Title: Unwritten
Disclaimer: SPN is owned by people who clearly aren't me. I'm not making a profit on this, so please don't sue.
Rating/Genre: PG for some language, gen.
Spoilers: Nothing for S3. Goes AU from All Hell Breaks Loose.
Notes: When I came up with this idea it wasn't AU yet, it just took me an awful long time to write it. Now I'm just kind of glad that it's done and I've gotten it out of my system. Con-crit is more than welcome.
Summary: "Bobby," Sam says slowly, alarmed. "I don't have brother."
The message Bobby leaves on his voice mail is terse and to the point and has just enough urgency in it that Sam is on the first bus out of Palo Alto even though he's promised he's never going back to that life. There's not much that can put that note in Bobby's voice and whatever that's happened is serious, so Sam squashes that little bit of resentment because no matter what's happened, Bobby's been good to him.
The scrap yard is just as he remembers, dusty and red with rust, cars piled one on top of the other. It's only been a year, but Sam has somehow expected things be different and feels stupid for thinking that. Things don't go away just because Sam Winchester decides he wants something more out of life than cheap motel rooms and demons, both literal and figurative.
He stops dead when he spots the Impala parked next to Bobby's old tow truck. Something inside him goes cold and dark and numb at the sight of that car and his heart starts hammering in his chest.
A chain rattles and Bobby's dog greets him with a yip, startling him enough to bring his eyes away from the car. He pets Beast's head distractedly, congratulating the mutt on a job well done; detecting an intruder even if it is just an old friend.
Bobby greets him at the door, looking the same as he always has like a shadow from his childhood with his weathered face, scruffy beard and ball cap. Sam stares at him for a few minutes, at a loss as to what to say. Bobby takes the problem out of his hands by opening the screen door and moving aside, making room for Sam's taller frame to slip into the house.
A beer is thrust into his hand and Sam doesn't even bother to hide his smile as he takes a pull. The more things change the more they stay the same.
"I got your message," Sam says. "You said you needed me for something?"
"It's been over a year now, Sam," Bobby says and his eyes are soft and kind, like the time Sam was seven and fell out in the yard and needed stitches to close the wound. It's not a look Bobby gives to Sam The Hunter, but to John's Little Boy. It's a look that shoots a bolt of unease through him, ratcheting up the feeling of not-quite-right that he's had since he listened to that message. Longer if he's telling himself the truth.
"I don't know what he said to you to make you leave," Bobby continues uneasily, his hand coming up to toy with the peak of his cap. "I know it must've been a doozy to send you trekking with the way things were. He made me promise not to tell you when he'd gone, but it's not right and I couldn't stand to see his things going to anyone else."
Sam frowns, tilting his head in question. "Dad's been dead two years now. I've already got what was left."
Bobby stares at him, turning suddenly and starkly pale behind his weathered tan. "I'm not talking about your dad, Sam, I'm talking about Dean." At Sam's uncomprehending look he continues. "Dean. Your older brother."
"Bobby," Sam says slowly, alarmed. "I don't have brother."
"Like hell you don't-!" and Bobby cuts himself off mid-tirade, face alight with horrified realization. "Christ. That stupid son of a bitch."
The feeling of unease increases, causing his stomach to roil and lurch dangerously. His head is suddenly buzzing with sound and his heart is pounding loud enough for him to hear. Sam doesn't understand what Bobby's just said, doesn't want to understand the implications of what's going on.
"I should've known," Bobby growls and he's not talking to Sam anymore, but to himself. "I should've realized the minute you left. You god damn Winchester 's are a stubborn bunch and there's nothing short of death that'll keep you from trying to save each other."
"Bobby," Sam speaks up, his voice rough and cracked. He's terrified. "Bobby, what are you talking about? What's going on?"
And Bobby's eyes are back on him, blue and clear and guilt-ridden. "Your brother. He must've done something to make you forget about him."
