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mattzerella-sticks · 3 years

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metamorphosis

Chapter 3 (ao3)

Prologue (ao3) (tumblr)

What if, when Jack was born, he stayed a baby?

A retelling of season 13, with a few key differences.

No planned schedule, will update when I finish chapters lol

Chapter 3 - the Sacrament of Confession

“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned…”

Mia sat at her kitchen island, rivulets of wine drip and form legs like tiny, burgundy tear tracks each time she swirled her drink. Hours passed since Buddy died, since the hunters and their magical baby left with the shadow that hung over her life for the past few years, rolled up in her antique rug, and she didn’t feel like doing anything else but this. It was funny, though. With Buddy gone, Mia was free to do anything, go anywhere, and all she did with her newfound freedom was climb the few feet from her lobby to her private floor. She camped in her kitchen for hours, drinking; the empty, nearby bottle of wine was full when Mia first retrieved it, an older vintage the cashier advised her to pop open during celebrations.

She guessed this counted.

Finishing her drink, Mia pushed both empty glass and bottle to the side. She laid her hands flat against the dark, marble counter and pushed, steadying herself as she stood. The room hardly spun. It wasn’t that strong a wine, especially given her inherited tolerance. Mia chose not to waste another.

Rather, she felt like taking a lengthy soak in her bathtub. With fancy bubbles and salts mixed in the water, and scented candles perched upon pure porcelain and wooden shelves and whatever space she could find.

She needed a relaxing bath. She needed to relax. Buddy dying meant she finally could relax.

Why is it so difficult for Mia, then?

On her way towards her bathroom, the intercom buzz annoyingly sprang to life.

Mia jumped, hitting the wall at her back and rocking the few picture frames hanging there. Her chest expanded with frantic breath, mind immediately conjuring an image of Buddy, angry, leaning his whole weight on the buzzer. Soon, she calmed, reminded how that was impossible, now and forever.

She approached the intercom with more confidence, slapping the receiver in response, cutting off another round of buzzing. “Yes?”

“Hey, Doc,” a familiar voice drawled, low and raspy, “can I come in?”

Dean Winchester lapsed into a weighty silence after. He said nothing else that might clue Mia in on why he stood on her porch for the second time this evening. And as Mia learned early on, there’s a lot that can hide beneath such silence.

A troublesome thought surfaced from the depths of fear simmering in the back of her mind, cloaked in the voice of her mother, sounding like advice she passed onto Mia from her mother who learned from her mother’s mother and so on in a long line of ancestors. “Hunters only come by for one thing,” they warned, “the best thing you can do is run.”

What if Dean, despite killing Buddy, wasn’t satisfied? What if he returned for her, to make good on his earlier threats? If she let him inside, will he prove her mother and mother’s mother and so on true? Fire a bullet between her eyes in the half a second it took to open the door? Or, if she refused, would he barrel inside regardless and steal this newly returned peace from her?

Would he stand outside all night, if Mia stayed quiet like she was, and think she abandoned her practice and skipped town halfway through his question?

Already she drew out her answer too long, and either she spoke in the next few seconds or fled to her bedroom where she’d stay awake until morning, hoping he left. The latter didn’t appeal to Mia. She promised herself that she finished running. That it wasn’t what Mia wanted to do, not anymore. Mia cleared her throat and pressed her finger on the button again. “Sure. I’ll be down in a moment.”

Mia detoured, grabbing a steak knife from a drawer and hiding it within the folds of her skirt. The knife wouldn’t overpower a gun, if it came to that, but Mia might take him with her.

Hopefully Mia’s fears stayed exactly that.

Mia opened the front door slightly, peeking onto the porch through a sliver. Dean stood, his shoulders stooped from exhaustion and a haggard expression across his face that exaggerated every wrinkle on his pretty face. Quickly scanning him, she saw no sign of a weapon. She couldn’t decide if it were better or worse. Mia unfastened the final lock, fully welcoming Dean back into her home. “Dean,” she started, “what can I help you with?” Her grip tightened on the knife, sharp line of its blade shifting against her skirt’s fabric.

He shuffled towards her, Mia flinching as he did. The knife perked at her side. “Sorry,” he said, both hands rising to greet her. His open, empty palms soothed her somewhat, and weakened her hold on the knife, it wilting into her skirt. “I didn’t come here for a fight.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I…” A shudder ran through him like a summer storm, righting his posture instantly. He glanced behind him, into the waiting shadows, as if a ghost might step out of that inky blackness. “Can we talk inside?”

