Hello, hello!

How have you guys been? Hopefully very well. In some of my other stories, I've teased this release, and it's finally here! I began this story in August of 2018, and just recently completed it. It totals at 50k words, making it the longest story I have ever written.

I would like to give my profound thanks to my two betas, whom I found through this lovely website, Greyline and Jetainia. Both have worked so vigilantly to improve this story, and I am beyond grateful for how much better you've made it. My dearest thanks to you and your lovely dedication, ladies.

Warnings: They are the Winchesters, and henceforth they cuss like a sailor. There's also graphic depictions of violence.

Please leave a review if you get the chance, even if it's a simple one-worded compliment or constructive-criticism. It would mean a lot to know this time and effort pleased someone out there.

Since this story is completed, posting will be every Saturday. There are ten chapters, each between 4k-6k words.

Enjoy!


"Hey, idiot! Get your lazy backside out of the covers and move it before Dad has your ass, man. He ain't going to be happy if he finds out you overslept."

Sam groans and opens one eye. The bright sun slams into view and he immediately closes it again in disgust, flopping over onto his stomach; the cheap covers scratch his skin and he resists the urge to claw at the itchiness, opting instead to place the mysteriously-stained pillow over his head—no move is too far to escape the burning light of the sun.

"Dude," Sam mumbles from beneath the pillow, "what time is it even?"

The pillow is yanked harshly away. Sam protests and tries to grab for it, but Dean tosses it across the room where it lands in a neat little heap of floppy stuffing and scratchy case.

"Time for you to be up and out, bitch. You're lucky Dad isn't awake either, or you'd be running laps before school," Dean says. He pauses, glancing down at his watch. "Which, for your information, starts in a little over twenty minutes."

Sam shoots up out of bed, both eyes now wide and suddenly alert. "Twenty minutes?" he repeats, urging himself off the mattress. "Dean! I've got a trigonometry test today for first period—if I miss it, it's gonna be a freakin' problem."

Quickly moving to the bathroom, he snatches his toothbrush and simultaneously starts trying to straighten his dusty bangs into something that might allow him to pass for a normal teenager instead of some monster from the depths of hell.

"Not my fault you didn't wanna wake up," Dean points out reasonably, loitering in the doorway. "I mean, you could always look up to your big-bro and not have to worry about that anymore. All it takes is a few fallacious documents, some puppy-dog eyes, and bam! Free from classes."

Sam grabs a towel on the counter and launches it at his brother. Dean dodges.

"I'm not going to become some apathetic excuse for a man like you. And either way, fallacious? I didn't know you knew any words a third grader couldn't spell."

"Excuse for a man?" Dean repeats, scowling. He puffs his chest out and tugs hard on each side of his unzipped leather jacket as if demonstrating something important. "I, for one, get way more smokin' chicks in a day than you'll ever get in a year. I wouldn't call that an excuse."

Sam coughs. "Slut."

This gets a reaction from Dean. Before he knows it, the same towel he'd lobbed at his brother now smacks him in the face. He dislodges it from his head and, catching sight of his own reflection, tosses Dean a dirty glare; Sam's hair, previously carefully flattened and tamed, looks like it's trying to crawl off his head again. He frowns at it. Stupid hair. Stupid brother.

Dean chuckles. "That's for the comment. And see, since I'm such a nice person, I even made you some toast. S'on the kitchen table—grab it on your way out. Sorry, can't drive you today—got a shift down at the garage first thing, and it's the complete opposite way from Crestmont. So, I guess—" he takes a moment to flash his shit-eating grin, "—run, Forrest, run!"

Once he's done in the restroom, Sam grabs his backpack from under the bed and spends a moment ensuring all his notebooks and supplies are in there. Shouldering it, he opens the door to his and Dean's shared room and flips his brother off. Without even trying to discern the individual insults in Dean's litany of cussing, Sam's out the main cabin door with toast in hand, starting off at a swiftish walk as he carelessly crams toast into his mouth. If he doesn't choke to death, it'll be a miracle.

Thick, humid air washes over him as a wall of heat, and he instantly wishes he hadn't thrown his jacket on amidst the morning chaos; a precious few seconds are wasted removing it. He checks his watch. Man, it's only eight and the temperature's already blazing like an oven on full broil. Why are they in this scorching hellhole again?