"If I had a brother, Bobby, I'm pretty sure I'd remember him. You don't just forget something like that. It's not possible."
"Neither's bringing back the dead and you Winchester 's don't seem to have a problem doing that."
"What?" Sam stumbles back, feeling like he's been sucker punched. The buzzing has grown louder, his limbs feel clumsy and heavy. Something's not quite right with him, in his head. Something that's screaming denials and telling him to leave, to head straight out that door and back to school. Where he belongs. Where he's meant to be. He fights it though, bringing a hand out to the wall to keep himself standing on weakened legs.
Bobby's continuing and if he's aware of Sam's internal struggle he ignores it, his voice steady and not unkind in the telling. "Your dad died two years ago to save your brother, Sam. Dean was dying and John sold his soul to save his boy. Damned if Dean didn't go and do the same thing to save you a year later, only he got a year out of it. You'd had run-ins with this Crossroads Demon before, though. You saved someone from their deal and she was smart enough to come up with some conditions. No worming his way out of it, or else you'd drop dead again.
"Dean was okay with that. Not happy, he wasn't suicidal, you brother, but if given the choice between your life and his, it was yours every time. You were the one who couldn't stand for it. You went a little crazy, looking for a way to get your brother out of the deal. I think if it had've come right down to it you would have went right back to that bitch and gave your soul back for his. Dean knew it and couldn't stand for it. Probably found the only way to keep you from interfering."
"By making me forget," Sam whispers, swallowing thickly. The voice in the back of his mind is still there screaming denials and he has to wonder, is that voice him or a symptom of some spell? No matter how much he wants not to believe it, it's all so plausible.
He's starting to list heavily to the side, no longer able to keep himself up. He stumbles past Bobby and into the man's study, collapsing into one of the rickety chairs in front of his desk. The crack that runs across the walls and ceiling from the time Sam was possessed is still there, hastily patched up to keep the weather from getting in, but still obvious to Sam's searching gaze. He hunches over on himself, elbows on his knees, face in his hands. He wonders how much of its real, wonders absently what Dean was doing while he was gallivanting across the country with a demon inside his head.
"Can I get it back?" He asks finally.
Bobby doesn't answer right away and Sam looks up and sees he's moved too, standing to the right of his desk with one hand splayed on top. He's not looking at Sam, though, but staring fixedly at a tall stack of books leaning precariously against one wall.
"I don't know," he says after a long pause. "You boys spent an awful lot of time between hunts looking for loopholes, but there's just no way of knowing where Dean found the spell. Or even if it is a spell. There are too many variations on the same theme."
"But it would be more specific, wouldn't it?" Sam protests, mind racing a mile a minute, not giving him a chance to doubt. "I'm not a complete amnesiac, so he must have found one that wiped away only certain details. That should narrow things down considerably."
But Bobby shakes his head, suddenly looking older and Sam's reminded of the fact that Bobby's hair and beard had been greying even when they'd first met him, back when he was a kid. Older than his dad by at least a decade and a hunter before John had enlisted in the corps, Bobby had seen more than a few hunters lost to the cause and he'd been closer to the Winchester's than he had been to most of the others. That the man himself is even still alive is a miracle.
Bobby's been expecting a memorial for a lost comrade, a lost friend and instead he's getting the exact opposite because you can't have a memorial for someone you can't remember. Sam wants to give him that so badly at that moment that he clenches his fists and tamps down on the urge to start researching. Instead he takes a calming breath and searches his mind for his lost brother.
He's not there. Sam can't even tell if he ever was or where he should be.
Finally he huffs a frustrated sigh and leans forward in his seat, looking up at Bobby. "You said you had his things?"
Bobby just stares at him for a few uncomprehending moments. "Yeah," he lets out slowly. "He left all of his stuff in the Impala when he took off."
"Okay," Sam says decisively and stands, moving toward the door on mostly steady feet. "I should go through it. I mean, he was my brother even if I don't remember." He hesitates, looking back. "Maybe you can remember for me."
The confusion on Bobby's face clears and he just looks sad again, but he nods and moves to follow Sam outside. The Impala looms in front of him like an accusation. He has to wonder why he never stopped to think about what happened to it. Never wondered why he wasn't driving it around Palo Alto, because there isn't a single memory of his quest to find the demon that doesn't involve that old car and that he'd just abandon it after he was done seems ludicrous now that he's thinking about it.
There's some junk laying on the floors, old fast food containers and potato chip bags, an old paperback novel that Sam recognizes as his own. It smells like gunpowder and sweat. It smells like home and Sam's so overwhelmed by it for a moment that he has to blink back sudden tears. He's momentarily ashamed that he could have abandoned this. Spell or no, this right here is as much a part of him as any ideal.
He leans into the car, kneels on back seat and hears the leather creak beneath his weight as he reaches for duffel bag that he doesn't remember having seen before. There's a cardboard box on the floor, too and a lumpy garbage bag, both of which he grabs. Bobby's moved around to the back and has the trunk open. Sam piles his brother's things onto the ground next to the rear tire and closes the door before he moves around to join Bobby.
The trunk is home to the Impala's arsenal, everything gleaming sharp and dangerous, the obvious care that went into maintaining it contrasting with the state of the back and front seats. It says a lot for his brother's priorities and Sam notes that, trying to gather enough information to paint a clear picture of the man he'd been.
They stand back and just look at everything for a few silent moments. The entire thing is like a time capsule and he and Bobby just broke the seal. The moment deserves more than Sam can give it, some sort of ceremony, but this will have to do.
Before the silence becomes uncomfortable Bobby claps a hand on his shoulder. "I though about selling this stuff," he admits gruffly, "but it didn't seem right. Not 'til I'd had a chance to talk to you.
"You probably still should," Sam says, his eyes straying towards the Colt, nestled neatly in the black padding. "They'll do more good in the hands of a hunter than going to waste in the trunk."
Beside him Bobby nods and pulls out a stack of leather bound books. Sam moves back around to the side of the Impala to grab Dean's things and follows Bobby back into the house.
While Bobby flips through the books Sam starts rifling through his brother's personal effects. The garbage bag is full of clothes, flannel shirts, faded jeans and t-shirts, all mostly uniform in colour. There are a couple jackets, heavy and warm, one a brown leather that catches Sam's eye immediately. He toys with it a few minutes before setting it aside. In the box he finds shoes and boots, no sneakers. Just heavy work shoes, all scuffed and worn.
It's when he starts going through the duffel bag that he really hits gold. Inside are all the things one would expect from a man who is for all intents and purpose road tripping across the United States. There's a shaving kit, a single change of clothes, some old magazines dated from a year or more earlier, a half-empty box of condoms that Sam is careful not to handle more than necessary and a silver hip flask that still smells of whiskey. It's the things that don't quite fit in with the obvious pattern that give him pause. The silver knife, still in its sheath and sharp enough to split a hair, another flask identical to the first, but still full of holy water. A stainless steel Colt, the grips a carved ivory, probably Dean's favourite firearm. Most startling of all is the journal hidden at the very bottom.
Dad's journal.
Sam takes a deep breath before he cracks it open. Nothing pops out at him at first. It's nothing he hasn't seen before about a million times, obsessed over, memorizing every little bit of information of every page. Then he hits a page that jumps out at him immediately because it's sudden blank white, a name and coordinates slashed across the middle. Dean 35 - 111.
Cold hard proof in his hands, Sam flips the pages back further, towards the beginning of the journal where there's more actual journal entries and less collected data. Things he's used to skipping out of discomfort because seeing his dad's grief in bold black ink feels like an intrusion. He finds more pieces of Dean there. A traumatized little boy who'd bricked himself away. The protective older brother who'd curled up with Sam to keep him safe. The picture that's being painted isn't finished yet, but he's starting to get an idea of what the finished product is going to look like.
