Title: Some Changes are Familiar
Author:
teamabodoRecipient:
spn_summergenRating: Teen
Warnings: Off-screen Original Character Death. Off-screen Death of Children. Rather drastic descriptions of decomposition.
Author's Notes: This is a mash-up of prompts two and three, because somehow that’s what happened.
Word-Count: ~11,000
Summary: The trials had worn deep into Sam's body, leaving him weak and sick enough that he can no longer go on hunts. With little to do other than hold down the fort, Sam has found something for himself on the stretches of time when Sam feels useless and angry. But old patterns die hard, and running doesn’t solve anything
---~---~---
Part 1:
---~---~---
“What the hell is this?” Dean snaps as he throws some brochures down on the kitchen table of the bunker. Sam freezes and stars at the pamphlets, a small part of him amazed that he had kept them, but mostly he only feels dread as he puts his spoon down back into his oatmeal. He knew this day would come, but he still dreads this conversation. Like he had dreaded when Dad came back from a hunt and everything got turned on its head. Like he had dreaded teachers asking him to stay after class when he got caught signing permission slips. Like he had dreaded telling Dean about Stanford. It isn’t like Sam had tried to hide anything, but Sam just… isn’t sure how Dean will feel about this change in Sam’s life.
“Brochures for the local community college,” Sam says slowly. He doesn’t break eye contact from Dean, but in the corner of his eye, Sam can see Kevin making his way into the kitchen. Sam can see him look over at the table curiously at the word ‘college,’ but Dean plows on.
“I can fucking read the damn thing, Sam. I mean why the hell do you have them?”
“Did you go through my room?”
“Sam, who the fuck do you think does your laundry? You need your rest, Sammy. You haven’t been exactly one hundred percent since the trials-“
Sam cuts off Dean’s speech, he’s heard it before, “And I appreciate that you take care of me Dean. I do, I really do.” Sam pushes aside his oatmeal, but doesn’t try to stand. His muscles ache, and today his lungs sometimes feel like they’re burning, and Sam is not going to make this be about how much he can’t do. Sam continues, “But, I can’t just stay here for the rest of my life.”
Dean runs a hand across his mouth, a hand on his hip as he turns away for a moment. He stares at nothing before turning to Sam, his voice stressed as he nearly snarls, “I thought you said the normal life wasn't right for you!"
"But I'm not living a hunting life, Dean!" Sam slaps his hand on the table, and he can see Kevin jump, "I wasn't living any life!"
Dean goes to open his mouth, but Sam rushes to interrupt him.
“It’s just a few college courses, to give me something to do,” Sam explains, but Dean is frustrated and looks freaked out and Sam didn’t know if he had the energy to keep fighting his brother about this.
“You’re going to get better! You can’t just run away to college again, Sam, you can’t just leave again!” Dean is getting louder and Sam can see Kevin pinned in place in the kitchen with a bag of potato chips in his grasp.
“I’m not leaving!” Sam tries again.
“How can I trust that, Sam? When you’re not trying to kill yourself to save the fucking world, you’re running away to a stupid normal life! One way or another, you’re always trying to get away- From hunting, from Dad, from me, from your family, and you don’t think about anyone but yourself! You can’t expect me to be okay with this-”
“You’re right, this is about me,” Sam interrupts, and feels awful when he sees the look on Dean’s face at that, “Dean, I’m not leaving. I’m just trying to have something for myself. I can’t go hunting, I can’t protect you, I can’t fight with you. I can’t keep staying here and feeling sorry for myself! I’ve already spent a year doing that, and I don’t want to spend any more like this!”
And it goes back and forth. Dean is scared and angry and raging while Sam is sick and weary and desperate. Sam knows there isn’t going to be a winner to this fight. Dean isn’t right about this, and Sam knows he hurt Dean and knows that there are still scars from when Sam had left for Stanford.
But he’s not backing down.
Not when, for the first time in so, so long, Sam is starting to feel sort of okay with what he’s doing with himself.
---~---~---
Sam had seen posters up at the local library whenever he had visited the town. He hadn’t given it much thought, just a fond consideration that left his heart hurting from the memories. He hadn’t really needed to go to that library, there were plenty of books, more relevant books, at the bunker, but when Dean would climb into the Impala with Cas (when he wasn’t off trying to further his human experience) or Charlie (when she was in town) or even Kevin (when he took a break from tracking angels and dreams and deciphering the angel tablet) to drive off to a hunt, Sam would be left behind, and the bunker was just so… lifeless.
