Work Text:
This is the story of Sam Winchester.
It is the story of a child who never had a choice, never had a home, and only had a backseat, a Dean and a John.
He is the boy who loved many but was loved by few, the boy with the demon blood, the boy who sacrificed himself for a world he never even felt a part of.
When he is six months old, there is the smell of smoke and charred flesh, a mother he will never know burning on the ceiling. His father drinks his sorrows away with whiskey, and his brother takes on the burden of raising him. When Sam utters his first word he doesn’t say “dada,” he says “Dean.” As a five year old he is antsy, always asking too many questions, because he never gets any answers. He constantly begs Dean to tell him where their father is, but his brother only replies with “You don’t want to know.”
On his eighth Christmas he finds out that the monsters under his bed and in his nightmares are real, and that his father kills them. His family, his blood, has been keeping a secret from him. If it were up to them, Sam probably never would have found out, would have lived in the dark forever. Every night, before they go to bed, Dean promises him it’ll be okay in the morning, and every night, Sam stupidly hopes it will, but it isn’t, it’s never really okay again after that.
His adolescence is filled with screaming matches with his father and various motel rooms. He wakes up every morning shaking from nightmares, checking his fingernails to see if there’s blood under them. Whenever his family comes home they are bleeding and scarred, sometimes with just scrapes and other times with large gashes. After a while, Sam stops expecting them to come home. He dreams of college in California, sunny skies and golden skin, dreams of getting out of this life, dreams of being normal. The letter is white and pristine, and he is almost afraid to touch it, to sully it, because this is his whole everything hanging in the balance. He tears open his future with eager hands and a pounding heart; his eyes widen as they read, Samuel Winchester, we are happy to accept—
The response he gets from his teachers and fellow classmates is: “Congratulations, Sam.”
The response he gets from his brother is: “I’m proud of you, Sammy.”
The response he gets from his father is, “If you walk out that door, you don’t ever come back.”