She owed him nothing. Still, Mia swore an oath when she accepted her diploma. As she noted during his first visit, this was a man who needed help.

Who would she be if she turned him away, hunter or not?

“Follow me,” she instructed, turning on her heel without waiting for his answer. His clacking heels let Mia know he trailed after her, from the entryway and up the stairs until she was in her kitchen again. Mia set her knife down on the island, facing Dean as she did. He snorted, raising a brow at the weapon. “What?” she huffed, “a girl can be cautious, can’t she?”

“You’d be stupid not to be.”

She rolled her eyes, “Yet here we are.”

Mia waited for Dean to respond. Instead of snagging the obvious bait, he hunkered down on one of her brass stools, shoulders hunched and fists mangling each other in a facsimile of prayer. She busied herself, setting the empty bottle nearer the sink while she washed clean her glass. Then, Mia asked Dean if he wanted anything. His non-answer meant she needlessly flipped cabinets open and shut, trying to fill a void with something other than words. Mia hadn’t much she wanted to say to Dean.

But about when Mia checked her refrigerator a third time, her mouth spat loose a question that dripped like drool past her lips and splattered everywhere by the time she realized she asked. “What you do with Buddy?”

Dean awoke, his eyes darting away from the swirling, enchanting pattern of her countertop. “Do you really care?”

A deflated no sat on her tongue, unwilling to rise from a lack of something Mia cared too little to analyze at the moment. It wouldn’t do Mia any good doing so, either. She sensed an answer that, in her current state, she might not like. Mia also recognized what Dean tried doing. Therapists smelled avoidance like vamps did blood. She glossed over his question with attempted ease, shrugging, breaking their locked gaze. “Call it being sentimental,” she said, “or curious. Whatever you feel like.”

Dean kept his judgment close to his chest but offered up what she asked for. “I dropped Sam off at the motel with… with the kid, then I took your ex past city limits. Dug a shallow grave, struck a match – that paint enough of a picture?” She nodded. “Thought so. Sorry ‘bout your rug, by the way. It was nice.”

“It was Home Goods. I’ll find another just like it.”

“Of course…”

Mia stood across from him, separated by the island. Her fingers lightly brushed the knife’s handle. “And you decided the next best place to come was back to the scene of the crime?”

“I stopped for gas in between,” he told her, “Bummed around at the Gas’n’Sip, bought some gum… not like I was dying to bother you again, or whatever.”

“But you’re here,” she pestered him, a sly smile crawling across her face as she noticed him squirming, like a worm wriggling for traction in mud. “Why?” Dean remained tight lipped. Mia pushed further. “Therapy didn’t seem like your thing earlier.”

“Therapy’s for people who have time to whine about their problems.”

“I think you’re afforded a little time,” Mia said, “especially after losing your mother.”

Dean grinned, his features stretching like saran wrap to barely conceal his frustration. “Can’t believe you bought all that crap, doc,” he laughed, “Sam and I were stringing you along. None of what he said was true.”

“So then she didn’t die a few days ago?” she asked, “And this little diversion, this hunt, wasn’t some sort of distraction from that big blowout?” Mia slid the knife towards her, studying her reflection in the blade. “It’s late, Dean. I’m tired. I’m betting you are, too. Sam sure was, only reason I could think of for why he’d spill all that to me while we were alone.”

She angled the knife Dean’s way, staring at it still. He looked furious in the silver mirror. “Did he mention anything else?”

Mia returned her gaze, arching her brow. “Was there anything else to mention?”

This contest ended with Mia the victor, Dean bowing his head in surrender. “…No. I guess there isn’t.”

A little, natty voice at her ear warned what he said was a lie. She didn’t call him on it, showing some mercy. Mia returned the knife to its drawer, her back facing Dean. “Is there anything you feel like mentioning?” Mia asked him, “About your mom… about what happened… about, hell, why you’re here?”

Her hand stayed on the knife’s handle as she kept turned away from Dean, her spine rigid and ready to snap at the first scrape of the stool. All she heard was a low exhale of a man with a lax grip on his sanity and some rustling.

“I was thinking about what you said during our… session,” he mumbled, “about how you practice. How you shift…”

Mia smiled, closing the drawer with a soft tap. She rounded the island, laying a soothing hand on Dean’s shoulder. “Is there something you want to say, that you didn’t get to?”

