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JOHN WINCHESTER’S JOURNAL
1998
July 12th:
Got tracking devices implanted in both the boys now. Dean a while back. He was obliging as always, agreed it’s a sensible plan. He’s a good kid, always has been. I don’t know where I’d be without him. Sammy—that one was harder. I knew there was no chance in hell he’d say yes, not if I asked him. He’s more rational these days, easier to deal with. But he’s still Sammy. So I got my opportunity today. The hunt got tricky, Sammy got injured pretty bad. Enough we had to knock him out with painkillers to stitch up his arm. It was easy enough to put in the tracker.
Dean was watching me like a hawk, asking me if I really think Sammy doesn’t need to know. For a moment it felt wrong. What sort of father secretly tracks his sons? But there’s no alternative. This keeps them safe. I could’ve told Sammy, but what’s the use? And after February, I wasn’t risking it. I can’t have him running off in a fit again. We’re lucky enough he wasn’t targeted either of the times he’s left.
Not that February lasted long. It was all over by the time I was back. I wasn’t there to pick up the pieces, but I think it really rattled Dean. I was hard on him after the first one, I’ll admit that. I was a wreck and I needed to get it through to him how much it mattered we didn’t lose Sammy, but I might’ve gone too far. I know it shook him up, even if he’ll never tell me that. But he’s a resilient kid; takes my shit, Sammy’s shit, and keeps on going cheerfully.
I’m talking a lot about the boys today, huh? Guess there’s not much else going on. I’ve been mostly occupied with sorting these GPS trackers. Don’t know where Mark gets them, didn’t ask. They’re perfectly safe, though. Military grade. And almost undetectable once in, which is for the best.
July 25th:
Sam found out about the trackers. Didn’t go well.
*
Sam does a lot of things Dean can’t fathom, but locking himself in the bathroom and attempting to operate on himself has got to be the most patently insane.
Dean supposes it’s less of an operation than an extraction. The initial job was pretty straight-forward, too; Dean was awake for his, hurt like a son of a bitch, but it wasn’t exactly complicated.
A flap of skin peeled backward, a small metal circle and wire pressed in… Dean had to look away so he didn’t throw up, and he’s not exactly squeamish, but there’s something about a military tracker being implanted under your skin while you’re awake that gets to you. Sam was deep in painkiller-induced sleep, though, when his was done, had no idea it was even there before today, so he’d have no way to know. Will he even be able to figure out where it is?
If anyone can reverse-engineer that sort of thing, it’s Dean’s little brother, but it seems to Dean like an exercise in futility. Trackers are a smart, tactical idea; it’s not about Dad wanting to control them or whatever hysterical bullshit Sam was screaming about when he found out. There’s a reason Dad wanted them to have them.
Dad won’t be pleased if Sam does somehow manage to rip his out; isn’t pleased by Sam’s general disregard for the intelligence of Dad’s decision, or Sam’s general disregard for Dad’s decisions. Is, in fact, currently shouting through the locked bathroom door, on the other side of where Sam is presumably trying to cut away the tracker literally implanted in him .
Just another Tuesday in the Winchester household.
They’ll settle down, they’ll each complain to Dean about the other, and they’ll start up again tomorrow. Nothing changes. Sam will always be stubborn, whiney and selfish. Dad will always—though Dean wouldn’t admit it out loud—be stubborn, relentless and generally mostly insensitive. Dean has to admit—though he understands why Dad didn’t —he should’ve told Sam.
It’s pretty messed-up he didn’t tell Sam.
Dean gets it. Sam likes to complain and he’d have said no for ages and ages and staged a mutiny and been altogether too much trouble for Dad to be bothered to deal with, when instead Dad could just make use of Sam being passed out from a particularly bad hunt, stitch his injuries back up and throw in the tracker as he does so. If Sam wants to be consulted on these things, he has to be more responsible about his attitude towards them, prove he can be trusted with autonomy. Dad’s right, really. He always is.
