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Sam was eight when he found out what the Family Business was, and throughout the rest of his childhood those words seemed like they should be capitalized in flashing neon; especially the way they fell from Dean’s lips. Dad was rarely around and Dean watched over him like a parole officer.
He was an observant kid, catching snippets of conversations, seeing things tucked away in a duffel or between the pages of Dad’s journal. Even before he knew what that tome truly was he understood that it was important. He never really got the whole picture but he could put two and two together. Dad sure as shit wasn’t a mechanic, or a salesman, or any other of the bullshit things Dean called him whenever Sam plucked up the courage to question why Dad was never there.
At nine he was given a gun to ward off the thing in his closet, and he remembers even now, as he held the cold weight of the .45 in his hand, how he wondered if it was real or not. Somehow the revelation of things that truly go bump in the night had produced in him the opposite effect than desired. For a long time afterwards he had ignored every strange sound, every lingering shadow. It was the beginnings of his desire for normal.
When he was eleven and sent to Bobby’s for a few months, Sam got a small taste of it. Living in a house, no endless days of camping out in the backseat of a car. That desire turned into a farfetched dream, then into a goal to be achieved – at any cost. It wasn't until many years later, when he had tried and failed, that he realized the consistency of a life in motel rooms was the only home he'd ever know. Same soap, same shitty water pressure, same odd smell, even the same world-weary desk clerk every time they checked in; every motel room held the same ambience of being lost on the road to self-discovery.
Intertwined with the bad memories are good ones: At twelve he managed to win a soccer trophy. At thirteen he and Dean took off to shoot fireworks in a field on the 4th of July. At fourteen he hunted a werewolf with his family and actually managed to enjoy himself. Despite any moments of levity there were always two constants in his life. The first was an unwavering feeling of not belonging. The other, Dad's orders, and by extension, Dean acting upon them unwaveringly.
How could he explain to people about his upbringing without raised eyebrows and murmurs of a father’s possibly illicit affairs? Sam knew his dad was on the level, as far as the hunting went, but around the age of twelve he began to understand that those hunting methods weren’t always entirely legal, by sixteen he was sure of it.
Dean got drunk once when Sam was 13, came stumbling home from some clandestine house party, and for some reason decided to spill his guts to a presumably comatose little brother. Sam had held his breath while Dean cursed and flopped onto the other bed, making the boxsprings creak; lay perfectly still as he heard Dean fight with his boots, and another string of curses as the laces got the best of him; heard the rustle of Dad’s hand-me-down jacket as Dean pulled it off and then heaved a sigh.
The silence after that stretched out in the dingy little room. Sam was about to admit his consciousness when Dean began to speak. It was soft, slightly hoarse, and filled the rented space with a sadness that held real weight.
“Y’know Sammy, when you were little it was easy lookin’ out for you. It was my job, simple… Now, you’re starting to really see the world and I don’t know if I can keep you safe anymore. Don’t even know where my place is in this damn family anymore.”
The silence pulsed in time with Sam's heartbeat for an eon before Dean began speaking again, this time Sam could hear the tears behind his brother’s words.
“I’m canon-fodder Sammy. Mom’s worth avenging, you’re worth saving, but me… I’m just a soldier, expendable…” Dean paused, sniffed. “Anyway, sleep safe, bud.” With that he went into the bathroom and closed the door softly behind him.
Sam never could tell if Dean knew he was awake that night.
Five weeks after working the kitsune case in Lincoln, Nebraska, John called them into the kitchenette of some run down motel in Arkansas that Sam can’t for the life of him remember the name of. Dad had been up early, already grabbed a staple breakfast of fresh donuts and gas station coffee, which he placed on the table before sitting.
“Dean,” he said, clipped but not angry.
“Yessir?” Dean replied automatically.
“Pack up and be ready to roll in 15. Got a long drive.” John’s face remained blank, his tone guarded – the same need-to-know manner in which he ordered them to do anything.