Scratch that. Not eight—five minutes till eight.

The watch used to be Dean's, one of the many hand-me-downs Sam's received in his lifetime. Whether it be shirts or shoes, he always gets Dean's old shit. Mostly he hated it, but the watch stuck with him and he's come to love it with a strange sort of affection; it feels like having a constant connection with his brother, and no matter how babyish that sounds, that means something to him.

Four minutes now... Four minutes until he physically needs to be on the school grounds. Four minutes till the first bell will sound. Any later and he's tardy; he's already got two of those against him this semester, so another will send him straight to detention.

Sam quickens his pace to a brisk walk, which soon becomes a jog.

The problem with getting detention is that, for one, it won't look good on his record, and that secondly, with all the training their dad's been putting them through recently right after school, it'll only make matters even worse between the two of them. He and his dad have been wound tight with the new transfer, Sam growing steadily more and more frustrated with the man who has effectively become his drill sergeant rather than a parental figure.

At this point, they've been here for a month already. Sam's just beginning to settle in with new friends and studies, though he knows the three of them will move on soon enough. They always do.

The monster they're here hunting is unknown to them—even Sam's got no idea what it is. What he does believe is that this thing's not quite an issue. For the four weeks that they've been here, nobody's been killed. When Caleb shot them a call, initially even his Dad's opinion was that it was just some wild animal loose out here. Dangerous, to be sure, but hardly supernatural. The fact all the dead livestock examined showed puncture wounds from sharp fangs and were coated in a strange type of residue unidentifiable as belonging to a known wild animal changed his father's mind faster than Sam could form a proper objection. Almost before he had time to pack, they were on the road again, heading for Mooresville, North Carolina, and destroying everything Sam had managed to build in Illinois during the werewolf hunt.

Sam finds it puzzling that this allegedly supernatural creature has yet to actually take a human life. If it hasn't hurt anybody, why are they hunting it? It's not done anything wrong to deserve being killed, so who gives them the right to play executioner?

His dad believes this thing's building up to something larger, something more than a pile of dead beef. A massacre, the man said, going so far as to present Sam with an analogy of how serial killers work up to their main goal by starting off skinning small animals.

Sam disagreed. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

So much for the right to a fair trial.

With the school in sight and only one minute left before the bell would ring, Sam leaves his thoughts behind and near-sprints up the stairs, taking two a go. Beside the nasty look the resource officer gives him, he's on time and faces no dire consequences for cutting it so fine.

Soon after that, the bell resounds sharp through the halls; Sam releases a sigh of relief, not having quite believed he got here in time until the bell rang to confirm he had. He cuts through the crowded corridor, making a beeline for his locker. It takes a few seconds fumbling with the lock to get it open, his mind reeling through the half-dozen different combinations he's had at various schools in as many months. When the lock finally clicks open, he jams the textbooks from his satchel inside, exchanging them for his trigonometry notes, which he briefly skims over as he slams the locker shut and turns to make his way to class.

Intent on last minute recap for the trig test, he is moving fast and not at all looking where he's going. Pretty much instantly, he walks right into...a wall? Feels like a wall.

Stumbling, he tries to catch his footing, the instincts of a hunter kicking in. It manages to save him. Sort of. He successfully straightens up and doesn't end up in a heap on the ground, anyway.

Looking up from his notes to see what he ran into, he finds not a wall, but a really large, muscled senior standing in his way. The boy's chestnut hair is fancily swept back into a curl and his eyebrows are scrunched up in an expression that can only be described as vexation, aggravated to have had his books knocked down by a junior. Clearly, the fact that it was unintentional did not faze him in the slightest.

He knew who it was, even though the guy most likely had no clue Sam even existed until now. Trey—the quarterback of the Crestmont football team. Classic. Standing next to him were his two equally large friends Dawson and Brendon. Sam internally kicks himself for putting himself on their radar. They were the literal definition of harassers, going around the school like they owned it, mostly picking on freshmen. Their talent for athletics keeps them well off authority's radar for troublemakers, unfortunately, meaning any of their nastier stunts are always glossed over without a second thought.

