And The Memories I Never Can Escape
Title: And The Memories I Never Can Escape
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Lisa, Amelia, Ben, Sam, Castiel, Dean.
Pairings: past Lisa/Ben and Amelia/Sam
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers through S8 to be safe. References the tie in novel One Year Gone, although you don't have to have read that to understand the fic.
Summary: Lisa has no idea she was once in a relationship with a man named Dean Winchester. Yet when she moves to a new town and becomes friends with new neighbour Amelia and hears the story of Amelia's lost love Sam Winchester, memories begin to resurface.
Moving to Texas had been intended to be a fresh start for Lisa, a chance to shut the doors on the memory of her old life, the intruders who broke into her home and killed Matt, of the car crash that had landed her and Ben in hospital, leaving neither of them with any memory of what happened.
This place wasn’t anything like her old neighbourhood, where everyone knew everyone else’s business. Most people kept themselves to themselves round here, and the only person Lisa had really got to know was a neighbour called Amelia, recently single again after having split up with her husband Don.
One day, Lisa had asked Amelia what had been the reason for her breakup with Don, whether it had been anything to do with the amount of time he spent working away. “Well, there was a period of time when I didn’t even know that he was still alive,” Amelia began.
Lisa whistled. “That would do it.”
“But it’s not that simple,” Amelia admitted. “When I thought Don was dead…there was another guy. Sam was his name, Sam Winchester.”
“Sam…” Lisa repeated. For a moment, the name sounded familiar, although she couldn’t think why; Lisa had never known anyone called Winchester.
“He’d come into the surgery where I work, he’d hit a dog and wanted me to treat it, and at first I really didn’t like him, but as I got to know him, I realised he was the only person who really understood what I was going through at the time. He’d just lost his brother, you see, and he’d spent practically every day with him for years. His brother was called Dean.”
The words hit Lisa like a punch to the stomach, although she couldn’t explain why. Why would she feel such a sense of loss over this Dean Winchester, a man she had never even met?
Lisa would ordinarily have minded as Dean and Ben crashed in through the kitchen door bringing mud into the house, but right now, she didn’t care. It was worth it to see Dean smiling and laughing with Ben, in a way she had thought at one point she was never going to see.
He still had the nightmares, although he wouldn’t admit this to Lisa and she hadn’t pushed the issue, He would tell her when he was ready. She’d be there to listen when he finally opened up.
“Guess what?” Ben burst out as soon as they walked in. “Football tryouts are next week and I have a chance of making the team!”
“You should have seen him, Lisa, he played really well out there,” Dean replied.
“Sam thinks I stand a really good chance of getting in,” Ben went on, and Dean froze. “What did you say?”
“Sam Arnold, you know, the guy I was talking to when you met me from practice? He’s the captain of the team.” Grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl, Ben ran off to watch his favourite show.
“It was stupid, I know,” Dean said before Lisa could open her mouth. “Sam’s such a common name, I’m always going to come across it somewhere.”
“It’s going to take time, Dean,” Lisa replied. “But don’t bottle it up. Any time you want to talk about it, I’ll be here to listen.”
Lisa awoke, shot straight upright in bed. What the hell was that? It was almost as if she was living the life that Amelia had talked about, except that she had it backwards. It had been Sam Amelia was with, not Dean. Why would she be dreaming about someone she’d never even met?
And yet some of it had actually happened. She remembered Ben’s excitement the day he first found out he had a chance of making the football team, and Ben really did have a friend called Sam Arnold who was the football team captain at his old school. But the thing with Dean…It hadn’t happened. Lisa had never known this guy. Why would he have been there? But it had felt so real.
She got out of bed, made her way to the bathroom, splashed some water on her face. As she glanced at her reflection in the mirror, Lisa realised that her nose was bleeding.
“This might seem kind of a strange question,” Lisa began, “and do tell me if you think I’m crossing a line, but do you still have a photograph of Sam?”
