Newsflash: I own neither of the boys, nor any of the family or the stupid people that keep trying to hurt them, poor babies.
A/N: Sequel to World Without End, which wasn't one of my favorites to begin with. I don't like this one much better but it demands to be posted, so there. Won't make much sense without the other.
Massively AU and at the same time, kinda… not. I need more sleep.
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Fairy Tale Redux
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Listen, Sammy. Are you listening?
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Sam's first memory is not of fire, or screams or the end of innocence and faith.
Nothing so dramatic, nothing so foreboding. Neither is it some arcane blood memory of a life he lived before, in heaven or hell. He is not the devil, nor is he an angel. Contrary to popular belief, Sam Winchester is human.
For the most part.
And that other part… well, there's always only been one opinion that mattered to him and Dean just rolls his eyes and shrugs whenever Sam brings it up, so there.
No, Sam's first memory is a simple, average one. It's of lying curled up under a heap of blankets, with his big brother's hypnotic voice weaving a world of monsters and heroes above him.
Sam's first memory is of Dean telling him a bedtime story.
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"An' t'n?" he demands, too tired to keep his eyes open, clinging to big brother with weakening fists, stubborn set to his mouth. Dean sighs above him and he feels him shake his head.
"Tomorrow, Sammy. I'll tell the rest."
"Now."
"Sleep, Sammy." It's an order, but a tired and soft one, a demand that he knows will be fulfilled before long because Sammy's limbs are soo heavy.
"Pw's?"
Dean chuckles in a way that is years too old for him. Sammy doesn't hear it, though, doesn't notice the weariness and exhaustion underneath. Sam hears only what big brother wants him to hear. "You won't remember, Sammy."
"N'mt'r."
Ruffling his hair, big brother disentangles himself from the other boy and strips off his jeans and sneakers before slipping into bed himself. He waits for Sam to get comfortable against his side, ruffles his hair and says, "You have to remember. There's no point otherwise."
Sam opens his mouth to protest but the words get swallowed by a giant yawn and he finally gives in, sinking limply into the bedding.
"'K," he allows. Tomorrow then.
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Once upon a time there was a kingdom far, far away and in that kingdom lived a king and a queen and their two sons, who were princes.
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Sam is five the first time one of Dean's stories comes true.
He's walking down the street toward the playground, Dean absent from his side because he was tired and Sammy's trying to be a good brother and let him sleep. Dean always tells him to let Dad sleep when he's tired and Sammy figures the same goes for all people. Maybe he'll even bring Dean back something cool.
Flowers maybe?
Do tired people get flowers or only sick ones?
He walks down the street and when he's half a block away from the playground he notices a big, ugly man on the other side of the street. Dean keeps telling him that he shouldn't call people ugly, even if they are, but this man is ugly. He reminds Sam of the monster Dean told him about the night before.
A big, hairy monster, that wanted to kidnap the littlest prince from his castle and take him to the land of dragons.
But that's only a story and so Sam walks a bit faster and nothing else.
On the next corner the man crosses the street toward him and smiles widely. He's missing his front teeth.
Just like the monster.
But stories aren't real. Tommy Maguire, who Sam met in the playground last week, said so. Sam isn't sure if he was right, but he forgot to ask Dean.
He looks over his shoulder at the big, ugly, toothless man and notices that he's wearing a shirt with the head of a tiger on it. Tigers are the coolest cats ever, Dean says, but the story!
In the story, the monster has a tiger on a leash and it uses it to catch the prince!
That's when Sammy decides that stories are real and frantically tries to remember what Prince Samuel did when the monster came for him.
Did he run? Did he scream? Did he try to hide? Sammy looks at the monster and jumps when he notices how close he is. He doesn't want to go to the land of dragons. He wants to stay with Dean!
Just then a woman in a blue dress comes out of a shop and Sammy remembers the blue fairy and how Prince Sam called her name and…
"'Xcuse me? C'n you help me? The man's gonna take me away and 'm scared!"
The woman in the blue dress kneels down and hugs him and asks him where his Mommy is and he tells her that she's with the angels, like Dean said, and that he needs to go home to Dean, because Dean will be mad that he went out alone and he shouldn't have and he's sorry, so sorry, but can she please take him home because she's the blue fairy and she saves Prince Sam and takes him home to his castle, please, please, he's so scared.
The woman does and Sam never asks for another story when he's too tired because he knows now why he has to remember.
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And one night an evil king from the land of dragons came and he hurt the beautiful queen because once upon a time he wanted her to be his bride but she said no because she wanted to marry the man she loved.
So he turned the world upside down around her and turned her to ash and after that, the king and the two princes were never the same.
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"Dean?"
"Yeah?"
"How do you know so much?"
He's nine and he's recently figured out that normal big brothers do not, in fact, know everything. Only Dean does.
