yah, I'm sorry. Did I mention, I'm a supernaturalist? Yay! Wanted to upload this.

This is an AU: Where Dean was never rescued from hell, and the series kind of...stopped there. Sam never had an interaction with Angels, etc, and never let the Devil out of his cage. As explained, he started a normal life...

There is a house that looks just like any other house in the picturesque neighborhood, complete with a front yard, sprinklers; even a football lays half-hidden in the thick green grass, discarded from a different day of play. The paint on the house is immaculate, the mailbox is in pristine condition, and the cheerful bunches of flowers in the soil beds are bright and blooming. No one would ever suspect odd happenings here. Surely not.

Its a warm April night; a slight breeze is blowing, the moon is round, full, and bright, and the stars are sparkling like diamonds set in navy velvet. The whole scene of this peaceful setting is an ideal Texas night, and the area couldn't be more content.

If the location is commonplace, the inhabitant of the aforementioned house is even more so. It belongs to a Mr. Samuel Winchester, a man of thirty-four years; a highly respected tax lawyer, Stanford graduate (rumors say he started there only after a few years of working 'odd jobs'), married and a father of one.

But those are merely the facts.

—•—•—

Sam yawned and stretched as he typed the final period on his tax report, sighing with relief as his sore back popped satisfyingly. Seriously- taxes could be a bitch. It was a little past nine, and he needed to be ready for the Wednesday rush tomorrow. He rose from his desk. He downed a glass of water. He changed his clothes and brushed his teeth.

Even after so long, the simple routine baffled him. He brushed his teeth in the same bathroom he had been brushing his teeth in for the past two years. He showered in the same shower every night. He came back to the same place every day. No scrounging for discarded supplies, no credit card fraud. He bought things with his own, self-earned money. Most amazing of all, he had a wife. And not just that...he had a family.

When Dean had died, Sam had been all alone. Or...it had seemed like that at the time. But for the first two months after, all he seemed to be capable of was drinking, getting drunk, getting hungover, and repeating that very cycle day by day. By month four hardly anything had changed, only now he had found himself caught in a mess of digging, digging, digging, digging, burying, burying, burying...and screaming at the dozens of crossroads he would find himself to be in. Usually with a bottle or two swinging from his blistered fingers. Screaming at God, screaming at the sky, even screaming at and for his father and Dean...but especially the demons. The demons that came sometimes and most of the time didn't come at all. He really didn't know which was worse, though, because the ones that did show themselves would tell him hi from Dean and what Dean was doing or what would Dean think...but never accepting his deals.

It was month nine when he happened to sit next to a woman about his age while he was getting more beer. All he remembers thinking at the time was that her eyes were familiar—he saw them every time he glanced in a mirror. She'd lost someone, he could clearly see...but she was also sticking to the more orthodox methods of coping, including drinking yourself stupid while huddling in the corner of a bar. He knew because he did it too...but she probably didn't go shout her lungs out at supernatural beings when she got drunk enough to attempt it. Sam himself had been reasonably plastered at the time; he had asked her, quite plainly (and rudely) who had died. She had responded for him to piss off. Then she had said it was her fiancee, Don, who had been killed in action in Afghanistan. She turned the question on him, and Sam inexplicably found himself talking about Dean—the words coming out in the correct order (as far as he could tell) but without him realizing exactly what he was saying. It wasn't liberating, it wasn't therapeutic, it sure as hell didn't make him feel better...but it was something different, and Sam accepted the fact that it broke the cycle he had been engaged in for the past one-hundred-fifty-something the two made it a habit, not because it made the pain of their losses less, or it improved their crashed and burning spirits, but because it was merely something different. And all they did was talk, and about anything. Just talked, and talked. Didn't cry, didn't flirt, didn't even consider doing THAT...just talked.

Much of the time later is a blur, like life began to accelerate. Some moments stand out, like the first time Amelia (because that was her name, and yes, he went on to marry her) had gotten him to smile (it was over a knock-knock joke, of all things), or when he asked her in a moment of proudly not-drunken bravery to go on a formal date with him. The mark of one year, one month, when Sam had stopped talking to demons entirely (but don't think for a second that he gave up on his brother. Sam scoured lore down to the index of its index, even prayed to a God he didn't believe in between summoning rituals and cataloguing reaper movement). There was the first time Amelia and him had kissed and Sam hadn't felt like he was betraying something important. Two moments gleam especially bright: the mark of two years, five months when he had finally realized not that he was giving up on Dean, but that Dean would want him to be happy; and the mark of two years, five months and one day when he asked Amelia to marry him and she said yes.

And the rest is all so clear.

In his own real time, Sam walked quietly up the carpeted steps and silently slipped into the small room down the hall, wincing slightly as the door creaked on it's close, before picking his way carefully through the messy space of scattered legos and capsized toy airplanes. On the night-stand, the novelty clock sent the dim blue silhouettes of various dinosaurs traveling slowly around the room in an endless cycle, around and around. A distant, nostalgic part of Sam briefly wished that he could have had these things when he had been a kid, but he quickly pushed the thoughts off his mind. He didn't like thinking about his past anyway; the present was far more important. Reaching his destination, Sam paused and, not for the first time, took a moment to just gaze at his son.

Dean Robert Winchester had been born on Saturday, January twenty-fifth, 2009, at 2:52 in the morning. Amelia had been in labor for sixteen hours before the little guy had decided to arrive. He had actually been born a month premature, and the new parents had yet to pick out a name at the time of their baby's birth. Only...Sam remembers actually crying with joy for the first time in his life as a warm yet nearly weightless bundle was placed in his arms, and blinking away the tears to find wide green eyes staring up at him—eyes that hadn't just belonged to Sam's own mother but to—

"Dean," Sam had whispered, and his exhausted love looked up at him and smiled.

"That's perfect," Amelia had murmured. And Sam realized that she was right.

Feeling a buoyant smile on his face, Sam gently ran his fingers through his seven-year-old's son's mop of messy dark curls (courtesy of Amelia's genetics) and carefully kissed his forehead. The sleeping little boy responded by burying his face further into his pillow.

"Goodnight, Dean," Sam whispered, feeling that old bittersweet ache in his chest before he willed it away. The present was more important, the present was more important...

He made his way downstairs, and entered the kitchen to make sure the security system was on when he saw a silhouette—a figure—leaning against the counter, holding a piece of paper in their hands. The kitchen was dark, and he could just barely make out their presence. "Amelia?" Sam asked, frowning. "What are you doing up?"

"Your kid's report card—straight A's. He really is just like you, huh?"

The man's voice made Sam's entrails flash-freeze. Unbidden, images swelled into his mind—the Impala he had scrapped, the pendant he kept locked in his drawer—it couldn't be it couldn't be—

Sam fumbled for the light switch (why were his hands shaking?), and the harsh yellow glare filled the room, illuminating the face of the intruder...

The stranger looked up with a too-wide grin, and Sam's heart spluttered and stopped.

"Heya, Sammy." Dean said, still smiling, and Sam stared into his eyes, his green—

No.

His black, black eyes.

Do you want me to continue? Review! Review! Review! Did I deliver this effectively? Review!