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Do you think that because I am poor, plain, obscure, and little that I am soulless and heartless? I have as much soul as you and full as much heart. And if God had possessed me with beauty and wealth, I could make it as hard for you to leave me as I to leave you... I'm not speaking to you through mortal flesh. It is my spirit that addresses your spirit, as it passes through the grave and stood at God's feet equal. As we are.
“Mr Winchester, a word, if you don’t mind.”
Dean does mind, and if this were some sucky high school movie someone would create a diversion, or fake a headmaster announcement, or something. His eyes flicker around the classroom as he puts his battered notebook back inside his bag, but, of course, no one is paying him any attention. Because, well, this is real life, not a shitty movie, and he doesn’t have any friends.
“Whatever,” he mutters, and then straightens up, sees his own done with this shit expression mirrored on Mrs Keating’s face, forces himself to smile. “I meant, sure, professor.”
He takes another two minutes to fiddle with his things, but he knows it doesn’t look convincing. All he has in his bag is the notebook (dog-eared and almost blank), two pens (both bitten off at the end), a bottle of holy water (obviously) and a folding umbrella which hides a nine inches silver blade (it’s unlikely he’ll need it, but it’s never bad to be prepared).
When the last student (Paul Greens, and isn’t he a pathetic little loser - fucking quarterbacks, they’re all the fucking same) disappears in the crowded hall, Mrs Keating stands up from her desk and shuts the door behind him.
“Mr Winchester, we really need to talk about your essay.”
“What about it?”
Mrs Keating gives him the glare of death and looks down at the paper in her hand. She’s an older lady, still okay looking, and always dressed rather inappropriately for her age, which is one of the reasons Dean doesn’t dislike her all that much. Today, for instance, she’s sporting a pair of purple jeans which must be twenty years out of date and an old Rolling Stones t-shirt. Her brown hair, slightly greying at the temples, is pulled back in a messy bun.
In this pristine classroom (because for once they’ve hit the bloody jackpot, this is sort of a fancy school, Sammy keeps jabbering on about the science lab, and the computer lab, and the whatever the fuck lab, and even Dean has to admit that studying in a place where the windows actually close isn’t a bad thing, it being december and all that), Mrs Keating looks particularly out of place, even more so than Dean himself, with his leather jacket and his badly-cut hair.
Dean looks down for a second to hide his smile, and then schools his expression back into his practiced couldn’t give a shit frown. Mrs Keating glances at him and matches it before taking a step closer to his desk and adjusting her glasses.
“My name is Dean Winchester,” she reads. “I don’t care about politics, I don’t care about God, and if you play football I’ll probably end up punching you in the face. I’m okay with demons but I’m scared of flying. I should probably be on antipsychotics, but, well, live as if you’ll die today, and all that.”
She looks up at Dean and frowns.
“The essay I assigned was Gender and Stereotype: Re-reading Jane Eyre.”
“So?”
“So I fail to see what your fear of flying has to do with that subject.”
And this is what he doesn’t like about Mrs Keating, Dean thinks, suddenly uneasy. He’s been here only two months, and already she seems able to read him like an open book. Trust her to pick up on the one true thing he’d mentioned in that first paragraph (well: aside from his name, that is).
“It’s an introduction. It’s supposed to let the readers know about my prejudices and hobbies and things.”
“Is that what you were taught at your last school?” she asks, still looming over his desk and seeming increasingly more likely to spit fire.
Dean opens his mouth, ready to say yes, and then the memory of the dream washes over him, making him speechless for a full minute.
The gigantic wings; the stench of blood and sulphur; and that bizarre room with his own face (though he looked older, and different in a way he can’t put his finger on) plastered all over the walls.
You don’t think you deserve to be saved.
“Well? Is it?”
“I - I read it somewhere,” says Dean, breathing through it. “Can I go? My brother will be waiting for me.”
“Sam finishes at five today. I checked.”
Without even realizing what he’s doing, Dean reaches inside his bag, closes his hand on the handle of the fake umbrella, because now he’s wary, because people taking an interest are never what they say, and they can be dangerous.
“What is this? An ambush?” he asks, and then he realizes how aggressive he sounded, and -
- and, yes, of course it’s an ambush, but he also needs to get a grip on himself. Jesus. Mrs Keating is not a demon, or a shape-shifter, or some other foul thing out to kill him. All she wants is to feel powerful for two seconds of her miserable life by taking apart his essay piece by piece (or, perhaps, if he’s really unlucky, she’s in the mood to play mother to the poor orphaned boy with the shitty life who just landed in her classroom: Dean has seen both types of teacher by now, and it can be surprisingly hard to tell them apart).
“The second part of your essay is a statistical analysis of the occurrence of terms of endearment in the novel. Which would be impressive, except the numbers are clearly made up, as is the quote from Bernstein you used as a commentary.”
“That’s not true. I took it from his book, used footnotes and all.”
She glances over the page, directly at him, and she narrows her eyes.