Not that Sam expected Dean to take him along - Sam was a liability now. He didn’t have the strength to run, didn’t have the energy to fight. And he wasn’t getting better. His physique that he had kept in perfect form for years slowly atrophied and disappeared, more quickly the longer Sam was confined to bed rest by orders or exhaustion. But that didn’t mean that staying behind, with only books for company, was a life that Sam wanted.
So Sam kept going to town, kept stopping by the library to read new books, kept walking by that poster. Sam would stare at it longer and longer, until Sam was too sick to come to the library for months.
He had lain in bed and asked himself, “What am I doing?” but what he meant was, ‘Is this the end of my life?’
When he felt well enough to fetch his computer, Sam looked up the application.
---~---~---
Sam is pulling himself together at the entrance to the bunker, taking a moment to sit on the armrest of a chair to catch his breath before heading out that door to head to make his first class of the day, Myths and Mysticism. He can see Dean frowning at him from the corner of his eye, but Sam isn’t going to say anything. It hurts, it hurts a lot that Dean ha been so weird with him, but if Dean wants to skulk around in the shadows like a creeper, he can jolly well do so.
“Sam.”
Sam didn’t expect Dean to actually do anything this time. He’d been pulling the silent routine for the past two weeks, and had figured that he’d have to be the one to man up and talk about his feelings first.
“Charlie has found some signs of a haunting over in Lexington…”
Spoke too soon.
“You should come with me and we can take care of it. Like we used to.”
Sam sighs as he adjusts his laptop bag over his shoulder. He looks over to where Dean is leaning against the railing of the upper level of the foyer and tries to give him a half smile, “Can’t this weekend. My sociology final is coming up, and I need to study for it.”
The smile fades from Dean’s face as Sam talks and Sam is inwardly cringing. But Dean doesn’t say anything, just turns around and walks away.
Sam watches his brother go, and turns to walk out of the bunker.
---~---~---
Getting the fake identity was easy. Frank had basically taught them how to erase themselves from the system and become new people, and Sam knew he hadn’t forgotten that. No, what was hard was after he faked his diploma and some college transfer credits so he wasn’t starting from scratch. Sam had stared at the online course catalogue for hours, at the few law classes and Sam couldn’t sign up for those.
He didn’t think he could follow that path and remember the nights cramming for tests at Stanford, Jess laughing at him and baking cookies when she didn’t have tests as well. He didn’t want to remember how close he had been to that new life, the life of a lawyer with steady pay, with Jess alongside him with her business degree and maybe a house and kids. He didn’t want to feel the heat of the fire that tore that away from him.
So, no law. Probably never again.
There had been a Greek Mythology course still open, and Sam found himself remembering Artemis and signing up for it, along with an Anthropology course on Ancient Cultures. It was impulsive and Sam sort of regrets it the hours after he has submitted ‘Samuel Campbell’s credit card information.
But it was kind of worth it when he sits down in the class and learns about the cultures that made the monsters that he’s personally faced and killed. Worth it start to piece together why they turned out the way they did.
(Although Sam has also learned that he probably massively insulted Artemis when he said that she had taken Prometheus as a lover. Assuming the myths were true at all. Stories say that vampires can only die with a stake to the heart and Sam knows that’s not true. But, the look in her eyes when he had brought it up has him leaning towards the idea that the myths were right about that one.)
---~---~---
Dean leaves for a hunt a few weeks later - an actual hunt, not just a haunting a few hours away - and Sam is on break until the following quarter. He still has one more week left of break, and Sam spends it napping in the bunker’s library, going through a stack of books he’s checked out from the Lebanon library. He’s coming to realize that murder mystery’s aren’t really his thing anymore, but he’s rather enjoying literature from the 19th century and modern young adult. Maybe he should sign up for a literature class next quarter, or the one after that.
He’s thinking it over when his phone vibrates, an uncomfortable sensation in his chest, and Sam grabs it in case it’s a text from Dean.
It’s not. It’s an e-mail from his Myths and Mysticism professor.