Trey looks him up and down for a few moments, scrutinizing, and Sam almost wants to shrink back into the lockers under the guy's contemplating gaze. Except, before he even has the time to consider that might not be such a terrible idea, he's grabbed by the shoulders and shoved hard back into the metal behind, head impacting strongly against the lockers. Sam's arms snap back to keep him from falling to the ground, and through the ringing in his ears he just barely catches the words, "Watch where you're going, freak," lingering on the heavy atmosphere created by the multitude of onlookers.

Sam grits his teeth against the pain just now rising behind his eyes. Great—a trig test with a headache. Maybe he should've taken Dean's 'free pass' after all.

Like a good little follower, Dawson picks up Trey's books and hands them off to his buddy before proceeding to strut off to wherever their classes were, the other two close behind, all three of them ignoring Sam completely.

Sam rubs the back of his head, feeling a bump beginning to rise beneath his mop of hair—it stings. He bites back a groan.

The silence in the hall is overt. A few dozen students ought to make a lot more noise. Glancing around, he finds the half the population of the hallway staring at him. He clutches his notes to his chest and gives them his brother's best 'staring down an apparition with nothing but a gun full of rocksalt' glare.

"What're you all looking at?"

Sam has been a victim of bullying since the 3rd grade—by now he's used to it. The harsh words, the bystanders. All of it. He's not embarrassed anymore and never will be. Granted, he probably just made things a hell of a lot worse for himself at this school, but what was there to do but try and block out the jabs and jeers. It's not like he'll be here long, anway.

Catching sight of one of his new friends standing near the front of the crowd, Sam shakes his head and begins moving purposefully toward him. Noah rolls his shoulders and palms the back of his own neck in embarrassment, then offers Sam an apologetic look. "Hey, look, I'm sorry—" he began.

Sam cuts him off sharply. "Don't worry about it."

He means it, too. He isn't angry his friend didn't stand up for him how most people would be. Noah's on the more popular side of things, which doesn't actually place Sam too terribly low in the rankings, but he knows Noah didn't want to ruin his reputation by fruitlessly fighting with the seniors, and Sam didn't hold that against him. Sam's going to be here a max of a month, maybe two—before he knows it, he'll be gone again, forgotten with all of the other students. Everybody else, on the other hand, has a notoriety to uphold, so Sam can hardly blame his friends when they don't want to protect him from things he can protect himself from. Well, correction, mentally protect himself from. With all of the attacks against the walls in his mind, he thinks it had become decently durable—not very susceptible to emotional trauma. Part of him is aware that someday that imperviousness might break...but it won't if Sam can help it.

"Don't worry about it?" Noah echoes, surprised. "What do you mean don't worry about it? They shoved you into a fucking locker."

Sam sets off down the hall, Noah by his side, praying he'll still reach his class on time. "I mean," he explains, "I don't care whether you step in or not to defend me, dude. I've been a target since I could barely speak, and I don't expect that to magically change now. I've had time to get used to it, time to adjust. I've also had time to pick out why they do what they do, and the majority of the time it's because they have some sort of shit going on in their own lives. Them though," he scoffs, jerking his head in the direction Trey and his cronies went off to, "that's just coming from being spoiled and a brat. They find it fun."

Noah's brows go up, perhaps to protest that no, he should have defended his friend, but if that's what he wants to say, he doesn't. His jaw tightens but the rest of the walk to class is silent, and just as they slide into their seats, the first period bell sounds.

Taking one last look at his notes, Sam tucks his stuff away in his bag and gets out a pencil, preparing himself to ace the exam. Headache be damned.


By fourth period (which in this school is the end of the day due to the fact they run on a block schedule), Sam is dead tired and just about ready to lay down and sleep right on the school's cold, tiled floor. His hands hurt from the essay he had to write in English, and his mind aches from the copious amounts of word problems he had to tackle in both chemistry and trig, breaking them down into their smallest component parts and assessing them until nothing made sense anymore.

