Chapter 4

I walked over to the trash container, the coffee in my cup had grown cold and for some reason, sour as I drank it. I knew what I was about to discuss was, well, it might be hard on him, but I had to get it out somehow. Cas said to be honest, to tell him everything, but I couldn't establish the trust I needed to do that if he wasn't telling me everything, so I was only going on gut instinct here when I came up with a theory for his dreams.

I moved towards the bench that I had parked in front of, pulled my feet up and wrapped my arms around my legs before glancing up at him. With a roll of his eyes, letting me know that he was still in the worst of moods, he kicked away from the car and came to sit by me, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees as he held the coffee with both hands.

I reached over and gently put my hand on his back, not wanting him to jump again because that scared me more than anything. His muscles twitched but he didn't seemed to be as frazzled as he was before and that was a good sign, but how long it was going to last was something completely different. Not that having keys to the Charger would have been any help because the boy could hotwire it in seconds, but they would have given me a little more confidence that he wasn't going to take off and leave me there once my "theory" was exposed.

"Okay," I sighed and watched him look up, just to watch the coming and going of the cars and the people, and not positive that he was even listening to me, I just started to babble. Everything that I had learned about his life, Dean, John and what came before our little misadventure in Oklahoma, brought me to this very moment. "Early on in the show, and you'll know what I'm talking about since you just binged it for the last month and a half, that Sam started to get these headaches, really, really bad ones that either came with a vision or just before them. Sometimes the headaches wouldn't come at all and the visions would just be nightmares, bad dreams, until they weren't dreams anymore, they were real."

I felt Sam stiffen as I talked, one of the main reasons I had put my hand on him. Outwardly, you would never have seen the signs of his discomfort of what the words were doing to him, but I knew him, I could feel him and every little twitch was a sign that I was right.

"Anyway, these dreams, these visions lead him to the fact that he was one of the chosen children, all pretty much born around the same time, all who had mothers who died in nursery fires." I paused for a moment, thinking of my facts, "okay, so maybe not all died in fires when they were six months, but they eventually died. These children had gifts, and some of them weren't the best people, and some of them really were, but what they all had in common was that it all started around their birthdays."

"I already told you that mine never stopped, they have always been there," he snapped but didn't look at me. He didn't move away, he didn't even try to shrug my hand off, he just snapped, which could have been a good sign.

"I know, which is why I asked if you wanted the show history before I started, Sam, I'm not rehashing this crap just to piss you off, I'm trying to make a point." He turned to me then, placing one hand on his leg as he pushed himself up and stared at me.

"And what point is that, because truthfully, Ali, I'm really not in a good headspace for this." He growled. Yeah, not good, I could see that, but I took a deep breath and went on.

"The visions that Sam was having ended after the devil's gate was opened, or at least we were lead to believe." He locked his jaw, his lips thinning as he turned away. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the devil's gate actually happened, kind of like Stull, but in a bit of a different way." He didn't reply, he just lowered his head to look over the roughed-up boots he was wearing. "Yeah, so since things here happened to you and TV-Sam in a similar way to a point, I'm going to guess that your visions didn't stop with the death of Azazel."

He turned to me once again, this time his eyes locked on mine, his empty hand clenched in a fist. Yep, I knew that name would get him and I watched him try to control everything that wanted to pour out of him.

"Sam, I love you, I want to know what's going on, so just talk to me." My hand didn't fall away from his back, instead I gripped his shirt and waited, but he turned back and looked up at the sky instead. Did I go on? Did I continue prying because that was what my brain told me to do, keep digging because sooner or later, he was going to have to know the truth, the real truth on why his mother died. "Okay," I cleared my throat and adjusted my footing on the bench. "So, my whole spiel, this whole "let's compare", I'll just get to the point of it. Your visions haven't stopped, it's why you've been so moody, you're having nightmares and Sam, you were having them while we were together in Oklahoma."