Oh god. He’s never gotten an e-mail from a professor after he’s finished his courses with them. Is he failing the class? Did he do badly with the subject matter, did his sick leave absences pull his grade down? Is he being expelled? Did they find out his entire campus identity is fake and he’s really a national felon that could go to prison for the remainder of his adult life?
Although, his Professor Varela probably wouldn’t be the one e-mailing him about expulsion or his criminal record. Sam would probably meet the armed SWAT team sent to take him in before he received an e-mail from the college.
Sam opens the e-mail.
As he reads the e-mail, he starts grinning uncontrollably. One of the professors’ most impressive students? One of the firmest grasps on the topic he has seen in years? Sam feels flush as he reads it and he can’t stop grinning. He figured he’d nail Myths and Mysticism, he’d been studying for it all his life, but his professor is bringing up his other anthropology courses, and how he had talked to other professors about Sam’s academia…
Sam felt proud of himself.
Professor Varela proposes that Sam come to his office sometime the following quarter so they can discuss his future and potential universities that had a more impressive anthropology program than the community college and Sam hesitates. He hadn’t actually been thinking about the future. He hadn’t been thinking about a degree. This had just been for fun to keep himself from feeling useless when he’s alone in the bunker.
But…
They could just talk about it. He could see if he even has options.
There’s lead in his gut, and a voice accusing him of leaving in his head, but Sam whispers to himself, “It’s just an advising meeting.”
---~---~---
And they did talk. They talked about the anthropology program, and the associates degree and anthropology concentration, and they talked about universities on the east coast, and Sam wondered how he fell into a world where good things like this were falling into place. He figured he should look up they symptoms of being trapped in a djinn dream, because he’s not going to ask Dean if his life is going too well.
Especially when Dean is still avoiding him, and trying to make up for it by sending him gory photos of dead bodies and detailed commentary on the hunt he’s working on and partly ignoring the texts Sam sends in reply if they aren’t on topic. Sam had wondered if this was some sort of guilt trip to get Sam back into hunting, but it didn’t really work when Garth kept hooking Dean up with fellow hunters to work with and keep Dean safe.
Sam couldn’t do that anymore, not when he was putting serious inquire into a cane, and fellow students helped him carry books when he was on campus because sometimes his muscles ached too much to do it himself. So he was not going to feel awful about letting Dean go off into the world hunting vampires and werewolves and demons with strangers more often than friends. He couldn’t do anything about it.
He didn’t bring up the offer for an internship to Dean.
---~---~---
“Come in,” Sam calls out when someone knocks on the door to his bedroom. He is going over papers to be graded for the anthropology department and doesn’t bother looking up when the door opened, and is surprised to hear Kevin clear his throat. As a general rule, Kevin avoids everyone if he can. He had almost killed himself trying to translate the tablets to lock down Hell, and then the Winchesters backed out, so it is kind of uncomfortable to be in the same room as him.
But, the bunker is one of the safest places in the world, and Kevin doesn’t have anyone else left, so he’s going to stick around for a while.
Kevin coughs when Sam stares at him and shuffles his feet before starting, “Sam? What’s going on with you and Dean?”
Sam looks back down at the stack of worksheets for Anthro 101 and stares at the questions, “You mean…”
“How the two of you can’t ever be in the same room anymore without the uncomfortable staring and stilted conversation, yeah that’s what I mean,” Kevin says. He crosses his arms and stares down at Sam, “Is this really all about college?”
Sam knows what he is getting at, the way Dean never lets Sam out of his sight when he is at the bunker, how Dean grows agitated on days when Sam goes to his college, that Sam hides in his room or a quiet part of the bunker to do his studying, homework or TA work. Sam knows that’s what Kevin means, but Sam doesn’t want to play that game.
“Yeah, it’s just about college.”
---~---~---
Sam actually made friends at his college. Other anthropology students, all with dreams of moving out of the nearby towns to go to a four-year university. They all were driven and excited about anthropology and Sam could only follow along in the peripheral. He wasn’t going to leave Lebanon, and had made an agreement with the anthropology department to TA to keep him in the field, but it was so hard when he would sit down with his Anthro 310 study group and he would lose hours of his day talking about the rise of civilization and the ways cultures have spread and receded and grew and fell and changed.
