On Our Own, 1/11, PG-13, Gen, AU
This was the plotbunny of oddness. I don't see this getting drawn out for chapters and chapters. But I wanted to post it, see if you guys were interested in seeing more. If not, I'll just keep writing it for me to see where my muse takes me. She's not certain about the ending right now.
Title: On Our Own
Chapter: 1 of ?
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Through the end of season 5, though especially for 5x04.
Disclaimer: None of this is mine.
Summary: AU. When Sam is fifteen, his dad makes a decision based on a dark future he was apparently shown by an 'angel': split his sons up and abandon his youngest to keep that future at bay. Dean refuses to let it happen, but if they want to stay together, there's only one option: run.
Wordcount: This chapter, 2,495.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11A
Part 11B
Epilogue (to come!)
The entire damn day had been weird. For one thing, Dad hadn't argued with him once. Not even when Sam had known that he was oh so wrong about the translation. Even Dean, hater of everything that involved studying Latin, had given Sam, and then Dad, a look of incredulity. But Dad hadn't disagreed, had said it was fine. And he hadn't been drunk or engrossed in something else. He'd even tried to smile at Sam, and that had just been wrong. Obviously, their dad had been replaced by a pod person who was going to eat them when they weren't looking.
So it was for his own self-preservation that Sam Winchester was crouched on the stairs of Bobby's house, unrepentantly listening into the conversation between their host and his dad. They'd been too quiet to hear until Bobby had gotten angry, and now they were both pissed off. Nothing new.
Their argument didn't make any sense, though. None that Sam could think of.
“You can't do this to them, John. It's inhumane.”
“You don't understand,” his dad said. “It's not a maybe, or a possibly going to happen: I know what happens, Bobby. I know how this goes down. And this is the only way I can think of to stop it without shooting one of them.”
Sam's eyebrows rose. Shooting someone? Had someone been turned into a werewolf? God, Dean would love that.
Except Dad wouldn't hesitate to shoot a werewolf, no matter whether it was human or not. He shifted uneasily on the stairs, careful to avoid the place where one of the steps creaked. For some reason, he couldn't shake the stirrings of wrongness in his gut.
“You don't know jack, only what some supposed 'angel' told you,” Bobby snarled, and Sam barely refrained from falling down the stairs. An angel. Holy shit. Dad said they weren't real, Dean refused to entertain the thought but an angel. He prayed most every night, but it had turned habit, almost. To think that they were real...God, what he'd do to talk to one of them for just, just a minute...
“I saw it,” his dad insisted. “I know what he does. I'd already figured out what had happened with Mary but...but I hoped that keeping him close would stop anything the supernatural had in mind for him. But seeing that future, Bobby, it doesn't do a damn lick of good. No. This is the best way to make sure it never happens.”
“You're a fool.”
“I'm saving the world.”
“You can't separate your boys!”
Sam's indrawn gasp was too loud. Or would've been, if a hand hadn't suddenly slapped over his mouth to catch it. Sam's head whipped to the side where Dean was crouching next to him on the stairs above, finger to his lips. His eyes were as wide as Sam's, though, and he looked every bit as stunned and scared as Sam felt.
The hell did he mean, separate?
“I can and I will,” Dad said firmly. “Tomorrow morning, I'll ask Dean to help me on a hunt, and we'll leave Sam here, same as we always do.”
“Think he'll get pretty suspicious that you and his brother don't come back,” Bobby said sarcastically.
“Too bad, I don't really care. Given what happens to him and Dean in the future, this is the better alternative. Besides, he's never liked moving around much. He'll make roots here.”
Sam felt like he was swaying on the stairs, shock still coursing through his system. They were going to leave him behind, what, permanently? Forever?
“Dean doesn't really like it anymore than Sam does,” Bobby said. Ever the brutally honest man, at least, and it was a small relief to know someone was on their side. “And what happens if I don't decide to let Sam stay here?”
“Then he'll make a life for himself somewhere else,” their dad said stubbornly. “He's a big boy.”
“He's fifteen, John!”
“Old enough to handle himself. He doesn't need me or Dean.”
This time, it was Sam who clapped his hand over Dean's mouth before his brother made their presence known. Dean looked downright furious, and for the first time, Sam actually thought his brother was willing to pick a fight with their dad.
It was better to focus on that than the fact that his dad was completely okay with cutting him loose and leaving him to the mercy of the world. Abandoning him, leaving him an orphan. The stairs felt like they were swaying again.
In half a second Dean's hand were wrapped tightly around his shoulders, keeping him from tilting down the steps. Oh. Guess he really had been swaying that time.
