A/N: Got inspired. Wrote this late at night. Did it work? You tell me. ;)

Disclaimer: The beauty isn't mine. But the feels are.

1988

"Everyone," says Miss Epworth, with a tinfoil bright smile, "is good at something."

Sam has never liked Miss Epworth. She laughs too often and too loud, calls him "Dear, sweet child" but still won't give him a second cookie, and makes the class draw crayon flowers to hang in the school hallway. (Dean says flowers are lame). But he knows that teachers are smart, and wise—they have to be, because that's their job—and so he knows that Miss Epworth must be right.

Everyone is good at something.

Ten years later, he's fifteen, six-foot-one and miserable, failing (again) to take down the ghoul with the first shot.

He doesn't know what he's good at, but he's sure it's not this.

1991

"Who do you want to be when you grow up?"

Sam taps his pencil one-two, one-two, against the smudged pages of his notebook. They need to write just a sentence.

That's not hard, right? Sam may be only eight, but he's heard questions like it before. "What do you want to be—what do you want to do—"

But this is who. Who do you want to be?

He rubs the soft graphite of his nubby pencil tip between his fingers, then holds it firmly in his hand, just like Dean taught him.

Who? Who? Who?

Maybe the other kids will write things about their moms and dads. But Sam's mom is dead, and Sam's dad is away all the time. He doesn't know what Dad does. He doesn't think he's supposed to know.

Prob'ly not even supposed to wonder.

So he writes his sentence, and hopes Mrs. Schozert with the kind eyes and fluffy white hair understands.

I want to be ME.

1996

"Different substances have different boiling points."

Sam hears that in 9th-grade chemistry, thinks of how all of a sudden, everything makes him reach his. (Metaphorically, of course. He's never really been boiled, and he has no wish to be).

But lately…what with Dean's teasing and Dad's training and yeah, OK, it's mostly Dad.

Sam fixes his goggles, thinks on their quarrel last night. It's the first time he's raised his voice to Dad.

Boiling points.

His Dad's not a monster. Sam doesn't have a black eye to hide. But something feels bruised inside.

Across the lab, a girl pours something too hot into something too cold, and glass spatters outward, jagged-edged.

Sam swallows down his metaphor, wonders what's going to get broken.

1998

"It's not all about using the big words. It's about using the right words."

Mr. Warren looks over his glasses when he says that, and Sam racks his brain to come up with a counterargument. He likes big words. Prestidigitation. Ameliorate. Parapraxis. Troglodyte. Sam uses his words like weapons now, when he squabbles with Dad, because Dad has no freaking clue what they mean.

It's the big words that draw the line hard and fast between them, between Dad and his disdain for books outside of lore, languages outside of Latin. It's the big words that make Sam feel different, even if they don't make him feel better.

It's about using the right word.

He never comes up with a counterargument, because maybe Mr. Warren is right. (He is a teacher, after all).

The right words for Sam are whatever separate him from Dad. From hunting. From the life he doesn't want.

Two-and-a-half years later, he writes an essay for Stanford, and when he gets his full ride he thinks that somehow, he must have used all the right words.

2001

"If you walk out on us, don't you think about coming back. You stay gone, you hear me? You stay gone."

Dad's not a teacher, not like the ones in school.

But Dad thinks he knows everything, thinks he knows what's right.

And so this once, out of spite or hurt or because of a thousand words to live by that he's carved upon his soul, Sam decides to believe him.

Stay gone.

Sets his jaw, walks out, doesn't look back.

Just like Dad taught him.