FIC: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood (Dean/Lisa, Dean/Sam, PG-13)
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Introduction
The most common interpretation of Robert Frost’s 1916 poem The Road Not Taken reads it as a celebration of individuality and non-conformism. Such a reading focuses primarily on the poem’s fourth stanza. Its inspirational message is that readers should take risks with their lives - even if it means going against the grain - and that these risks will pay off in the long term.
l.
The thing about choices is you don’t always even know you’re making them.
Dean will knock on Lisa’s front door. It will be late, but she will let him in anyway. He will tell her that he loves her and he will mean it, and she will say that he is late, but she will let him make love to her anyway.
Dean will drink too much Jack Daniels. He will feel like he is drowning for months, but Lisa is a strong swimmer and she will help him stay afloat. Eventually she will teach Dean to doggy paddle all on his own.
Dean will take a job as a mechanic, but he will find it gives him too much time to think and not enough to do. He will see an ad in the paper and will train to be a paramedic. Though it was nothing he imagined himself doing, Dean will be good at his job. He has steady hands, can stay calm under pressure, and isn’t afraid of blood. He likes saving people.
The townspeople will think he is strange at first, but he is good at blending in and when he marries Lisa they will consider him one of their own. Dean will not get married in a church, and he will ask Lisa to keep her maiden name.
They will keep a picture of Sam and Dean on the mantle. One of Lisa’s friends will own a graphic design company, and she will blow up an old photo-booth picture they once took at the Grand Canyon to ten times its original size. She will even fix it up so it looks less grainy and the color is less faded.
Dean will be a devoted husband, and an excellent father. He will take Ben to baseball games and choir practice, and they will go fishing nearly every weekend in the summer. He will not teach Ben to shoot a gun. Dean will cry tears of joy when Lisa tells him she is pregnant.
Dean will never pray. But when Lisa goes into labor nearly a month early Dean will look up at the sky and say “Please, Cas.” The baby will be healthy and perfect, with Dean’s green eyes and Lisa’s dark hair. It will be Lisa who suggests they name their daughter Sam. Lisa likes gender-neutral names. She will go by Sam Braeden, not Sam Winchester. Ben will try to protect his little sister, though more often than not she will end up protecting him.
Dean will drive a mini-van, though he will never sell the Impala and he will make sure to drive her twice a year: once on his brother’s birthday and the other on the day he saved the world. Dean will refuse to think of it as Sam’s death day. At first he will go alone on these drives, but eventually Lisa will come with him. They will stop at some greasy diner and Dean will tell stories about hunting with Sam. Lisa will never grow tired of them, even as the years pass and they start to repeat.
Once their daughter has left for college, Dean and Lisa will travel. Dean will hold Lisa’s hand as the airplane takes off because flying makes him nervous. She will tell knock-knock jokes to distract him. It will be the first time Dean has ever left the country. He will wonder why he’d never gone before.
Dean will have four grandchildren, three girls and one boy. None of them will be called Winchester. They will visit their grandparents’ cottage in the summer. Dean will look forward to it all year. The cottage will all but overflow with children for the month, and they will all pick blueberries and watch the fireworks together.
Dean and Lisa will die within two years of each other, of natural causes. They will be cremated. Their ashes will be buried side by side in Cicero’s local non-denominational cemetery. Ben will inherit the house, Sam the Impala. The children will have moved away long ago, but they will visit and leave fresh flowers for their parents. Dean’s grave marker will read Beloved father, husband and brother.
ll.
The thing about choices is that sometimes you don’t even really have them.
Sam will knock on Lisa’s front door. Though it will be late, Dean will still be awake. He will answer the door with a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand and a gun tucked into the back of his jeans. Dean will know Sam could be a demon, but he will hug him anyway. Sam will not be a demon. Dean will grab his keys. He will leave the Jack Daniels behind. They will never look back.
At the motel that night Dean will ask Sam what it was like in Hell and Sam will answer him. Sam will cry and Dean will hold him and kiss him on the mouth because it feels like the right thing to do. Sam will stop crying and they will make love. Over bacon, eggs and bad diner coffee the next morning they will decide being together is worth going to Hell again. They will not feel guilty.
They will hunt. In the South they will be Sam and Dean, brothers and FBI agents / doctors / insurance investigators / clergymen. In the northern states they will be Dean Winchester and Sam Campbell, lovers and FBI agents / doctors / insurance adjusters and even occasionally clergymen. If anyone notices a resemblance they will say they come from the same small town, that they practically grew up together. They will stay as close to their truth as possible. They will hold hands in public.
Sam will be bitten by a werewolf. The night it happens Dean will lock them both in Bobby’s panic room. He will bring a gun loaded with two silver bullets. Sam will ask Dean why he needs two and Dean will say he will either need neither or both. Sam will not argue. Dean will never pray, but he will look up at the sky and beg “Cas, please.” The sun will rise and set and rise and set again. Sam will not transform.
