Supernatural Fan Fiction ❯ Out of the Mouths of Babes ❯ Interlude ( Chapter 3 )

Author's Note: This chapter is…sadly devoid of Boyish Adorableness. In fact, Sam and Dean are not in this chapter at all—hence my choice of titles. But it does have some information, so I suggest that you just get through it as fast as you can and then the next chapter WILL see a return of our boys.

 

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Chapter 3

 

<Flashback—Seven Years Ago>

 

“Mother, look! Look! I found a heartflower!” Ryuji said excitedly, running up to his mother, who was sitting demurely at the pristine glass table in the corner of the garden.

 

She smiled down at him and lifted him into her lap, hugging him to her.

 

“It's very pretty,” she said, laughing her silvery little laugh. “And very lucky. Go ahead, make a wish.”

 

Ryuji smiled at her, and then closed his eyes, twirling the flower in his little fist, and made his wish.

 

It was then that he felt his mother's entire body tense.

 

Curious, and a little alarmed—well, to the extent that any three-year-old can be alarmed, anyway—Ryuji opened his eyes and looked to see what was the matter.

 

There was a man in the garden with them now.

 

He was tall, and thin, and he had close-cropped black hair and a decidedly handsome face. And he was watching Ryuji's mother steadily, intently, in a way that made Ryuji afraid.

 

“Mother,” he whispered in a perfectly audible tone. “Who's that?”

 

His mother stared at the stranger, looking troubled, and maybe a little…fearful?

 

But no, that couldn't be….Mother wasn't afraid of anything…

 

“I don't know,” his mother said, for his ears alone. “But I think you should go inside now.”

 

“But…”

 

“Now, Ryuji,” she repeated, and suddenly Ryuji saw the wisdom in obeying her.

 

<The Next Day>

 

Ryuji's mother wasn't at breakfast the next morning, and his father said she was ill.

 

“She won't be leaving her bed today,” he said, his handsome, pale face stern as usual, “but I think a short little visit from her son would cheer her up very much.”

 

Ryuji found this very agreeable, and the moment he finished eating he set off for his mother's room, while his father left the house to do whatever mysterious things he and Mother did all day while Ryuji stayed home and played with his nurse.

 

But when Ryuji reached his mother's room, he found the door locked, and someone already in the room—a man with a voice of finest silk.

 

That voice was like the strongest magnet, and Ryuji pressed his ear to the door to listen.

 

“…Don't expect your services free. I'll make it worth your while.”

 

“You don't understand.” That was Ryuji's mother, but he hardly recognized her voice—it was so hollow, weak. “I can't. I would be found out—I'm not good at hiding things…”

 

“I can help. You'll learn, and you'll be very accomplished. There's no need to worry about that.”

 

“But…I…I can't leave my son…”

 

This time the man laughed, but not with mirth. “Please, don't act like I'm a fool. You never even wanted a child.”

 

“That's not…”

 

“If I remember correctly,” the man continued, “you considered taking its life in the womb.”

 

“His. It's a he—my son. And I love him, very much.”

 

Ryuji smiled at hearing it, but the man didn't sound so happy.

 

“No, you don't. You pretend you do. You fool others into thinking you do. You wish you did, and feel terrible about the reality—but it is reality, and inescapable.”

 

“Please,” Mother said quietly, “stop.”

 

“You know the truth,” the man said ruthlessly. “You know it, and you wish for a way to get rid of the boy. I can give you that. All I want in return is your people fighting on my side.”

 

The pause that followed the words was much too long, and Ryuji fled.

 

<Two Years Later>

 

Something was wrong with Mother.

 

It had become…obvious, more so over time. She'd gone bitter, like some drink that was too old. She didn't play with her son anymore, and hardly spoke but to scold or yell or argue. Sometimes she didn't even come home at night.

 

For a time, Ryuji swore up and down that she was not his mother, that she only looked like mother but was in fact someone else. But at four years old, he'd mentioned it to his father, and in the resulting explosion he'd promised never to even think it again.

 

But that didn't change the fact that something was wrong, and soon after his fifth birthday, Ryuji found out what.

 

Found out more than he'd never wanted to know, actually.

 

<1983—The night of The Fire>

 

Ryuji was sneaking to the kitchen when he heard the yelling, and none of the words made any sense to his sleepy little mind, but he listened anyway.

 

“Come now, what's wrong?”

 

Ryuji felt a shiver shot through him—he'd never forgotten that voice, and doubted that he ever would.

 

“What's wrong?!”

 

That was Mother, and she sounded exactly the same—that was the voice she'd used when speaking to him all the time lately.

 

“What's wrong is that we've just killed a human!”

 

“You did nothing. I did all of the work. Doesn't that satisfy your conscience?”

 

“I was there! I put the man to sleep! I made it impossible for him to save her. Humans and Elves have always gotten on splendidly—well, when they know about us, at least—and now I've taken a human life. I helped you kill Mary Winchester. And for what? So you can maybe, someday, if you get lucky, have one general in an army of thousands?”

 

“It was needed. It will have a great impact on the coming war. Our war.”

 

“No,” Mother said staunchly. “Not our war. No longer.”

 

“Why, what do you mean?” the man said with exaggerated surprise.

 

“I never agreed to this, Azazel. Never.” A pause, as if to gather strength. Then…“I want out.”

