When Sam wakes up the next morning, he looks over to see if the creature is still asleep and finds it sprawled out on its stomach just like usual. It's then that he notices the lump under its pillow and realizes that it's sleeping with a gun. This shouldn't be surprising, Dean always sleeps with a gun, but things are different now and he feels sick thinking about how it could have just gotten up in the middle of the night, shot him, and taken off. If he's going to stop the monster from hurting anyone then he needs to keep it around, and if he's going to do that then he needs to make sure of his own safety.
By the time the monster wakes up about an hour later, Sam thinks he's got a pretty good plan worked out. "When I ordered you to tell me the truth last night" Sam starts off, in lieu of good morning, "that order stayed in effect for the rest of the night."
"Yeah" it replies, looking sad. "Unless you specify a time limit, any order you give me will stay in effect until contradicted by a more recent order."
"Did Dad have any standing orders?"
"Yes" it says, clearly not liking the direction this conversation is going.
"Tell me what they were."
The monster begins to recite:
"1. Do not shift forms without my permission
2. Do not do anything to directly or indirectly cause harm to me or Sam
3. Protect Sam at any cost, even your own life
4. At all times behave as though you are Sam's brother and my son, and you want to be with us
5. Do not kill or injure any non-supernatural human unless required to do so to follow another order
6. Do not look for, or incite anyone else to look for, a way to remove the binding spell placed upon you"
Sam considers the list; his dad had actually been pretty clever with the wording. "Are these orders still in effect since his death?"
"Well I haven't had to keep acting like I'm your brother, so I guess not."
Sam swallows, thinking again of the danger he had been in last night without the protection of those standing orders. "Okay, new orders:
1. Do not shift forms without my permission
2. Do not do anything to directly or indirectly cause me harm
3. Do not kill or injure any non-supernatural human unless required to do so to follow another order
4. Do not look for, or incite anyone else to look for, a way to remove the binding spell placed upon you"
The Shifter looks angry but Sam can tell that it's also considering the orders Sam left off the list. Sam briefly considered including the one about protecting him with his life, but he can't bring himself to order someone to unwillingly die for him, even if that person isn't a person. And as for the one about pretending to be part of their family, Sam is much happier with the order to tell him the truth.
"I have more questions for you."
"I knew you would" it says resignedly.
"Whose body are you copying right now?"
"Nobody's, I made this one up."
"I didn't know Shapeshifters could do that."
"Of course, we can. Copying a living human gives you a psychic connection with that person, which can be useful but after a while you get tired of all the extra noise in your head. It takes longer, but It's better to just come up with an original body to use."
"I want you to tell me about your life before Dad found you. You said you were one of his cases, were you killing people?"
It huffs. "No just stealing stuff. I guess he found it suspicious that George Clooney walked into a bank in the middle of Minnesota one day and took out a bunch of money."
"You turned into George Clooney?"
"I was fifteen" it says defensively. "I wanted the new Atari. I didn't know I was going to end up getting my free will taken away for the rest of my life."
"Didn't you have parents or something?"
"No. Well, I mean, technically yes, I have parents. Shapeshifters aren't turned like vampires or werewolves, we're born and grow up, just without the whole family thing."
"So, then who . . .?"
"This isn't a lifetime movie Sam. Can we just get breakfast already?"
Sam gives in, he supposes that the creature's past isn't really the priority right now anyway.
Breakfast proceeds astonishingly normally. The Shifter orders itself the unhealthiest thing on the menu and Sam has to bite back the urge to lecture his brother about heart disease. You don't have a brother and monsters can't die from heart attacks he reminds himself.
After breakfast they go back to the hospital for Dad's body and give him a proper hunter's funeral. The Shifter helps Sam cut wood for the fire, but Sam can't help but resent it for being happy about his father's death.
The next day they get in the car and drive west. The Shifter asks where they're going. Sam doesn't tell him; he doesn't know. For the next few days that's pretty much all they do, drive without direction. After a while Sam orders the Shifter not to drive them off a cliff and lets it take over. It enjoys it more anyway.
