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Samuel Winchester’s life, detest it as he sometimes might, began and ended and began and will end, with the Family Business.
It was him, not Dean, not even Mary, that Yellow Eyes came for on November 2nd, 1983. It was he who was chosen by Azazel, by Lucifer, by Gabriel, by Rowena, by Dean. Again and again and again.
Dean might be the Righteous Man, and he and Cas might share that “profound bond”, but there were major players in the celestial chess game who were vying for Sam.
That the Lord called Samuel: and he answered, Here am I.
The Lord never called upon Sam Winchester. The Devil, on the other hand...
And it made him wonder. Chuck help him, he couldn’t stop wondering.
He’d always been the curious brother.
“Dean, how are clouds made?”
“Why don’t we have a Mom?”
“Why does sodium chloride of all things repel ghosts?”
“How long ‘til we get to the motel?”
“Why does Dad hate me?”
Don’t ask questions, Sammy, Dean would say.
Why? Sammy would ask again.
Because sometimes you won’t like the answers.
How much demon blood can get rid of the pain?
More than you have at your disposal.
Oh, God, why did it have to be Jessica?
Because of you, Sam.
Why did Lucifer choose me?
Dean was right. Sometimes, the answers weren’t worth all the trouble they caused. Sometimes, they just hurt.
He’d watched his father live twenty years of his life that way. Looking for answers that only caused pain.
Masochist that he was, Sam kept looking for knowledge. The way Dean sought out cheap beer and bar brawls and scantily clad Asian women. He kept searching.
Most men who live as searchlights do so as a crusade. Cas and his quest for God, Dean and his quest for John, John and his quest for Mary. Hell, Lucifer and Michael….
Sam was never searching for a certain something.
The first eighteen years of his life were spent looking for a way out.
A way to save Dean from Hell.
A way to take on the devil.
A way to raise the Devil’s son.
A way to a home that didn’t really exist outside of a 1967 Chevy.
The road to nowhere leads to me, Ozzy's voice crooned in his head.
So, Sam, wanderer that he was, just kept running. Kept learning, kept exploring.
Kept suffering.
It was always unclear, looking back, whether he was running to one thing or from another.
⛥⛥⛥
“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.”
⛥⛥⛥
It was 9:04. Thirteen minutes til the 9:17 Greyhound boarded and left.
Sam was currently sitting on a bench outside the bus station, clutching his ticket and jotting in a small spiral-bound notebook.
If he took the 9:17 from Liberty, Missouri, he’d end up in Kansas City a little after 10. There was a 10:20 bus, four more hours to Wichita. Another eight hours to Amarillo. A day to LA. Eight and a half hours to Stanford. Almost two whole days.
But he’d been on the road his whole life. He could measure out his whole life in the distance between Lawrence and Sioux Falls to Falls Church to Lake Oswego to Poughkeepsie to Half Moon Creek to Lehigh Valley and Coeur d’Alene to Mackinaw City to Biloxi, Missoula, Couderay, Winslow, Durham, Tulsa…
He’d done the math. He used to sit in the back with a map and write down cities with cool names. Dean’s favorite had always been Intercourse, Pennsylvania. Sam was partial to Why Not, North Carolina. Dad never did give them an answer.
⛥⛥⛥
Dean never understood it, and it’s not like he ever talked to his dad about it.
Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…
Sam wasn’t lying when he said he prayed. He, of all people, knew the power of forgiveness, redemption. He, of all people, needed to pray for salvation.
Dean didn’t need to pray because he was already safe. Dean, the Righteous Man, Heaven’s favorite renegade, Michael’s own incarnate.
When Sam was little, he’d read up on any mythologies he could. Fantasy books, Bobby’s tomes of Egypt, Rome, Greece, Babylon, the Far East. Sam was fascinated by it.
He knew there was a god, or something, anything. So he’d talk. He’d tell all the things he couldn’t tell Dean, all the things he couldn’t say out loud.
It wasn't until he was much older that he started to question who the voices in his head really were.
⛥⛥⛥
Jessica came out of the blue.
That was how most things in Sam’s life were, he’d later ponder.
