Fic Post: Sara Winchester's Knowledge of Good and Evil, 1/1 [PG-13]

[toldthestars]

Disclaimer--ok, so if I read this summary, I'd be like, *intensive eye-rolling* Okay, moving along Little Miss Mary Sue, but, hey, roxymissrose likes it, so it CAN'T POSSIBLY be bad, right?...RIGHT?  Guys....?
Title: Sara Winchester's Knowledge of Good and Evil
Fandom: SPN
Rating: PG-13 (for language, some violence, implied badness of a brotherly nature)
Word Count: 9,000ish.
Summary: Sara Winchester has two brothers, Sam and Dean. Their lives are not normal. Her brothers are even more not normal.


Sara Winchester’s Knowledge of Good and Evil

(Hear No Evil.)
At first, Sara Winchester wanted to know-no, she had a deep, aching need to understand-what was wrong with her brother. If God or Heaven or-hell-the Devil himself could give her some sort of hint or clue as to why it was that Sam cried all of the god damn time, then maybe she could put an end to it. It seemed like some terrible kind of miracle for a sound that big to come out of something so small. It made Sara wondered what little Sam would be capable of when he was big.

It wasn’t just the sound of it, although his screams never failed to crawl under Sara’s skin and make her itch and ache, it was the way that Dean would get. Her spirited big brother would become a shade, quiet as the grave as he watched through wide, shining eyes while Sam cried, Dean’s chubby little kid hands wrapped around the bars of the crib or clutching at the hem of their mother’s nightgown. He’d be so hushed, so still, as though he could make up for all their fussy little brother’s noise with his own silence. The whole thing never failed to make Sara’s stomach hurt; it twisted in knots she thought might never come undone.

There had to be something wrong with Sam, something that could be fixed. She didn’t want Sam to suffer-she didn’t want Dean to suffer, and she learned early that it seemed the two went hand in hand. It broke little Sara’s heart that there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to fix her broken little brother, and nothing to put Dean’s fears to bed.

After that night, Sam’s hollering came to an abrupt end. Just when Sara thought Sammy had all the reason in the world to cry his little eyeballs out-when they all did-was when Sam seemed to make some sort of peace with the world. Nevertheless, when Sara got older, she became fond of saying that Sammy came out whining and just hadn’t given it a rest since. When the terrible crying stopped, Sara figured that if something had been wrong with Sammy, maybe it was for the best to not know.

(…)

Sara remembers their first childhood, and she knows that Dean does too. They don’t talk about it, or, specifically, Dean doesn’t talk about it, and Sara follows suit. But Sara remembers that first childhood, even when she tries not to.

It was the one with PB and J sandwiches cut diagonal-half for Dean, half for Sara. Their mother made a mean PB&J, with just the right ratio of jelly to peanut butter. That childhood was the one where Dad would come home, smelling like cars instead of guns, and would tickle her until she thought she just might puke pure happiness. It was the one where, at night, Dean would let her crawl into bed with him when Mom and Dad would throw angry, ugly words at each other: like the word mortgage. Sara wasn’t sure what it meant and she sure as hell wasn’t gonna ask, but whatever it was, she vowed that she and her brothers would never have a mortgage for as long as she lived.

And then their lives split in two, ripped apart and started over from ash. There was the night when that first childhood died bloody and out of the mess, the second was born. She didn’t remember much of it, just smoke and heat and ash, and frankly, that’s the way she likes it. It saves her the trouble of drowning the memory face-down in a puddle of whiskey. Course, she drinks anyway, but it’s for the taste.
Then there was the new life. When they were on the road, it was hotel rooms, cold spaghetti-o’s and endless hours of waiting. At first, Sara hated waiting, but she got good at it. She swore she could hear the Impala’s rumble from a mile away. It wasn’t all terrible-they got to jump on the bed, stay up as late as they wanted, and watch any movie that came on the TV, if there was a TV. The only thing Sara ever wanted to know when Dad was coming home. Sam, though, he was the one with the big questions. Sara had once asked Dean if Sam asked so many questions because his head was so big and he needed things to fill it-Dean had liked that. Twenty years later, Dean still liked that-because Dean never got tired of a bad joke.

Every time little Sammy asked a question, Sara felt like the world was cracking open underneath her. She believed Dean when he said, trust me, you guy don’t want to know. Lie to us, Sara would think at her big brother. Please, please lie to us. After all, it wasn’t as though knowing where Dad was would bring him home any faster.

But Sam never was very good at letting any damn thing go. When he found Dad’s journal, Sara knew the world underneath wasn’t gonna come back together. Sam read it aloud, and she wanted to leave and shut it all out but she knew that leaving was against the rules, so she listened to the stories about evil things and horrible deaths. Suddenly the MGM monster flicks she loved to watch with Dean lost some of their appeal.

Dean’s first reaction was to tear into Sara for not stopping Sam from reading the journal, but in the end he sat between them, arms around them, and he told them their Dad was a superhero. Sara felt that was believable-in fact, it mostly confirmed what she had already suspected. Dean said that everything would be okay, and that their Dad would be home soon, because it just wouldn’t be Christmas without Dad. That night, Dean was very quiet and Sam’s face was coated with snot and tears and Sara thought, Good. One day, I’m gonna beat the curiosity right out of you.

