Pray My Soul To Keep
:::
"Look, I'll admit I'm a bit of skeptic, but since when were you all Mr. 700 Club? No, seriously, from the get-go, you've been buying into this angel crap. I mean, what's next? You gonna start praying every day?"
"I do."
"—what?"
"I do pray every day. I have for a long time."
:::
It was December. It was supposed to be Christmas.
But then again, Christmas for the Winchesters? He should have known that was a joke from the start. He knew his brother was trying so hard to make things work, but there was only so much a twelve year old could do when stuck with his kid brother in the middle of no where, in a crummy motel with little to no money at hand.
And when Dean got mad at him? For asking questions? For wanting to know the truth? For daring to speak about Mom?
That only made him more mad.
It was bad enough Dad left all the time. Bad enough that they were always either on the road or in some remote place no one heard the name of before. No, then Dean had to do his stupid Dean thing and get sarcastic and mean, yelling at him and then doing the one thing he always said he would never do and left.
Sam knew his brother would be back, anyway. Dean always came back.
But it made him so mad, to be left on his own, even for a few hours, on Christmas Eve of all times. So mad that he was eight years old and his father and older brother kept lying to him, kept telling him, "Stop asking, Sammy," when all he wanted to know was what was so important about his father's job that kept him away from his own sons. Kept him away even on Christmas.
So he'd taken the time he was alone and was productive about it.
... okay, so admittedly, he had flopped onto the sofa, crossing his arms over his chest and sticking his chin out in an expression of defiance—never a pout, God no—and watched more of the clay- mation Christmas shows that reran on TV. He did that for a good hour or so until he got restless and did the unthinkable.
Sam dug into the pack that was always kept safest. His father's pack.
Inside that pack was the journal that Sam always saw Dad writing in, mulling over with a distant look in his eyes that he thought his sons wouldn't see. Of course, even Dean knew that when Dad had the journal out, he had to distract Sam, or else there'd never be an end to the questions.
But there was no one around to tell him "Just stop asking, Sammy."
So he read the journal.
And the anger was replaced by fear.
A fear that maybe... maybe things were even worse than he could have imagined.
Was Dad crazy? Going off and... hunting things? That's the word he kept using in the journal. Vampires, werewolves, witches, goblins... things Sammy had never even heard of, but acts in the journal which were only too familiar. The salting of the doors and windows. The guns that were kept mostly out of sight—the fact that Dean had a revolver under his pillow making a sickening amount of sense now. The different herbs and all the water kept in the trunk of the car... talismans and holy water.
His stomach clenched at the idea of it, but he needed to know the truth. Maybe... there was a chance that Dad wasn't crazy. Maybe it was all real. Maybe there really were things in the dark that wanted to kill them, that they used these things to protect themselves.
The constant movement, never living in one place for long in his short life, would be justified, if it was true. At least in some part.
He stuffed the journal under the mattress of his bed and sat there for a moment, numbly wishing Dean would just come home already. Dean would be able to tell him the truth. Dean wouldn't lie to him, not after knowing that Sam knew what was out there.
Eventually, he pulled himself up and lay down on the couch, facing the door just to be sure he knew exactly when his brother would be home. He tried to watch the movies and cartoons that came on, tried to get back into the spirit of the holiday, but the more he thought about the possibility of the truth, the more his stomach clenched.
What if something had happened to Dean while he was out? Dean almost never left Sam alone in the motel. Dean almost never went outside at night, not without the pocket knife he thought Dad didn't notice was missing from the arsenal in the trunk. But Dean had stormed out of the motel so fast, Sam had no idea if he'd remembered to bring the knife with him this time. So what if something came at him in the dark?
The thought of it terrified him.
The motel door opened, and there was Dean.
"Thought you went out?"
"Yeah, to get you dinner."
Christmas dinner that year was a pack of beef jerky and a bag of Funyuns.
Sam knew by how Dean was joking about the chips being "vegetables" that his older brother was already ready to pretend that they hadn't had that argument before. It was a peace-offering. Sam knew that he was trying to make amends but after what he learned... he just needed the truth.
And Dean wouldn't lie to him.
Not after he knew that Sammy knew.
"I know why you keep a gun under your pillow."
"... no, you don't. Stay outta my stuff."
Dean was exasperated, but there was a hint of fear in his eyes—Sam knew even by the age of eight that the best way to read Dean was to ignore everything, even his own words, and look him in the eye.
"And I know why we lay down salt everywhere we go."
"No, you don't. Shut up."
The words were quicker, sharper, but Sam knew he would need the ultimate proof. Otherwise, Dean would just deflect and pretend and deny. So he scrambled to the opposite side of his bed, pulled out the journal, and placed it heavily between the two of them on the night table.