He's usually good at managing his schoolwork, but after changing to this school right smack in the middle of first semester, the make-up work is phenomenally intense. Sometimes, he wonders why he's bothering; he'll only have to do it all over again somewhere new next month. If he wouldn't go crazy from the lack of contact with normal kids his age, and didn't know there was no hope of learning anything academic, he'd let his father homeschool him just for a little consistency in curriculum. Not that his dad's curriculum would be consistent in a helpful way... It would just be more of his drill sergeant crud and no sums. Consistently.

Goodbye future.

Heading to the parking lot, he scans the spots for his brother's prominent Impala... He couldn't see it. Sam sighed in despair.

Dean had gotten his own car at the age of sixteen, yet Sam couldn't manage to convince his father to get him one. He can see the man's point in not needing three cars to drive around, but if Dean's not going to keep his promise to pick Sam up from school instead of forcing him to walk home, then he either damn well needs a vehicle, or at least some way to get him back faster. Not every school is ten minutes away from their hole-up.

Adjusting his grip on his pack, he bites his lip to reign in his discontentedness. It isn't his brother's fault. In fact, Dean's probably working his ass off at the local auto shop to provide a small sum for their family of three, which is more than could be said for their dad. After all, they need some way to get food and that's pretty much the only option. Better than credit card fraud, anyway. At least it puts Dean's vehicle engineering skills to use and, if Sam's not mistaken, his brother actually enjoys working there.

Either way, right now Dean's probably working overtime and Sam can't bash him for that. It's one of those things you just can't control.

By the time he arrives back at the cabin, it's a good fifteen minutes since he realised nobody was coming to pick him up. He takes out his own, personal key and slides it into the lock on the screen. Doing the same with the door behind, he pushes it open and sighs in contentment as the blissfully cool air conditioning greets him. After trekking through the blazing hot weather, it's a relief to be somewhere kept at a more comfortable temperature.

He sets his school supplies down on the wooden table at the center of the welcoming kitchen, and then snags a granola bar from the pantry. Nobody appears to be home right now. He figures his father's either off gathering stuff they'll need for the hunt, or trying to get more information on what they're dealing with here. Between a mountainous backlog of assignments and evening training, Sam's got some research done; unfortunately, he's not turned up anything useful. At this point, he's categorically decided to leave the matter be and focus more on catching up on his schoolwork, since the amount is legitimately towering over him. No matter which school he's at, he needs to keep his grades up if he wants any chance of making higher education.

It's not something Sam's thought about in too much depth, but every now and then when he's got nothing to do or is feeling particularly down, he wonders what it would be like if he didn't live this life. What if he could actually be normal? To him, what even is normal? He presumes it's something in which he can return to a home that will always be there for him, or a family that'll greet him with a warm dinner every day after work.

He laughs inwardly.

To hunters, that sort of life is practically unfathomable—nobody can have it and nobody complains about not getting it. Except Sam. Sam's always been the exception.

Hunters have a job to do, and they know it—he knows it. They save lives, even when not everybody is grateful. In fact, every possible thing works against them every minute of the day—including odds. The law enforcement does jack shit, causing more harm than good with their procedures and closed-off attitudes, and other people look at hunters as though they have three heads and a lion's mane for shirt collars. It's kind of hard to do your job when people hate you.

Millions of other people live out perfectly serene lives, yet by chance, Sam's part of a hundred-thousandth percentage that dedicate their days to fighting monsters that would scare most people out of their minds, all because of what happened when he was six months old. Not that any member of his family will talk about that night, but he's long managed to put together most all the details. Their mother died in a fire on the ceiling of his nursery, her death clearly caused by some mysterious supernatural creature. It's pretty easy to deduce his mother died protecting him...and sometimes, in the middle of the night staring at yet another skeezy motel ceiling, Sam wonders if it would've been better had his mother not come into his room that night and saved him. If he'd died, his mother would still be alive, and both Dean and Dad would be protected from all the monstrous crap that overwhelmed their lives nowadays. Maybe it's a selfish thought, but it still doesn't change the way he feels about it. He should be dead, but he isn't—she is.

Pulling out his French assignments, he starts out on the translations. He isn't necessarily concentrating though, the words blending together as an abstract smudge in his brain. Too many things chase each other in circles around his mind—it doesn't feel like the right time to be working on foreign language classwork for a school he won't be at much longer.

