Notes: Just remember that it's all in your imagination and we'll get along just fine.
The colours of the school uniform were black, white and yellow. The stripes on the tie and the piping on the cuffs of his blazer made Sam feel like a giant bumblebee, which was not a pleasant feeling for someone who already didn't want to be there.
It was a private school, something that had surprised Sam until he realised that the school provided scholarships for other charity cases like him in order to appear fashionably altruistic towards the less fortunate. His uniform and textbooks were second hand, some of the book jackets vandalised with scribblings from previous owners. At least one of his science books was out of date. The only good thing that came with being sent to this new school was that the administration had evidently decided that his scores for the entrance exam and previous school records indicated that he was eligible to skip a grade.
Subsequently Sam found himself in classes with people a year, sometimes two years, older than he was. An outcast without even needing to say or do anything.
He spent his lunch breaks studying in the library or sitting outside on his own practicing his meditation. In the first week he was pulled aside twice by boys who thought themselves tough. Sam easily proved tougher. He broke fingers and stole a rich white kid's butterfly knife, not getting into trouble only because nobody wanted to admit that they'd been bested by the gangly, shaggy-haired youth from the poor side of town.
He saw the blonde girl for the first time in his second week, a transfer student from interstate. A military brat, or so he heard. She was in his grade, which made her only a year older than he was. Her name was Jessica, and Sam knew without even getting close to her that she was different. Not different in that sappy, ridiculous way that led to schoolboy crushes, but different in the sense of power. Sam had a feeling that Jessica was dangerous, that she wasn't what she appeared to be.
Sam would swear he saw her tailing him home once or twice.
Then it seemed that the very moment he decided he'd had enough she was gone. Jessica just clean disappeared. Even the administration had no idea why she wasn't turning up at school or how long she would be gone. She was gone for one and a half weeks - seven working days - before she appeared again.
Sam followed her movements on Wednesday and Thursday, before trapping her in a girl's bathroom on Friday.
He ducked in after her and wedged the main door shut. The windows were too high and too small for her to make an escape that way. Sam had his knife, and his abilities. If he was wrong and she screamed, she'd only live to regret it.
"You were following me before you left," Sam said, coming up behind her where she stood in front of the mirrors. "Why?" As he approached her a feeling of wrongness buzzed in his head. His eyes narrowed as he identified the thing that was out of place. "Demon."
Her eyes flashed inky black in the mirror for barely a second. Sam had his knife in hand before he remembered that it would do no good.
"Your dad sent me," Jessica said, turning to face him. "Don't stab me," she added, folding her arms in front of her stomach in a move that was almost self conscious, "I like this body. It's all soft and squishy."
"Dad wouldn't send a demon," Sam replied, eyes narrowed. "If you're from the demon who was there at my conception I don't want anything to do with either of you."
"John Winchester," Jessica glared right back at him. "The human. I was sent by him, alright?"
"My dad," Sam repeated, "wouldn't send a demon."
"I'm bound," the demon told him snippily, sounding more like the teenaged girl and less like a creature of darkness. "So why don't you just get off your stupid high horse, you filthy little half-breed son of a whore. I just got back from telling him all about the house and the family you're staying with."
Sam looked her up and down, playing with the knife in his hand. After a moment's thought he tucked the weapon back into his pocket, outwardly unarmed and harmless. "Let s say that you're telling the truth," he mused aloud. "And dad is really going to come next week."
"We don't actually lie, you know. That's a fallacy you tell yourselves so you can feel better."
"Why would he send you back now?"
Jessica gripped the row of sinks behind her, tilting her head to the side and letting her blonde hair fall over one shoulder. "I'm supposed to make sure you're still here where you're meant to be. So easy," she sighed, "and so boring."
Sam watched her. It didn't make sense to him. He just couldn't see it. Even if she was telling the truth it didn't make sense for John to send her back just to tell him that he was coming. Sam knew not to run yet, he knew not to make waves and get himself sent to another home. If she was telling the truth then there was only one reason Sam could think of, why his father would send her back.
He took a deep breath. "Ok," he said aloud.
Sam focussed. He let his mind go blank, turning over into the space where he went when he made things break and move with just his imagination.
Jessica frowned at him. She looked ill, then surprised. "What are you -?"
Her sentence was cut short by a cough, a tiny plume of blackness puffing out of her mouth. Sam felt something in him pulse in response, foreign and powerful. Jessica gasped for air, sucking the blackness back inside only to cough more out. It dripped from her chin like thick black slime, hissing where it fell on the tiles that covered the bathroom floor. Her hands flew to her mouth, trying in vain to keep the stuff inside her as it bubbled through the gaps in her fingers.
She cried it out in tears that streaked bluish lines down her cheeks while Sam clenched his teeth against pain that pounded his temples. He felt something dripping from his nose and tasted blood.