He sat up straight, shifting away from my hand, from my touch and he looked at me, his eyes dark with the anger that I knew was in there somewhere. He shook his head, his lips locked tight and I wanted to just let it go, but I could see the frustration on his face, like he had lost the ability to find his words, to get his thoughts out.

"You had one before we met, about our meeting," I whispered, watching his eyes grow wide at the idea, but he didn't deny it, and that was when all of my theories on how and why finally connected. "You knew who I was the moment you turned around in that booth and you knew what was coming."

"Ali," I watched as he closed his eyes and turned away and I reached out to him again, this time, to hell with the shirt, I grabbed his arm, catching his attention again. This time he nearly backed me up against the bench as he leaned into me. His breathing was shallow and his lips were parted but the hardness in his eyes fade. "I saw you in my dreams, I saw the vampire attack," he reached a shaky hand out and his fingers brushed my skin as his pushed my hair back from my shoulder. "I…" he swallowed hard, "I saw you die, and I couldn't let that happen, I couldn't… I needed to know you."

"Sam, I…" what do you say to that exactly? His breath was shaky and the tips of his fingers brushed my cheek as he placed his forehead against mine.

"You were so… are so beautiful," he sighed and I smiled at the compliment but knew the other shoe was about to drop, wait, I take back drop, the bastard was about to plummet from thirty-seven thousand feet. "When I feel sleep after I knocked on your door, after the headlight, I had another vision."

"Sam," I pressed and reached out to cup my hands on his cheeks, pushing him away so that he would look into my eyes, "tell me what you saw."

"I'm sorry," he whispered, his own fingers tangling in my hair, "I'm so sorry, Ali, you were supposed to die."

"What?" I moved away from him, but then changed my mind, and turned quickly so that I had him pinned down to the bench, sitting on his lap as I faced him, the emotions that crossed his face almost let me speechless… almost. "Do you know how much crap you can churn up by screwing with the natural order of things? Sam, you of all people know that things happen for a reason."

"I couldn't let you, not like that," he whispered but it wasn't like he was he was mad that I was scolding him, he said it more like he was pleading with me to understand. I let my fingers trail down to rest on his chest as his lips trembled, not sure if he was on the verge of crying or if it was because of all the other emotions, and his thumb caressed my cheek. "I kept thinking afterwards that it was meant to be, that I was meant to save you, that I had seen it wrong, because you swung."

"Yeah, how about that," I said still a little shocked, "and you know why I swung that blade? Because friggin Cas told me to." I had never told him that before, or maybe I might have, but I didn't really get into it. There was a voice that night, once at the Waffle House, once in the room, the first told me that the boys would keep me safe and the second was to swing like my life depended on it, well, apparently it really did. Sam looked at me in shock, yeah, I must have left that out. And I'm pretty sure I left it out when I wrote the trip story down the first time. Cas was with me, with me through it all. "I wasn't supposed to die, was I? Because if someone above was watching and that was the way it was supposed to be, why send me you, why send me Cas?"

"Cas told you too?" Sam whispered.

"Not that I wouldn't have done it on my own but, Sam, I was terrified. You were bleeding and this thing was coming at me, and I just listened to the voice in my head. I swung." I took a breath and let it out, trying to relax my body in order to get him to do the same. "You were exactly where you were supposed to be, Sam, your vision was wrong."

"So why am I having them again?" He seemed so lost at that moment, and I bit down on my lower lip, let my face show my concern as he glanced over my lips then stared into my eyes. "Why am I having visions of you dying again?"

"I don't know, baby," I sighed, brushed his hair back from his face and leaned in, kissing him lightly on the lips. "I don't know, but I think we need to get to Danni and Dean."

"We were with them," he sighed, and I sat back a little, confused. "When you died in my vision, Ali, we were with my brother and Danni." He shook his head. "I want to keep you as far away from them as I can, but I know we have to go." Sam sat forward, capturing me around the waist with one arm as he placed his palm against my cheek with the other. "Promise me, Al, promise me as soon as this case is done that you'll run, run far away from us."

"I'm not," I smiled, thinking he was joking but I could see the seriousness in his eyes. "I'm not going to run from you Sam, not from you."

