Sam tries to do what his brother asked, he really does.
He doesn't remember how he did it before. Honestly, it was something that happened to him more than something he really tried to do. He hit a dog, and went running to save it like that dog's life was the most important fucking thing in the universe because dammit, he'd hurt and killed and let down enough people and he wasn't going to let the fucking dog die. Then Amelia made him keep the damn thing, and there he was with a girl and a dog and that ever-elusive normal life he'd always wanted so badly.
He still misses it, but he doesn't go back to Amelia when Dean disappears. He doesn't go looking for Dean, either. He tries to do what his brother asked and move on, but he does it on his own terms.
Sam finds a house out in the middle of nowhere, off a little-used back road in the mountains of northern Georgia. It's falling down and overgrown and ugly, and he buys it with the last of the ill-gotten income from his life as a hunter. He gets an easy job as a fry cook at a local diner, something that doesn't require a lot of thinking, and he goes to work every day and does his job and comes home. He doesn't get another dog. He also doesn't burn Dean's tapes or sell his car. He does put a picture of him, one of the few he has of the two of them together as kids, in a frame on the empty bookshelf in his living room. Sam saves his paychecks for paint, and better carpet, to fix the roof where its shingles need replacing, and to install an air conditioner. He doesn't indulge a lot: he eats healthy and sparingly, doesn't drink or go out. He buys books, normal books, books printed in the last hundred years that have nothing to do with the paranormal or the occult, and he reads a lot during his free time. By the end of a year, he needs a second bookshelf.
When he realizes Dean has been gone for over a year, Sam goes out and buys a metal lockbox and a shovel. He puts all Dean's tapes, the rest of their pictures, and their dad's journal in it and locks it up tight, and buries it in the back yard under a scrawny little peach tree he's been trying to encourage. He throws the key as far as he can into the woods behind his house, turning quickly so he doesn't have even the slightest chance of seeing where it lands. He starts saving money in a jar every week after that, and by Christmas that year he has a headstone marking the spot, shaded by the scraggly arms of the tree.
Here lies Dean Winchester. Father, brother, beloved son. An angel is watching over you.
He didn't have them include the birth or death dates, mostly because Sam's lost track of all of them over the years.
Alice Parker is an accident that happens on Dean's birthday. Sam didn't go looking for anyone to share his life with; after so many years of loss and pain and terror, he was simply grateful to live a quiet life and go to bed feeling relatively safe at night. He bumps into Alice at the hardware store, perusing flower seeds in the gardening section where he was making a futile attempt at picking out a fertilizer that might encourage that damn tree to blossom come spring. She looks at him with big, green eyes set wide over a freckled nose and slightly obscured by tendrils of chestnut-colored hair, and Sam almost stops breathing for a second. He tries to back away as gracefully as possible, but she has a kind of persistent joviality that reminds him, oddly enough, of Becky Rosen with an upper limit installed on the crazy. She keeps popping up in his life after that, no matter how careful he is to stay guarded and aloof and out of her way. Eventually, he stops being so careful and just lets her in.
She's perpetually optimistic, and sweet, and she likes books almost as much as he does. In another year she's added to his collection with some of her own favorites, and she has a drawer full of clothes in his bedroom. She's even helped him pick out curtains for the downstairs windows. She never asks about the headstone in the back yard, but she does offer to help him with the tree. One very gross composting endeavor later, and it's looking promising. He thinks that this year it might even blossom.
It doesn't, but Sam just promises himself he'll keep trying.
Alice moves in that October, and they redecorate the whole place together until it's unrecognizable as the same shabby little house where Sam spent so many months alone. Between the two of them, they can even afford to build onto it a little, and Sam adds a garage for the car. Alice loves the Impala, and Sam manages to keep the ache out of his smile when he watches the way she handles it. It reminds him far too much. If she notices she doesn't say anything, and her unwillingness to make him face his demons is just one more thing he loves about her.
She does ask him, just once, who the two little boys are in the photo on top of the bookshelf. He swallows hard, smiles, and tells her that's him and his dumbass big brother when they were kids. She seems to understand that his brother is the one all but buried in the back yard, and she doesn't mention it again until it's their three year anniversary and she's telling him he's going to be a father.
"Sam," she says in that warm voice that always makes him feel safe and loved, "I think if it's a boy we should name him Dean."
He throws his arms around her, buries his face in her hair, and chokes out a hoarse, "I think that's a great idea." He cries for his brother for the first time that night, tears soaking into her hair, and she just holds him.
Sam tells her as much as he can about his insane life while leaving out the reasons for all of it. She seems to accept that he's being as honest as he thinks he can, but that's what he loves about her. She's never asked why his brother's last name was Winchester and his own last name is Wesson. She doesn't even blink when he tells her he wants the baby to have her last name. Alice just accepts things for what they are, doesn't go digging for details she doesn't absolutely need, and trusts Sam to tell her if there's anything truly important she should know.
She doesn't need to know that the house is warded, symbols carved into the baseboards under the carpet, for instance. She just needs to know that their home is safe, and that Sam will be there for her and their kid.
Mary Deanna Parker is born on May 30th, 2019. Sam holds her in his arms and he knows with perfect clarity that he would do any and every insane thing he ever criticized Dean for doing to protect him for this little girl in his arms. She's perfect, and he feels like he could suffocate from the sheer force of protective, overwhelming, terrifying love he feels pressing in on him from all sides as he stares down at her.
"I can't believe we made this," he says dumbly, and Alice laughs and quips that after all, she did most of the work.
They take their baby home to a brightly-colored house full of overstuffed bookshelves and happy memories. The spring after she's born, the peach tree finally blossoms.
