A/N: These aren't my kids. I'm only the nanny. And, clearly, not a very good one, since I let them get into all this trouble.
This is the story of Sam's first kill. If that story has already been told otherwise in canon, then consider this AU. I've missed a couple of seasons, so it's possible I've missed that.
LIES ABOUT ANGELS
My mother promised my brother angels. She said they were watching over him all the time.
I wasn't there. And then later I was, but I was too little to remember. He doesn't like to talk about her, but sometimes, when he's desperate – sometimes when I'm scared or sad or desperate myself enough to make him desperate – he whispers stories about her into the darkness between the motel beds. He mostly thinks I'm asleep when he does this and I never let on otherwise. He never tells me whether she actually said it outright, but I imagine the implication was that nothing bad was going to happen to him. That the angels would keep him safe.
Then lots of bad stuff happened. To him and to the rest of us.
Especially her.
If you saw us driving down the street into your town (and you hadn't already been killed by whatever it was we were arriving in your town to deal with), what you'd see would be this:
-A black car so shiny you'd never know how many times it (because I refuse to use female pronouns for the thing like my dad and brother do) had been dinged up by flying gravel, and flying bullets, and sometimes flying family members.
-A scowling man behind the wheel. You'd never see him look at you, but he'd already have mentally cataloged your face and your haircut and your outfit and whether you looked appropriate to the time period and whether you were packing.
-A smug-looking teenager in the passenger seat, nodding to the tunes, and to the ladies, without a single angel anywhere near him so far as you could tell.
-And if you managed to see into the cavernous back seat, you'd see a normal-looking kid in ratty-looking clothes, reading something his brother stole him from the library.
Of course if you actually were the thing we were arriving to deal with, you wouldn't see us coming at all. You'd just be dealt with. Efficiently. Expertly.
By those two guys in the front seat.
Me, I'm on perpetual research detail. I sit in the back seat even when the car is parked in the middle of a pitch-dark forest. Even when my dad and brother have been gone for hours and I'm starting to think that they're not coming back. Even when my mind creeps and tiptoes and wanders into the corners that aren't supposed to be visited, corners where my mother's whispered voice, which is only imagined and is probably wrong, talks to my brother about angels, the last time any of us truly felt safe.
And then on Mondays I wake up and go to school.
There is a disconnect that happens in my mind. It's like:
Pitch-dark forest, missing dad and brother, worry, fear, startled by a noise, bloody dad, panicked brother, miles of highway, stitches and whiskey and tales I only wish were tall …
Aaaaand …
School. Metal lockers banging open. Squeaky sneakers on old linoleum. The smell of paper and tweed and poorly-hidden cigarettes. Sharp elbows and pungent body odor. Bad cafeteria food that smells like a sponge left in the dishwater too long.
You'd think, with the two hemispheres of my life being so very different, that I would be good at one or the other of them. You'd think that if I were as bad as I am at being a hunter – as out of place, as awkward with the gun, as – in the words of John Winchester – unmotivated as I am to traipse around the woods, killing evil stuff, that I would have to be good at the polar opposite, the completely mundane world of junior high school education.
But I've found that, no matter what town I live in, junior high school bears little resemblance to education. Mostly I spend my days trying not to get my fingers slammed in a locker, trying not to slide in my worn-out shoes, trying to hold my breath past the cigarettes, to duck the sharp elbows, to eat enough of the bad cafeteria food that I won't be hungry later if Dad and Dean are late getting home. I'm good at being educated, but not very good at school. Just like Dad and Dean know their way around a job that feels foreign to me, the other kids all know how to navigate the halls together, and I am alone.
The thing that ties the two halves of my world together is that there are always books. Both places, books.
And so I become very good at reading.
I am reading something and I can't remember where I got it. It's either from the school library two schools ago, or it's from Bobby's.
If it's from Bobby's, I know it's a reliable source.
But if it's from a school, I have no way of knowing. All I can say is that I hope it's from an old school library. So I can at least pretend it's fake.
I don't want it to be real.
I wake up screaming, but it doesn't matter. I'm still in the Impala. I'm still alone. The book is on the floor. I don't want to ever pick it up again.
There's stuff I don't want to know. About the world and how it really works. About what's hiding in the shadows. I'm the one who's supposed to read and report, but sometimes I wish I didn't have to know. Sometimes I wish I were as dull and as sheltered as the kids who bang the lockers closed on other kids' fingers, who throw elbows into their ribs. Who look at us without really seeing us when we first roll into town.
Who don't ever miss us when we're gone.
I am … choose an adjective.
-Frustrated
-Frightened
-Hurt
-Worried
-Tired, so tired, so tired.
-All of the above.
I spend my days researching presidents and scientific strategies and historic landmarks. I spend my nights researching werewolves and vampires and wendigos and, sometimes, historic landmarks. And the things in this book, things I know are real, but that I don't want to read about. Things that have personal meaning for my family, that frighten me all the way to the core.
I know they exist. I just hope they aren't as powerful as this book seems to think. Or bad things are going to happen again.
You know what I never read about? I never read about angels watching over people. That must have just been a tall tale after all.
Dad gets back to the Impala without my brother.
What? Dad. Gets back to the Impala without … What?
I've been asleep too long. I'm groggy, I'm still half out of my mind from the nightmares. I don't understand what's going …
"Dad?"
I meet him outside the car, because he's digging in the trunk, digging desperately in the trunk. The whole side of his face is bloody and I can't see where it's coming from. He does not look at me. The book in the back seat burns in my mind. Demons can look like anybody. They can take over anybody and you'd never know. You'd never know Dad wasn't Dad until he'd killed you, eyes all black, and …
"Dad?"
