When Sam leaves for Stanford, everyone has trouble adjusting. Pre-series.
This story mentions Sara Lucian, a character from two of my other Supernatural stories (Creepy-Ass Orchard of Death and The Louisiana). Reading those stories probably isn't strictly necessary. Sara is a friend (and nothing more) of Dean's who is also a young Hunter. She specalises in exorcisms and was trained by her mother, just as Dean was trained by John. Reviews are hugely appreciated.
xxx
Oklahoma,
August 1st, 2002
It wasn't easy, Dean knew, trying to raise two kids whilst hunting all the things that went bump in the night. After eighteen years, though, John Winchester had the system down perfect.
Holidays were invariably spent in the Impala, shooting from this town to that state and back again. Schooling complicated matters. Although, it didn't have to. For someone who didn't see the point in anything 'normal', John was incredibly determined that his boys would both graduate from High School. Anything else was out of the question, but that much he was set on. The best solution was normally to rent some flat or tiny house for six months, a year tops, and let the boys attend the local school.
It worked well enough. Aside from one or two hairy moment with Social Services and the time Dean's math teacher had been a closet zombie, it had gone fine.
Dean liked the rented flats and homes. Having a decent sized fridge and being able to spread out a bit. Hell, being able to actually unpack was always nice for a change. At twenty-two, he was really too old to be living at home, but when home moved around so much, who cared? This home, though, was the last. Sam had graduated almost a month ago, but the lease didn't expire for another three weeks. No point leaving with the rent already paid and all, but there would be no more semi-permanent homes. No reason for them.
And Dean was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
He knew John's plans for Sam. Hunt, train, hunt, train, train some more, kill something big and nasty, avenge their mother. Identical to the plans for Dean, which Dean was following pretty much to the letter, just with a lot more booze and loud music than his father had anticipated. Sam knew about these plans as well. In the same way that other families discussed colleges, the Winchesters debated firearms.
Or they used to. None of them mentioned the future anymore, because they all know that something had to go wrong.
But despite all that, Dean was sitting calmly at the kitchen table with his father and a fistful of eye-witness reports when he heard something crunching up the gravel outside their lonely, isolated little house. A mechanical something, not the demonic kind. Just to be clear.
Dean stuck his head out of the front door. "Oh, you didn't."
His best – and only – friend grinned back at him. Sara Lucian was an exorcist, twenty years old and just a few inches over five feet in height. And sitting on a fricking motorbike.
"I talked Mum round," she said. "What do you think?"
"Amelia agreed to you having a motorbike?" Dean said, somewhat surprised. He'd known about Sara's love of motorbikes for years, but her mother had never let her drive anything but a Toyota.
"More or less. She said if I killed myself, she'd bind my spirit in a toothbrush."
"Nice."
Sara shrugged. "That's Lucians for you."
"What are you doing here?"
"Your dad in?"
"Kitchen. Mind if I..." Dean said, gesturing at the bike.
"Knock yourself out," Sara said, picking up her rucksack and heading into the house. She'd been there once or twice before and made a point of banging on Sam's bedroom door as she passed it. "Female in the house!" Turned out an entirely male-dominated household didn't always have the best idea of 'modesty', as she'd discovered much to her – and Sam's – embarrassment the last time she was here.
John looked up at she entered the kitchen. "Morning, Sara."
"Morning. Got the books you wanted from Pastor Jim," she said, fishing three small volumes of out her bag. "And I have a favour to ask."
"Amelia needs back-up?" John asked, taking the books and checking them over.
"No. But her spider sense is tingling. She thinks a possession is going to pop up somewhere around here, and soon. Mind if I crash on your sofa for a day or so until she's proved to be right?"
"Your mother's still worrying about you?"
"Safest place for miles," Sara said. "If it's a problem-"
"You know anything about a two-thousand year old curse on a piece of land in Arkansas?"
Sara smiled. Heaven forbid John should actually tell her she was welcome to stay. "Arkansas?" she said, sitting down. "Rings a bell."
Sam entered the kitchen, running a hand through his mussed hair. "Oh, hey, Sara," he said.
"Hey, Sasquatch," Sara replied.
