A/N: Big old chapter for you here. And thanks for reviewing. Enjoy.
Chapter Twelve
Sam was confused when, instead of heading towards a motel or even a diner, Dean gently rolled to a stop in the middle of a suburban street. It was the kind of white picket-fence type of street that Sam had dreamed of living in when he was younger. Hell, he still felt the yearning to live in such a nice, normal area, but reality had recently been beating - with increasing vigour - the belief that it ever could happen out of his head.
"Where are we?" Sam asked Dean.
Dean sighed, "Just get out of the damn car. There's someone you should meet."
"Who?" asked Sam warily, this wasn't exactly what Sam had in mind when he had told Dean he should probably find someplace to stop for the night.
Dean rolled his eyes impatiently, "A man called John." He said as he opened the door, stepping onto the pavement and started to approach the house he had pulled up in front of, escaping any further enquiries.
Sam shared a quick, befuddled glance with Jess before shrugging and editing the car. He followed Dean up the driveway, which was kept fairly neat if not quite as well-tended as the other front gardens along the street, with Jess close behind him.
Dean had just finished knocking as Sam caught up to him and the group waited in awkward silence for the door to be answered. Sam couldn't help but wonder what kind of cretin Dean would be introducing them to now.
The door was eventually answered by an older man bearing a shotgun. He was almost as tall as Sam, certainly taller than Dean, broad shouldered and sharp, piercing eyes which, complete with an expression like thunder, made an imposing presence in the doorway. He didn't look like he belonged to a gang, but Sam knew - much to his past regret - that looks could be deceiving. Still, there were no alarm bells ringing in the back of his mind to tell Sam that this guy was bad news.
"Wow, roll out the red carpet why don't you?" Dean quipped.
"What are you doing here? And who the hell have you brought to my house?" The man spoke in a deep, booming baritone that seemed to penetrate Sam's entire body, not just his ears.
"Well, I'm waiting for you to put the shotgun down... " Dean raised his eyebrows hopefully but the older man merely gripped the weapon tighter, even if he didn't exactly point it towards any of them. "Okay... Well if you had picked up the phone when I called you would know I have some pretty big news to tell you."
"Don't you dare take that tone with me, boy!" the older man thundered, "I told you I wouldn't have a gang member living under my roof and you went ahead and joined anyway. You made your choice, now live with it." He glanced at Sam and Jess, "And don't be bringing any of your so-called friends around here either."
"Even if he's your son?"
"What!?" Cried Sam, "This is... This is..?" He trailed off incredulously, unable to even to finish the question as he looked back and forth between Dean's slightly smug face and John's visage stricken with incredulity in amount and intensity to match Sam's own off-the-charts level. He hadn't even given a thought to who his dad was, his mind had this far been completely overwhelmed with the revelation that Dean was his brother - a fact which was still stirring turbulent emotions within him, but if Sam could pick out the most prominent feeling he was experiencing, he would have to name it as troubled.
"Dean, you better explain what's going on." John practically growled.
"Dad, meet Sam Campbell; Sam, meet John Winchester - a.k.a dad..." Dean introduced, "And this is Jess, she's a friend of Sam's who just kinda got caught up in everything."
Sam's eyes were glued to John's face, a face which was scrutinizing him carefully, devoid of any emotion other than perhaps suspicion. Again the horrible feeling of familiarity churned in his gut and he felt almost like he was standing in front of his mom - a situation he had found himself in many times - waiting for either absolution or condemnation; waiting to see if his night was going to be tolerable or tormented. The weight of a thousand nights spent in ugly penance crawled over his skin like steel talons and suddenly Sam found himself wishing he was looking into the face of a wendigo intent on devouring him slowly rather than this...
"Dude, you ok? You look kinda peaky," Dean interrupted Sam's internal struggle.
Sam shook himself back into the present with limited success but insisted, "I'm fine." At Dean's doubtful expression he continued, "It's just a lot to take in, you know? You told me you were my brother a few hours ago and now... "
"You should come in," Sam looked up as the waves of John's voice lapped at him instead of crashing over him like they had earlier.