If Amelia thought the question odd, she didn’t show it. “I have this one,” she said, looking through her phone until she came to a picture of Sam with the dog. “He always used to say he’d never even wanted that dog. Then one day I came home earlier than expected, caught him playing with him, and took this when he wasn’t looking. I don’t know why I even kept it. Maybe if I hadn’t, Don and I would still be together. He found it on my phone and asked me why I’d kept it on there when we were trying to make a go of it. That was the beginning of the end for us.”
Lisa reached out and took the phone from Amelia, looked at the photo of Sam Winchester.
Lisa had barely noticed Sam Winchester the first time she ever saw him, because she had just been so focused on the fact that he and Dean had brought Ben home to her and the changelings had all gone. But the way Dean talked about him so much in the year they had been together, she felt as though she did know him well, from the story of the look of disgust on his face the Christmas when their father hadn’t come home for Christmas and Dean had stolen someone else’s presents for him only to discover that they were a girl’s presents, to the time when Sam had driven Dean crazy talking about some imaginary guy named Sully, and she wished she had had the opportunity to get to know him better.
Yet the day when Sam had returned to Dean after a year of being presumed dead, Lisa found herself wishing he never had, for she had grown to love the life she and Ben were leading with Dean, and she knew that now Sam was back, Dean would never be able to turn his back on hunting, that there would be the long absences from Dean that Dean had described growing up with himself from his father, which wasn’t what Lisa wanted for Ben, or for herself. And she knew that things could never be the same again.
“Are you okay?” Amelia asked as Lisa thrust the phone back at her. “You kind of went a funny colour there.”
“I’m fine,” Lisa replied, knowing it wasn’t true, but also not knowing how she could ever explain that to Amelia. “And his brother, Dean?”
Amelia looked at her oddly. “No, I told you I never met him. I think I saw an old picture Sam had once, but it wasn’t a great picture. He didn’t look a lot like Sam, shorter than him, blonde hair. I’ll tell you who he looked like, Eric Brady on Days of our Lives.”
How could this be? If Lisa really had never met Dean Winchester, why did it sound like the man in her visions looked so much like him?
Ben was working on some homework when Lisa got back, so she forced a smile for his sake and asked him what he was working on.
“It’s my history project,” Ben began. “About the Salem witch trials.”
Lisa read over his shoulder. “Interesting!” she exclaimed. “Remember that time we went to Salem? Maybe there was something there that will help you with this.”
“What are you talking about?” Ben asked. “We’ve never been to Salem.”
“Sure we have.” Lisa replied. “You were about eleven, don’t you remember? You had a crush on that waitress, and I got annoyed with Dean for disappearing off when we got there, so I made him take you on that pirate tour you wanted to go on.”
Ben stared at her. “Who the hell is Dean?”
Lisa reeled, stepped away from him in shock. Why had she just said that? None of that had happened, she knew it hadn’t, and yet she could remember it, remember so many things: Dean and Sam at Ben’s birthday, Dean drinking with her neighbour Sid, her persuading Dean out of the spare room after Sam was missing, presumed dead… It wasn’t possible, yet these images were racing through her mind.
Ben was still staring at her. “Are you okay?”
Lisa ran.
“Lisa?” Amelia stared in shock as Lisa crashed through her door.
“I need to understand, and you might be the only person who can help me. Why do I keep seeing Dean Winchester, keep having memories of a life with him when all I know of him is the little you’ve told me?”
“Dean? I don’t know, I don’t understand…” Amelia began. “Lisa? Your nose, it’s bleeding, and you look really pale, maybe you should sit down, tell me from the beginning…Lisa?”
But Lisa had collapsed, pale and sweating, blood pouring from her nose.
Amelia had never thought she would be calling this number again. She wasn’t even sure why it was still in her phone, just like that photo of Sam and the dog that Don had found. She didn’t know what she would say, or even think there was anything left to say to him after she had turned up to meet him, ready to start their new life together, only for him not to show up and never call her again. But she couldn’t understand what was happening to Lisa, and if it only seemed to happen whenever there was any mention of Sam or his brother, then maybe Sam was the only person who knew how to help.
When Sam saw the name Amelia Richardson appear on his phone, his first reaction was that Dean had pulled another stunt with the burner phone again. Then he couldn’t understand why Dean would bother, considering he hadn’t seen Amelia for years, hadn’t even mentioned her, and they’d got past what happened but Sam thought Dean understood now how pissed off he was when Dean had done that.
