A/N: Although it works as a standalone, this will make a lot more sense if you read "Lost Boy" first.
November 2005
Sam hadn't known where he was heading when he told Dean he was going for a walk. Or at least, he hadn't consciously known.
But here he was, in a park, staring at a cluster of bushes that, thirteen-and-a-half years ago, had a clear space inside them just big enough for two eight-year-olds.
The girl with the cookies and the Lost Boy.
He'd thought he knew what it was like to feel lost, but the longing for a home he'd never known, the out-of-place-ness he'd felt in the hunting life, that was nothing compared to this. Nothing compared to the gaping emptiness in his chest, the coldness of an unshared bed, ash and fire damage and the smell of smoke where there used to be a home that often smelled of baking.
Sam couldn't breathe, couldn't think, and he was diving forward, into the bushes, clawing his way through to the clearing that might be just as gone as the girl who made it her fort, ignoring the twigs that scratch his face and catch at his hair and clothes.
And then he's through, and it's there. He's vaguely aware of the thought that some groundskeeper must keep the bushes pruned just right, must know that natural forts in the bushes are just as important as the swings and slides and space to run, and as much as he's able to be he's grateful.
His long, lanky frame takes up almost the entire space on its own. Jess would have to sit in his lap for them to both fit now. But that would be cozy, not cramped, because no matter how close she gets, Jess never crowds him.
No, that's not right. Jess would've had to sit in his lap. They would have been cozy, because Jess never crowded him. It's all past tense now.
And with that thought, he comes undone.
It's not that he hadn't cried, hadn't been miserable, hadn't felt the loss. He'd done all those things. But he'd done them at arms length from the grief, the true grief, the great black hole that he'd been skirting the edges of, feeling the pull stronger and stronger, the pull of everything this was and everything he felt, trying not to get sucked in because he didn't know whether he'd ever come out the other side.
But the work was done now. He'd salvaged everything that could be salvaged from the wreck of the apartment, made all the necessary arrangements with the school for a leave of absence, scoured the area for any hints, any at all, of supernatural activity.
And the funeral. That was done now, too. Jess' parents let him help. It wasn't that he'd wanted to, but then, they hadn't wanted to plan their daughter's funeral, either. They knew what he and Jess were to each other, what the plan was, and he knew that, if he'd let himself, he could have leaned on them as they all three experienced the implosion of their world.
But he hadn't let himself, because that would have been giving in to the grief, and even though he'd known, known ever since he'd watched her engulfed in flames as Dean dragged him screaming from the apartment, that he'd have to let himself fully feel it at some point, he'd been putting it off. Because there was work to do.
But the funeral and the wake were yesterday, and even though he knew the work of finding Dad, finding Jess' (and Mom's) killer was just beginning, it wasn't enough to hold back the grief anymore. Not for long, anyway. He'd felt its inexorable drag, and he'd known with more clarity than he'd felt since the night his world went up in flames that he didn't want Dean there when it swallowed him, so he'd gone for a walk.
And now he's here, in the place where they met, and the grief has him, and it pulls him apart and scatters him far and wide.
Sam's head collapses against his knees, he presses his clenched fists into the grass, and the sobs shake his entire body. His thoughts skitter downwards in spirals, because whenever things were bad it was always Jess he turned to, Jess who held him and carried him through, and he needs her now more than he ever has, but her absence, her death, is the very reason he needs her, and so she cannot come, but he needs her, but she's gone and will never hold him again.
He thinks the sobs might physically shake him apart. He thinks he doesn't care.
This, this is what it means to be lost, and it's so much further from nice than anything Sam had ever imagined.
He doesn't remember reaching into his pocket, but he is holding two metal objects in his right hand, squeezing them tight: one she gave to him, one he was going to give to her.
A kiss and a question.
A thimble and a ring.
The metal digs into his palm, dragging him back towards reality. His stomach muscles hurt: it doesn't feel like much time has passed, but the heavy sobbing, receding now, had to have been going on for a while if his muscles are complaining this much. The tears still flow, but not as heavily. He wipes his nose on his jeans.
"Jess," Sam whispers hoarsely, prayerful and pleading. He has to tell her. Has to say it. Maybe she'll even hear him.
