A/N: Many thanks to everyone who left reviews! Really made my week! I'm so glad you guys are enjoying the story :)
To my first anonymous guest reviewer: I'm sorry you're having trouble getting to the early draft. I did some checking, and apparently you're only allowed to link to certain "approved" external sites, which is why the link on my profile wasn't working—serves me right for trying to be fancy with the hyperlink. I changed it so you can just copy/paste the URL. Hopefully that solves the problem! And thanks for reviewing!
To my second anonymous guest reviewer: Thank you for your very kind comments! I agree that the different versions of the boys take some getting used to, but that was a lot of why the early pilot draft intrigued me so much.
To Tillypuitan: Yeah, Sam has had a little more screen time thus far, but I promise, Dean will get his fair share. :) Thanks for reviewing!
Sam is standing in the living room of a house. He doesn't recognize the furniture, doesn't know any of the people in the photographs, but something about the room is familiar. Didn't their old house in Lawrence used to look something like this….?
Out of nowhere, the couch comes barrelling across the room, directly towards Sam. It knocks into him and pins him against the wall. A floor lamp standing in the corner topples over and shatters. Pictures rattle on the walls. Sam closes his eyes, unable to move, as a whirlwind whips up around him.
Then, suddenly, the wind and noise stop. The resulting silence is broken by a soft, achingly familiar voice.
"Sam."
He opens his eyes cautiously, and there she is. Standing there in a simple black dress, her hair floating around her shoulders, smiling gently. Looking just as she did the last time Sam saw her.
"I'm sorry," his mother says, and dissolves into flame.
Sam wakes with a start at that point, just as he does every time he has this nightmare. For a moment he lies still on the motel bed, listening. All is quiet and dark; Dean's breathing sounds slow and deep from the other bed, so he's still asleep. Sam might not be so lucky next time, though; he's been having this nightmare for weeks already, and Dean is bound to notice eventually. Better to just bring it up himself, on his own terms. But not before he's done a little research.
Sam gets quietly out of bed and feels his way over to his duffel. It takes him a minute to extract his laptop in the dark, but he gets ahold of it eventually, tiptoes into the bathroom, and closes the door before powering it on.
Then he pulls up his usual news sites and runs a search on Lawrence, Kansas.
*S*P*N*
Sam waits anxiously for Dean to get up that morning. He doesn't know what he's going to say to his brother to convince him that they need to go back to their old house in Lawrence, but he's sure Dean won't like the idea. He'll probably like the idea of Sam's nightmares even less, but there's no help for it. Sam's only had this type of nightmare twice before, but ignoring them hadn't turned out well either time. He's not going to make the same mistake again.
Sam is sitting on his bed, ostensibly reading through John's journal for anything about demons they might have overlooked, but really only turning the pages, all his attention taken up with listening for movement from the other side of the room. When Dean finally stirs, Sam looks up immediately, tossing the journal aside.
"Hey," he says as Dean sits up.
Dean looks surprised at the greeting, but he croaks out a sleepy "Hey" in reply. "What're you doing up so early?"
"Is it early?" Sam says vaguely, checking the time on his cell phone since the cheap motel they're staying in didn't provide a working alarm clock for their room. "I was doing some research."
But Dean isn't paying attention. He's staring at the phone in Sam's hand.
"You know, I've been thinking," he says, scrubbing a hand through his hair a tad awkwardly. "Maybe you should stop talking to Jess so often."
Sam gapes at him, completely forgetting about Lawrence for the moment. Is this why Dean was acting so strange back at Bobby's?
"Why?" Sam asks. "You jealous?"
"No," Dean says, too quickly. Sam snickers, and Dean's awkwardness vanishes, replaced by a glare.
"It's just, you're looking kinda whipped, there, little brother. Always come running every time she calls…."
"Excuse me?" says Sam, outraged, all laughter gone in an instant. "You think that just because I talk to her, I'm whipped?"
