SPN FIC - To Know Her
You guys won't object to a double header, right?
I've had this one in process for a while, because I couldn't figure out where to slot it into S5. So ... just say it belongs in S5 "somewhere." Sam and Cas, a motel parking lot, and a need to find something that's been lost for a long time.
He'd felt almost relaxed, out here in the cool, rain-washed air -- until Castiel showed up. Or made himself known, since apparently he'd been here all along.
CHARACTERS: Sam and Castiel, with flashback to baby!Sam, Mary, and wee!Dean
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2797 words
TO KNOW HER
By Carol Davis
"I thought you'd be gone by now," Sam said quietly.
Castiel stood beside him in silence, hands tucked into the pockets of his trenchcoat, gaze fixed on something down at the far end of the motel parking lot. Sam looked over that way and saw nothing but a collection of trash blown up against the low cement bumper at the edge of the asphalt. None of it was identifiable from where he was standing, leaning against the passenger side of the Impala, legs crossed, arms folded across his chest.
He'd felt almost relaxed, out here in the cool, rain-washed air - until Castiel showed up. Or made himself known, since apparently he'd been here all along.
"I had nowhere in particular to be," Cas replied.
"So you decided to hang around." Sam smiled, no humor behind it, and whuffed out a lungful of air. "For what? You figure we're gonna talk strategy? Play checkers? Watch some HBO? I can't speak for Dean, but I gotta tell you, Cas, I'm not feeling really sociable right now."
"I did not expect you to be…sociable."
"What, then?"
The two of them watched an empty M&Ms wrapper blow down the length of the parking lot. When it was gone, Cas said, "I find myself at a loss. Occasionally."
"Really."
"This is not going well."
"Wow. That's a…really remarkable level of insight." Before Castiel could respond, Sam told him, "I'm really not in the mood for whatever it is you had in mind to say. A pep talk? A reminder that things are falling apart a little at a time, but when Lucifer gets up to speed, the shit's really gonna hit the fan? I'm tired, man. I don't need this."
Castiel looked at him for a moment, almost unblinking.
"Could you -" Sam said.
"What?"
"Could you not do that?"
"I was not aware that I was doing anything."
"You're staring. It's - you shouldn't stare. It makes me feel like -" Sam shuddered. "Like those dreams I used to have about showing up for class naked."
"You had an unfulfilled desire to appear in front of your classmates without clothing?"
"I - God, man. No."
"Then I am confused."
"Barnes & Noble," Sam said. "They have books about dream interpretation. Okay? I'm serious, man. I'm not in the mood for this."
Castiel didn't move, just went back to studying trash.
Maybe he thought he'd learn something from it. There was nothing blown up against that bumper that was worth this much attention, Sam thought; at the same time, he was tempted to cross the parking lot so he could see for himself what the hell was over there.
"Dean is -" Cas said after a minute.
"Sleeping."
"I see."
A man and a woman came out of one of the motel rooms, got into a car together, and drove away. Married, maybe, Sam thought. Nothing about their demeanor said they'd been here for any kind of questionable purpose.
But appearances could be…
Naked, he thought, wondering how much Castiel could see inside his head. Inside his heart. There was a lot of crap buried in both that didn't need to be brought out into the light of day - or the bright-white glow of parking lot security lights. It was one thing to share bits of what he was thinking with Dean. Another thing entirely to share it with an angel of the Lord.
"You're not bound by any…like…vow of confidentiality, are you?" he asked.
"I am not."
"That's what I thought."
"Would you like to confess something?"
"No," Sam said. "Not a confession."
"What, then?"
"Do you have any idea how much time we have? Days? Weeks? Months? Are we going to dick around until 2012?"
"2012?"
"Mayan prophecy. End of the world."
"Your guess is as good as mine."
Sam had expected as much. Didn't like it, but it was no surprise. Feeling very much like his old demon-driven nightmares had been easier to slough off than five minutes with Castiel, Sam turned away from the angel's scrutiny and shoved a hand through his hair, using his palm to hold it away from his forehead for a moment.