Sam nodded and was steered into a plain but comfortable living room and was handed a glass of water as the rest of the company seated themselves around him. He could feel their eyes on him, probably wondering why he was acting like such a freak. But then again, he was a freak. This wasn't his world and he shouldn't have tried to insert himself into it.
"So Dean," John started, "Why don't you explain what the hell happened?"
Dean briefly told his dad about the emergence of his conscience and it's consequences, turning sheepish when he explained about the kidnapping and quickly moving on to the part where they went on the run together. Again he glazed over some of the less flattering details - mainly the parts involving guns. "Then I got another call from my friend Dogma and he said about Kaiser wanting to find my mom, but they couldn't find many records of her. They found records of her marriage to you, my birth certificate and then Sam's. He was born six months after she... Y'know."
John nodded with pursed lips, "So you haven't seen this birth certificate then?"
Dean shook his head.
"So how do you know it's true? These aren't exactly trustworthy people you're getting your information from."
At this Dean faltered, but Sam's thoughts wondered warily to the the picture he kept in his wallet. It was a talisman against his guilt, a reminder of the monstrosities he was capable of and a token of strength all at once. It was a picture of him and his mom, it had been a good day and they were both smiling; the snap had been taken not long before...
Anyway, it reminded him that not only had there been times when he had felt nothing but love for his mom - no fear, no sadness - and those times he could believe his mom loved him too; but it also reminded him that he had killed someone who was capable of loving someone else, not just a dictator who demanded abject obedience through fear. He had never been very good at that...
Sam fumbled with his wallet before pulling out the picture and holding it up for John to see. "This was my mom, does that answer your question?" He asked, his voice coming out a little gravelly.
John swallowed and nodded, "Yeah, that's Mary."
Dean leant over to have a look, Sam guessed whatever photos or memories he had of their mom must have been from when she was a lot younger. He let Dean have his moment before hastily tucking the photo back in his wallet and then stuffing that back into his jeans pocket.
"So, Sam... Where is Mary now? What, uh... What is she doing these days?" John stammered.
Sam grimaced, this was a conversation he still wasn't sure he was ready for. He glanced around the room briefly trying to avoid the eager expressions of both Dean and John, he saw Jess' pained expression and she put a sympathetic hand on his knee. He had let slip before that his mom was dead but he hadn't told her how... He couldn't bring himself to do it then and he couldn't bring himself to do it now.
He took a deep breath, "She's dead... Has been for nearly three years."
Sam couldn't tear his eyes away from watching both John and Dean's faces fall, the disappointment and the devastation, and it all seemed to be aimed at him. What would they think if they knew he had done it? He had taken away Dean's mother. He had taken away John's wife. He had permanently removed any chance for reconciliation.
Suddenly Sam found it hard to breathe.
"I have to go," he whispered and he got up and ran out the door, hitting the street at full speed and just keeping going. He had no idea where he was going but he kept on anyway.
It took a while for the whirlwind inside to stop pushing him down the street at full pelt, and he gradually slowed to a walk. By some luck he had ran towards the centre of the town and when he asked a woman strolling past where he could find some food, the diner she directed him to was just around the corner, at least it wasn't that far to walk.
The diner he walked into fifteen minutes later was cute and clearly a family business. It was cosy and he was already warm from running across town so he shrugged off his jacket as he sat down and ordered a coffee and the first sandwich he saw on the menu, not out of any particular desire to eat but more from the knowledge that his body needed fuel or he would be left vulnerable.
He picked slowly at his sandwich when it was delivered, his thoughts still flittering through his mind so quickly and chaotically that he barely had time to register each one, let alone examine them and organise them. By the time he had regained a more rational thought process the dregs of coffee in his cup had long since gone cold.
When the waitress came over and asked about a refill he nodded, as if he could put off returning to his nightmare world of beasts and demons for a little longer, just give himself a few more minutes to drink and mull over the knowledge that he had a family now. A proper blood family instead of the patchwork one he had cobbled together from old, cranky hunters that always smelt of beer or whisky.
