Not the Same Kid

I stood in back of the roadhouse staring at Jo. I felt… I'm not sure what I felt. Blindsided? Sucker-punched? I knew I needed to say something, but I couldn't get my mind to form any coherent thoughts. "You're pregnant," I finally squeaked out. And that was fucking useful.

"Yeah."

"And I'm… you think it's mine?"

"Sam! I know who the father of my baby is. I mean, I know what we did was… unexpected."

"Unexpected?" That was a polite way to put it. We'd both been angry with our parents. And we'd both developed the admittedly childish habit of stomping off in a huff. We'd run into each other about three months ago and somehow a drunken bitching session had ended up in some really hot sex. We hadn't seen each other since. "Are you sure? It only happened once."

She folded her arms and narrowed her eyes at me. "That's all it takes, genious."

"It's not that I doubt you or anything. It's just… we were careful, right? I mean, yeah, we were drunk, but I clearly remember using a condom. This is just…"

"Unexpected?"

I barked out a laugh. "Yeah. Look, I'm gonna be around for this, okay? 'M not gonna just leave you to do this alone."

"Really?" She looked hopeful, like she'd half expected me to run for the hills and never look back.

I shrugged. "You didn't get pregnant on your own. This is my kid too."

She looked at the ground. "Good. Cause I'm a little scared."

"Scared? You want scared? I've gotta tell my Dad."

"Oh yeah?" She looked back up at me with a smirk. "We'll I've gotta tell my Mom."

"Oh. Right." Shit. Like most older women, Ellen liked me. But I wasn't sure how she was going to take the news that I'd impregnated her daughter.


I sat staring at my beer waiting for my father's reaction. It'd taken me a whole week to work up the nerve to tell him.

"You're gonna step up, right," he asked. Only it wasn't a question. I felt my posture go straighter, my shoulders square a little more.

"Yes, sir. Provided Ellen doesn't shot me."

He snorted. "Of all the girls in the world to knock up, you just had to pick Ellen Harville's only daughter. Sure know how to pick 'em."

"Not like I did it on purpose." I sighed. "'M not ready for this, Dad."

"Nobody ever is, son. Nobody ever is." Dad's voice sounded heavy, part sadness and partly something else. Something that I caught a glimpse of every once in a while whenever I was hurt or after a particularly bad fight. I swollowed hard, wondered if I'd have this much baggage with my own kid.


"Sammy what's wrong?"

"I don't… I don't know what it is. But there's something that's just… not right. I was visiting Jo. She was all amped up on hormones or somethin' and she just jumped me."

Dad chuckled. "Hate to break it to you kid, but that's not exactly abnormal."

I blinked at him. "I really don't want any anecdotes. Please. I still choose to believe I was delivered by a stork."

Dad shrugged, still looking amused. "Just sayin'."

"Anyway, that wasn't the really weird part. In the middle… of… of everything, she just freaked. Started screaming and punching me. Ended up huddling in a corner like a caged animal. You should have seen her, Dad. The look in her eyes. She was terrified of me."

Dad sat back and stared at me, saying nothing. I could practically hear the gears turning in his head. "I got some calls to make. I'll be back."

Normally I would have demanded that he tell me what was going on, and that would have lead to an argument and long tense silence. And I still wouldn't be able to get the answers I wanted. So I just nodded instead, accepting that he wasn't going to turn into Mr. Transparency just because that's what I wanted. Mainly because I was just too damn rattled and tired to deal with it. And partly because I needed to met Ruby and the hypocrisy of keeping my secret while expecting my father to have none was starting to get to me.


"Adam," I asked, testing the name on my tongue.

"Adam," Dad confirmed, still not looking at me. Like he was confessing a dirty secret. I guess he was.

"So why are you telling me about this now?"

"I don't know. I feel like… something's missing."

"And that something is your grown ass pre med son?"

Dad flinched at the tone of my voice before narrowing his eyes at me. "Do you need me to prove that I can still take you over my knee, Sam?" His voice was quiet, reasonable. I knew my father well enough to know how deceptive that was. Not that I was ever afraid of him. He'd never hurt me and now that I could pin him to a wall if I really wanted to? I wondered what he'd do if he knew what I could do. Would he try to kill me? A shiver ran up my spine at the thought. Dad could never find out about Ruby and the training. And especially not about the blood. That would not end well.

I snorted. "It's just… after the whole Stanford thing, you can understand why I find it a little upsetting to learn that I have a little brother who got the whole mom and apple pie normal life."

