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It’s true what they say about parenthood – it causes you to look at your own parents, and their choices, a bit differently. Though for Sam, perhaps that was for different reasons.
Sam was already older when he had his boy. He’d gotten past hating their father, and had gotten past making excuses for him. He’d already made peace with what had happened.
But raising his son stirred a lot of things in him. About both their parents. Rushes of resentment and understanding.
Watching his sleeping son, six months old, bile rising up because of what their mother had done. Even on the bad days, even on the worst days, when Sam would have died or killed or traded anything else- and he had to remind himself that she didn’t know. She didn’t know.
Traded for him. Traded for his life, over something nebulous and unknown and ten years in the future?
Sam knew he would have done the same.
Thinking of their mother, who came back, but not really. Not all the way. Distant and unhappy and could never look at the two of them without pain in her eyes. Sam understood better, now. The pain of what she’d done, the pain of what they’d lived – and a different kind of pain that never left her, of trying to move through the world and be a regular person and some kind of decent mother. Without.
He only really saw her happy once.
And if Sam could claim he was succeeding at this at all – and really, he could never be quite sure that he was – maybe it was only because of what had come before, the examples of other people, the traps he knew he couldn’t fall into.
*
He made sure never to have a second child. He had no idea how to raise two. What if there had been two boys? Two brothers? How on earth could Sam raise brothers? How on earth could he not pass a boatload of issues onto two brothers? He had no idea what brothers were supposed to actually be like.
*
Looking at the smallness of his school-aged son, remembering what he’d had to do at that age, remembering what his brother had had to do at that age, and the creeping horror of just how wrong it was.
And understanding just why their father had been such a broken man. Without. The weight of that grief, that grief-
Sam knew he’d see him again someday, knew they’d be together someday, and he still could barely manage, still had crying jags in the car, still sometimes wished he could die a little faster already. Their father hadn’t known that. Hadn’t known there was a Heaven and he would be with her again. Didn’t have the context for the pain. Didn’t know why it hurt so bad. Knew there was something coming for one of his kids. Their father knew about deals, could have made one, never did, until one of his kids – both of his kids – needed him to.
Their father was messed up. A lot of things he did were messed up. Sam and his brother paid the price. But Sam would never again consider their father weak.
Sam remembered how he used to be. He might not have done much better.
*
His boy had to know. About what was out there, about the past. He was still a Winchester, and even if the bigger pieces had moved off the board, who knew what could still come after him. He had to fight his instincts to protect him further, to train him too much, to force him, to base their lives around it. His boy had to know, but he also had to choose. And that was terrifying.
Growing up, their father had expected a lot from them and explained little. Sam barely knew anything about their mother. He wasn’t even sure what their father actually knew about how it had all come about.
And he understood. He learned, he knew his son needed to know those things too. Know who his father was, know who his family was, what had happened, how it came about. Sam knew his boy would need to make his own choices, and he wanted to make sure he knew the facts, best he could.
And now, Sam knew how hard that was. How easy it would be to never talk about. How much he had to shut off a part of himself every time he called his son by name, how much he had to teach himself not to choke on every word of talking about his brother. How much he wanted to never talk about it, about him, and how hard it was not to foist that pain onto his boy.
How hard it was to want Dean Winchester to stay in the world, how much he wanted his memory to live on, and how hard it was to look at and love a different Dean Winchester.
*
How often he thought of his brother. Painfully, joyfully. With a tight chest and tears in his eyes. Holding a little life in his hands and thinking he still wasn’t ready – and realizing just how young they had been, when his brother – when Dean – had become responsible for him. The ways it had formed and saved and destroyed his brother. Feeling the anger and outrage and gratitude and love and jagged pain for all his brother had taken on for him. Understanding that Sam had probably saved him just as much as the other way around. Trying to live his brother’s example, trying to raise Dean like Dean had raised him, with the maturity he hadn’t had a chance to develop before it had been put on him, with the knowledge neither of them had, way back then.
Looking after his boy, raising his boy, loving him and putting him first, and understanding just the very depth and constancy of it. And somehow understanding his brother even better, and loving him even more, and grieving him that much more deeply. The tangle of what they were, that that connection got mixed in with the other connections, that Sam would go to Heaven one day and be with him again. No wonder his brother short-circuited. No wonder he could never even think to look past Sam – because if this Dean and his Dean had truly been one single person, Sam wasn’t sure what he would even do with that amount of… just, everything.
What does that do to a person? What did it do to his brother? To raise the person who was also that? The person you’d share a Heaven with? The person whose destiny was joined with yours?
What had it done to Sam? To look up to, to obey, to idolize and childishly adore, that person? To have never known life without him? To have so many different “consuming connections” all on the same person?
How had he ever left? How had he ever convinced himself he’d wanted to?
How was he still breathing? Without.
*
Sam had forgiven their parents long ago. But only later, much later, could he fully understand the scope of how hard it was. How sure he was that he’d fail, that he’d raise his boy cursed somehow like the rest of them. Understanding the mix of love and grief, both of them neverending. The weight of the responsibility. Understanding the terrorizing fear of what could happen, and still forcing himself to allow his son to choose. Understanding that, by nature, he was short-changing his son, could never give himself completely over to being his father, could never smile and have it fully reach his eyes. Just like their parents, both stumbling through with the same holes in their chests that Sam felt every day, the same smiles that never quite reached their eyes either. Trying to get out of bed every day, be there for a child. Or two children. Without.
Some parts of the curse had indeed continued with him, and would end with him, as he taught his boy the hardest lessons he’d had to learn, the lesson he and his brother and their parents had struggled to learn. To let go with love, to live on with their memories, to go on every day even when the weight was so heavy you didn’t think you’d be able to stand.
Dean squeezing his hand, looking at him with a watery smile, grief and love in his eyes, telling him it was okay to go. And Sam knew, at least in that, he had succeeded.