A Hunter's Legacy - Part Two

[mangacat201]

Part One

The familiar rumble of the Impala’s engine lulled them into a semblance of comfort, but the mood in the car was subdued. Dean only had the music on low, as if to simulate normality, but his eyes were trained on the road in a way that made sure it was impossible to start conversation without actually snapping fingers in front of his face. Sam didn’t really have the urge to talk either though, so the silence in the car was more comfortable than awkward.

He knew that his brother was still mad about the last resort option they had to pull on this and tense about finding out the boy’s fate for the better or worse. Sam thought of Lisa, left all alone now in her empty house with nothing but a little shred of hope left in her to balance the big load of helplessness weighing her down. He had not lied to her when he told her she was strong for going on the way she had, but he dreaded that they would have to bring her bad news by the end of this day. Sam knew it was one of the reasons Dean had put off involving the angel. Chances were, whatever Castiel could find out wouldn’t bode well, but they had to at least try, even if there was nothing else to be done but bring the boy’s mother the closure she deserved.

Thankfully it wasn’t that much of a stretch from Indiana to Illinois, even if their way led them to the opposite corner of the state. Dean drove with a grim determination on the empty highway, encountering other cars only occasionally. They noticed in passing how the wind picked up when they crossed the state border, disturbing the smoldering air, but since the sky was free of clouds save for a few harmless white wisps, they didn’t bother worrying about a storm. The brothers drove in silence, not much to talk about until they arrived at their destination, and they had long since abandoned the human habit of filling silences with empty chatter. For once though, Dean didn’t have the music blasting from the speakers at top volume, but kept it quiet, more a background noise than anything entertaining; a soundtrack of their life.

They were just headed down another empty stretch of back road that didn’t seem out of the ordinary when suddenly something changed. Nightfall wasn’t far away, and the sky had already begun to color in the beautiful spectrum of dusk with its mauve, purple and lavender. The sinking sun was a red ball of fire flaming on the western horizon almost straight ahead of them. There had been nothing around them but a few birds perching on the power-line that ran parallel to the road, and the scorching mid-western heat that had them rolling down the windows soon after they’d left Cicero.

 

Now though, there was Nothing around them. Suddenly there were no birds, no sounds, everything seemed to have stilled save for the wind that roared with an exceptional force now. The atmosphere felt electrically charged, and the temperature had dropped a noticeable few degrees in the matter of seconds. The brothers tensed up simultaneously, but Dean voiced what they were both thinking.

“What the fuck?”

He didn’t get any more words out though, since just a moment later lightning crashed out of the open sky and down onto the road directly in front of them, and it was all he could do to hit the brakes full on and pull the car to a swerving stop diagonally in the middle of the road. Roaring thunder followed the lightening strikes only a fraction of a second later, and they saw that the visible bolts of electricity were closing in from all around them, zeroing on the exact spot where they stood with the car. Dean wanted to jump out and run, but Sam yelled at him to close the window and keep his ass inside the car. He had an instinctive and ingrained trust in his brother. It had been an onerous piece of work getting that trust back after all they’d been through, but now it overrode Dean’s first reaction, and he frantically rolled the window up yelling back at Sam for no better reason than that they were about to be struck by fricking lightening.

His voice was drowned out, however, by the unearthly wall of sound that suddenly surrounded them, and the eerie, whitish-blue glow of a flash up close and personal slid over the roof of the car from behind. The split second before Dean had to close his eyes against the onslaught of light, he could have sworn that the flash of electricity slithered over the hood more like a caress than a crackling deathly line. This was definitely no ordinary kind of lightning by any stretch of the imagination. When he blinked his eyes open again, the flashes had moved on as if the car was nothing more than a piece of the scenery and converged in a spot some twenty feet ahead of them, forming a thin line that went up into the sky.

