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Sam felt small again.
In all his life, he never could pin the moment where he started feeling like an adult, and not just some lost, little kid in a great big world he didn’t belong to. He supposes it might’ve been around the time he stopped hesitating to throw himself in front of someone else, when it started becoming second nature to shelter those younger than him, the moment he stopped including himself in the pity he held for victims. One never can pin the moment they ‘grew up’; all he knew was then was different to now.
Until his mother showed up.
Suddenly, every fibre in his body felt too big for his skin. He felt like he should be hiding behind his father’s coattails, watching snow fall for the first time, like he should be wrapped up in every layer he’d ever owned, watching that crystalline reflection of nature float tenderly towards the ground.
She was so beautiful. This was the first time he’d seen her.
She was so much smaller than him. He was so exposed.
He didn’t know if he could hug her.
This was the first time they’d met. She was his mother.
He’d never even dreamt about hugging her — her face was one he hadn’t known, not really, but oh, how he’d dreamt.
He’d always imagined their meeting somewhat differently: he would die, and maybe, just maybe, he would go to heaven, where she would receive him, waiting, with a smile and a long, tender hug and a warm, knowing kiss, and she would have been watching him, and she would know everything, and they would be alright.
But she’d come to him instead, and barely knew who he was — in fact, she didn’t know him at all. He was a stranger hiding in the name she gave her son, in a body whose shape she didn’t recognise anymore, wouldn’t have recognised in a long time. The thought that now, the way he was, he meant nothing to her? To his mother? He knew he was unworthy, but even to him this was a blow too low.
So instead he just stared, stared because if he closed his eyes she might disappear again, the walls might fade and Dean’s smile would flip and he would find out this was all some mistake, he’d finally lost it, he never got out after all. She kept staring back, though, or avoiding his gaze, not knowing how or when or why to share the smile she so routinely gave to Dean in only the short few seconds or minutes or hours they’d been together. He knew staring was rude, though they both knew why he was doing it, but she still squirmed slightly beneath it, and he still couldn’t stop.
Instead, he let Dean talk, and she responded, and the two of them carried on a conversation like their worlds hadn’t just come crashing cataclysmically together, while Sam watched like a paralysed man on a cliff face, the landscape crumbling steadily beneath his folded legs.
She was so beautiful.
He didn’t think he should hug her.
His arms ached to hold her. How could he know if she wanted to be held?
Surely, when she looked at him, she would see all the ways he was wrong; mothers were supposed to know their children, were supposed to understand. He knew he wasn’t good, wasn’t clean, was a walking omen and harbinger of things better left unknown. He shouldn’t hug her; he shouldn’t even look. How could a mother love a son like him? If she did, if somehow he tricked her and she did, it could only end up a lie. The moment she learned about him, learned what he’d done, the moment he opened his mouth and all his poison overflowed from the wastewater in the sickly reservoir of his soul, she’d walk out, he knew it.
He shouldn’t hug her, shouldn’t taint her, shouldn’t paint her clean blonde hair in muddy reds and ruddy browns. Regardless of what Sam deserved, if she knew, she’d walk out on Dean too. Dean didn’t deserve that. Maybe all Sam wanted to do in the world was to hug her, maybe his every fibre strained in her direction, cried out to be held and known and loved, but he loved Dean the way his blood loved his heart, so instead he stared, and resolved to keep his distance, to act as if all was fine; he resolved, somehow, to give her only his best.
But then she looked at him, sad and scared and full of love and wonder all at once, and it threatened to break him all over again.
He was bigger than her, but he was so, so small again. She was everything, larger than the sky, a colossus he could scarcely imagine approaching. He wanted Dean, he wanted his brave older brother to sort everything out for him again, wanted to be told what to do, wanted someone to hold his hand and tell him where to place his feet to somehow bridge the canyon the width of his entire life stretching between him and the woman across the table.
But Dean was small again too, smaller than Sam had ever seen him, small again and eating messily with stars in his eyes and shirt untucked, small again and staring at his mother to make everything right, to know that everything was alright.
Sam had never known that feeling, and he knew he was no longer small enough to learn it. Perhaps he never had been.
He wanted to be small again, to run towards her, to barrel into her and have her arms come around him, have her hold him up and wrap him tight and whisper that everything was alright. Her voice was so sweet. Every moment she spoke was a blessing, clearer than a choir of angels, and holier too, no matter how clear it was she didn’t know what to say. Every word was a fresh snowflake, the first snowfall of a child’s first winter, gentle white magic from the distant creatures in the sky.
Sam could almost picture it, the memory of Dean’s little voice overlaid by what hers might’ve been like on road trips and in lullabies, singing along to all the songs he’s told were hers. All the things he could’ve learned about her, he now could simply ask, if only he could find the courage, the energy, the words. It was as if he hadn’t yet learned how to speak, was still spending his time eagerly watching the way they do it, the big people at the bigger table, hoping, one day, to join in.
Sam wanted to hug his mother. He wanted to shrink down forever, wanted to run to her and have her hold him and know him and promise him things will be alright. He wanted to be pure and happy and sweet for her again, small and light and unknowing. He wanted, so desperately, to be mouldable, and changeable, and not wrong in all the ways he was now. His overgrown, underfed bones shook with the shame and desire that she wouldn’t come to his bedside at night, wouldn’t speak to him in all the ways he wished with everything that she would.
He’s not sure his crib had a mobile, but if it did, it must have burnt the night she did. Perhaps he burnt that night too, perhaps that’s how she saw him — something strange and ungainly lumbering through that pile of tender, sacred ash.
He’s not her child, not really, but she is his mother, and he aches for her.
The table is a mile wide between them, the map is covered with snow.
His mother is across the table, and Sam can only stare.