Five people Sam saw at Stanford from his past life.
In Lexington, Nebraska Dean had a girlfriend. Well, not a girlfriend, girlfriend… more a girl who was a friend who he fucked whenever and wherever he could. Sam in all his 13-year-old wisdom always thought she was a stupid, shallow, bleach blond, cheerleading bitch. Imagine his surprise when she was the one who greeted him on the first day of orientation with a toothpaste commercial smile and arms held wide open for a hug. On initial recognition of her, he half hoped she didn't recognise him, but when she read his name off the list she had on her clipboard and matched it to his face she let out a little squeal and showed him that smile. When she hugged him he could feel her looking around behind him before she asked if Dean was around. He muttered something about having to catch the bus and she was off on a long breathy monologue about how she remembered he used to be attached to Dean at the hip. For the first time in a long time, Sam's emotions got the best of him and he had to work at not showing how her words hurt him.
When he was eight, Sammy spent a day playing with 7 year old Mary Elizabeth Jones while his brother and father cleared her house of a poltergeist that liked to throw knives at her sister Brenda. When she started to get pinpricks in the heels of her feet during her freshman year, he wondered if his brother or father would come and see him when her parents called them. Instead she came straight to him. He had promised himself that he was over that life, but he realised that while he might hate hunting, he liked helping people. Besides, she was in that sorority with that cute blonde from his introduction to art appreciation, Jennifer or Jessica… something like that.
Mike Browning lived in Floyd, Virginia when Sam was in the 6th grade. He lived two houses down and was 2 years younger but the boys bonded over sharing 'gun names'. Mike either hadn't seen him or didn't remember him, but Sam wasn't too upset about that. Dean had constantly been fighting with his older brother, Joshua, and from the sounds coming across the dinning hall; Mike had grown up just as arrogant and self centred as his older sibling.
He remembers Miss Barch from his junior year in Santa Fe. They'd been there for most of his sophomore year so Sam was surprised when Dad didn't uproot them and move them to the other side of the country. He'd killed the feathered snake god thing, so history dictated that Dad would find another hunt. Instead Dad had left him there with Dean to start the new school year, and there was his new academic advisor, Miss Barch. Now she was Mrs Williams, but it was still her with the same sad eyes and straight eyebrows. She used to nearly come to tears when he came into her office with bruises and cuts and once a broken arm. But no matter how pissed of he was with his father or brother for dragging him out on a hunt, as often as he thought, just one word would end it all, he never did say a thing about how he got hurt. She cried the day he told her that they were leaving. Now when he says that he hasn't had contact with his family for just over three years, she smiles and there's a glint of triumph in her eyes. He doesn't like what he knows she's thinking, that he's escaped an abusive home and overcome so many difficulties to get to where he is now, but he doesn't correct her either.
It's been nearly four years since he was last slammed into the floor by Dean.