\\It's like a stranger in my hand (the baby is crying)
There
comes a time when the boy must leave (get up)
And the man has to
enter
For the soul to understand (all of the changes)
As if it
ain't hard enough this life I'm living in
I was caught with my
guard down
When the world came knocking.\\
Fire has always been a central idea in Sam's life. "Mommy died in a fire," his big brother told him, when he was old enough to understand the words, if only just a little.
Fire took his mother away from him, he thinks often, but it's abstract, no emotion attached to the idea. After all, when you grow up with no mother, how can you really, truly miss their presence?
What he does know is fire keeps him warm. It's the first thing he learns about it. When he's too small to be left alone and their father has nowhere to leave them for the night, they set up camp near the road, start a bonfire, draw a saltline around their camp, and John tells Dean to watch Sammy until he comes back. Dean keeps the fire going by heaping logs on it whenever Sam starts to shiver in the encroaching night. The warmth makes Sam feel safe, even later, when he realizes he never is.
He learns also that fire kills, cleanses. Salt and burn, little brother, Dean tells him when he asks what they're going to do with the bones of the poltergeist he's unearthed. And salt and burn soon becomes his new mantra, his words to live by. Powerful words, to sever connections.
Salt and burn, he thinks, when he walks out the door at eighteen, his father yelling after him that he can stay gone. Salt and burn.
He's never feared fire. It's comforted him, helped him, cleansed him, but never gone against him.
It isn't until he opens his eyes to see his dead girlfriend pinned to the ceiling that he learns to hate it.