Still, though—of course Sam’s mad. It’s a betrayal. It sucks. If Dad had told him, I’m getting tracking devices implanted in you and Dean in case you get kidnapped on hunts , Sam might’ve kicked up a fuss, but at least he would’ve known . Would’ve, hopefully, resigned himself to it.
Instead—
Well.
Dad finally steps away from the door. Dean’s already tried. They could break the door down, of course they could, but it’s not worth the property damage charge, not when it’s not really a big deal, just Sam being difficult per usual, and he probably won’t get anywhere with the tracker and Dad will yell for a bit and then it’ll be over. Dad sighs. “How,” he says, and the anger from the shouting hasn’t gone anywhere in his tone, “did he even find out?”
Here we go. “He got it out of me,” Dean admits, because it’s true, and it’s easiest this way. “I’m sorry, okay? It was an accident. He was catastrophising about that hunt I went on a few days ago. Vermont. You know how he gets when I play bait. I told him it wasn’t a problem, you’d find me, easy, even if I got taken.”
“And he guessed from that?” Dad says, eyebrow raised.
“Well, he asked how, considering you were hours away and not on stand-by, you’d be able to figure out where I was, and I said—”
“Dean,” Dad says. He isn’t impressed. He looks a second away from shouting, or from trying to break the bathroom door down no matter the property charge, or from lunging at whoever’s nearby, which right now happens to be and is usually Dean.
Dean swallows. “Yeah, I know,” he says, hurriedly. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry. I told him you could track me, he asked how, I forgot he didn’t know and I told him—” Dean gestures at his arm, where John had implanted the tracking devices with the help of a lot of pool-scam money and an old ex-Army buddy. “The devices, you know. Then he figured it out.”
Dean doesn’t really know why he spills it all. It would’ve been easy to downplay his mistake, act like Sam had just guessed and Dean had barely said anything at all, and probably Dad would never find out and Dean would get away with it. But he feels compelled to say everything he’s done wrong anyway; he always has.
He doesn’t, generally, like hiding things from their father. Dad should have all the info. Dean should trust him to act how he chooses based on that information. If Dean fucks up, it’s better to tell him, let him deal with it, take the consequences and move on, rather than remain in limbo. Besides. Dad usually finds out. He finds out everything.
Dad just looks at him. Dean stills. Takes a shallow breath. Unsure what he’s going to do. Dad’s sober, wasn’t in a bad mood before all this, has been relatively pleased with Dean lately. All good things. The way John’s looking at him, though—
“He would’ve found out anyway,” Dad says shortly. “It’s fine.”
Dean breathes out. It’s fine . It’s not, it’s anything but, and Dean still has more to tell him, but for now—it’s fine. Okay. Good.
“And don’t look so stiff,” Dad says. He shakes his head. Dean’s unsure how to respond to that, but Dad continues anyway before he can: “I don’t know why Sam has to be so damned difficult all the time. You’d never act like this.”
I’d never get away with this , Dean thinks, but he doesn’t say it. “Yeah,” Dean says, attempting to strike a balance between commiserating with Dad and talking him down. “It’s just a shock to him. He’ll get over it.”
Dad sighs. Heavily. “I just wish he wouldn’t do this. It makes me feel bad about things I know I was in the right to do. Doesn’t he understand how much safer this makes hunting, how much more effective? The strategies we can try now? The way this brings us closer to ending this, to finding your mother—”
Finding your mother . Dad’s holy grail. Maybe it’s that that pushes Dean over the edge a little, because Dean doesn’t even entirely realise he’s going to say it until he does. “Maybe, Dad, if you’d told him—”
“I couldn’t have told him!” John says, angrily, in the specific tone he only gets when someone says he was wrong about something he was already considering he might’ve been wrong about, and promptly decides he was right all along. “He doesn’t listen. He’d never have agreed.” He points at Sam’s door viciously. “He’d have left again.”
Again . Dean flinches.
Sam has run away twice before. Both on Dean’s watch. There’s a lot Dean thinks his father has never really forgiven him for, and Sam’s runaway attempts, both lasting longer than they should’ve, are large parts of that.