 

“Hmm,” the man said calmly. “That could be quite difficult to arrange. We do have a deal.”

 

“Not anymore. The deal is off. You will not have the Elves' help in your war. I'll find my own way to deal with Ryuji and regain my husband's attention, without your help. Now leave.”

 

“You want to sever our alliance. Truly?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Very well.”

 

Even hidden as he was, Ryuji felt a sense of release, and felt relieved knowing the evil man with the pretty voice was gone.

 

The relief was to be short-lived.

 

The Queen of the Elves was found dead the next morning.

 

XXX

 

The story said “suicide,” and five-year-old Ryuji was the only person in all the Elven lands who knew the truth—who knew the danger. He wanted so badly to tell a grown-up, to take this awful burden from his tiny shoulders, but there was no one to tell. His father was in deep mourning, and insensible with grief besides. He wouldn't even look at his son, let alone come out of his bedroom, or speak to anyone.

 

And all the other options were just…not good enough.

 

Luckily, Elves had long since turned waiting into an art form, and so Ryuji decided to do just that—wait for a better time. No matter how long it took—and even so young he knew it would be a long time.

 

For the next five years, things deteriorated. The government was taken over by Ryuji's uncle, his father's brother, and Ryuji began to give up hope in the Elven King ever recovering from his grief by the time he turned nine. He hadn't even seen his father in almost a year—he was cared for, his lessons taught, entirely by a set of nurses and educators who came in and out all day, every day.

 

It was a difficult time for everyone, but it was hardest for poor Ryuji. At nine years old, he had no friends, no siblings, virtually no family—but he did have an exceptionally heavy burden to carry, and no way to rid himself of it. And the fact that there was no sign of danger yet only made it worse.

 

And every day, the load got heavier and heavier, until he woke up on the morning of his tenth birthday and couldn't take it anymore.

 

XXX

 

His father was lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling, his fingers drumming an irregular tattoo on the sheets next to him. He didn't look any better than he had in years, but at least he didn't look any worse, either. He did look as if he wasn't quite there, but then he always looked that way nowadays, and it was entirely possible that he could indeed hear and understand what was going on around him.

 

Ryuji wasn't really sure what he was supposed to do. He hadn't actually seen his father alone since his mother died, let alone spoken one-on-one with him. But as he was ten years old, the solution seemed fairly simple to him, and after a couple of seconds he sat down at the bedside and began to talk.

 

Over the course of half an hour, he laid out the whole story, from beginning to end, leaving nothing out. And the entire time, his father didn't so much as blink. Even at the part where Ryuji said he thought his mother had not committed suicide, after all.

 

Finally, though, Ryuji finished the painful story, and he waited with infamous Elvish patience for some sort of reply.

 

He sat there well into the night, and the reply never came.

 

After many hours, Ryuji got up and left the room, and as he did, he realized that he was completely alone in this. He'd tried to speak to his uncle before talking to his father, and failed miserably. And there really was no one else.

 

So that left him the only one to help his father.

 

<The Next Night>

 

It was a custom, dating back to antiquity, that Elven graves were put in the cemeteries of humans, and buried in the human manner. No one had ever explained the tradition to Ryuji, and he thought that maybe even the grown-ups had forgotten why, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that Ryuji's mother was buried in the human city of Baltimore—just a step or two outside the Elven dimension, the nearest one to home—and he was determined to get there.

 

He had never actually traveled between the Elven and human lands before, but he'd seen it done, and it really wasn't any more difficult than opening a door and stepping through. The change in surroundings was a bit disorienting, but still it was only an hour or two before he was kneeling in front of his mother's grave.

 

He sat there for a long, long time, his mind blank, simply having no idea what to do now. He'd run away from home determined to find a way to make his father better, but only now did he realize that he didn't know how. Who could possibly help him?

 

So, at long last, he simply decided to sleep, because he was very tired and, lest it be forgotten, only a child, after all.

 

So he curled up in the cold, next to the grave, burrowed into and under the human clothes he'd borrowed from a shop down the street—to hide his true nature as well as to keep warm—and he fell asleep.

 

It was there was John Winchester found him, and that was how he ended up in a motel room in Baltimore with a man he didn't know—until he'd seen the Book. Only then did he realize it.

 

This was Mary Winchester's husband.

 

This was the man whose wife Ryuji's mother had helped to kill.

 

He only wished he knew what that meant for him, and for his family.

 

<End Flashback>

 

After Ryuji finished his story, John Winchester stared at him for a long, long time. He didn't look angry, or sad, or puzzled, or…anything, and when he finally spoke all he said was, “I need to think about this.”

 

Ryuji was pretty sure this was a dismissal, and took it as such. He had always heard that humans were…very abrupt.

 

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Author's Note 2: The flashbacks were fragmented, vague, and confused, I realize this. But if you think about it, it does make sense, since the story was being told from the perspective of a little kid and all. So, needless to say, there's still some explanations to come.

 

And I know, I know, the wait was long, the chapter was not, and we have seen NO Sam interaction in the story yet, and it's already chapter four, but I promise the next chapter will have plenty—when it comes out.

 

In the meantime, go to the nearest newsstand and pick up the first ever issue of Supernatural Magazine! That's right—a magazine dedicated solely to the guys we love and adore, available at any good American retailer. (Having read this magazine cover to cover, I can assure you that it's a good buy…)