Title: Cracks In The Glaze

Author: chemm80

Characters/Pairings: Sam, with mention of Dean, Mary and John

Disclaimer: None of the Winchesters belong to me.

Warning: Some language.

Genre: Gen.

Summary: Sam finally opens the box from home and looks back. In the end it's what John left to Dean that Sam finds hardest to forgive.

Word Count: About 1800 words.

A/N: Many thanks to the gracious riverbella for her supersonically awesome beta skills, but even more for the encouragement. This wasn't what I started to write. I really wanted to write about boys riding around in the car happily kicking evil's ass, but Sam wouldn't stop whispering in my ear.

Sam knows how to lie. He doesn't particularly enjoy doing it, but he can appreciate the necessity. More often than not, the truth doesn't serve when you're a Winchester.

So if anybody had asked him why he's never looked at what's in the box, he might say, "Hey, we had a lot of work to do." Or maybe, "I was busy trying not to turn into the Antichrist." Or even, "Well, what with the demonic apocalypse and all, I just never got around to it."

Sam's not as good at lying to himself. So when he asks himself why he hasn't opened the box in the two years and more since they went back to Lawrence, he answers true. It's too much for him. And it's too little. He knows whatever he finds in this box won't hold any nostalgic charm for him. It's just dead leaves, litter of things that were gone long before he was old enough to know what they were, still less to see their meaning. Irrelevant to the life he knows, now more than ever.

Because Dean is all Sam has left and Hell is trying to take that from him too. He's found no answers in Dad's journal, no help in the books. He has little hope and zero faith that he will find anything useful in the pitiful scraps of their past. But his back is against the wall, so he opens the box.

--

The summer Sam was twelve the fuel pump went out in John's truck. They spent almost a week in a barely-running motel next to the interstate. There was no auto parts store. There wasn't even really a town. The whole place consisted of a gas station/convenience store, the scorpion-infested dump where they were staying, and some sort of auto salvage yard, though even to call it that was to glorify it beyond all reason. Some place along I-40 in New Mexico. Get your kicks on Route 66.

Whatever screwed-up alarm clock normally controlled John's sense of urgency didn't seem to be kicking over. He seemed content to wait on the salvage yard to order the fuel pump in for him. Sam didn't see why they couldn't get in the damned Impala and drive a couple hundred miles to damned Albuquerque to get the damned part, but he knew better than to ask. John didn't justify his actions to anybody, least of all to his sons. The habit of shutting up and following orders was sanded into the grain.

It was hot and dry and dusty and Sam was bored out of his mind. He lay under the air conditioner in the room during the heat of the day. With the godawful racket the thing made, he thought it ought to have the decency to put out at least a little cool air. He wished fervently for a library. When one didn't materialize, he roamed the rocky, cacti-ridden moonscape behind the motel. Sometimes he could catch a blue-tailed lizard or a horny toad and amuse himself with it for a while.

Dean had taken over the care and feeding of the Impala a few months before, and he still spent most of his time in it, or under it, or hanging over the front of it. God only knew what he was doing. Sam didn't know and couldn't have cared less as long as he left him alone. Dean was sixteen, more obnoxious than he'd ever been. Lately Sam found it best to stay under his radar whenever possible.

He had been pushing Dad too, uncharacteristically defiant. Sam wasn't sure why Dean was doing it, but he wasn't used to it and it upset him. They would square off like a couple of junkyard dogs, and every time it happened it scared Sam to death. Maybe this would be the time his father crossed the line into violence. Or Dean would. He didn't know which would be worse.

Sam never knew what started it that day. He came back to the room too close to midday, hot and thirsty, with a pocketful of interesting-looking rocks he'd spent the morning picking up. He knew Dad would make him throw them out, but they were his for a while. The door was slightly ajar and he heard them long before he got close enough to see them through the crack. Dean had his back to him, but Sam could see Dad's face clearly when Dean spat it at him.

"This is not about Mom! Do you seriously think this fucked-up life is what Mom wanted for us?"

Sam flinched when Dad gave Dean the look – the one that made Dean's eyes water, like he'd been blindsided with a tire iron. Sam had seen it before, but never knew how to read it. It was partly sad and partly wild-eyed lunatic, as far as he could tell. Sam wanted to intervene, step in front of the bullet somehow, but it took bigger balls than his to face John Winchester down. He'd never even seen a grown man who could do it, for that matter.