It stayed stable for a moment and then, for the lack of a better word, bulged outward, until a rip appeared in the very centre. Dean’s ears still rang, but his eyes worked out just fine the way a silhouette emerged from the spot where the rip was steadily growing. It turned into the distinct shape of a horse and a rider leaping through the gap to land with bone-shaking force on the road in front of them, the horse rearing up on its hind-legs at the sight of the car. Against the light at his back it was impossible to make out more than the riders vague outline, but it took only a few seconds for the lightening to die down, leaving only the dusky light of the sinking sun to illuminate the shape of the newcomer.

Before Dean could grasp any more thoughts he was out of the car with his gun trained on the stranger, ignoring his stinging fingers from the slight discharge from the door and the faint smell of burned rubber in the air. He felt more than saw Sam take a similar stance on the other side of the car. Dean blinked a couple of times and realized now that the rider on the prancing horse was a man, who appeared to be wearing some kind of strange medieval get-up, and a helmet that made it impossible to see more than the lower part of his face, and a pair of piercing eyes shadowed behind the slits.

“Freeze and tell me who the fuck you are, right now!”

Dean’s voice rang out loud and clear in the air, and the rider cocked his head for a moment, before he answered:

“Dean? Dean Winchester?”

Dean exchanged a quick look with Sam, who looked just as puzzled but didn’t falter in his stance. His muzzle jerked to follow the rider’s hand, but the fellow just chuckled and loosened the strap of the helmet, to pull it up and over his head slowly before speaking again.

“Now, this is unexpected.”

 

~*~*~*~*~

 

Sam hadn’t been too surprised when the stranger had addressed Dean by his real name, even though they had never encountered him before. They had had enough hassle with a lot of things over the years that knew you even if it appeared you did not know them, because they gave nothing on outward features. What made him wary was the questioning way the rider had said it, as if he wasn’t entirely sure. The world stopped spinning for a moment, when the rider took off the helmet and coaxed the horse nearer to the car, though it didn’t stop prancing nervously back and forth. Without the helmet, the young man’s features were easy to make out and he was a handsome devil; tanned skin and high cheekbones that hinted that their owner was growing out of youthful chubbiness, dark brown, short hair, and a set of mischievous green eyes that had a dangerous lure to them. Sam saw Dean frozen in shock on the other side of the car, so he decided to take this one.

“Do we know you?”

The rider focused on Sam and smiled in a way that seemed to lengthen the shadows and spoke of an intelligent predator. He dismounted and walked closer to the car leaving the horse to throw its head around and prance a few steps away from the vehicle. The young man seemed to be somewhere around twenty, all lean muscle under the old-fashioned tunic he wore, and with a noticeable suggestion of a practiced fighting stance, even though his body was completely relaxed right now, and the helmet was pinned under his arm with quiet confidence. He did a little bow, but the smirk that went with it was obviously sarcastic.

“Benjamin Isaac Braeden, at your service, gentlemen.”

It confirmed Sam’s initial gut feeling, but he was still dumbfounded. Dean on the other side shook off his shock and cocked his gun, aiming for the boy’s head; he took the threat, remaining completely silent and unfazed.

“You are definitely not Ben Braeden, he’s an eleven year old boy, who’s been missing for two months.”

The answer to Dean’s remark came in form of a humourless chuckle, and a few choice words:

“Two months only, huh? Interesting. Time really does fly when you’re having fun”, his tone turned sharp and bitter when he went on, “try spending almost seven years in the deepest parts of Faerie, and see how fast you grow up. It took me this long to find a way out. It's been a damned close call, but it’s nice to know that it's not a new century already. That could just as well have happened; you never know with these things.”

The brother’s eyes widened at the revelation of the involvement of fairies. It put a whole new spin on the stranger’s claims. Dean’s eyes narrowed again though. He had been a hunter long enough to know not to take anything at face value, but since the young man had had plenty of opportunity to attack by now and hadn’t, he was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“All right, if you are really Ben like you claim to be, prove it.”

A quiet rustle of chain mail accompanied the guy crossing his arms, betraying his armoured state and telling the brothers that this was getting stranger by the minute.

