Toy Soldiers, for awkwardjonas (gen, PG-13)

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Title: Toy Soldiers
Author: ignipes / Janis Joplin
Recipient: awkwardjonas
Rating: PG-13
Notes: 2500 words. Thanks to krisomniac for the beta help. Spoilers through the end of season two.
Summary: After they leave that graveyard in Wyoming, Ellen and Bobby talk about the Winchester boys.

~
Ellen let the call ring through to voicemail, but when it answered she hung up without saying anything. She stared at the phone for a few seconds, then dropped it on the kitchen table and stood up. The coffee in her mug was stone cold, and the pot on the counter was empty.

She heard Bobby's footsteps on the creaking wooden floor before he spoke. "No luck?"

Ellen shrugged. "Not yet. She does this sometimes." She rinsed the coffee pot and measured out the grounds, set the filter in place and flipped the switch. "I just don't want her to hear it through the grapevine before she hears it from me."

It wasn't exactly something you could leave on voicemail: Jo, honey, it's your Mom. Look, our place is blown up and a lot of our friends are dead and the doorway to Hell was open for a little bit last night letting all kinds of nasty critters out into the world, so if you could give me a call back I'd sure appreciate it. Love you, sweetie. Bye-bye. Ellen was telling herself not to worry; it felt like an eternity, but it had only been about twenty-four hours since she'd first called Jo. It was just like Jo to give it a while before calling back. Nothing to worry about.

Bobby put a stack of books on the table and sat down heavily. There was a fine layer of dust on the bill of his hat and his hands were smudged dark, like he'd been rummaging around in an old attic rather than his own library. Ellen took another coffee mug out of the cabinet.

"You tell her to come on out here when you get a hold of her," Bobby said. "It's safe here. Safe as it is anywhere."

"Thanks," Ellen said. "Not that it'll do any good. Can't exactly tell that girl what to do anymore."

"Kids," Bobby grumbled.

Ellen looked out the window over the sink and hid a smile. Bobby was sincere in his offer, no doubt about that, but he couldn't hide the little bit of grudging surrender in his voice. Forty years or more of keeping his own company with nobody but the dogs to bother him, and now he was playing host to one homeless saloonkeeper and two damaged boys, not to mention his phone ringing off the hook as word of what happened in Wyoming spread across the country. Hunters were solitary folk, suspicious bastards to the last, but if there was something big going down, they always wanted to know what was going on. Whether it was so they could duck and run or stand and fight, that depended on the person, but Ellen figured that's the way it was with people everywhere.

The coffee pot gurgled and spat the last of the steaming water, and she poured two cups. Black, strong, not quite as good as a shot of whiskey would be but it would have to do. "Speaking of kids," she said, handing one mug to Bobby, "where are Sam and Dean? I haven't seen 'em all day."

"Out," Bobby said. "Around."

Ellen raised an eyebrow and leaned against the kitchen counter. "You gonna make them help you with that?" she asked, nodding toward the stack of books on the table.

"Help with what?" Bobby sipped his coffee and looked at her guilelessly.

But Ellen had known Bobby too long, and it didn't take much to notice that there was something strange about the way Sam and Dean were acting. She saw it in the graveyard after they killed the demon and closed the crypt, during the short conversation before the long drive home, and stumbling into Bobby's house beat down and exhausted in the early hours of the morning: Dean reaching out to touch Sam like he thought he might vanish in a puff of smoke, Sam glancing at Dean when Dean wasn't looking like he couldn't decide if he wanted to laugh or cry, and both of them refusing to say a damn thing that meant anything once they'd left that Wyoming cemetery in the rear view mirror. Shared looks and nods of their heads, that silent communication they did so well, and they'd vanished as soon as they got to Bobby's place.

"Bobby," Ellen said, "give me a little bit of credit for not being a fool. I heard what that kid said to Sam in the graveyard, and now it's got you searching through every damn book about demons written in three languages. What the hell did those boys do?"