Sam could hear his own heavy heartbeat as the face-off stretched tight between them. When he saw their dad start to advance on Dean, a sharp thrill of fear shivered down his back. He felt a strong urge to run - toward or away, he wasn't sure.

Dad stared at Dean for a long minute. Then without another word, he shouldered past him and headed for the door. Sam folded back around the doorjamb as his father burned by him without acknowledging his presence.

By the time he could breathe again, Sam's knees were weak with adrenaline and relief. He sat down hard in the rusted metal chair outside the door. He watched the cars passing on the interstate. He wished he were going, too. There had to be someplace better than here.

He wondered how long it was going to last this time. This wasn't some TV sitcom, where Dean would apologize and Dad would cool off and everybody would join hands around the dinner table and live happily ever after. As nice as Sam sometimes thought that would be. For the next several days (at least), there would be silence that would raise the hair on the back of his neck with the current of fury humming through it. There would be cleaning of guns and sharpening of knives and packing of equipment. But there would be no mention of this again. Ever.

John had stalked down the walk and disappeared around the end of the short strip of motel rooms. Sam got up to scout the situation. He wanted to know exactly where Dad was. Life was going to be a minefield for a couple of days and he'd like to avoid getting his ass handed to him. He eased around the corner on soft feet. He heard his dad before he saw him. He froze, then peered carefully around the edge, cheek pressed tightly against the rough stucco of the wall.

John was sitting on a large rock several yards behind the motel, partially facing the distant mountains. His voice was soft and ragged, but the wind carried it back to Sam.

"God help me, Mary, I know he's right. He looks at me and I see you. I hear you. I can't…I can't." His voice broke on the last. Then he inhaled back sharply through his nose. "But there's no goin' back. What am I supposed to do?" Then softer. "What am I supposed to do?"

--

Sam is saddened by how little the box actually holds. It's mostly pictures, but he finds a few ticket stubs. There's one from an AC/DC concert in 1977. He shakes his head. All the years and miles with them blaring from the Impala's speakers and Dad never once mentioned he'd seen the band live. Of course, Sam had never asked. Direct questions were worse than useless with his father. His face would slam shut with a crash you could almost hear. Sam never knew if it was the life that made him that way or if it was just his nature. He guesses it doesn't matter.

He picks up a ticket stub from a Fleetwood Mac concert. That had to be his mother's doing. The sudden cramp in his stomach from that thought surprises him a little. He squashes it with a thought - What? You don't have enough issues right now? You're gonna sit here and mourn over somebody you never even knew? Then immediately feels ashamed. She…her memory…deserves more from him than that.

There's another one from a movie theater. The Omen? You've got to be kidding me. He tries to picture his father taking a pretty girl to a concert or a movie and fails completely. He can look straight at a picture of his young parents together and still draw a blank when he tries to imagine them doing anything real. They're just stories to him, but even less than fictional characters. More like paper dolls.

Then he looks back at the smiling young woman in the picture and he sees something else. The parts are familiar, but the sum is new. The picture forms in his mind, pieces sliding into place like well-oiled machinery, until the circuit closes and the light switches on. He thinks maybe he knows what, or who, his father saw when he looked at Dean, beneath the surface, at the heart of it all.

It's not news to Sam that Dean is a man of strong feelings that he'll do just about anything to hide. Sam has always thought he had a pretty good handle on why that is. He knows Dean respected John, but until now he'd never recognized how hard Dean had worked to protect him. Sam tries to cast it as a sign of how much their father loved their mother that reminders of her were so painful to him, but at the moment he can't see it as more than just the same old selfishness.

He feels an unexpected sense of loss. He'd missed knowing Mom. Was it too much to ask for a chance to see the part of herself she passed on to her firstborn?

Dean thinks Sam's got to talk about everything; hates the way he always wants to get it all out on the table, analyze it, dissect it. Simple salt and burn, Sammy. Don't need an autopsy. There were things he'd spent a lifetime blaming their father for on his own account, but Sam's long since gotten over most of them. Long hours on the road are good for more than just sleep.

In the end it's the things John put on Dean that Sam finds hardest to forgive.