Sara woke up late that night and heard her brothers talking. When she didn’t hear her father’s voice, she decided that she didn’t really need Christmas to come every year and went back to sleep.

In the morning, Sam and Dean handed Sara a baton and a Barbie, presumably as Christmas gifts. As it turned out, the baton did excellent things for her dexterity and hand-eye coordination, and the Barbie made pretty good target practice. And the presents helped her to forgive Sam for his incessant need to shed light in dark corners. Mostly.

She didn’t bother to ask Dean about the new necklace.

(…)
Some people could call the Winchesters lucky. Of course, Sara would call those people assholes, but a case could be made. For example, the Winchester had plenty of places they could almost call home. Instead of one family, they had a collection, spreading from one coast to the other. They had about a million uncles-Uncle Bobby, Uncle Caleb, Pastor Jim-but for all those uncles, they really only had one cousin. And for that, Sara counted herself lucky.

“What’s with the long face?” John had asked her once, while making yet another long trek to see yet more ‘family.’

Sara shifted. “Nothing.”

“Come on, now,” John said, giving Sara that look, “Tell me what’s eating you.”

The Winchester children were no strangers to fantastical feats of manipulation, misdirection, and just plain old bullshitting. But all that amounted to nothing when faced with their father, whose level gaze was just about the most powerful truth serum there was as far as Sara was concerned. At the same time, however, Sara knew that hunters don’t bitch. These weren’t John’s words, of course, but that didn’t make them any less a part of their family’s gospel. Sara caught Dean’s gaze in the rearview and he shrugged at her.

“I don’t like it at Aunt Ellen and Uncle Bill’s,” said Sara.

John raised his eyebrows. He looked back at her brothers . “You boys feel that way?”

“No,” Sara protested. “It’s just me...it’s Jo.”

“Jo? What about Jo?”

Sara felt her face go hot and she sunk further into her seat, letting the dashboard take over her view of the road. “She laughs at my hair and says I look like a boy.”

“Ah,” replied her father. “I can see how that would ruffle your feathers.” John appeared to think about the problem. There were much bigger problems in the world than being teased over a silly haircut, Sara knew, but nevertheless, John gave serious consideration to her grievance, and Sara loved him a little more for that.

“Tell you what, kid-the next time Jo Harvelle wants to give you grief over your hair being cut short, you show her why it is.” The hand that John wasn’t casually gripping the steering wheel landed on Sara’s head, brushing through the short strands. “And whatever she says to you, you’re my girl, and you’re a knock-out, you got that?”

Sara glimpsed the mirror into the backseat, where Dean was jamming a finger into his mouth and rolling his eyes, and Sam had a hand clapped over his mouth and theatrically dry heaving.

Sara waved her father’s warm and reassuring hand away. “Dad, come on, quit it.” She felt immediately sorry for it, but John just turned up the radio, apparently satisfied in having found a reasonable resolution to the situation.

Of course, Ellen felt otherwise when she walked into her backyard to find Sara with a handful of Jo’s pretty yellow locks, dodging Jo’s wildly flying fists with a fair amount of success. While this caused one hell of a ruckus between Ellen and John, Jo and Sara both felt they had come to an understanding about each other.

Still, there was one thing that deeply, deeply irritated Sara about Jo Harvelle.

“I’m going to marry Dean some day,” Jo said.

During their stays at the Harvelle household, Dean found things to do around the house or garage or yard-anything to be near Ellen and be deemed useful. Sara liked Ellen a lot, but her PB&Js just weren’t the same. The ‘kids’, as Dean called the other children, even though Sara was just a year younger, would waste days wandering the woods near the property, never going to far but becoming embroiled in highly intense and involved games of hide and seek-because no one could hide like the child of a hunter, and they took their fun very seriously. This day, they took a break from games to amble by the creek. The brook isn’t the only thing babbling, Sara thought to herself.

“Don’t be stupid, Jo,” Sara said.

“Yeah, shut up,” Sam said, picking up a stick and whacking it against the nearest tree trunk.

“Oh, you guys just wait and see. It’ll happen.” Jo pulled the back of her teeshirt up over her head, to make a create a make-shift veil. “We’re gonna get hitched.”

Sara wrinkled her nose at what she perceived as the biggest load of foolishness since Sam became convinced mermaids could attack him in the bathtub. “That’s sort of wrong.”

“What do you mean, wrong?” Jo demanded, putting her little balled fists on her hips.

“What I mean is, we’re sort of like family,” Sara explained. She picked a smooth rock from the water and looked at it. “It’s sick, marrying your family.” She threw the rock aimlessly towards the tangle of tree limbs in the sky. “It’s so bad it’s against the law.”

“It’s against the law?” Sam echoed.

Jo tossed her hair. “Well, that doesn’t matter because we’re not real family. Me and Dean can still get married if we want to.”

“No, you can’t,” Sam piped. “Besides, he doesn’t want to. He’s got us, right, Sara?”

Sara thought about Dean, up at the house and working diligently-happily--away on domestic duties. Faced with Sam’s big old puppy eyes, however, all Sara could say was, “Sure, Sam.”

“Oh, come on, Sara, don’t let him be so naïve. One day, Dean is going to grow up and when you grow up, you can do anything you want. He’s gonna want a good wife,” Jo said.

“That isn’t true,” Sam narrowed his eyes and squared his little shoulders, his fingers curling at his sides.

