[Ben glances away when he realizes that they're talking about something else entirely - not a twelve year-old boy trying to figure out if this father-figure he loved still actually gave a shit about him, but the demons that came later. The night where Dean put a gun in his hands and told him to shoot or his mother would die and he did the best he could but he can feel it all now.
Every time the rifle kicked back.
Every time the bodies just flopped down like someone cut their strings and there was nothing animating them anymore. He'd never hurt someone before, not like that, and even though he knew they were demons, they still looked like people.
Trauma never fully processed before the memories were ripped away and replaced with something else. Something not real.
And Matt ... well, he was putting a lot of effort into not liking Matt, but he didn't deserve that.
He tries to take Dean's comment for the statement that it is. Tries to push past the way it makes him feel, to the intent behind it. That it was hard for him to let them go and let them forget him when he was the only one who had been given a choice in the matter.
Now he feels like he should have taken the opportunity for the beer when he had it, but it still feels like a bad idea.]
I get what you're trying to say. But it's kind of hard to look at it as you losing us when you were the one making all the choices.
Ben, I was there. I heard the things the demon said. I saw what I brought to your door. And whether or not, I could've done better, prepared either one of you, I don't even know, and I didn't. All I saw was a life neither of you deserved.
( And then it comes back to Rudy and the nail he hit on the head. Dean didn't deserve them. Dean didn't want to hurt them, didn't want them running, or learning a new way of life. Not becoming the traveling girlfriend of a hunter. And who knows what she even wanted. He never asked. And Ben wouldn't speak to him.
And then, Cas.
But, this isn't about Cas, or his choices or how Dean felt like he'd been backed into corner all damn year. )
Me making your mom happy, being your family --
( Sacrificing all that meant, thanks to Cas, they could live their lives. He even threatened Sam's life afterward if he ever mentioned them again. Well, deep, deep amounts of violence.
He wasn't worth all that. He was broken. With his legacy and his unrelenting attitude, alcoholism, nightmares, the brother he's saddled with but would never give up. She said it to him under the influence of the truth curse. He doesn't believe it anymore. Sam and him have their own touchstones now.
But, they will die for one another and fuck if that isn't family. )
Ben, if you wanted anything out of this. Anything at all. What is it.
[Ben takes a deep breath before shaking his head.]
Honestly? I don't know.
[He leans back in his seat as he tries to figure out how exactly to say it.]
I was drunk when I decided to take the test. And when I took it. I think I just wanted an answer more than anything else. If it hadn't been so fucking weird, I might not have even called.
[Which feels shitty to say, but he hadn't really thought through what he would actually have done once he had the name.]
( He gets it. And Ben's uncle is out there somewhere, sharing his body with an archangel. Not really first sit-down material. He would've found something. Dean's the stone he overturned.
This is veering off into emotional territory and he's not built for it in public. Or, at all. He's a brick wall that has to be broken down piece by piece, until he breaks and puts himself back together again. Taking out his wallet, he unfolds a twenty and puts it on the table.
Turning back, he makes the eight ball. )
I'll make the call to your grandmother.
( Get that ball rolling. He reattaches the pool cue to its' wall-mount. )
You got my number.
( He doesn't wait for Ben to object, he doesn't ask for any more time or confidence, or empty promises. This is on the kid now.
He doesn't say goodbye to Helene.
Outside, someone watches from a few cars down. He sees Dean leave from the rearview mirror and then watches him climb into that sick Impala in the side mirror. After Dean drives off, Dickerson pulls out of his unmarked car and hoofs it back down the pavement, up to the familiar bar.
Inside, he gives a look around, nods to Helene. Gives a 'Where's my boy at,' eyebrow raise, she nods toward the pool tables. He flicks his hat with his pointer finger in thanks and moves around the emptying tables.
"Was it bad," he asks. Yes, he's off early. Yes, it's because this is monumental. Just accept that you got a good guy in your court and speak up. Or, don't if that's what you want. )
*
( Dean hopes this was enough of a start. It's late to call his mom, not that she wouldn't answer. Hunters answer on the second ring. Sometimes on the first.
He buys a bottle of Jack at the corner store by his motel. Inside the room, he pulls the paper down, sets the bottle on the table, and takes a long, lingering breath. Composed. No tone. He speaks. )
[Ben startles, then blinks up at Dickerson like he's pulling himself out of a mire, thoughts swirling around his brain like he doesn't quite know how to process any of this.]