Sam and Dean will inherit Bobby’s house and junkyard. They will not spend very much time there at first because they will be so busy hunting, but they will enjoy having a home base. Though sometimes it will be as long as six months before they return, they will always make sure to keep the place in good shape. They will fill the house with the things they collect on their travels - weapons, artifacts, old books and photo-booth pictures taken at cheesy tourist attractions.
Dean will see a doctor for his bad back and will be advised that his cholesterol is dangerously high. He will complain about having to change his diet, but he will occasionally let Sam order him a salad. Eventually, Sam will learn how to cook and they will start to stay in motels with kitchen suites. When the doctor recommends getting more exercise, Dean will wink suggestively at Sam.
As they get older, Sam and Dean will spend more and more time at Bobby’s. They will help to organize a network of other hunters, picking up where Bobby had left off. Sam will collect probably the world’s largest library of dangerous books. Dean will repair old cars and donate them to the younger hunters who pass through for advice or information. He will like that fixing cars gives him time to think.
Sam and Dean will chase a witches’ coven all the way to Vancouver. It will be the first time either of them has left the country. There will not be time to drive before someone could die, so they will take an airplane. Sam will hold Dean’s hand during takeoff. They will join the Mile High Club in the tiny chrome-filled lavatory and Dean will decide that he’s not so afraid of flying after all. In Canada they will consider getting married, but will decide that what they have is too big to fit on a piece of paper.
Sam and Dean will live almost three times longer than either of them expected they would. When no one hears from them for a few weeks, one of the guys will stop by to check in. He will find them in the Impala. There will be no autopsy, so no one will know exactly how they died. Their hunter’s journal will leave detailed instructions on caring for the house and the car.
The hunter will burn their bodies together, over the same fire. They will have no grave to mark, but the hunter will preserve the initials they carved into their car as children - S.W. + D.W.
Epilogue
But there is a second, ironic reading of the poem often favored by critics. This second interpretation focuses more closely on the second and third stanzas of the poem, which seem to indicate that there is little actual difference between Frost’s two roads because they are described as “really about the same.” The “difference” referred to in the last stanza is thus largely imagined by Frost’s traveler, in retrospect. The original choice between the two made little or no difference at all, or at the very least he could not have known in advance which path he should have taken. The traveler's words to the contrary are simply rationalizations made after the fact. Moreover, some critics point out that it is left unsaid whether the difference the traveler claims his choice of roads made is positive or negative.
In a letter referring to the poem, Frost himself said "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem - very tricky."
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Introduction
The most common interpretation of Robert Frost’s 1916 poem The Road Not Taken reads it as a celebration of individuality and non-conformism. Such a reading focuses primarily on the poem’s fourth stanza. Its inspirational message is that readers should take risks with their lives - even if it means going against the grain - and that these risks will pay off in the long term.
l.
The thing about choices is you don’t always even know you’re making them.
Dean will knock on Lisa’s front door. It will be late, but she will let him in anyway. He will tell her that he loves her and he will mean it, and she will say that he is late, but she will let him make love to her anyway.
Dean will drink too much Jack Daniels. He will feel like he is drowning for months, but Lisa is a strong swimmer and she will help him stay afloat. Eventually she will teach Dean to doggy paddle all on his own.
Dean will take a job as a mechanic, but he will find it gives him too much time to think and not enough to do. He will see an ad in the paper and will train to be a paramedic. Though it was nothing he imagined himself doing, Dean will be good at his job. He has steady hands, can stay calm under pressure, and isn’t afraid of blood. He likes saving people.
The townspeople will think he is strange at first, but he is good at blending in and when he marries Lisa they will consider him one of their own. Dean will not get married in a church, and he will ask Lisa to keep her maiden name.
They will keep a picture of Sam and Dean on the mantle. One of Lisa’s friends will own a graphic design company, and she will blow up an old photo-booth picture they once took at the Grand Canyon to ten times its original size. She will even fix it up so it looks less grainy and the color is less faded.
Dean will be a devoted husband, and an excellent father. He will take Ben to baseball games and choir practice, and they will go fishing nearly every weekend in the summer. He will not teach Ben to shoot a gun. Dean will cry tears of joy when Lisa tells him she is pregnant.
Dean will never pray. But when Lisa goes into labor nearly a month early Dean will look up at the sky and say “Please, Cas.” The baby will be healthy and perfect, with Dean’s green eyes and Lisa’s dark hair. It will be Lisa who suggests they name their daughter Sam. Lisa likes gender-neutral names. She will go by Sam Braeden, not Sam Winchester. Ben will try to protect his little sister, though more often than not she will end up protecting him.
Dean will drive a mini-van, though he will never sell the Impala and he will make sure to drive her twice a year: once on his brother’s birthday and the other on the day he saved the world. Dean will refuse to think of it as Sam’s death day. At first he will go alone on these drives, but eventually Lisa will come with him. They will stop at some greasy diner and Dean will tell stories about hunting with Sam. Lisa will never grow tired of them, even as the years pass and they start to repeat.
