you are here and so am i

When Dean was four years old, he was woken up in the middle of the night by a siren wail. He remembers getting out of bed, and his father placing Sammy in his arms, telling him to get to the storm cellar. He remembers sitting in the dark and rocking his little brother, waiting for his parents to come, and singing as much of Over The Rainbow as he could recall. He remembers John coming down, latching the door, and holding him and Sammy tight. He forgets hearing his mother being taken from him.

John tells him, years later, while Sammy sleeps in the back seat of the car. It’s May, just after Sammy’s twelfth birthday, and they’re speeding towards North Platte, Nebraska, after getting a call from another team of storm chasers John hasn’t scared away yet. The Harvelles have always helped them out when they needed a hand, and they’re pretty excited about the data they could get from some of the twisters that are predicted.

It’s a quiet morning, and John’s put the music on low enough that they can talk over it, but high enough that it’ll lull Sammy to sleep. Kid’s getting older and needs more sleep, even if he’s still small enough to stretch out across the back seat, shoes off and feet barely sticking out of the window. He’s taken to stealing Dean’s plaid shirts and using them as a pillow, preferring the smell of Old Spice to John’s aftershave. He’s a good kid, the best brother Dean could ask for.

John waits until Sam’s snuffling into Dean’s plaid shirt, covered in a blanket Ellen probably hid under the back seat a while back, before he starts talking. “I know Sam’s been asking about it, why we’re always driving around, and you don’t know what to tell him. I don’t know how much you remember from that night, son, but I figure it’s about time I talked to you about it.”

Dean stays quiet, and it’s not long before John starts talking again, pain lacing his words. “About six months after Sam was born, a tornado set down just outside of Lawrence, in the middle of the night. It was November, I remember that much, so it was unusual for the time of year. We didn’t have much of a warning system then, and nobody was really keeping an eye out for it. The siren started just a couple of minutes before it reached us.”

John coughs a little and takes a drink from a can of Pepsi, clearing his throat a little. “I’d been fixing the hinges on the storm cellar that day, your mom had been telling me to do it for ages. I remember seeing it open and telling you to take Sam and get there. I feel like your mom must’ve known something was going to happen, she’d been after me for weeks to fix those hinges. I was running out of the house towards the cellar with her when she turned back.”

A horn blares behind them, Bobby’s van signaling a turn, and John makes a turn to keep the Impala on the 83 instead of getting on the 20. Dean looks in the back seat to check on Sammy, but he’s still fast asleep. John checks the rear-view mirror and smiles briefly before focusing back on the road.

“I can’t remember what she went back for. Might’ve been one of Sam’s toys, might’ve been something of yours. I can’t remember, but I remember holding the cellar door open and waiting for her. And I remember hearing her scream before that man in the truck drove straight through the house. He might’ve been drunk, or just scared, but he drove right through the house. Police said they’d found a kerosene lamp, and that probably started the fire.”

Dean’s been quiet this whole time, piecing together what he remembers with what John’s told him, and remembers hearing his mom scream, remembers holding Sammy close and singing louder to keep him calm. He stares at the map of Nebraska and blinks back tears. John turns to look at him for a moment or two, his eyes flicking between his son and the road.

“If we’d have better warning, if someone had been watching for it, we probably would’ve had more time to get to safety. Your mom would still be alive. But we didn’t, and I want to change that. So the next time Sam asks, you can tell him that we’re out here, chasing these fucking things down so what happened to us doesn’t happen to anyone else. So no one else knows what it’s like, to see fear and the finger of God take someone you love away from you.”