He could talk with people about interesting subjects and history and cultures and mysticism and receive feedback and more information and Sam loved it! He didn’t feel so weird knowing the things he knows because he can talk with people who are just as interested!
But… he knew they were all going to leave. They all had larger dreams than a small town community college with only two 300 level anthropology courses, and Sam had moments when he lay in bed at night or on his sick days and wondered:
“Is this it for me?”
Because sometimes the boundaries of the bunker and Smith County felt like a cage and he was rotting inside.
---~---~---
Sam is going through the kitchen making up that week’s grocery list when Dean comes stomping in from his latest hunt. Sam calls out a greeting, but Dean just stomps off to his room to dump his gear, Cas trailing in softly from behind. Sam can hear his limp that stuck around after he walked from Canada to Kansas when the angels fell. Sam thinks it’s psychosomatic, because when he needs to run, he can, but when he has to think, Sam figures a trauma of watching his family burn around him as he desperately tried to find his only friends in the world when he’s lost and human had to show up somehow.
Still means he can go hunting with Dean. Thank God someone Sam knows can actually watch his brother’s back.
Sam hears Cas limp to his room though, and Sam figures Cas isn’t going to come out again for the night. Sam sighs quietly to himself and rubs a hand over his eyes. He’s starting to feel tired, and he should probably sit down and go over the list from memory. They hadn’t gone through that much sugar since the last grocery trip, right?
Sam can hear Dean walking through the halls, and tries not to make any sudden movements when Dean comes into the kitchen. Sam continues to go down his checklist of cooking staples and farmers’ market food, and Dean heads straight for the fridge for a beer.
It’s quiet for a few minutes, the uncomfortable sound of both brothers leaning against the counters while they kept their hands busy to try and not beat a dead horse. Sam looked up from his list to see Dean look away and Sam feels a strained cord in him fall apart.
“Dean, what’s your problem with me going to college?”
Dean groans and refuses to make eye contact as he throws his head back, “Sam, will you shut up about your goddamn college?”
“I don’t think I should. You keep assuming I’m going to leave just because I’m in college again, when I’m still sticking around. I’m not going to let you being an avoidant ass-”
“Are you joking! I’m just acknowledging you have a pattern-!”
“-fulfill some self-fulfilling prophecy you’ve come up with because Dean, I’m not planning on leaving!”
“God, Sam, it doesn’t really matter does it.”
“Yeah, it does. It does, because we’ve got a home, we’re trying to live our own lives, and it’s only going to work if we talk to each other!” Sam knows he’s repeating the same lines over and over, and he takes a deep breath to try and come in at a different angle. He looks over at Dean to see him trying to finish off his beer.
Sam leans more heavily against the counter and takes another shaky breath as his spine tries to settle properly. He looks around the room, looking for something to say. But it’s not going to be something easy, not for something wired into his brother’s brain.
“One of my professors has been trying to talk me into going to a four year university. Says I’ve got a knack for anthropology and that I could do interesting things in the field,” Sam says and can almost feel Dean tense and freak out next to him, “And I was really tempted. I like feeling useful, and Dean, I haven’t been useful lately. I can’t go into the field like you can, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life waiting in the castle for you or Cas or Charlie or even Kevin to need something. I don’t want to live like that anymore dean.
“But I turned him down. I turned him down because I didn’t want to leave my family behind. I don’t want to try to be normal because that would mean pushing you behind and I can’t do that when…” Sam tries to find the words and runs a hand through his hair, “I mean, we’ve fought against destiny to try and keep together as a family, and I can’t just walk away from that. Not when I know that we wouldn’t be even in the same worlds anymore.
“But I can’t just be a cheerleader for you, Dean. I need to try and do my own things. And I know why you don’t trust me to stick around. I know it looks like I’m looking for a better offer, but I’m trying to tell you… to show you… that that’s not actually happening. I’m not abandoning ship. I just… want to change directions.”
Dean is quiet. He’s not drinking from his beer and Sam believes it means he’s chewing on what Sam says. But Sam doesn’t want to wait on Dean. Sam doesn’t want to feel this constant pressure to get Dean’s approval and Sam isn’t going to knuckle under about this.
Sam pushes himself off the counter, leaving the shopping list on the counter and says, “I’m going grocery shopping tomorrow. Add whatever we need to the list,” before walking to his own room.