“Come on, guys.”

“We might go off and be hunters together, like Isaac and Tamara. Just the two of us,” Jo said in a sing-song.

“Shut up, Jo!” Sam shouted.

“Yeah, knock it off.”

“Or, maybe we’ll get a big old house, out far, far away, where no one will bother us, and then we can have a family all of our-“

Jo never got to finish teasing Sam, because Sam had already shoved Jo so hard that the girl tumbled to the dirt. And if Sara didn’t move to stop Sam, well, she blamed it on being tired from walking.

“Dean’s never gonna leave us! You hear me? Dean’s never gonna leave m-“

“Sam!”

All three kids jumped, their hearts plummeting into their guts. When they turned and realized it wasn’t Ellen or John yelling at them, their hearts continued an awful tumble down to their toes. Dean walked briskly towards Jo, offering a hand and laying a mean, heavy glare on Sam at the same time.

“Thank you, Dean,” said Jo daintily, and was going to add another comment until Dean turned that flat hot stare on to her. Sara just managed to hold back a smile as Jo damn near swallowed her tongue.

“I’m going to do you all a favor,” Dean growled out. “And pretend I didn’t hear any of that.”

And then Dean stalked away.

“Nice going, Sam,” Jo hissed, wiping mud and leaves from her backside.

Sara took Sam by the hand-she considered it a measure of how miserably stunned he was that he even let her.

“You leave my brothers alone,” Sara said to Jo. And then she marched back to the house with Sam in tow, hoping like hell that the memory of that afternoon would fade like summer in September.

(Speak No Evil.)

When Sam got to be of a certain age, Dean and Sara had to duke it out over who was going to be the one to give the kid the talk. Sara tried to duck behind the reasoning that the chat should be mano-a-mano, not womano-a-mano, but being a girl had never excluded Sara from much in her life, even when she wanted it to. After Sara lost out to Dean, she vowed that she would force the Winchester family to adopt a more sophisticated method of decision making, or, at the very least, that she would stop fucking shooting paper. Paper never wins.

The conversation with Sam was every bit as uncomfortable and awkward as she had assumed it would be, but with less vomiting and bloodshed than she had envisioned, so she counted that as a win. As a reward for sitting through the whole thing, Sara handed Sam a box of condoms-Ribbed For Her Pleasure, because Sara figured whatever sucker took up the charge of de-hymenating her little brother deserved a little something for her troubles. As expected, Sam looked like Sara had handed him a box of dead puppies. Unexpectedly, he handed them back.

“I don’t think I need those,” Sam said uncertainly.

Sara let out a long-suffering sigh. “Protection is important. Don’t make me get out pictures.”

“No, I mean…” Sam licked his lips. “I don’t…not…ribbed for her pleasure.”

Realization crept upon Sara like a Mack truck.

“Oh,” she said.

“Yeah,” said Sam.

There was something important to say here, Sara assumed. And it wasn’t, “I TOTALLY FUCKING KNEW IT,” which was probably at least seven different kinds of insensitive. She shoved the box of condoms back into Sam’s fidgeting hands.

“Well, protection is still important. And, you know, they’re probably ribbed for his pleasure, too.”

Sara had never seen a shade of red quite like the one on Sam’s face at that moment. If it could be found in a crayon box, it would be called “The 66th Circle of Hell Red.” He coughed and scuffed his feet and looked to the side. “You think I’m a freak now, don’t you?”

“No more than usual,” Sara shrugged.

“thankssara,” Sam muttered as quickly as possible. Sara considered giving him a hug, but decided on a quick jab to the arm. “Don’t mention it,” she said.

“Actually, could you not? I mean, do you think could not say anything to Dad?”

Sara couldn’t imagine why Sam would be concerned about their father’s reaction to such unextraordinary and-in Sara’s estimation-predictable news. Race, class, gender, sexuality-those divisions mean fuck all when you knew about the big deep line drawn in blood between human and other. The Winchesters reserved their hate for creatures who truly earned it, usually with a body count. But Sara shrugged, and swore to Sam that she’d keep the conversation under wraps.

“What about Dean?” Sara asked.

“Don’t worry,” Sam said. “I’ll tell Dean myself.”

There wasn’t a whole lot of room for secrets in the Winchester family, so, while Sara would never say such a thing out loud, she did find herself being pleased that Sam had let her into his confidence, and that they shared this little knowledge just between the two of them.

(…)
John giving Dean the Impala when he was old enough to drive meant the Winchesters could cover twice as much of the country, when Sam wasn’t bogging them down with his insistence on going to school. Dean had gotten his GED and Sara wasn’t far behind, but the summers sent them scattering across the country. Sometimes Sara went with her father, and sometimes, when John thought a job was too dangerous or when he thought it might involve Yellow-Eyes, she went with her brothers. On the rare occasion, John and Dean would hunt together and Sara and Sam would go off on their own, when they were old enough, if only to prove that they could. Usually, by the end of those adventures, Sara was ready to let the monster live and kill Sam instead, for all his whining and worrying about their brother, as though there was something in the known universe that could take down their father and Dean.

They were on their way towards the Southwest-one of Sara’s favorite parts of the country-when Sam initiated what had to be the second most awkward conversation of Sara’s life.

“You know, at the next hotel, we should get two rooms.”

