Chapter Text
Summer 1997
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
The old ceiling fan turned with a steady creak, barely stirring the hot air pooling inside Bobby Singer's house. Outside, the chirping of crickets announced the end of a sweltering afternoon, while the orange light of sunset filtered through the dust-covered windows. The living room was as cluttered as always: mechanic magazines scattered across the coffee table, forgotten tools in a corner, several empty beer bottles, and a shotgun leaning against the couch.
Bobby had left hours earlier to check out some leads on a supposed haunting in a neighboring town, leaving the house in an unusual silence.
John sat at the table going through a box of ammunition. His expression was serious, focused, as if he were already planning out that night's hunt. Dean, stretched out on the couch with his boots hanging over the armrest, absently cleaned his pistol while listening to a Led Zeppelin tape on an old portable player.
Sam, meanwhile, paced back and forth.
He'd spent the last ten minutes trying to convince his father.
"Dad, it's just a few hours!" he insisted, for what felt like the hundredth time. "Freddy and Alice just invited me to watch movies, that's it. I'm not going anywhere, I'll be at their house, five minutes from here."
John didn't even look up.
"I already told you no, Sam. We're hunting tonight."
"But you and Dean can handle it!" Sam's voice rose without him meaning it to. "I don't even do anything useful yet, I just carry stuff and wait around. What difference does it make if I'm not there this one time?"
"The difference is that in this family we watch each other's backs." John kept loading the magazine. "I'm not saying it again."
"But…"
"No."
Sam let out a frustrated breath and ran a hand through his hair.
"I've made exactly two friends since we got to Sioux Falls. Two, Dad."
"Then you'll get another chance to see them some other day," John replied.
"When? The next time we spend three weeks straight in the same town? Or in six months?"
Dean glanced up briefly, feeling like this conversation was already heading down the same road it always did.
Sam kept going.
"Freddy and Alice never invite people over. They said I'm the first person they've considered a friend in years."
John finally looked up.
"I already told you, we're hunting tonight," he said, his tone final.
"There's always a hunt!"
The words hung in the air.
Dean set the pistol down slowly on the table.
John rose to his feet, unhurried.
"What did you say?"
Sam swallowed, but didn't back down.
"I said there's always a hunt. Always a monster, a ghost, or a demon more important than anything in my life."
John stared at him, hard.
"Because those things kill people."
"And I just wanted to go watch movies!"
"Not while you're under my roof."
Sam let out a bitter laugh.
"What roof? We've been living at Bobby's for three weeks. Before that it was a motel. Before that, another one. Before that, another one."
John fell silent again.
Sam took a deep breath.
"I just want to be a normal kid for one night."
John's jaw tightened.
"You're not a normal kid."
The words hurt more than Sam expected them to.
Silence filled the room again.
Finally, Sam turned to Dean.
"You're not going to say anything?"
Dean sighed. He knew exactly what Sam wanted to hear. But he also knew John too well.
"Come on, Sammy, don't be so dramatic," Dean said, and even though he said it with that half-smile of his, no real edge to it, it still stung Sam anyway. "I didn't even go to my own prom. And look, I'm still alive."
Sam crossed his arms.
"That's not the point."
"Yeah, it is." Dean stood up from the couch. "This is just how it is."
"Well, I'm sick of it being like this!"
Sam's voice cracked slightly.
"I'm tired of starting a new school every month… tired of saying goodbye to people… tired of pretending everything's fine…" He looked straight at John. "And I'm tired of you deciding my whole life."
John snapped the ammo box shut.
"This conversation's over."
Sam opened his mouth to answer, but couldn't find anything to say that wouldn't sound as useless as everything else he'd said that afternoon. So he shut his mouth, swallowed whatever was stuck in his chest, and walked out toward the Impala without another word. They were just two friends. The first two friends he'd made in the three weeks they'd been in Sioux Falls, two odd twins who didn't fit in anywhere either, and his father hadn't even thought twice before saying no.
Dean watched his brother walk out with his shoulders slumped. It wasn't anger he saw there. It was disappointment, and somehow that hurt worse.
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The drive to the bridge was quiet. Sam sat in the back seat, forehead pressed to the window, watching the fields darken with the sunset. John drove with his hands steady on the wheel, eyes fixed on the road, and Dean hummed something under his breath just to fill the silence no one else wanted to fill. When they arrived, the railroad bridge rose like a long shadow over the river, its rusted metal beams creaking faintly in the wind.