She’d sprung into his life one cloudy afternoon in December of his sophomore year. She’d transferred into his philosophy class back in October. She was majoring in political science. He just knew her as the pretty blonde who sat a few seats away from him, until the day she approached him after class.
“Hey, Sammy!”
Brady. “It’s Sam,” he corrected. Not that Brady took any notice.
“This is Jessica. Luis’ girlfriend’s roommate.”
“Hi,” he said softly. “Uh, I’m Sam. Sam Winchester.” She smiled, lips curling into a rosebud crescent.
“You’re in my philosophy class, aren’t you? With Professor Stahly?”
“Yeah.”
“We should compare notes sometime,” she said, smirking.
Sam blushed. “I, uh, don’t really take notes.”
“I know. I sit behind you. You doodle.”
“Yeah,” he said. God, his face must be beet red. “Guess I do.”
“Well,” Jessica said, grabbing a purple pen from her bag and taking Sam’s hand. “Call me sometime anyway. I feel like you’re the kind of guy who’s got an interesting take on things.”
“That’s our Sammy,” Brady crowed. Not that either of them paid him much mind.
She tapped his hand, and he realized her number was there, written in that purple ink.
“See ya, Brady,” she called, walking away.
Sam was still half frozen in shock, and hardly realized what was happening when he heard his own voice say, “I don’t have classes on Tuesday afternoons!”
She spun around, and he could tell that she was just as stunned as he was.
“Tuesday it is.”
Even now, years later, he could still see the purple ink on his hand in his mind's eye. The soft curl of her 3's, the spot where her pen almost faltered, right in between the 5 and the 2, the perfect, infinite loop of her 8.
Funny, how after all this time, he could see the numbers perfectly, even when her soft smile and bright eyes started to slip from his memory.
⛥⛥⛥
But I must also feel it as a man. I cannot but remember such things were that were most precious to me. Did heaven look on, and would not take their part? Sinful Macduff, they were all struck for thee! Naught that I am, not for their own demerits, but for mine, fell slaughter on their souls. Heaven rest them now.
⛥⛥⛥
He never thought of it as stealing, per say.
After all, libraries were really all about borrowing.
He was fourteen when he took a copy of The Outsiders from his junior high. The one that was somewhere in Schuyler County, Illinois.
He loved that book. It was a few weeks past his birthday, and he really didn’t wanna move again. He’d just settled in at school, and now it was the end of the year. Another summer on the road with Dad and Dean. Oh boy.
Dad decided he really didn’t need the last two weeks of the school year anyway. It was three weeks after Sam’s birthday when Dad told him and Dean to be packed and ready to go. By 0500 hours the next morning.
It’s a Wednesday, and Sam has a geometry test. Or he’s supposed to. He liked this school.
Mr. Kinney was having them read the book in class. The Outsiders. They were going to have a party after they finished, watch the movie and eat chocolate cake.
Sam never got to. He finished the book that night in the motel room. He was shocked when Dean walked in to see him reading and crying. He didn’t say anything, either.
Sam wondered what life would be like if he had a gang. He had his brother, and sometimes their dad, but that was about it. He supposed he should be grateful. But he still wondered.
Dean, somehow, reminded him of Sodapop and Dally.
Dean had Sodapop eyes: lively, dancing, recklessly laughing eyes that can be gentle and sympathetic one moment and blazing with anger the next.
He got drunk on plain living too. That quote always made him smile.
But there was something about him, the other side of Dean, the hunter side of him, that scared him.
I liked my books and clouds and sunsets. Dally was so real he scared me.
Yes, that was his brother all right.
He walked to the school to drop off his textbooks. But he couldn’t bring himself to put the small, worn paperback in the pile. So he took it with him.
⛥⛥⛥
“Pastor Jim?”
“Yes, Samuel?”
Sam was staring at the ceiling of the confessional, eyes averted from Pastor Jim.
“Does God really love everyone?”
“Of course,” came the reply. “Why?”
“Do you think God loves some people more than others?”
“I should think not. God is just and reasonable, and loves all His children equally.”
“Then why do some people have harder lives than others?”
“Where is this coming from, Samuel?”
“I was just thinking about some things Dean said.”
“What did Dean say?”