“You're a bastard,” Bobby said, voice pitched low and dangerous. “You don't deserve to have those boys.”
“I know what happens if they stay in each other's lives. Most people split away from their siblings and their parents when they come of age,” Dad said. Solemn and serious. Completely serious about splitting them up and Sam never being able to see Dean again.
“Most people don't grow up in each other's pockets the way those two have,” Bobby argued. “You split them up now, you'll kill the both of 'em. They rely on each other to survive, John. They always have. It's been Sam and Dean against the world since your oldest was big enough to carry Sam on his own.”
“They rely too much on each other,” their dad replied. “And believe me, that's been a worry all on its own. They just...just look at each other, or say only one word, and somehow they've had an entire conversation. I've known mind readers with less accuracy than those two. But now that I know how it ends...I'd rather they die now then be at that place later.”
Sam stopped breathing, and he felt Dean freeze beside him. The living room was silent with a pregnant pause, waiting to give birth to an explosion.
He wasn't wrong. “You self-righteous, pig-headed, sonuvabitch,” Bobby seethed, and the floor creaked from his walking. “You can get the hell out of my house, right now.”
“You can't keep my boys,” Dad said, his voice equally as angry. “I have the law on my side. You toss me out now with the boys, and I'll leave Sam in the middle of somewhere and take Dean with me. It's your call.”
Sam couldn't help the small whimper that was thankfully covered by Bobby's louder swearing at their dad. It didn't matter, though. None of it mattered.
It took a minute to realize that Dean was tugging at his arm, back to the second floor. Somehow, he managed to find his feet and push himself to standing. Following Dean took every bit of strength and focus that he had, and a few minutes later they were inside the room they shared. Dean left him standing in the middle of the room to lock the door and wedge one of the room's chairs underneath the doorknob. What good that would do to keep a determined John Winchester out, Sam didn't know.
His legs threatened to give out beneath him as his mind became too heavy to carry on his own. Fortunately, that was the point where Dean noticed and dragged him over to one of the beds.
It still took him a minute to realize that Dean was kneeling in front of him, worry written across his face, and rising panic in his voice. It was like listening to him speak underwater. Shell-shocked, his mind thoughtfully supplied. You're shell-shocked. The world will come back in a minute.
The world where his dad wanted nothing to do with him, was more than happy to leave him in the middle of nowhere in order to keep Dean, his good, older son who apparently wasn't going to do something dramatic to the world in the future.
Like a rubber band that'd been pulled too hard, everything came back with a quick snap. “-me, dammit Sammy, answer me-”
“Dean?” he managed, voice choking up. Because they were going to get split up like a litter of fucking puppies all because his dad wanted to. And Dad had decided to keep the prize pup to himself.
In an instant his brother's arms were wrapped tightly around him. “I'm here,” Dean swore in his ear. Sam buried his head into the space between Dean's shoulder and neck and tried to blink back tears. “I'm here, Sammy.”
“For now,” Sam managed to get out. “Until tomorrow.” Because he knew Bobby would let them stay. Not for their dad's sake, but for his sake, and Dean's. They'd get one last sleep, and then-
And then.
“No,” Dean said firmly. Sam lifted his head and sat back, wiping at his eyes. Dean knelt before him, determined and strong and fully capable of wrecking anything he saw fit to destroy. He usually looked like that on a hunt, ready and willing to kill anything that tried to hurt Sam.
He wasn't on a hunt now. But he was completely willing to destroy the threat against Sam, even if it was their own father.
God, Dad.
“Don't,” Sam whispered. Besides the fact that Dean, though nineteen, wasn't big enough to hold a fight against their dad, Sam sure as hell couldn't. He'd shot up a couple of inches over the past few months, but nothing spectacular. He was still small, still easy to pick on and bully, and still the weakest member of the Winchester family, though only in size. No matter what their dad said, he could handle any weapon with ease, could out-translate Dean any day, and had no problem putting the pieces of a hunt together.
But it obviously wasn't good enough. Nowhere near good enough to let him come along, to not let him get split up.
Dean was either getting psychic, or he'd seen something in Sam's eyes that somehow transmitted some of his inner thoughts, because the next thing Sam knew, Dean was frantically cupping his face and leaning his forehead against Sam's. “We'll be all right,” he promised. “I'll get us out of here.” I'll keep you safe.
Sam wrapped his hands around Dean's bigger wrists and nodded against his brother's head. It was acknowledgment and trust all in one small move, but they'd never needed anything else. Who the hell needed words when you knew that your brother would rather die than watch you bleed from a shallow cut? That your brother would give up anything just to keep you safe, keep you happy?
Who needed words when your brother knew you'd do the same and anything more if he asked?