A blood family he had ruined. A family that would despise him if they knew.
He couldn't go through that again.
Sam sighed, he would have to go back to his old apartment and collect his gear and then he would have to hunt. After all, it was the only thing he was good for, and even that was for a limited time only if Azazel got his way.
Sam was still lost in thought as he paid the bill and wandered down the street. First, he would need to acquire a car. He hated this part of hunting, the part where he had to scam and steal from innocent people just to get by. Sam only knew a handful of hunters who were able to make ends meet legitimately.
He was so lost in his thoughts he didn't hear the roar of Dean's car until it was too late. He had been spotted. Dean pulled the car over abruptly and climbed out with Jess following suit.
"Dude, what the hell? We've been looking for you for nearly two hours!" Dean shouted across the roof of his car.
Sam grimaced.
"Sam what's going on? You should be happy you found your family, not freaking out. Why don't you come with us back to Dean's house?" Jess coaxed.
Sam shook his head, "I shouldn't."
"What? Why the hell not?" Dean demanded.
"It's not a good idea, trust me."
"Sam what are you talking about?" asked Jess.
"Look, everyone would be better off if I just left. Jess, you should go back to college, don't let me ruin your life and Dean... You should probably re-evaluate your decision making skills, but that doesn't mean you can't still do something with your life. Just forget you knew me."
"Sam that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." Asserted Jess, "You think I can just forget you after everything that's happened? You've saved my life twice now... You got shot." Jess' tone had gone from severe to incredibly gentle and her eyes drifted to the swell of Sam's shoulder where the bullet had grazed him as he had tackled Jess to the floor the previous morning.
"What?" Cried Dean, "You got shot? Why the hell didn't you say anything!?"
Sam shrugged, "It's only a scratch, didn't even need stitches."
Dean gaped incredulously at him.
"My point is," continued Jess, "I could never forget the man who saved my life. You're kind of a hero."
"Trust me, I'm not. There are things you don't know about me."
"Yeah, I'm beginning to see there's a while library's worth of things I don't know about you." Jess replied with a rueful smile tugging at the corner of her lips, "And I'll admit that scared me at first. You seemed so different from the guy I knew in college, I would never in a million years have imagined that you knew how to fight or how to shoot - you seemed like the least violent person I'd ever met - but even with all that, all you did was defend me. You're still kind and gentle and everything else that attracted me to you. I just forgot to see it... But you looked so terrified yesterday when you were making sure that I was alright, you didn't care that you got hit, and then you were shooting back and I watched you and I realised you were trying not to hit them, weren't you? You didn't want to seriously hurt them, you just wanted to scare them off."
Jess had been slowly edging her way forward as she was speaking and Sam found himself staring down at the top of her head as she cradled one of his hands in hers. She looked up at him and he swallowed and gave a small nod.
"See? I know everything I need to know. I trust you and I know I'll never be able to forget you."
"Jess," Sam started to protest through his suddenly dry throat. He started to pull his hand out of hers but her fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around his, just enough to let him know that she didn't want to let go, and he found he couldn't deny her small request.
"Dude, don't screw this up! You're so close to sealing the deal!" Dean called from the other side of the car.
Sam ignored him and frowned at the trio of intertwined fingers, "The things I've kept secret, I've kept secret for a reason. If you knew the whole truth, you'd be running for the hills."
"Well, since you're running away anyway, why don't you come back to dad's and fill us in? Then if we really don't like what you say you can carry on running away in peace. But if you don't come back with us today, dad will not let anyone rest until we find you and then you'll have to tell us anyway. So why not take the short way round?" Dean suggested.
It actually made a certain amount of sense. It would be better to close the door on this life completely, make sure he wouldn't be tempted to return. With lingering reluctance and a small amount of trepidation, he got into the car and as Jess slid in next to him she pulled him down and kissed him. He couldn't stop himself from kissing her back. He felt like a condemned man on his way to the gallows and he would take these last moments of pleasure and treasure their memory when the dark got too deep.
