Chapter Text
There’s no need to ask. Sam knows what it means when she comes back from the latest school, heat of a Georgia summer sticking her shirt uncomfortably against her skin, to find her father packing books into familiar battered cardboard boxes. She’d seen the Impala in the yard as she walked home, trunk open wide. Her father only does that when he’s getting ready to go.
"Going somewhere?" she asks anyway, as if John’s the only one leaving. As if there’s a chance this time he might let her stay. She lets the porch door slam behind her.
"Hey Sammy"
He smiles, a tired, worn kind of smile but doesn’t stop packing. When she’d left in the morning the kitchen table had been loaded with guns ready for cleaning. She’d eaten her cereal amid the metal
The table’s empty now, guns packed away carefully and Sammy knows that’s that. No hope of winning an argument because how can she object to leaving when there are monsters on the loose, when people are probably dying. But she just started to have a life here, had just got on the debate team, even made a couple of friends and it’s not fair that she has to leave it all behind.
It’s not fair and he doesn't care and she knows she shouldn’t either, should be focused on this monster fighting hero kick her family seems to love so much but she doesn’t want this life, never has.
"Dean's gone to let Jack know he's quitting. Won't be gone long." And Sam swears John doesn't even look bothered, as if he isn't the least bit concerned at dragging his son away from the only job he's ever truly loved.
"Get your stuff together, we're heading off in a bit."
She doesn't move.
"Where we going?"
John looks at her and frowns, like he's considering berating her but seems to decided against it.
"Going up to Bobby's for a bit" he answers with false patience. "Town's got a ghoul problem he can't get a handle on on his own. How you feel about going to help him out?"
She wants to laugh at him, at the way he likes to pretend she has a choice. But there's anger always present these days, a cruel, restless creature just beneath her skin and she's suddenly too furious to speak.
The door to her and Dean’s room slams satisfyingly and she just stands with her back pressed to the wood, livid, desperate, burning with the injustice of it all.
Dean’s bed is in the far corner near the window and stripped, his blankets and pillow arranged neatly next to his duffel like the dutiful solider their father so loves him for being. The floor looks bare without his dirty clothes dotted about like decoration.
The bed nearest the door is hers, though she finds excuses often enough to crawl into Dean’s. There’s a stack of books sprawled haphazardly across the covers from this morning when she’d rummaged through them in a rush, frantically searching for the English text she need for her first morning’s class. She needn't have bothered now.
Sam pushes the textbooks to the floor and climbs beneath the covers. Reaching for a battered copy of any old fiction book she makes herself a sanctuary, floats in the problems of someone else's life, so lost that she doesn’t hear Dean knocking, comes back to herself with a start as he sits down next to her. There isn’t enough space and the angle is awkward. His body twists, half falling off the side. Sam doesn’t move to help him.
"Time to go kiddo"
And just like that she’s furious again.
"I don’t want to go"
"Come on Sammy, you’ll do fine in the next place." Dean’s voice is gentle, coaxing. He reaches out to twirl a strand of her hair around his finger. "We’ll find you a new school soon as we get there, I promise. You’ll only miss a week or two."
He just doesn’t understand. For Sam this isn’t just about changing schools, or leaving behind friends or constantly having to pack up her whole life into one duffel bag. It’s all of those things and a hundred more but she doesn’t have the words to tell him.
She wants to tell him that it’s about knowing (really knowing, like the way she knows the sun will rise tomorrow or that Dean loves the Impala) that this is never going to be enough for her. She cannot live this life.
But it’s far too big a thing to say out loud. Life-changing, heartbreaking. It means loosing the only people in the world that love her and Sam hasn’t got the guts.
"I don’t want to go!" she repeats instead but Dean’s hands are moving, seeking out the ticklish places beneath her ribs and she can’t help the squeal she lets out as he digs his fingers in, holding her down as she tries to squirm away, any last hope of argument stolen away with her laughter.