The first time, Sam was twelve, Dean was almost seventeen. Twelve , and he was away for two weeks. Dean was beside himself with worry, thought Sam had been taken or worse, spent the better part of a week frantically searching for him using every technique he knew until Dad came home beside himself with rage. Dean doesn’t like to think about the first time.
Obviously, the awfulness of the first time never got through to Sam, probably because by the time they found him, Dad had already thoroughly vented his frustrations on Dean. He tried to run again, two years after, the second and hopefully the last time.
Four months ago. Four months ago, then-fourteen year old Sam had again waited for a time when John was gone and Dean was responsible and ran. The only thing he’d done to show even the slightest slither of consideration for Dean was call him from a payphone, telling him he was okay, so he didn’t think Sam was dead again.
Of course, Dean had immediately tracked the payphone and figured out where Sam was. He’d just managed to wrestle Sam back home when Dad got back. The story came out anyway—Dean couldn’t hide things from Dad, could never make himself—but it wasn’t such a big deal, now that Dean had dealt with it. That had been the second time.
Dean doesn’t like being reminded of either of them. That was a younger Sam, younger and stupider. He didn’t actually want to leave.
“I don’t think so,” Dean says. “He’s not an idiot, Dad—”
Listen to him. Defending Sam. Dad’s right . Sam is being stupid about this. John just shakes his head at Dean. “No, but he sure likes to act like one, doesn’t he?”
There’s the brief, smallest flicker of anger. Sam’s been alright recently, as well; calmed down a bit, stopped bugging Dad so much about wanting a normal life , whatever the hell that even means, started being more cooperative and more interested in research for hunts. Some intensity seems to have faded out of him, something that means he doesn’t argue with Dad so often and instead mutters all irritated to Dean about him, something that’s lessened the tension always brewing between the two. He’s calmed, a little.
Though Dean’s learnt never to trust that. When Sam’s not stirring trouble, something’s always wrong. The shoe always drops. A fight always sparks.
“Look, you have to trust us more, okay?” Dean says. Hoping this is one of those times Dad actually wants—and will take, which is different—Dean’s advice. He hasn’t been drinking, always a good sign, and he’s talking to Dean instead of just snapping at him or punishing him for letting Sam figure it out. “I know Sammy’s difficult, but he’s fifteen, he deserves to be consulted a little more on these things. Obviously he’s being childish, but, hey, I wouldn’t be that happy if I woke up and found a tracker I had no clue about in me, either.”
“You wouldn’t kick up a fuss,” Dad says dismissively.
That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t hate it , Dean thinks but doesn’t say. “I guess I’m just a better son.”
Dad doesn’t smile, acts like he never even heard it. Bad sign. “He’s still being ridiculous. He’s my kid. He’s a kid. I’m just trying to keep him safe. It’s not a violation.”
Dean never said it was a violation, which means Sam had said it was a violation. This strikes Dean as a little melodramatic. But Sam’s always melodramatic. “Yeah, I know.”
Dad sighs, and then, entirely unprompted, “Get out, alright, Dean?”
The previously-dissipating tension in Dean’s head reappears in full force, worse than ever. He blinks. He doesn’t know what to say. What did he do ? It had seemed alright, there, for a minute, like the storm was about to blow over. He glances at Sam’s door. “Dad, I—“
“Get out,” Dad says again. His voice is entirely calm. The fact he hasn’t been drinking makes this feel somehow worse. What did Dean do? How did he fuck up this time? Aside from letting Sam know, of course, but it seemed like they were past that—and why does he have to be sent away for that? “Take the car. Go for a drive. I’ll call you when you can come back.”
Dean looks at the motel door, which as of right now is both the most imposing barrier he’s ever seen and the thing he most wants to get through. “Sam,” he starts, not even knowing where he’s going with it. That’s it, really. Sam. The total summation of his priorities. Whether he wants to shake Sam for being such a petty idiot, or check Sam’s okay and make sure him and Dad don’t fight too badly, he’s not sure. But he has to be here. Sam .