"You don't understand, Ali," he drew in a deep breath as his emotions started to surface and his eyes glistened with something, fear, hatred, disgust, "you have to run from me," he sighed, "I think I'm the one that kills you."

Okay, pump the brakes! I slid from his lap, from his touch all together and placed my hands over my mouth. Sam's visions, if correct, which is questionable since he got the first one wrong, was that he killed me! I mean forget the fact that I died in the first place, but Sam killing me? Okay, there was just something cosmically wrong with that picture.

I turned back to him, running my hands though my hair as I collected myself, and repeated the same mantra in my head over and over: not gonna freak out, not gonna freak out!

Yeah, total freak out!

"Okay, um, let's just get back in the car and go," I stated, in a rather calm voice, because if we didn't move, I was so totally going to freak the hell out.

Sam stood, not sure on what we were going to do but he took the driver's side and I slide into the seat he had occupied before, having to adjust the back so that I wasn't laying so flat. With a deep breath, I curled my legs up against me as I buckled the belt and stared out the window while he backed out and headed down the highway once more.

Where the hell had that conversation gone so completely sideways? How exactly did we get on the subject that I was going to die? Better yet, what exactly did I do that would make it so SAM had to kill me and Danni and Dean didn't do a thing to stop me in time?

All these things, went through my mind as we drove. Holy hell I was in for a long day, and we still had more than two hours to go, two very, very long hours.

Note to self: when thinking of the worst possible way that you could die, always leave out the song that you get stuck in your head, one that has to do with falling into a cement mixer, frying getting a suntan, or being eaten by a lion. What the hell was Sam listening to? My mind was taken off the thoughts of my own death and brought back to the strange radio station that played through the speakers, which made me turn in my seat and look over at the grin on his face.

"What the hell, Sam?" I questioned and watched as his blue-green eyes landed on mine.

"You weren't answering me. I figured you were off in your own little world and I know the only thing that keeps you locked in those little places is the music you listen to, so I switched the station." He shrugged and turned back to the road. Confused, I rubbed my forehead and adjusted my position in the seat as I studied the expression on his face.

"So, Train?" I smiled, and watched the corner of his lips go up. "You thought it would be best to get me out of a thought with "50 ways to say goodbye"? You do know she drowns in a hot tub right?"

All I could see was the smile widening on his face and that was just what I was looking for. I wasn't at all mad about the song, in fact, it was one of my favorite ones, but I wanted him to think he was getting the best of me. With a huff, I sat back in my seat and watched him for a few more minutes before his eyes glanced sideways in my direction.

My brain thought of a million and a half things that I wanted to ask him, and I think he knew it because he reached his hand over and placed it over mine. I hadn't realized I was wringing my hands together nervously until he stopped the motion, and in turn it started my foot bouncing.

"What?" He whispered, it wasn't a harsh question, he just knew I wanted something.

"It can wait, it would probably be better to ask Dean," this caught his attention and he turned his head in my direction, looking me straight in the eyes for a few second before he looked at the road.

"What do you need to ask Dean that would have to do with me?" Now this time there was definitely a bit of a bite to the words that passed his lips.

"I don't," I paused, and thought about how to actually come out with it because the more I wanted to know, the more it might hurt him to dig up his past. "I don't want to upset you, Sam, I'm just curious about things, you know timeline differences and stuff."

"Is it about me, though?" He seemed to take the explanation without much issue but the thought of me talking to Dean about his childhood seemed to upset him more.

"Not so much, I guess," I shrugged. "Do you want to hear the question and then can decide for yourself?"

He glanced at me again, not just out of the corner of his eyes, but he actually made contact to see that I really wasn't trying to blow him off. I watched as one shoulder came up in a shrug, but in all that time his hand never moved from mine and I found a way to intertwine our fingers.

"Yeah, okay," but his voice was unsure.