Why he'd come out here in the first place, he wasn't sure. Dean had faceplanted on the bed less than five minutes after they'd checked in, and had been snoring softly and steadily ever since, leaving Sam free to do whatever he chose: watch TV, do a little research, lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling. Instead, he'd come out outside, to lean against the car and watch traffic straggle past the motel, trying to ignore the familiar pull of lack of sleep on his shoulders, his back, his legs.
And to hang out with Cas.
"Me and Dean," he ventured. "We might not survive this."
"The likelihood is that all of us will fall, Sam. Myself included. It could go badly. It could very likely go…very badly."
"Did you ask Chuck?"
"There are limits to Chuck's abilities."
"Well, that's a bitch, isn't it?" Sam said bitterly. "You'd think he'd have a line on the stuff that matters. Instead of, oh, what I ate for breakfast this morning. And whether Dean picks his nose or not. He does, by the way."
He waited, but Cas didn't pick up the ball. Which wasn't exactly a surprise. Cas had been walking around in human form for more than a year now, but that - and whatever he might have picked up (or stolen) from Jimmy Novak - didn't mean he was worth a shit as a conversationalist.
Or as a source of information.
There were lots of questions hanging in the air these days, and mighty damn few answers. The plus side of it was, that might not go on for much longer.
Nothing might go on for much longer.
And there was nothing like an Apocalypse to make you lay your cards on the table.
"I want something," Sam said.
Castiel quirked an eyebrow.
"I don't ask for much."
"One could argue that you ask for a great deal."
"One thing. That's all."
"I cannot guarantee your brother's safety."
Cas was a blunt son of a bitch - but that was an excellent time-saver. If this had been anyone else, if they'd been anywhere else - if Sam were arguing his case in front of a jury, say - he would have been more careful to lay out his reasoning.
But it is what it is.
So he said simply, "I want to know my mother."
Castiel blinked at that. "I - I cannot take you back in time, Sam. That's no longer possible. I believe I have…shot my wad."
"You -" Sam said, startled.
"Is that the correct phraseology? Dean seems to be particularly fond of it."
"It's - yes. It's…fine."
"I am sorry. The decline in my powers is frustrating for me as well. I occasionally find myself feeling useless," Castiel confessed, ignoring the reaction it got from Sam. "Taking up space. I did not wish to become a whining crybaby - but I suppose there is little to be done about it at this point." He let out a whispering hiss of a breath, and to Sam he looked very much like what anyone in the everyday world would have taken him for: an exhausted, overworked salesman, stopped for the night in a town he wasn't familiar with and facing nothing in the morning that held any appeal for him.
"Life's a bitch," Sam said.
"You did not always think so."
"Yeah," Sam told the angel. "I kind of did."
Castiel turned to Sam and gave him the kind of curious, inscrutable look Sam always associated with dogs.
"No," he said. "You did not."
Gently, for no more than an instant, he brushed his fingertips against Sam's temple.
Then he vanished.
Sam stood where he was for a minute, bothered by the intimacy of the angel's touch, insignificant as it might have been, frowning as he lay his fingers against his temple, telling himself no, it wasn't scarred. Didn't itch. Didn't burn.
With Castiel gone, the parking lot seemed different: either brighter or darker (Sam couldn't decide which). More silent, as if Sam's hearing had been turned down a notch. Definitely emptier. Dean was sleeping only a few yards away, and the cars passing by the motel were close enough that the drivers might have heard him if he had called out, might even have responded, but he felt alone in the bone-deep way he thought he'd left behind him more than a year ago, when Dean came back from Hell.
He turned, finally, intending to walk until he'd tired himself out.
Find a bar, maybe, and have a drink in the company of strangers.
To his right, as he turned, lay the big window of the room he and Dean had booked for the night, a wide, dirty rectangle of glass displaying no light and no motion because Dean had pulled the drapes shut tight before he collapsed into sleep.
For a moment Sam thought he had walked some distance without realizing it, because he wasn't looking at the backside of the room's cheap polyester drapes.