“Always Sam with you,” Dad says, which is so unfair that Dean almost wants to leave, right then and there, but not really, he never could. He doesn’t leave during fights; that’s pure Sam or pure Dad. He stays right there the whole time, feet glued to the ground. It’s true, it’s just desperately unfair. Always Sam with you ; like it hasn’t been all about Sam since before Dean was old enough to go to school, like his entire life hasn’t been about Sam on his dad’s own command. “Just get out, alright? I don’t need you right now.”
Dean wants to ask Are you mad at me? like some stupid weepy girlfriend he’d never have. He settles for, “When do you want me back by?”
“I don’t care,” Dad says, and he’s growing gradually more irritated by the moment. Dean can’t leave , not with him like this, that’s just— “Tomorrow, whatever. Just not tonight, alright?”
He’s being punished. Or, rather, disciplined. Dean knows he is, just like he knows the morning after Sam and Dad have a particularly bad fight and Dad gets him and Sam to run twice the normal amount of laps. Just like he knew Dad was teaching discipline when Dean missed a shot on a hunt and got injured and Dad was just a little slow on the first-aid, wanted to run through exactly what went wrong and get the right answers out of Dean before he looked at the broken arm. Just like he knew after he let Sam run away to Flagstaff, the first time he’d ever done it, cause he’d been off with that stupid boy, Dean doesn’t even remember his name anymore, and Dad had sent him on that awful solo hunt for his seventeenth birthday, stepped in right at the end and saved the day and given Dean a look that said and what did this teach you?
Dad excels at this. This time, though, Dean’s not sure what he’s being punished for.
“Alright,” Dean says, but he doesn’t make a move.
Dad sighs. “Look, me and Sam are going to have a talk. You don’t need to be here.” He looks at Dean steadily, then adds, “Do I really need to keep telling you? Dean.”
A talk . What does that mean? “I don’t have any money,” Dean says. He knows he’s asking for it. He doesn’t care. He’d prefer anything but this.
Dad casts a look, already bored. “That’s your fault. I left you with a hundred and fifty—“
“A hundred fifty for the week, Dad,” Dean says, disliking the fact he’s even saying it. “It’s been—“
“I’m not discussing this with you any longer, Dean,” Dad said, and there’s that edge to his voice now that meant Dean has to stop fucking talking. Fine. Okay. He wishes Dad had just fucking hit him. “I don’t want to see you right now.”
He doesn’t tell Dean to leave again. He doesn’t need to and he isn’t going to. “Okay,” Dean says, instead, a little quieter, hating every fibre of his being as he says it. “I’m sorry.”
Every atom of his being is screaming Sam , but he leaves the motel room without even a backwards glance at the door. After all, Sam’s the one kicking up problems, and Dean’s the one getting kicked out.
The door swings shut behind him, and he sinks onto the steps outside, takes a deep breath.
Fuck , he thinks. Sammy, you idiot .
*
From the bathroom, lock twisted shut, Sam can hear every word. Heard the door slam shut behind Dean, heard the quiet out-breath of Dad, like he’d been expecting that to go worse than it had. Maybe because he was more used to arguing with Sam, or yelling at Sam, and with Sam it tended to go worse because Sam didn’t flinch at the first command or break at the first obstacle the way Dean did. Dad never told Sam to leave, never wanted him to get some space. That would require him to relinquish control for even a second. To actually trust Sam to exist in the world.
Dad raps a sharp knock on the bathroom door. Sam ignores him, carefully and painstakingly digging the knife in just a little deeper. It hurts like hell, but he’s certainly had worse. Then the last bit of the metal’s coming out, Sam gets the tweezers and yanks at its end and pulls the rest of it out, a tiny metal string the only thing left of the tracker implanted. Something beneath Sam’s skin telling Dad everything. He feels sick. Staring at his blood-stained fingertips and open, gory, bleeding arm, in fact, he feels a little like he’s about to throw up. Then the door bursts open, and there’s no time.
“What the fuck,” Dad says, voice growing louder as he speaks. Every syllable of the curse word carefully enunciated. He’s staring at Sam’s arm. “What is wrong with you, Sam?”