Once their daughter has left for college, Dean and Lisa will travel. Dean will hold Lisa’s hand as the airplane takes off because flying makes him nervous. She will tell knock-knock jokes to distract him. It will be the first time Dean has ever left the country. He will wonder why he’d never gone before.
Dean will have four grandchildren, three girls and one boy. None of them will be called Winchester. They will visit their grandparents’ cottage in the summer. Dean will look forward to it all year. The cottage will all but overflow with children for the month, and they will all pick blueberries and watch the fireworks together.
Dean and Lisa will die within two years of each other, of natural causes. They will be cremated. Their ashes will be buried side by side in Cicero’s local non-denominational cemetery. Ben will inherit the house, Sam the Impala. The children will have moved away long ago, but they will visit and leave fresh flowers for their parents. Dean’s grave marker will read Beloved father, husband and brother.
ll.
The thing about choices is that sometimes you don’t even really have them.
Sam will knock on Lisa’s front door. Though it will be late, Dean will still be awake. He will answer the door with a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand and a gun tucked into the back of his jeans. Dean will know Sam could be a demon, but he will hug him anyway. Sam will not be a demon. Dean will grab his keys. He will leave the Jack Daniels behind. They will never look back.
At the motel that night Dean will ask Sam what it was like in Hell and Sam will answer him. Sam will cry and Dean will hold him and kiss him on the mouth because it feels like the right thing to do. Sam will stop crying and they will make love. Over bacon, eggs and bad diner coffee the next morning they will decide being together is worth going to Hell again. They will not feel guilty.
They will hunt. In the South they will be Sam and Dean, brothers and FBI agents / doctors / insurance investigators / clergymen. In the northern states they will be Dean Winchester and Sam Campbell, lovers and FBI agents / doctors / insurance adjusters and even occasionally clergymen. If anyone notices a resemblance they will say they come from the same small town, that they practically grew up together. They will stay as close to their truth as possible. They will hold hands in public.
Sam will be bitten by a werewolf. The night it happens Dean will lock them both in Bobby’s panic room. He will bring a gun loaded with two silver bullets. Sam will ask Dean why he needs two and Dean will say he will either need neither or both. Sam will not argue. Dean will never pray, but he will look up at the sky and beg “Cas, please.” The sun will rise and set and rise and set again. Sam will not transform.
Sam and Dean will inherit Bobby’s house and junkyard. They will not spend very much time there at first because they will be so busy hunting, but they will enjoy having a home base. Though sometimes it will be as long as six months before they return, they will always make sure to keep the place in good shape. They will fill the house with the things they collect on their travels - weapons, artifacts, old books and photo-booth pictures taken at cheesy tourist attractions.
Dean will see a doctor for his bad back and will be advised that his cholesterol is dangerously high. He will complain about having to change his diet, but he will occasionally let Sam order him a salad. Eventually, Sam will learn how to cook and they will start to stay in motels with kitchen suites. When the doctor recommends getting more exercise, Dean will wink suggestively at Sam.
As they get older, Sam and Dean will spend more and more time at Bobby’s. They will help to organize a network of other hunters, picking up where Bobby had left off. Sam will collect probably the world’s largest library of dangerous books. Dean will repair old cars and donate them to the younger hunters who pass through for advice or information. He will like that fixing cars gives him time to think.
Sam and Dean will chase a witches’ coven all the way to Vancouver. It will be the first time either of them has left the country. There will not be time to drive before someone could die, so they will take an airplane. Sam will hold Dean’s hand during takeoff. They will join the Mile High Club in the tiny chrome-filled lavatory and Dean will decide that he’s not so afraid of flying after all. In Canada they will consider getting married, but will decide that what they have is too big to fit on a piece of paper.
Sam and Dean will live almost three times longer than either of them expected they would. When no one hears from them for a few weeks, one of the guys will stop by to check in. He will find them in the Impala. There will be no autopsy, so no one will know exactly how they died. Their hunter’s journal will leave detailed instructions on caring for the house and the car.
The hunter will burn their bodies together, over the same fire. They will have no grave to mark, but the hunter will preserve the initials they carved into their car as children - S.W. + D.W.
Epilogue
But there is a second, ironic reading of the poem often favored by critics. This second interpretation focuses more closely on the second and third stanzas of the poem, which seem to indicate that there is little actual difference between Frost’s two roads because they are described as “really about the same.” The “difference” referred to in the last stanza is thus largely imagined by Frost’s traveler, in retrospect. The original choice between the two made little or no difference at all, or at the very least he could not have known in advance which path he should have taken. The traveler's words to the contrary are simply rationalizations made after the fact. Moreover, some critics point out that it is left unsaid whether the difference the traveler claims his choice of roads made is positive or negative.
In a letter referring to the poem, Frost himself said "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem - very tricky."