Some frustating news, guys - I haven't started the last part of the story, and on Wednesday, I'm going away (to Disney World!) so I have no idea when the next update will be.
Before I go, I'll be posting four chapters. Two right now, and two tomorrow.
And this is the tricky part. These next four chapters will either make or break this story. You'll either buy it, or you won't. Obviously I'm hoping for the former! - but I don't have any expectations. In any case, I hope you enjoyed the ride!
Sam's eyes widened. "A-a voodoo…priestess?" he stammered. "A real, voodoo, priestess?"
"Yeah," Dean nodded. "She was powerful, experienced. She practiced a lot of different magic, even developed some of her own."
Blinking hard, Sam cocked his head as he tried to arrange his thoughts. "She…did this to me?" he asked.
"Yeah, she did. She hit you with a memory spell."
A voodoo priestess. Maybe it should have bothered him more – in fact, he was sure he'd be pretty disturbed once he thought on it some more – but at the moment, a trickle of relief went through him as realization sunk in.
The whole past year--it wasn't his mind that failed him. It wasn't his fault he couldn't remember his own memories. It wasn't him.
Sam tried to make sense of it. "A memory spell…to erase my memory?" he asked haltingly.
Dean nodded again. "So you would forget everything that we do. Every evil, every monster, every ghost. She made you forget anything that was connected to our work."
Sam ran a hand through his hair. "Even family."
"Especially family," Dean echoed.
"But...why?"
Dean shrugged uncomfortably. "If you don't know about them, you can't fight them, right?"
Sam stiffened at his words, and his eyes narrowed as he looked down at his lap. He could have fought, if Dean had let him. Dean could have re-taught him everything he knew, could have retrained him.
But he dumped him instead. His own brother left him when he needed him the most.
"The spell knocked you out cold," Dean started to explain as Sam's silence grew. "And I knew you wouldn't remember anything about me once you woke up. So I took you to the only friend you had who knew about us. I asked her if she could take care of you."
Sam shook his head, feeling tears burning in his eyes, and glanced at Dean at an angle. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because, Sam," Dean replied. He clenched his fists in his lap. "It was better that way."
Sam's eyes shot to him. "How can you say that?" he hissed at him.
Even though he almost flinched, Dean replied in a resolved tone. "The only memories you had were of your life at Stanford...Hell, Sam, that was the life you've always wanted. It just made sense."
"The hell it does!" Sam shouted back. "You still should have told me!"
"And what if I did? Huh?" Dean demanded. "You hated hunting, Sam. So why should I make you chose between the two when you didn't need to?"
Sam glared at him, outraged. What kind of stupid question was that? Dean went on, his voice livid. "Don't you realize how dangerous this job is? What it turns you into? This was your only chance to be completely free of it!"
"So...you decided to just give me up? Let me go?" Sam retorted heatedly. "While you were left behind, playing the martyr?"
Dean reacted violently to that. "No, Sam! No," he said severely. He was glaring back at him, but his face was pale and his lip was trembling. "Don't say that. Don't call me that."
"What, a martyr?" Sam shot back. "Even though you gave up your own brother, never even told him you existed—just because it was easier for him? Just because you thought I'd be--what?--happier?"
Sam jumped to his feet, needing an outlet for the emotions boiling inside him and unable to find one. Dean's eyes followed him as he started to protest. "No, Sam, you don't—"
"I don't what?"
But Dean didn't finish.
"Were you ever going to tell me?" Sam asked him. "Because for some reason I decided I'd go with you, I decided to give up the life I knew for you. And you still didn't tell me."
"I was going to," Dean replied softly.
"But you didn't."
"I was afraid!" his brother exploded. "Okay, Sam? I knew how you'd react, and I didn't—I wasn't ready yet."
Sam stared at him for a long moment. This was his brother, he thought. This was the man who shared his blood, the man who shared part of his life.
"For someone's who supposed to be so smart," he started bitterly. "I am so damn stupid."
"What?"
"I must be. You obviously thought I'd never figure this all out." When Dean tried to argue, Sam just talked over him. "And I didn't. I just followed you around like an idiot." He threw his hands into the air and turned away, staring at the wall.
"What if I stayed in Stanford?" he asked. "Did you expect me to live the entire rest of my life without my memories? Without knowing who I was?"
"No, just—only until you got settled," Dean replied weakly.
