Sam has had visions for longer than a few months. He's had them for years and years. They were why he really left. Because Sam was seventeen years old and his dreams came true, but not in the way he wanted his dreams to come true. He dreamed in bloody string theory and when he sometimes pleaded for tolerance and shades of gray, Dad always said, "If it's supernatural, we kill it."
Sam told them he just wanted to be normal. It wasn't a lie. And it wasn't his fault they didn't really understand.
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Sam started getting visions when he was thirteen years old.
He realized them for what they were six months later when two girls drowned due to an angry water spirit and he kept getting the same feeling of déjà vu.
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Sam considered the possible implications of his visions when he was fourteen. He started going to church every Sunday he could. He gave excuses about taking walks and going to the library and slipped away to high stone archways and hard wooden pews to pray forgiveness for the lies he'd told to get there. Sam prayed for Dean, for Dad, for himself. It gave him comfort in more ways than one.
Evil couldn't step foot into churches, after all.
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At fifteen, Sam had the same vision over and over every night for a week. Blood and pain and not one single clue about what or when or where. He looked as ragged as he felt, and Dean stared at him with worried eyes until Sam admitted to having nightmares.
Just because it's not the whole truth doesn't make it a lie, Sam told himself a hundred times afterwards. And just because it's not the whole truth doesn't make it a lie.
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Sixteen and Sam knew things couldn't continue like this. A routine vanquish turned into a demon smirking at him and calling him 'my lord' and a suspicious light in Dad's eyes.
He started researching colleges that weekend and decided to apply to Stanford based on two statistics:
1. Special Collections and University Archives include about 260,000 rare or otherwise "special" books.
2. Financial aid is provided to about 77 percent of undergraduate students from a variety of internal and external sources.
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Sam was seventeen when he left his Stanford acceptance letter where he knew Dean would find it. He needed Dean to be angry enough not to notice something was wrong and Sam knew Dean would be so much angrier about finding out from an ill-placed piece of paper then if Sam just told him straight out he was going off to college. So Sam left the letter jutting out just slightly from the folds of his backpack, the stylized seal clearly visible at the top.
Dean just thought Sam wasn't good at hiding things.
If only he knew.
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With Dad, Sam pushed and pushed because he needed an excuse; he needed Dad to say it. Cold words fell from cold lips, "If you go now, don't ever come back."
Yes, that was it exactly.
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Stanford was normal. Sam went to class and read books and lived his life like he'd always expected to be right where he was now. The dreams came less often and they never showed Dad or Dean anymore.
And Sam had wanted this so badly and for so many reasons, that when Dean called (drunk) and asked (brokenly) if he was happy, "Yes" was the easiest damn lie he'd ever told.
Review? No flames please.