Dean nodded. He pulled his hand out his pocket – she hadn’t noticed it disappeared – and revealed a photograph. It was old. It was bent every which way. It was given to her with trembling hands. “If you don’t mind?”

She studied the profile, committing details to memory as the beginning pinpricks of the shift startled like morning waves lapping at her feet.

“Give me a few,” she told Dean, “I won’t be long.”

Mia retreated for her downstairs bathroom. That room was more accustomed to handling the ooze produced from her shedding. Plus, a bubble bath wasn’t out of tonight’s equation entirely. If she used the one upstairs, that wouldn’t be the case.

She slipped the photograph between the cabinet mirror and its frame, thumb tracing the profile captured there. Her body roiled with change. Her cracking bones echoed within this small space, bouncing off tiles as she changed to better fit what she saw. In the process, Mia stripped free of her clothes. Then, she peeled away her dark skin for something lighter and, by her guess, calloused.

Tiny hands doubled in size and calloused. Her jaw became squarer, stubble shadow obvious once her eyes adjusted to their new color. Mia’s hair sat flatter atop her head, lifeless.

When she dropped the last piece of dead skin into the tub, and her body fell silent as the hum inside quieted, Mia examined her appearance in the mirror. She compared what she saw with the picture. “Not bad…” she coughed, voice and octave deeper, and with a similar twang she heard Dean and Sam speak with earlier. Mia approximated this detail, like she had the height.

He looked tall, in the photo.

Mia left the bathroom, diverging briefly for the armoire in her office. She kept a few outfits inside, at least one article of clothing for each size. Her eyes caught a simple, grey button-down and a pair of jeans, not caring to put on much else.

It’s not like she’ll wear them long.

Dressed, she shuffled back towards Dean. He moved from the kitchen since Mia left, sitting on one of her sofas in the living room. Dean didn’t flinch when she stepped on a loose floorboard, though its creaking startled her enough to make a tiny gasp. Dean’s focus lingered on his lap, held there with grit and determination if his trembling shoulders were any indication.

Mia approached him with care. “Dean,” she started, voice gruff but also soft, “I’m right behind you.” She laid her hand on his shoulder, overtly aware how he tensed from his words and then again, somehow worse, once she touched him.

Dean’s head whipped around so fast she felt the breeze against her now-hairy forearms. “Wow,” he chuckled, a grim sound that didn’t rest easy, “you really look like him.” Mia moved to sit beside Dean, her hands off and in her lap. “So,” he continued, “do I call you Mia, or…”

“It’s best you speak to me as if I were the man in the photo.”

Nodding, Dean slid away from Mia, widening the distance between them. He tried meeting her gaze. She noted how his eyes stayed fixed on a point behind her. “Okay,” he said, “uh… this is… this is so weird…” It’s not an unusual reaction to this method. Mia was well accustomed to this routine, waiting, watching him cycle through his discomfort still and silent as an ice sculpture. Every patient, no matter their differing problems, responded the same. “Hey… hi,” Dean squeaked out, deflating, “dad.”

Mia’s lips thinned in response, the only cue she gave for Dean to keep talking.

Dean cleared his throat. “It’s… it’s been a while, I guess. That is – that we’re here like this. I know it’s not – you’re not… if you were you, it’d sure be a shock. What am I? Nearing forty… neither of us probably predicted that happening, did we…” He sighed, rubbing away some glistening wetness crowding his eyes. “Fuck, I don’t – I don’t know what I’m doing. Dad… Mia… I don’t – I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing here?”

He begged for an answer with pouted lips and hollow cheeks. Mia, resilient, ignored his pleas. She dipped her chin and raised her brow in practiced ease.

The combination provoked something terrifying from Dean. A wildfire tore across his face, razing the sadness and confusion. Those softer emotions flew on windswept smoke while the only thing left to see was an ugly fury.