“He… he said there isn’t a God. There can’t be. Because God wouldn’t allow bad things to happen. He told me....”
Sam trailed off for a moment. “Dean said if God was real, He wouldn’t’ve took our mom.”
Pastor Jim exhaled softly. “Samuel…. It might not be my place, but God didn’t take your mother. She’s in heaven, of course, but it wasn’t God who took her from you. That was something evil, you know that. We can’t blame God for the evil in the world. Because it is God who helps us to fight that evil. God is benevolent, kind.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Do you have anything you’d like to confess, my son?”
Oh, if only the old pastor could see him now.
Forgive me, Chuck, for I have sinned….
⛥⛥⛥
Sam’s favorite thing was when Dean would bring home work from his classes. Sometimes, Dean would tell the teacher he lost his paper, and they’d reluctantly give him another. And he’d always pass the second copy on to Sam.
Sam could ace the seventh grade geography test. Hell, he did better than Dean. The next step was the seventh grade spelling list.
“Alright, Sammy. Your word is deceive.”
“Aw, c’mon Dean, gimme a hard one!”
“Deceive.”
“Deceive. D-E-C-E-I-V-E. Deceive.”
“You got it. How about accumulate?”
“Accumulate. A-C-C-U-M-U-L-A-T-E. Accumulate. These are easy, Dean.”
“Well, we ain’t done yet.”
“Don’t say ain’t, Dean. It’s not a real word.”
“Who died and made you Merriam Webster?”
“Merriam and Webster did.”
“You’re too smart for me, Sammy.”
Yes, Dean was aware that his little brother was becoming smarter than him. Did it trigger his inferiority complex sometimes? Hell yes. But more than that, it made him proud of his geeky kid brother. Sammy was the brains of the second grade. Which meant that Dean was doing his job.
⛥⛥⛥
“And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, / No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before…. And as to you death, and you bitter hug of mortality: it is idle to try to alarm me”
⛥⛥⛥
Sam was starting to regret the beers.
Fucking lightweight, eh, Sammy? The voice of Dean drawled in his head.
Yes. Yes, he was.
The pot might’ve been an off-color choice, now that he thought about it.
He had a sinking suspicion that five beers and a joint would leave him feeling like shit tomorrow morning. But, hey, he already felt like shit now. He felt wobbly and dazed and weirdly wired. Turns out, Drunk Sam had the coordination of a baby giraffe on an acid trip.
Hence, why he was hiding.
He was sitting in the bathroom of his roommate’s girlfriend’s best friend’s brother’s somebody’s house, slumped against the door, tracing the grout along the tiled floor. He could hear some girl giggling in the next room, and the sound of a mattress creaking. Some yelling coming from the foosball table down the hall.
So this is how college kids do it, he thought. Dean was probably more fit for this life than he was. Dean, with his liver of steel and that cocky grin that made girls (and guys) go weak at the knees.
Sam would, in all honesty, rather be at home. Not at some frat boys’ Friday-after-Halloween party.
The cute girl from his philosophy class was here. That was a plus.
Of course, he’d chickened out and fled.
He flipped his phone open.
11:53 p.m. November 2nd, 2002.
And he hadn’t realized it all damn day.
He wondered if somewhere, Dad was drunk off his ass while Dean hustled pool.
It stung, the realization that for the first time, he was alone on the anniversary of his mother’s death.
There were years where he’d wished, desperately, to be alone. To not have to watch Dad drink ‘til he forgot everything but his Mary. To not have to watch his brother try and “take it like a man”. He’d been sullen and close to the edge on this day as a boy, but now he’d follow in his father’s footsteps.
Sam remembered one year, Dean must’ve been twelve or so, in some no-name motel room. He didn’t realize Sam was still awake. So Sammy just laid there, listening to Dean, his big tough brother, cry himself to sleep, holding the picture of his mom.
He was probably out banging some barely-legal chick (or dude.) at some hole-in-the-wall.
But he dialed the number anyway.
Six rings in and Sam’s theory was confirmed.
And then—
“‘Lo?”
“Dean?”
“Sammy,” Dean exhaled over the phone. “What’s goin’ on?”
“It’s November 2nd.”
“Yeah.”
“Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“Think ‘m drunk.”
“Pansy. Me too.”
“Smoked some pot, too.”
“You sure? Out there in Cali, I’ll bet they just roll up kale and snort quinoa.”
“Wasn’t kale, dumbass.”
“Huh,” Dean chuckled. “Good for you, Sammy.”
“‘S weird.”
“Pink Floyd and Wizard of Oz. Gets weirder.”
“Jesus.”
A moment of quiet. “Why’d you call, Sammy?”
“‘Cause I miss you.”
“Miss you, too, kiddo.”
“This is a shitty party.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Where are you?”
“Waynesboro.”
“Georgia or Pennsylvania?”
“Virginia. Any hot college babes over there?”
“Hell yeah.”
“You’re still a virgin, aren’t you?”
“Fuck off.”
“Bitch.”
“Jerk.”
⛥⛥⛥
There was this one time, he had to have been about 11. They were somewhere in West Virginia.
Dad and Dean were tracking a rugaru through the mountains. They went out at sunset at 5 that night. Dad said they’d be back in a few hours.
So Sam had the motel room all to himself. Again.
(What he didn’t know was that this hunt wouldn’t be an easy one. It was Dean’s first really bad hunt. Two little girls would die. Dean came back concussed and bleeding out, and Dad was shaken. They didn’t come home until 9 a.m. the next morning.)
There was a little chapel down the street. He could hear the choirs practicing sometimes, if he opened the windows and everything was completely silent. It rarely was, but he liked to imagine.
That night, he walked down to the little church. It was whitewashed wood, two uneven towers stood like sentinels in the night. He walked in, still trembling from fear and from the cold. He sat in one of the hard wooden pews, taking in the peeling paint and the sound of the night wind rattling at stained glass windows.
He realized he had no idea what to do next. He settled for picking up a worn-out hymn book, flipping the pages aimlessly, gazing up at the little ceramic nativity statues at the front of the church. The Angel, surrounded by foil and paper stars, smiling eerily. Saint Joseph, rigid and still. The cold, porcelain eyes of the Virgin Mary, staring blankly at an empty cradle.
He liked to think that she looked like his mom.
Mary. She was basically deified, beatified in her death. She was a martyr, a saint. It was written in the Winchester Code. Sam idolized Dean. Dean idolized John. And John idolized revenge in the form of the angel that was Mary.
Sam didn’t remember what she looked like, of course, but he’d seen pictures. Her soft round face and wheat-blonde hair, so like Dean’s. But Sam, Sam had her eyes.
That’s what Dean told him, at least.
As he got older, he started to think maybe that was the reason his father never looked him in the eyes.
So Sam prayed.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women….
⛥⛥⛥
Sam had put Bobby’s Place as his mailing address for his college applications. He’d confided in the old man, making him swear on everything under the sun that he would never tell John or Dean.
Sam would phone up once or twice a week, to check in on his applications. He’d been accepted to every damn one so far.
The letter from Stanford came on a Tuesday afternoon in March.
“Bobby, it’s me. Anything?”
He’d grown accustomed to Bobby sighing and saying, ‘Not today, Sammy-boy.’
But today—
“Yeah, I got somethin’ ‘ere. Stanford, looks like.”
Sam inhaled sharply, Bobby was rustling around with some papers on the other end.
“What’s it say? Uncle Bobby, what does it say?”
Bobby didn’t answer right away.
“Bobby—”
“Well, congratulations, hot shot,” the old hunter said gently. “Looks like you made it big.”
Sam could’ve screamed. He might’ve, actually.
“What else, Bobby?
“There’s a big ol’ packet here for you. I’ll send it to your P.O., okay? I’ll put it in some lore books I been meanin’ to lend to you.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Stanford’s still your top pick, huh?”
“God, yes,” Sam said. “The acceptance rate’s under 5%. And I—”
He actually choked up for a minute.
“Sammy?” came the soft, yet gruff reminder from the other end.
“I’m okay. Just really… in awe, I guess.”
“Well, I ain’t in awe, boy,” Bobby said. “But I sure am proud.”
Sam was certain Bobby could hear him grinning over the phone four states away. “Thanks, Uncle Bobby.”
