Christine (spaghettitoes) wrote in spaghettific, @ 2011-05-08 22:29:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | jimmy novak, rating: pg, supernatural |
Supernatural Fic
Title: Finding Faith
Fandom/Characters/Pairings: Supernatural: Dean, Castiel, Jimmy, the Novaks.
Word Count: 1, 614 (yeah, couldn’t I find just one more word?)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A kid called Jimmy starts hearing things; he should find this more disturbing but if you can walk through fire unharmed it must mean something.
Warnings: Pre-canon, children doing dangerous things – don’t try this at home kids!
Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with Supernatural or CW but y’know that’s easily corrected if you’re interested.
Jimmy Novak found faith at the age of thirteen.
The only child of an accountant and a kindergarten teacher Jimmy had been raised agnostic, baptized to placate his grandparents but church forgotten and prayers overlooked at meal times. When Jimmy was seven he decided the stories his grandmother told about Jesus were just that, stories. He would have no time for religion from that moment on, setting his sites firmly on the good work of G.I. Joe.
* * *
In the summer of 1988 Jimmy and his family drove to
The music had stopped more than five minutes before he woke for the third time and Jimmy’s walkman clicked static on loop as it waited for him. All conversation exhausted the rumble of the tires on the road was the only sound. Jimmy jumped up, pulling his headphones off instinctively to look at his Walkman in horror.
“Hello sleepy head.” Jimmy’s mother peered over her shoulder, her smile fading when she saw his face, “What’s wrong?”
“I just…” Jimmy looked to the Walkman, still trying to play a finished tape and habitually stopped it. “I heard something….shouting. It…it was…”
“It was a dream.” She returned her attention to the windscreen, “I’d have bad dreams if I listened to that music.”
Jimmy settled into his seat properly, looking out the window but letting his vision blur as he focused on the three words that occupied his mind.
Keep him safe.
* * *
Jimmy had little interest beyond the pizza cooling beside him while they waited outside the manager’s office. His mother slipped out and gave his father the room key before she returned to finish paying. Both Jimmy and his father frowned at the man who held the door for her and watched her walk back into the office.
“Come on kiddo-” His father turned the car towards a parking space and their room for the evening, “-that pizza’s making me damn hungry.”
Their room had something resembling a dinner table so Jimmy sat himself and the pizza at it before his father urged him back outside to help with the suitcases.
“We don’t need all this for a stop-over.” Jimmy sighed, tugging the suitcase once then reassessing its weight, “I don’t think anyone’s gonna steal a ton of Mom’s creams either.”
“Just bring it inside.”
Carrying two cases his father strode confidently towards the room and Jimmy cursed the slow progress of his development as he dragged the case out of the trunk with both hands and lowered it to the ground. Stretching up to close the boot Jimmy saw another car park across the lot; it was black and sleek, the kind of car his Dad would scoff at from their station wagon.
Two little kids, road tired and grumpy, tumbled out of the car after their father. The older carried a duffle bag bigger than the brother whose hand he tugged on supportively but Jimmy ignored them. Instead he looked angrily at their father, certain that, should the man look around, he would know that you don’t leer at a man’s mother.
Keep him safe.
There was no mistaking it for a dream this time, no pretending. With the words Jimmy’s eyes darted back and forth, not for the source but for the target. When the older brother dropped his bag, his expression sullen and more worn than a kid’s should be, Jimmy heard the voice again.
Keep him safe.
* * *
A cascade of thoughts and words ran through Jimmy’s mind as he mechanically ate his pizza, attention focused hazily on the window of their motel room. In the background his father fussed over his distance while his mother coddled him, asked what else could be expected of putting a child on the road for so long. Jimmy knew, whether it was the incomprehensible voice occupying his mind or simple empathy, he knew the expression of a kid who had seen too much highway.
Jimmy was guided through the rest of the evening by his mother and habit: nudged into the bathroom, t-shirt tugged at until he begrudgingly changed for bed. He was folded in blankets and looking blankly at the ceiling when his parents did the same. While they slept softly he twisted under the covers and looked to the window again, wondering if his mind would break under the weight on it.