Sara cocked an eyebrow at Dean in the rearview. Sam turned in the passenger seat so he could address both his siblings.

“That’s a waste of money,” Sara said.

“Well, I mean, we’re a little old to be sharing one room, don’t you think?” Sara couldn’t tell if Sam was talking to her or Dean. “I think we’re past the point when it’s socially acceptable to sleep in the same room as siblings of the opposite sex.”

Sara stared at Sam as though pieces of his face were falling off.

“Sam, two nights ago we set the remains of sociopathic janitor on fire. We passed socially acceptable like a decade ago,” Dean pointed out.

“Come on, Dean,” Sam said. It was in that tone, the tone that Sam used, that tone that usually resulted In Sam getting his way.

“Sam, don’t be stupid. Who gives a fuck about modesty? I mean, morning wood, monster dumps, jerking off in the shower, tampons-“ Sara still felt a little satisfaction at the small twitch the boys gave at the word, although they’d each gone out on plenty of tomato stick runs in their time-“it’s all old news. What’s the point of separate rooms now?”

Sam watched Dean, and Dean watched the road. “It’s just, you know,” Sam started, “what if you wanted to have company? Or, what if one of us wants to have company?”

Sara shrugged. “Sock on the door’s worked fine in the past.”

“Dean?” Sam said.

Dean licked his lips, adjusted his grip on the wheel. “I don’t like the idea of splitting us up. We’re safer together.”

“One door over? One door over, and she’d be in mortal danger?” Sam said incredulously.

“We’re not talking about this anymore,” Dean said to Sam.

Sam slouched back against the seat, folding his arms over his chest. “I just thought it would be nice for Sara-for all of us-to have some privacy for a change.”

“Sam, discussion over.” Dean punctuated his statement by cranking up the Black Sabbath.

Sara had to admit Sam was right-all day and every day under each other’s feet had made her consider smothering her brothers in their sleep on more than one occasion. But Dean was right, too-it was safer to be together, and privacy was just another thing that happened to other people.

Still, that night as she lay on the cot set up between the two bed, between her two brothers, Sara could not get to sleep. She could not stop herself from wondering if she belonged somewhere else, and if she did, where on earth might that be?

(…)
The way Sara saw it, the Winchesters were not so much a family, as a pack of snarling, viciously loyal and possibly rabid wolves, backed into a dark corner of the world and snapping at its shadows. She should have realized, looking back, that any effort to be anything other than that-any attempt to domesticate a Winchester would go very, very badly.

Sara stood just outside the hotel door, rubbing her sore jaw and watching the brass numbers tarnish on the peeling paint. She had a wild and desperate notion that if she just stood still, soon the sun would come up and her brothers would come out and they could hit the road like nothing happened. Sara let out a sigh, ground out that ridiculous fantasy like a smoldering cigarette butt, put down an empty bottle and went into her room.

Sara liked plans. Currently, her plan was to make a bee-line for the bathroom and stay there. It wasn’t a particularly good plan, but it was what she had. She attempted to throw out a “Hi guys I’m home nothing to see here I’ll be in the bathroom shouldn’t have had that burrito see you in the morning”-she had intended to say it casually, but it was like her mouth tried to say every word at once and what came out was a drunken grunt of a greeting. Verbal malfunctioning aside, she couldn’t turn her face to any angle that concealed her swollen, discolored eye from her brothers. Before Sara made it halfway across the room, Dean was on her ass, gripping her by the shoulders and staring at her busted face with an expression that looked like a homicide waiting to happen.

“What the fuck happened?” Dean demanded.

“Ran into a door,” Sara said with a smirk. Dean’s face darkened. Wrong approach, Sara thought with a sinking stomach. Sam was at her side, reaching to touch Sara’s split lip until she slapped his hand like he’d gone for the last Oreo. “Are you okay?”

“What was it? What did that?” Dean finally let her go in favor of going to drag the duffel out from under Sara’s bed. He looked up at her when she didn’t speak. “What, did your brains get knocked loose? Answer the question.”

“Man, it’s just a black eye,” Sara said calmly.

“And a split lip,” Sam added.

“Not helpful, Sammy,” Sara hissed. “Dean, don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

“No,” Dean said flatly as he loaded his sawed-off. “You’re lucky you got away. Some other poor sucker might not be so lucky. So hurry up and tell me what we’re dealing with so I can go kick its ass.”

She took a deep breath and stood up straighter. “It’s not an it. It’s a...who.”

Dean stared at her like she had something on her face-possibly something sentient and with its own limbs. Sara felt caught under a scalding hot spotlight, and though she didn’t like it at all, she knew it wasn’t gonna go away.

“Name is Stanley Turner,” she went on, “Regular at the diner--guess he followed me after my shift. Caught me off guard, but...” she shrugged. “I’m fine, and I’m too tired to play renegade fugitives tonight, so what say we let the poor fuck live?”

“No promises,” Dean said before slamming the door after him, hard enough to rattle the hinges.

Sara let herself collapse on the nearest bed-happened to be Dean’s. It smelled vaguely of leather and metal and made Sara think of her Dad. And for a moment, a really nice moment, it was quiet. Of course, with Sam in the room, peace could only last so long.

“So,” Sam said, poking the edge of the bed with his foot. “Either you just sent Stanley Turner to his death, or you’re lying.”