Nah. No, it was fine.
[It gave him a lot to think about, but it wasn't bad.]
( Doesn't take away from the sincerity of the moment. And how monumental it is. He stayed. That matters. Maybe they'll have a Gingerale about it. But, he doesn't want his friend stewing. )
As far as explanations go, mortal danger's a pretty rock-solid one. Not letting him off the hook, you shouldn't, but maybe that helps you process it. You feel like any progress was made?
[That counts as progress, right? And yeah, remembering now what demons were like, how scared he was the last time he and Dean were together, he could see how Dean would think that it was better for him to forget it all ever happened.]
I don't think it was to keep us safe. I think it was more to keep him safe. But Dean is not a well-functioning human so I can't really expect him to act as a well-functioning person would.
I don't know, man. I'm not going to lie, the stuff I remember from right before he left is really rough. Like I'm going to have to go back to therapy rough. Maybe he thought he was helping. But it was more for him than it was for us. If it was actually for us, he would have asked.
( Maybe not by relationship, not all his life, he doesn't know anything. )
Just going out on a limb here. You think Dean, in his moment of crisis, was going to sit you both down, your mom, in the hospital, and you and ask if you wanted to be erased from his life. To keep you safer. And, if he did sit you down. What would the alternative have been?
( He's just trying to find the devil's advocate here. Because yes, he gets it, he gets how it looks and sounds and yeah, it's selfish, but he sees like, maybe the 10% of how selfish it is.
Still, ride or die for Ben Braeden, this one right here.
-- Wait. A second. He pulls the needle up from the record. He leans in, whispering. )
( He leans against the table, crossing his arms, trying to maybe give his buddy different perspective. )
Just saying. All your feelings. Rudy-valid, you know. But. Maybe think a little harder into what he was going through then. People give up kids for adoption cause they can't be good parents. ( Early in his childhood, his father fell into that category. But they found their way together. ) If he knew you were his from the jump, yeah, I'd be pissed on your behalf. Tell him to stand ten feet away. Pass notes, be the go-between cause he wouldn't deserve you but -- I don't know, Braeden.
He didn't think he was my dad, but I always counted him as my dad. I didn't care if we were fucking biologically related. And there were other ways to protect us that he could have tried and he didn't. He did everything he could to try and keep me away from the hunter shit, but never taught us anything to actually protect ourselves when he wasn't there because hunter Dean wasn't "good enough" for us.
[It's not the fact that he gave them up. That, Ben maybe could have handled if it was just simply a matter of him being like "I don't want to be here," and walking away. Sure, he still would have been pissed, but he would have understood.]
He put us in this glass jar and pretended to be normal, but when the jar broke, he couldn't handle it and instead of finding a way to fix it, he erased my memory and walked away. I'm not mad because he gave me up, I'm mad because my mom got fucking possessed and almost died, and his response was to take what little we did know away again. How was that fucking protecting us?
[Ben's trying not to be loud, because they are in public, but while he knows Dickerson is trying to help, there are layers to this shit sandwich that he's not interested in him defending Dean on.]
He should have told us how to have that not happen. He should have made her get the goddamn tattoo. Dean says he left because he couldn't protect us? He didn't try because all he actually did do is not be there while being the only person who actually knew anything.
[He slumps back against the chair and rubs a hand over his face.]
And yeah. Parents give kids up for adoption all the time. But if the kid is old enough, they're still allowed to be pissed about it.
[And he does, as promised, appear where requested. He appears on the other side of the table, staring back at Dean and wondering if this is the delayed conversation they haven't been having since Ben made a reappearance.]
( He pours one for Cas and one for himself. He forces the glass across the table. It slides in front of Cas, taking a seat. He gestures for Cas to sit. Join him. Once he does, Dean speaks. )
[Would there be a point to denying it? No. Is Dean about to be very angry? Yes. Does this make Cas' silence on the matter better? Also no.]
Since that is not a question, I assume you are not looking for an answer.
[It's childish of him, but he also doesn't think that Dean is looking to have a conversation about this. Dean wants to yell at him, as the representative for all angels, so he might as well let him get it over with.
Because of course, Heaven knew. Michael was principled enough to not want to posses a child to force Dean's hand, but the rest of Heaven wasn't above using it as a manipulation tactic if needed.]