“Amelia?” Sam asked tentatively.
“Sam, I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s my friend Lisa. There’s something going on with her, she’s having nosebleeds, and fitting, and it all seems to have started happening when I mentioned you.”
“Wait…did you say Lisa?” Sam repeated.
“Yeah, Lisa Braeden. She’d ask me things about you and your brother, and I thought nothing of it, but now she’s collapsed, and things like that only seem to happen when we’re talking about you…wait, do you know her?”
“She’s Dean’s ex, I think I know what’s happening…tell me where you are, I’m on my way.” Sam scribbled down the address Amelia gave him, then when Dean walked in immediately said “Sorry, there’s no Alex here, you must have the wrong number,” for Dean’s benefit before immediately hanging up. No sense in telling Dean about the call quite yet. It wouldn’t do him any good knowing.
Dean shrugged, before turning back to his magazine. Sam waited until he was sure Dean was engrossed, before dialling Castiel’s number. “Cas, it’s me. Remember the way you wiped Lisa and Ben’s memories so they wouldn’t remember Dean? She’s met Amelia now, and she’s starting to remember Dean, and I might need to ask you to do that again…”
There were so many things that Sam could have said to Amelia, whether it be to apologise and explain why he never made it to the hotel room, or even simply ask her how she had been. But now was not the time. “Where’s Lisa?” he asked.
“She’s right through here. Hurry,” Amelia gasped, and Sam took one look at her and was relieved that they had already been in Texas, so it hadn’t taken him and Castiel long at all to get there. Amelia stared at Castiel. “You’re…not Dean?”
“No, this is a friend of ours, Castiel, he’s the one who can help Lisa.” Sam led Amelia out of the room to allow Castiel to do what he had to do. He found himself thinking back to his own experience, when his own memories of his time with Lucifer in the cage and his days of having no soul had been hidden behind the wall in his mind only for that wall to come crashing down, and he knew he couldn’t watch Lisa go through the same thing, and neither should Amelia have to. He had disagreed with Dean’s decision to have Castiel wipe Lisa’s memory at the time, and seeing the way she was suffering now, he had to admit a part of him wondered whether he had been right all along, and if Lisa had been allowed to live with her memories of Dean the whole time, she wouldn’t be suffering in this way now. But then he looked at Amelia, and how she seemed to be wanting to say so many things to him and yet not knowing where to start, and he wondered how things must have been for her in all that time since they’d last seen each other. If Dean had left Lisa with her memories, she would have most likely gone through the same as Amelia, and Sam wasn’t sure now which would have been better.
“It’s done.” Castiel stepped out of the room. “When she wakes up, she won’t remember it again.”
“I don’t understand,” Amelia began. “So your brother was Lisa’s ex? And this guy had wiped her memories so she wouldn’t remember their relationship?”
“I’m not going to pretend I agreed with it at the time, because I didn’t. But that’s what happened.” Sam explained.
“And knowing me, hearing me talk about my time with you, that triggered it all for Lisa,” Amelia realised.
“If it makes things any easier,” Castiel offered, “I can do the same for you.”
“But the choice is yours, Amelia,” Sam interrupted. “You don’t have to.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Amelia replied. “I can handle this by never bringing up Sam again in front of her. But I want to make the choice for myself, which Lisa was never given, and I choose to hold on to my memories.”
Dean glanced up from his laptop as Sam and Castiel walked in, hastily shutting it down but not before Sam saw the Asian beauty crap on the screen. “Where did you two get to?”
“Lead on the werewolves,” Sam lied. “It didn’t pan out.” They had agreed on the way back that they wouldn’t tell Dean yet, and Sam wasn’t sure whether they ever would, but now wasn’t the time, not with everything that was going on with Mary. So he just sat down on the uncomfortable motel bed, flipped through the menu for room service, and tried not to think of Amelia, lost and confused back there. Although he had to admit, he felt easier knowing she had made the choice herself not to have her memories wiped, where it had been taken away from Lisa. Meanwhile he would go on, back to the hunt, just as he had decided to back then, just as he knew he always would.