Sam always had been a smart little bastard. Sara put her throbbing head in her hands. She knew they had Aspirin, but she didn’t care enough to bother. Instead, she shoved a hand between the mattress and box spring and found the flask that Dean thought was hidden there. She took a long, mean pull on it. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt Sam’s hand on her shoulder. He was lucky she was off her game-a startled hunter is a dangerous thing.

“Sara, tell me what really happened.”

“Beat it, Sam.”

She did her best to ignore her little brother, waving her hand at him to go away, until the pain-in-the-ass was kneeling directly in front of her, hands on her knees and forcing her to look into his eyes. His big, stupid, pathetic brown eyes. It was like hypnosis--she found herself wanting to tell him. Sometimes, deep down, Sara wondered if Sam was a Jedi, ‘cause a chat about what actually happened was definitely not what she was looking for. And yet, she couldn’t forget about Sam confiding in her, and suddenly, without warning-

“So, I’ve been seeing this guy.” Sara thought she might vomit, and she sort of did, only instead of actual puke, she vomited up the truth--the truth about David, the guy that didn’t seem to mind that she didn’t paint her nails and didn’t wear skirts, and felt generally that high heels should be shot on sight. He was okay with the fact that fancy restaurants bored her silly and the “l” word made her gag.

David was shy and lonely, wry and incredibly smart, and had an intensity that was easy to be drawn into-unless, of course, you found yourself totally repulsed by it. In retrospect, Sara acknowledged that he had all of the qualities of a fairly charming serial killer.

They’d been together longer than Sara had ever imagined sustaining a relationship-nearly three weeks-and she figured that was a long enough wait. At that point in the narrative, Sam looked like he was on the razor’s edge between horrified and fascinated.

“You gave him your virginity?” he asked with wide eyes.

Sara snorted and choked on the whiskey, her eyes watering ferociously. “Sam, I’m a woman and a hunter-if I was a virgin, I might as well put on a friggin’ bulls-eye on my forehead and sign up for the nearest sacrificial slaughter. I ditched that shit years ago. It was a liability.”

“Oh,” said Sam with even wider eyes--any wider, and his eye balls would have just plain fallen out of their sockets. “Good point.”

“Hell yeah right, good point,” Sara said, squinting into the flask. It was much lighter. Dean was gonna kill her. Course, he was already gonna kill her for the Stanley Turner rouse-might as well get buried, too. “Anyway, I got stupid, and I told the guy about us. Ya know. Hunting.”

Sam stood up abruptly and Sara’s wobbly neck took its time in following the movement. “Sara, how could you? We’re not supposed to talk about that ever, to anyone!”

Sara stood up too and gave her brother a sloppy shove. “Yeah, Sam-I get it. I got the fucking message.”

Sam’s expression softened. “Is that--?”

“After-after what we did, I figured I’d go for broke and I told him everything. Of course, he thought I was lying to him.” Sara laughed and dragged a hand over her face. Of course. Of course he would think that. David, the poor sweet mean loser who no one liked but her, of course he’d think she was lying, that she was just some slut who dragged him along, fucked him and was ready to ditch him with the most ridiculous excuse she could come up with. Of course he’d lost his shit. She wasn’t sure if she’d do much different, were the world different and the roles reversed.

“He kinda freaked out on me,” Sara finished lamely.

“No shit,” Sam said, and Sara fought back a giggle because she still got a kick out of the relatively new development of Sam cursing. “I don’t understand, though,” Sam went, shaking his head. “You could have kicked his ass in your sleep. Why’d you let him-“

Sara put her hands on Sam’s shoulders, partially because she needed him to understand something, and partially because standing was a risky endeavor at the moment. “If I had put his lights out, then, he mighta known I was telling the truth and it was too late, you see? Couldn’t go back. I had to learn my lesson.”

“Your lesson?”

Sara found her hands smoothing Sam’s shirt, buttoning up buttons she hadn’t noticed before were undone-the boy was practically half naked. “I didn’t want to fight him. It wasn’t his fault. They aren’t like us, Sam. We can’t trust them, you hear me? You have to be careful about what you say. Dean and Dad are right. You can’t tell anyone who we are.” Sara knew she was starting to lose her grip-her throat hurt and her eye throbbed and she could tell from Sam’s worried, wrinkled up face and his hands tight on her arms that she was being...well, not herself to say the least, but she couldn’t stop. “We’ve got us, that’s it, you see. Don’t say anything to anyone else, Sammy, we’re the ones you can trust, the only ones you can trust. Do you understand? You trust us, no one else.”

“Sara-shh, I understand. I get it, okay?”

Sara nodded. “Good. Just, um, let’s keep this between us, okay?”

“Sure, yeah.”

“Good.”

“Sara?”

“Yeah?”

“How does bed sound?”

“Good. Bed sounds good.”

It was weird, having Sam guide her to her bed and tuck her in. It was like a memory remembered wrong--the opposite of so many night so long ago...but it was sort of nice, too. Sara made a silent note that getting drunk seemed to be a good way to get others to treat you like a helpless baby, and with a lot less derision and disgust than normally accompanied dealing with the needy. Snatching that bottle of Jack on the way out of David’s house was probably the best idea she’d had all night-even if David’s stepfather would probably make him pay for it later. What goes around comes around, she thought. She was pretty sure that it was the one thing she’d done in the past 6 hours that Dean would have approved of.