It's interesting to Sam to observe what changes and what stays the same about the creature now that it's no longer being forced to play a part. Some things like driving, being fond of the Impala, and a taste for terrible food are the same between Sam's fake brother and the actual monster. Other things are entirely different, like how the Shifter immediately stops wearing the old leather jacket that used to belong to Sam's father.
A few mornings into their undirected road trip, the Shifter finds Sam peering intensely at his computer. It walks over and peers over his shoulder as he scrolls through text.
"What are you doing?" it asks.
"Looking into reapplying to Stanford."
"Just like that?"
"Well, what else I'm I supposed to do? The demon is dead. Dad's dead. There's nothing tying me to hunting anymore."
"There are other demons out there and other monsters."
Sam looks pointedly at the Shifter. "I know. But I've never believed that all the evil in the world should somehow be my responsibility. Even Dad was mostly in it for revenge, which he got, I guess. The only idiot who ever thought we needed to save the world was, well Dean, and it turns out that was all fake. So, I'm going back to school. It's bad enough that I'm stuck with you for the foreseeable future, I don't need any other freakiness in my life."
"Ouch Sammy. What about your psychic murder visions, don't they count as freaky?"
"They came from the demon, hopefully I won't have any more of them now."
"So, what's the plan? They going to give you your scholarship back?"
"Maybe. Before I left, I did the paperwork for a leave of absence, because of, you know, mental health reasons. With any luck it should just take filling out a few forms and everything will be back to how it was."
"Wow that simple" the Shifter remarks sarcastically. "What about me?"
"I don't know." Sam is about to tell it that it can do what it wants, but he bites his tongue when he realizes that might be construed as an order and he really doesn't want to find out what the thing wants. "You can get a job or something, I guess."
The Shifter laughs, "can you really picture me as a productive member of society?"
Sam looks over to where it lounges in the chair across from him, feet on the table and eating funyuns for breakfast. He really can't.
About a week later Sam knocks on the door of a modest middleclass house a few blocks from the Stanford campus. Securing housing in university towns is never cheap, but fortunately, Sam has the advantage that he's here in the summer, a few months before most students will be arriving for the new semester.
A man in his late sixties answers the door and moves to shake Sam's hand. "Hello, you must be Sam. I'm Byron, it's good to meet you."
"Good to meet you too sir" Sam says shaking his hand.
Byron peers around Sam and sees the Shifter standing behind him. "Oh" he says somewhat awkwrdly, "I didn't realize from your emails that you were looking to rent with a partner."
"This is my brother, Dean" Sam says. It's the first time since he found out the truth that he's referred to the Shifter as either his brother or as Dean. The words come out easily but the untruth of it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. "The place is two bedrooms isn't it?"
"Yes, it is" Byron agrees. "Are you a student too, Dean?"
"No" the Shifter replies, "I just get dragged around by my little brother."
Byron laughs then opens the door wider, inviting them in. He leads them down a hallway, showing off the various rooms and talking as he goes. "Miranda and I have owned this house for years, but once our kids moved out it was too big for us. We had the place converted into a duplex; thought we'd try to make a bit of money renting out the other half. It's partially furnished, mostly with what other people have left behind."
Sam tunes in and out as Byron continues with the rest of the tour. He thinks back to when he and Jess were first looking for an apartment to move into together. It was only about two years ago, and yet everything has changed. Sam squares his shoulders and mentally shakes himself out of his melancholy. He's here to get back as much of that normal life as he can, he reminds himself. Jess may be dead, and part of him will never fully recover from that, but Sam knows that she would want him to carry on with his life and not be sucked down permanently into the world of darkness like his father had been. "We'll take it" he declares as Byron finishes up his explanations. He spends the next twenty minutes hammering out the details and signing the one-year lease while the Shifter looks on passively.