Keep It Together
"Lets get something clear Sam, if you leave tonight, do not ever come back! You hear me? If you leave, you are never welcome back." John slams the door behind him and gets in his truck, wheels squealing as he pulls out of the driveway headed for the nearest bar.
Sam stands in the living room of the latest run down house that the Winchester's were calling home and listens as his Dad pulls out of the driveway, Dean stands in the doorway staring at his brothers back unsure of what to say.
Sam sighs and places the duffle bag he is holding down on the table and opens it up, retrieving a thick envelope from inside that had the Stanford University crest across the front of it. He stares at it for a minute, and thinks about classes, dorm rooms and a life outside of hunting, and suddenly knows none of it matters, he couldn't leave his brother, he was even having a hard time comprehending life without his Dad, a man he hadn't gotten along with since he hit puberty. He would never go to school again, and he would never leave this world.
Sam walks over to the kitchen and takes each piece of paper out of the envelope placing them in the kitchen sink, reading them over one last time. He throws his class schedule in, political sciences didn't matter, and he laughs slightly over his electives, which were going to be Ancient Mythology and Latin, two easy credits for him. His roommates name would have been Brady, he wondered if they would have gotten along, if they would have been life long friends.
He tosses in that letter that had given him so much pride two weeks ago, he had gotten a full ride, but it didn't matter, it wasn't in his future. As he pours lighter fluid over the papers Dean suddenly broke out of his stupor.
"Sammy, what are you doing?" Sam turns towards his brother, and drops a lit match into the sink watching it all go up in flames. Fire once again destroying his future, but at least not his family.
"I'm making my choice Dean."
"I thought you wanted all that." Sam scoffs.
"What do I have if I have no family left?"
"I'm your family…"
"Not if Dad ordered you not to be." Dean flinches.
"You can't honestly believe that."
"Why not? It is just another order that you would follow like a good little soldier."
"Sam-"
"Dean stop, its over I'm staying… now I'm going to bed, cause in the morning, we've got work to do."
Sam tosses and turns for hours, and prays to whoever was listening that he was doing the right thing.
The next morning, John says nothing when he sees Sam emerge from his bedroom packed and ready to go, they leave the house, the last house they would ever live in, they never stayed in one place long enough to need more then motel rooms.
The rest of the summer consists of non stop hunting, and Sam thrives, or so it would appear. He follows orders, kills monsters, does all the research, and nobody says anything the day Stanford move in day comes and goes, but they were all thinking about it.
Sam's meticulous, he is up by six every morning, no matter what time they get in the night before, so he could go running, and be home, showered, and ready to grab breakfast by eight. He chews every bite fifteen times before swallowing, takes one sip of water every five bites. He cleans his guns twice a day, and will not sleep until they were all cleaned after a hunt. Order, control, it keeps Sam in line.
In Palo Alto, a pretty blonde sat on the quad alone in the corner, not wanting to be there, but her roommate had dragged her along. In another world, a floppy haired eighteen year old, would have come up to talk to her, and they would talk about how their roommates refused to let them sit alone in their rooms studying, instead the girl sat alone for rest of the night, debating on whether or not she belonged there.
In this world, the two older Winchester's were carrying their youngest into the motel room, Dean is frantic as Sam continues to lose blood out of a deep wound across his chest, courtesy of an angry werewolf that turned out to be a fifteen year old girl.
"Sammy? You with me?" Dean asks.
"Yeah…"
"You're gonna be okay Sammy, Dad is gonna stitch you up."
"I killed a kid Dean…"
"You killed a monster Sammy, you did what you had to do."
"It wasn't her fault."
"It wasn't your fault either kiddo." Sam sits silently as John stitches up the wound, he refuses to scream or show any sign of weakness, weaknesses got you killed in this life, but more importantly they could get your family killed.
Sam thinks about that kill often, and every time he looks at that scar he sees the scared eyes of a young girl.
It never got easier, every scar held a story, and he saw victims not monsters.
Victims of this cruel world that destroyed lives, dreams and futures.
Eventually he stops looking in the mirror.
Dean watches as the clock changes from 11:59 to 12:00, officially making it May 2nd.
"Happy birthday Sammy." Dean whispers, Sam looks confused, like he didn't realize the date, but he realizes after a few minutes it was his birthday, and instead of being on a college campus, he was sitting in the Impala somewhere between nowhere and goodbye.
"Thanks."
"So what do you think? Grab a couple beers tonight? Just hang out and relax."
"We've got ghouls to hunt Dean."
"Ghouls live mostly off the dead Sammy, it can wait one more night, and I already got Dad's all clear." Sam eyes his brother suspiciously.
"Dad agreed to let us go out?"
"He thinks we need a break, it had been a crazy few months." Sam scoffs, he was aware, he had been there.
"Okay, fine."
Dean nurses one beer all night, not interested in getting drunk, while Sam drinks steadily for a few hours.
"Shouldn't you be trolling for chicks?" Sam asks suddenly.
"Nah, not in the mood, you go right ahead though Sammy."
"No thanks, not my scene."
"You can't stay celibate forever dude, men have needs, don't want your thing to fall off." Sam smiles, something rare as of late.
"Sophmore year, her name was Tonya Farber." Dean chokes on his beer.
"You did not hit that."
"Correction, you didn't hit that, I totally did."
"Dude she was 19." Sam shrugs his shoulders.
"We were drunk, she was bored, and I agreed."
"Huh, I should get you drinking more often, you actually talk about something besides hunting."
"So is that what this is? You trying to get me to talk?"
"Well, do we have anything to talk about?" Dean can't tell Sam he is scared, that Sam was withdrawn and quiet, he can't tell Sam that he misses his geeky little brother.
