I heard you cry out, knew that it couldn’t be good. I brought Sammy with me because I couldn’t leave him alone and…” John took a deep breath. “I don’t know what the demon was, I’ve never seen another one like it, I’ve never been able to find anything on the symbol that he put you in. The translations that we were able to get later were a mixture of four languages and nothing comprehensible at that. And you were just gone, gone and I couldn’t find you…”
Dean took a deep breath; squeezed Buffy and Dawn’s hands then looked up and met his fathers’ eyes.
“I was in LA…” he started and he told his story.
The battle was fierce, worse then pretty much every other battle he’d been in. And since Buffy was his sister that was saying something.
Anya was dead; they’d lost some of the Slayers-to-be.
Spike had sacrificed himself and he thought Angel might have been happy that Buffy had already given the pendant to Spike and thus he wasn’t the one wearing it at the end.
Dean was just really glad it was over, their house was gone but Angel had already said that they were all welcome to stay at his hotel to recover and Dean though that a great idea.
Until he saw Sammy and dad staring at him like this had been the moment they were waiting for and Dawn was hovering next to his side glaring at Sammy like if he took a step closer she might claw his face up with her nails.
Probably the only reason that Buffy wasn’t right there with Dawn was because she was bit distracted by the fight being over and not being dead.
His room in the Hyperion was really the only room that was quiet. Considering that something like 95% of the current residents of the hotel were female that was saying something. Because if you got two or more of those girls in the same room their voices carried like nothing Dean had ever experienced before.
His room was also the only place where he was safe from the custody battle that had seemingly crept up between Buffy and Dawn and Dad and Sammy over breakfast their first morning.
Everyone wanted him to take sides and how he was supposed to tell one or the other of them that he preferred one over the other…
He couldn’t, so he kept his mouth shut and locked himself in his room for as long as he could get away. Which was about 19 hours a day and he’d gotten good over the years at creeping past Buffy and Dawn into the kitchen (they could be vicious during that time of the month, especially if they thought Dean was eating all the ice cream).
“Fred’s got some sort of presentation set up downstairs,” Xander was standing in the doorway, looking confused, probably wondering how he’d gotten there and why he’d been the one sent.
Dean didn’t make the pirate comment that was on the tip of his tongue, he also didn’t say that he thought that the patch made Xander look rakishly handsome and that he should have no problems picking up girls if he wanted to.
The man was still grieving for Anya after all. Besides he was almost positive that Xander wouldn’t take the comment in the manner that he wanted him to.
Dean huffed a sigh to himself and rolled off his bed. Followed Xander down the hallway and there was Fred with a big whiteboard with a whole slew of incomprehensible squiggles scrawled across it.
Dawn and Buffy were on one side of the room, Dad and Sammy on the other. A sea of teen-age Slayers and Angel’s group were between them.
“Dean,” Fred grinned at him and Dean grinned back, because it was Fred. And he couldn’t help himself her cheerfulness was almost always contagious.
“What’s up?”
“So your sisters and your dad and brother have been having all these long-winded arguments about who has more rights to you even though you’re well over 18 and fully able to choose for yourself who you want to go with,” Angel cleared his throat and then looked surprised when everyone glanced at him.
“Sorry,” he muttered. Dean smirked.
“Right, so you’re able to choose who you want to go with but you haven’t yet, which led me to believe that maybe you just couldn’t decide between them and really you’ve spent more time with Buffy and Dawn so why would you want to leave them anyway, they’re your sisters. But I started working on the formula anyway.”
“I took into account how much time each of you has lived with him awarding a specific point value for years, months and days. I didn’t go so far as to figure in hours because that would be taking it a bit far,” Fred ignored the muffled laughs. “In order to be fair I had to only award points to Dawn from the time of her creation to present time and do the same for Sam, giving him points from his time of birth to present.”
She glanced back at the white board, tilted her head to the right.
“Going by the formula, Buffy and Dawn will have him for 10 months and two days. John and Sam will have him for 1 month and 28 days.”
Dean nodded once, to show he understood, so she wouldn’t try to explain it again.
“You created a formula to show us how much time each of us will be spending with Dean?” Sam was squinting at the board, he didn’t look pleased and his dad looked like he was going to blow a gasket. “That’s pretty ingenious.”
“Well you know,” Fred flushed. “I had some free time.”
Dean shook his head, in his free time he trained with Buffy and tried not to die. He certainly didn’t create complex mathematical formula’s that required footnotes to explain.
He’d barely passed math when he was in high school and forced to take it.
And they lived happily ever after… except for the fist fights that burst up periodically between Dawn and Sam that Buffy and John kept having to break up, that Dean stayed out of because that would be taking sides.