He was looking into a room filled with shadows, a room he recognized because the demon Azazel had taken him there in his dreams. A room that had once meant warmth and safety.
And love.
He lifted a hand and touched the glass half-thinking that it wouldn't be there, because it hadn't been there; his nursery had had small vertical windows, not big horizontal ones like the motel, like every motel he could remember ever staying in, through all the years and all the miles he and Dean and Dad had traveled.
He was wrong, though; the glass was cold and a little greasy, and when he lay his palm against it he could see the ghost image of his touch misting against the glass.
Inside, he could see his crib. Could see his infant self, arms and legs flailing.
He could hear himself baby-chuckling.
He was afraid in a way that made the remains of his dinner bubble halfway up his esophagus that he was looking at that night, the night Azazel had shown him far too much of in a way that had been impossible to erase from his mind's eye ever since, but as he forced himself to keep looking he realized that in there, it wasn't night, it was morning. A cloudy - maybe rainy - one, but morning, and through the windows on the far side of the room he could see the outdoors he remembered from a few years back, from standing out there with Dean.
As if he'd issued a summons, a small, mop-haired figure in Superman pajamas came streaking into the room, stopped just short of colliding with the crib, and shoved a hand between the bars to touch Sam's baby self.
"Sammy!" the little figure crowed.
Then she was there, in jeans and a pretty blouse, barefoot, blonde hair blue-ribboned into a wavy ponytail. She was smiling as she crossed the room, as she crouched beside the crib so she'd be something approximating Dean's height. She, too, pushed a hand through the bars and used it to tickle the pudgy cheek of Sam's baby self.
"He's awake!" Dean informed her, small voice shrill with a crowing kind of joy, if he were announcing the sudden return to consciousness of someone who'd been comatose for the last couple of decades.
"I see that," she said.
"He's smelly."
"Well, I guess we'd better fix that."
She hoisted baby-Sam out of the crib and carried him to the changing table with an "Ew! Icky!" face that was strictly for Dean's benefit - or maybe not. Either way, her smile came back quickly and she was humming as she replaced the offensive diaper with a fresh one. Tickled baby-Sam under his chin. Dressed him in an outfit Dean selected from the options in the dresser drawer. When she was finished, Dean began to reach for him.
Dean couldn't carry him, Sam thought. Couldn't manage that kind of burden.
Then he remembered: Dean had.
Instead of surrendering baby-Sam, she lowered herself to the floor, propped baby-Sam in front of her knees and grinned at Dean as he collapsed cross-legged onto the rug. "I can pick!" Dean chirped. "You said I can pick."
"Then pick."
"I wanna go…"
"Where?"
"Playground! Sammy wants to swing. Right, Sammy?"
"Playground it is, then," she said.
He'd seen her before. Had seen the handful of pictures that remained of her, gathered from one place or another, most of them bent and wrinkled and stained from being well-handled. Had seen her spirit, pensive and brooding, when he and Dean returned to Lawrence that first time.
Had seen her moments away from her death, courtesy of Azazel.
But he had never seen her like this.
He stood and watched, palms pressed against the glass, trying to will himself into passing right on through it, to be able to stand in that room - invisible or not, it didn't matter. He stood and watched as Dean retrieved from somewhere (his own bedroom, probably) a series of plastic trucks and stuffed toys and a gigantic rubber ball, setting each item out in front of baby-Sam for his - what? Approval? He watched his brother romp and dance, sing bits of songs, recite knock-knock jokes, do somersaults on the rug.
Watched his mother smile and laugh at all of it, as if Dean were the court jester and she the queen.
He watched her pick his baby self up from the floor and carry him to the rocking chair in the corner, settle him into her lap, then open her blouse and nestle him against her breast to nurse. After a moment Dean came to stand beside the chair, tousled head resting against their mother's arm, gaze drifting from baby-Sam's face to their mother's, his own small face betraying the kaleidoscope of thought and emotion going on behind it.
Smiling still, their mother kissed the top of Dean's head and murmured something to him that Sam couldn't hear.
Let me, he thought desperately. Please.
But the glass held fast.