“When?” Sam asked instead. They couldn't leave now, because their dad was still awake, and bound to come up and check on them as they supposedly slept. And it couldn't be early morning, because their dad was up at the crack of dawn. Sam's eyes skittered over to the clock in the corner, heart sinking at the time. Almost midnight. Even if they left now-
God, how the hell were they supposed to get out of there at all? Bobby lived in the middle of nowhere.
A tap on his cheek brought his attention back to Dean. Once he had Sam's attention, he gave a small grin. “I'll get us out of here,” he said again. It was a promise and a threat.
For the first time since he'd heard his dad's decision, Sam felt the world even out and settle to a balance. Dean would handle it. Dean would keep him safe. His own personal mother hen, constantly keeping him from harm.
Sam had never had a mother growing up, but after meeting the moms of friends at school, he'd decided that while he'd wished he could meet his own mom, he hadn't felt like he was missing something.
He'd had a Dean, and he felt horrible for the rest of the world who didn't have one.
“Bed,” Dean told him. “Hair above the blankets, eyes closed and visibly so from the door.” Like all the other times they'd played hooky and stayed home from school 'sick', or when they'd pretended to be asleep only so they could keep talking through the night.
Sam scrambled into bed, only to be stopped by Dean. “Get dressed and packed first,” his brother told him quietly. This wasn't just for fun. Tonight, they were letting go of this life for good. Of their life.
Of their dad. Sam swallowed hard but nodded and turned to his duffel. It was cold outside: something warm, but not too warm so that he started sweating under the sheets while they waited for their dad to come up and check on them.
By the time he was finished dressing, Dean had removed the chair from the door and was just throwing on his t-shirt. “Are you okay?” Sam asked softly.
Dean turned towards him, eyebrows raised. “I think I should be asking you that, Sammy,” he said, equally as quiet.
No, Sam wasn't okay. But Dean worshiped their dad. This recent turn of events, this being forced to choose between their dad and Sam, it had to be nothing less than a betrayal in Dean's eyes. “I just,” Sam started to explain, then stopped. There was no real way to put it into words.
Dean let out a small sigh and looked away. “I know,” he said finally. “But this is the right thing to do, and you know it.”
Didn't make it any easier. “I do,” he said anyways, just to have something to say. Then, “I'm sorry,” because he hated this. Hated that Dean was in this position, that Dean was hiding his hurt, his pain, from Sam. That their dad had turned on Sam.
“Don't be,” Dean said immediately, eyes darkening. “This was his choice, Sam, not yours or mine. We're making ours tonight. We're not getting split up.”
No further words needed. He hadn't just turned on Sam, he'd turned on Dean, too, and Dean couldn't be clearer about it. They were fighting this together.
Sam nodded slowly, and Dean gave one terse nod in return. “Bed, if you're packed,” Dean said. “I'll get us out of here.”
If they could make it past their dad. Make it past John Winchester, one of the best damn hunters in the business.
Forget sleeping: breathing was the more important thing to focus on as they waited for their dad. Sam swallowed and pulled the covers up just enough. If they could pass the inspection. Then, they'd go.
“One step at a time, Sammy,” Dean said from the bed across the way. Sam lifted his eyes and met Dean's fierce gaze. “And I'm stepping with you.”
Hopefully between the two of them, they could out-step their dad.
Sam closed his eyes and focused on breathing.
Part 2
~Nebula
Title: On Our Own
Chapter: 1 of ?
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Through the end of season 5, though especially for 5x04.
Disclaimer: None of this is mine.
Summary: AU. When Sam is fifteen, his dad makes a decision based on a dark future he was apparently shown by an 'angel': split his sons up and abandon his youngest to keep that future at bay. Dean refuses to let it happen, but if they want to stay together, there's only one option: run.
Wordcount: This chapter, 2,495.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11A
Part 11B
Epilogue (to come!)
The entire damn day had been weird. For one thing, Dad hadn't argued with him once. Not even when Sam had known that he was oh so wrong about the translation. Even Dean, hater of everything that involved studying Latin, had given Sam, and then Dad, a look of incredulity. But Dad hadn't disagreed, had said it was fine. And he hadn't been drunk or engrossed in something else. He'd even tried to smile at Sam, and that had just been wrong. Obviously, their dad had been replaced by a pod person who was going to eat them when they weren't looking.
So it was for his own self-preservation that Sam Winchester was crouched on the stairs of Bobby's house, unrepentantly listening into the conversation between their host and his dad. They'd been too quiet to hear until Bobby had gotten angry, and now they were both pissed off. Nothing new.
Their argument didn't make any sense, though. None that Sam could think of.