Bobby had a cagey look about him, like he was thinking of not answering, but he sighed and sat back in his chair, shaking his head. He looked tired, tired and worn down, the kind of exhaustion even a good night's sleep and a pot of coffee couldn't fix. "They're just doing what their daddy taught them," he said finally.

Ellen fixed him with a pointed glare. "That don't exactly answer my question," she said.

He looked up at her then, a stubborn look she knew well, and he said, "It ain't my question to answer."

She was afraid he'd say that, but she hadn't really expected anything different. When all was said and done, never mind that he was a conman and liar and all the rest, Bobby Singer was a man of honor. He wasn't about to go spilling somebody else's secrets.

"Let me guess," she said. "That Dean did something real stupid." She took her mug over to the table and sat across from Bobby. Truth be told, there were a number of ways a boy could go from having a knife in his spine to walking around hale and hearty the next day, and Ellen didn't like a single one of them. For a second she thought about calling up Ash and having him pull together some information, but like a punch in the gut she remembered the smoldering pile of rubble and tangle of stupid blonde hair, and she had to close her eye tight, concentrate on breathing, listen to the steady tick of Bobby's kitchen clock and let the feeling pass.

When she opened her eyes again, Bobby was still watching her, still waiting and sipping his coffee. He said, "He's a good kid."

"I didn't say he wasn't," Ellen replied, "just that I figure he did something stupid. He's too much like his daddy, the crazy bastard."

Bobby raised his eyebrows under his ball cap. "Too much," he agreed, "and maybe not enough, in some ways."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"John Winchester may have been a crazy bastard, but you can't say he had many doubts about whether he was doing some good in this goddamned fight." Bobby spun his coffee mug around on the table and went on, "Even when a little bit of doubt would've been better for everybody all around."

Ellen snorted. "That's one way of putting it." She thought about Dean as she'd first seen him: anger and grief he couldn't hide, sure, but there was still that stubbornness, that same damn Winchester charm that had drawn Bill away from home and never brought him back, all those years ago. She never really figured doubt was part of the equation.

Then she thought about her phone ringing day and night, Dean's panicked voice on the other end, saying he'd lost his brother just like he'd lost his dad, and she thought that maybe she'd been figuring wrong.

"Boy sure loves his family," she said. She wondered, not for the first time, just how many people Dean actually knew outside of his family. He'd latched onto her as an ally quickly enough, and just from talking to him it was pretty clear Sam was the only real friend he had in the world. "Especially that brother of his."

Bobby looked at her like she'd just said, "sky sure is blue" or "demons sure are nasty fuckers," but he smiled and shook his head. "First time I ever met those boys," he said, "back in, I dunno, must've been eighty-eight, eighty-nine. John had been 'round a few times before, but never with them, and this time he drops by hot on the tail of a revenant over in Pierre. Asked me if I didn't mind watching his sons for a day or two while he hunted the thing down."

Ellen rolled her eyes. "He asked you to babysit?"

"Course I minded—what the hell do I know about kids?—but I said sure thing, I think I can manage. I've handled demons, how hard can it be to watch a couple of boys?"

"Then you really don't know anything about kids," Ellen said.

Bobby grinned. "But that's the thing. They weren't no trouble at all. Lively as hell, sure, but give 'em a couple of dogs to chase and some old cars to play in and they were happier than pigs in shit. It seemed to me..." Bobby hesitated, and his smile faded. "Seemed to me maybe they weren't used to being let run loose like that. First day, they were all 'yessir' and 'nosir' and waiting to be told what to do. Little Sammy just followed his big brother around everywhere he went, doing everything he did. Hero-worship. Some things don't change much with time."

Ellen smiled slightly. Maybe things changed and maybe they didn't, but Bobby had known the boys a long time, long enough to know the way of things.

"And Dean," Bobby went on, "well, he never stepped a toe out of line, never complained about anything. Didn't even seem like he thought about it."

Eighty-eight or eighty-nine the boys would have been about six and ten, Ellen guessed. She thought of Jo at ten years old, talking back as sure as she'd open her mouth and breaking every rule just to see what would happen.