It wasn't long before they pulled up on the same street as before, they had to park a little further away this time as more cars filled the street at the later hour.
"Sam," John began as Sam was seated on the same sofa as earlier, a note of disapproval and concern threading through the curiosity in his voice, "Why did you run away earlier?"
Sam surveyed the range of concerned faces opposite him and felt like he was in some sort of intervention.
He took a deep breath, "You won't believe me," he stalled.
"Why don't you tell us and let us decide if we believe you?" John negotiated gently.
"That's what I'm afraid of," muttered Sam under his breath.
"What do you mean?" asked Jess.
"Doesn't matter."
Dean - ever impatient - couldn't hold back any longer, "Do you know... Did mom ever say anything to you about us? Or why she left?"
Sam shook his head, "I used to ask where my dad was all the time when I was a kid, but she would never talk about it. I never even dreamed I had a brother out there. But I think... I'm pretty sure she left to protect you guys."
Dean looked at him like he had announced he had a secret passion for the music of Taylor Swift. John and Jess were equally confused and shared a worried glance.
"Sam, now might be a good time to start making sense," Dean suggested.
John rolled his eyes and supplied, "Why don't you start from the beginning? Why on earth would Mary leave to protect us?" The scepticism in voice was climbing higher with every utterance, "And if she had, why would she take you into this supposed danger with her?"
"Because I am the danger," Sam grimaced and brought his fingers up to massage his forehead as everyone else in the room exchanged even more confused and disbelieving glances.
"Hey, I thought I told you to start making sense?" said Dean.
"The night I turned six months old a demon broke into my room and fed me it's blood." Sam could see John was about to protest but he held a hand up. "Can I just get it all out in one?"
John hesitated but eventually be nodded for Sam to continue with a doubtful expression on his face.
"I don't know why, or even how mom knew it was going to happen but it happened, and now the demon wants me for something. There are others like me out there and he wants us all to join him. But mom brought me up knowing how to fight the supernatural and we've managed to stay off his radar for the most part... she said I should save as many lives as possible before the demon blood overtakes me and turns me evil." Sam's grimace was steadily becoming more and more pained as he spoke and he dug his fingers into his temple even more.
"Sam? You ok?" Jess asked.
"Well that's just the biggest load of crap I've ever heard," Dean vented, "Now why don't you tell us what it was really like growing up with mom? Don't worry, I can take it."
"Dean, give it a rest for a moment will you?" John moved in front of Sam whose breathing had become heavily laboured as he massaged his head. "Sam, what's happening?"
"Is it another migraine?" Jess asked as she crowded round Sam as well.
"Do you get these migraines often?" asked John.
"They're not exactly migraines," Sam panted through gritted teeth. He gasped as the pain creshendoed.
"Then what is it?" John asked, but Sam's eyes started darting erratically and he became unresponsive as he lost himself to his vision. "Sam!" John cried as he grabbed Sam's shoulders and shook him a little.
"Give him a few minutes," Jess murmured, placing a hand on John's arm.
John turned to look at her, eyes tight with worry, "He does this often?" his eyes flickered to Dean who just shrugged, looking just as worried and confused.
Jess shook her head, "Not usually, but it's happened a few times. He had one yesterday morning though, just before we knocked on Dean's motel door, he's never had two so close to each other before..." She was distracted from the rest of her sentence by Sam coming back to himself. His eyes were were still darting around but there was purpose and awareness behind them now and the lines of pain were slowly fading from his face. "Sam? You back with us?"
Sam's eyes landed on Jess with a small half-smile but then they slid over her shoulder to the clock on the wall behind her. His eyes widened and he immediately started casting about himself, once it was clear he wouldn't find what he was looking for in his immediate vicinity, he stood up and looked around the room.
"Has anyone seen my jacket?" He asked the room.
"Dude, who cares about your jacket? What the hell just happened?" Asked Dean.