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Lisa, Amelia, Ben, Sam, Castiel, Dean.
Pairings: past Lisa/Ben and Amelia/Sam
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers through S8 to be safe. References the tie in novel One Year Gone, although you don't have to have read that to understand the fic.
Summary: Lisa has no idea she was once in a relationship with a man named Dean Winchester. Yet when she moves to a new town and becomes friends with new neighbour Amelia and hears the story of Amelia's lost love Sam Winchester, memories begin to resurface.
Moving to Texas had been intended to be a fresh start for Lisa, a chance to shut the doors on the memory of her old life, the intruders who broke into her home and killed Matt, of the car crash that had landed her and Ben in hospital, leaving neither of them with any memory of what happened.
This place wasn’t anything like her old neighbourhood, where everyone knew everyone else’s business. Most people kept themselves to themselves round here, and the only person Lisa had really got to know was a neighbour called Amelia, recently single again after having split up with her husband Don.
One day, Lisa had asked Amelia what had been the reason for her breakup with Don, whether it had been anything to do with the amount of time he spent working away. “Well, there was a period of time when I didn’t even know that he was still alive,” Amelia began.
Lisa whistled. “That would do it.”
“But it’s not that simple,” Amelia admitted. “When I thought Don was dead…there was another guy. Sam was his name, Sam Winchester.”
“Sam…” Lisa repeated. For a moment, the name sounded familiar, although she couldn’t think why; Lisa had never known anyone called Winchester.
“He’d come into the surgery where I work, he’d hit a dog and wanted me to treat it, and at first I really didn’t like him, but as I got to know him, I realised he was the only person who really understood what I was going through at the time. He’d just lost his brother, you see, and he’d spent practically every day with him for years. His brother was called Dean.”
The words hit Lisa like a punch to the stomach, although she couldn’t explain why. Why would she feel such a sense of loss over this Dean Winchester, a man she had never even met?
Lisa would ordinarily have minded as Dean and Ben crashed in through the kitchen door bringing mud into the house, but right now, she didn’t care. It was worth it to see Dean smiling and laughing with Ben, in a way she had thought at one point she was never going to see.
He still had the nightmares, although he wouldn’t admit this to Lisa and she hadn’t pushed the issue, He would tell her when he was ready. She’d be there to listen when he finally opened up.
“Guess what?” Ben burst out as soon as they walked in. “Football tryouts are next week and I have a chance of making the team!”
“You should have seen him, Lisa, he played really well out there,” Dean replied.
“Sam thinks I stand a really good chance of getting in,” Ben went on, and Dean froze. “What did you say?”
“Sam Arnold, you know, the guy I was talking to when you met me from practice? He’s the captain of the team.” Grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl, Ben ran off to watch his favourite show.
“It was stupid, I know,” Dean said before Lisa could open her mouth. “Sam’s such a common name, I’m always going to come across it somewhere.”
“It’s going to take time, Dean,” Lisa replied. “But don’t bottle it up. Any time you want to talk about it, I’ll be here to listen.”
Lisa awoke, shot straight upright in bed. What the hell was that? It was almost as if she was living the life that Amelia had talked about, except that she had it backwards. It had been Sam Amelia was with, not Dean. Why would she be dreaming about someone she’d never even met?
And yet some of it had actually happened. She remembered Ben’s excitement the day he first found out he had a chance of making the football team, and Ben really did have a friend called Sam Arnold who was the football team captain at his old school. But the thing with Dean…It hadn’t happened. Lisa had never known this guy. Why would he have been there? But it had felt so real.
She got out of bed, made her way to the bathroom, splashed some water on her face. As she glanced at her reflection in the mirror, Lisa realised that her nose was bleeding.
“This might seem kind of a strange question,” Lisa began, “and do tell me if you think I’m crossing a line, but do you still have a photograph of Sam?”
If Amelia thought the question odd, she didn’t show it. “I have this one,” she said, looking through her phone until she came to a picture of Sam with the dog. “He always used to say he’d never even wanted that dog. Then one day I came home earlier than expected, caught him playing with him, and took this when he wasn’t looking. I don’t know why I even kept it. Maybe if I hadn’t, Don and I would still be together. He found it on my phone and asked me why I’d kept it on there when we were trying to make a go of it. That was the beginning of the end for us.”