John cut the engine.
The three of them got out and headed to the trunk to gather what they needed.
"Sam, you stay up top," John said, checking his weapon, already in work mode. "Dean and I will go down to the bank. The spirit's been showing up near the water, so that's the logical place to start looking."
"I could help," Sam said, without much conviction, already knowing what the answer would be.
"You're going to help by staying up here and keeping your eyes open." John handed him a gun loaded with rock salt. "You see anything, you yell. That's all I need from you tonight."
Dean clapped him on the shoulder on his way past, a quick gesture, almost an unspoken apology, before following his father down the path that led to the river.
Sam stayed behind alone at the top of the bridge, the gun heavy in his hand, his chest still tight from the afternoon's argument. He sat down on one of the wooden beams, let his legs hang over the edge, and tipped his head back to look at the sky. The stars were just starting to come out, still shy against the last orange glow on the horizon.
He thought about Freddy and Alice, probably already on their second movie by now, eating popcorn on some normal couch in some normal house, with normal parents who didn't carry guns or chase ghosts. He thought about all the towns he'd left behind without saying goodbye, all the "almost-friends" who never got the chance to become real friends because they always left too soon. Trapped. That was the word that kept coming back to him. Trapped in a life he'd never chosen, dragged from town to town behind his father's obsession.
"Is this what my whole life's going to be...?" he murmured to himself.
The wind answered with a long, low whistle.
Then he heard a voice.
"Sam!"
It came from far away, from the other end of the bridge, muffled by the distance and the murmur of the river below. Sam jumped to his feet, heart pounding.
"Dean?"
No answer came, only the echo of his own voice fading among the metal beams. He looked down toward the bank where he'd last seen his father and brother, but the darkness had already swallowed that stretch of ground. He looked back toward the other end of the bridge, and this time he saw it: a shadow, barely visible against the dark tree line, standing right in the middle of the tracks.
"Dean, is that you?" he called again, taking a couple of steps forward, the gun still gripped tight in his sweaty hand.
The shadow didn't move, didn't answer, but something about the way it stood made the hair on Sam's arms rise. Still, he kept walking, faster now, telling himself it was Dean, it had to be Dean, that his brother had called out to him for some reason and he needed to get over there.
The sound of splintering wood came a second before the world tilted.
Sam felt the ground open beneath him, the air ripping the breath from his chest, and in the split second before he hit something hard and cold, he caught a glimpse of the starry sky spinning above him, as if the whole universe had started turning in circles. Then, only darkness.
His body hit the river like a stone.
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Down on the riverbank, Dean's head snapped up at the sound of a violent splash, a sound different from the river running over the rocks.
"What was that?" he said, already turning toward the noise.
He didn't wait for an answer. His eyes found a pale shape being dragged by the current, arms that weren't moving, a body floating face-down in the dark water.
"SAM!" The scream tore out of his throat before his body had even finished processing what he was seeing. "Dad! Sam fell!"
Dean didn't think about the cold of the water, or the strength of the current, or the gun still in his hand when he threw himself into the river. All he thought about was reaching that pale shape before the water swallowed it for good. He swam with everything he had, fighting the current trying to drag Sam downstream, until he finally managed to get an arm around him, holding his head above the water while he kicked toward the bank with the other.
"Come on, Sammy, come on, hang on," he muttered between gasps, swallowing water, never stopping.
John was already in the water by the time they reached the bank, wading in up to his knees to help pull them out, arms stretched toward his sons with an urgency that left no room for panic, not yet. Between the two of them they dragged Sam onto dry land and laid him down on the damp grass.
"Sam. Sammy, son, wake up," John held his son's face between his hands, but Sam's eyes stayed closed, his lips parted without a sound.
Dean, soaked and shaking, leaned over his brother's chest looking for any movement, any sign at all.
"He's not breathing." His voice came out broken, almost unrecognizable. "Dad, he's not breathing, there's no pulse."
That's when he saw the blood, dark and thick, welling up from a gash at Sam's temple and soaking into the grass beneath his head. Without a second thought, Dean tore off his own wet shirt and pressed it against the wound, his hands shaking as he tried to keep steady pressure.