“It’s not enough you have to forbid me from being a normal kid and having a life of my own,” Sam says. His voice rises even without it meaning to; he hates it, hates the way it makes him sound, like he’s just some upset kid instead of laying out the logical facts of the matter, the points of the case, the step by step reasoning for why Sam should be allowed a normal fucking life. “You decide to get this—thing—implanted in me—“
“You have a life of your own,” Dad says. He’s ten times angrier already. The second Sam opened his mouth, probably, that happened; the second he even saw Sam. “It’s not about hurting you, it’s about safety, you stupid, reckless, arrogant—“
“Safety? Or just another way you can control me?”
Dad swipes the blade off the bathroom sink with a harsh arm movement. Sam pointedly doesn’t move, sits perched on the edge of the bathtub just fine. Refuses to break eye contact, to look away, to flinch or to back down at all. He needs to get this across.
“It’s a tactical decision,” Dad says. Voice even again. Threatening, just a little, but mostly even. He’s quite good at shifting between them. “Surely you can see that, Sammy. If you were on a hunt and got captured, I’d be able to find you. It’s ridiculous to kick up such a fuss over this. I don’t know what you’re so upset about.”
Sam is suddenly so hotly angry he can’t think straight anymore. “It’s about the choice!” he spits. “You didn’t even give me a choice—you just stitched something into me—you could’ve asked me—if it’s really the smart decision you could’ve talked to me about it I would’ve said yes—“
“No, you wouldn’t have,” Dad says dismissively. “As this tantrum shows.”
How is Sam fifteen and still being treated like he’s five? “You asked Dean!”
“Dean,” Dad says, voice rising, “was perfectly obliging, and I’d thank you to be more like your brother.”
“Only because you’ve drilled him into being that way, damaged whatever sense of self he ever actually had—”
Dad blinks at him, looks a little horrified. That one looks like it hit home, Sam thinks with a sense of victory. “Don’t talk to me like that,” he says. “And that’s not true. It’s because Dean knows how to prioritise this family, knows what’s important.” Then, more viciously: “It’s because Dean isn’t a selfish little brat like his brother.”
Horrifyingly, Sam finds he’s blinking back a tear. He hates this. He hates that no matter how smart he is, no matter how well he argues, no matter what he says, conversations can always be ended with that .
From Dad’s point of view. From Dean’s. It doesn’t matter how big or how clever he gets, he’s still just the little brother, the youngest son, the baby, there to be put down and bossed around and derided as selfish and mean and bratty and stupid and betraying the family for daring to want things. His cardinal sin; Sam has never been able to quash the desire he deserves something better. And no argument Sam makes for his own personhood will ever convince Dad, even though he keeps thinking it will. And because of that it’ll never convince Dean. To both of them, he’s just—selfish. A little kid. Sammy.
“I’m not ,” he says, quietly. That’s all he can say.
“Maybe you’re not,” Dad agrees. He’s rational. He seems rational. That’s why every time Sam thinks it’ll be different. This time; this’ll be the one where he breaks through to him.
He never does. Dad is rational in his beliefs, but he doesn’t change his mind. He decided he was right a lot time ago, and there’s no steering him off that road. Sam gets it. He realised he was right a long time ago, too. Unstoppable force meets immovable object, Dean had called it once laughingly. Sam isn’t sure which of them is meant to be which.
Dad sighs. “But you’re sure acting like it, Sammy, okay?”
A younger Sam goes I’m not, I’m not, I’m not . Another younger Sam starts crying, says I’m sorry, I never meant to be selfish, I just don’t see why I have to give up everything and nobody else does, I don’t see why any of us have to, I don’t understand, why can’t we just give up, why can’t we just live a life outside of all this and—
But Dad’s nothing without this. In the hunting world, he’s a success, well-known, infamous, important. In their family, he’s a God, hated and worshipped in equal measures, by different children.