Sam was just going to turn out the light when he paused for a moment.

“Sara?”

“Yeah?”

Sam hesitated. “Was it worth it?”

Sara stared at the ceiling for a moment. “No,” she said, and her voice didn’t even shake.

“Oh,” said Sam, and he turned out the light.

Sara could imagine her life different, if she tried hard. She could close her eyes and conjure up a house that was her family’s, and all of them owning more than could fit in a duffel bag. She could imagine having other things, too...now that she knew what it was like, she sorely wished she didn’t. To want something else, to really believe that another life was possible for them-well, all that wishing amounted to nothing more than howling at the moon.

(See No Evil.)
Sara still remembered the conversation in which Sam had tried to evict her to her own room, to Girlsville, population: Sara Winchester, and she still felt none too pleased by it. Nevertheless, she wondered if it was about time to have a very similar conversation with their father. John seemed to not notice how much his children had grown up, but, on this particular day, Sara felt pretty damn sure he just might notice Dean banging some broad in the hotel room they all shared.

Sara caught a glimpse of her brother’s narrow white ass through a crack in the curtains just as John was fishing in his pocket for the room key. The ass accompanying her brother was just as white and even narrower-Sara didn’t see much more than that, and Thank God for small favors on that one. She was already going to have to rinse her brain in fucking bleach to cleanse what little had seared her poor retinas--and she and John were about to see a whole lot more if Sara didn’t act quickly.

“DAD!” Sara shouted, throwing out her hands to stop him.

“What?” John said, hand instinctively going to his back towards his stowed gun. He stared at Sara, almost certainly expecting a vamp to be attached to her neck, or, at least, a gnome gnawing on her ankle--something. Sara had nothing.

John waited. Sara blinked.

“I...forgot!” Sara exclaimed.

John waited some more. He looked around, one hand still on his gun, looking like he might still use it. “Forgot what?”

Sara tilted her head and squinted. “...Tampons?”

For a moment, John was motionless, except for one eyebrow slowly working its way up his forehead. It was quiet. “I, um, meant to go to the drugstore to pick ‘em up, and I...forgot.”

John finally let out a breath. He gave her a weary, long-suffering look. “You do know this happens every month, don’t you?”

“I am aware, yes-let’s go,” Sara said, grabbing his arm and dragging him in the direction of his truck.

“Can’t I even put down my-“

“Dad. Time’s a-wastin. Lady things...happening...as we speak.” Sara wanted to slap herself into next week, but her Dad’s feet were begrudgingly stomping towards the car, so, it was clearly all going according to plan. As for Dean? Dean owed her big time.

“And I’m talking big time,” Sara said later, stretched out on the bed next to Dean with a take-out container of nachos between them. “Like, blue-label big time.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. It won’t do me much good if Dad ends up hearing you yapping about it anyway,” Dean hissed.

“He’s in the shower, he’s fine,” Sara said with a mouth full of queso.

“Say, who was she? Would Sara know her?” Sam asked from his place sprawled at the foot of the bed. He gave Dean a smarmy grin, and Dean gave Sam a glare that would make a demon nervous.

“It was just someone,” Dean snapped. “Now shut it, I’m trying to hear Ray Liotta.”

“You’re awful cranky for a man who just got laid,” Sara observed. “Laid by a scrawny, sorry-ass looking female, but laid nonetheless.”

“Hey!” Sam exclaimed. Sara raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re wrecking the movie,” he added.

“I’m wrecking the movie? Your giant head and your giant towel are blocking all of the good fellas! I can’t see a single one of them.” Sara turned back to Dean, who was staring so hard at the television that Sara thought he might be counting Joe Pesci’s pores. “You oughta be careful, you know. What if Sam had come home and seen you?”

“So what if he had?” Dean shrugged. “He’s not a baby anymore, Sara.”

“I didn’t say he was. It’s just not decent, that’s all.” Sara wrinkled her nose. “And it still kinda smells like ass in here.”

“That’s it,” Dean muttered as he got up and grabbed his coat.

“Where are you going?” Sara asked, just as Sam was pushing himself up and calling “I’ll come with you!” Dean answered them both, without bothering to turn around.

“I’m going out, alone.”

Sara stared after Dean for a moment, watching the window rattle in its frame. It wasn’t like Dean to storm out in a huff-well, actually, that was exactly like Dean to do that, but usually there was a reason.

Generally, Dean came out of his conquests grinning like an idiot and giving Sara the play-by-play, no matter how much she begged him not to. She wondered if, perish the thought, whoever he’d been playing slap n’ tickle with was more than just another warm body? Was that why he’d been so god awful moody lately? Was Dean Winchester actually experiencing those things known to lesser beings as emotion? And, a quieter, more cautious voice asked, when exactly did Sam have time to take a shower? Her gaze turned to Sam, who had the towel now draped over his shoulders, his hair curling from the heat in the room. Maybe Sam had seen something he wasn’t supposed to. Maybe--

Maybe her family was a pack of weirdoes, and Dean leaving meant more nachos for her. And, fuck it, if Dean was going to be so ungrateful, next time maybe she’d just let Dad walk in, after all.

(...)
There wasn't any smoke or ash, blood or death on the second night that Sara Winchester's life changed, but there was plenty of screaming. It was the night that Sara realized her family didn't need demons to tear them apart--no, like Dorothy and her ruby fucking slippers, that power had been inside them all along.