But Sam ignored him, he glanced at the clock again and began muttering to himself as he moved distractedly through to the kitchen. Three pairs of worried eyes tracked him as he stalked out of sight. He reappeared a few moments later carrying salt and strode directly over to the window and started shaking the salt into a line along the sil.
"Sam? What are you doing?" Jess asked cautiously.
He looked up as if he had forgotten they were there, "It will make sense in about seven minutes." He said before turning and salting the next window.
John stood up, "Sam, why don't you just sit down and explain to us why you're putting salt on the windowsil?"
Sam shook his head, not even looking up from his work, "No time." He quickly strode to the stairs and ran up them still carrying the salt.
"Does he usually go bat crap crazy after one of his migraines?" Dean turned to ask Jess.
"He's usually a little distracted for a few minutes and he'll go phone his uncle but after that he's fine. Like nothing even happened." Jess replied, just as mystified by Sam as the rest of them.
A few minutes later Sam thundered down the stairs, pulling a rosary out of his jeans pocket only to be confronted by Dean, "Dude just stop. You're acting like a freaking crazy person."
"I can't. If I don't do this, you'll all die. Now let me through."
Dean reeled back at the unexpectedly morbid pronouncement, "No. Not until you explain what the hell is going on in that big, freaky brain of yours."
"I don't have time to explain, you're just going to have to trust me." Sam's eyes panned around the rest of the room to see both Jess and John looking at him like he had lost his mind, "At least trust me for the next three minutes?" He tried to assume the most earnest expression he could, he needed their trust for the next few minutes.
Luckily, Dean caved. "Fine! But you better explain yourself afterwards." He reinforced his point with a finger in Sam's face, but Sam was just grateful they wouldn't try to stop him anymore.
He grabbed some jugs from the kitchen and quickly made some holy water, he handed one to John and one to Jess, keeping a jug for himself and handed the rest of the salt to Dean. He then ushered them into the corner furthest from the door and made another line of salt around them, studiously ignoring the range of highly sceptical and fairly concerned faces watching him.
"Whatever happens, stay inside the salt. If any of them come at you, splash them with holy water or salt. Shooting them won't work." Sam instructed, aiming his last sentence towards Dean.
"Sam who are you talking about? Who's coming?" Jess asked sounding very much like she was trying to talk someone out of jumping off a building.
"Demons." Sam replied. There was no point in keeping it a secret now, they would know for sure in less than a minute.
"What? Wait! Sam, what are you talking about? Demons? Like the one you think fed you it's blood?" Jess was getting a little frantic, he knew he was scaring her, but she was going to be scared either way.
He could see she was desperate for answers and he wanted to give them to her but there was no time... "The demon blood, it's not just going to turn me evil, it gave me visions too. My migraines..."
There was a bang that rattled the door on its hinges, making everyone flinch. Sam didn't really know how he was going to finish his sentence anyway so he turned and strode to the middle of the room just as another bang echoed through the house. Sam gripped the jug tightly in his hand as he steeled himself to face the demons about to burst through the door. On the next bang the door splintered and blew inwards, scattering the salt and revealing a young woman and two men who stood smirking over each shoulder.
A slow, predatory grin spread across her face, "Hey Sam, long time no see. My father is very disappointed in you."
"Yeah? Well you can go to back to hell and tell him that he can carry on being disappointed."
The demons blinked, revealing the blackness of their souls through their eyes. Sam immediately launched into an exorcism, but with a snarl and a wave of her hand the woman sent him flying into the wall next to him, his jug of holy water falling from his fingers as he flew. He scrambled to his feet and resumed the exorcism, the woman stalked over to him while the others advanced on his family and grabbed him by the throat and pinned him to the wall. He was still managing to croak out the incantation so the demon tightened her grip and pushed him up the wall until he was wheezing for breath.
