Down in the Playground (Gen, PG)

[pixel_0]

Title: Down in the Playground

Rating: Light PG

Category: Gen oneshot

Word Count: 1106

Characters: Dean-centric, with Sam, John, and OCs

Spoilers: None

Author’s Notes: Written for prompt 6: Inferiority Complex for the psych_30 challenge.

Disclaimer: The following characters and situations are used without permission of the creators, owners, and further affiliates of the Warner Bros television show, Supernatural, to whom they rightly belong. I claim only what is mine, and I make no money off what is theirs.

 

Inferiority Complex: an individual’s belief that they are unworthy; the condition of having low self-esteem

 

 

Somewhere on the playground, a child trips, a child stumbles, falls from levels too high, and Dean watches. Watches the child topple to chubby hands and knobby knees onto jungle gym gravel. He watches, but doesn’t catch him. Cannot catch him. Cannot break from frozen limbs to run and catch himself. Catch the child that is him just years much too young as he watches his life and how he fell.

 

He stands away from the jungle gym and watches his juvenile self cry. In his pockets, his hands are sweaty, and he fingers some loose change. Change that feels like a quarter. A quarter and a nickel. Thirty cents left over from a purchase he doesn’t even remember. A purchase that probably didn’t matter. Not that much ever matters.

 

A teacher approaches himself in the child form with short, clipped strides, and her navy skirt snaps in the breeze. His name is single syllable of definite annoyance on her pursed lips. Lips that spout frustration within the construction papered and dusty white chalked walls of her classroom every day. Why is he outside? What about his schoolwork? Doesn’t he realize he’s jeopardizing his future? Doesn’t he know that he’s breaking the rules? Doesn’t he know? Understand? Doesn’t he?

 

He—younger he, not the older one standing in a fog of confusion off to the side—tries not to cry. He wipes his nose on the back of his hand, and the teacher scoffs. Scoffs at his shabby clothing, and the way his hair is cut a little bit too crooked and hangs sloppily over his watery eyes. But, he doesn’t stand like she wants, only stares at his hands curled into stone and gravel. His silence, his staring at anything but her, annoys her enough to send her turning into the school building without looking back. Let the troublemakers tend to themselves, she thinks. Let them. Just let them.

 

She does not help him to his feet.

 

His father comes to his younger self, scolding and criticizing. He shouldn’t be crying. It’s just a scrape. A scrape on the knee and a scratch on the hand. You’re better than that. Cry when there is something to cry about. I didn’t raise my son to be a crier. Do you hear me, Dean Winchester? Do you? Besides what is he doing at school anyway, when there are better things to be done at home? There’s target practice, Latin to read, this to be done and that to be finished and…and. And everything that’s not this.

 

John does not help him to his feet.

 

The other children come. They tease, and they taunt. Taunt his tears and mock his muddy face. They circle him like vultures picking off their prey, and when he buries his head into his arms on the ground to inhale the sweet scent of grass, they kick gravel on him. “Stupid boy, stupid boy,” they sing. “Stupid boy with a stupid face.” He has stopped crying now, but he keeps his head protected. His stupid face, they say. A face his mother once kissed every night before he went to bed. No one has kissed—touched, held, loved—his face since she died.

 

The children do not help him to his feet.

 

Then he is alone. The playground is completely silent, and he finally lifts his head. His young eyes see his older self standing across the quieted yard, but neither of them says anything. He wants to go to his child self, pick him up and carry him inside. Carry him inside and clean his face off, wash his hands where the gravel has gotten under the skin and let him know that everything’s going to be okay.

 

It won’t get better in the future, but it won’t be any worse. He’ll learn how to adapt, he wants to tell the little boy. He’ll remember the teachers and the kids, the ones who doubted and the ones who hated. He’ll remember his father’s words that he was never good enough, and how that pushed him to be better—stronger—than what anyone ever expected. He’ll remember, and he’ll learn, and then, even though he’ll never be the best, he’ll be okay.

 

But, Dean stands away from the boy, as if touching him will make the pain come flaring back, reminding him of what he was—what he still is beneath the layers he wears and paints and builds. The crying boy—it was him, wasn’t it? No, not wasn’t. Isn’t. The boy is not him. He has changed, he’s better than that. He—

 

He clutches his face in his hands that are no longer child chubby, but masculine callused, and he bends his head. There is nothing more for him to argue against. He knows that he still is the little boy, crying on the playground while the world does not help him to his feet. The world instead leaves him to cry in tears and gravel. Alone. So alone.

 

Then, somewhere on the playground, a child trips, a child stumbles, falls from levels too high, and Dean watches. Watches the child topple to chubby hands and knobby knees onto jungle gym gravel. He watches, and he catches him.

 

In Dean’s—no longer an adult, just a child—kid of single digit year old arms, he holds onto the boy tightly. Sam looks up at him through brown bangs and smiles. Smiles a little fearfully and hesitantly, but happily that his brother stopped him before he fell. They’re both crouched close to the ground, and as Sam slides back to the grass, Dean rises to his adolescent feet. He looks up at the sky with its full, white clouds. He thinks of the world and how it never helped him, and he thinks of all that pushed him down and ate him up.

 

So, he turns to Sam, babyish Sam still crouching on the ground and looking up at him. He turns to Sam and extends his hand, and he forces a smile through his adult mind to his childish lips.

 

Sam will never be able to understand what he feels in the shame and pain that circle around him when he lets his guard down for the slightest moment. Dean never wants Sam to feel that. He only wants Sam to feel happiness and love, the things that were stolen from them and never returned. So, even though no one ever helped him, ever cared enough to see him through the dark, Dean extends his hand, and he helps Sam to his feet.

 

As he always has. As he always will.

 

 

End

Comments

[lark_ascends]

Oh, that broke my heart. Broke, I tell you.

[pixel-0.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm so sorry. *offers glue for heart* Now we just need some happy fic for Dean to make it all better, yes? Yes. :)

Thank you very much for the feedback.