When Sam’s cynical, sometimes, he thinks maybe it all comes down to that, maybe it’s not Mom at all, even if Dad doesn’t realise it. Everyone wants to feel important. And it’s such a good way for Dad to make sure he has people, to keep them under control. Missing soccer matches and school assignments and tests and never being able to keep friends or get girlfriends or build their own life or plant roots anywhere aside from inside each other. Sam only has Dad and Dean. And Dad’s always angry with him and he’s always angry with Dad. And Dean’s the strongest person Sam knows and a lost cause all in one.
“Well, I don’t agree,” Sam says. “I think the bare minimum you can do before modifying my body is to ask me.”
“And I think,” Dad says, voice as level as Sam’s, “You’re purposefully being obtuse. You’re not stupid, Sam, you know this was the right thing to do.” He looks at Sam for a moment. Steadily. Then he says, “I think you’re just upset because you’re planning on running away again.”
Oh , Sam thinks. So he knows .
This explained why he’d sent Dean away.
Sam just looks at Dad. “I didn’t make it far last time,” he says, instead of denying it. It’d be pointless. It’s like a dare, when he says it like that. See. You’re essentially keeping me locked up here.
“And you won’t,” Dad says. His eyes go to Sam’s arm again. “Even if you rip that tracker out. I track monsters for a living, boy, I’ll always be able to track you.”
“I track monsters too,” Sam says.
Dad ignores this. “You’re my child , Sam. You’re a child. I can’t let you go, I can’t let you abandon our family, and I can’t let anyone get you. You understand?” He sighs. There’s something heavy in it. “I know you think it’s about me controlling you. Or about me not understanding how bad it feels sometimes. I know, Sam, I get it. The way I raised you boys—it’s been hard on all of us. But it’s not forever, even if it feels like that. I’m going to find the demon—“
“Yeah, for the fifth year in a row,” Sam interrupts.
Dad’s eyes flash. For a moment, Sam thinks he’s gonna hit him, but he doesn’t, he never really does. Sam likes to push the line anyway, though, see what Dad will actually do. It usually never gets past bluster and shoving and extra harsh training the next day. “Maybe I’m being too understanding,” he says. “Or not clear enough. I’ll find you, Sam. And it’s not because I need you for the hunt, although I do value your skills. It’s not even because I particularly want you around, the way you are right now. Though of course I love you, both you boys.” He sighs. “It’s because you’ll die without me. You’re easy pickings, Sam. And the monsters know you now because they know me.”
“So, what?” Sam says. He wants to cry. “Because you kill monsters, I’ll never have a normal life?”
“Close,” Dad says, “but no. Because monsters killed your mother, you’ll never have a normal life. Angry? I get it. I’m angry too. Take it out on them, not me. They’re the ones you should be picking fights with.”
“But you’re the one making me fight them,” Sam says, quietly.
Dad doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “Yes, I am. And I’m sorry.”
“But not sorry enough to stop,” Sam says.
“Sam,” Dad says. “Nothing is more important than finding the demon. Nothing.”
Not me? Sam thinks, but he knows the answer. “Oh, okay, so your dead wife takes priority over your kids. Great. I’m sure that’s what Mom would’ve wanted.”
He regrets it the moment he’s said it. Dad’s eyes flash and he steps forward, grabs Sam’s right shoulder. Sam almost slips off the edge of the bathtub, but Dad has his hand twisted in his shirt. He pulls this move a lot; like by physically holding Sam in place, he can somehow make Sam listen to him, agree with him.
He can’t.
“You do not,” Dad says, “talk about your mother that way.”
“I mean, she seems like a pretty great woman from what you say,” Sam says, because he’s incapable of both self-preservation and selflessness. “I think she’d be proud of me for winning a soccer trophy—“
“Of course she’d be proud!” Dad shouts, face barely a foot away from Sam’s. Sam refuses to back away. “You think I’m not proud? It just doesn’t matter!”
“It’s my life!” Sam says. “How can you say my life doesn’t matter?”
“It is not,” Dad says, suddenly quiet, “your life,” and then he drops Sam. Sam almost falls backwards into the bathtub, catches himself on the edge just in time. He scrambles up, standing upright.