Lisa reached out and took the phone from Amelia, looked at the photo of Sam Winchester.
Lisa had barely noticed Sam Winchester the first time she ever saw him, because she had just been so focused on the fact that he and Dean had brought Ben home to her and the changelings had all gone. But the way Dean talked about him so much in the year they had been together, she felt as though she did know him well, from the story of the look of disgust on his face the Christmas when their father hadn’t come home for Christmas and Dean had stolen someone else’s presents for him only to discover that they were a girl’s presents, to the time when Sam had driven Dean crazy talking about some imaginary guy named Sully, and she wished she had had the opportunity to get to know him better.
Yet the day when Sam had returned to Dean after a year of being presumed dead, Lisa found herself wishing he never had, for she had grown to love the life she and Ben were leading with Dean, and she knew that now Sam was back, Dean would never be able to turn his back on hunting, that there would be the long absences from Dean that Dean had described growing up with himself from his father, which wasn’t what Lisa wanted for Ben, or for herself. And she knew that things could never be the same again.
“Are you okay?” Amelia asked as Lisa thrust the phone back at her. “You kind of went a funny colour there.”
“I’m fine,” Lisa replied, knowing it wasn’t true, but also not knowing how she could ever explain that to Amelia. “And his brother, Dean?”
Amelia looked at her oddly. “No, I told you I never met him. I think I saw an old picture Sam had once, but it wasn’t a great picture. He didn’t look a lot like Sam, shorter than him, blonde hair. I’ll tell you who he looked like, Eric Brady on Days of our Lives.”
How could this be? If Lisa really had never met Dean Winchester, why did it sound like the man in her visions looked so much like him?
Ben was working on some homework when Lisa got back, so she forced a smile for his sake and asked him what he was working on.
“It’s my history project,” Ben began. “About the Salem witch trials.”
Lisa read over his shoulder. “Interesting!” she exclaimed. “Remember that time we went to Salem? Maybe there was something there that will help you with this.”
“What are you talking about?” Ben asked. “We’ve never been to Salem.”
“Sure we have.” Lisa replied. “You were about eleven, don’t you remember? You had a crush on that waitress, and I got annoyed with Dean for disappearing off when we got there, so I made him take you on that pirate tour you wanted to go on.”
Ben stared at her. “Who the hell is Dean?”
Lisa reeled, stepped away from him in shock. Why had she just said that? None of that had happened, she knew it hadn’t, and yet she could remember it, remember so many things: Dean and Sam at Ben’s birthday, Dean drinking with her neighbour Sid, her persuading Dean out of the spare room after Sam was missing, presumed dead… It wasn’t possible, yet these images were racing through her mind.
Ben was still staring at her. “Are you okay?”
Lisa ran.
“Lisa?” Amelia stared in shock as Lisa crashed through her door.
“I need to understand, and you might be the only person who can help me. Why do I keep seeing Dean Winchester, keep having memories of a life with him when all I know of him is the little you’ve told me?”
“Dean? I don’t know, I don’t understand…” Amelia began. “Lisa? Your nose, it’s bleeding, and you look really pale, maybe you should sit down, tell me from the beginning…Lisa?”
But Lisa had collapsed, pale and sweating, blood pouring from her nose.
Amelia had never thought she would be calling this number again. She wasn’t even sure why it was still in her phone, just like that photo of Sam and the dog that Don had found. She didn’t know what she would say, or even think there was anything left to say to him after she had turned up to meet him, ready to start their new life together, only for him not to show up and never call her again. But she couldn’t understand what was happening to Lisa, and if it only seemed to happen whenever there was any mention of Sam or his brother, then maybe Sam was the only person who knew how to help.
When Sam saw the name Amelia Richardson appear on his phone, his first reaction was that Dean had pulled another stunt with the burner phone again. Then he couldn’t understand why Dean would bother, considering he hadn’t seen Amelia for years, hadn’t even mentioned her, and they’d got past what happened but Sam thought Dean understood now how pissed off he was when Dean had done that.