Sam just shook his head, his eyes narrowing into slits. "And when would that have been?" But Dean didn't answer.
Frustrated, Sam started pacing the cramped room as new thoughts bombarded him. "I lived the past year making a complete fool of myself!" he realized out loud. "I thought I'd gone crazy, I thought my family--Oh, God, Rebecca and Zach, they must think I'm pathetic! I can't believe that they would...This whole time, they lied to me! Everything was just a damn lie!"
His ranting left him shaking with emotion and he had to grab at his hair just to ground himself.
"They didn't want to," Dean was telling him. "Believe me, Sam, they only did because I told them to. You'd already lost your memories, and I made them—"
Sam closed his eyes. "Stop it, Dean, just stop it."
His energy suddenly left him, and he dropped down onto the side of his bed, his back at an angle to the other man.
"Sam..."
Sam ignored him. He thought about all the white lies "John" had told him, the lies he knew Dean constantlygave to strangers, and the enormous lie he'd just admitted to. He was sick of these lies. How could he have kept this from him?
"I thought that with this spell," Dean said in a soft voice, "You could be happy again." Sam squeezed his eyes shut as his brother continued. "I didn't want you to be hurt."
Sam hung his head, feeling tears prickling at his eyes. He sniffed, without meaning to, not realizing his nose had started to run.
He didn't know how he felt. He struggled to put his feelings in order so he could make sense of them, because right now he couldn't tell how he was supposed to feel. There were too many emotions filling his chest, and he tried to identify them. It gave him a reason to block the other man out for a moment before he could lose his composure completely.
It stung. It stung a lot.
It hurt that Dean had kept this from him, made him sick that Dean had let him go for a full year lost and confused as he tried to put pieces of himself back together. And that made him angry, more angry than he could remember ever being. His stomach churned and his chest felt tight, and he wanted to scream at him. It wasn't right, it wasn't fair. Dean had no right to keep that from him.
But he tried to look past those feelings, just for a moment, to figure out what the truth really meant to him.
Over the past few days, he had befriended the man named John. He knew he felt an instant connection, and he thought that had come because he was different, just like he was. Even though the two of them were almost opposites of each other, he still felt he could identify with him. He even admired him, he realized.
John had been everything he could want in an older brother. Strong, noble, flawed. A real smartass, of course. And overprotective – annoyingly so at times.
Sam could do a lot worse than having John--Dean as an older brother. In fact, for a large part of the past year, he'd thought his older brother had been a sick murderer. He could admit he preferred this version.
So maybe someday he could get past this lie, this hurt. Maybe he should take some comfort that Dean had only meant to protect him. It must have been hard for him too, and he only did what he thought was best.
He had to have been under pressure when Sam was hit with the spell, maybe even panicked when it happened. He knew he didn't have much time to make the decision. The deception shouldn't have gone on as long as it had – and he was still outraged that it had – but Dean had been scared, and maybe Sam could understand that.
Sam tried to imagine what it would have been like. Knowing that when your brother woke up, he wouldn't know who you were. Knowing that college would offer him safety and familiar faces. If college was all he could remember, then maybe he could deal with his sudden memory loss more easily while surrounded by only setting he knew. And knowing what the Winchesters did for a living, telling Sam that he spent his off time hunting monsters would have just freaked him out.
And, it was a messed up life. Sam could see that.
Dean had to make a quick decision, had to move before Sam recovered. So he did the only thing he could think of - he patched him up, stuffed him into the car, and drove all the way to Stanford so he could be with friends when he woke up.
Sam froze.
He turned to Dean slowly. "Didn't you just say I was attacked by a goatman in Idaho?" he asked.
Dean nodded at him, looking startled at the sudden question. "Yeah, his hoof caught your back."
Sam turned his head to stare at the floor, his thoughts suddenly running away from him. "But...the cut on my back was fresh when I woke up. It couldn't have been more than three, maybe four days old – and I spent at least two of those days at Rebecca's."
He looked at Dean through the corner of his eye and saw that he had stiffened. "How did we have time to go all the way to New Orleans and back, Dean?"
Dean avoided his gaze suddenly as he shifted in his seat.
"We were never in New Orleans," he finally admitted.
A funny feeling started to blossom in Sam's stomach. "But then why..."
Dean licked his lips and then abruptly cut him off. "She owed me a favor."
And that little bit of understanding Sam had found shattered completely.