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“The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true.”
- Six of Crows, Leigh Bardugo
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Sam likes stargazing because he knows what he’s looking for. Everything else is so much more complicated.
The night sky in small towns near big cities isn’t fantastic, but it’s miles ahead of anything in big urban centres. Sam gazed out the window for a minute or two, contemplating, before deciding that so long as it wasn’t the blotchy purple hue of Chicago, he could deal.
The sky is a dark blue-black when he finally takes a tentative step out of their latest scummy motel, with dirt tread carpets and an intense Japanese fan theme. He has no telescope, (he's wanted one since forever), but by now he knows what he's looking for.
He's barefoot, now, wearing faded jeans and one of Dean's old hand me downs, one that still smells faintly of his cologne.
The cold chills him straight to the bone as he wanders out, climbs up on the roof of the Impala. The sky is dark, unlit from the nearby city and undisturbed by the nearby noise of the highway. Good enough.
He leans back, and starts searching.
.
They're stuck in the plains, endless and directionless and lost. There’s just grass, and cornfields, and roads complete with signs that are coated in rust and have bullet holes, the occasional hick town dotted along the interstate, nothing of note for miles.
Dean has always loved the plains, Sam knows, for precisely that reason. Because Dean doesn't get lost. Dean knows where he's going. Sam's always been jealous of him for that.
.
The first time he stargazed, it was out of pure curiosity, and the only reason he hid from his family was because he was one hundred percent sure Dean would laugh at him. He was nine when he first pushed up on top of the Impala’s roof, a stolen star map and a book thrifted from a second-hand shop they’d come across maybe two of Dad’s hunts back. (Aberdeen, Ohio. There had been a décor theme of lamps with legs, and bookshelves so old Sam thought they were going to fall over.)
He’d known nothing, then. Just that he wanted to look up at the stars and point them out at night. He thought maybe he’d use them, someday, when he and Dad and Dean finally stopped in a town for more than a handful of months, that he could impress the other kids he’d meet by being able to point out the difference between Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, explain how Aries was a ram and Circinus were compasses.
He never had had the chance to do that, but when he was ten Dean has wandered out of the motel room, bleary-eyed and panicked, and spotted Sam on the roof. He’d been fuming, Sam knew, thinking Sam had gotten kidnapped or killed (because this was before Sam had ever contemplated running away). Sam had thought quickly, so when Dean had marched up to him, mouth drawn into a thin line, Sam had given him wide eyes and a small smile.
“Do you wanna know where Octans is?” And Dean had given him the most confused look, before his gaze fell from Sam’s face to the starmap in his hands, and Sam could see the moment where it all clicked for Dean, where he stopped being angry and concerned and was proud instead, where he went from Dad’s clone to Sam’s brother.
“Of course,” He’d said, stepping up beside Sam and gazing upwards, absentmindedly ruffling a hand through Sam’s hair.
When Dean looked back at him, Sam had smiled, and Dean had smiled back.
That had been the last time he stargazed alone. Until now, at least.
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Dean was the person to show him how to use a crossbow. He knocked the arrow back with a grin on his face, and Sam was thirteen and kept wondering why his brother smiling made his whole world tilt sideways.
“Now, it's basically like firing a gun. So, you won't have any problems.” He gave Sam a wink and Sam's heart skipped a beat.
“Keep your eye on the target, and hold steady. Annnd-” he released the arrow it hit the target, bull's eyes straight.
He nodded to the similarly looking crossbow at Sam's feet. Sam picked it up tentatively. He didn't know why his hands were shaking. He’d shot plenty a gun before.
He cocked his head to the side, narrowing his eyes. The target was ahead, a bull's eyes stuck to the tree, surrounded by a fence lined with bottles. And Sam kept looking, wondering, bottles or bull's eye, bottle or bull's eyes, the bottles were harder to hit but he didn't want to just do what Dean did.
He released the arrow, let it fly.
It hit sheer air.
Dean looked at him curiously for a second, before his expression fell to a smile again, and he dropped a hand on Sam's shoulder.
“You'll get the hang of it, don't worry.” He laughed. “You just have to know where to aim.”
.