“And how, pray tell, would I do that?”

Dean pondered the possibilities for a moment and concluded that there was no sure-fire way to prove anything until they got to Cas, but, on the other hand, if this was really Ben, they had to take the chance.

“Tell me something only Ben and I would know.”

His answer was a short derisive laugh. “Seriously?”

“Let’s just say if you pass my test right now, I’m not going to put a couple of rounds into you for good measure, and you’ll be on probation instead.”

“Hmm, doesn’t sound like such a good deal to me, but since this meeting changes a lot of things, and I’m probably going to need your help, fine. On the day after my eighth birthday you sat on a bench beside me and offered to take care of a bully,who had stolen my game. I declined your generous offer, of course. Then you whispered into my ear, ‘To deal with bullies, you ask politely only once. If they don’t give back what’s yours, you take them by the neck with both hands and give them a knee where it hurts most.’ Good advice, but I’ll never forget the scolding my mum gave me after that one.”

Dean looked beyond stunned, so Sam assumed the tale had been spot on. Still, he was prepared to follow his brother’s lead on this one, since Dean was the one who had actually spend time with the boy a couple of years back. Sam knew that this had been less a test about what was actually said, and more about the young man’s willingness to be tested. And he knew that his brother would trust his instincts, because he had developed an uncanny nose for the truth, that couldn’t merely be explained by a lot of experience in the field of reading people and their reactions.

~*~

Dean assessed the young man’s words with internal surprise, since his words didn’t only exactly match what he had said that afternoon, but they rang true, too. He had little doubt left that this guy was telling the truth, and he was indeed Ben Braeden. However he was supposed to tell Lisa that they’d found her son, but that he was now more man than boy was beyond him. This case had been complicated from the very beginning; He supposed that there was no reason why that should change now. Dean saw Sam shift out of the corner of his eye, obviously waiting for the verdict. He had no other choice though, if they were to untangle this mystery, they would have to work Ben’s story out of him, and that meant a minimum of trust. Consequently, he nodded and loosened his stance, putting the gun down on the roof of the car, not letting go, but not keeping his finger on the trigger either. He addressed Sam with verbal confirmation.

“He’s telling the truth.”

His brother would get the meaning of the admission beyond what Ben would gather from it, and that would have to be enough for now. He watched the young man’s shoulders sag a little, but at the same time his body stayed taut and alert, as if he was waiting for something to happen.

“I did, that’s great, can we get on the move now? As much as I appreciate not being held at gunpoint anymore, it’d be better to get out of here as fast as possible.”

Sam held up his hand: “Wait, we might believe you for now, but we need to hear your story first before anyone is going anywhere fast.”

Ben grimaced and turned around peering suspiciously before meeting the tall man’s gaze.

“Look, weaving a spell like that? It leaves a residue that is quite easy to trace for somebody who knows what they’re doing. And believe me, once they notice I’m gone, someone will be very mad, so please, I’d rather be half a state over, before they find the rip here, all right? I’ll get into the car with you, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but on the road.”

Dean nodded at the restive animal that was still moving from side to side behind Ben.

“But what are you going to do with your horse? We can’t very well tie it to the bumper and we sure can’t just let it wander through all the fields here.”

Ben looked over his shoulder and beckoned the horse with a sharp high whistle which it followed reluctantly, bending its neck so it could be scratched behind its ears. It didn’t seem to be wearing any harness at all, yet he handled it like he’d never let go of the reins.

“Oh, don’t worry about Brigid, she can keep up and out of sight, can’t you, girl?”

He got a high neigh for an answer and patted her flank for a moment. Then he turned back and gestured at the car.

“Can we go now?”

With a little disbelief colouring his features, Dean nodded. A short exchange of glances between the brothers had Sam take the back seat, leaving Ben to ride shotgun. When all the doors had sounded closed, Dean turned the ignition and was pleased to find the motor rumble to life instantly, against all odds. He shifted into gear and put the pedal to the metal.