"He wasn't being hunted by a demon, Sam. I didn't even know about him until after you'd left for Stanford and he actually had a mother who was his only legal parent. I wasn't even on the damn birth certificate, Sam. I was just some guy who showed up one day when he was thirteen. I thought about just taking him once… one night when I woke up in a cold sweat worried about all the things that could happen to him, but I couldn't… I couldn't protect you if I was in federal prison for kidnapping."

"So you're saying that this is really proof that you love me more?"

Dad ran his fingers through his hair. "It sounds really fucked up when you put it like that."

I wanted to tell him that it was really fucked up anyway, but I restrained myself. Who says that I have no self control? "I want to meet him."

"Meet him? Yeah. I suppose you would."

I laughed at the look on my father's face. "He doesn't know about me either, does he?"

Dad looked away. "That would have just brought up a lot of questions that I didn't want to answer."

"Well, he's an adult now. Adam can make his own decisions. And… I don't think he needs to be left unprotected. I know now, and if Azazel or Lilith find out…"

"They'll use Adam against us and the kid will be a sitting duck. Yeah. I thought of that to. Okay. Let's go see your brother."

Hearing my father say that felt right and wrong all at the same time. Because something was missing. I just couldn't figure out what that something was. Only that it was something big, something important. Maybe it was Adam, but I couldn't help thinking that it wasn't. That it was close, but still no cigar.


It was a little freaky how much Adam looked like a younger, gawkier version of Dad. We sat in his dorm room, an uncomfortable silence hanging over us until he finally cleared his throat.

"So… Sam. This has gotta be kind of awkward for you."

"Oh, I think it's awkward for everyone." Another few moments of uncomfortable silence. "You know, I always wanted a brother."

He smiled. "Yeah. Me too. Growing up an only kid kinda sucks."

I laughed at that. Didn't I know it? "Yeah. It kinda does."

Dad cleared his throat and cut in. "I know you gotta be wonderin' why I never told you about Sam."

Adam shrugged and looked away. "The question did cross my mind. You weren't… you weren't married were you?" He cast a nervous glance at the ring on my father's hand.

"A long time ago… I told you a truth about that. Sam was only six months old when Mary died. So, it wasn't something like that. It was… Adam, do you believe in the supernatural?" Was Dad blushing?

Twenty minutes later, Adam was sitting very still and quiet and staring at nothing in particular. He drew a deep breath and nodded. "Okay."

Dad went a little wide eyed and blinked at him. "Okay?"

"Yeah. I mean, that's a pretty lame lie to make up just to explain why you didn't tell me I had a brother. I mean, I suppose you could both be crazy, but…" he shrugged, "I think I would have noticed that by now, Dad. It explains all the scars, and the paranoia." It was all kinds of weird hearing someone else refer to my father as Dad.

"I'm not paranoid."

"Yeah, right," Adam and I said in unison. Dad fidgeted uncomfortably as we glanced at each other in surprise and then laughed. I just couldn't shake how this whole thing felt right and wrong all at the same time.

"So, uh, any other family I should know about?" Adam looked from Dad to me and back again.

"Sammy has a son," Dad said proudly. I smiled too, remembering what it felt like to hold him in my arms for the first time, how hard it was to leave him to go back on the road. I was more determined then ever before to end this quickly. For my son. I didn't want him growing up the way I did, running from demons.

"Yeah. He's only a couple of months old. His name is Isaiah. I'd love for you to meet him. You can be the cool uncle."

In the end we grudgingly agreed to let Adam finish out his semester. He'd join up with us latter. In the meantime, Dad and I put every protection up that we could think of. Dad made him promise to lay salt lines every night and keep the .45 he gave him close by. I snorted. At least Adam was in double digits before he got his first .45. We went over the gun safety rules with him and he promised to start target practice first thing Monday morning. Dad looked like he wanted to stay longer, but we had a demon infested town to deal with. Seemed like we couldn't get a breath between hunts lately, and it wasn't just us. Everyone was stretched too thin trying to stop a runaway train that showed no signs of slowing.

"Remember what you told me about Jo a few months ago?" Dad's voice was low, just barely clearing the rumble of the Impala's engine. We'd driven together to go see Adam, and usually when we drove together, we took the Impala because Dad sometimes seemed to miss it. Miss her. It was supposedly my car now, but he wouldn't so much as let me put a CD player in it.

"Yeah?"

"I keep having these… feelings that don't jive with things I remember. That, plus what you told me about Jo. Somethin's not right. Hasn't been right for about a year now. False memories, or false emotions. I'm not sure which, but we're bein' manipulated."

I felt dread crawl up my spine, cold and harsh. "By who? Or what?"

Dad shrugged. It wasn't like we had any shortage of enemies. "Not sure, but I got some ideas. Lots of things can mess with your perceptions, emotions and memories. We gotta figure which one's bein' messed with. Then we figure out why and how."

