Sam stood stunned. He opened his mouth to say something, closed it again.

Shelley, brown haired and attractive in an unremarkable sort of way, took a surprised step back when she saw Sam. Her little sundress flounced around her thighs with the movement.

Sam was pleased to see she didn't have any visible marks from her assault. Her mouth went open for a second and he saw something flash across her face. It was anything but welcoming. Anything but what he would have expected from her if he had ever come across her again.

Rebecca looked from one to the other. "I'm sorry but...do you two know each other?"

Sam looked to Shelley to take his cue from her. She backed away from him a little bit, features closed off, her jaw tight.

Rebecca's pretty face betrayed her confusion.

Sam averted his eyes, almost guiltily. Perhaps what had happened to her was something she didn't want to share with others just yet.

Shelley spoke first. "No. We've never met."

"Okay then, well this is Sam. Sam this is Shelley. Shelley goes to Palo Alto University." Rebecca gave him an appraising look. "Excuse Sam's appearance. He got jumped by a bunch of drunken frat boys when he was trying to help someone this past weekend. He normally doesn't look like he went ten rounds with the Michelin Man."

Shelley cocked an eyebrow. "That's too bad. Hope you feel better soon."

"Ugh, yeah thanks." Sam replied, feeling out of his depth with the exchange. He decided to use the time-held Winchester method of dealing with awkward situations. One Dean had perfected over the years. He tried to leave.

"Rebecca, I'm going back to my dorm. Nice to meet you Shelley."

Rebecca hugged him tightly. Sam winced a little at the embrace against his ribs. "You rest and call me if you need anything. Be careful with those dizzy spells and be careful going back to your dorm."

Sam gave a fond little half smile. He wondered if this was what it was like to have a mother. "Okay," he acquiesced.

He gave a quick smile, looked to Shelley with an encouraging nod before he ducked to grab his book bag and shouldered out the door.


The Palo Alto sun warmed his back as he walked stiffly back to campus. It was something he'd never adapted to in all his time here- the ever present sunshine. It made him feel as if he were on an overlong vacation that he just hadn't returned from yet. He supposed being raised in perpetual darkness made it difficult to trust the light.

Campus seemed a daunting walk, even though it honestly wasn't that far. Walking home while stiff from injuries wasn't a novel experience. Just one he hadn't felt in a while.

Sam had plenty of practice walking home from school with a split lip or an aching shoulder. He tried to avoid fights, tried not to call attention to himself but it seemed in every school that they went to, especially during junior high, someone had to try to test his mettle.

In a fair fight, Sam Winchester could take down just about any of his peers with little trouble. But kids didn't fight fair and sometimes he'd come out the worse for wear if he'd been ganged up on or someone had caught him flat footed or if Sam simply didn't WANT to fight. He didn't like hurting people. He didn't like getting in trouble from the school for fighting back. He tried to deflect, avoid, ignore. When those didn't work, he'd get in a scrape. Usually nothing more than a few punches.

And then he'd limp home and Dean would over react with threats to kill them or rip their lungs out. And Sam would have to go three rounds verbally with his hot-headed sibling to convince him that he didn't need his big brother galloping in to save him.

His father would simply look at Sam's black eye and shrug. Then he'd say the other guy better look worse and it was over.

The problem stopped in high school when Sam's height shot up dramatically and he was suddenly the tallest person in any given space.

So while the experience wasn't new, it had been a while and wasn't particularly welcome.

He thought of Shelley's reaction and couldn't puzzle it together. Although he also knew from his father's work that victims had a startling array of responses to trauma. Any one of them could be affecting her.

Sam wandered into the familiar tiled hall, shoulders slumped, and opened the door to his dorm. He threw his books in a heap onto the floor. They made the sound of a muffled thump and then a slide of paper landing on itself and shifting to fall where gravity took it.

Sam headed for his little antique desk. He opened it up and fished out the Oxy he'd nabbed from Brady's stash and hidden in the top shelf. Force of habit had made him snatch it and now he was glad he had. He dry swallowed the pill and wandered to his little dorm room ice box, grabbed a coke and popped the tab. He noticed that they were down a few drinks. His absentee roommate must have actually been in the room for a few hours.

It was a rare occurrence. Keith mostly shacked up with his girlfriend and only very occasionally dropped by the room he shared with Sam. It was to the point that some days Sam forgot he even had a roommate. The arrangement suited him just fine.