 

Dean stayed silent for a couple of minutes, just driving; he knew his brother had the boy under control if he tried anything. Sam, on the other hand, had put his gun on the back seat beside him and was studying the young man in the front with avid eyes. Ben had exuded solemn confidence before, when they were outside, but in here he looked uneasy and vulnerable, even though he tried not to show it. Even so, his shoulders were rigid, and his fingers rubbed on the leather of the upholstery in an unconscious movement. He took in the interior of the car as if it was something foreign, or long forgotten, and looked outside to spot his horse through the window, the horse that, miraculously, seemed to have no difficulties keeping up with the car, even though it had turned kind of transparent. Sam wondered what kind of breed it was, but he had the feeling it would all be revealed when Ben finally told them about what had happened to him. When the silence in the car lengthened into awkward, his big brother got uncomfortable and snappy almost on the spot.

“Now, tell your tale.”

Ben started for a half a second, until he concealed the reaction and shot a question back.

“Where are we going?”

“Same way we were going when you jumped out of thin air and nearly electrocuted us with the lightning show. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that it’s impolite to answer with a question?”

Ben scoffed and answered with a cynical grin: “Conversational classes were not part of my educational routine, I’m afraid.”

Sam noticed Dean beating Led Zeppelin drum patterns reflexively on the steering wheel, a tell that showed how Dean was reigning in his emotions to keep from blowing up at Lisa’s son for being so cocky and self-assured. But Sam also noticed how Ben caught up on it and looked away quickly. He didn’t ask anymore questions, but started at the beginning instead.

“I was late coming out of school. I’d had to stay behind to have a talk with one of the teachers about a project we had to put together for extra credit. I thought my mum was probably already waiting for me outside so I walked along the corridor, stuffing my books in and not really paying attention to where I was going. I didn’t notice then, but actually I remembered it later… there was this feeling, like when you blink and have the impression that the world skipped a beat for you? I was still in the school’s corridors, or so I thought, but when I stepped outside the doors, I got to know that nothing is necessarily as it seems. They were waiting for me in the yard that was suddenly growing over, like ivy is the new black, and she was there… she told me they’d been keeping an eye on me, and that it was time I came into the fold, I didn’t exactly have a choice about saying no to that, but still, it was different from the first time.”

Dean perked up then: “Wait, are you trying to tell us what I think you are? You’ve been taken by a bunch of fairies, again?”

Ben gave him a dirty eyeball and laughed bitterly.

“If you really want to see it that way… even though I wouldn’t exactly use the term ‘a bunch of fairies’ for a Hunt.”

The word rang through the silence in the car for a moment as if there was an echo somewhere outside and they heard the horse neigh with a shrill tune that made Ben jump and shiver and look impossibly young for a moment, more like the eleven year old he was supposed to be, rather than the image of the young man superimposed on his body and mind.

Dean gripped the steering wheel a lot tighter when the meaning of the word washed over him leaving a cold, steely lump of foreboding in the pit of his stomach. He had an inkling what the boy was talking about, and it would make their lives just this much more difficult in a way that was really not necessary right now. Before he could ask about more information, Sam leaned forwards with his hands on the front seat, beating Dean to it by interposing the most important question.

“What, you mean like the Wild Hunt?”

Ben snorted under his breath and gripped the dashboard with considerable force, eyes trained straight through the windshield and on the road.

“Oh for,… you think there’s only one? The Hunt is not just a band of legendary ghost riders that pick up lost souls along the way on a stormy night like the lore says. What people have told and written about them isn’t even close to what it’s actually like. It’s the clans of the Sidhe, the fey people of the Old World, riding and holding court in the Netherworld. Each one has a different kind of game, and it’s not all about humans by far, since only the strongest Hunts ever make it into this realm, because it’s not an easy feat to have a large number of riders cross over the borders between the worlds. Those are the Hunts led by royalty.”

“And who leads the clan that took you and will come after us by proxy?”