“It wasn’t a full reference, and therefore I could not check the precise wording, but I did read Calvin Bernstein’s study and I don’t remember him stating that,” she lowers her eyes on the page again, “Jane’s pathetic need to have sex with anyone who would have her is predicated on the fact that sex is really awesome.”
Dean tries, and fails, to suppress a grin. Mrs Keating remains silent for another thirty seconds, just stares at him, and then she sort of smiles as well.
“Nice wording, though. Are you studying for your PSAT already?”
Dean shrugs.
“In any case, I would have been way happier if you’d actually read the novel. This analysis you make of Jane stabbing Mr Rochester the first time they meet is really impressive, but not quite what Charlotte Brontë described.”
“Maybe her book would suck less if -” starts Dean, then catches Mrs Keating’s eye, smiles as endearingly as he can and switches tack. “I mean, maybe the novel would be more interesting with more action scenes.”
“How would you know? It’s clear you haven’t bothered to read it.”
“It’s a girl’s book.”
“Is that what your father says?”
Jesus. She’s known him two fucking months. How can she always be spot-on, about fucking everything?
“Actually, this is the reason I wanted to talk to you today. I’d like to give you the opportunity to rewrite this essay, because -”
“What? Oh, come on -”
“- I don’t want to give you a D, if at all possible. Sometimes parents don’t take well to bad grades, and I’d hate to make your life more difficult.”
And just like that, the tension in the room is almost unbearable, because now she’s looking directly at Dean’s face, at the bruises around his right eye, at the ugly gash on his cheek, now she’s thinking, how could she not, about Dean’s aggressive, in your face behaviour; about Sammy’s shyness, his unwillingness to talk about their home life.
“Dean? Do you want to talk about it?”
Except there is nothing to talk about. Dean’s injuries come from carelessness and bad luck - he’s gone after a ghost on his own, and maybe he shouldn’t have, but fuck it. John Winchester has nothing to do with it. He’s been away for almost three weeks, and Sammy has stopped asking when he’ll be back. He’s working a job in Nebraska, that’s all Dean knows, and they’ve been doing fine without him. So, no, whatever this woman thinks, he did it all himself. It’s been months since John hit him, and Dean will never say anything about that, to anyone, ever, because every fucking time it happened, he fucking deserved it. He will not sit in a classroom and listen to someone who doesn’t know them (doesn’t know his father, doesn’t know their lives) talk about abuse and foster homes and universal love and shit. He will fucking not.
You don’t think you deserve to be saved, says the voice again, and Dean grits his teeth against it, tries to forget that in the dream he wasn’t defiant, he didn’t stand his ground; in the dream, he’d been weak and helpless and broken and the thing behind that voice - the thing with the gigantic wings, the bloody angel - had filled him with light and wonder, had comforted him and loved him.
Yeah, mixing tequila and gin before bed - definitely a bad idea.
Without really knowing what he’s doing, he starts to stand up (he needs to get out of here), feels a hand over his.
“I liked the end of your essay, though,” says Mrs Keating, seemingly from very far away. “I felt I could see the real you there. It was beautifully written.”
“Right,” Dean rasps out, and sits down again, trying to ignore those warm fingers on top of his.
“You are so much more than you think,” she goes on, because, fuck him, she’s the second kind after all, and she won’t let him go until he’s sobbing his heart out in this stupid classroom. “The bit about angels was very moving.”
Angels?
Jesus, Dean doesn’t even remember what he put in that final paragraph - he’d scribbled something random ten minutes before class, but it now sounds like something of the dream seeped through - not surprising, perhaps, since he’s been dreaming the same thing over and over again, for weeks.
“There’s no such thing as angels,” he says, and squares his jaw.
“Of course not,” she agrees, in a refreshing, matter-of-fact way. “But it strikes a nice balance with the beginning of your essay, what you mentioned about demons.”
She lets go of his hand, sits down in the chair next to him.
“But I still think you should read the book. I’m sure you’d like it.”
“I did read the fucking book,” says Dean, because now he’s angry and he doesn’t know where this rage comes from, but it’s pressing under his skin, it’s making him both hot and cold and fucking terrified. “In every fucking school we go, it’s all we read. We never talk about real things, about shit we could actually use, it’s all about fucking Jane Eyre, and you know what, it’s her fault, all of it, she should have married him and shut up about it, why did she have -”
“What would you like to learn in school?” Mrs Keating asks, when it becomes clear that Dean won’t add anything else, and Dean shakes his head, because it would have been fucking useful to know so many things - how to cook healthy stuff on a motel’s half-broken stove, and how to deal with a kid brother who feels responsible for their mother’s death, and how to say no to his father, how to say yes to Gary Williams - sweet, stupid Gary, who’d tried to kiss Dean in the locker rooms back in Ohio and had been beaten bloody because of it. School should teach them how to not care when nobody cares (how many times they’d run out of money, and Dean has had to lie and steal and sleep his way forward to pay for Sammy’s meals), and how not to care when somebody does (Why can’t we tell anyone, Why can’t we have a normal life, Why can’t we - and Sammy would shout at him and cry in front of him, because the first rule is, you don’t shout at social workers, you don’t cry in front of social workers, we’re family and we stick together). Yeah, and school should also teach them how is it fair that demons kill people and that this is not a government emergency, that it’s not the army to go after demons, with tanks covered in holy symbols and holy water grenades and billions of dollars and walls of names of the fallen heroes - no, how is it fair that they have to do it, in danger and in secret, and that they have no bloody choice about it? Dean has accepted it by now, he knows there is no way out for him (just a pyre in the woods, some day, and that is, if he's lucky), but he still wishes, desperately, that Sammy would get out, because Sammy is clever and good and he deserves so much more than this.
