Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, Criminal Minds or any of the characters. I also do not own the video game Fallout. Nothing is mine, and this is for entertainment purposes only.
My knowledge of Fallout is limited to later games in the series, so I apologise if there are any glaring mistakes in the short reference to that game in this fic.
Part 1/3 of Monsters.
.
The park was cold at night.
Sam shivered, pulling his knees further in, and making sure the too-large coat was completely covering his body. The bench wasn't the best place to sleep – he'd take a bed, if he could – but it was the best he had for now.
He wondered about his dad, and about Dean. John Winchester probably hadn't even realised his son was missing yet – he was probably busy hunting down whatever it was killing people here. Dean, too. Dean had dropped out of high school around the end of January that year, not even bothering to graduate. It didn't really matter, he'd said. Saving people was more important than education. Hunting things was more important than knowledge. The family business was more important than Sam's dream of a normal life. More important than Sam's life.
Dean had gone with their dad on this hunt, leaving Sam alone. And Sam had left. After Six Flags, after Rochester and that little, insignificant town in Alabama, Sam had been surprised they hadn't seen it coming. He'd run away before. He'd made it painstakingly clear that he did not want to carry on with "the family business." He wanted a future. A life of his own. And he knew he wasn't going to get it by staying with his family.
Sam shivered again. The ice-cold wind pressed against his face, and he closed his eyes. He might as well try to sleep, he figured. Overthinking his situation was not going to help.
It was a long night.
.
"Hey! Red! C'mon!"
Sam's eyes fought him in his attempt to open them.
"Red! C'mere, boy, c'mere!"
A dog barked. Sam shifted his weight a little, so he was sitting on the bench rather than lying in his somewhat awkward sleeping position. He pulled the fabric of the coat around him, his fingers fumbling in the cold as he did so.
"Hey!" the voice called. "Kid!"
Sam turned to face the stranger. They were about the same age, but the other boy had short, blond hair and a warm-looking red jacket. His cheeks were tinted ruby by the cold, reminding Sam of the Christmas cards he saw in shop windows every December. He often wondered if they were an accurate depiction of a normal life, but then there was no way he could ever know. No way his life would ever be normal.
"You okay, kid?"
Sam nodded. The stranger walked closer, yanking his dog's lead to bring the small, red-brown terrier with him. The dog rolled over on the frosted ground before running after the blond boy.
"Did you sleep here?" he asked as he reached Sam's bench, taking in the almost-frozen boy who held the coat around his body like it was a matter of life or death. "Jeez, kid, I wouldn't be surprised if you caught pneumonia."
Sam just looked at him, unsure what to say.
The blond boy sighed. "I'm Eddie," he told Sam. "You?"
"Sam."
"Sam," Eddie repeated, nodding. "Where d'you live, Sam?"
The darker-haired boy shrugged. "We don't really have a house," he told Eddie. "We move around a lot."
Eddie frowned and sat down next to Sam on the bench. Red jumped up next to him. "We?" he questioned.
"My dad, brother, and me," Sam clarified. "They're off... Hunting."
"And they just left you here?" Eddie asked, slightly horrified. Sam shrugged; it was close enough to the truth. They had left him alone at the motel in Beaver Falls, and he'd hiked to this tiny town the night before, but those were details.
"Look, Sam," Eddie continued. "I can't leave you out here – you'll freeze to death! I'm sure my parents won't mind you staying at ours for a bit, before we figure some stuff out."
"You don't have to -" Sam began.
"I know," said Eddie. "Just let me."
.
Sam poked at the food set out in front of him – ham sandwiches, quickly put together by Eddie's mother after he'd convinced her that he didn't want to go to the police station – and then picked one up and took a bite.
"How long have you been out there?" the woman asked.
Sam shrugged. "Just last night." He took another bite. Eddie's mother smiled as she watched him eat.
"Your family left you?" she questioned.
Sam swallowed. "Sort of. They went hunting."
"Hunting?" someone asked. "Like bears?"
A girl, very like Eddie in looks, but a few years younger, was standing in the doorway, wearing blue jeans and a pale green top. She was staring at Sam inquisitively.
Sam nodded. "Yeah. Like bears."
"Who are you?" the girl demanded.
"JJ," her mother warned. "Be polite."
JJ rolled her eyes. "Sorry," she said. "Please may I know who you are, strange person in our dining room?"
Grinning, Sam told her. "I'm Sam Winchester."
"Jennifer Jareau," the girl responded. "Most people call me JJ. I just started middle school."
"Sophomore year," Sam replied.
JJ smiled. "Like Eddie," she told him. "My sister's older than him, though. She's in Senior year."