Ben turned slightly and stared at Dean with an intense look for a moment, before he eyed Sam out of the corner of his eyes and answered:

“Freya Huld.”

 

From the way Sam’s hand tightened until the upholstery groaned directly behind him, Dean assumed that he’d heard of the lady before, and that whatever it was, was going to be no good. Splendid, how this case seemed to take a spin from bad to impossibly tricky in just a matter of minutes. He caught Sam’s look out of the corner of his eye.

“You know the chick?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call her that to her face, Dean, but yeah, I know of her. Lore says she’s a Norse goddess, one for the women – fertility of the land and the people, that kind of thing – but also a leader of royal blood of the gods. The aspect of Frouwe Hulda is best known from a fairy tale about the weather, making snow from the duvets and such, but she’s also the protector of lost children.”

Ben nodded and added: “When the Queen goes out to hunt, it’s for the souls of children that cross her path in the stormy nights of the ride. She gathers them, raises them to be warriors and takes them into service once their training is done.”

Dean had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach about what had happened to Ben in the clutches of these creatures that had stolen his childhood from him to train him to be a warrior of the darkest times of the night.

“And how long does this lovely education take?”

Ben looked over morosely. “Seven years.”

“Wait, what? But you said…”

“Yes, exactly. I’ve had to work through almost seven years of battle training for weapons, and politics, and sorcery, until I found a spell that would open a window to the outer world and catch an opportunity that would not require me to vanish out of a full court containing some of the most powerful Fey surrounding me. Now I’ve got just about a month to sever my ties of service to the Lady in every way, before they have me join the Hunt.”

Dean looked over for a moment and processed the fact that not only was Ben all grown up, but that he'd also admitted to being well enough versed in fey-craft that he could put rips into the fabric of reality, as he had very obviously demonstrated right in front of them. He wondered once again how he would be able to keep Lisa from killing him, once a bunch of angry fairies (and he was damn well going to call them that in his head, since they hadn’t proved themselves to be any more than the easy bitch they’d torched some couple of years ago.) hopefully didn’t get the job done. The time frame worried him though, he knew how long Sam had researched to find ways around his deal, and he was under no illusions that getting Ben out of this mess was going to be any easier.

“Ok, but why just a month, I mean, from where I see it, this is going to be complicated. We might need more time to find something and you’ve been with them for seven years already. Couldn’t we buy time by having you go in as a ruse until we find a way to break you out?”

Ben looked at him with a pale face and big eyes, all thoughts of keeping a game face thoroughly dashed, and Dean suspected even before Sam spoke up that he was not going to like what he said.

“Dean! Seriously, it doesn’t work like that, since first of all, to join the Wild Hunt, you have to be dead.”

“Oh… right that is… wait, how would you… wait WHAT they’d really…?”

“Yes, they would. It has happened since I was there, it’s a big spectacle and a ceremony, like coming of age if you will. You put down your human life and take the spear and become Fey forever. It’s the way they keep their people alive since there is only about one natural born Sidhe child in a millennium or two. They live forever from our perspective, but they can be killed in battle or accident like any other creature, and they hold grudges, very expertly. So they've found a way to keep their ranks closed; it’s an honor to be chosen for the Hunt.”

Dean snorted derisively and drummed his fingers some more.

“Yeah, right and I guess it’s not one of those where you just politely say ‘no, thank you, I’m not interested’, right? Bastards, the lot of them!”

“Precisely.”

 

Dean tightened his hands around the steering wheel, and he let the seconds tick by for a bit to order his thoughts, even though there was really no question about what they were going to do next.

“So, we go and try to take on a clan of really powerful fairy-people – who I guess have all the fancy little advantages of nasty, old-world witchcraft like the lore says and probably more – and we’ll try to get you fired without getting you dead, us dead, and a whole horde of nasty bitches on our ass for the rest of eternity? Great, just what I needed this weekend to make the whole week perfect.”