Behind him, a voice said, "You should get some sleep."
"I don't want to sleep," Sam said. "I want -"
He leaned into the glass, felt it cold and ungiving against his skin.
Felt it for what it was.
The corners of the window began to reflect, again, what lay behind him: the parking lot, the street, a scattering of stunted trees. His brother's car. The cars and vans and trucks of other people: a collection of strangers.
And a mournful-looking angel in a dirty trenchcoat.
It was nothing more than a window, of course. On the other side of it, on the other side of a set of ugly orange-and-brown, rubber-lined polyester drapes, his brother lay sprawled face-down on a lumpy bed, surrendered to what was more than likely a fitful, restless sleep.
"It's not fair," Sam said.
"That your brother remembers, and you don't?"
Sam drank in a last look (his mother rocking the chair with the bare toes of one foot; his baby self heavy-lidded, tiny hand clenched into a fist; his brother's lips moving, telling a joke or a story or parroting a lullaby), then turned away from the window to look the angel in the face. "None of it," he said. "None of it's fair."
"Life is a bitch," Castiel said quietly, with a small ghost of a nod.
"And that's all you've got to say about it."
"What would you like me to say, Sam?"
It wasn't unkind; it was a simple question, without layers, the kind Sam remembered Pastor Jim asking, years ago and miles away. It was the kind of bare and unadorned question that had prompted him to pray, every day for a considerable span of time - to ask for answers, and if answers were beyond his pay grade, then for something small.
A little peace of mind. That would have been enough.
"Good night," Sam said to the angel. "Just…good night."
Castiel considered that for a moment, then looked past Sam at the motel room window, as if he thought he'd see something there.
Maybe he did see something.
"Good night, then," he said affably.
When the angel was gone, Sam looked again at the window, at the twin stains his palms had left behind on the glass. He could see nothing in it now, nothing but the reflection of night and passing cars and a parking lot littered with blown trash.
But when he closed his eyes, he could see more than that.
"Thank you," he said softly.
Then he opened the motel room door and went inside to get some sleep.
* * * * *
I've had this one in process for a while, because I couldn't figure out where to slot it into S5. So ... just say it belongs in S5 "somewhere." Sam and Cas, a motel parking lot, and a need to find something that's been lost for a long time.
He'd felt almost relaxed, out here in the cool, rain-washed air -- until Castiel showed up. Or made himself known, since apparently he'd been here all along.
CHARACTERS: Sam and Castiel, with flashback to baby!Sam, Mary, and wee!Dean
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2797 words
TO KNOW HER
By Carol Davis
"I thought you'd be gone by now," Sam said quietly.
Castiel stood beside him in silence, hands tucked into the pockets of his trenchcoat, gaze fixed on something down at the far end of the motel parking lot. Sam looked over that way and saw nothing but a collection of trash blown up against the low cement bumper at the edge of the asphalt. None of it was identifiable from where he was standing, leaning against the passenger side of the Impala, legs crossed, arms folded across his chest.
He'd felt almost relaxed, out here in the cool, rain-washed air - until Castiel showed up. Or made himself known, since apparently he'd been here all along.
"I had nowhere in particular to be," Cas replied.
"So you decided to hang around." Sam smiled, no humor behind it, and whuffed out a lungful of air. "For what? You figure we're gonna talk strategy? Play checkers? Watch some HBO? I can't speak for Dean, but I gotta tell you, Cas, I'm not feeling really sociable right now."
"I did not expect you to be…sociable."
"What, then?"
The two of them watched an empty M&Ms wrapper blow down the length of the parking lot. When it was gone, Cas said, "I find myself at a loss. Occasionally."
"Really."
"This is not going well."
"Wow. That's a…really remarkable level of insight." Before Castiel could respond, Sam told him, "I'm really not in the mood for whatever it is you had in mind to say. A pep talk? A reminder that things are falling apart a little at a time, but when Lucifer gets up to speed, the shit's really gonna hit the fan? I'm tired, man. I don't need this."
Castiel looked at him for a moment, almost unblinking.