Really. You were there, the Hell Sam and I went through with Adam. With Zachariah. Hell, they freakin resurrected him and you didn't think I needed to know there could've been another pawn on their celestial dick-Chessboard? ( He looks away, watching Cas' reflection in the TV behind them. ) You erased everything about me from his life.
[Castiel doesn't move, doesn't sit. This conversation doesn't feel like a casual one, and he will stand and be ready for the battle that is coming. All he came to do that night was heal Lisa and apologize to Dean. Dean was the one who upped the ante. Dean is the one who made the choice.
Castiel assumed that it meant Dean didn't want to know.]
It wasn't my secret to tell. If Michael indicated that he intended to use the child to force your hand, I would have. But prior to you going to live with them, I didn't know that they were important to you.
( Because, until he let them be, they weren't. And by the time they burrowed into his heart, he wasn't good for either one of them. )
I remember you bringing Sam back. Bringing Samuel. You were well aware I was playing house and who I was doing it with. Don't blame me for you keeping your souls under wraps and being surprised when we didn't take it well.
That has nothing to do with why I didn't tell you about Ben. Don't you think if that was all it was about I would have played that card?
[Castiel had asked Dean to stand down, and he wouldn't. He could have pushed the buttons that he knew would get him the result he wanted and he didn't.
That time wasn't exactly the best for their relationship.]
And who's to say that you would have even believed me, for exactly that reason. I wasn't exactly high on the list of people you trusted at the time. Would you rather I wave Ben's paternity around like some kind of trump card? I am not his mother. Why should I have been the one to tell you? If Lisa didn't, I assume she had a reason.
You know, Cas, I knew all angels had dick capacity, but until now I forgot how bad you all can be.
( And if things were any lighter, he would pause and acknowledge how that sounded, but he's too pissed. )
You don't need to remind me I'm damaged goods, thanks. ( His fingers retract back into a fist, the bottom of his hand knocking against the table. ) I think we're done here.
[That wasn't what he meant, Dean. Why do you do that? But he can read the dismissal as clearly as anything else, so he sets his jaw in frustration and does as requested. He disappears.
As easily dismissed as he is summoned.
Twenty minutes later, Dean's phone begins to ring, Sam's name flashing on the caller ID.]
He's only another glass in, now sitting on the front astroturf and watching a happy foreign family in the pool down below. He knows he was cold. He knows he was the dick. He knows it's not black and freaking white.
He answers, finally. He wants to blurt out that he's entitled to how he feels. But, instead, he answers like every hunter answers. Just in case it's not Sam and someone's spoofing Sam. Freaking habit. )
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everyonelives2025-07-26 07:05 pm
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Every time the rifle kicked back.
Every time the bodies just flopped down like someone cut their strings and there was nothing animating them anymore. He'd never hurt someone before, not like that, and even though he knew they were demons, they still looked like people.
Trauma never fully processed before the memories were ripped away and replaced with something else. Something not real.
And Matt ... well, he was putting a lot of effort into not liking Matt, but he didn't deserve that.
He tries to take Dean's comment for the statement that it is. Tries to push past the way it makes him feel, to the intent behind it. That it was hard for him to let them go and let them forget him when he was the only one who had been given a choice in the matter.
Now he feels like he should have taken the opportunity for the beer when he had it, but it still feels like a bad idea.]
I get what you're trying to say. But it's kind of hard to look at it as you losing us when you were the one making all the choices.
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( And then it comes back to Rudy and the nail he hit on the head. Dean didn't deserve them. Dean didn't want to hurt them, didn't want them running, or learning a new way of life. Not becoming the traveling girlfriend of a hunter. And who knows what she even wanted. He never asked. And Ben wouldn't speak to him.
And then, Cas.
But, this isn't about Cas, or his choices or how Dean felt like he'd been backed into corner all damn year. )
Me making your mom happy, being your family --
( Sacrificing all that meant, thanks to Cas, they could live their lives. He even threatened Sam's life afterward if he ever mentioned them again. Well, deep, deep amounts of violence.
He wasn't worth all that. He was broken. With his legacy and his unrelenting attitude, alcoholism, nightmares, the brother he's saddled with but would never give up. She said it to him under the influence of the truth curse. He doesn't believe it anymore. Sam and him have their own touchstones now.