Dean was pretty proud of his spot-on recap of their situation, but his smile faded instantly when he noticed Ben clenching his hands into his thighs, and the tension mounting in his shoulders in what had to be bordering on painful.

“You are right, I… I shouldn’t have asked this of you. There’s no way I’m getting out of this in such a short time, and I shouldn't guilt-trip you into a fight like this. I should go.”

Dean frowned and fumbled for words to tell the boy that he hadn’t meant it like that, but he was really starting to lose his touch with the kind of comforting and encouraging business that had rolled off of him so damn easily in the early years of his hunting life. Nevertheless, he steadied the wheel with one hand and cupped the other on the boy’s neck, rubbing lightly and ignoring the subtle flinch.

“No, wait Ben, that’s not… you’re not going anywhere, until we got you out of this mess, alright? I promised your mom that we would find you and bring you back to her, and I damn well plan on keeping that promise. Besides, we’ve had worse, believe me.”

Ben looked over sceptically and huffed a little breath; his face hardening, and his features blanking in a way that brought out the trained warrior and left no trace of the little boy that had shone through his countenance before. His obvious disbelief blanketed his posture almost visibly. Dean didn’t elaborate but exchanged a look with Sam through the rear-view mirror that held an entire history in the blink of an eye. His brother nodded slightly and then turned his eyes to the back of Ben’s head.

“Have you ever been with the Hunt when they rode?”

Ben turned slightly, and the hard cast of his expression, and the down-turned corners of his mouth belied the delicacy of the topic.

“No… at least, not outside the Netherworld. We move in the realm of the Sidhe all the time; they are nomadic by default, and the court goes wherever the Queen is heading. But the conditions for crossing through the veil are only right about half a dozen times a year, and only full-fledged members of the Hunt are allowed to enter this plane in the times of the Storm Nights. They don’t always take someone back with them, because people are more likely to stay indoors during a storm nowadays, but from time to time there are children who are out at night.”

Sam looked thoughtful for a moment.

“Do they ride in every storm?”

“Oh, no of course not. Not every storm is in the right place at the right time to make a rift possible, and it’s always more likely to happen closer to the great feasts.”

Now the tall man perked up and pursed his lips in a way that suggested an expectation had been met. He didn’t hesitate long before continuing to the next question though.

“But you said you were taken in broad daylight and nowhere near a storm. How is that possible?”

Ben shrugged and fiddled with the hem of his tunic for a few moments.

“I’m not exactly sure either. I asked her about it years ago, and she told me that my blood was special and called to her. I couldn’t ever make sense of that at all, but now that I think of it,… you wouldn’t happen to know something about that, wouldn’t you?”

Dean frowned for a moment and looked over at Ben shortly before training his eyes back onto the road, but he didn’t miss Sam’s knuckles brushing Ben's back as Sam curled his hand into a fist.

“Why would we know anything?”

“Well, considering I’m your son and all I thought…”

Ben didn’t have time to finish the sentence and barely managed to brace his hands on the dashboard of the Impala when Dean swerved the car rather abruptly across the road and parked it for the second time that day amid smoking tires. The engine ticked reproachfully at the rude treatment, but for once Dean didn’t notice in the slightest, sitting there with his hands clenched in a white-knuckled grip, staring at the young man beside him with wide, horrified eyes, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly for a few seconds.

“You… my… WHAT?”

 

Ben met his eyes with an equally stupefied air before removing his hands from the dashboard to cross his arms over his chest, and he slouched half into the seat, half against the door as far from Dean as possible. Blankness rippled over his face at a moment’s notice, but defiance oozed out of every muscle in his tense body.

“I… it’s ok, I suspected, but since Mum didn’t want to talk about it, and you didn’t want to stay with us, I figured… I’m not trying to make you… I don’t … I’m not…”

Sam stilled the young man’s rant with a hand on his shoulder which made Ben jump and look at him, startled, as if he’d forgotten Sam was even there with them.