"When are you going to stop calling him that?" John asked idly, suddenly beginning to tidy up the case notes.
"When his feet shrink."
Sam managed a faint smile. "You just love it that I'm taller than Dean, don't you?"
"Maybe a little bit."
"Traitor," Dean said, coming in. "That is one nice bike. Who'd you steal it from?"
"Twenty-first birthday present," Sara said primly. "Thank the Lord for the Lucian fortune. Oh, uh," she scrabbled for her bag and pulled out another book, tossing it at Sam. "Congrats on surviving high school."
"Thanks," Sam said, and looked at the title. "Christ, the Codex?"
"It was that or Lord of the Rings," Sara said. "Some useful protection stuff in there, Sasquatch. Might come in handy."
John slipped out of the kitchen just as Dean vehemently banned any sort of high-brow discussion. He paused outside the small room, listening for a moment.
"You guys don't have any tea, do you?"
"Get thee behind me, Satan," the boys said in unison.
Shaking his head, John moved off.
xxx
It wasn't like Sam had ever asked to be different. Well, not if you took 'normal' as the usual definition. He wanted nothing more than a real life, not hunt after hunt, fighting for a woman he couldn't even remember.
Sam sat by his bed, moonlight coming through the curtain-less window for him to see by. Once again, he slipped the envelope from beneath his mattress and extracted the letter. He couldn't quite make out the words, but he knew them anyway.
Mr Winchester,
We are pleased to inform you...
Sam knew he had a problem seeing the consequences of his actions. It had started out innocently enough. He'd wanted to take the SATs seriously, just like he'd taken all of his schoolwork seriously since preschool. And he'd gone to talk to the guidance counsellor because not going would cause too much hassle.
Well, I haven't much thought about college, he'd practised in his head. Thought I'd take a year off, get my head together, figure out what I want to do with my life.
And the counsellor had smashed right through that plan when she'd started mentioning Ivy League, dropping names all over the place.
But... my family, we can't afford-
And he'd meant, we can't afford to do that, in a complete different way to the one she'd assumed as she easily started passing over forms about scholarships applications.
A nice woman, who Sam had never even spoken to before, neatly demolished all his plans to ignore college because it was never going to happen just like that. And Sam was halfway through planning the next set of objections, or even just tossing the forms out the window, when he suddenly realised...
He wanted this. He wanted to go to college, he wanted to learn and maybe become a lawyer and stop killing things. Simple as that.
So he filled out form after form, and studied like crazy, and filled out more forms and sent them off and this was the result. He was in. Full ride to Stanford, pre-law.
And it was going to ruin everything.
Sam wasn't an idiot. He had the proof in his hand, but he knew more than facts and figures. He knew Dad was going to be furious. Dean would be hurt. Shouting would be a given. Harsh words, just like every other fortnight for the last six years, when Sam hit puberty with a vengeance and fell out of love with his freakish life. But this was more than just wanting normal.
This time, normal was in his grasp. All he had to do was take it.
And damn his family.
When the front door slammed, Sam jumped guiltily and stuffed the letter away again. Dean and Sara had gone to the one and only local bar. They, well, Sara had invited him along as well, but Sam knew that Sara was very likely the only friend Dean had and he wasn't about to get in the way. His door was open just a crack and he could hear the two of them in the kitchen.
"I can't believe you did that, Dean!" Sara said, being careful to keep her voice low.
"The guy was jackass," Dean replied, completely unrepentant. "What's the problem?"
"The problem is I needed a good screw more than a knight in tarnished armour."
Sam grinned as he heard Dean splutter.
"Good grief, Dean, you would've thought the whole thing with Caleb would've shown you-"
"Please, for the love of all that is holy, can you change the subject?"
Sara's laugh drifted through the door, happy and uncomplicated. "Aw, is Dean getting embarrassed?"
"Does your mother know you're like this?"
"A slut? Probably not. No longer a virgin? Definitely."
"Tell me she didn't give you 'the talk'."
"Hell, no. She never suspected me and Caleb were doing anything more than debating shotguns."
"So how?"