"Just do, Sammy."
That might have been enough a few years ago but Sam can actually think for himself now and he drops the towel he's been using to dry the dishes Dean is washing and crosses his arms over his chest.
"How do you always know everything?" he reiterates, glaring.
Dean shrugs with his arms in suds up to the elbows and uncomfortably not looking his way. "I always have. That's just how it is."
"But why?"
Sometimes Sam asks why just to annoy Dad and Dean, but this time he really has to know. Has to know why last night's story was about the bully that tried to beat him up today, including exact instructions on how to get to Dean before it happened.
For a while, after Sam found out about hunting, the stories became general as they had been when he'd been really small. Basic lessons, draped in stories. But lately they've been getting more specific again and Sam isn't five anymore and while he still believes Dean hangs the moon, he's pretty sure that, scientifically speaking, he doesn't.
Dean drops the dirty pan into the water with a grunt and snatches up the towel to wipe his arms off and turn the full brunt of his glare on his little brother. "I don't know, I don't care. Now drop it."
He does that thing with the eyebrows that he copied from Dad and thinks looks dangerous but doesn't really work on Sam at all. Mostly.
Sam drops his arms and the why, switching tracks. "Why don't I know stuff?"
"You know stuff, Sammy. There's so much junk in your brain it gives me a headache," he grins, waggles his brows and flings the towel at Sam, who catches, barely.
"But not like you," little brother argues after a minute of silence and gets the pan smacked into his hands as a reaction.
More silence. The pan is dry and put away by the stove before Dean mutters, "You will, squirt. One day."
For some reason, he sounds angry. But Sam's more concerned with details and Dean always has those. He has this new game he plays where he bets on the color of girls' panties with the other boys from his class and then someone has to go and peek under their skirt. Last week alone, Dean won ten dollars.
"But you could already do it when I was real little."
"You're still real little." The growl is stolen from Dad, too, but unlike the eyebrow thing, it works on Sam. He draws up his shoulders again and decides it's time for the big guns. Enough with the avoiding.
"I'll tell Dad."
Dean rounds on him so fast that water and suds spray everywhere and his expression is furious. "Don't you dare, Sam. It's my secret and I told you. You tell anyone else and we're through, is that clear?"
He is close and vivid, right up in Sam's face in a way he's never been before, actually yelling. Sam shrinks back into himself and feels tears rising unbidden, stupid emo things. Dean's never, ever been this mad with him before. It's freaking him out.
So he nods and drops his gaze to his ratty sneakers and doesn't say a word until his big brother has stormed down the short hallway into their room and slammed the door.
It'll be years before Sam understands that Dean's not mad but scared.
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And the king was scared that the man from the land of dragons would come back and take his sons, too. So he taught the princes all he knew about fighting and defending and made them into great knights. They were famous before they were all grown up and all the evil things feared them and their father, because they were warriors.
But then, one day, after many battles, the younger prince grew tired of fighting. He didn't want to go to war all the time.
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All Dean's stories, from first to last, end the same way. Not with happily ever after. Never that.
Sometimes the words fit the story he just told, sometimes they don't. But they never change. They're the one constant throughout the princes' adventures, the essential fact under it all.
"Remember, Sammy," Dean says at the end of every single story he ever tells, "Angels are righteous (and oh, how long will it take Sam to understand that that's not a good thing), demons are evil and humans simply are."
Here he stops and looks Sam right in the eye, writing the words onto his little brother's soul.
"There is no destiny," he says.
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And the prince walked away.
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Sixteen-year-old Dean comes thundering down the stairway at Bobby's at half past the ass crack of dawn and almost slams into the man himself in his hurry.
His eyes are full blown green on white, his skin pasty pale and Sam knows that look, that expression, that cold sweat. It's usually followed by his brother not sleeping for a couple of days and then crashing hard.
He grabs Bobby by the lapels and says, "Call Dad. Tell him not to go in there alone. There's more than he thinks."
Sam drops his spoon into his soggy cereal and stands, grabbing a for once unresisting Dean and parking him in his chair, all the while purposely not looking at Bobby to avoid giving the hunter an opening.
He still finds it.
"Why'd I do that, boy?"
Usually, Dean has a smooth story at this point, some shit about research and gut feelings and hunches. But this isn't usual. This is one of the times when things change too fast to keep up with and he's messing with things he shouldn't.
Sam tried to figure it out once, how it works. Does Dean vague up everything into metaphors and symbols in order to make sure no-one tries to act ahead of time and change unchangeable things, or does his knowledge already come prepackaged in mystery and confusion. Does Dean know what can be changed and what must stay the same, does he work around the fixed points, or does he tie himself into knots trying to avoid what can't be avoided?