⛥⛥⛥
“What’s broken is broken—and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I live…I’m too old to believe in such sentimentalities as clean slates and starting all over.”
⛥⛥⛥
When Sam was very small, he'd started learning lists.
He liked them. The structure, the order. The one stable thing he had was words and numbers. He memorized things to make up for that which he couldn't understand.
He'd say them as he fell asleep some nights, laying on his back in a dark, dirty motel room, a neon vacancy sign flashing through the sheer curtains.
He'd say them in hell, too.
First came hydrogen. The most basic of all elements.
Two was the second. That was his birthday. His death day. His mother's death day too.
Third was Class 300. 340, that was Law, which was broken up into law of nations, Constitutional & administrative law, Defense/Commerce/Industry, labor, social service, education....
Four. That was Zeppelin IV. Stairway to Heaven. And as we wind on down the road, our shadows taller than our soul...
Splitting your soul into seven pieces. Jessica liked those books. She never made it to seven. Maybe Sam was a horcrux too. But how could he be a horcrux if he didn't have a soul?
Five said that no person shall be held to answer for a capital crime unless on an indictment of a grand jury, unless they were in the military at a time of war or public danger. (The whole world was in danger now.) ...nor shall any person be on trial for the same crime twice. Double jeopardy. But that didn't make sense, because he was here, again. The same crime committed again and again. They weren't allowed to deprive him of life, liberty, or property without due process. But they did. Who was on the grand jury of the universe, the Supreme Court of Heaven and Hell, who condemned him to this?
Six. Six plus six plus six was the number of the beast. The Devil was the root of all evil, and the root of his number was 25.8069758011...
Sam was 25 when he met Ruby. That's when he started down the yellow brick road of fire and brimstone.
But that wasn't right. He'd been on that path since 1983. November was 11, and 11 was the gateway to the universe. New beginnings, if he believed the fortune tellers. But eleven just led to twelve. Twelve Olympians, twelve angry men, twelve apostles, but he was Judas. He'd sold out mankind for 30 gallons of demon blood. Twelve Shakespeare plays that end in death. But that wasn't counting the histories. Maybe this was one of Shakespeare's lost plays. The Tragedy of Samuel Winchester, Boy King of Hell. A Play in Five Acts. The thirteenth tragedy. Unlucky 13. That was a prime number. Sam wasn't Jewish, but the Torah said God had 13 attributes of mercy. Never said anything about the devil though. On Friday the thirteenth of October, 1307, the Knights Templar were killed. But that wasn't right, because in 1835, Samuel Colt made a gun that could kill anything. But that took him right back to thirteen, thirteen bullets. Fibonacci said so. Such that p2 divides (p − 1)! + 1, where "!" denotes the factorial function. Three numbers fit that. 5, 13, 563.
Three. Trinities. In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Three times three times was nine circles of Hell and Heaven and Purgatory. Dante was 35 when he traveled all three. Sam was 29, and he had been to two of those already. Two Outta Three Ain't Bad. Two- thirds majority. That's what Dean always said. Dean and Dad wanted to hunt, to travel, to lead this life. But he didn't. He was the third.
Who is the third who always walks beside you? Three wise men bring gifts to Mary and her newborn son. But the Bible never said there were three. Maybe there were four. Gold, frankincense, myrrh, and demon blood. But that wasn't right, because her baby was a savior, her baby was the Righteous Man. Not the boy king of Hell. Four made sense. Four seasons, four suits in a deck of cards, four Beatles. Four right angles in a square. Four temperaments. Four Noble Truths.
How many numbers would it take for him to break? Dean broke in 30 years. Camus said that 30 was important. A man at 30 gains a new awareness of the meaning of time, he said.
Time means nothing in hell though. Would he break in Catch-22? Or 525,600 minutes? 85 Federalist Papers? In the seven letters of his first name or the nine in his last? In Sonnet 29 or Atomic Number 88? However many licks did it take to get to the Tootsie Roll Center of a Tootsie Pop? Would he break in 451 degrees? That's how hot it had to be for paper to burn. There was no paper to be burned in hell. Only Sam.
So he burned.
Baptized by fire.