You don’t think you deserve to be saved, and of course he doesn’t, not after everything he’s done already, the violent, disgusting things he’s had to do to survive, and this is why he hates the fucking book, why he hates Mr Rochester, who just doesn’t get it, the arrogant fucker, and why he hates Jane, because she could have said yes and she didn’t.
Dean is not even aware he’s said the last two sentences out loud (and, oh please God, let it be only the last two sentences), but now he sort of is, and he shuts his mouth so tight his teeth hurt, because you’re not supposed to talk, not about any of it.
“I think you’re right. This is the core of the problem: neither of them gets it,” says Mrs Keating, softly, and she pretends not to notice that Dean is almost crying. “These two characters are so different that there is a communication problem. Both are, in a way, unable to express their desires and emotions - think about the roundabout way Mr Rochester chooses to tell Blanche Ingram she should forget about him - and they also belong to different worlds. Mr Rochester has been clear in his courting of Jane from the very beginning, but Jane has perceived it as indifference, if not downright mockery. You know, some scholars consider their relationship a metaphor for our relationship to the divine, which is why I found your mentions of angels and demons so intriguing.”
“How - how so?” says Dean, passing a hand on his face, feeling the edge of his bruises.
“All her life, Jane has instinctively looked for someone to protect her and love her, but she’s always been disappointed. She’s had to endure horrific things, and she’s been alone in enduring them. And then she meets this man, someone who’s clever and strong and perfect in every way -”
Again, a glimpse of the dream: blue eyes looking down at him; the sharp angles of a handsome face; pure, blinding light.
“- and what is unusual about Jane is that she insists in doing things her way. She is not content with what she’s given, does not accept her destiny, does not submit. She wants to be loved as she is, and she knows she deserves it.”
“Well, she doesn’t. The wife in the attic - why did she even care?”
“It’s like you wrote in your conclusion, Dean. She cared because she loved Mr Rochester - because she wanted all of him. All her life, she’s wanted that kind of love - all encompassing and absolute - and she wasn’t about to be cheated out of it, not for any reason.”
“But that’s bullshit. You never have that in real life.”
In the way she looks at him, Dean realizes Mrs Keating knows his mom is not in the picture, and is suddenly terrified about the possibility that Mrs Keating might know more than that - might know about Gary Williams, and about the truckers’ bar in Idaho where Dean had first winked at a complete stranger - about his pathetic dream of wings and how nice it’d felt to have someone care, someone love him as he is -
“That’s not true,” she says, gently. “You do have that in real life. But you have to fight for it.”
The school bell rings over their heads. It’s five o’clock. Outside the glass, the world has turned dark and hidden. It will be cold, too cold for Dean’s leather jacket, but Sammy has a new coat, so it doesn’t matter. Dean doesn’t need much.
And he doesn’t need true love. He has no time for that. He must do his job, he must try and stay alive long enough to ensure that Sammy can be whoever he wants to be, the smart little bastard, and that’s it.
But last night the dream was more vivid than usual. Last night he’s seen the angel clearly - he’s seen him fight and die and come back to life, all for him, Dean, even though Dean is pathetic and unworthy; and last night, they’ve stepped closer to each other than they’ve ever been, close enough for Dean to know that the angel is hot, not cold, as the white light around him had made him think. Close enough to know he tastes like a human does, close enough to feel wanted and desired and loved (deeply; unconditionally). And now, in an unremarkable classroom with two shelves of novels and a map of the world on the wall, now Dean remembers the dream and dares to hope, for the first time, that he’ll get to know this in real life. That someone is really out there, waiting for him. Loving him.
“I’ll fix the essay,” he says, a bit roughly.
“Good,” says Mrs Keating, slightly taken aback by the abrupt change of subject. “I have no doubt you’ll do a great job. Just remember,” she adds, standing up to see him out and putting a hand on his shoulder, “it’s not about the story, it’s about how you see the story. Just as it’s not about about the world, but about how you see the world. As readers, and as people, we have the right to be heard. To fight for what we want.”
He nods at her, curtly, his heart beating fast inside his chest, and then he adjusts his bag on his shoulder (feels, briefly, the hilt of the blade poke against his lower back) and walks out.