He flopped onto his too small mattress and had to cut off a whine of pain. His sore muscles contracted and hurt before they relaxed. He curled onto his side, his ankles hanging slightly off the bed. The springs poked into his ribs and he wondered again why one of the finest learning institutions in the world couldn't afford a decent goddamn mattress.

Sam felt distinctly miserable. The pain and lack of sleep compounded with the utter strangeness of his encounter with the girl shook him a little.

He hoped the pain pill wouldn't take long to kick in. He lay staring at the opposite wall for a bit. His rib was throbbing. His neck was a little sore from fighting being held under water.

Any other truly life or death situation he'd been in... Dean always had his back. No Dean now. Just himself. Just Sam. He wondered if his whole life would be that way?

Just Sam...

There was a staccato knock at his dorm door. He startled and then waited for it to repeat.

There it was again.

"Hang on." He called, trying to pull himself out of his exhausted tangle on the bed.

Sam hauled himself upright, despite the protests from his body, and staggered sideways a little. So the Oxy finally was starting to kick in. He wondered what dose this was because smaller doses didn't tend to affect him much but he felt decidedly dizzy until he righted himself and sat very still.

He limped to the door and opened it.

The girl he'd saved was on the other side.

"Shelley?" He asked, shocked, eyebrows raising into parenthesis.

She pushed past him, her little sundress incongruous with her hardened expression.

He turned to face her, his hand still on the door handle, blinking away the tired. "Hi?"

"So is that what you're going around telling everyone?" She crossed her arms, her expression pinched with confrontation.

Sam tried to follow her train of thought. He couldn't seem to get his brain back on the rails. "Is... what, what I'm telling everyone?" He repeated slowly.

"You're making yourself out like you're some kind of hero."

Sam took a step back, his head swimming from the Oxy and probably a mild concussion. "I..." he pinched the bridge of his nose. "...haven't told anyone anything but Rebecca. She kept pushing...to know what happened."

"So you told her that?"

Sam wrinkled his brow. "Told her what?"

"That you got beat up trying to save me from being raped?"

Sam blinked. "I didn't say anything about it being you. I...I didn't know it even was you." He paused. "I don't even know who you are."

She put her hands on her hips. "Exactly. You don't know anything, so maybe you shouldn't have jumped in and broken Cody's nose."

"Cody?" Sam kept feeling like he was trying to bring himself up to speed.

"My boyfriend's best friend."

The attic light went on in Sam's brain. "Your boyfriend?... You knew them?" Sam shook his head. "... but they were... you were scared to death..."

"I had a good thing going with Tom and you blew it. He left that night. I haven't even heard from him. He's not answering his cell."

"They were going to rape you." Sam replied patiently. His jaw was throbbing.

"Rape me?" She threw her hands up. "Are you fucking kidding me?" She was turning hostile quickly, her mouth twisted into a sneer and her body language turned defensive.

"I heard noise and they were holding you in a dark corner and feeling you up. You were crying and frozen. What else was I supposed to think?"

She seemed a little taken aback by the description. Then volleyed back at him. "Well you were wrong. I mean we were all pretty fucked up." She furrowed her brow and Sam wondered if she actually remembered anything. "It was a fun thing out back of the party. The three of us."

"Well," Sam said, the beginnings of weariness seeping into his voice. "It certainly seemed like you changed your mind about anything being fun."

"It stopped being fun when you broke Cody's nose."

Sam sighed. He recognized the pattern. Woman in an abusive relationship. The instinct seemed to be to protect the abuser. He'd seen it time and again growing up in the places they'd stayed. Their Dad intervening and the wrath being turned on him. She probably had been so intoxicated she didn't even remember what had happened.

"Tell him to press charges then." He replied flatly.

"Keep your nose out of my business! I don't need chaperoning. If I want to drop some E and get drunk and have a good time with a couple hot guys that's my business."

Sam gave her another weary look. "Okay. Are we done so I can lay down?"

"Thanks for ruining things with Tom for me, you asshole."

She grabbed the door handle and slammed out of his room.

His Dad's baritone rang in his mind. "Sometimes son, someone doesn't know they need saving. You save them anyway."

He'd done what he had to- his conscience was clean. Sam grabbed a can of beer from the freezer and held it against his Jaw as an ice pack before the flopped back onto the bed.

Thank you so much for the reviews! I have been a jerk about getting back to people about them. I promise I'll be better this time. Thanks Michele and Melissa for the advice on this chapter.