---~---~---
Cas didn’t stay very long. He usually doesn’t. He felt the restraints of Kansas more firmly than Sam ever could. Cas was a celestial being that was not limited to a single dimension, let alone a single arbitrary political landmark. So Cas would stick around for a week, or a month, it depends on how tired he is, and when Dean asks, but he always follows it up by leaving.
Every time, Sam thought about asking Cas to stay.
Every time, Sam saw the conflicted look on Cas’s face as he looked around the foyer, and a little bit of him knew that Cas wasn’t ready for that yet. He hadn’t made this choice, and needed to figure it out at his own pace. Even though the bunker felt a little more empty when Dean didn’t have his best friend to laugh with and fill the hallways and endless rooms.
This time, when Dean was avoiding seeing Cas off, Sam tried to say something. He told him that they’d always let him in, always let him stay. That he could still do something with himself if he stuck around. Tried to tell Cas that leaving didn’t have to be the only choice.
Sam had no idea what stuck, but Castiel squeezed his shoulder before he left.
---~---~---
Sam is sitting in his car in the parking lot staring at his phone. Dean hasn’t texted or called in a four days. While Dean’s been almost bipolar in his behavior towards his brother, he always made at least a minimum effort to stay in contact when Dean was on a hunt. They always check in. Hell, Cas and Charlie always check in.
Sam can remember his brother at Stanford, can remember Dad going missing and Sam does not want that to happen again.
Not again.
Staring at the phone, Sam thumbs over to his contacts and rolls down to the ‘G’s and hits dial.
“Heya, Sam!” Garth picks up after the third ring.
“Garth, what case did you put Dean on?” Sam asks, drumming a finger against his steering wheel.
“Dean? I sent him to Omaha, Nebraska with ah…” Sam can hear Garth doing something on the other end of the phone, and Sam stares blankly out the windshield. He wished he is looking at something other than bushes, every second seemed to stretch for weeks, “… With Ralph Williams, a hunter from Iowa. Looked like a standard werewolf case.”
“Has he checked in with you in the past four days?”
“Uh, no, no he hasn’t. Is something up?”
Sam rubs a hand over his eyes and lets out a shaky breath, “Dean hasn’t checked in with me since Thursday, and Dean always checks in. I know I know,” Sam rushes when Garth makes a sound as if to reassure, “It’s only been four days. But Dean has checked in with me every day for the past two years, ever since the… the trials. He’s been late before, but not by a week.”
Garth is quiet on the other line, then Sam can hear him sigh, a ragged, tired sigh. “I’ll e-mail you the information I gave Dean, and anything else he sent me. There’s still two days left of a the full moon, so while you’re there, check the newspapers to see if Dean and Williams took care of the werewolf. Do you want me to track down Cas and send him your way?”
Sam shakes his head, then remembers to say “No, you don’t have to bother Cas.” He is probably out of the country, he’s been talking about it a lot the past couple months. Cas doesn’t like being trapped, and doesn’t think the continental United States is too small. “Thanks a lot, Garth.”
Sam really hopes that this is nothing.
---~---~---
It wasn’t like Sam was jumping the gun about this. He had tried calling Dean the day after Dean hadn’t checked in, because it’s not the first time that Dean gets drunk and forgets to check in. Sam just has to try calling then. He always tries to call Dean. But Dean doesn’t always pick up right away, can’t always, so at first Sam thought nothing of it.
Then Dean didn’t pick up the third day.
Sam tried to reason with himself that Dean was a grown ass man and could take care of himself it was fine. Sure, Dean’s been putting a strain on things because he’s scared and following a self-fulfilling prophecy about how Sam is going to leave him behind. It hasn’t been easy, but Dean’s been… He won’t say great, but it’s been better.
So when the next day Dean hadn’t picked up, Sam’s pretty damn sure that something’s wrong.
He drives himself down to Omaha after he calls in ill to his professors and study group, and after Garth sends him a dossier on the hunt Dean was after and what motel and room he’d got a month long claim on. He tries to ignore how this feels exactly like when Dad went missing, because Dad ended up dead at the end of that and Dean is not going to be dead.
Not if Sam can fucking help it.
---~---~---
Part 2 ---~---~---