"It would be better for both of you if you just broke it off with her, Sam," Dean says, ignoring Sam's angry tone.
"Oh, like it was better when you 'broke it off' with me to hunt monsters?" The words are out of his mouth before Sam even knows what he's going to say.
"Yes! Exactly!" Dean says, and Sam has to fight to keep his expression smooth. He didn't think Dean regretted bringing him along quite that much.
"Well if it was so much better, why did you come get me?" he snaps.
Dean's eyes slide away from his, and he makes no reply as he pushes back his bedcovers, swings his feet onto the floor, and moves toward the bathroom.
"Hey! What aren't you telling me?" Sam demands.
"Nothing!" Dean calls over his shoulder, before slamming the bathroom door.
Sam sighs. He's quite certain it's not nothing, but he decides it would be prudent to let Dean keep his secret for now. After all, Sam's got his own secret to divulge this morning—and if Dean's already second-guessing his decision to recruit him, Sam doesn't like to think how he'll react to the nightmares. Starting an argument now definitely won't help matters.
"Look," he says as soon as Dean comes out of the bathroom, struggling to regain the flow of normal conversation. "I think we need to head back home."
He watches Dean's face carefully as he says this, but his expression remains completely nonplussed. "Home?" he asks, as though it's a word in a foreign language.
"Lawrence," Sam clarifies, his mouth dry.
Dean raises his eyebrows. "Okay, random. Where'd that come from?"
Sam takes a deep breath. "I have these nightmares."
Dean just shrugs, and bends to rummage in his duffel bag for fresh clothes. "Yeah? Comes with the territory." He sounds perfectly unconcerned, but his shoulders look tense.
"Not these nightmares," says Sam.
Dean straightens up, a bundle of clothes in his arms, and frowns at him. "What's so special about these nightmares?"
"These ones come true," Sam says in a rush.
There's a pause. Then Dean says, "Come again?" His frown, Sam notices, has deepened, but he can't tell whether in anger or confusion.
"Look," says Sam, doing his best to sound reasonable. "I dreamt about Cheryl and Tommy dying for weeks before it happened, okay? And—" He stops, swallowing hard. "And I dreamt about Mom, too."
To Sam's surprise, Dean's expression suddenly clears. "Oh, now I get it," he says.
It's Sam's turn to frown. "Get what?"
"This is why you said Mom's death was your fault, isn't it?" says Dean, staring at him. "It wasn't cause you saw the monster, or the hellhound, or whatever. It was cause you knew it was going to happen."
Sam spins his amulet on its cord, not looking at Dean. He'd been drunk when he told Dean about seeing the monster, and is now regretting his alcohol intake even more than he did when he woke up hungover the following morning. He also definitely knows now that he prefers not to discuss this topic sober.
"Wow," says Dean, and now he's smiling, but it looks stiff and forced and Sam doesn't like it. "So turns out you've got the Shining, and you still accused me of being psycho enough to kill Dad, back in Palo Alto."
"Okay, I'm sorry," says Sam, not caring if he sounds desperate. "Like I said, I had reasons for not wanting to believe. But I've come around, haven't I?"
"Have you?" says Dean, watching him.
"Yes," says Sam, thumping the journal on his lap for emphasis. "That's why I'm telling you this. I want to do something about the nightmares this time."
Dean doesn't immediately refuse, which Sam takes as a good sign. After a moment, he gives a sigh, sets his bundle of clothes on the bed, and sits down. "And to do that, we have to go to Lawrence?" he asks, rubbing a hand over his face.
Encouraged, Sam reaches over to his bedside table for his laptop, opens it, and flips it around so Dean can see the news articles he's pulled up.
"I've been having dreams about Mom at our old house," he explains. "I did some research, and it looks like there might be a case there." He waits for Dean to make some comment, but Dean just squints at the news articles and says nothing, so he continues, "A woman bought it a couple of months ago, moved in with her kids. Then, earlier this week, they ended up leaving—first a plumber got his hand torn off in the garbage disposal, and then all kinds of other freaky stuff started happening."