But, they will die for one another and fuck if that isn't family. )
Ben, if you wanted anything out of this. Anything at all. What is it.
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Honestly? I don't know.
[He leans back in his seat as he tries to figure out how exactly to say it.]
I was drunk when I decided to take the test. And when I took it. I think I just wanted an answer more than anything else. If it hadn't been so fucking weird, I might not have even called.
[Which feels shitty to say, but he hadn't really thought through what he would actually have done once he had the name.]
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( He gets it. And Ben's uncle is out there somewhere, sharing his body with an archangel. Not really first sit-down material. He would've found something. Dean's the stone he overturned.
This is veering off into emotional territory and he's not built for it in public. Or, at all. He's a brick wall that has to be broken down piece by piece, until he breaks and puts himself back together again. Taking out his wallet, he unfolds a twenty and puts it on the table.
Turning back, he makes the eight ball. )
I'll make the call to your grandmother.
( Get that ball rolling. He reattaches the pool cue to its' wall-mount. )
You got my number.
( He doesn't wait for Ben to object, he doesn't ask for any more time or confidence, or empty promises. This is on the kid now.
He doesn't say goodbye to Helene.
Outside, someone watches from a few cars down. He sees Dean leave from the rearview mirror and then watches him climb into that sick Impala in the side mirror. After Dean drives off, Dickerson pulls out of his unmarked car and hoofs it back down the pavement, up to the familiar bar.
Inside, he gives a look around, nods to Helene. Gives a 'Where's my boy at,' eyebrow raise, she nods toward the pool tables. He flicks his hat with his pointer finger in thanks and moves around the emptying tables.
"Was it bad," he asks. Yes, he's off early. Yes, it's because this is monumental. Just accept that you got a good guy in your court and speak up. Or, don't if that's what you want. )
*
( Dean hopes this was enough of a start. It's late to call his mom, not that she wouldn't answer. Hunters answer on the second ring. Sometimes on the first.
He buys a bottle of Jack at the corner store by his motel. Inside the room, he pulls the paper down, sets the bottle on the table, and takes a long, lingering breath. Composed. No tone. He speaks. )
Cas, I need a word.
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Nah. No, it was fine.
[It gave him a lot to think about, but it wasn't bad.]
What're you doing here? Didn't you have to work?
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[She was one hundred percent trolling for the hot goss, but they know and accept that about her at this point.]
I just ... feel like I'm still catching up. He's spent like ten years missing us, allegedly, and I'm still trying to sort through it all.
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As far as explanations go, mortal danger's a pretty rock-solid one. Not letting him off the hook, you shouldn't, but maybe that helps you process it. You feel like any progress was made?
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[That counts as progress, right? And yeah, remembering now what demons were like, how scared he was the last time he and Dean were together, he could see how Dean would think that it was better for him to forget it all ever happened.]
I don't think it was to keep us safe. I think it was more to keep him safe. But Dean is not a well-functioning human so I can't really expect him to act as a well-functioning person would.
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( Just - to keep it in perspective. Maybe he'll get there. But, maybe it helps to help him. )
Keep him safe. From what? Penetrating his non-functioning heart?
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[Ben shrugs.]
I don't know, man. I'm not going to lie, the stuff I remember from right before he left is really rough. Like I'm going to have to go back to therapy rough. Maybe he thought he was helping. But it was more for him than it was for us. If it was actually for us, he would have asked.
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( Maybe not by relationship, not all his life, he doesn't know anything. )
Just going out on a limb here. You think Dean, in his moment of crisis, was going to sit you both down, your mom, in the hospital, and you and ask if you wanted to be erased from his life. To keep you safer. And, if he did sit you down. What would the alternative have been?
( He's just trying to find the devil's advocate here. Because yes, he gets it, he gets how it looks and sounds and yeah, it's selfish, but he sees like, maybe the 10% of how selfish it is.
Still, ride or die for Ben Braeden, this one right here.
-- Wait. A second. He pulls the needle up from the record. He leans in, whispering. )
Your until now dead grandmother? Mary Winchester?
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Yep. Apparently she's not so dead anymore. That's kind of a thing with them so I try not to think too hard about it.