"So, Sam leaves for college, Dean goes off with John, but that's not what happens to you. The gap that we saw through the show was that it started with Sam in college, a few years in, and Dean had come to get him." I watched as he faced the road, taking in my words, weighing them as I also tried to figure out his expressions, his feelings. "Dean reacted when I told him those words, Sam, the one little sentence that started the whole series, so what exactly happen to you and Dean if those words got the same reaction?"

"I," he started but I watched him bite the inside of his lip gently, before he took a breath, one that made his chest rise. "I separated from them, I had decided that I needed to be on my own. I was nineteen, and angry, and so stupid."

"So, Dean did come and get you?" Sam nodded, his lips growing tight, and he let out a long breath.

"Dean and I weren't really on speaking terms at that point, so when he showed up I was somewhere in Arizona, Wickenburg if I remember the name correctly. Population of six thousand or so people but one hell of a ghost problem." I watched as his eyes faded into those memories, but this time they didn't seem to bring out the emotion that the ones of his childhood had, maybe because they weren't connected to the dreams or maybe because he was concentrating on what Dean was like at that time. "It was supposed to be a typical salt and burn, just vengeful spirits kind of thing, you know something that you can handle on your own, but it turned out to be just a bit more."

"Did you call him to help, or did he just show up?"

"No," Sam shook his head, sucked his teeth for a second, and adjusted in the seat. "Dean never just shows up and I didn't call. Apparently, the case was on his radar already but Dad had been gone for too long, Bobby hadn't heard from him either so Dean just decided that the case was something he could handle. We were both wrong."

"What happened?"

"Necromancer," Sam shrugged it off as if it were nothing major, but I could see there was more to it, so I waited for him to continue. "Yeah, a badass one as a matter of fact. I was pretty much dead on my feet when Dean came in."

"You, dead on your feet?" I smiled and watched him give me a little grin.

"Yeah, up for more than three days straight digging and burning the bastards. I really should have called in backup but I was pigheaded."

"Not much has changed in that department." I mumbled and felt him give me a little squeeze of my hands.

"You're right," he snickered and glanced at me, "still pigheaded as ever, but yeah, Dean kinda saved my ass. By the time, I got down to the who, the monsters had grown in number to the point that there was no way to stop them. Digging up the whole cemetery wouldn't even have done the trick and no amount of salting and burning the corpses would have stopped it. I finally had the guy cornered, some little jerk with a bad temper and a need for revenge on someone else in the town. He got his hands on an old grimoire and basically opened a can of worms he couldn't control, so I thought. He apparently had learned a little bit about what he was doing and managed to get me backed up against a wall. I thought I was dead. I was exhausted, beaten to a pulp, and you know the only thing I could think of as I lay there waiting for this monster of a dead man, some Frankenstein creation, to bring the ax down on me was how much I wanted to see him, how much I really wanted my brother with me at the end."

"Did he swoop in and save your ass?" I meant it as a joke but it came out a little more serious than I expected.

"Actually, he did." Sam sighed, giving a little shake of his head. "He, ah, not only saved my ass, he waited until I was able to walk around on my own before he threw the little gem of: Dad's on a hunting trip and hasn't been home in a few days. Funny, I thought I wouldn't care about Dad at all at that point, but after what I had gone through, I was scared to death for him. I didn't want to admit it, but I guess being so close to it myself, I thought God, this can't be the way Dad goes, killed at the hand of some monster. So, when I was better, I got on the road with Dean."

"Okay, so that's not so bad." He nodded, but I noticed his expression didn't lighten. "Sam?"

"Yeah, it actually was pretty bad," he replied after taking a moment to collect his thoughts. "I didn't know how bad it had gotten for Dean. Dad used him to keep me in line, to make sure I was the one that stuck to the rules, whatever they were that week, or day, or month, but when I left, I didn't realize that I left Dean wide open for what I thought was just Dad's reaction to my behavior."

Wait, John's reaction to Sam's behavior? Did that mean what I thought it did?

"Did your dad hit you?" Sam's head whipped in my direction, his face full of fear or surprise, it was hard to tell but he was quickly shaking his head.

"Not unless I swung first," he defended John and I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or bad.