"Well, I think she figured it out about the time I started using the bottled virgin's saliva for spells rather than just spitting in the bowl."
They both laughed that time and Sam felt some knots in chest relax. There were plenty of others, but he had some comfort knowing that Dean had someone other than their dad. Maybe he could do this.
Maybe.
xxx
The next morning, Sara was gone. Not missing-gone, gone-to-kill-a-demon kinda gone, with the note on the kitchen table to prove it.
Dean was sitting on the work-surface, almost inhaling a cup of coffee, when Sam walked in. "Dad wants us to go with him today," he said by way of greeting. "New creature feature a coupla hours away."
"Any idea what?" Sam asked. Arguing about it seemed like way too much hassle.
"No," John said, coming in from the front door. "But it sounds nasty. Sam, can I see the Codex Sara gave you?"
"Sure. It's in my room," Sam answered, mind fixed on coffee and breakfast. There should be some Lucky Charms left, shouldn't there?
There wasn't, as it turned out, but there was plenty of coffee and that was almost good enough. Sam was on his third cup when his father walked slowly back into the kitchen and he nearly dropped it when he saw what John had in his hand. Not the Codex. The letter.
"Dad-"
"What the hell is this?" John asked, voice soft, dangerous.
"I- I-"
"Dad, what's going on?" Dean said, eyes flicking from one to the other.
"Look for yourself," John replied and threw the letter to his son.
It fell to the floor and Dean slid off the work-surface to retrieve it. "Stanford?" he said, staring at the letter. "A full ride?"
And Sam's mind, his fast-working, too damn smart mind, was stuck, unable to think of anything to do or say to defuse this situation. He thought he'd have more time, time to talk his father around and warn Dean and talk about it with someone, and plan, and-
"Well?" John demanded, snatching the letter back from Dean. "What the hell were you thinking?"
"I just... I wanted to see if I could do it," Sam managed to say and it wasn't the whole truth, not even close, but it was somewhere to start off.
"Well, you did it. Ready to get on with something worthwhile now?"
God, he hated that tone in his dad's voice. The one that let him know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that no matter what he did, he'd never be good enough.
"Well?" John said again.
Is this how he wanted to life his whole life? Hating his father more and more, hating his life, having nothing good to focus on? Never being good enough?
"No."
"Excuse me?"
Dean was shaking his head frantically at his brother, wordlessly begging him not to do this. It hadn't been a cease-fire between Sam and John, it had been the quiet before an earthquake.
And Sam had learnt to hide his fear from his father at age nine, so doing it at eighteen wasn't so bad. "I want to go."
"You want to what?"
"I want to go to Stanford," he repeated, ignoring the stab of pain somewhere inside him. This wasn't going to end well. For all his plans of maybe hunting in holidays, long distance research, it was never going to end well. "I don't want this life."
"You have a responsibility-"
"To what? To your insane quest? I want more than that!"
"What about your mother?"
"What about her? She's dead, Dad, and nothing's gonna change that. Not even getting yourself and us killed just to make yourself feel better!"
John nodded slowly, face impassive. "Fine. Go after your perfect life. But you do it without us, understood?"
Sam nearly flinched. "What?"
"Either stay here and do your duty, or go and stay gone. I mean it, Sam. You walk out that door, never come back."
For a moment, Sam wavered. This was home, however shitty it was. It was all he knew. He looked to Dean, to his big brother who had always stepped into the argument before it got this bad. Not this time, though.
He swallowed. "Fine."
John crumbled the letter in his hands, dropped it on the floor and walked out, slamming the front door behind him so hard that the whole thin wall shook.
"Well, that went well," Sam said to his feet.
When Dean took a step forward, Sam turned and fled into his room. A lifetime on the road made packing second-nature. He could be ready to go in half an hour, maybe a little more. Unlike certain brothers, Sam kept his clothes neatly folded so it was easy to stuff them all in the duffel he yanked out from under the bed. Some books were grabbed from the window sill, including the Codex, and tossed on top of the clothes. A few framed photos, a baseball that had once been Dean's, a stuffed bear small enough to sit in his hand with hardly any fur left.
