The Child that Was
K Hanna Korossy
"For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be."
– John Connolly
Something was wrong with Dean.
Heart hammering, Sam stuck his head out from under the covers and took a frantic glance around the room. In the dim yellowish light from the parking lot, he couldn't see any threat in their room. But Dad and Dean had told him that sometimes monsters weren't visible.
Dean gasped again from the other bed, stirring under the covers. Where was Dad, anyway?
"Dean?" Sam called, voice wavering in a way that would have embarrassed him another time. Was he just having a bad dream? But Sam's big brother didn't usually have bad dream; nothing scared him. "Dean? Are you okay?"
The lump that was Dean in the other bed made a weird rattling sound. He went still.
And then above him rose the otherworldly, malevolent face of the Baba Yaga, her hands pressing down on Dean.
"Dean!" Sam screamed, shooting up in bed—
—in the bunker, almost toppling over the side. Sam lurched back and panted at the ceiling, fists curling in lingering powerlessness.
A nightmare. Just a nightmare. Dean had killed the Baba Yaga—twice now—and was alive and, okay, mostly well. Sam closed his eyes as his breath evened out. Just a dream.
His brows drew together. Well, sort of. There was something off about it, something that continued to scratch at his waking brain. He replayed what he remembered of the already fading images.
Dean, under attack. The Baba Yaga just as Sam remembered, with that blood stone on her finger. Sam, frozen in his own bed, under that Voltron blanket Dean had stolen for him from a laundromat.
The blanket. The olive green-striped mustard walls. The patchy rug on the floor between the two beds. Details he could have sworn he didn't remember, but apparently he did.
Sam sat up. It wasn't a dream. It was a memory.
Not of the Baba Yaga. That was Sam's mind working off dregs of the last case. But Dean moaning and twisting in bed in the throes of a nightmare in that ugly motel room, that had happened. Followed by Dean gasping himself awake, searching wildly for Sam. Sam had slid from his bed without hesitation then and gone to join his big brother, who had actually hugged him before agreeing to share a bed for that one night. And maybe a few after.
Sam had completely forgotten that.
Ten-year-old Sammy hadn't understood it besides knowing that sometimes Dean had bad dreams. Adult Sam recognized that terror in even a kid version of his brother's eyes, the desperate relief after: Dean had dreamed Sam was dead. Repeatedly.
Sam rubbed his eyes and sank back into the bed.
I'd never seen anything like that before. I had nightmares about that for the longest time.
All the clues were there, he just hadn't been able to put them together as a kid: the nightmares, the evasive answer from Dean about the kid victims, dreaming Sam was dead. The Baba Yaga used hallucinations of worst fears to terrorize its prey. Even for a teenage Dean, that had meant losing his brother.
"Damn it, Dean," Sam sighed, meaning it.
He was still furious with Dean. His brother had kept from him the secret of Jack's role in Death's plan to kill Chuck, because he knew Sam would fight it. Sam didn't even know what he was more mad about that, that Dean had kept something from him again, or that it was this: Jack sacrificing himself.
But Dean had been trapped in the life far longer and more thoroughly than Sam would probably ever know. Even as a kid himself, lying to protect his little brother, bearing the weight of trauma and terror alone. No wonder he was desperate to break free, even if this was the wrong way.
Sam breathed out, anger breaking down into an exhausted frustration. Not forgiving, not yet, but at least…understanding a little better.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, then reached for the phone by his bed. After their tense, silent ride home, Sam had gone to bed while Dean left to go on a drive. Even though they were both tired, Sam hadn't tried dissuade his brother. He needed the space, too.
But now he picked up his phone and, hesitating only a moment, wrote a two-word text.
Come home.
The End