I own nothing.

Postcards

Most people at Stanford that knew him thought that Sam didn't communicate with his family at all.

It was just one of those things known around the dorms, like everyone knew not to mention her mother in front of Katie or she'd start bawling, or not to talk about minor league baseball with Rick because he'd just get overly angry with the current teams.

Ask Sam about his family and he'd stiffen right the hell up, then force an ugly looking false grin onto his face and change the subject.

There were rumours about it, of course. Like there were rumours about Katie and Rick. The nasty gossips said Katie had broken her mother's heart by not going into teaching, Rick was pissed because he wasn't good enough for any of the minor league teams and Sam didn't have a family. Others said other stuff, but it didn't really matter. The important thing was that no one really asked Sam about his family anymore.

But they weren't entirely correct.

No, Sam hadn't actually talked to one member of his family since he'd slammed the door shut behind him in the small town in the middle of nowhere important. The other he hadn't talked to since a gruff 'Be careful' at the bus depot. And no, neither member of his family had attempted to call him or come see him.

But he knew they were alright. That they were alive. Because one month and twenty-two days after his leaving with only a duffel bag, he'd rung Dean's phone half-drunk and nearly physically sick with homesickness and the knowledge that they could be hurt and dying and he'd never know. Dean hadn't answered. He'd only gotten voicemail. So he left a message that he would kick himself over the next day.

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"Uh, hey Dean, it's … it's Sammy. Just, uh … just ringing to say I made it and … and all that and … God, just … just be careful, alright?"

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So he knew they were alright, that they were alive. Because two months to the day after he'd left, eight days after he'd left that message, he got a postcard.

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Bitch,

Being careful.

You be too.

Jerk

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Every two months or thereabouts Sam would get a postcard. An extra one on his birthday.

It didn't matter when Sam moved from a dorm to a tiny rental place after his first year, the postcards never faltered, just turned up with the new address.

Sometimes they only had one line, sometimes Dean had covered all the available space writing about some girl he was trying to pull, or some town that had a shrine to a giant ball of string or something.

He never wrote of the hunts, of the injuries, of the blood and the desperate race to stop it. God only knows many miles away from Sam and Dean still knew just what he needed to hear. That Dean was okay, Dad was okay. They were surviving.

Sam was away from his family for four years. He received twenty-eight postcards in that time. He kept all twenty-eight. Only Jess, out of all his friends, knew that he received them, and that after a bad day he would pull them all out and read them one by one, until he was smiling again.

They burned in his bedside table when his life went up in flames.