"Jess, you're supposed to be here with me. We were supposed to come here together. I had it all planned out. I've been planning it ever since August when you looked me in the eye and told me you were hoping for, pretty much counting on, a future with me in it and I told you I was doing the same. We were going to see if your fort was still here, and if it wasn't I was going to do this right outside the bushes. But it is, so we'd sit here. We're grown up now, so you'd be in my lap so we could both fit. We'd be laughing and fidgeting and getting dirt and grass and leaves all over ourselves. We'd remember how we met here."
Sam shifts so he's sitting the way he imagines it would be if all was right with the world and Jess was here with him so he could give her his question. The tears have stopped now: he's engrossed in this, in saying the words, in telling her what was supposed to happen. He thinks that part of him is convinced that if he believes in this moment hard enough, it will come true (denial is which stage of grief? the rest of him asks, but he ignores that part, because whether it brings her to him or not, he has to finish this now that he's started).
He closes his eyes, imagines her familiar weight in his lap, her arms around his neck, her hair brushing his cheek.
"I'd hold up the thimble, just like I did the first time you kissed me, and you'd smile and kiss me again," he says to the imaginary Jess in his lap, eyes still closed, trying to lose himself in the fantasy, just this once, just this one time.
"But I'd pull back after a minute, and you'd look at me, a little confused and a little worried because I'd have a really serious look on my face because I want to get this just right. And what I was going to say was, 'I love you, and I don't ever want—'" he has to swallow back a fresh sob, and the tears that had slowed to a trickle pick up speed again, "'—I don't ever want to live without you, so will you marry me?' and you were going to say yes and you would be laughing and crying at the same time while I put the ring on your finger. Look, it's blue topaz, for December when we met the second time and because I know you're even less impressed with diamonds than you are with roses. And I'd apologize that it wasn't anything much or fancy, and you'd shut me up with a kiss and tell me you loved it because it was different and special and ours. And that's what was supposed to happen when I came here," he concludes, and with a deep, shuddering breath opens his eyes.
He is alone. His first kiss sits on his finger and the most important question he'll never get to ask sits in his hand. And he understands now: he didn't just come here to give in to the grief for a while; he came here to say goodbye.
This is where it started, him and Jess. And this is where it ends.
When he leaves here, he will still be full of anger and grief. He will still have nightmares if he ever makes the mistake of falling asleep. He will still miss Jess with every fiber of his being, still pray to any God who might be listening, silently screaming that it doesn't matter if he can't see her, if time is bent so he never met her, just let her not be dead. But he will no longer live in the might-have-beens. He will no longer look back. ("If I look back I am lost." Jess will never know how that series ends, either; they were going to start the fourth book after his interview, as a reward: it was released the day before she died, while he was off with Dean, and now they'd never stay up all night, pressed against each other on the couch or in their bed, gasping and yelling and turning to stare at each other with wide disbelieving eyes and restraining each other from hurling the damn thing against the wall when yet another beloved character was inevitably killed off; oh god don't think about that it's too close it's too real and Sam decides right then that he probably won't ever finish the series. If she doesn't get to, why should he? The copy they'd bought burned, and he can't imagine buying a new one without her.)
Sam will let all the pain and all the anger drive him forward and forward and forward, towards his father, towards answers, towards justice for Jess and for his mother and for everything lost with them.
He reaches out and digs a small hole in the dirt under one of the bushes, he thinks about where Jess once stashed her cookies, once had to spit a mouthful of cookie because he made her laugh so hard. He gently lays the ring and the thimble down in the hole, and stares at them for a long moment. Then, not quite sure why, just sure that it's what he has to do, he takes the thimble back and slips it into his pocket.
Carefully, reverently, he scoops the dirt back into the small hole in the ground, burying the ring and the question he never got to ask and the future he and Jess will never get to have. He pats the earth down firmly, smoothes it over, then musses it and the surrounding dirt up, trying to make it less obvious that something is buried here.
Sam grips the thimble in his pocket with his right hand and lays his left on the ring's little grave, letting himself think about how, in many ways, this is a more authentic, more fitting resting place for Jess' memory than the cemetery plot where her charred bones lie.
"Bye, Jess," he murmurs, and crawls out of the bushes and back to his new-old life, more of a Lost Boy than he's ever been before.
A/N: In case anyone is wondering, the book series Sam thinks about is George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. As it turns out, A Feast for Crows, the fourth book, was released on November 1st, 2005. And we know from "Slumber Party" that Sam likes the books but hadn't read them all at that point. So I decided to make a sad reason why not.