He sighs heavily, changing his mind on the homework and instead pulling out the laptop that he received as a gift from Bobby on Christmas. Booting the old thing up, Sam taps his fingers rhythmically across the keys, humming a good Zeppelin song he and Dean sing quite often.

So if you wake up with the sunrise,

and all your dreams are still as new,

and happiness is what you need so bad—

girl, the answer lies with you.

By the time the screen lit up, three minutes had passed and Sam had polished off the rest of his snack. Considering, he pauses a moment before searching up the website for Carrigan Farms, the pads of his fingertips lightly gliding across the keyboard in a routine dance. Research isn't like a bike—it's a rollercoaster you're strapped into and can never get off. It's a habit. Impossible to break.

Most of the animal attacks happened there—twelve cows, six pigs and seven cats all mutilated to nothing but intestines and bone. It's pretty suspicious for sure, Sam agrees insofar as that much, but why isn't this thing moving on to larger things yet? It's hardly padding out the usual monster résumé.

He surfs the page for a few minutes, reading up on the owners and everything about the farm's past. Again. Al and Kelly Carrigan are a happily married couple, living out in the beautiful countryside for the farmland—and maybe the views as well. They even host hayrides for children and students, occasionally even going as youthful as preschoolers. Sam knows the animals that were targeted have nothing to do with the people who run the place, striking them off the list of suspects in his mind.

Despite this, he dutifully scrolls down to where their phone number is listed, picks up his own device and dials. It rings precisely four times before the line is picked up and a cheery voice greets him:

"Carrigan Farms, this is Kelly. How may I help you?"

Sam's a little surprised to find out the owner also answers calls to the place, given there must be a lot and he's called before—something which had previously earned him nothing but monotone employees who make it sound like their life sucks ass—but disregards it, happily praising himself on his luck to find someone who actually knows what they're talking about for once.

He pulls out one of his fake cards and says in his most mature and formal voice, "Hello, Mrs. Carrigan. My name's Sam Tycone. I'm an intern for the Fish & Wildlife service in Mooresville. I was contacting you about the recent animal incapacitations you reported a few days ago?"

There comes a short silence over the line, aside from some rustling of papers, before the woman finally speaks again. "An intern? Really? My pets are being skinned and killed, and they send an intern to call me?"

Sam breathes hard out his nose in annoyance. The gears in his mind turn at a creaky double-speed as he scrambles to come up with a plausible explanation, something that backs up his story.

"Ma'am, with all due respect," he starts, "I am only reporting your statements to my bosses. I don't have control over this, and I wish it could be any other way to support your needs. But for my sake, I can't refuse, and instead I am here to record what you say. If you don't mind, of course." He smiles over the line, not that it would do any good.

Kelly seems to debate this for a moment, and more papers are shuffled in the background.

Finally, she gives an apologetic response. "Yes, I'm sorry. It's just...things have been really stressful around this place lately, and I just want to get this whole thing sorted out and over with. I want my animals safe. I've improved the fencing, the enclosures, everything—yet somehow, something is still getting to them...I just want it to stop."

Sam nods in sympathy, understanding where she's coming from—he could do with it being over himself.

"I get it, Mrs. Carrigan," he reassures. "That's why I'm here. So if you want, could you please tell me what happened in your own words?"

It's night by the time Kelly finishes her story of how every morning she would find one of her animals dead. Apparently, it's never the same animal two mornings in a row, but the corpse is always found in the same spot, surrounded by berries of some sort. (Again, those are never the same. Blueberries, blackberries, huckleberries—it didn't seem to matter so long as they were berries.)

The first one was a shock, as they hadn't ever encountered a problem with any of their livestock being killed before; it was a young calf named Josie, found lying in the centre of the grazing pasture. A circle of raspberries had been placed around the decimated body, a few flowers in the mix. The flowers-and-berries presentation described certainly conflicts with the surely gruesome sight of the animals remains, and Sam really doesn't know what to make of it. Along with the blood and bones, the only evidence left was a tooth—a fang, as Kelly had described—and a weird type of blue substance. Nobody seems quite sure what that stuff is yet, though the veterinarian who did a necropsy—no, Sam's not joking. A necropsy they payed for, on nothing but strings of ravaged meat—claimed blood loss was most likely what killed the poor animal, before the trauma and teeth.