"But he hit back?"

"Yeah, when I was older, that was one of the main reasons I left, because I was too afraid." Sam sighed, "I was so angry, so out of control, I thought I could have killed him at any point. I thought I might hurt Dean and I couldn't live with that, so I left. The problem was Dad was so used to confrontations with me that when it came to Dean, it was the only way he knew how to deal, so Dean started having to swing back and…"

"John was abusing him?" Again, it wasn't really a question to Sam but a thought that went through without stopping at my filter.

"It wasn't abuse, not in Dean's eyes. It was Dean being a good son, defending himself, making sure that Dad knew that Dean could handle whatever was thrown at him. Not that Dean was weak at all, I mean he kept me in line, hell he held me down more than once, more than I can count actually. He was the one that should have gone off to college, he's a frigging genius, but I left, I went and left him holding the bag." Using his knee to keep the wheel still, Sam ran a hand through his hair and then slammed it down onto the hardened plastic. "Dean came out of that situation harder, rougher and downright dangerous. He wasn't the playful brother I remembered anymore, I mean Dean could have a hell of a sense of humor and he knew how to use it to get what he wanted, but he was edgy and serious when he found me."

"What happened when you went to look for John?"

"Sometimes, after the hunts we did while we followed whatever clues Dad left, Dean would do what we always did, head to the nearest bar, pick up the neediest woman," his eyes glanced quickly in my direction to see if I was offended, I wasn't, and he continued. "Anyway… there was a few times that Dean got out of hand, not many but I would walk in on him, half-drunk, scaring the hell out of the woman. He never touched her, never once, but the shit he was saying, Ali," his fingers squeezed mine a little harder and he let out a deep growl. "I don't know what he did to Dean, and my brother is too stubborn to tell me anything, even now, but I honestly didn't know if I wanted to find Dad after what I saw him become, I didn't know if I wanted to save him, because I was so dead set on killing him."

"Jesus, Sam." I closed my eyes as he rubbed the scruff on his cheek. "I'm sorry."

"It was what it was, I guess, I mean Dean has… he's not as bad as he once was. When he hits the bottle now, it just kind of rolls through him, but that might be because of Cas and not actually dealing with the problem." Sam looked over at me, trying to give me a reassuring wink as that sly little grin crossed his lips. "Ali, I was supposed to be the dark one, I was supposed to be the one with issues, the demon blood, but Dean hasn't gotten anything but crap since he came back from Hell, from being with Alistair. I mean that alone was crap enough."

"Cas brought him back, right? I mean, he pulled him out of hell?"

"Yeah, brought him back, but the damage was done. Even if I wanted to help him, there was no way I could. Hell changes you, being on that rack, that changes you. Dean, though, Dean is so much stronger than I am because no matter how black it looked, he was the one that told me we could get through it. I never bothered with it, it didn't really affect me. I could have taken or left it, it didn't matter personally, but because it was something he was fighting for," Sam paused, "I couldn't let my brother down again, I confessed that once, that my greatest sin was how many times I had let him down, but not now, not again. Until you, it was always Dean first, Ali."

"It should be Dean first, Sam, it should always be family first." I shrugged and honestly believed it. I was what I instilled in my children and I certainly wasn't going to try and change Sam because of my wanting to be closer to him. No, it was the reason I pushed him to go with Cas in the beginning, to leave me when I went home from Oklahoma. Sam needed to put Dean first because Dean needed him.

"Family?" He smiled and lifted my hand up to kiss the back of my knuckles, "you realize that you're part of it now, right, so it's you first too." His eyes scanned over my face, lingering at my lips as he rolled to a stop. I hadn't even realized we moved off the highway to the rest area. "It will always be you first, you and Dean and Danni."

"Where are we going?" I laughed as he continued to kiss my fingers, moving down each knuckle. He looked up just in time to roll to the gas pump, lean over the seat and kiss me softly on the lips. It wasn't a quick kiss, more of a lingering one before he was out the door, and I was left totally confused. "What the hell just happened?"