“Amelia?” Sam asked tentatively.
“Sam, I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s my friend Lisa. There’s something going on with her, she’s having nosebleeds, and fitting, and it all seems to have started happening when I mentioned you.”
“Wait…did you say Lisa?” Sam repeated.
“Yeah, Lisa Braeden. She’d ask me things about you and your brother, and I thought nothing of it, but now she’s collapsed, and things like that only seem to happen when we’re talking about you…wait, do you know her?”
“She’s Dean’s ex, I think I know what’s happening…tell me where you are, I’m on my way.” Sam scribbled down the address Amelia gave him, then when Dean walked in immediately said “Sorry, there’s no Alex here, you must have the wrong number,” for Dean’s benefit before immediately hanging up. No sense in telling Dean about the call quite yet. It wouldn’t do him any good knowing.
Dean shrugged, before turning back to his magazine. Sam waited until he was sure Dean was engrossed, before dialling Castiel’s number. “Cas, it’s me. Remember the way you wiped Lisa and Ben’s memories so they wouldn’t remember Dean? She’s met Amelia now, and she’s starting to remember Dean, and I might need to ask you to do that again…”
There were so many things that Sam could have said to Amelia, whether it be to apologise and explain why he never made it to the hotel room, or even simply ask her how she had been. But now was not the time. “Where’s Lisa?” he asked.
“She’s right through here. Hurry,” Amelia gasped, and Sam took one look at her and was relieved that they had already been in Texas, so it hadn’t taken him and Castiel long at all to get there. Amelia stared at Castiel. “You’re…not Dean?”
“No, this is a friend of ours, Castiel, he’s the one who can help Lisa.” Sam led Amelia out of the room to allow Castiel to do what he had to do. He found himself thinking back to his own experience, when his own memories of his time with Lucifer in the cage and his days of having no soul had been hidden behind the wall in his mind only for that wall to come crashing down, and he knew he couldn’t watch Lisa go through the same thing, and neither should Amelia have to. He had disagreed with Dean’s decision to have Castiel wipe Lisa’s memory at the time, and seeing the way she was suffering now, he had to admit a part of him wondered whether he had been right all along, and if Lisa had been allowed to live with her memories of Dean the whole time, she wouldn’t be suffering in this way now. But then he looked at Amelia, and how she seemed to be wanting to say so many things to him and yet not knowing where to start, and he wondered how things must have been for her in all that time since they’d last seen each other. If Dean had left Lisa with her memories, she would have most likely gone through the same as Amelia, and Sam wasn’t sure now which would have been better.
“It’s done.” Castiel stepped out of the room. “When she wakes up, she won’t remember it again.”
“I don’t understand,” Amelia began. “So your brother was Lisa’s ex? And this guy had wiped her memories so she wouldn’t remember their relationship?”
“I’m not going to pretend I agreed with it at the time, because I didn’t. But that’s what happened.” Sam explained.
“And knowing me, hearing me talk about my time with you, that triggered it all for Lisa,” Amelia realised.
“If it makes things any easier,” Castiel offered, “I can do the same for you.”
“But the choice is yours, Amelia,” Sam interrupted. “You don’t have to.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Amelia replied. “I can handle this by never bringing up Sam again in front of her. But I want to make the choice for myself, which Lisa was never given, and I choose to hold on to my memories.”
Dean glanced up from his laptop as Sam and Castiel walked in, hastily shutting it down but not before Sam saw the Asian beauty crap on the screen. “Where did you two get to?”
“Lead on the werewolves,” Sam lied. “It didn’t pan out.” They had agreed on the way back that they wouldn’t tell Dean yet, and Sam wasn’t sure whether they ever would, but now wasn’t the time, not with everything that was going on with Mary. So he just sat down on the uncomfortable motel bed, flipped through the menu for room service, and tried not to think of Amelia, lost and confused back there. Although he had to admit, he felt easier knowing she had made the choice herself not to have her memories wiped, where it had been taken away from Lisa. Meanwhile he would go on, back to the hunt, just as he had decided to back then, just as he knew he always would.