"Could you -" Sam said.
"What?"
"Could you not do that?"
"I was not aware that I was doing anything."
"You're staring. It's - you shouldn't stare. It makes me feel like -" Sam shuddered. "Like those dreams I used to have about showing up for class naked."
"You had an unfulfilled desire to appear in front of your classmates without clothing?"
"I - God, man. No."
"Then I am confused."
"Barnes & Noble," Sam said. "They have books about dream interpretation. Okay? I'm serious, man. I'm not in the mood for this."
Castiel didn't move, just went back to studying trash.
Maybe he thought he'd learn something from it. There was nothing blown up against that bumper that was worth this much attention, Sam thought; at the same time, he was tempted to cross the parking lot so he could see for himself what the hell was over there.
"Dean is -" Cas said after a minute.
"Sleeping."
"I see."
A man and a woman came out of one of the motel rooms, got into a car together, and drove away. Married, maybe, Sam thought. Nothing about their demeanor said they'd been here for any kind of questionable purpose.
But appearances could be…
Naked, he thought, wondering how much Castiel could see inside his head. Inside his heart. There was a lot of crap buried in both that didn't need to be brought out into the light of day - or the bright-white glow of parking lot security lights. It was one thing to share bits of what he was thinking with Dean. Another thing entirely to share it with an angel of the Lord.
"You're not bound by any…like…vow of confidentiality, are you?" he asked.
"I am not."
"That's what I thought."
"Would you like to confess something?"
"No," Sam said. "Not a confession."
"What, then?"
"Do you have any idea how much time we have? Days? Weeks? Months? Are we going to dick around until 2012?"
"2012?"
"Mayan prophecy. End of the world."
"Your guess is as good as mine."
Sam had expected as much. Didn't like it, but it was no surprise. Feeling very much like his old demon-driven nightmares had been easier to slough off than five minutes with Castiel, Sam turned away from the angel's scrutiny and shoved a hand through his hair, using his palm to hold it away from his forehead for a moment.
Why he'd come out here in the first place, he wasn't sure. Dean had faceplanted on the bed less than five minutes after they'd checked in, and had been snoring softly and steadily ever since, leaving Sam free to do whatever he chose: watch TV, do a little research, lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling. Instead, he'd come out outside, to lean against the car and watch traffic straggle past the motel, trying to ignore the familiar pull of lack of sleep on his shoulders, his back, his legs.
And to hang out with Cas.
"Me and Dean," he ventured. "We might not survive this."
"The likelihood is that all of us will fall, Sam. Myself included. It could go badly. It could very likely go…very badly."
"Did you ask Chuck?"
"There are limits to Chuck's abilities."
"Well, that's a bitch, isn't it?" Sam said bitterly. "You'd think he'd have a line on the stuff that matters. Instead of, oh, what I ate for breakfast this morning. And whether Dean picks his nose or not. He does, by the way."
He waited, but Cas didn't pick up the ball. Which wasn't exactly a surprise. Cas had been walking around in human form for more than a year now, but that - and whatever he might have picked up (or stolen) from Jimmy Novak - didn't mean he was worth a shit as a conversationalist.
Or as a source of information.
There were lots of questions hanging in the air these days, and mighty damn few answers. The plus side of it was, that might not go on for much longer.
Nothing might go on for much longer.
And there was nothing like an Apocalypse to make you lay your cards on the table.
"I want something," Sam said.
Castiel quirked an eyebrow.
"I don't ask for much."
"One could argue that you ask for a great deal."
"One thing. That's all."
"I cannot guarantee your brother's safety."
Cas was a blunt son of a bitch - but that was an excellent time-saver. If this had been anyone else, if they'd been anywhere else - if Sam were arguing his case in front of a jury, say - he would have been more careful to lay out his reasoning.
But it is what it is.
So he said simply, "I want to know my mother."
Castiel blinked at that. "I - I cannot take you back in time, Sam. That's no longer possible. I believe I have…shot my wad."
"You -" Sam said, startled.
"Is that the correct phraseology? Dean seems to be particularly fond of it."