"We need to do CPR," John said, already dropping down beside Sam, his voice carrying a forced calm that couldn't quite hide the tremor underneath it. "Dean, count with me."
John laced his hands over Sam's chest and started compressions while Dean, one hand still pressing the shirt against the wound, leaned down to give the rescue breaths. Two breaths. Thirty compressions. One cycle, then another, then another, while the night kept closing in around them without any mercy.
A little water trickled from the corner of Sam's mouth, and for one horrible instant it looked like he was about to cough, like he was about to open his eyes, but nothing else happened. His chest stayed still.
"We need to get him to a hospital, now." John was already lifting Sam off the ground, his son's body hanging limp in his arms, head lolling back. "Dean, to the car."
They ran for the Impala, Dean yanking the back door open while John settled Sam onto the seat with as much care as the urgency would allow. Dean climbed in after, laying his brother's head across his lap, and the second John started the engine, he went back to compressions as best he could in that cramped space, leaning down again and again to keep giving rescue breaths while the Impala roared down the dark highway fast enough to make the tires scream on every curve.
"Hang on, Sammy, please, hang on," Dean kept repeating between breaths, his hands stained with his brother's blood, his voice wrecked. "Don't do this to me. You can't do this to me."
The hospital lights finally appeared at the end of the road, and John hit the brakes almost before the car had fully stopped, bolting out toward the back door to help get Sam out.
"We need help!" John shouted, carrying Sam in his arms as he burst through the automatic doors. "My son drowned, he's not breathing!"
Chaos broke out immediately. Nurses and doctors surrounded John, taking Sam from his arms in quick, practiced motions to lay him on a gurney that was already on its way.
Dean stood frozen a few steps back, soaked through, his brother's shirt still balled in his bloodied hands, watching the medical staff wheel Sam through a set of double doors while the words "no vital signs" echoed between them like a sentence.
"Dad!" Dean tried to follow, but a doctor put a firm hand on his chest, stopping him.
"You need to wait here," the doctor said.
Through the glass of the room, they caught a glimpse of the defibrillator paddles being placed on Sam's small chest, his body jolting with each shock, a nurse calling out numbers neither of them fully understood. Dean felt his legs give out and let himself slide down against the wall, hands covering his face as the sobs he'd held back the entire drive finally broke loose.
"He can't leave like this, Dad," he murmured through tears. "Not like this. Not because of me."
John wrapped an arm around him, pulling him against his side, his eyes fixed on the scene beyond the glass, his own cheeks wet too, though he said nothing, because there was nothing to say that could fix what was happening behind that door.
Somewhere that wasn't the river, wasn't the hospital, wasn't anywhere Sam could recognize, everything was darkness. There was no up or down, no walls, no light, only a thick emptiness wrapping around him completely. Sam tried to move, tried to call out to someone, but his body wouldn't respond and his voice made no sound. Fear cut through him in a way he'd never felt before, a fear with no edges, nothing to hold on to.
Then he heard the voices. Women's voices, distant, layered over one another, arguing about something Sam couldn't quite make out. He couldn't distinguish the words, only the tone, urgent, tense, like a dispute that wouldn't resolve, drifting around him in that endless dark.
And then, without warning, something pulled him forward with a force that tore the air out of lungs he didn't even know he had in that place.
"We have a pulse!" The doctor's voice cut through the room like lightning. "He's breathing, we've got sinus rhythm, let's get him stabilized."
Dean's head snapped up, his heart stopping for a second before it started again, pounding hard enough to hurt. John loosened the arm he had around his older son, both of them straightening to see better through the glass, where the medical staff were moving now with a different kind of urgency, one that, for the first time in the last twenty minutes, seemed to lean toward hope.
"He's alive," Dean whispered, as if saying it out loud might undo it. "Dad, he's alive."
John didn't answer with words. He just closed his eyes for a moment, letting out a breath he seemed to have been holding since he pulled Sam from the river, and squeezed Dean's shoulder with a trembling hand.
But as the doctors pushed the gurney down some hallway deeper into the hospital, Sam still unconscious and an oxygen mask covering his pale face, neither John nor Dean could have imagined that somewhere between life and death, something had changed forever.
And that the fall hadn't only left a scar on Sam's head.
It had left a mark far deeper.
One that was only just beginning to wake up.