"Sam, I need you to come with me."
What?
"Your brother's pinned down, we need more manpower. Grab that gun."
I don't know what he means by pinned down. Like in battle? Like, trapped somewhere? Or more literal? Pinned, like stuck? Like hurt? My heart hasn't had any trouble waking up, it's pounding in my chest, but my mind is still fuzzy. "Dad ..."
"Now, Sam!"
The word "now" in my father's voice terrifies me on a gut level. I don't know why. But when he says it, I am compelled to run. I feel the cold metal of the gun arrive in my hand. I grip. Dad's running beside me, soundlessly, and fast. I feel slow and clumsy and loud. I feel like if the thing knows we're coming, it'll be because of me.
"Left," Dad says. No, says is not the right word. Breathes. Thinks. I catch his meaning and stumble to the left while he glides right.
We come up behind the …
Okay, I did the research, so I knew this was what we were hunting. Still. I have never seen these creatures up close and they're so big and they're so gross and they're so very capable of killing my brother. Or my dad. Or me. Or everyone. I'm so startled that I have to work to stop short of entering the clearing and being seen.
Something makes me look up, and there is Dean, in a tree, looking mortified but not all that scared.
My heart stutter-steps and then returns to its usual rhythm. Dean doesn't look scared. Dean looks pissed that he's stuck in a tree. I look for his gun and find it on the ground in the center of the pack of creatures.
Dean climbed the tree to get a better shot, and then he dropped his gun. And now he's stuck.
I suck in a few sharp breaths.
Dean's okay. Dean's not hurt. Dean's not pinned down. Dean's just stuck in a tree.
I'm so washed in relief that I forget to be afraid. Until Dad thinks at me, "On three."
Wait, what on three? Crap! I don't understand the –
Oh. I have a gun.
And if that weren't enough of a reminder, Dean's helpfully making shooting motions.
There are two creatures and I get it now. If Dad shoots one, the other will have time to pounce on him. I know from my research that they're crazy fast and can jump 55 times their own body length, which makes them a better jumper than a kangaroo rat. I also know from my research – research I desperately wish were not tumbling around inside my brain now that I'm face to hairy rump with one of these creatures – that they are vindictive. If you kill one of their own, they will pounce. If you somehow get away, they will track you and kill you. They're big and hairy, but they're not stupid. They can track better than my dad even.
So we have to kill them at the same time. On three. And he's already on two. And I'm a good shot – I've killed a million soda cans – but I have never been on a hunt and I have never killed anything supernatural before.
I have never had my dad's life and my brother's counting on me making the shot.
My ears fuzz out, so all I can hear is my heartbeat. Somewhere inside that rushy, blood-thumping noise inside my ears, I catch a wisp of a voice I have never heard before.
I can't make out her words. But somehow I know, she's talking about angels.
Somehow I know, she's lying about angels.
My blood pumps harder, the way it does when a kid slams my fingers in a locker, or elbows me in the stomach, or ignores me, ignores my family, never knowing what we do for them. What we give up for them, what we risk. The forest stands still, my treed, humiliated brother trying to catch my eye, the beasts still focused on him, still unaware of the ambush that's about to take place.
I feel:
-Angry.
-Rageful.
-Tired, so tired, so tired.
My dad says three.
The trigger is still cold, because I haven't been touching it. The sounds of two gunshots bust through the blood-whooshing sounds in my ears. There are unearthly cries, the screeching and screaming of two creatures dying in the night. In their final moments, their giant, filthy, murderous claws reach out to each other, and I remember from my reading that these creatures mate for life.
They die before their claws can touch.
I look away.
We're in the car, and Dad's quiet, but I can tell he's pleased. The creases at the corners of his eyes turn up instead of down.
Dean's reliving the whole thing on my behalf, telling the story tall, waving his arms, drawing pictures in the air with his hands. How cool it was to see me waste a supernatural being, how badass I am because I made the shot. Part of me knows he's trying to distract me from the teasing I could instigate based on him being literally treed by the thing he was hunting. There is so much teasing ammo in that event that I wouldn't even know where to start. The Little Brother Handbook states that I ought to be all over it.
But part of me knows Dean is truly proud that he witnessed my first kill (and from such a good vantage point, too). And that it was my first kill. That I didn't back down. That I understood Dad's directions and my training paid off and the things in the forest went down without a glitch.
I don't tease. I don't answer. I don't say anything.
I feel:
-Relieved
-Frustrated
-Frightened
-Hurt
-Worried
-Angry.
-Tired, so tired, so tired.
I do not feel:
-Proud.
Eventually, Dean gets quiet like Dad. But the creases still forming at the corners of his eyes turn down, not up, because he knows me.
Job's done and we're packing up to go. For other families, packing up involves U-Hauls and suitcases, boxes and bubble wrap, packing tape and permanent markers. A whole lot of goodbyes.
Into the trunk, on top of the secret compartment where the gun I used is kept, we each toss a duffel.
Done.
Then I climb into the back seat with the books, kicking them off the seat to make room for my legs, which are a little bit sore from traipsing through the forest. I know, although he hasn't said, that Dad has noticed, and he will be adjusting my training to include roots and branches.
Dean is cocky, having decided I'm going to let the whole getting-treed thing slide. He reaches back to shove my feet, trying to get a rise out of me. Then he picks up the demon book, the nightmare book, off the floor and tosses it onto my lap.
"Don't screw that up," he says, "it's Bobby's."
Oh.
Miles go by. Night comes, and my brother dozes. Dad hums tunelessly with the classic rock station.
I stay awake as long as I can.