Writer's Note: Just FYI this story is complete. I'll be posting the next chapters up over the course of the next couple of hours. :)
Sam was fourteen and had begun that age-old maturation process of looking at his brother with a more objective perspective than he ever had before. The hero worship was holding - to a degree. It helped that Dean was actually a hero, saving more lives with their father than most of the firefighters or policemen in the small towns they traveled to. It was still warped though, Sam had started to realize, but he put that more on their father than Dean.
Dad was motivated by vengeance; he hunted to kill monsters... and the stakes just happened to get higher if there were innocent lives in the mix. Sure, Dad always pulled the "innocent lives are depending on us" card whenever Sam questioned things - and Sam had to admit it was the best argument he had - but now that he was older he knew the word to describe his father when he used it: disingenuous.
Dean, on the other hand, talked a good game with his dad but Sam knew there were other - better - reasons why he did what he did. To Dean, hunting was a lifestyle. He saw no competition between a day at the beach and a night of grave desecration like his father did. Whenever Dad went with them to stuff like that - just one day of acting like a normal family - he'd have them sparring the next day or get moody while he researched or sometimes he'd just take off the next morning leaving them nothing more than a note and some money. Sam hadn't known if it was guilt or bitterness or a mix between the two but whatever it was, he and Dean had learned fast to exclude him on those kinds of activities lest they wanted an irritable, self-loathing patriarch roaming around.
About four months back though Sam had come to a revelation that he'd hated - just because it made so much sense - on one of those "normal family" days. Their father had come with them to a county fair in Iowa. Dean had been bothering Sam to go mostly but all at once Dad just stood up from his hunched-over position at the small table in their motel room, stretched, and said he was up for it as well. Dean's eyes had lit up and Sam had been hard pressed to refuse after that.
He'd wandered around the fairgrounds, practically attached to Dean at the hip now that their father was watching, and let Dean's goofy enthusiasm for the activities and contest prizes cross over into him.
Dean had just won in the shooting gallery contest and was asking the pretty girl that'd been runner-up what stuffed animal she wanted when Sam had turned to look for his father. He was standing farther back, leaning against a tent pole, just watching the passers-by. He was shadowed by nothing yet it was there; his jaw set as he darkly observed the smiling, happy faces of carefree civilians eating cotton candy and pushing strollers.
Looking back to Dean's charming grin as he handed the pretty girl a stuffed penguin and flirted, it hit Sam: their dad saw these people as those he might fail to save where Dean saw them as people he could save.
Dad thought of these people like Mom; Dean saw these people as Sam. And it all stemmed back to Dad having lost Mom and Dean having saved Sam the night of the fire nearly thirteen years ago.
After that moment of clarity, Sam had spent a long while trying to figure out what his "complex" was; after all, if Dean and Dad had one, he probably had one too. After a lot of introspection Sam finally had to come to the conclusion that he hadn't been scarred by the event; he barely remembered it. His only complex was that he approached the subject of hunting monsters with a level head and rational mind. His dad and brother treated "the truth" like some sacred secret clouded in mystery and darkness whereas Sam came to terms with it like he came to terms with the concepts of genocide and terrorism. Growing up knowing about it had rendered it a mundane aspect of reality; an opt-in or opt-out kinda deal.
Put simply, his dad's choice to become a hunter after the fire and discovering monsters was just as absurd to Sam as, say, a guy who didn't know street gangs existed, lost his wife to them, learned more about them, and then decided to travel the country on a quest for vengeance against all murderous street gangs.
Like, okay, but maybe Dad could've gone a more balanced route, especially given the fact that he had an infant and four year-old son to think about.
Sam didn't really ever explain this perspective to Dean or their father... but it was getting pretty obvious. Sam picked his battles as best he could but he always found himself accidentally razing the mystique of their situation down to the ground: they were poor, constantly in danger, no outside support networks of friends or family, transient, always sustaining injuries, and Dad was, objectively, at least a negligent parent.
In normal society, there was no functional comparison to the way they were being raised. Hell, there were laws against the way they were being raised: why else did they skip town every time they mentioned a teacher had looked at their bruises or injuries a beat too long?
Whenever Sam brought this up, Dad and Dean would dismiss it: "They just don't know. They don't understand the things we have to do to keep them safe."
If Sam had a "wrong" button to push, he'd drown them both out for as long as it took for them to shut up and listen. EHHHH wrong: Dean and I don't actually deserve to be getting those bruises, fractures, broken bones (or worse), Dad. EHHHH wrong: Dean had only initially opted in to hunting because he was scared you'd die without backup, Dad. EHHHH wrong: I'd be safer and more protected by society's laws than I am with you, Dad. With you, I literally get attacked by nightmares. With you, I have scars that won't ever go away. With you, I'm scared all the time.
His only saving grace - the only psychological ballast he had - was Dean. Sam figured this out the hard way in May of ninety-six. Dean had to stay behind to complete a hunt when Dad had gotten a tip from Caleb something nasty was brewing in a neighboring state. Dad had decided to take Sam with him, figuring that it'd leave Dean with fewer distractions to complete the simple salt and burn. Sam had been worried but Dean had promised he'd be fine - he'd catch up with them in like two days tops.
Sam remembered waving at Dean through the back window of the Impala and Dean waving back, smiling reassuringly in the parking lot.
That was the last Sam saw of his brother for a month.
Apparently it hadn't been such a simple salt and burn. When Dean successfully burnt the bones of the first spirit, he'd accidentally triggered a second spirit - the first one's boyfriend - into an unfathomable rage across an entire campsite.
So, Dean stayed longer to research the boyfriend's remains... which was pretty damn hard to do because the guy was completely undocumented. A year later when the movie Titanic came out Dean swore up and down this case had been like these spirits' exact story - only on land. Dean had finally figured it out though. He'd nailed the potter's field down and had practically set up camp there - desecrating about four different graves that all could've qualified as the boyfriend.
Dean had come home to Sam exhausted but accomplished. Dad had been proud of him. And Sam... Sam had been ready to walk right up to CPS and let them take him away.
Because while Dean had been hunting, so had Dad. And without Dean, Dad didn't have backup. And like Dean, Sam couldn't handle the thought of their dad going out there alone.
Writer's Note: Thank you for reading! Please comment/review if you have the time! ~ Alex