His eyes flashed yellow and Jessica collapsed, spewing the last of the dark, inky liquid from her nose and mouth.
Sam sagged, stumbling back until he caught himself on the edge of a bathroom stall. He raised a hand and wiped the blood from his nose with a sleeve. He felt triumph through the headache that pounded with his pulse.
The girl on the floor - he wondered if her name was really Jessica - twitched and groaned, curling in on herself. She lay like that for several long seconds, then hesitantly pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. When she looked at him it was with a mixture of fear and gratitude.
"Th-thank y-you." Her voice came out raw, barely above a whisper.
"I didn't do it for you," Sam told her, the cuff of his blazer still pressed against his nose. "Were you awake?"
"What?" She blinked, and coughed a little, still sitting on the bathroom floor.
"While you were possessed, could you still see what was going on?"
"Y-yes." The girl shivered.
Sam frankly didn't care how she was feeling or what she might have been forced to witness. "Is my dad coming?"
The girl looked up at him, fear flashing across her face. She wrapped her arms around herself and pulled her legs up closer to her body. "Yes," she nodded. "J-John Winchester, like it s-said."
Sam left here there on the bathroom floor. He stopped at a different bathroom to carefully mop up the residual blood from under his nose, then went back to class. He packed his bag over the weekend, and started keeping a close eye on the surrounding neighbourhood.
-
The car was sleek and huge, a classic black beauty with an engine that rumbled and purred, windows tinted just enough that you couldn't get a clear view of who was behind the wheel.
Sam was looking out the window during his history class when he caught sight of the massive black car driving slowly past the school at barely five miles an hour, way too slow to be coincidental. He stared at the car until it was out of sight, wishing the classroom wasn't so far away from the road so he could have read the licence plate.
He saw the car a second time during lunch, idling on the side of the road opposite the school.
Sam went right up to the fence for a better look. He grinned when the window rolled down and Dean's face smirked at him from the driver's seat. Without another thought Sam walked straight out of the school gates and crossed the road to stand by the side of the car. He leaned down to speak to Dean through the open window.
"Now?"
Dean shook his head. "Cut class in a school like that and they call your parents. Dad wants you to go home after school and grab your stuff, then tell your jailers you're going to study at someone's place or something. We'll pick you up at six by the gas station two blocks from your house."
"Shit." Sam sighed. "I was hoping you were going to get me out of English."
"No such luck, Sammy." Dean grinned. "So did you kill that demon bitch or what?"
Sam nodded. "It was gross, like it dissolved or something."
"Dad owes me a twenty."
"You bet on me killing a demon?" Sam asked incredulously. "Dude, you're such an asshole."
"At least I bet you'd win." Dean dug in the glove box and produced a generic prepaid cell. He shoved the phone into Sam's hands. "Call us if something goes wrong, ok?"
Sam crossed the road and trudged back into the school. When he looked back over his shoulder the black beauty was already disappearing into the distance. He checked that the phone was on silent and tucked it into his blazer and out of sight. He responded to the semi-suicidal call of 'Hey Winchester, was that your boyfriend' with a bland-voiced "eat me".
He hasn't cared for what the other students thought since he was sent to this high school. He's not about to start caring now.
-
It was so insanely easy to get away that Sam almost felt sorry for his foster parents. He thought about all of the paperwork they'd have to do, the investigation to determine whether he ran away or was kidnapped, and he smiled slightly. Sam hoisted his backpack onto one shoulder and leaned against the wall. It was ten to six and he stood outside the gas station, an open can of coke in his hand and a chocolate bar stuffed into a pocket.
That was dinner, if Dean or their father hadn't picked anything up. Sam was pretty sure they'd be driving all night, maybe all day too. That was the drill when trouble got too close for comfort. Just fuck off to the next state and keep going after that until they found somewhere quiet to settle for a while. Then it would be six months with a new identity, in some new cottage or apartment, playing at being a normal guy with a normal family.
Sam sipped his coke and mused on the subject of normal.
Normal kids got cd players and video games for their birthdays, Sam got books written in Latin or new weaponry. Normal kids had fathers who went to work in the morning and came home in the evening, nine to five jobs, labour jobs, with weekends off and time to sit down to dinner as a family. Sam had a father who worked scams and performed petty larceny to augment the cash pay from whatever part time job he'd picked up to keep the bills paid. Sam had a father who killed people, who laid down salt lines to keep the demons away.
If a normal kid shot someone in the face with a .45 their father would be horrified, would wonder where he went wrong, and would pay for lawyers and sit in the court to offer moral support.
If one of John Winchester's sons shot someone he helped them hide the body. If that someone was a hunter, or a cop, chances were good that he'd shoot the guy again himself, just to make sure they were dead.