Silence and sleep came in unison until the darkest hours of the morning. Woken by the same three words, louder and clearer than before, Jimmy acknowledged only the number two on the clock and then the cold, hard ground on his bare feet.
The boy, his expression determined if lacking confidence, was out of his family’s room and hurrying through undergrowth and the miscellany of the motel that escaped Jimmy’s understanding. He followed the boy anyway, without thinking or questioning himself. Jimmy’s attention was so focused, his mind narrowed in on the boy and those three overwhelming words, that he had no inclination to question why the cold didn’t nip his arms and legs, how his bare feet moved over wood, gravel and brush without a twinge of pain.
Jimmy found the boy in an abandoned house, the lights of the motel flickering far behind them. Watching through a window, his heart a steady racing beat and his mind inexplicably calm, Jimmy watched the vague form that the boy fought with.
A ghost. Jimmy wanted to laugh: a little kid with a crow bar facing down a ghost on his own in the middle of nowhere. But there was no laughter, only the rush of a voice he couldn’t comprehend and the knowledge that this boy needed his help. The being inside the house screamed in anger at the confrontation, rolling angrily around the room leaving fire like footprints on everything it touched.
Jimmy moved to go inside as the encounter spilled into another room. He didn’t need the voice to tell him any more; keep him safe was knitted with the very fibre of his being and Jimmy knew, with a certainty he had never considered possible before, that this boy’s life was in his hands.
The being, the spirit, the ghost shot from the room when Jimmy entered. It threw itself through the ceiling, sending aged timbers falling broken to the ground and burning. Jimmy’s ward was trapped behind them, already brought to his knees by smoke and anxiously looking for some way to escape.
There was no clawing ache in Jimmy’s lungs, he was barely aware of the thick, choking smell that filled the air. When he reached down and gripped the fallen beams there was no heat, the wood seemed to move away like chopsticks from a plate and he tossed them aside carelessly. Unconscious, the boy could be picked up like a rag doll and he sprawled in Jimmy’s arms, limp and small.
As he carried the boy outside all Jimmy thought about, flames licking needlessly at his limbs, was how very small the boy was beneath his thick jacket and layers of clothes. Not even ready for middle school and already he looked tired of everything.
The motel parking lot was in view when the boy stirred, coughing and jumping until Jimmy had no choice but to set him on the ground. The boy stood up amidst the dust and looked questioningly at Jimmy. The boy’s expression was plain confusion and Jimmy looked down at himself - bare feet black with dirt and ash, ill-fitting shorts billowing in the slightest breeze and Alf t-shirt embarrassingly proud – and decided that he had to agree with his charge.
“Don’t tell my Dad.” The boy looked anxiously at Jimmy, too grateful to make his request a demand but a resistance to trust trained into him.
Jimmy shook his head slowly and a smile momentarily creased the boy’s face before he turned and ran back to his cabin.
* * *
Swiftly opening curtains sent a blast of sunlight to Jimmy and woke him from sleep. He washed and dressed in a hurry, paying no attention to his parents as they discussed the day’s drive ahead of them. He dutifully followed them from the room, looking inquisitively at the foot prints on the carpet while chomping into a breakfast roll. He slumped into the car, the familiar surroundings of the parking lot slowly settling into his mind and reawakening memories.
Jimmy had the rest of the drive to contemplate the previous night’s events, his mind his own again. His parents said nothing, passing concerned glances frequently but leaving him to look out the window in silence. When they arrived at the holiday house both were too pleased to hear him speak to refuse him time alone to explore.
Jimmy left the house with confidence: striding, almost running, down the street to the church he had seen on the drive in. He rushed to the very front, dropping to his knees at the alter with his hands clasped together. When the priest arrived Jimmy told him everything.
* * *
Jimmy didn’t hear the voice again for twenty years but when he did we was ready. The words were louder, the message clear.
Child of God – Save him