Sam never liked fields- too much open space makes him claustrophobic. Paradoxically. He'll never be like Dean, who loves nothing more than the endless rolling fields out in front of him, nothing to see but the road and a person in the passenger seat. Dean, who loves everything Sam could never comprehend. Endless fields, the smell of gunpowder, the way the road spreads out in front of them, fixing cars, the endless motel rooms and junk food- and Sam, on days where Sam doesn't even like himself.
Dean, who Sam can't bear to look at sometimes (because why did God give him a brother who looks beautiful, when he's all scrambly limbs and insecurities and rebelliousness, and why did his brother have to be the only person that Sam could ever rely on, why does Dean have to be his everything, why has it always been Dean). Dean, who would give his life up for Sam's in a heartbeat (and it's so precious, like a glass bird in his hand that he could so easily crush, and Sam knows- Sam knows one day he'll have to, if he ever wants to leave, but Dean always makes him want to stay, goddamnit). Dean, who looks at him and John like they're the only things on this planet that matter. Dean, who's always been the good son, the one who does what he’s told, the one who does what best for his family instead of wilfully following some stupid dream that even he knows, deep down, is damned near impossible.
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They don’t use crossbows, usually. But they’re useful if you’re ever without a gun in the woods, if you have to make something from scratch. If you want to be unexpected.
Sam practiced to the point where he got better with a bow than a gun, much to John’s annoyance. Dean just looked at him curiously, the slightest tinge of a smile on his face.
.
Stargazing with Dean used to be easy. When he was ten, eleven, twelve, pointing at the stars with his brother by his side atop the roof of the Impala was the most natural thing in the world. When Dean smiled at him, Sam smiled back, completely lacking in the racing heart rate he gets nowadays. When Dean asked a question, Sam answered it. Where Dean went, Sam followed.
But something changed. Now, whenever Dean has that particular glint of wonder in his eyes as he looks at Sam, Sam forgets all about stars, and he can never explain to Dean why.
Now, when his brother takes a step one way, Sam always thinks of what it would mean to go in the other direction.
.
Because Sam isn't Dean. Sam can't do this forever. Sam can't get lost anymore, can't just make do with this endless cycle of nearly losing the only person he cares about for the lives of strangers, can't do with the endless tacky motel rooms and the widening, all-engulfing plains.
Sam needs a direction. And he needs one that isn't just following in his family's footsteps.
.
(Because he can still feel the radiance of heat as Dean fixes his hands over Sam's, crooks his fingers over Sam's knuckles and smiles gently as Sam looks at him.
He remembers the way that Dean had adjusted his stance so he aimed for the bull's eye.
His arrow hit straight on, but Sam felt nauseous for days.)
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The grass is cold and damp under his feet as he pushes off the hood of the car and lands beside a plowed cornfield. Chopped stems run in every direction, and Sam resists the urge to shiver. Too much choice, he thinks, too many options. Maybe that’s why fields didn’t bother Dean, why he always liked straight roads so much. Dean always thought in straight lines, from point A to point B with no in between, like every question only had one answer and responding was the easiest thing in the world.
Maybe that’s what Sam had never really understood.
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He thinks about taking the wrong path. He thinks, you don't know where you're going until your feet hit the ground.
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Dawn is just creeping over the horizon when he jumps off of the roof of the car, shoes scuffed and crossbow in hand. He sets up the bull's eye and the glass bottles (even though glass bottles were only ever really meant for guns: it's unnatural, but he likes it). He stands in the grass, shifts his stance in the precise way Dean taught him to, notches the arrow over the edge of the bow, cocks his head and closes one eye.
The bottles lie in the distance. The bull's eye is close, an easy shot.
Sam stands like that for a while, just looking at the stars, letting the chill air seep into his bones, the damp grass get his shoes wet, the minutes tick by. He thinks of sea-glass bottles and beat up dart boards with bull's eyes. He thinks of Dean's smile and John’s constant disappointment. He thinks of university, of loving someone he isn’t related to. He thinks of arrows.
The arrow soars far above his head, glinting against the night sky. He thinks of directions and paths and going where you need to be.
The arrow hits a bottle, knocks it straight off the fence.
That night, he writes his first application.