"It's - yes. It's…fine."
"I am sorry. The decline in my powers is frustrating for me as well. I occasionally find myself feeling useless," Castiel confessed, ignoring the reaction it got from Sam. "Taking up space. I did not wish to become a whining crybaby - but I suppose there is little to be done about it at this point." He let out a whispering hiss of a breath, and to Sam he looked very much like what anyone in the everyday world would have taken him for: an exhausted, overworked salesman, stopped for the night in a town he wasn't familiar with and facing nothing in the morning that held any appeal for him.
"Life's a bitch," Sam said.
"You did not always think so."
"Yeah," Sam told the angel. "I kind of did."
Castiel turned to Sam and gave him the kind of curious, inscrutable look Sam always associated with dogs.
"No," he said. "You did not."
Gently, for no more than an instant, he brushed his fingertips against Sam's temple.
Then he vanished.
Sam stood where he was for a minute, bothered by the intimacy of the angel's touch, insignificant as it might have been, frowning as he lay his fingers against his temple, telling himself no, it wasn't scarred. Didn't itch. Didn't burn.
With Castiel gone, the parking lot seemed different: either brighter or darker (Sam couldn't decide which). More silent, as if Sam's hearing had been turned down a notch. Definitely emptier. Dean was sleeping only a few yards away, and the cars passing by the motel were close enough that the drivers might have heard him if he had called out, might even have responded, but he felt alone in the bone-deep way he thought he'd left behind him more than a year ago, when Dean came back from Hell.
He turned, finally, intending to walk until he'd tired himself out.
Find a bar, maybe, and have a drink in the company of strangers.
To his right, as he turned, lay the big window of the room he and Dean had booked for the night, a wide, dirty rectangle of glass displaying no light and no motion because Dean had pulled the drapes shut tight before he collapsed into sleep.
For a moment Sam thought he had walked some distance without realizing it, because he wasn't looking at the backside of the room's cheap polyester drapes.
He was looking into a room filled with shadows, a room he recognized because the demon Azazel had taken him there in his dreams. A room that had once meant warmth and safety.
And love.
He lifted a hand and touched the glass half-thinking that it wouldn't be there, because it hadn't been there; his nursery had had small vertical windows, not big horizontal ones like the motel, like every motel he could remember ever staying in, through all the years and all the miles he and Dean and Dad had traveled.
He was wrong, though; the glass was cold and a little greasy, and when he lay his palm against it he could see the ghost image of his touch misting against the glass.
Inside, he could see his crib. Could see his infant self, arms and legs flailing.
He could hear himself baby-chuckling.
He was afraid in a way that made the remains of his dinner bubble halfway up his esophagus that he was looking at that night, the night Azazel had shown him far too much of in a way that had been impossible to erase from his mind's eye ever since, but as he forced himself to keep looking he realized that in there, it wasn't night, it was morning. A cloudy - maybe rainy - one, but morning, and through the windows on the far side of the room he could see the outdoors he remembered from a few years back, from standing out there with Dean.
As if he'd issued a summons, a small, mop-haired figure in Superman pajamas came streaking into the room, stopped just short of colliding with the crib, and shoved a hand between the bars to touch Sam's baby self.
"Sammy!" the little figure crowed.
Then she was there, in jeans and a pretty blouse, barefoot, blonde hair blue-ribboned into a wavy ponytail. She was smiling as she crossed the room, as she crouched beside the crib so she'd be something approximating Dean's height. She, too, pushed a hand through the bars and used it to tickle the pudgy cheek of Sam's baby self.
"He's awake!" Dean informed her, small voice shrill with a crowing kind of joy, if he were announcing the sudden return to consciousness of someone who'd been comatose for the last couple of decades.
"I see that," she said.
"He's smelly."
"Well, I guess we'd better fix that."
She hoisted baby-Sam out of the crib and carried him to the changing table with an "Ew! Icky!" face that was strictly for Dean's benefit - or maybe not. Either way, her smile came back quickly and she was humming as she replaced the offensive diaper with a fresh one. Tickled baby-Sam under his chin. Dressed him in an outfit Dean selected from the options in the dresser drawer. When she was finished, Dean began to reach for him.