“You want me to yell?” he asked, voice climbing higher, more frantic, “Is that it? Yell at you? Scream and rant and rave at you until I’m hoarse – because I can do that! I want to… I… I’ve wanted to, for so long.” He leaned closer to Mia, snarling, scaring her. She kept playing statue, not to comfort wounded prey but to protect herself from a rabid predator. “Swallowed so much shit, since good little soldiers didn’t talk back to their drill sergeants. Because that’s what you were. You weren’t a dad, I was. Hell, I was mom, too. I had to be both of these things while you spent every day playing hunter, chasing down the demon that killed mom. To what end? Revenge, for mom? The last thing she wanted was for any of us to get involved in this life, becoming hunters like she was… not like you’d know, since she kept that from you.” He sunk into the sofa, chest heaving, ripping breaths out of the air with deadly intent. Dean spoke, again, in a much calmer tone. His words were sharp and precise, aimed to kill. “You didn’t know who she was. You didn’t know Sam… and you sure as hell didn’t know me. All you ever were concerned about was yourself. You lied to everyone, pretending what you did was for something much more noble than it was. Justified being a shitty dad with excuses, like how hunters can’t be good parents or have childhoods, or that, when mom died, a part of you died, too…”

Dean paused for far longer than a beat, giving Mia a moment to digest what he said. Recovering from her stupor, she reached across the divide and laid a hand on Dean’s knee. “Dean…”

He jumped. “I get it,” Dean whispered, “I really do, how you must have felt after mom died. When Cas… I didn’t know I could get more broken than I already was. Seeing him there shattered what little of me there was left. And what sucks is that I can feel myself… feel myself turning into you, but also being aware of who I used to be. It’s like I’m going crazy…” Dean shook with the force of an earthquake, except nothing else in the room moved an inch. “I want to blame someone for making me like this. I want it to be you, I want this to be your fault so bad because it feels like it should… because you didn’t step up when mom was taken from us. You didn’t try to be the adult and forced that job onto a kid who wasn’t ready. You made me become a nurturer, then into a killer – now I’ve got a kid and every few seconds I’m flipping between comforting him or destroying him.” Dean sucked in a deep breath, eyes flooded and red-rimmed. “I hate Jack and I hate that I hate him, but I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to fix it. And I can’t stop thinking about you, because you sure didn’t ask for Yellow Eyes to kill mom. She made that deal… same way Cas did what he did, to protect those they loved. We were the suckers who got stuck picking up the pieces, is all.”

Dean’s trauma reminded Mia of her first shift, of skin strips peeled slowly one by one, left in a pile of blood and pus. She wiped her own teary gaze, clearing her throat. “Dean –“

“I don’t,” he talked over her, “I don’t need to hear that you’re sorry. I understand you… but I doubt I’ll ever forgive you. I just… I want to stop feeling like this, so… so full of anger and hate and venom… but empty, at the same time.” Dean sagged, shoulders drooping as he shunted the heavy baggage he carried for, what Mia guessed, decades. “This was stupid,” he said, “I shouldn’t have come here –“

“Dean,” Mia started, rising, “Wait –“

“Thanks for trying anyhow, doc,” he mumbled, scurrying towards the stairs, “I’ll see myself out.”

She stood there, letting Dean run from her home. He clambered down the steps, and when he slammed the door open Mia heard the hinges scream as they rocked from the force.

Mia sighed. Those hinges called for her. They warned that someone might take advantage of her open front door to come do harm.

Except no one could hurt her tonight. Nor would they any other night.

She stripped off the borrowed clothes she wore, marching to her bathroom naked. Mia twisted the knobs beside her faucet, hot water cascading from the spout and filling her tub. Then, she opened her mirrored cabinet for supplies: perfumes, bubble baths, a box of matches and a green cylinder of pre-rolled joints. As she closed the cabinet, her stare lingered on the features of the face she borrowed. Mia traced the edges of Dean’s father’s face, frown deepening with each passing second. “You must have been a real rat bastard when you were alive,” she said.

Mia struck a match, lighting a joint and all of the candles littered about her bathroom. She dumped a capful of bubble bath into the half-filled tub and added a few drops of perfume. Once the tub reached the inner rim, it looked like a field of bubble-shaped flowers that smelled of lavender with a waterfall she slowly eased to a trickle and then a drought.

It was the perfect environment for relaxation. Unfortunately, that was the furthest thought from her mind.

Mia, however, accepted that.

She slipped into the tub, taking a drag from her joint and huffing smoke past her lips. It clouded the past events, of Buddy’s attack and his death, of Dean Winchester’s breakdown, but didn’t fully remove them. Tonight carved itself a firm place within her mind as a turning point in her life.

And though her heart ached for Dean, wishing him luck in finding his own version of peace, Mia learned from their session.

Freedom came slowly, bit by bit, one piece of skin at a time.

Mia wasn’t sure who she’ll be on the other side of this transformation. She smiled, content with who she was now and reveling in the uncomfortableness of freedom.

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