Again, Sam pauses and waits for Dean to say something, though he isn't entirely sure Dean heard his rundown; Dean's eyes have slipped out of focus, and he's staring at the laptop with an abstract, faraway look on his face.
"You saw Mom?" he asks finally, in a much softer voice than normal. "In your dreams?"
"Yeah," says Sam, just as softly.
Dean's eyes snap back onto him. "I don't want to go back to Lawrence," he replies forcefully.
All of Sam's previous annoyance returns with a vengeance. "Well, you don't have to come if you don't want to," he snaps, closing the laptop rather harder than he intends to. Perhaps it would have been better, he reflects furiously, to just slip off to Lawrence on his own. After all, Dean goes wherever he wants without a thought to anyone else. Why shouldn't he?
"I didn't say I wasn't coming," Dean points out, rising from the bed and gathering up his clothes again. "If it could give us a clue about what happened to Mom...Dad would want us to check it out."
"I thought the whole point of all this was that we were doing it for Mom," says Sam.
"Yeah," says Dean, though he doesn't sound as if he's really paying attention. "We are."
"So we're going, then?"
"We're going."
*S*P*N*
They don't talk much during the drive to Lawrence. Dean suspects that Sam is itching to pester him about the secret he seems to have guessed he's keeping, or worse, to start some kind of discussion about their parents, but Dean turns the radio on full volume as soon as they get in the car, and keeps it that way as they leave South Dakota behind, heading for Kansas. Nothing like ear-pounding classic rock to ensure silence.
Sam pounces as soon as they stop for gas and food, though.
"So, you gonna tell me whatever it is you're not telling me?" he asks as Dean parks the Impala and they get out.
"Who says I'm not telling you something?" Dean counters. He tucks his keys into his jacket pocket, where they scratch against the torn-out page of John's journal as the two of them walk into the gas station.
"I'm saying it," says Sam.
"Yeah, well, innocent until proven guilty, lawyer boy."
"In that case, I'm arresting you on suspicion of withholding evidence."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Lawyers can't arrest people."
Sam opens his mouth, probably to rattle off another clever reply, but is interrupted when the person behind the food counter asks for their order. Ten minutes later, they're back out in the Impala with two greasy slices of pizza each, and, thankfully, Sam has moved on to other topics.
"So what's our first stop when we get to Lawrence? Check out the house right away?" he asks around a mouthful of pizza.
Dean reaches into the backseat for John's journal and tosses it at him. "First line. Wipe your fingers before you touch that!"
Sam rolls his eyes, but complies. "'I went to Missouri and I learned the truth,'" he reads once he has the journal open. "What, like the state?"
"No, dumbass, Missouri Moseley—don't you remember her? Friend of Mom's? She used to come around and babysit sometimes…."
"Oh yeah," says Sam, somber now. "She was there when…."
He doesn't have to finish the sentence, and Dean is glad that he doesn't. This trip is bringing back enough memories as it is.
"Hey," Dean says, after several bites of pizza have disappeared in silence. "Remember how she used to always yell at me for putting my feet on the table?"
"Yeah," says Sam, with a small chuckle. Dean can see his dimples showing faintly when he glances over at him. "Swearing, too."
"Dude, I never even said anything!" Dean protests. "I was only thinking it!"
Sam's smile fades. "She's psychic, isn't she?"
"The real deal," Dean confirms.
"How did you find out?"
"Dad told me."
"Oh." Sam chews thoughtfully for a moment, swallows, but doesn't take another bite. "Do you think...do you think Dad knew about me?"
"I don't know," says Dean, busying himself with wiping his fingers on his napkin. "If he did, he never mentioned it to me." Of course, John also hadn't mentioned that there was a demon after Sam.
Sam doesn't answer. Dean turns the radio on again, to fill the silence.
A/N: Flashback chapter next week! Then Lawrence. :)