Dean couldn't carry him, Sam thought. Couldn't manage that kind of burden.
Then he remembered: Dean had.
Instead of surrendering baby-Sam, she lowered herself to the floor, propped baby-Sam in front of her knees and grinned at Dean as he collapsed cross-legged onto the rug. "I can pick!" Dean chirped. "You said I can pick."
"Then pick."
"I wanna go…"
"Where?"
"Playground! Sammy wants to swing. Right, Sammy?"
"Playground it is, then," she said.
He'd seen her before. Had seen the handful of pictures that remained of her, gathered from one place or another, most of them bent and wrinkled and stained from being well-handled. Had seen her spirit, pensive and brooding, when he and Dean returned to Lawrence that first time.
Had seen her moments away from her death, courtesy of Azazel.
But he had never seen her like this.
He stood and watched, palms pressed against the glass, trying to will himself into passing right on through it, to be able to stand in that room - invisible or not, it didn't matter. He stood and watched as Dean retrieved from somewhere (his own bedroom, probably) a series of plastic trucks and stuffed toys and a gigantic rubber ball, setting each item out in front of baby-Sam for his - what? Approval? He watched his brother romp and dance, sing bits of songs, recite knock-knock jokes, do somersaults on the rug.
Watched his mother smile and laugh at all of it, as if Dean were the court jester and she the queen.
He watched her pick his baby self up from the floor and carry him to the rocking chair in the corner, settle him into her lap, then open her blouse and nestle him against her breast to nurse. After a moment Dean came to stand beside the chair, tousled head resting against their mother's arm, gaze drifting from baby-Sam's face to their mother's, his own small face betraying the kaleidoscope of thought and emotion going on behind it.
Smiling still, their mother kissed the top of Dean's head and murmured something to him that Sam couldn't hear.
Let me, he thought desperately. Please.
But the glass held fast.
Behind him, a voice said, "You should get some sleep."
"I don't want to sleep," Sam said. "I want -"
He leaned into the glass, felt it cold and ungiving against his skin.
Felt it for what it was.
The corners of the window began to reflect, again, what lay behind him: the parking lot, the street, a scattering of stunted trees. His brother's car. The cars and vans and trucks of other people: a collection of strangers.
And a mournful-looking angel in a dirty trenchcoat.
It was nothing more than a window, of course. On the other side of it, on the other side of a set of ugly orange-and-brown, rubber-lined polyester drapes, his brother lay sprawled face-down on a lumpy bed, surrendered to what was more than likely a fitful, restless sleep.
"It's not fair," Sam said.
"That your brother remembers, and you don't?"
Sam drank in a last look (his mother rocking the chair with the bare toes of one foot; his baby self heavy-lidded, tiny hand clenched into a fist; his brother's lips moving, telling a joke or a story or parroting a lullaby), then turned away from the window to look the angel in the face. "None of it," he said. "None of it's fair."
"Life is a bitch," Castiel said quietly, with a small ghost of a nod.
"And that's all you've got to say about it."
"What would you like me to say, Sam?"
It wasn't unkind; it was a simple question, without layers, the kind Sam remembered Pastor Jim asking, years ago and miles away. It was the kind of bare and unadorned question that had prompted him to pray, every day for a considerable span of time - to ask for answers, and if answers were beyond his pay grade, then for something small.
A little peace of mind. That would have been enough.
"Good night," Sam said to the angel. "Just…good night."
Castiel considered that for a moment, then looked past Sam at the motel room window, as if he thought he'd see something there.
Maybe he did see something.
"Good night, then," he said affably.
When the angel was gone, Sam looked again at the window, at the twin stains his palms had left behind on the glass. He could see nothing in it now, nothing but the reflection of night and passing cars and a parking lot littered with blown trash.
But when he closed his eyes, he could see more than that.
"Thank you," he said softly.
Then he opened the motel room door and went inside to get some sleep.
* * * * *