“Come on,” Dad says, quieter. “Sammy. Can’t you just cooperate, just this once? Quit fighting with me over every damned thing?”
“I want to leave,” Sam says. He’d stamp his foot if he wasn’t aware of how much more of a petulant child it’d make him seem. “I don’t want to hunt.”
“Well,” Dad says. “We don’t always get what we want.”
“I could call Child Services,” Sam says, even though he doesn’t mean it. “The cops.”
“You think Dean would ever forgive you?” Dad says. The answer, of course, is both a yes—he’d forgive Sam anything—and a resounding no. Besides, Sam could never.
“I don’t care,” Sam says, which is such an obvious lie to both of them that Dad doesn’t even bother with it. Sam settles on something truer. “I’m not doing this anymore. I’d rather die.”
“You will die!” Dad shouts. “Is that what you want? No fucking life at all?”
“Better than this one—“
“Don’t you dare say that.” It’s angry, at first. Then it’s just weary. “Don’t you dare say that.”
”I’m serious ,” Sam says, and he is. “I’d rather die than keep doing this for the rest of my life.”
“Don’t you dare take that tone with me,” Dad says. He’s yelling again now. “This is your life until we find the demon. And you think fighting me every step of the way helps ? Do you realise how much time you take up with your stunts? The hunts I’ve had to leave early to find you?”
“You didn’t come home,” Sam shouts. “You waited two weeks to find me. And, you know what, Dad, that was the best I’ve ever felt—away from you and Dean and hunting—”
Dad doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then, dark eyes disappointed, anger gone and just sadness: “I don’t know where I went wrong with you.”
“Oh, because Dean’s so perfect,” Sam says. “And that’s why you just kicked him out to yell at me.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” Dad says. “Should’ve kicked you out. You want to leave so badly? Fine. Sleep on the streets and don’t come crying to me when you get kidnapped and tortured by the demon that killed your mother.”
“Fine,” Sam says. “I will.”
“Fine,” Dad says.
Then he doesn’t say anything. He just sits down on the edge of the bathtub and puts his head in his hands. Sam watches him for a moment, rage bubbling up inside, curiously, awfully fascinated.
“You’re a difficult kid,” he says finally, looking up at Sam. “I don’t—Dean makes sense to me. You don’t.”
It’d hurt if it wasn’t so obvious. “Thanks?” Sam says.
“I don’t know why you have to be like this,” Dad says. “You’re a smart kid. You know this is the situation. You know everything I do makes sense. But you refuse to even try to understand me.”
Sam doesn’t think that’s true. He doesn’t think that’s true at all. He’s tried to understand Dad. He’s always trying to understand Dad; to look at him through Dean’s eyes, see what Dean sees, whatever’s there that justifies the blind devotion Dean has to him. Or just to see it from Dad’s point of view, understand how it is you even get like that. Meanwhile, Dad’s never tried to see things from his perspective. Dad’s never tried to understand him .
“I don’t know,” Sam says, still so, so bitter. “Maybe I just don’t like the fact you sacrificed my life for hunting before I even had a life.”
Dad sighs again. “See,” he says. “Selfish.”
“So it’s selfish of me to want something for myself?” Sam says. He knows he’s right, he does, knows it isn’t, but somehow when he says it it feels so weak and stupid, confronted with the fact that neither Dad or Dean want anything for themselves that isn’t kill this demon . “Really? Is that it?”
“Yes,” Dad says. “It is.”
Sam doesn’t have anything to say in response to that.
*
JOHN WINCHESTER’S JOURNAL
1998
July 26th:
Sam’s in Orlando. First solo hunt. I figure he’s old enough to rip a tracker out of his own skin, he’s old enough to kill a ghoul by himself. Dean’s with me, nearby. Found another case in Tallahassee. Looks like a particularly nasty poltergeist. I’ll handle it. Dean can stay here, keep an eye on Sammy.
If anything good’s come out of this whole affair, it’s that Sammy seems more committed now. Maybe I finally got through to him.
Here's to hoping.