"How?"

"We start with emotions. They're the easiest to fix despite that they're treacherous bastards. Then if that's not it we'll work on perceptions, which are a bitch but still easier than memories. Takes a hell of a lot of juice to alter memories. Practically have to fucking rewire your damn brain. That's not an easy thing to do. Even harder to undo."

"How long's it gonna take?"

"Bobby and I are researching. We've got a bead on something to bring out true emotions. Should be ready soon."

"What about the rest? Perceptions and Memories."

"Those are gonna take more time. Only the nastiest bastards mess with those."


"How much longer you gonna keep this up, Sam?"

I looked up to see Victor standing next to me at the bar. I frowned at him. "Keep what up?"

"Lying to your father. Sneaking out at night. Treating me like I just fell off the stupid train and landed on my damn head."

I narrowed my eyes and leaned a little closer to him. "What are you implying, Victor?"

"I'm not implying a damn thing. I'm saying that things aren't adding up with you, Sam. You need to talk to your father before somethin' goes wrong."

"Or what?"

Surprise and a little bit of hurt slide through Victor's eyes before he shut it down. "Do you honestly think I'm threatening you here? I thought… look, we've been hunting together for over a year now. We've saved each other's asses more times than I care to count. I would never threaten you."

I let out a slow breath, felt tension seeping out of my body along with it. "Then just trust me, okay? I mean, if you trust me with your life then why not with this?"

"Maybe because you didn't think to ask me to until you got caught out. Look, Sam, you're lying to John. I can't even tell you how uncomfortable I am with that. And you always wait till you think I'm asleep to sneak out. In my experience, people only lie and sneak around when they shouldn't be trusted."

"You mean like the way we lie and sneak around every day?"

"The hunt's different. And even then, we don't do that with each other."

That was the one thing that I hated about Victor. He was just like Dad with his follow orders/obey the chain of command bullshit. I snorted out a bitter laugh. "You have met John Winchester, right? The man lies to us all the damn time. And don't you dare say 'he just doesn't tell us everything.' If he's allowed to have secrets, than so am I, damnit."

Victor shook his head. "You're going to have to grow up one day and get rid of the huge chip on your shoulder. Maybe he's not father of the year, but John's a good man. He took me in and kept me alive, when any other guy would have told me to go fuck myself after what I put the two of you through."

"My father isn't perfect, Victor. Sometimes he's wrong. Sometimes he's got his head so far up his ass he can't figure out which way is up."

"Wow. "

"What?"

"I haven't known you that long, but you're not the same kid I met a year ago. If I didn't know better, I'd swear…"

I snorted. No I wasn't the same. I wasn't weak anymore. I could exorcise demons with my mind. Soon I'd be able to kill them. No, I wasn't impotent little Sammy anymore. "What? What would you swear, Victor?"

"That you're on something."

I snorted and shook my head. "So I'm not just a sneaky lier? I'm a drug addict too?"

"Fits. The lying, the sneaking around, the disappearing at odd hours, the irritability. All this overly aggressive behavior."

"You don't know shit."

"What's your poison, Sammy?"

"It's Sam. Only Dad gets to call me Sammy."

"I haven't noticed any track marks, or any strange smells. So that leaves snorting or swallowing."

"Victor, you're barkin' up the wrong damn tree, man."

"Lot's a things you can take as a powder. Snort it right up your nose, enters the blood stream almost immediately. Instant euphoria. Good way to forget you got two uber demons after you and that we keep losin' more people than we can save while the whole damn world's falling down around your ears."

"You're wrong."

"No, I'm not. Wish I were, but I'm not. You're on something. And you need to tell John before you get someone killed. I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but you're daddy's wrapped a little too tight. Ever wondered what would happen if you got your stupid ass killed? Ever wondered what John would do?"

"He's got Adam."

"Who he's seen maybe four times in the kid's whole life. Not sayin' he doesn't love the kid, but he raised you. Spent his entire life protecting you. If he lost Adam, it would hurt but he'd go on for you. He looses you? He's going down and he's not gettin' back up."

"You're not going to my father about this because there's nothing to tell. I'm not taking any drugs."

"And I almost believe you. You've gotten a hell of a lot better at lying."

"It's your word against mine. Who do you really think Dad's gonna believe? Some guy he's only known for a year, who he met because he wanted to put me on death row, or his son?"

Victor snorted a looked away. "Manipulative. Forgot to add that to my list. I almost don't know what to hope for when this all goes to shit. I don't want to die because you're an idiot who can't keep your shit together. John doesn't deserve to. You deserve it, but John wouldn't survive."