"Where'd you get that? That's Dad's! He's gonna kick your ass for reading that!"
"Are monsters real?"
"—what? You're crazy."
"Tell me."
And just like that, Sam knew he won. The way how Dean chewed on his lower lip, looking away to Dad's journal—probably wondering what Dad would want him to do in this situation.
Dean wouldn't lie to Sam. Not about this.
"I swear... if you tell Dad I told you any of this, I will end you."
"Promise."
So Dean told him the truth.
Sam almost wished the truth was that their dad was crazy, that they were some kids whose mother died in a fire and whose father just couldn't cope with the loss and saw monsters and demons wherever he went. Maybe that would have been the better truth, because at least then it would make sense. It would make more sense than Dad dragging his two sons around, leaving them alone and defenseless when there were monsters around.
It would make more sense than knowing something could happened to Dad like what happened to Mom, and then it would just be Dean and him.
It would make more sense... than knowing that Dean would fight the monsters before they could get to Sammy. Because that's the kind of big brother Dean was. The kind of big brother who, despite ruining even Santa Claus for Sam, tried to make-believe that everything would be better in the morning, that Dad would be there for Christmas Day, that the truth hadn't reared its ugly head and ruined whatever childhood Sam had left.
But it was what Sam asked for, after all.
"Stop asking, Sammy," they kept telling him.
But he couldn't.
Not when this was the devastating truth.
"It'll all be better when you wake up. You'll see. Promise."
It was the night Sam learned the truth. It was the night Sam stopped believing in Santa Claus. It was the night Sam learned that monsters in the world were real. It was also the night he realized the truth about his father... and his brother. His father wasn't going to be there for Christmas. Despite what Dean said, John Winchester was never really there on past Christmases and Sam had the feeling that he would be there less and less as they got older.
And the next morning when there was a tree and presents and Dean tried to make it seem like Dad was the one responsible? That was when Sam realized that the real superhero wasn't Santa, and it certainly wasn't Dad.
Even though he had sticky fingers and didn't seem at all guilty about taking away someone else's Christmas presents—a girl's, no less—Dean had meant well. He had made the final attempt to make Christmas possible. It was more than anyone else had done or ever would do for Sam again.
"Here. Take this."
"No. No, that's for Dad."
"Dad lied to me. I want you to have it."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure."
Uncle Bobby had given Sam the necklace because he'd been hoping that that year he could probably convince his father into staying in one spot longer than a couple of weeks, that he would stay home instead of driving off God knows where. The old junkyard dealer had told Sam that it was an item for protection. At the time, Sam had no idea what he meant except in that cheesy way of people putting value on an object given as a gift. After the truth was out there in the open, Sam knew that it was probably a bit more than that.
And if Dad was as good at what he did like Dean said he was, then Dad wasn't the one who needed the protection. Dad wasn't the one who deserved it, maybe.
"Thank you, Sam. I... I love it."
It was one of the most sincere things Sam could remember Dean ever saying to him.
That, along with everything that happened that Christmas, was the reason why every night, whether Sam had to squirrel away in the motel bathrooms or pretend to be asleep in the back of the Impala, Sam would pray. For protection against the monsters, for their broken family to stay together as long as they could. Maybe, he thought to himself when offering up the nightly prayers, just maybe if there were monsters in the world that could kill them, there was Someone looking out for them as well.
:::
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
If I should live for other days,
I pray the Lord to guide my ways.
May angels watch me through the night,
And wake me with the morning light.
:::
Author's Notes: Durf. This fic inspired by my rewatching 2x13 - Houses of the Holy. I've always kind of found it interesting that Sammy was the one who was more religious than his brother. Though, yeah, it makes sense for their personality types. One thing is that Sam has always been the little brother or the youngest son. He's always had people looking out for him and I think he never really understood the idea of Being On His Own until later in the show. Because even when he ran off to Stanford? C'mon. John and Dean were still out there and probably kept an eye and an ear out for trouble. I think Sam had faith for a long time, but the faith was broken down steadily over the course of season 3, with Dean's deal and Hell hanging over their heads, and of course, life later on.
But that's not to say that Sam is purely selfish about that kind of thing. Of course, he wants his family protected as well. And it would make sense that on that Christmas, Sam stopped thinking of his father and maybe even Dean as being infallible and tried to find another way to protect his family. Of course, we all know how things go from here, but still... good intentions and all.
... surprisingly, I like writing Sam more than I thought I would. Huh. Also I just realized the irony of my fic title. Hurhur.
Anyway, thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed!