It has never been terribly precise. Some years it would hit closer than the others, but in thirty-two years of his life - twenty two since it began - only once did he get a chance to, from afar, sing Happy Birthday to his ten years younger self. Other than that it would vary - the only thing he could be certain of was the year: T minus ten. Year 2015 promised hell of a journey.
Sam has lived with that day in mind for the last ten years of his life - even when he knew he wouldn't live long enough. Yet here he is, he's made it. With his shoes tied and his jacket on, just in case (the last time, it wasn't easy to explain to Dean where he got frost bites in Kansas in May) he is counting down the minutes to midnight. There are ten months and one day in which Jess is alive - his last chance to see her, to hear her pearly laughter - that's way more than a half, who wouldn't bet on it. He's not a betting man, though, he's had this awful feeling in his gut he knows exactly when he's landing this time.
He's prepared for that, too.
There have been twenty-one birthdays on which he didn't manage to change a damn thing - he tried. At ten, panicked and confused, he found his mom, he screamed and cried, he pleaded for her to believe him he was from the future. He wouldn't have even recognized her, had she not been standing by the car, all radiant and beautiful. He rushed to her, held onto her palm on the stroller's handle and onto her flowery dress, begging for her to leave the house before that November night: to take him, Dean and dad and run away and never look back. She must have taken him for a lunatic, a crazy kid, although with the knowledge she had had, she should have taken him for an omen. He was still motherless when he returned to the chilly motel room, to the stinking bed, with Dean's back pressed against his back. All red and choking on his own tears, shivering from shock and grief. Dad was gone as always, Dean didn't even wake up, he never noticed.
Sam never told. Neither dad nor Dean were ever to find out about his annual journeys. Hiding a secret so big lain on his young shoulders a great burden that threatened to smother him at times, but giving it up felt even more scary and would serve no purpose at all - he'd only seem like a more of a freak than he had already been. And Dean would be mad if he ever found out, he'd be furious Sam hadn't fixed things, hadn't saved mom. At fourteen-years-old, not yet as hardened as he has gotten by now, how could he forgive Sam for not having done more?
Soon enough it became an inseparable part of him, something Sam had for himself, almost sacred - Sam never had many things that were his own. Even if each year the trip was bitter. He observed his family deteriorate, never having time to heal. He saw dad's obsession growing stronger, he watched Dean become an obedient, little soldier, with his pure love ripped out from his heart, turned into a gag and pushed down his throat with a mantra of Sammy, Sammy, Sammy.
At fifteen Sam decided he'd go to college to take some weight off his brother's back. It wasn't until thirteen years later that he saw for himself what it had done to Dean; what dad had done to him.
As for Sam - leaving was the greatest thing that had ever happened, it gave him peace and a piece of normal life. Most importantly: it gave him Jess. And then it took her away.
Since that day, for ten years, he's been anxious for what would happen at thirty-two. Since then, every birthday has become a try out, every return - a moment of truth. He has attempted to change small things and big things - it wasn't always easy and not once has it worked as planned.
"Why the hell do you think it will work this time?" he's been beating himself up for getting hopeful. Maybe this time would be different somehow.
He's read The Time Machine enough times to know the dynamics. Hell, he's had angels spit the rules right into his face for two years. Destiny, supposedly, cannot be changed, nor can be changed the past. Only it can, it has.
Dean's footsteps resound on the hallway, just as the first trembling strike of an old clock in the library starts to echo against the walls. He must have noticed the lamplight leaking under the door to the corridor, but it doesn't matter - Sam will be back before he can knock on the door. Or if he's lucky, he won't be.
He's had ten years to come up with much more than a plan - he's got it all figured out, whole ten years of figurative and literal hell scratched out and rewritten. First, he'll kill Brady and save Jessica - Dean will be fine hunting solo for a little bit longer. Until the nightmares begin, until Cold Oaks - he'll be saving Jessica until the history stops overwriting itself.
But the rest won't be on him, the rest will depend on 2005 Sam - he's got that prepared for the boy. First step: stay with Jess, go to that interview. Step number two: kill Jake (I'm sorry). The rest is a lottery, chess game with more variables than stars in the universe, against a bunch of angels shaking the table until the pieces click as they want them. He's got it all written down in ifs and thens and even more probablys of a man older and wiser and gone through much more, making up for a book thicker than War and Peace.
There's so much hubris in this memoir: in every curve of every letter, in every ounce of ink soaked into the pages. His life's work; almost. It wasn't finished yet last year - last year Dean died, again, and Sam lost all track of time. He ended up in Stanford unprepared; it felt like taking the final exam without studying. At least it was spring, the sun quickly washed his despair away. Its rays danced in Jessica's golden locks, top pinned-up with a red clip, rest let down on her bare, sun-kissed shoulders. She had the widest smile as she sat on the boy's lap, reached her hand to brush his shaggy bangs with long fingers.
He watched them from a safe distance, as always, a stalker among the crowd, feeding off the fleeting joy of young love, its lemonade taste. He tried to break them up once, before their hearts had time to melt into each other, to spare her skin melting into the ceiling. But there is little damage one can do in a few hours. Back in the Impala, he still had a burning black hole where his heart used to be.
He feels for the book's endless weight under his jacket, right next to the knife. The steel will soon flow with redness of Brady's blood for the second time, the sharp edge will pierce his guts, unexpected, in the most painful way possible - the lengthy torture condensed into a one calculated movement; erasure, annihilation of Hell's grand scheme.
Dean's knuckles hit the door, once. Sam's feet hit a dusty road; lungs search to substitute the air that escaped them too rapidly, punched out. Sam delivers it in heavy gasps, as his eyes read in blurry vision a green and white sign welcoming to Jericho, California. He needs to steady his heart and calm his breath, but he has no time for that. The sun's already hanging low in the sky, and there's a long way to the highway, even longer to Palo Alto. He runs.