"Dad and I'll be just fine. Thanks."

"The minute I get proof, I'm going to have a long talk with your father."

"It would be in your best interest to drop this."

"Or what, Sam. You gonna be a little slow to save my ass next time we hunt?" My thoughts dragged out in the harsh light of day like that sounded… wrong. So fucking wrong. My stomach did a slow roll and I clenched my jaw. Victor frowned and cocked his head at me. "Who the fuck are you?"

"You could always leave."

"I owe John. Be a sorry way to repay the man to leave now with the way things are."


Oh God…" Dad's knees buckled and he fell heavily to the floor.

"John… what the hell is it?" Bobby's gruff voice softened a little with concern as he stared at his old friend.

"How the hell could I forget? How could I forget my own son?" His voice was a hoarse, anguished whisper.

"Your own son? What are you talking about Dad?"

"Dean. I forgot him…"

"Jesus Christ, Dad! Have you heard of condoms? You're the one who taught me about protection! Don't tell me you have another son out there somewhere? One that you actually forgot existed."

"No, Sam. Dean taught you about protection. You and I hadn't been getting along that well and I thought it would be easier… God, he was so proud that I trusted him to do it." Dad laughed, his eyes far away as if he were caught in a memory and I felt an icy finger of dread run up my spine. "He… he got this fucking cucumber… to use as a demonstration. You couldn't look a cucumber in the eye again for years."

"I don't remember any of this."

"I know. I don't think anybody does. He was such a good son… such a good man. How could we just forget him like that?" Dad's eyes went suddenly wide and his face lost what little coloring it had left. "Oh shit! That must have been part of the deal…"

"Dad, what the hell are you talking about?" He was making absolutely no sense. If I could have gotten away with it, I would have shaken him.

"We have to get him back, Sam."

"Back? Back from where?"

Dad gave me a look that froze my blood. "Hell."

"Okay… how exactly are we going to get someone out of Hell?"

Dad grabbed my shirt and pulled me against him so that his face was only inches from mine. "Not someone Sam… Dean. Your older brother, my first born son! And if I have to open the Hell's Gate and fight my way to him single handedly, then that's exactly what I'm gonna do!" And with that almost crazed gleam in his eyes, I didn't doubt that he was telling me the absolute truth.

I swallowed and shrank away a little. Even though I knew he'd never hurt me – because God knows I've given him enough reasons if he ever wanted an excuse – my Dad was pretty fucking terrifying when he got this intense. Actually, I'd never seen him quite this intense before.

"What if… what if we can't?" I couldn't keep the question from escaping in a hoarse whisper. It was a stupid, useless question because I already knew the answer, already saw it in his eyes, felt it in my bones. I may not know who Dean was… but somehow I knew. My Dad was right. We had to get him back. Because what was missing, that big fucking void in our lives? That was Dean. I don't know how I knew that but I did and I was suddenly just as anxious as Dad to get him back.

He pulled away from me. "That's not an option, Sammy. I can't… I can't just leave my boy in Hell. He doesn't deserve that. If anyone ever didn't deserve that, it's him."


A/N:

It's okay, redgriffin7. I'm glad you enjoyed it and I know you want Dean back… just be patient.

Well, it looks like I dodged a bullet there, kelmar2004. Or at least a pitchfork. And hopefully that little chat is starting to make a little more sense now.

Thanks, onlyobsessed. I hope I can live up to your expectations.

Sorry Danaa, it's not going to be as easy as finding something in Dean's wallet. Hopefully you'll enjoy the ride, though.

I've haven't written that yet, rog457, but I think it's a safe bet that John's gonna have a cow. When you really think about it, Hendrickson's a lot like Dean in some ways. I think John might be subconsciously trying to hold onto Dean through him.

Thanks Yammy1983!

That was my favorite Ruby too, Haylia Jones. Nothing against Ruby 2's actress, but I just never got used to her. I would have given anything to have the original Ruby back for that last scene when Lucifer was rising.

Little more patience, greendaypumpkin. Dean'll be back.

Good guess LuckyMe1. I didn't get it from Lost although I know that was the name of one of the eps. I thought about it for a while and started to dismiss it when one of the reviews I had mentioned it. And I just thought, you know, it makes a crazy kind of since. Not Tabula Rasa in the positive sense – like a fresh start after bad things, but in the negative sense. Because when everything is wiped away, it's not just the bad. It's all the good too.

Thanks lace and silk. Sad and ironic was what I was going for.

Thanks hpsupernaturalfan! I hope it will be too!

Here you go, kminxus!

Sorry, moira4eku… you're going to have to wait a little more.

-Angie