Just a weird little one-shot. Not sure why.
Job's End
"You know, my dad has this saying. Mostly he only says it when he's upset with me, like the time I broke my mom's favorite china, or the time I tracked mud onto the newly-shampooed carpet."
The whole crowd, minus one, chuckles knowingly.
"'Boy,' he says. 'Sometimes I wonder about your generation.'"
More chuckles. Sam thinks of what his own dad would say in a similar situation. But he can't drudge up a similar situation that he and his dad would ever be in. Truth be told, he hadn't realized carpet was something you could shampoo.
"You know," the valedictorian continues, "my dad gives the best advice. I wonder about my generation, too. I wonder what we're going to see. What we're going to learn. I wonder how we're going to change the world."
And despite his best efforts, Sam tunes out.
Technically, this is Dean's generation, not precicely his. Most of the kids in their gold caps and gowns are 18, Dean's age. Sam's only here on a family ticket, because he expected to watch his big brother graduate. Except his big brother got called away on a hunt.
Sam sighs. Corrects himself mentally. Went looking for a hunt to get called away on.
Dean had no interest in marching across the warped stage of the auditorium with the other kids. He had no interest in moving his tassle from right to left.
But I do, Sam thinks. Oh, God, I do.
Still, that's not what's weighing on him most today.
The stage is looking a little worse for wear. Not two days ago, he and Dean chopped a hole in it, in the dead of night, hunting for the bones of a bully whose victims finally did him in one day. Most of the kids at graduation are sporting black eyes, courtesy of the bullying spirit. But the black eyes are fading to yellow. That ghost isn't going to hurt anyone now.
Job's done, Sammy. Time to move on. This ain't a place for Winchesters.
Sam thinks about the remaining week he will have here, living alone in the motel room while he finishes out his freshman year. Dad surprised him by letting him stay. By not making him skip out on the final week of classes. He's got finals this week, bubble sheets onto which he will color patterns that mean another great grade, another high mark.
Then the next day he'll climb back in the Impala and go somewhere else where grades don't matter. Where the only mark that counts is your marksmanship.
It sucks, is what it does.
On the stage, the smug-looking Valedictorian is finishing his speech. About this generation, about how they have focused long enough on themselves. How it is time now to go out into the world and make lasting changes.
And Dean, who continued to go to school despite late-night hunts and struggles with algebra, despite war wounds and battle scars and a dad who didn't see the value – Dean's not here. Because in the end, something more important came up. The world needed somebody to go out in it and make a lasting change. Today. No matter what else was on the schedule.
Dean answered that call.
After the speech, the crowd rises to its feet, minus one. There is applause. There are whistles and shouts from the nervous kids in line, about to take their next steps.
And there is a quiet fourteen-year-old, by himself in the crowd, sitting next to an empty chair, watching an empty spot in line.
This is not a place for Winchesters.
Sam studies the faces of each kid-turned-not-a-kid who marches across the stage, watches every last graduate trip on the roughly-patched wood. In some faces he sees world-weariness and in others he sees only freshness and youth.
But nowhere does he see a face like Dean's, with stubble and scars and a grin like a beacon, deserving more than anyone to talk to these clueless kids about changing the world.
This is not a place for Winchesters.
Against a backdrop of flying caps and silly string, Sam walks out.