"I see," she said slowly. And she did, maybe for the first time since she'd met the John's son, that dusty afternoon that brought guns raised and confusion all around in her empty roadhouse. She understood well enough to direct a silent scolding in the direction of John Winchester's dead soul, may he rest in peace. "I guess maybe nobody ever told John that a drill sergeant ain't the same thing as a father."

"Guess not," Bobby agreed. "I reckon he knows it now, though." He raised his coffee mug and glanced upward, a silent toast to wherever-he-might-be.

"Better late than never, I suppose." Ellen had never known John's wife Mary, never knew anything about the woman that had set him on his hunt all those years ago, but she hoped wherever they were, reunited with the harps and angels and all the rest, the woman was giving her husband an earful in the way only an outraged mother could.

Those boys, too brave and stubborn and goddamned determined for their own good, they'd finally finished their father's mission, finally destroyed the monster that ruined their lives, but the cost—well, you couldn't take back a ruined life, couldn't start over again just because there was one less demon in the world. Ellen wondered if John had ever thought about that, ever realized that by teaching his boys to hunt he was setting them on a path they could never leave.

The boys knew it, of that she had no doubt. They knew there was always going to be more work needing done.

"Crazy bastard," Bobby said, like he knew exactly what she was thinking.

She and Bobby sat in silence for a few minutes, two tired souls getting too old for this end-of-the-world shit, while a patch of sunlight crept across the kitchen floor and the prairie wind picked up outside. There were demons out there, demons and restless souls, creeping through the world with death and havoc on their minds, but in the South Dakota sunlight that cold crypt and all the fury of hell seemed awfully far away.

"You think you can help them?" Ellen asked finally.

"Might be." Bobby glanced down at his books, his expression turning thoughtful. "It's been done before. It'll take..."

"What'll it take?" Ellen asked shrewdly.

"It'll take some doing," Bobby said with a shrug, "but there's a chance."

"A chance." That didn't sound like much, and Ellen wished to hell Bobby would just tell her what was going on. She'd have to corner one or both of the boys when they came back. Sam would be the best bet, if it was Dean's stupid mistake they were set to fix. She didn't know if she could help them, but she could try. She didn't know Sam Winchester all that well, he was a hard kid to figure and didn't seem to know himself all that well either, but she knew enough to know he wasn't going to let a debt like his brother saving his life go unpaid.

"Well," Bobby said, "let's just say that if I was a—that I wouldn't want those two boys gunning for me, no matter what the rules are."

That was an interesting way of putting it, but before Ellen could push him further there were heavy footsteps on the porch outside and the door of Bobby's house swung open; the boys were back. They came into the kitchen looking a little bit windblown, a lot subdued, exhaustion obvious in the slope of their shoulders and lines of their faces.

Sam glanced at the books on the table, then at Bobby, while Dean pointedly ignored both and said to nobody in particular, "We're heading into town for groceries. Y'all need anything?"

Bobby grunted a no and Ellen shook her head, and Dean left the kitchen again, quickly as he had come in, not another word to say. Sam trailed after him, looking over his shoulder just once, and that look he gave might've been something between an apology and promise, then he was gone too. The door slammed in the wind and outside that old car rumbled to life.

When the sound of tires crunching on gravel faded, Bobby pulled one of his old books closer and opened the cover. "One thing I know for sure," he said, not looking up from the dusty, yellowing pages, "it's a lot harder to kill two men than it is to kill one."

Common sense, Ellen thought, least it should be, but hunters were a funny folk. John Winchester had thought that his boys were his weakness, that he was better off hunting on his own, and all that got anybody was a whole lot of unanswered questions and whole lot more bad feelings. But whatever other trouble they got into, Ellen was willing to bet all she was worth—whatever that was, thanks to the insurance company and bullshit stories about gas leaks—that John's sons wouldn't be making that same mistake any time soon.

"Maybe a chance is all we need," she said.

Bobby turned a page in his book and didn't answer.

Ellen drained the last of her now-cold coffee and stood up, poured another cup, and went to call her daughter again.