backroads baby!

sam begs to stay home.

that's the part that will haunt him, until he meets his grisly, ugly end. he had begged to stay home from that hunt. dean swears up and down and back up again that it's routine. it's just a salt a burn a few towns over, and dad needs their backup on grave digging and look out.

if it's routine, sam insists, then you can handle it without me.

dad wants him to go--he orders sam more than once to suck it up and get his ass in gear, but sam digs his heels in.

he has an algebra test of all things, on that friday, and he's been studying all month for it. they've been in town for while, taking out small hunts in the nearby area, and sam has settled into his life here. his two friends want to walk over to the local ice cream place after school the day of the test to celebrate it being over, but sam keeps that part to himself.

dad tells him in no uncertain terms that his grades are not more important than people dying, but sam insists that he wants a life, dad. he shouldn't have to get an F on a test and miss out on regular, average life to burn a ghost when two people can get the job done just fine. they get into a screaming match almost daily leading up to the hunt, and dean is at his wits' end.

he finally snaps and starts advocating for sam to stay home, too, since he doesn't want sam to be angry and silent the whole ride there. john finally relents.

they leave while sam is still asleep on thursday, so he doesn't even get to say goodbye. his last memory of dean is dean slipping out of his bed and throwing a bundled pair of socks at him as they walked out the door. he has a half-sleeping, half-awake memory of dean saying "be good, sammy. be back before you know it."

the night before, they'd run through the checklist: salt lines, gun on the nightstand, charged phone. dean in his bed, dad on the other.

dean usually checks in the nights that they're gone, but he doesn't call on that night. sam waits by the phone. figures they're busy. sam takes his algebra tests and gets a 97%. he and his friends get ice cream; sam gets rocky road. he remembers every moment of that day in perfect, agonizing clarity. he remembers what clothes he was wearing, how the tag on the back of his jacket itched his neck.

he stares at his phone for an hour on friday, during the commercial breaks of 48 hours, before giving up. he remembers being mad; like dean was punishing him for staying behind. he falls asleep feeling smug and proud--he got his way and he proved it was the damn right choice. maybe if he shows dad the results, dad'll let him stay back more in the future, he thinks.

dad comes back saturday morning.

just dad.

he stumbles in the motel door while sam is still sleeping, the door banging loudly against the doorstop. he steps over and disrupts the salt line, which should be sam's first clue that something is wrong.

sam jerks awake, and blearily watches dad as he turns around and props his hands on the dining table. his head slumps between his shoulders. he's tired, sam thinks. the motel door is still open, and sam assumes dean is out, unpacking the car. he flops his head back on his pillow.

but dean's footsteps never come. dad doesn't move. dad doesn't move for a long time.

"dad?" sam asks, when he rolls over a few minutes later and realizes his father is still standing, still sentinel at the table.

john flinches.

sam sits up, heart rocketing into his throat, as john continues to crumple, knees failing and hitting the floor with a sickening thwack.

"dad?" sam repeats--urgent and sick--and whips the blankets off, his head spinning with the sudden movement, and he falls to his knees next to his father.

john's hands are still on the table, and his arms cover his face as his shoulders begin to shake. sam tries to pry his arms away, begs dad to tell him what's wrong, where's dean, but it's not until the latter where a low, wounded keen oozes between john's teeth. sam's stomach drops.

"dad," sam asks again, still shaking his dad's arm, but his hands are numb, his face is numb; he's outside of his body, and his teeth start to chatter, adrenaline making everything cold.

john's hands lower, his arms slumping to his side. he looks gutted, tears squeezed out of red-lined, hollowed eyes.

sam's world ends.

"no." he says, the word so loud that he jumps. "no. no, no. dad, where's dean?"

john looks away.

"no, that can't--" sam says, and he's up before he processes it, out of the door that slams behind him with a deafening bang. the door to the impala is open--the driver's side, only the driver's side, no, that doesn't make any sense, that can't make sense--but the car is empty.

sam's running--he's running like he's never run in his life, in his bare feet and pajamas and heart beating so hard he's going to throw it up. he's running across the motel parking lot and to the road, then he keeps going, down this two-lane nowhere road, screaming dean's name.

it can't be true, it can't be, dean is here, dean has to be here, because sam is here, and dean would never leave sam, he wouldn't.

sam screams dean's name until he can't because his throat swells shut with traitorous, nauseating tears, and the road is endless and dean isn't there. how is dean going to hear him? sam keeps mouthing dean's name, and it's like a million nightmares where a monster is going to kill dean and sam's mouth opens but no sound comes out and dean--and dean--

and dean dies.

and it's sam's fault.

sam stumbles and falls into the road, hands and knees, scraping skin and blood and sera and dean is going to be so pissed. he gets so worried about sam when he gets beat up, and sam beat himself up, and how is he going to explain that one? dean'll call him a klutz, but he'll make sam hop up on the motel bathroom counter and pick gravel out of sam's knees with a grumble and someone must've hit a wild animal on this nowhere infinite highway because something is making a horrific noise.

it's not until john catches up with him and hauls sam into his arms that sam realizes it's himself. john starts yanking him out of the road and sam screams harder and fights him with everything in his soul--how is dean going to find him? how is dean going to know sam came to look for him?--until he's just fighting john, fists and nails and screaming, screaming, screaming.

where is he? where is my brother? what've you done to him?

and john is sobbing and just sitting there taking it, arms around sam like a prison, and that's how sam knows dean is truly dead.

later, john will drop dean's necklace into sam's scraped, bleeding palms. much later, john will tell him that dean is already burned. he didn't want sam to see what was left, he says--what was left, like dean wasn't a person, wasn't sam's, when he burned him--and sam will start to scream again--you took him away you took him away, you stole my grief you fucker, you asshole, give him back to me, where is he--

after that, sam gives john none of his anger, because john wants it. he takes sam's screaming and fists and clawing, grasping hands as self-flagellation, and he doesn't deserve the release of it. but mostly, sam blames himself. if he had been there, dean would be alive.

sam drops out of school by the end of the week. he can shoot a target 350 yards off before his voice drops.

sam'll have a thousand nightmares about that night in the graveyard, where dean dies scared and in pain at sixteen. he'll have a million dreams about the night just before, dean's arms around him, snoring into his hair, until he gets up, and leaves sam. sam will wake up and reach for someone else in his bed until he dies.

~~~

that is to say, anon. not well. sam doesn't take it well at all. he and john get along for the purposes of the hunt, but they aren't a family. john drinks and drinks and drinks and sam is half-dead, wracked with grief and guilt and self-hatred. dean made them a family, and he isn't there anymore.

i imagine without dean to stop sam from taking risks, he doesn't live terribly long. hopefully to his 30s. but esp with azazel and chuck and other external factors gunning for him, it doesn't look good.

diagnosis: hurting her own feelings prognosis: terminal