This changes things a lot. Something sucked these young animals dry of blood before finally eating them for supper. This also means that whatever this is, is doing this for food. Sam had taken notes in the same half-blank notebook he used mostly for his hunting research; at the bottom of a page he jots down and triple-circles the word harmless? as a question of whether this thing is a legit threat. He gets so engrossed in checking and double-checking his tight, scribbled words that he fails to fully acknowledge the soft purr of the Impala's engine, indicating Dean's return.

The door to the cabin opens and in comes the broad, confident form of his older brother clutching a takeout bag in one hand and two plastic shopping bags in the other. Sam looks up sharply at his entrance, raising an eyebrow at the food; the side of the bag reads Ed's Venue and it exudes the scent of grease and burgers into the room. He scrunches up his nose. Great, cow cholesterol and carbs. Would it kill Dean to buy a vegetable for once in his life?

"Hey, Sammy," Dean greets with an attempted wave, takeout bag doing its best to abort the movement and making it seem halfhearted. Like Dean isn't so happy to see him after all. The older boy rolls his shoulders and cocks his head questioningly. "You going to help me here, or…?" He motions demonstratively with his laden arms.

"Oh," Sam says slowly, leaning back in his seat, "I don't know. This is pretty entertaining."

"Shuddup," Dean mutters.

Stumbling over to the table with his burden, Dean drops the lot atop it... Directly onto Sam's notes. The papers wrinkle under the weight and there's a small sound of tearing paper, causing him to shoot a disbelieving look at his elder brother.

"What?" Dean asks innocently. "Sorry, that your homework or something?"

Sam swipes a hand through his messy hair and shakes his head. "No, jackass. It's notes for the so-called hunt that we're on. And which," he gestures angrily before him, "is now completely crumpled and probably impossible to read."

Dean points a very pissed off finger at him. "Hey, you need to watch your fucking language, bitch."

Sam laughs at this hypocrisy. He slides back his chair with a teeth-shattering squeal of wooden feet against tiled floor and comments, "Like you, you mean? All right, you jerk. That better?"

"Much."

"You're a dick."

"Vagina."

Sam reels back, disgusted. "What the hell, dude?"

"Sorry," Dean says with a strange smirk, "I thought we were talking about our sex lives. That girl down at the garage who came in to get her old Cadillac fixed up. Phew," he whistles, a long, appreciative sound, "now that was some real meat. How's yours been? Oh...wait. You ain't got one."

Sam scoffs, lifting the bag of greasy food off of his paper. He grimaces at the splodgy yellow stains it left, suddenly overcome with the urge to smack his brother in the face. Oddly, he's been getting that feeling a lot recently. A lot just today, even. Looks like Dean didn't pick him up from school because he was trying it on with some girl at the auto shop... Nice. What a dick.

Somehow, Sam manages to restrain his response to this realization with a curt, "Very mature, Dean."

After ripping the bag open from where the staple was holding it together, Sam pulls out the contents. Inside are two meticulously wrapped burgers, as well as a salad. There's also a plastic container that, upon further inspection, turns out to have grilled chicken and broccoli inside.

Sam instantly feels bad.

Dean nervously glances at him. "Burgers are for me and Dad, if he ever wants to come back." There's a fragile amount of anger in his words. "Got chicken for you, and whatever the hell that salad is."

"Thanks," Sam mumbles somewhat contritely, opening the lid and grabbing a plastic fork. He's just begun to dig into his dinner when he halts, something coming to mind for a second. "What did you mean by, 'if he ever wants to come back?'" he wonders with mild concern.

Dean's uninterested. Unwrapping the waxed paper around his hamburger, he carelessly replies, "Don't you remember what's coming up?" He takes a bite and continues to talk around the food stuffed in his mouth. "It's October 29th, dude. Dad's probably at some joint getting shit-faced. He ain't gonna to be home until tomorrow morning...late tonight if we're lucky."