"So was my brother," said Sam, "until he stopped going to school."
Eddie's mother cut in then. "Sam," she said, "please finish your sandwiches. It would make me feel better, knowing you've got some food inside you."
.
Since it was Saturday – Sam had made sure to disappear at the weekend so that the school in Beaver Falls wouldn't call his dad until Monday – nobody had school, though Henry Jareau, Eddie's dad, did have to work. He was the only member of the family Sam hadn't met in his first hour in the house.
Eddie had tried to get Sam to play some game with him, but Sam had become disinterested after a few minutes. Fallout was far too much like Sam's own life – too much about weapons and having a rubbish life and killing various strange creatures before they killed you.
Now Sam was wandering around the house, wondering what he could do. Without realising it, he walked straight into the elder sister, Rosa.
"Hey, watch it, kiddo," she told him. After a moment of silence, she asked, "Sam? You okay?"
Sam nodded. He was okay. No worse than usual.
"You look kinda sad," she told him. "You wanna talk?"
He shrugged.
"Come on," Rosa said. "Come in my room."
She ushered him into a room that was decorated in beige and blue, and sat him down on the end of her bed. Her room was larger than Eddie's, but only slightly, and where Eddie had a computer, Rosa had a bookcase.
"Talk to me," Rosa ordered.
Sam just looked down. "I don't have anything I want to say," he told her.
"Really?"
He sighed. "Okay. I guess... I'm worried about my brother. Dad gets angry sometimes, and Dean -" He swallowed. "I mean, Dean's never had to go to hospital because of Dad, but – I'm just worried that me running away might make Dad angry somehow."
"Running away?" Rosa echoed. "I thought they left you behind."
"They did," Sam admitted. "In a motel in Beaver Falls."
Rosa stared at him for a long moment. Eventually she quietly asked, "Has your dad ever hit you?"
"No," Sam told her. "He, uh, he gets angry at Dean mostly. For not looking after me."
"Why did you run away, then?" she questioned. There was hardly a pause between his words and hers this time.
Sam stared at her cream-coloured carpet. "It's complicated," he said. "I guess I just – wasn't happy?" He said it like a question.
"Why?" Rosa pressed.
He shrugged, thinking for a moment. "Misunderstandings," he summarised.
Rosa bit her lip. "I know what that's like," she said.
"You do?" He looked up at her for the first time in the conversation. Her blue eyes met his dark ones.
She nodded. "Yeah. I mean, nothing like you, of course. Just... My friends at school argue a lot, and they all end up turning on me somehow. And at home, it's almost like I'm invisible."
There was a long moment of silence between them.
"Do you ever get the feeling that nobody cares?" Sam asked quietly. "That you could just disappear, and... That would be it. You'd just be gone, and nobody would notice."
Rosa nodded, understanding. "All the time."
"Yeah," Sam said. "Me too."
Silence floated between them, coated in understanding and sympathy. The silence was long.
"Except," Rosa said eventually. "JJ. I can't leave her."
Sam glanced over at her. "JJ?"
Nodding, Rosa continued, "She cares. She doesn't know. But she cares. That's why I haven't...you know...yet. I know she'll miss me. Nobody else will, but... I can't ruin her life, Sam."
Sam looked down. "Nobody cares about me," he said.
.
It was late afternoon when Henry Jareau returned home from work.
"Hey, Jaje," he said, grinning as his eleven-year-old daughter launched herself at him for a hug. "You had a good day, sweetheart?"
JJ nodded. "Dad, meet Sammy." She'd taken to using that name for him sometime around lunch. He'd told her off for it, mainly because it reminded him of Dean, but she'd insisted on using it. "He's homeless."
Henry raised his eyebrows. "And he's in our house because..."
"Eddie found him while he was out walking Red this morning," Sandy, the mother, told her husband. "I wanted to take him along to the police station, but he didn't want to."
Henry looked down at Sam. "We can't keep you here, kid."
"I told him that," Sandy said. "He says his dad and brother are on a hunting trip, and they just left him."
"He ran away," Rosa said from the doorway, where she stood separated from the rest of the family. "That's what he told me."
Sam glared at her.
"Hey, listen," she said to him. "From what you told me, your dad and brother love you. A lot. So you should go back to them... Sammy."
Sam rolled his eyes at the use of the nickname. "I don't -" he began, but Henry interrupted him.
"In that case, we should get you along to the police station. Your dad and brother are probably very worried about you, Sammy."
Sandy sighed, assuming Sam had lied to her about his family leaving to hide the fact he'd run away. "Come on, young man," she said, holding out her hand to him. "Let's get you home."
Sam looked down. "Can I go say bye to Eddie first?"