⛥⛥⛥
When you look at the dark side, careful you must be ... for the dark side looks back.
⛥⛥⛥
It was the heat of the moment, telling you what my heart meant…
Sam sat up abruptly, eyes wide, frantically searching the room for Dean. Instead, all he found was a rumpled bed and a pair of work boots. And, of course, the beat up clock radio.
He rolled his eyes. “Very funny, Dean!”
“Oh, come on,” a voice drawled from the bathroom. “You love this song and you know it.”
Lucifer stepped out into the room, Dean’s toothbrush in his hand.
"Aren't you impressed? That's a callback to something I wasn't even there for!"
Sam stiffened. “Go to hell.”
“Already been. It’s pretty nice this time of year.”
“Where’s Dean? What did you do to him?”
“Don’tcha think Big Brother’s got better things to do than play Rain Man?”
“I’m not asking you again.”
“You can't concern yourself with bigger things—” Lucifer was singing.
“Fuck. Get out of my head.”
“Of course this is happening inside your head, Sammy. By why on earth should that mean it’s not real?”
“You…. you read Harry Potter? ”
(So this is what his life had come to. Discussing Harry Potter with his imaginary frenemy Satan. He kind of felt relieved. The last two days, he’d been singing My Girl at the top of his lungs. Un-fucking-believable.)
“Ten points to Gryffindor!”
Sam let himself flop down in bed. Maybe he really was losing it.
"You betcha," the devil crooned. "You know how this story ends, don't you, Sam-boy?"
Sam buried his head in the pillow in a feeble attempt to drown out the screaming in his head.
Because he did know how the story went.
All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Sammy together again...
Happy fucking Tuesday to him.
⛥⛥⛥
He knew his father wasn’t a religious man. Said so on his dog tags, and Sam had learned that asking his father deep questions was usually a no-go.
Dean always joked about it. Sam asked him once.
“Where d’you stand on religion, Dean?”
Dean had shrugged, taking a sip of his gas station slushie. “I don’t. I don’t care for it, but who the hell am I to judge others? Went to Sunday school as a kid. That was about all.”
“Huh.”
“I don’t give a shit about any of the old biblical myths any more than I care about the Greeks or the Romans. Walkin’ on water, the plagues of Egypt, making bread out of wine and encouraging cannibalism—”
“I don’t think that’s how that goes, Dean—”
“I’ve heard of weirder. Hell, I’ve seen weirder. But if it doesn’t hurt anybody else, I don’t give a damn.”
“You think any of it’s real?”
Dean snorted, twirling his slushie straw. “What, like angels watching over you? I call bullshit.”
Somewhere, in the very deepest part of his mind, Sam knew that phrase. Angels are watching over you, a soft voice said. It was never said to him. He could hear that same voice, telling him, Sweet dreams, baby boy. See you in the morning.
“There’s demons, though.”
“Really? I had no idea.”
“Fuck off.”
“You been reading too much Dan Brown, Samuel.”
“‘For every action there’s an equal, opposite reaction.’”
“Meaning?”
“If there’s evil in the world, shouldn’t there also be an equal amount of good?”
“You tell me. You see a whole lotta good in our line of work?”
“So you don’t believe in a God?”
“Didn’t say that,” Dean conceded. “I believe in a God. Whether he believes in us… well, jury’s out, Sammy-boy. And I’ve just always assumed God was just as much of a duplicitous bastard as the rest of mankind.”
“What d’you mean?”
Dean slurped his drink obnoxiously. “Well, Samuel, there’s a stairway to heaven but a highway to hell. What’s that tell you about humanity?”
Sam rolled his eyes. "You're a dick."
Dean sighed. "I think God left the building when Elvis did, to tell you the truth," he said softly.
Sam could've swore he saw a hint of pain in his brother's eyes, but Dean was quick to mask his thoughts.
Dean turned up the radio, and they didn’t speak of it again.
⛥⛥⛥
It was after midnight. Dad and Dean were talking in hushed voices. Sam was pretending to be asleep.
“Dad,” Dean said quietly. “I don’t think he’s ready.”
“You need to stop coddling him, Dean.”
“He’s too young—”
“You were 11 on your first hunt.”