The real tragedy of it was that, to begin with, the evening was about as Norman Rockwell as the Winchesters got. John and Dean were finally home--both at the same time, no less. It had seemed like lately the only glimpses Sara caught of her older brother were of his backside as he was walking out the door--not her favorite view for a number of reasons. It was nice to see his stupid smiling face, especially when she'd been saddled with staring at Sam's pouty puss all damn day and night. Seriously, it was like the kid was prepping for the Miss Emo Bitch Pageant 2003, and he was gonna win her foot in his ass if he didn't lighten up.

Even as they sat together, with Dean trying to steal strips of beef from Sara's fried rice, Sara trying to put a chopstick through Dean's hand for the offense, and John pop-quizzing them on the difference between a Southwestern and a Gulf area hupacabra, Sam sulked. That was alright, Sara figured, because every family needed the mopey adolescent. It completed the picture.

Until Sam unfolded a piece of paper he'd been holding in his lap and handed it to their father. Silence fell over the table--except, of course, for Dean's chewing, which Sara was pretty certain could be heard from the highway.

"Wassat, Sammy?" Dean asked. "Approval for gender reassignment finally come thro--ow! Sara, you kicked me."

"I meant to, jackass."

"It's an acceptance letter," Sam explained. "From Stanford. They want to give me a full ride."

The idiot grin slowly faded from Dean's face, and the color bled away with it. John handed the letter back to Sam, and turned back to his meal. "That's impressive, son. Real impressive."

John's children watched him the way one might watch a smoking volcano. John neither said nor did anything further, which was even more unsettling. Sara realized that something had escaped understanding.

"Dad," Sara sad quietly. "I think Sam actually wants to go to Stanford."

It was around about that point that Hell broke loose.

It began with whether or not Sam could go to school--and if it had stayed with that one relatively simple question, they might have all gotten out in one piece. But somehow it became larger and darker, with accusations and recriminations. Sam told John he was a lousy father, and John said Sam was an ungrateful son, and while they were both far from being right neither was completely wrong.

Sara had to hand it to Sam, the boy didn't back down in the face of their father's anger. A single disapproving look from John could make Sara’s innards wobble, put broken glass in her throat and turn her little heart to ash. Hell, she could barely stand to be in the same room with those harsh eyes and harsher words, even if neither were directed at her. Soppy idiot that she was, she got to feeling sorry for Sam, even though he'd started all this mess and was handling it with all the grace of a drunk emotionally retarded elephant. Sympathy for the Devil, Sara thought to herself.

"Dad," Sara cut in, "couldn't you lay off him, just a little?"

John and Sam turned to her with such expressions of surprise that it was clear they'd forgotten they weren't the only two people in the universe. "You stay out of this," John growled, and even though Sara's guts twisted, she had expected her father to react that way. What she didn't expect was for Sam to snap, "Sara, I can handle this myself."

And then they went back to the messy business of hurting each other. Sara looked at them both, cast a glance at Dean, who'd gone apparently fucking comatose, still sitting at the table with the cold Chinese food, staring at that letter like it had his god damn destiny written on it. To hell with all of you, Sara decided, and she grabbed her coat and left.

Of course, she only went as far as just outside the door. It was as though her entire world was limited to fit within a specific radial distance from any one of the equally fucked up men of her family. She imagined if she made a run for it, she’d just slam against thin air and be thrown back to the ground. The tide of nasty warped words were just barely held back by the old, ugly wood of the door. She stood, and waited, and stared up at the full moon. That explains it, she thought. We must be were-assholes.

Sara was so startled when something nudged her arm that she almost took a swing, but the nudge was quickly followed by a proffered flask, so that made things alright. Dean looked at her sideways and bumped her with his shoulder. She took the flask, for what it was and what it was intended to be.

“He can’t go,” Dean said, while Sara tipped back the flask.

“Yeah, I know,” she replied when she found her voice. “But he’s gonna anyway.”

“Don’t say that.”

Sara shrugged and took another deep drink. Behind them, the door burst open, and Sam came storming through. “You walk out that door, Sam,” came John's voice, heavy and cold as granite, “you don’t come back.”

In response, Sam slammed the door closed.

Dean and Sara exchanged a glance. Some part of her, the minute piece that still craved pb&j and her own bed, wanted to reach out and take her older brother’s hand. Instead, she watched while Sam clenched and unclenched his fists and tried drag his breathing back to something resembling normal.

"Sam," Dean said, "Don't do this."

Sam turned an almost accusing look at Dean. "Well, it's not like I have anything to stay for, do I?"

"Sam--" Dean's eyes darted to Sara, he licked his lips and caught hold of Sam's arm. "You can't go, okay? You just...can't."

There was something raw and desperate in her older brother's voice, something Sara didn't understand.

"Dean,” Sara said, as she gently pushed the two boys a little further apart from each other. “Maybe we should just...let him."

Of course, Dean looked at her as though she'd suggested catapulting their brother directly into the sun. "What?"

Sara shrugged. "What are we gonna do, chain him up and cart him around in the trunk until he gives this up? Besides, it's only college, for Christ's sake." She tried to sound casual, to believe it was just college and not the end of their lives as they knew it.