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( He leans against the table, crossing his arms, trying to maybe give his buddy different perspective. )
Just saying. All your feelings. Rudy-valid, you know. But. Maybe think a little harder into what he was going through then. People give up kids for adoption cause they can't be good parents. ( Early in his childhood, his father fell into that category. But they found their way together. ) If he knew you were his from the jump, yeah, I'd be pissed on your behalf. Tell him to stand ten feet away. Pass notes, be the go-between cause he wouldn't deserve you but -- I don't know, Braeden.
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He didn't think he was my dad, but I always counted him as my dad. I didn't care if we were fucking biologically related. And there were other ways to protect us that he could have tried and he didn't. He did everything he could to try and keep me away from the hunter shit, but never taught us anything to actually protect ourselves when he wasn't there because hunter Dean wasn't "good enough" for us.
[It's not the fact that he gave them up. That, Ben maybe could have handled if it was just simply a matter of him being like "I don't want to be here," and walking away. Sure, he still would have been pissed, but he would have understood.]
He put us in this glass jar and pretended to be normal, but when the jar broke, he couldn't handle it and instead of finding a way to fix it, he erased my memory and walked away. I'm not mad because he gave me up, I'm mad because my mom got fucking possessed and almost died, and his response was to take what little we did know away again. How was that fucking protecting us?
[Ben's trying not to be loud, because they are in public, but while he knows Dickerson is trying to help, there are layers to this shit sandwich that he's not interested in him defending Dean on.]
He should have told us how to have that not happen. He should have made her get the goddamn tattoo. Dean says he left because he couldn't protect us? He didn't try because all he actually did do is not be there while being the only person who actually knew anything.
[He slumps back against the chair and rubs a hand over his face.]
And yeah. Parents give kids up for adoption all the time. But if the kid is old enough, they're still allowed to be pissed about it.
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Is everything alright?
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You knew Ben was mine.
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Since that is not a question, I assume you are not looking for an answer.
[It's childish of him, but he also doesn't think that Dean is looking to have a conversation about this. Dean wants to yell at him, as the representative for all angels, so he might as well let him get it over with.
Because of course, Heaven knew. Michael was principled enough to not want to posses a child to force Dean's hand, but the rest of Heaven wasn't above using it as a manipulation tactic if needed.]
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Really. You were there, the Hell Sam and I went through with Adam. With Zachariah. Hell, they freakin resurrected him and you didn't think I needed to know there could've been another pawn on their celestial dick-Chessboard? ( He looks away, watching Cas' reflection in the TV behind them. ) You erased everything about me from his life.
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[Castiel doesn't move, doesn't sit. This conversation doesn't feel like a casual one, and he will stand and be ready for the battle that is coming. All he came to do that night was heal Lisa and apologize to Dean. Dean was the one who upped the ante. Dean is the one who made the choice.
Castiel assumed that it meant Dean didn't want to know.]
It wasn't my secret to tell. If Michael indicated that he intended to use the child to force your hand, I would have. But prior to you going to live with them, I didn't know that they were important to you.
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( Because, until he let them be, they weren't. And by the time they burrowed into his heart, he wasn't good for either one of them. )
I remember you bringing Sam back. Bringing Samuel. You were well aware I was playing house and who I was doing it with. Don't blame me for you keeping your souls under wraps and being surprised when we didn't take it well.
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[Castiel had asked Dean to stand down, and he wouldn't. He could have pushed the buttons that he knew would get him the result he wanted and he didn't.
That time wasn't exactly the best for their relationship.]
And who's to say that you would have even believed me, for exactly that reason. I wasn't exactly high on the list of people you trusted at the time. Would you rather I wave Ben's paternity around like some kind of trump card? I am not his mother. Why should I have been the one to tell you? If Lisa didn't, I assume she had a reason.
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( And if things were any lighter, he would pause and acknowledge how that sounded, but he's too pissed. )
You don't need to remind me I'm damaged goods, thanks. ( His fingers retract back into a fist, the bottom of his hand knocking against the table. ) I think we're done here.
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As easily dismissed as he is summoned.
Twenty minutes later, Dean's phone begins to ring, Sam's name flashing on the caller ID.]
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He's only another glass in, now sitting on the front astroturf and watching a happy foreign family in the pool down below. He knows he was cold. He knows he was the dick. He knows it's not black and freaking white.
He answers, finally. He wants to blurt out that he's entitled to how he feels. But, instead, he answers like every hunter answers. Just in case it's not Sam and someone's spoofing Sam. Freaking habit. )
Yeah?
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