“Ben, that’s not… we didn’t know, alright? We didn’t know.”

The three of them sat there silent for a moment, in an awkward triangle of not knowing what to say and clueless what to do with the revelation that had just taken place. That is until Dean burst out laughing in a pitch that bordered on hysterical and filled the interior of the car with a swell of sound that was swallowed by murderous silence after a moment. Dean leaned his head on the wheel for a moment, before he turned, shoulders still shaking with suppressed guffaws and spoke up.

“I… I don’t believe it, this is just too good. And I’m sorry to say, kid, but it’s not true. Your mother told me herself that she’d had you tested, and it was some guy she met in a biker bar with only a P.O. Box to his name, and nothing to add to your life. But I admit you really had me there for a moment, though I don’t like telling you that you had it wrong.”

Ben’s eyes glazed over and flashed dangerously for a moment, almost as if a storm cloud was really gathering around his head.

“I know it’s true for the fact that the spell that brought me here was designed to anchor the rift in the location of the Next of Kin, though I didn’t expect the ‘next’ to work out quite so literally. Besides, I know how torn up my mother was after you’d left again, even though she did her best to hide it. And how did the two of you meet, anyway?”

“Well, we were in a bar of course, and after a few drinks together we hit it off like lightening so we decided to spend some time together somewhere with less racket than those raucous biker dudes where making … and after the weekend… I gave her the number of… SON OF A BITCH.”

Dean stared at Ben for a few moments and only now seemed to register just how much they shared in terms of looks and attitude, before he abruptly shoved the door open and scrambled out of the car in a mad dash. The frame shook with the force of the door slamming shut that would be sorely regretted later on, but right now Dean could do nothing but stalk off into the last rays of the sinking sun, hands clasped behind his head in a gesture of hapless disbelief and the urge to move and do something with the things he’d just learned.

 

They sat in the awkward silence of the car for a few moments until Ben made to open the door on his side and follow Dean.

“Don’t.”

The young man looked at Sam with a defiant, furious expression, not taking his hand from the door handle but not opening it either.

“He can’t just…”

“Yes, he can and you’re going to let him. I know that you have every right to demand we deal with this and since you spend years thinking about the how’s and why’s, wondering and I can’t imagine what you came up with, but… when we passed through your town and Dean learned about you, it was a very… it was a very difficult time in his life and he thought that maybe there was a chance until your mum told him there wasn’t. It’s… we’re not exactly prone to having family alive and well and it’s been just us for such a long time and a lot of losses on the way. You’ve got to give him some time to come to terms with it on his own, can you do that?”

Ben’s jaw tensed for a moment, eyes downcast, but then he let go of the door handle and allowed his hand to rest on his thigh even though it was balled in a fist. Nevertheless he nodded and then looked up at Sam again.

“He really didn’t know?”

“Believe me kid, you would have known if he had. If only that we made sure that nothing like this could happen to you while we were away. But this makes things even more complicated to deal with since you are…”

Sam broke off the sentence in the middle and caught himself, as if he knew he'd said too much already, but Ben couldn’t fathom what he would have said, if not Dean’s refusal to actually acknowledge him as his son, which sounded freakish even in his own mind, now that he realized how little separated them in terms of years. He wanted to rip at his hair and dig his fingers into his eyes with the frustration and the unfairness of it all. He’d learned some important things in the little time he’d spent with the man around his eighth birthday, and while he had never known for sure, the thought had always brightened his spirits when he couldn’t bear it anymore… living in an alien society he had never actually managed to fit in properly, fey politics and intrigues always going over his head and the yearning for home and family instead driving him to become an ambitious and relentless scholar of all things the Court of the Sidhe Queen could offer him. All so that he might have the chance to see his mother again one day, to tell her he loved her and never wanted to leave again. And now he had found a distant, ignorant, young father, who had no clue what to do about him.