"You know," Dean said from the doorway, just as Sam was doing a final check under his bed and in drawers. "Dad'll be so pissed when he gets back, he won't know whether you're here or not. By the morning, he'll have calmed down."
"Great," Sam replied, pulling open the drawer of his bedside table. Knife, holy water, rosary... "Then what? Repeat that argument a few dozen times until he shoots me?" He shut the drawer again, leaving all of the hunting stuff where it was. "I don't think so, Dean. He'll never back down over this."
"And neither will you, right?" Dean snapped, managing to sound pissed off. Which, Sam thought, he had every right to be. "Geez, Sammy, ever heard of compromise?"
"Compromise? In this family?" Sam snorted, because it was that or start crying. "Here, it's all or nothing. And I just figured something out." He hooked the backpack over his shoulders, grabbed the duffel and gave Dean a faint, fake smile. "Revenge is all. We're nothing."
"That what you really think?"
"Looks like," and Sam slipped past the shocked Dean.
It said a lot about Dean's state of mind that he didn't even try to grab Sam as he passed. All his life, Dean had anchored Sam, kept him close even when Sam wanted nothing to do with him. But this... It wasn't just that the rules had suddenly changed. All of a sudden, no one was playing any more. Sam was leaving. Walking out of his life, in search of something better, something normal.
He was about three miles away before he started to cry.
xxx
The exorcism had gone smoother than any other Sara had ever done. Her mother's mystical tracking system led her to the possessed host before the demon even had time to get comfy and prying it out into the ether and slamming it back into hell was satisfyingly easy. After a year of solo exorcisms, Sara was starting to settle into the routine, adapt to the fallout, although the feeling of a job well done was still sour.
So when she parked her shiny new bike outside the Winchesters' home, next to John's truck, she was in a pretty good mood. Needless to say, it didn't last.
It wasn't that late, only eleven pm or so, and Sara was hoping Dean might not object to a celebratory drink or two. The fallout had only lasted a day and a half, with another half day spent on the road, and all evidence of what she had done was gone. She wanted to feel human again and spending time with her best friend seemed a good way to go for that.
But the house was dark, apparently empty. Sara frowned; they weren't meant to have moved on yet. Dean had told her to come back here once she was done.
There was no such thing as paranoia in the hunting world, so Sara pulled out her revolver before trying the front door. Unlocked. Not a good sign. Sara slipped through it and into the house, trying to avoid the several creaky floorboards. The door to Sam's room was ajar and the room itself looked like it had been ransacked. Really not a good sign.
She moved into the kitchen, eyes flicking from one patch of deep shadow to the next. No glowing eyes stared back and nothing jumped out at her. Her foot nudged a crumpled piece of paper and after one last look round, Sara knelt and quickly scooped it up, smoothing it out awkwardly, one handed.
Sara never heard someone sneaking up on her, but as it was John Winchester doing the sneaking, that wasn't too surprising. After a momentary scuffle, John realised who it was and released her.
"Mr Winchester, what's going on?" Sara asked, rubbing a sore arm. "What happened to Sam's room?"
He turned away without answering. She could smell alcohol, but he didn't seem drunk. More hung-over, to be honest.
Sara blinked, confused. He'd never ignored her before. Dodged questions, yes, refused to answer, definitely, but never simply ignored her completely. She looked back to the letter still in her hand.
"Stanford?" she said. "Sasquatch got into Stanford?"
And then she saw the look on John's face.
"What did you do?" Sara demanded. "What the hell did you do?"
"That doesn't matter," John replied fiercely. "Sam chose that-" He gestured to the letter. "Over his own family. That's all that matters."
"You threw him out." Not a question, a simple statement. "For God's sake-"
John gave her a harsh shove, slamming her against the kitchen table. A cup of stone-cold coffee fell off the edge, shattering on the floor.
"God has nothing to do with it!" he roared.
Sara couldn't help it; she shrank back. "You're right," she said quietly. "This is all on you. Where's Dean?"
"At that bar."
She left without another word. The Impala wasn't outside the house, but it would only take thirty minutes or so to walk to the bar, so she left her bike where it was, draping her leather jacket and helmet over it. Even in the hot August night, she shivered in her tank top and knew it had nothing to do with the temperature.
