WHO: John & Mary Winchester; open to anyone awake WHERE: Winchester & co house WHEN: Tuesday, December 6; night [slightly backdated now to not conflict with the graffiti fun] WHAT: Even normal days can't always keep away the truths of the past. RATING: PG-13 for topic matter STATUS: thread; in-progress
It had been a busy day and not in the usual work way. No, today John had spent his afternoon climbing around on the roof with anyone else who had volunteered to help get the outdoor Christmas decorations up, and most of the evening inside nailing and pinning and climbing ladders until the Christmas decorations were in place. Everything, that was, except the tree. He and Mary had always left the tree for last and this year, everyone living in the house would be going to get it as a family. He could only imagine how long it would take all of them to decide on one tree, but John knew he wouldn't trade the experience. Besides, he had a plan in place in case they couldn't – buy more than one, then put the best in the main floor living room where it would be seen the most, look the 'showiest' with all the new decoration Mary had bought, some to replace or make up for years without memento decorations, and the other in the downstairs family room and let Ben go at it with the kid-geared decoration-making and decorating.
At the end of it, he was tired, but pleasantly so, and parked himself on the sofa in the family room to watch TV before heading to his room. He usually didn't like to fall asleep watching TV anymore, not since that night when falling asleep had changed his life forever, but as the time here started to ease the edges of all those old 'can't do' things, sometimes he found himself doing them, like tonight. Before the news came on, John was asleep.
But there was another reason he hated to sleep anywhere but his own room and those were the nightmares. They hadn't been many at first, the resilience of the human mind, shielding things that would prove too much during the readjustment to living, but over the weeks, they had started to show up every few nights. On a good day, he could wake and forget them and on a bad day, he could wake and remember, which had been how he recently learned how long he likely had been in Hell, but either way, the nights reliving those years of agony and torture were still bad. Tonight was no exception.