“Sammy’s not… He’s not like I was at 13, Dad. He’s—”
“He needs to do this, Dean.”
“He’s just a kid!”
“So were you.”
No, Sam thought, Dean was a child. But he was never a kid.
Dad glanced back at Sam. “He’ll be alright, Dean.”
Dean didn’t answer.
“He needs to learn how to be alright.”
How cryptic.
But how right he was.
⛥⛥⛥
I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
⛥⛥⛥
Sam had started awake with a scream, tears already streaming down his cheeks. He couldn’t get air into his lungs, and was currently voiding his stomach into yet another motel toilet.
It was a routine by now.
Sam, waking up in a cold sweat, panicking, screaming, crying, Jessica’s name on his lips.
Dean, leaping out of his own bed to comfort Sammy. Sam darting out of bed to vomit. Hands rubbing soft circles on his back as he trembled. A washcloth wiping the sweat, tears, and vomit from his face. A glass of lukewarm water lifted to his lips. Sitting on the tiled floor, the older pulling his little brother flush against him, cradling him. Sam’s head nestled in the crook of Dean’s neck as he bawled. Dean lifting Sam’s hand to his chest, saying, come on, little brother. I need you to match my heartbeat. Looking staunchly at the picture frame above the toilet to avoid looking at Sammy. Because, goddamnit, watching Sammy fall apart like this was gonna break him. His voice wavering as he coaxed his brother to C’mon, Sammy, you gotta breathe with me. Easy, easy….
When the sobs tapered off into whimpers and sniffles, and then a soft voice singing:
And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain. Don't carry the world upon your shoulders….
⛥⛥⛥
“Ave Maria, gratia plena, please tell Castiel he’s an idiot with the emotional capacity of a teaspoon, and that his holiness and my dumbass brother should pull their heads out of their asses for just five minutes and work out their sexual tension in a productive way, whether meaningful or not. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us third wheels, now, and when I inevitably walk in on them screwing in the kitchen, Amen.”
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It wasn’t until mid-July, post-graduation, six hunts and fifteen states later was when it all came to fruition. He’d spent the miles from Pocatello, Blue Earth, Asheville, Hattiesburg, Sweetwater, to Liberty counting the days ‘til it all inevitably fell apart.
“Got a vamps’ nest in Traverse City lined up next,” John was saying.
“Sounds good,” Dean replied, finishing off his burger. “We can be packed and ready to go by tomorrow morning.”
“Figure now that Sammy’s outta school, we got more opportunities.”
Sam couldn’t help it. He snorted.
Dean froze from where he was twirling a french fry in a ketchup-mayonnaise concoction. John looked up from his journal. “You got something to say, Sam?”
“I got accepted into Stanford. In California. You’ll have plenty more opportunities without me being a pain in your ass the whole damn time.”
“And how are you planning on payin’ for that?” John said coldly.
“Full ride,” Sam said.
Dean’s eyes were wide.
“And when were you planning on lettin’ us know you were skippin’ out on us?”
Sam didn’t answer.
“Mighty selfish of you, boy.”
That’s when he snapped.
“Selfish,” he muttered.
“What was that?”
“You heard me,” Sam snapped, playing with a forkful of wilted salad.
“You got something to say, you spit it out.”
“Dad,” Dean said gently.
“Oh? Sorry, I didn’t realize my thoughts were of any worth to you, sir,” Sam spat. He could feel heat seeping through his body.
“You better get your shit together, Samuel—”
“My shit’s together, Dad! You’re the one who can’t—”
“This is our life, Sam! Does your mother mean nothing to you?”
“This isn’t a life, Dad! It’s an obsession, an addiction, I think Mom would agree—”
“YOU NEVER KNEW YOUR MOTHER!” John roared, his plate shattering on the floor.
Sam froze.
Oh, God. His mom.
Dean looked like he wanted to cry, and that nearly broke Sam.
“You’re right,” Sam said icily. “But you can be damn sure she’d’ve been proud of her kid getting a full ride to Stanford! Any normal parent would be!”