“Yessir,” Dean answered mechanically.
Sam knew his brother’s face well enough to read the confusion there. They'd barely finished up the latest salt-and-burn and Sam knew Dean had been hoping for some down-time before shipping out to a new point on the map. Sam also knew that his brother would never question Dad, but he himself had no such problems.
“Another case, Dad? Already?” He didn't even try to keep the grousing out of his voice.
John took a leisurely sip of his java, put the paper cup down and twisted it on the table top, but his eyes were hard when they met Sam's. He let the silence ride along that stoney gaze for long enough that it came dangerously close to a pissing match between them. Sam would not back down, he would yell and shout and say any foul thing to get Dad to finally realize he shouldn't be treating them this way.
Finally, John's eyes fell and he cracked a smile. The tension dropped away in a second. When he looked up it was at Dean, and Sam could see the concerned readiness on his brother's face, in his posture.
“Well, I was planning on surprising you, but... I'm buying a truck for myself, and you're getting the Impala.”
Dean's jaw dropped, Dad started grinning and Sam just looked from one of them to the other.
Eventually his brother started smiling too and hooting in celebration of the ultimate prize he'd been coveting since he learned to drive; he loved that car more than Dad ever had. Dean and John did the manly hug thing while Sam sat by, staring blindly at the scratched and graying formica table top.
Dean grabbed his shoulder, exclaiming, “Can you believe that, Sammy? My very own set of wheels!”
Sam’s smile was genuine at the sight of such joy on his brother’s face, but at Dean’s next words, familiar doubt crept back in and he was questioning his place again.
“Best present ever!”
Sam tried to find Dean’s eyes, see if he really meant it, but Dean’d turned away and was thumping Dad’s back through another embrace. His smile faded, memory filling with another gift that was given years ago. One that he hoped still meant as much to his brother as it did then; hanging around Dean’s neck like it had ever since he put it on 8 years ago.
Sam silently got up and began to pack.
Standing vigil in those dark, desolate woods, over Dad’s funeral pyre, it hits Sam that they are now truly alone; orphans floating on a blacktop river, in a steel and chrome ship, to points unknown. There are still so many questions, so many avenues unexplored; and it falls to them to continue their father’s vendetta, his crusade against the thing with the amber eyes.
Can a grudge be inherited? Can it be passed from one soul to another, so that they may continue the fight? Sam feels that yes, it can, because he’s been chomping at the bit to just get in the car and drive until they find the bastard, unload the colt into him and burn the poor meat suit that remains. But this response is more characteristic of Dean. Sam is more interested in the why, despite a burning desire to get started on the how.
One small black thought has been eating at him since they carted Dad’s body out of the morgue and high-tailed it across as many states as they could before anyone noticed. It’s a persistent thing, burrowing into his brain and making a home there, convincing him of it’s legitimacy not only by the mysterious disappearance of the Colt but also by Dean’s unusually taciturn bearing. What if Dad went willingly, leaving Dean in charge of saving Sam’s soul from yellow-eyed pollution?
He tries to ask, stumbles but manages to get the words out, fumbling and vague though they are.
“Before he… before... did he say anything to you? About anything?”
Dean’s eyes stay on the fire, blood-shot and puffy just like Sam’s, but they have a hardness to them that belies true grief. Sam knows that Dean is fighting off tears, trying to stay strong, if not for him then for himself, and the answer when it comes should be comforting, but it’s not.
“No. Nothing.”
More tears leave tracks down Sam’s sooty face, while his heart swells to breaking with counterintuitive disappointment. His father, the superhero, wasn’t so great after all. Wasn’t strong enough, fast enough, hunter enough, to stay alive; so why should Sam and Dean be?
When the fire has been reduced to embers, and they’re both cold and broken, as they set sail once more towards Bobby’s, Sam feels ashamed of his thoughts. Everything Dad did was to keep him alive, make him an even stronger and smarter hunter, and by God he is going to be.