"Oh, right. We should definitely listen to you, because you're such an authority on going out on your own," Dean said. When Sara started to ask what in the hell he was talking about, Dean cut her off with an answer. "Why don't we review your experience with civilians, hunh? Cause that went awesome, didn't it?"

Sara went cold with anger. Son of a...She turned to Sam, who looked for the first time that night--maybe the first time in his life--like he'd rather not talk at just that moment.

"Sam...you told him?" Sara asked. It wasn't a real question, because she already knew the answer. Sam steadily avoiding her eyes told her everything she needed to know. The cold feeling simmered in her gut.

It was a night of saying things, terrible things, things that you knew you'd later regret, and hell if Sara was going to be left it. She turned to Dean.

"Sam fucks guys," she spat out.

She and Dean stared at each other, each looking equally stunned. Although she hadn't meant it that way, it had come out as a condemnation. She didn't feel vindicated for Sam's betrayal, she felt like a dick.

Dean sort of swiveled towards Sam, with darting glances back at Sara. "You...Sammy...what? I am totally shocked--"

Dean was interrupted by Sara shoving him, just as hard as she could. "You fucker, you knew! The two of you are just..."

Sara looked at Sam and Dean and realized that for all the all the long, stuffy hours crammed into the same damn car, all the restless nights sharing the same four walls, for all the same shared ugly memories they carried with them and the things that connected them, she barely knew her brothers.

"Sara," Sam said softly. "I need to talk to Dean. Alone."

Sara looked from her little brother's grave expression to Dean, and his gaze slid away from hers and he said nothing. Sara hadn't intended to walk away--it was against everything in her to turn her back on them. But somehow, almost against her own will, that's what she did, and before she really realized what the hell was happening, she was halfway across the dark parking lot. She looked numbly at her legs, wondered when they'd taken over the show. She looked back at her brothers, in time to see Dean pull Sam into a fierce hug. She watched as Sam turned his face into the crook of Dean's neck, saw Dean's hands move over Sam's back, cup the back of Sam's head. Something about the sight of it pressed on Sara's lungs; she turned her back on it and it was still there. She found now she couldn't walk away fast enough.

Sara hotwired the first car she could find and just fucking drove. She didn't know where she was going, and she surely didn't care.

(...)
Of course, Sara got all of thirty miles away before her father called. Of course, she answered. And of course, as soon as she heard his voice--"Sara" was all he had to say--she pulled a u-turn in the middle of the road and raced time back to the hotel, bawling like a snotty kid with a skinned god damn knee the whole way. She figured it alright; this way, she might be able to face her father with eyes dry, if swollen and red.

However, she hadn't anticipated John wrapping her in his arms the moment she walked through the door--she wasn't prepared for it, and it did her in.

When the worst of her sniveling had subsided, she sat with her Dad at the same table where the whole fucking disaster had started--only instead of boxes of gently rotting Chinese, there was now a beautiful bottle of amber peace waiting there. Sara couldn't express in words her gratitude. Dean was nowhere in sight--off, driving Sam to the bus station, John explained. And that was fine, more than fine--Sam and Dean could both go to Hell, as far as she was concerned, left more whiskey for her and her Dad.

They sat and drank and didn't talk much and that was a blessing. It was quiet, except for Sara's pleasant buzz until John cleared his throat. He didn't quite look at Sara.

"You know I didn't mean it to be like this," he said. He paused, drained his glass. "If your mother knew--"

"Dad," Sara interrupted. She poured him another. "It's okay."

John went back to considering the liquor in his glass.

Dean didn't reappear until morning, and when he did, he was silent. They all were.

In fact, Dean didn't say more than was necessary for weeks after that. Dean acted like the sunshine'd been taken out of his summer, like the whiskey had been removed from his ginger. Sara didn't feel particularly compelled to prod at scabs, so not talking suited her just fine. For a while. When his epically bitchy sulking got to wearing on her, she pointedly put on Bad Company and stared at Dean, willing him to take the hint, occasionally nodding towards the radio. Dean's lip quirked into a smirk, just for a moment, but it was enough.

Sara and Dean and John hunted--and hunted well, no matter how you split them up--and they drank, and they generally went on with their lives as best they could. Occasionally, Dean or Dad would find excuses to travel through California. Sara would generally make herself scarce at those times, taking the Charger that Uncle Bobby held for her and heading solidly East. Just now, she needed time, and most certainly distance, but one day she was pretty sure she'd be able to see Sam without seeing red.

It wasn't that he'd left. It wasn't just the absence of their little brother-although after enough shots, she might admit that she missed him--or that Sam out there without the people who had dedicated their lives to watching over him, it wasn't even Sam spilling some fucking secret to Dean or making her feel so very...no, it was that, once a-fucking-gain, Sam was forcing questions that Sara didn't want asked. He made it seem as though a "normal" life was possible, and, in fact, that it was better--and if that was true, what the hell had they all been doing with their strange, blood-stained and soul-straining existences? What had it all been for?

Sara didn’t know.

So she avoided the West Coast.

But avoidance didn't erase what Sara now knew--there was something wrong with her brothers, and there wasn't a damn thing she could do to help. She also knew, however, deep in her, that while the Winchesters looked at the world in terms of good and evil, they did not look at the each other that way. Good and evil became mist and fog in the shadow of the word family. So Sara went on with her life, and as she did she searched for the power to forgive--but more than that, so much more than that, she sought the power to forget.

...