Sandy nodded, and Sam rushed upstairs.
"Hey!" Eddie complained as Sam burst into his room, but then he looked up and, realising who it was, paused his game. "You okay?"
"I'm leaving," Sam informed him.
Eddie blinked. "Oh."
"So. Um. I guess I should be saying goodbye." Sam fiddled with his jacket zip as he said the words.
Eddie nodded. "Yeah, I guess." He paused, and then – as if he had suddenly thought of something – jumped up from his chair and ran to the shelf beside his bed. "Here. Take this."
"I can't -" Sam began.
Eddie pressed the small object into his hand. "Just take it, Sam. I want you to have it."
Sam stared at him. "Why?" he questioned.
Shrugging, Eddie said, "It's just a present, Sam. Something I want to give you."
"Okay," Sam agreed, giving up. "Bye, Eddie."
"Bye," the blond boy said, smiling in farewell. They nodded at each other awkwardly, and Sam returned the smile before he walked out of Eddie's room and shut the door behind him.
He looked down at the object in his hand.
It was a young boy's toy, a stiff plastic figure of a soldier painted green. The soldier's gun was missing, leaving a jagged mark where it had broken off.
It was nothing. A memory of Eddie's, a cheap, broken toy, but Sam grinned at it, because it, more than anything, meant someone cared.
.
He was still staring at the broken soldier when Rosa came upstairs. She went into her bedroom, and came out seconds later with her hands clasped around something. Seeing Sam, she walked over and hugged him.
"Thank you, Sam," she said.
"For what?" Sam questioned, but Rosa had already walked away. She entered her younger sister's room, and a moment later Sam heard an excited squeal. JJ must have come up while he was in Eddie's room...
Curious, Sam considered entering JJ's room as well, but as he was walking towards it, Rosa came out. She shut the door softly behind her, curled her hands up into fists, and looked at Sam.
"What was that about?" he inquired.
Rosa looked at him for a minute or so, and Sam wondered whether he'd said something wrong, but then Rosa uncurled her fists and said, "My necklace."
"Your...?"
She shook her head. "Goodbye Sam. Be happy." And, patting him on the shoulder, she disappeared into her bedroom. The door made a soft thudding noise behind her.
.
"Sam! Come on!" Henry Jareau called from downstairs.
Sam went.
He wasn't looking forward to returning to Dean and his dad, but it wasn't like he had a choice. He never had a choice.
.
Many years later...
.
"The Winchesters," Hotch said, and two pictures appeared on the board behind him. "Sam and Dean, on a killing spree across the US. They started in Jericho, California, and so far they've also killed at Black Water Ridge in Colorado, and Lake Manitoc in Wisconsin. They've killed thirty-two people so far, of all genders, ages, races and social backgrounds, and it doesn't appear they're interested in stopping."
"So they're spree killers," Morgan said.
"Who usually end with suicide by cop," Prentiss added.
JJ stared at the picture on the left. Sam Winchester... The memory was just a faint echo in her mind now; the memory of the boy who her brother had brought home with him one day. A boy who'd just started Sophomore year, a boy who's dad and brother had left him behind on a hunting trip.
She wondered what she would have done, at the time, if she had known what kind of hunting they were talking about.
It was hard to imagine the young boy who'd run away from his family on a spree killing with his brother. It was hard to imagine Sam killing at all. He'd seemed so innocent, so lost and confused, in the one day she'd known him.
"You okay, JJ?" Rossi asked.
She nodded, looking around. They needed to know. "Sam won't end with suicide by cop," she told them.
"What makes you say that?" Reid asked.
"He, uh," she began. "When he was fifteen, he ran away from Dean and their dad. Eddie found him on a bench at the park while he was walking our dog. Sam said they'd left him behind to go on a hunting trip, but later on he told my sister that he'd run away. My dad... He insisted on taking Sam to the police station, taking him back to his family."
"He ran away," Hotch muttered.
Morgan spoke up. "So, what? You think Dean and their dad were forcing Sam to...take part in their fun? Or that Dean's manipulating him somehow?"
"I don't know," JJ admitted. "It's just...the Sam I knew wasn't a killer. I don't know what happened to him – I hardly know anything about him – but he was a good person."
"Was," Rossi echoed.
Was, JJ repeated in her mind. She wondered if, had her father not insisted on taking Sam back to his family, that was could have been an is, if Sam could have turned out to be a completely different person. A good person, like he was before.
"Was," she agreed, wondering if she should second guess he statememnt that Sam wouldn't end in the usual way for spree killers.
After all, he wasn't the boy she'd called Sammy any more.
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If you want to read more - the next oneshot in the series is up! It's called Spree :-)