On her third birthday Sam gets a thick, letter-sized envelope in the mail. It's postmarked to Sam Wesson & Alice and Mary Parker, but there's no return address. He opens it and pulls out a small stack of papers. The one on top makes his heart stutter in his chest.
It's a postcard of the Grand Canyon lit up by a sunrise. There's no return address on this either, but there's a short message scrawled on the back.
Made it home okay. Angel-face says hello. Tell my niece not to be a giant dork like her daddy.
It's so utterly Dean, and Sam is suddenly dying to see him. He needs to look his brother in the face and see that he's okay, that Purgatory didn't break him or change him, or worse: leave him alone in the world beside a shell that used to be the only real friend he'd ever had. But…angel-face says hello. Sam smiles, imagining Cas's wide-eyed, stoic expression and deadpan greeting. He sets the card aside carefully, like something precious he's afraid to break, and turns his attention to the rest of the papers in the pile.
The second one is a Disney Princess coloring book that appears to have been divested of all the pages pertaining to Aurora, Cinderella, Ariel, and Snow White. Belle, Rapunzel, Tiana, Pocahontas, Merida, and Lilliana (the heroine in a fairly recent take on The Twelve Dancing Princesses) have all been left intact, and Sam raises an eyebrow and can't suppress a laugh when he reads the inscription on the inside cover.
You can be a girly hero or a tomboy princess, or you can be all of the above. The one thing you don't ever have to be is a damsel in distress, but don't forget that even superheroes need to ask for help sometimes. Happy 3rd Birthday!
Love,
Uncle Dean
Sam loves it, and he knows Alice will too. He makes a mental note to pick up a new box of crayons and add them to the little pile of gifts currently hidden under the floor of the trunk in the Impala.
The next item in the stack is a book of some kind, thin and paper-bound, with a blank cover and no title. Sam opens it curiously, only to nearly drop it when he comes face to face with a picture of his brother.
Dean's older than when Sam last saw him—he'd be over 40 now, after all—and the years show a little more than Sam would like, especially around the eyes, but whatever joy that takes from the image is thrown right back in by the happiness that seems to radiate from his every pore. The photo is at an angle, catching him half in profile with the sunlight hitting him full on, and his expression is all squinty laughter, white teeth against a deeply tanned face and the green of his eyes just barely peeking out between his lashes. Dean looks radiant—boy, wouldn't he tease Sam for days if he knew that thought had crossed his mind?—and the knowledge strikes Sam like a hammer to his temple that the person who took this photo must absolutely adore his brother. He thinks he knows who it was.
The next pictures all but confirm it. Sam wryly thinks that what he's holding looks like a brochure for gay honeymoon destinations. Each page is covered with different-sized prints of Dean and Castiel, sometimes alone but mostly together, in all the places that a lifetime of moving all over the country never showed them. Dean and Cas on a boat with the Statue of Liberty looming in the background; Dean on a mechanical bull being tossed around like a rag doll; Cas raising an eyebrow at Dean as the latter puts bunny ears on a fake alien in Roswell. In one they're standing side by side at the entrance to Yellowstone National Park, Dean's arm thrown around Cas's shoulders like it's something he does all the time. It probably is, come to think of it. Dean is beaming away like it's the happiest day of his life, and Cas is looking at Dean, a soft smile on his face and quiet contentment in his wide blue eyes.
There's even one—and Sam doesn't even want to think about how they managed to get two supposedly dead men through that kind of security—of Castiel smiling bemusedly while being smooshed between Dean and Mickey Mouse.
The last page has no pictures on it, just a note in a small, neat hand that Sam knows instantly even without a signature.
Dean did not want me to, but here is our address. He thinks he's doing you both a favor by staying away, but I'd like to think that things can change for the better and old habits can die. I hope you are as happy with your family as I am with mine, and I hope someday I can convince you both that Dean needs to meet his namesake.
The address is a post office box in some little town in Nebraska. Sam grins at the thought of his brother crisscrossing the country on a perpetual road trip with his angel in tow. He takes a deep breath and looks out the window at the tree, its branches hung with hard little knobs that will be peaches by the middle of the summer. It eases an ache inside of him he didn't even realize he still felt, just knowing that all that remains of his brother isn't buried in a lock box in his back yard. Then he sighs, because he knows he'll have to show all of this to Alice when she gets home, and there is no way she won't be climbing the walls with excitement until he gets his idiot brother here.
He wonders if she'll be quite so excited once said idiot brother starts indoctrinating their daughter into classic rock, swear words, and hustling poker.
The very thought makes him laugh to himself, and he's suddenly dying to have his brother and Castiel under his roof, in front of his face, solid and real and alive. He knows Dean will put up a fight and, if the way his brother looks at Cas in half those pictures is any indication, he knows he'll lose. Practically bouncing as he moves, Sam heads for his computer and taps impatiently on the table until it pulls up the website he's looking for.
"Hello? Yes, hi, my name is Sam Wesson, and I'm trying to reach a friend of mine who recently changed his number. Do you happen to have a phone number on file for box 3512? Sure, I'll wait."
By the time Alice arrives home with a squealing, giggling mess of sandy curls and freckles balanced on one hip, Sam is sitting at the kitchen table with a slip of paper clutched tightly in his hand and a grin fighting to take over his face for good. As her smile grows to match his automatically, he stands and comes over to take her in his arms, balancing Mary between them.
"Alice, honey," he says, without preamble or explanation. "How would you like to meet my older brother?"
Author's Note: I was so depressed by that last thing I wrote that I had to write a second chapter just to kiss it better. I'm seriously considering doing a companion piece now that will look at things from Dean's side in a similarly brief format. Thoughts?