As the other demons reached the salt line they paused, not having the power of the woman. Dean's mind had gone blank the moment he had seen three pairs of eyes turn completely black, but he instinctually recognised the threat standing in front of him and reacted as his instincts had been trained to do for the last six years, he dropped the salt and reached for his gun, firing almost point blank into the chest of the demon stood in front of him to no effect.
After a moment in which Dean, Jess and John absorbed the fact that the only effect the bullet had on the demon was to piss it off, Jess remembered Sam's instructions and flung the jug of holy water across the demons and sent them shrieking and stumbling back as if they had been splashed with acid.
Amidst the distraction of the shrieking demons Sam braced both legs against the female demon and managed to push her off him. Unfortunately her extra power also translated into extra physical strength even for a demon and she only stumbled back a couple of steps, and she was back on him before he could move from where he had landed on the floor. He tried to get more of the exorcism out but defending against a supercharged demon and still getting repeatedly beaten made it extremely difficult. There was another round of howling from the other demons and Sam turned his head to see John throwing his jug of holy water at them. Then, in his periphery, Sam saw his own forgotten weapon just beyond arm's reach and with only a small amount of water left in it, but all he needed was a distraction, and that was enough to distract.
He gathered his strength and pushed the demon off him and scrambled for the dregs of his holy water even as the jug seemed, inexplicably, to be rolling unsteadily towards him, and splashed them in her face and as she was reeling from that he finished the exorcism and fell back against the wall breathless. Three writhing black miasmas snaked around the room and back to hell; and three bodies dropped to the floor, a puddle of blood slowly growing beneath one of them.
Sam shot forward to put pressure on the wound.
"Dude what are you doing? They were just trying to kill us!" Dean demanded, eyes still wide with adrenaline.
"That was the demons, these are just the hosts. They're innocent." Sam looked up and saw that everyone was still highly sceptical, "Those black clouds you saw? They were the demons being forced back to hell, they don't have a physical form so they posses innocent humans and use their bodies to do their dirty work... If the hosts are lucky, they won't even know what's happened. But we need to call an ambulance, this guy is losing a lot of blood."
Nobody moved, they seemed to be suspended inbetween various states of shock, fear and repulsion. Sam looked desperately between them but nobody seemed likely to recover their senses any time soon, so he shifted until he could reach his phone while still keeping pressure on the wounded man's chest and dialed for an ambulance. Sam tried to asses the other victims from where he was crouched, he was pretty sure the man next to him was dead but he couldn't tell if the woman was still breathing, he kept it vauge so that the police wouldn't be called until after the victims had gotten the help they needed but there was no hiding the fact that a gun had been involved and they would need to make a quick get away before the police did eventually turn up.
After a few minutes' silence, John's voice rumbled lowly from the corner, "Get out."
Sam looked up surprised as his focus had been solely on keeping the guy in front of him from bleeding out long enough for the ambulance to arrive. Even Dean and Jess had turned to stare at the oldest Winchester.
"I don't know who you are or what kind of thing you're involved with but you need to get out of my house. Now." John's voice sounded like distant thunder... Thunder that was heading closer and closer.
Sam swallowed, "This man is losing a lot of blood, I need to keep the pressure on."
"Get out of my house!" John's voice was bubbling with anger but he hadn't reached the boiling point yet.
"I'll leave as soon as the ambulance gets here, they said there was one five minutes away." Sam pleaded.
John only hesitated for a brief second before raging, "You're not staying in my house one second longer!" He marched over to Sam and picked him up by the front of his shirt, Sam's own blood-stained hands wrapped around John's fists and he stared into his father's hate filled eyes as he was marched backwards to the hole where the door should be.
Once they had reached the threshold John pushed Sam down the step shouting, "Leave! And don't you ever come back here again!"
Sam stood and stared as John half turned his head, all the while keeping his eyes on Sam and shouted at Dean, "You too Dean, take your other friend with you and don't be bringing any more trouble down on my doorstep or next time I'll be using that shotgun, no questions asked!"
Sam heard the sound of approaching sirens, both ambulance and the police, as Dean and Jess filed out the door and they were all aggressively waved off the property by John.