Sam falls silent at that, realization setting in. It's only four days until his mother's death anniversary? How could he forget something so paramount? Of course that was why his father's been so distant recently; their mother died nearly seventeen years ago to the day. Suddenly, everything makes sense—the drinking, the extra arguments about the transfer, the cruel words tossed and battered back and forth that were simply placeholders for tense feelings. Sam almost feels ashamed for giving his dad a hard time this month.

Sam never grieves their mother as much as Dean or his father, and when he actually does, he never does it in the same way. His mourning is a constant ache at the back of his mind, never forgotten, never releasing the grip it had on him in the minutest way. Every day he dreams of the beautiful woman he's seen only in photographs and longs for the security of a mother that he's never known. While the rest of his little family lost a wife and mother whom they loved and cherished—who loved and cherished them—he simply lost all possibility of ever experiencing the unconditional love that a mother bears for her child; to Sam, the concept of such was a murky, abstract thing—he'd never had it, but knew he wanted it. More than anything. Perhaps even more than total normality.

The closest he's come to experiencing a relationship like this is back when Caleb still had his wife, Tyler. She was the closest he has ever come to having that. Likely, the closest he ever will come.

Sam doesn't fully remember Tyler, but what he does recall is her small frame and kind smile, eyes inviting—warm and safe. He remembers that terrible day he stood over her pyre, her skin cold in death, flames cleansing her still form of the vivid, angry cuts slashed deep into her chest by a werewolf on a rampage.

No, he'll never know love like that. He's long given up on finding a mother, or even a woman who may care about him as one would. What's the point? If he did find one, she'd probably just end up burned to ash, too.

"I'm sorry," Sam amends sincerely, shifting his mind back to the present.

"Yeah, me too," Dean agrees, eyes shuttered, staring down at what was left of his food.

The rest of the dinner passes in a swell of silence, pregnant and stilted. There are no more sarcastic remarks, no more playful jokes or mocking laughter. This in itself is unusual, if overall not surprising, given the way their previous anger and frustration had just been dampened—ninety degrees outside and it still rained in their cabin. Sam can't help but feel he's the cause of it.

They do talk about the case a little, to try and break the discomfort; however, it doesn't take much before Sam knows he has to back off. Dean's already at his breaking point. Sam told him about the clockwork deaths and the rings of fruit, going into how all the details on this one are just so odd. When his brother asked him how he was getting his information, resulting in Sam admitting he impersonated a government intern, he received a clap on the back. It was a mistake to go on to provide his opinion of how he believed this hunt was some creature that simply relied on these animals for food. Like a switch, Dean immediately flipped from proud at his baby brother's ingenuity to annoyed at his disregard for the importance of the hunt..

"Whether this thing's going after long pig or not, it's still evil, Sammy. Ain't no argument there. It's supernatural, we kill it."

Sam didn't protest this, not wanting to start another fight, but on the inside, he really wanted to. This is what he's been asking all along... This thing isn't hurting people at all, beyond a bit of emotional stress over the loss of Kelly's 'pets', and yet they're still going to hunt it down, pin it in one place, and kill it?

It's not right.

With his retelling of Kelly's story, a new thought had even jumped into his mind: Maybe the ring of berries is an apology? This thing obviously doesn't want to kill, hence the surrounding commemerance.

So, instead of arguing his point, he just nods tiredly, holding back a sigh of long-sufferance. Dean and Dad will never change. Never see the countless shades of grey their world is made up of.

"You know that, right, Sammy?"

Sam looks up, carefully maintaining a subdued, stoney façade, and responds plainly, "Yeah. Of course, Dean. I know that."

He adds a smile to the mix to make it more convincing—he learned early on in his life that the smallest of grins can make a big difference in winning someone over, whether it be in a quarrel or simply avoiding a question as to whether you're all right.

Quietly, he gathers up what little stuff he has from the table and decides to call it a night. Some extra sleep never goes amiss.

That night, Sam's restless, however. He keeps tossing and turning, seemingly incapable of getting even remotely comfortable. At some point very late, he hears the smack of the screen door banging against its frame and knows his father has returned. Sam doesn't get up to welcome him, quite sure it would be a wasted effort, and most certainly does not consider himself lucky.

Instead, he turns his back to Dean's bed and the door beyond, facing the wall. Finally, some eternity later, he manages to doze off into a dreamless sleep.