Sara had always known that the Winchester family had their issues. They were Hunters, after all, and every Hunter was at least a little twisted. Some could be used as a corkscrew. But the Winchesters... They were different. Quite a few Hunters learnt from their fathers, but Sara knew of only one Hunter who had raised his own children in this world: John Winchester. Few Hunters even had families these days, let alone kept them by their side. And the Winchesters had just proved that it didn't really work.
She didn't know when Sam had started to reject his life and his family's work. Long before she had met Sam or Dean, for certain. But for whatever reason, Sam had wanted out. And now he had gone. Left or been driven out, it made no difference. Sam was gone. And that meant Dean was in serious trouble. He'd based his entire life around his little brother. Sara wasn't nearly bigheaded enough to believe that their friendship of three or four years could even begin to compensate for the loss of eighteen years of brotherhood.
But she had to try.
By the time she reached the bar, Sara no longer cared why Sam had left, or what John had said. Neither of them would ever back down, she knew that much, and so all was left was to help Dean. Somehow.
The bar was very familiar to Sara. It was the same one she'd visited with Dean only three days earlier, the one she'd been planning to return to in order to celebrate a successful exorcism. Now, though, there was nothing to celebrate.
A quick glance around didn't reveal Dean, so Sara made her way to the bar and managed to catch the barman's attention.
"Back again, huh?" he asked, recognising her.
"I'm looking for my friend. The guy I was here with last time?" she called over the music.
His smile faded and he pointed to a table near the back of the bar. Sara allowed herself one quick glance at her friend and turned back.
"How long has he been here?"
"Since we opened. Was here last night as well, opening 'till closing."
Sara winced. That was far too many hours of drinking. "Can I settle up for him?"
With Dean's impressive tab paid off, she thanked the barman and headed for Dean's table. A handful of beer bottles and shot glasses littered the stained surface.
"Hey, Dean," she said, slipping into the empty chair. "Trying out a liquid diet?"
She'd have to tread carefully. John just got excessively maudlin and gloomy when drunk, using tequila to revisit happier memories, but Dean, on the one and only occasion Sara had seen him drunk before this, had started a fight that took three hours and five policemen to halt. Good times.
Dean looked up at her, frowning slightly. "Sara?" he nearly slurred. "Thought you were working."
"I was. That's all taken care of," she replied easily. "You wanna get out of here?"
Waiting for an answer could take hours, so Sara just stood up and heaved Dean up. He was more or less able to walk – although straight lines were now something that happened to other people – so it was possible for Sara to manoeuvre him out of the bar again. If she didn't get him back to the house before he passed out, she was buggered. There was just no feasible way for a five-foot-three girl to manhandle a six-foot-one unconscious Dean anywhere.
Propping her friend against his car, Sara rummaged through Dean's pockets, ignoring the swipe at her head, until she found the keys to the Impala.
"What the hell were you gonna do, Dean, sleep in a ditch?" she asked, opening the passenger door and shoving him in.
"Doesn't matter."
"Does to me," she retorted.
"Yeah, but for how long?"
"Shut it, Dean," Sara said firmly. That was not going to lead anywhere she wanted to go.
"You give so much... you sacrifice so much, and for what?"
Sara wished Dean was talking about Hunting. She knew all the arguments for continuing to hunt, had used most of them on her own mother had some point or another. But this time he was talking about something else, something bigger, and Sara didn't have any answers for him. Hell, she wasn't even sure of the question.
"I liked you more when you were hitting things," she said finally.
"He just left. Just walked out on us." On me, was the unspoken thought and Sara hated it that Dean couldn't manage to voice that.
Belatedly, she started the engine. This wasn't something she was sure she could fix, but if she was going to hold Dean together, she would've preferred him to be sober and taciturn, not drunk and talkative. She was good with sober and taciturn.
"Aren't you gonna to tell me that it'll all be ok?" Dean asked as she pulled out of the parking lot.
"Would that help?"
"No. No, it wouldn't."
xxx
Part Two should be up by the 25th. Reviews are loved...