"No chick flick moments Dean." Sam whispers and the two sit in silence for another hour, before Dean pushes Sam into the Impala and they head home. Sam is asleep the second he hits the bed. Dean tosses and turns for hours, wondering how everything got so screwed up.
The ghouls snack on Sam and Dean for a while before John can get to them, and John can't meet his son's eyes when Sam asks why the ghouls said his blood tasted funny. Sam figures it has something to do with why he feels so dirty; he just starts scrubbing at his skin a little harder after that.
He dreams about fires, demons and a man with yellow eyes, and he couldn't help but feel a little bit of déjà vu, yet he wasn't afraid.
Sam should have been a sophomore at Stanford by now, but instead he is sitting in a coffee shop in San Francisco researching a haunting, his coffee is knocked over by a girl with blonde hair.
"Sorry about that, I'll buy you another one!" She says frantically.
"It's okay, I am pretty sure it was cold anyway."
"Still, here have this one, I'll go buy another."
"Thanks… uh…"
"Jess."
"Nice to meet you Jess, I'm Sam."
"Nice to meet you too Sam, you from around here?" Sam never knew how to answer that question, he couldn't say he grew up in the back seat of a 1967 Black Impala.
"I'm kind of from everywhere." He was, that car had moved across every state, at one time or another.
"Oh… well if you are ever anywhere near Palo Alto, call me." She drops a napkin on the table that has her number on it, and walks out of the coffee shop. Dean walks in as she is leaving and smiles.
"Who was that?" Sam looks at his brother and then back down at the napkin, she was from Palo Alto… in a different life, maybe he could have known this girl. In another life maybe he wouldn't have felt like being anywhere near her somehow contaminated her.
"No one." Sam crumples up the napkin and throws it in the trash. "You ready to hunt some ghosts?"
The ghosts kill a mother and daughter in the house before Sam can get to them, Dean finds him holding a lifeless little girl, wearing those sad wide eyes that show everything inside Sam's soul. He pulls him away when they hear sirens, and they run, leaving the bodies in the house.
Sam stops praying after that.
John starts leaving his sons alone more after that, leaving saying "Watch out for Sammy." That irritates Sam, he is almost twenty two, he doesn't need a babysitter, but something deeper in his soul tells him that isn't what John means.
Eventually John stops coming back, and they retrieve his journal from Jericho California, and begin their hunt for their father and Sam knows that somehow this is all his fault.
Dean wakes up to Sam scrubbing the skin of his hands and arms, and Dean grabs him by the wrists shocked by the amount of blood that was on his hands.
"Sammy stop." Sam continues to try to pull away. "Sammy, please… talk to me."
"Dean… this is my fault… I'm not clean…"
"What does that mean?"
"I don't know…"
Dean wraps up Sam's arms and lays Sam back down on the bed.
"I should have let you go Sammy… if I had of known Dad was going to take off anyway, I should have let you have your normal… I'm sorry." Sam doesn't respond, pretending to be asleep.
Sam's visions are painful, and every psychic he meets he sees parts of himself he hates in each of them. When they turn bad, he puts a bullet in each and every one of them, just as he hopes someone will do for him someday.
The John search ends with yellow eyes possessing him, and before he smokes out he snaps John's neck. Sam and Dean walk away uninjured, but feel like they have been torn into a million pieces as they salt and burn their father.
They spend a few weeks at Bobby's trying to figure out what to do next, Sam ignores his brother, but this time Dean ignores him right back. Eventually they find common ground, as long as they never talk about their father.
They are working a case about a supposed angel when Dean realizes how much his little brother has changed. Sam and the priest are talking about God and the bible. Sam has always been quite knowledgeable on the subject, he used to spend summers around Pastor Jim's church, and he may have been the only Winchester with any faith left.
"You know more about faith then most of my congregation, you must have been raised by a devout family." The priest says.
"No I wasn't, I just spent a lot of time at church as a kid."
"Well, it is nice to see young people have so much faith in the Lord."
"You are preaching about God to the wrong man Father." Dean looks up at his brother shocked by what he was saying. "I grew up, angels and God don't entice me anymore." The priest looked deeply saddened.
"I'm sorry."
"For what?" Sam asked.
"For whatever happened to you that made you doubt that God cares, but he does and you shouldn't live your life so angry at him."
"Your God expects way too much out of us." Sam said, and he walks away.
It turns out the "angel" is a priest who can't move on, somehow Dean wishes it had of been an angel.
"Sammy can I ask you something?" Dean asks.
"Yeah, what's up?"
"When did you stop having faith in God and angels and all that crap?"
"Does it matter? You don't believe in any of it either."
"Yeah but… you always did."
"I grew up Dean, I don't believe there is anyone up there protecting us, not anymore."
"Why not?"
"I used to believe that no matter what was wrong with me, that maybe I could be saved. But I can't, and there is nobody to save me."
"I'm watching out for you Sammy…"
"I know you are, but you can't save me either."
Dean's hands clench around the steering wheel, Sam was all he had left and he was going to save him.
Dean starts praying to whoever is listening, that Sam would make it through this war.
By the time Dean and Bobby get to Cold Oak, Sam is standing over Jakes dead body.
"What did you do Sam?"
"What I had to do."
"Who convinced you that you had to do this?" Sam's eyes meet Dean's, but they are cold.
"The man whose blood runs through my veins." Dean doesn't understand.
"Dad's dead Sammy…" Sam smiles.
"Not Dad, Yellow Eyes."
Sam kills Yellow Eyes just outside of Wyoming, he won't be leading a demon army, but his powers may come in handy.