 

Ben was startled out of his contemplation by the much more subtle opening of the car door, and the rustle of leather that accompanied Dean’s body sliding into the driver’s seat again. Ben still had his back pressed against the door and was facing Dean that way. The other man had his left hand perched loosely on the wheel the other lying thigh, the most laid-back pose all in all, but his shoulders where visibly thrumming with tension, and he stared straight out of the windshield, not chancing a glance toward the other occupants of the car even for half a second. The silence crackled through the interior of the car, and Ben was just about to snap and say something, when Dean finally turned his eyes on him… well, looked at him from the corner of his eyes at least.

“Are you absolutely sure?”

Dean’s voice carried a certain kind of waver that indicated he was rather sure of the answer but needed to hear it nonetheless.

“Quite so, I’m afraid. The nature of the spell doesn’t leave any room for…”

He didn’t get to finish the sentence, because Dean stretched out his arm to snag him behind his neck and drag him forward in one smooth motion. The older man ignored his flailing limbs and tugged Ben's forehead against his shoulder where Ben allowed himself to breathe in only for a split second. before he felt Dean’s hot breath in a whisper right beside his ear.

“We’re going to get you out of this, alright? You’re not going to die.”

Ben nodded minutely and was released from Dean’s grip so abruptly that he snapped upright again. He stared at the other man as he turned the ignition and made the Impala’s powerful engine thrum to life. He pulled away from the blacktop with screeching tires, eyes firmly on the road as if nothing had happened. Incredulously, Ben turned his eyes to meet Sam’s gaze and was met with a shrug and a secretive smile that didn’t really reach Sam’s eyes, instead they showed an abundance of history he couldn’t decipher with just a look. He was dazzled and confused, but decided that he could live with it if this was really it, since it was still more than he had thought he would ever get. Neither of the three was particularly interested in talking right now, or so it seemed, which is why the silence prevailed inside the car as it inexorably ate away at the road.

 

Ben wanted to ask where they were going, and how long it was going to take, but he sounded so much like a whining child in his own head when he tried to find a way to breach the silence that he gave up after opening his mouth futilely a few times. Dean didn’t acknowledge his presence again while he was driving, and Sam was an unknown quantity that hadn’t even played a part in his musings on family up to now. If he was honest with himself, he had been so busy pondering scenarios of what he would do, how he’d find out, what kind of questions he’d ask if he ever met Dean again, that he had kind of forgotten that he’d have an uncle as well as a father if everything panned out. Ben wondered if Sam was thinking the same thing now, and whether it felt just as weird to him. He tried to sneak a furtive glance at the tall man in the back seat, without being too obvious, but Sam was looking out of the window on Dean’s side and didn’t seem to be paying any attention to him. Reflected light from the window played over his features and illuminated a silvery scar that ran from the side of his neck to his shirt collar and didn’t look like the kind of injury one could possibly survive. Curiosity spiked through Ben, and his honed sorcerer’s senses reached out, more on their own accord than in conscious thought. There was something about Sam, the touch of something big and unearthly that no human mind was designed to fathom. It provided a layer of distance around the tall man - something that might possibly be felt by ordinary people, even if not consciously.

It made Ben shiver with dread, silent revulsion and immense fascination, contradictory feelings that puzzled him. Sam seemed to catch onto his thoughts at that very moment, because he looked up unexpectedly and held Ben’s eyes with an unwavering gaze, trapping him with eyes that reflected an unnatural glaze for a split second, grinding the world to halt. He saw the brightest, sharpest darkness, before Sam finally blinked and turned his eyes away, breaking the spell. Ben had the feeling that the man had found out far more about him than the other way round, and it made his stomach clench with overwhelming unease. And there it was again, that uncanny smile that spoke of loss, and regret and so little hope. A slow creak of the leather alerted Ben to a shifting motion, and told him that Dean must have noticed the silent exchange. The older man didn’t say anything though, but still, it made Ben feel like he was in way over his head, and considering he’d spent the better part of his adolescence at the court of one of the most powerful Fey Queens, that was saying something.

Part Three