He turns back another page and his own face is looking back at him, younger and less shadowed. It's a photo from a couple years ago, probably before he went to Stanford the first time. He can't remember it being taken, can't even remember having ever seen it before and he guesses it probably has something to do with the guy who's standing next to him, smirking, one of his arms thrown over Sam's shoulders. This is Dean. He's tall and compact. Handsome, Sam supposes abstractly. They don't look very much alike, but their eyes are a similar shade and Sam can see pieces of both his mother and his father in Dean's face.
He turns over the picture and reads the neatly scrawled words there. 'Sammy turns 18.' Right before he'd left for college.
His hands are shaking. He takes a deep breath and slots the picture back into the journal, flipping back further. Another picture, this one from when they were kids. Dad's in it too, and the three of them are sitting on the hood of the Impala. If anything, that's even more startling. The full extent of what Dean must have done, taken and altered over two decades of memories from Sam's life.
It's awe-inspiring and more than a little infuriating. Dean stole those memories from him, they were his and there might not be a way of getting them all back. He couldn't even begin to fathom the kind of desperation that would have driven Dean to commit that kind of violation.
Sam shuts the journal and sets it aside, looking across the kitchen table at Bobby who's flipping through one of the books he'd found in the truck.
"Find anything?" Sam asks, passing a tired hand over his face.
"Not a damn thing," Bobby says and looks up from the book, expression sombre. "Not that I really expected to. Dean was a jackass, but he wasn't stupid. He wouldn't have left anything that was potentially dangerous to you just lying around. If there's something to be found -- which I'm not even sure there is -- we won't be finding in the trunk of the car."
"No, I didn't figure."
It's still a little disappointing.
"I'll just have to keep looking." Sam nods towards the stack of books Bobby had been staring at so fixedly before they went outside. "Do you think he found whatever this was in one of your books?"
Bobby shrugs. "It's possible," he says, but his expression is doubtful. "Only been through about half of what I've got here and some of them are in languages I don't even recognize. Dean never seemed interested in any one book over the others."
Possible, but not probable. Sam's head aches from all the possibilities. It would take years to check all of the books in Bobby's collection and years more to track down all of Dean's contacts and check their resources.
That's when he realizes that he's not going back to Palo Alto. Bobby's not going to sell off the Impala's arsenal, because Sam's going to need it in the coming months, maybe even years. If he lasts that long.
"Well, at least I've got the time now," he mutters wearily, letting his shoulders slump.
Bobby looks at him through narrowed eyes. "What do you mean, you've got the time? Sam, you have to go back to school."
The look Sam shoots him is disbelieving. "You think I'm just going to go back to school after this? Apparently I didn't even want to go back in the first place. What makes you think I want to go back now?"
"It's what Dean wanted, why he went to all of this trouble in the first place. So that you wouldn't be trapped into this life."
"Yeah, well, Dean's not here is he? This isn't about what Dean wants, it's about what I want and this time Dean's not here to send me away."
Bobby just studies him for a few long minutes. Sam gazes back, chin jutted stubbornly, expression set. It's a look he's studied all his life, learned from his father too many years ago to count. Bobby seems to recognize it as he slowly nods his head.
"Fine," he agrees grudgingly, almost aggrieved. Sam can hear the silent 'goddamn stubborn Winchesters' tagged onto the end. "But you'll stay here a couple of days before you go rushing into danger with your arms wide open. I don't care if you think you're ready to jump back into this, you're going to get a few refresher courses and you're going to like it. Then I'm going to give you a few names and you're going to be careful."
As far as compromises went Sam could live with this one. He nods and looks again at his father's journal. Maybe he doesn't remember who Dean was and maybe he never will, but he thinks that maybe Dean was worth the effort of finding out.
END