At two minutes to six a familiar four-wheel truck pulled into the gas station. The car stopped only a few feet away from Sam, and when the door swung open it framed John's smiling face. "Hey, Sam."
Sam grinned back. He threw his bag into the truck and climbed into the front passenger seat. "Hey, dad. Where's Dean?"
"Your brother is in the impala," John explained, barely waiting until Sam had shut the car door before driving away. "He's picking up some take out. We thought you'd be hungry, if you skipped dinner."
"Yeah, I did. The Stuarts wont think to call anyone for a few hours. I'm not supposed to be back until ten."
John nodded. That was a few good driving hours to start them off. They made idle chitchat for the twenty minute drive that took them to the impala. Sam told his father about the foster home and the school while John told his son about the things he and Dean had done to keep occupied and out of sight.
Sam was just about to finish off how he'd killed the demon riding Jessica when they pulled to a stop in a parking lot outside a diner. "How did you manage to bind a demon anyway?" Sam asked.
"A dangerous ritual that I don't want you boys repeating," John said, in his 'no arguments' tone. He nodded to a figure just emerging from the diner, a convenient distraction from the subject of dangerous voudou. "There's Dean."
"Do you mind if I ride with him?" Sam asked, already half out of the truck before he'd finished speaking.
John shook his head. "Go ahead. He's got the food anyway."
-
"So where are we going anyway?" Sam asked, half asleep in the back seat of the impala. His wrist watch told him it was already some time after midnight and Dean had been drinking caffeine-laden soft drinks to keep himself awake and alert while Thin Lizzy played softly through the car's speakers. Easy listening music that wouldn't keep Sam awake.
"We're going to Colorado," Dean replied, looking at his brother's shadowy form through the rear-view. "Dad knows this cabin there. We're going to lie low for a couple of months before we decide where we're going next."
"A cabin?" Sam asked, a little incredulous.
"Yeah. No shit, a cabin. I think it used to belong to our grandfather or something."
"So dad wants us to go to a place steeped in family history? That's so stupid. That could get us caught."
"Dad knows what he's doing," Dean shrugged. "Or I hope he damnwell does."
That was the end of that conversation. Sam fell asleep soon afterwards and only woke up when Dean prodded him. It was already light, and Dean had smudged shadows under his eyes. "Get up," he said, "it's your turn to drive."
Sam got into the driver's seat without complaint. He was tall enough to pass for the age on his fake driver's licence without any problems so he didn't worry about getting pulled over. The licence had a fake name, and he'd noticed that the car's plates had been changed again. Sam turned on the radio and tapped his fingers against the steering wheel while his brother snored in the back seat. After about ten minutes on the road he caught up to their father's truck again, and he had to wonder just how long John was going to be able to go without crashing.
It turned out to be five more hours.
Sam followed the truck onto the shoulder of the road, pulling over to see what was up. He walked over to the window to talk to John, who looked exhausted.
"You boys swapped out at six this morning?"
"Yes, sir," Sam agreed with a nod.
"Give it another hour here," John sighed, "and send Dean over here. He drives to the next motel, then we stop for some rest and skip out before morning."
Sam nodded again and left his father to get some well-deserved rest. They'd done similar things ever since Sam was tall enough to learn how to drive. He spent the next hour napping until his watch alarm went off, then he woke Dean and sent his brother off to the truck. Within minutes they were back on the road again.
The motel they crashed at was a plain little nothing of an establishment, which was just fine with them. They rented a room with one single and one double bed, the only one available with two beds at all, and crashed with the door locked, salt lines down over all possible entrances. John took the single, leaving Dean and Sam to fight it out for space on the double.
In the end the two of them wound up falling asleep on top of the covers, Sam's hand covering half of Dean's face, and Dean's heel digging into Sam's shin. It was a good thing they made it work because when they finally got to the cabin several days later it was to discover that there were only two bedrooms. And only two beds.
"Don't drool on me," Dean said, dropping exhausted onto one side of the futon bed, his duffle bag dumped just inside the door.
"Don't stick your hand up my shirt and you've got a deal."
"Bitch." The word was muttered, half asleep already.
Sam shook his head and claimed the other side of the bed. "Jerk."
Two months at the cabin passed with relative ease. John took his sons out to hunt the local wildlife in order to keep their skills with knives and guns sharp. He made Sam shoot three full clips into a target painted on a tree on the edge of the overgrown back yard before he was satisfied that the youngest Winchester hadn't lost his touch. The tree died just days later, and it wasn't much of a surprise.
By the time they were ready to leave the Winchesters had already decided where they'll be going next and the identities they'll be using. It had been discussed in the evenings over dinners put together from grocery-store vegetables and rabbits or venison.
-
The next time Child Services caught up with the Winchesters they were using the false name 'Wellington' and Sam was four months from seventeen. He killed the social worker before she could get word to her office.