Dean had his hand on his shoulders now. “Sammy, please—”
(He never meant to snap at Dean. Dean cared. Dean, try as he might, was not his father, and damned if Sam didn’t think that was Dean’s greatest strength. Dean was proud of him. Or, he would’ve been, if he didn’t take Dad’s side on every-damned-thing.)
“Shut up, Dean! I’m not like you! I can’t live like this anymore! With the motel rooms and the arsenal and all this emotional baggage!”
John started up again. “It’s not always about you—”
“IT NEVER IS!”
“WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?”
“It’s the cause, the fight, the family fucking business—”
“THIS FAMILY—”
(He could feel his father’s breath hot on his face.)
“Yeah, because you’re supporting your sons—”
“—GODDAMN UNGRATEFUL BRAT—”
“—drunk in the gutter, on your damn crusade for vengeance—”
“JUST BECAUSE YOU DON’T GIVE A DAMN—”
“ NORMAL KIDS DON’T LEARN HOW TO SHOOT AT SIX—”
“— YOUR MOTHER—”
(Oh, God, what about his mom?)
“NORMAL FAMILIES—”
“—WE AREN’T LIKE OTHER FAMILIES—”
“You ever think maybe I don’t want to be your perfect little soldier?”
“IT’S NOT ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT!”
“Just because Dean’s dumb enough to worship the ground you walk on—”
Dean blanched. “Sam…”
“Dean knows his place—”
“BECAUSE LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO HIM ALL THESE YEARS—”
“Sam—”
“—LEAVING FOR WEEKS ON END, MAKING HIM DROP OUT, BEATING HIM SENSELESS EVERY TIME YOU DRANK YOUR FEELINGS—”
“YOU LITTLE SHIT—”
Dean was doing his best to separate them. To no avail. “Dad…”
“YOU HURT HIM, DAD! FAMILY’S SO FUCKING IMPORTANT TO YOU, AND YOU—”
“YOU DON'T LIKE IT HERE, YOU CAN GET OUT!” John screamed. “YOU WALK OUT, DON'T YOU EVER COME BACK!”
John strode to the door, slamming it and leaving. Sam stood there for a moment, watching the doorway, as though John would reappear any second, glanced at his big brother, who was pale and trembling in the corner.
Had he really said all that?
All that shit about Mom? About Dean?
He darted into his bedroom. He could hear Dean gagging into the sink.
He shoved all the clothes he could into his duffel. His favorite jeans, Dean’s hoodie. Three summers’ worth of lawn-mowing money. A couple of library books.
(He never did return those. The Mid-Continent Public Library never did figure out what happened to their copy of Leaves of Grass. The same way books would disappear from libraries across the nation, the only common thread being a young, sandy-haired boy and a ‘67 Chevy. Nobody ever bothered to put the clues together.)
He walked back into the kitchen, to where Dean was wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his henley.
“Dean,” he whispered.
Dean’s gaze snapped onto him. “Sammy, you can’t…”
Sam exhaled sharply. “I have to, Dean.”
“Sammy...”
Sam walked over and hugged him, hard. He wanted nothing more than to bury his head in the crook of his brother’s neck, like he did as a frightened child.
God, Dean… I’m so sorry.
He had to hold back the tears. For Dean.
Finally, he stepped away, taking in his brother’s pained expression.“Bye, Dean.”
With that, Sam turned and walked out of the motel room.
For once, he didn’t look back.
What he did was walk the two miles to the bus stop. He boarded the Greyhound.
What he did was pull out that stolen library book and read, trying to pretend that this was just another cross-country trip.
What he did was stare out the window and into the darkness, unable to sleep.
It wasn’t until three a.m., as the green signs guided him through Lawrence, Kansas, that Sam finally allowed himself to cry.
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Pray for us sinners, now, and in the hour of our death….
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"And for just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows the holy void of uncreated emptiness, the potent and inconceivable radiancies shining in bright Mind Essence, innumerable lotuslands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven. I realized that I had died and been reborn numberless times but just didn't remember especially because the transitions from life to death and back to life are so ghostly easy,... it was only because of the stability of the intrinsic Mind that these ripples of birth and death took place, like the action of the wind on a sheet of pure, serene, mirror-like water. I felt sweet, swinging bliss... I thought I was going to die the very next moment. But I didn't die...”