Most days, little Sammy rears his ugly head and insists that Dean simply knows because he knows everything and it's just easier that way. Some days, Sam, the kid with the old eyes, takes point and insists that his brother is probably killing himself, one inevitability at a time.
Now Dean just glares weakly at Bobby and orders in the voice he usually reserves for Sam, listen now or we're going to die and I'll yell at you in hell, "Call him. Tell him. It's a nest. You did some more research or there were simultaneous sightings or the timing's off or a fucking fairy told you. But tell him, goddamnit."
He's not screaming. Dean never screams when he's really raw. He just snaps and bites people's heads off with far more experience than he should have. Sam doesn't remember if Bobby's ever been on the receiving end of that before. He stares at the older Winchester long and hard for more than a minute and Dean stares right back, twelve years of stories and sixteen years of knowledge in his eyes.
Then Bobby nods and grabs the phone, calls their Dad and bullshits him like the pro he is.
He hangs up once John agrees to do some more research and rounds on Dean with an expression that says he doesn't appreciate being bossed around. Dean just drops the spoon he's been toying with and looks up at the aging hunter, eyes flat.
And Sam thinks, for the first time in his life, that maybe knowing everything isn't as cool as it sounds because his brother looks like he's three days past broken and just waiting for it to catch up with him.
He steps forward lithely; laying one hand on Dean's shoulder and glancing calmly back at Bobby. Later, he'll mark that as the point in time where he stopped being Sammy and became Sam, who's still Dean's little brother, but who is also his partner. His friend. And when he has to, his last line of defense.
Later.
Right now, he just wants Bobby to back the fuck off.
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The younger prince went away and then… then everything… it sort of fell apart but the prince was happy, and that's what matters, right? He moved to the kingdom of grey and met the princess that lived there and they… they loved each other. Probably. Well, actually, they did for sure.
But you see, things aren't always that simple.
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That night, Bobby grills them for two hours over burgers and fries, during which Dean doesn't say a word to break his stony silence and Sam babbles about anything that comes to mind except the secret they're all dancing around with their arms spread wide, waving.
Then Bobby switches tactics and sends Sam to bed. He goes, but only after Dean's say so.
Another two hours later Dean stumbles into their room and straight into his little brother's bed where he crashes with a mumbled apology, a need for contact and beer breath.
He's drunk for the first time in his life and Bobby probably tried to use that to fry him, but he sleeps and Sam can't work up any anger at that.
They never talk about that day again and nothing much changes, except for two things. Bobby listens to Dean's suggestions more keenly and sometimes, he lets him have a beer or two.
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Because the evil king wasn't finished with the royal family. Not even close.
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The first months at Stanford are hell because there's no-one riding on Sam's shoulder wherever he goes, whispering courses of action and possible outcomes under the thin veneer of fairy tales in his ear.
He almost gets mugged twice before figuring out that somehow, he'll have to survive on his own now and he's surprised at how much he hates that thought.
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He had a plan, Sammy, a master plan. And that plan included the youngest son of the woman he once loved, the beautiful queen. And the oldest too, because in a way… in a way, the oldest was the evil king's son as much as he was the noble king's.
The whole plan was… stretched thin over thirty years, Sammy, it was a mess of people and pain and loss and sometimes even the evil king wasn't sure about all of the players and their roles anymore.
He lost track and everything spun off its axis and then…
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Sam read once in a cheesy novel, that it is the seer's curse to know his own fate and be unable to change it.
He never wonders if that's true or not. Not once because the evidence and proof is right in front of him, staring at him every day for eighteen years with tired green eyes that are like Mom's in the only picture he has of her.
Sometimes, Dad can't look Dean in the eye.
Sometimes, Sam wants to gouge out those eyes so he can stop following Dean's stories to the inevitable end.
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There is no destiny.
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Then why does everything seem fixed? Why is every single one of Sam's decisions already made inside Dean's head? Why can't he just walk away?
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The evil king had his plans and so did the good king and the dead queen and the evil king's daughter and his brother and everyone, everyone who'd ever met the princes had some sort of plan, some destiny.
They all wanted something.
Everyone always wants something for you and from you, remember that.
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He tries. Lord knows, he tries. He gives Dean his beer when Dad's not looking so he can drink himself into dreamless sleep, he listens to his stories and tries to do the opposite, to trick Fate at her own card game.
He tries running away from it all and knows he's failed when Dean waits for him that day, with a thousand dollars and a packed duffel at the ready. He knows, right then, that running's useless and he still does it because that's what Dean sees him doing and following big brother's word is just that fucking ingrained in him.
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There is no destiny.
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But there is, always and forever, the curse that rests on their family, brought on them by yellow eyes and thirty years of hate and blood and death.
And there's Dean's word.
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Remember, Sammy. Angels are righteous, demons are evil and humans simply are.
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Always Dean's word, from here to the End of Days. Literally.
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There is no destiny.
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