“You can't do this to them, John. It's inhumane.”
“You don't understand,” his dad said. “It's not a maybe, or a possibly going to happen: I know what happens, Bobby. I know how this goes down. And this is the only way I can think of to stop it without shooting one of them.”
Sam's eyebrows rose. Shooting someone? Had someone been turned into a werewolf? God, Dean would love that.
Except Dad wouldn't hesitate to shoot a werewolf, no matter whether it was human or not. He shifted uneasily on the stairs, careful to avoid the place where one of the steps creaked. For some reason, he couldn't shake the stirrings of wrongness in his gut.
“You don't know jack, only what some supposed 'angel' told you,” Bobby snarled, and Sam barely refrained from falling down the stairs. An angel. Holy shit. Dad said they weren't real, Dean refused to entertain the thought but an angel. He prayed most every night, but it had turned habit, almost. To think that they were real...God, what he'd do to talk to one of them for just, just a minute...
“I saw it,” his dad insisted. “I know what he does. I'd already figured out what had happened with Mary but...but I hoped that keeping him close would stop anything the supernatural had in mind for him. But seeing that future, Bobby, it doesn't do a damn lick of good. No. This is the best way to make sure it never happens.”
“You're a fool.”
“I'm saving the world.”
“You can't separate your boys!”
Sam's indrawn gasp was too loud. Or would've been, if a hand hadn't suddenly slapped over his mouth to catch it. Sam's head whipped to the side where Dean was crouching next to him on the stairs above, finger to his lips. His eyes were as wide as Sam's, though, and he looked every bit as stunned and scared as Sam felt.
The hell did he mean, separate?
“I can and I will,” Dad said firmly. “Tomorrow morning, I'll ask Dean to help me on a hunt, and we'll leave Sam here, same as we always do.”
“Think he'll get pretty suspicious that you and his brother don't come back,” Bobby said sarcastically.
“Too bad, I don't really care. Given what happens to him and Dean in the future, this is the better alternative. Besides, he's never liked moving around much. He'll make roots here.”
Sam felt like he was swaying on the stairs, shock still coursing through his system. They were going to leave him behind, what, permanently? Forever?
“Dean doesn't really like it anymore than Sam does,” Bobby said. Ever the brutally honest man, at least, and it was a small relief to know someone was on their side. “And what happens if I don't decide to let Sam stay here?”
“Then he'll make a life for himself somewhere else,” their dad said stubbornly. “He's a big boy.”
“He's fifteen, John!”
“Old enough to handle himself. He doesn't need me or Dean.”
This time, it was Sam who clapped his hand over Dean's mouth before his brother made their presence known. Dean looked downright furious, and for the first time, Sam actually thought his brother was willing to pick a fight with their dad.
It was better to focus on that than the fact that his dad was completely okay with cutting him loose and leaving him to the mercy of the world. Abandoning him, leaving him an orphan. The stairs felt like they were swaying again.
In half a second Dean's hand were wrapped tightly around his shoulders, keeping him from tilting down the steps. Oh. Guess he really had been swaying that time.
“You're a bastard,” Bobby said, voice pitched low and dangerous. “You don't deserve to have those boys.”
“I know what happens if they stay in each other's lives. Most people split away from their siblings and their parents when they come of age,” Dad said. Solemn and serious. Completely serious about splitting them up and Sam never being able to see Dean again.
“Most people don't grow up in each other's pockets the way those two have,” Bobby argued. “You split them up now, you'll kill the both of 'em. They rely on each other to survive, John. They always have. It's been Sam and Dean against the world since your oldest was big enough to carry Sam on his own.”
“They rely too much on each other,” their dad replied. “And believe me, that's been a worry all on its own. They just...just look at each other, or say only one word, and somehow they've had an entire conversation. I've known mind readers with less accuracy than those two. But now that I know how it ends...I'd rather they die now then be at that place later.”
Sam stopped breathing, and he felt Dean freeze beside him. The living room was silent with a pregnant pause, waiting to give birth to an explosion.
He wasn't wrong. “You self-righteous, pig-headed, sonuvabitch,” Bobby seethed, and the floor creaked from his walking. “You can get the hell out of my house, right now.”
“You can't keep my boys,” Dad said, his voice equally as angry. “I have the law on my side. You toss me out now with the boys, and I'll leave Sam in the middle of somewhere and take Dean with me. It's your call.”
Sam couldn't help the small whimper that was thankfully covered by Bobby's louder swearing at their dad. It didn't matter, though. None of it mattered.
It took a minute to realize that Dean was tugging at his arm, back to the second floor. Somehow, he managed to find his feet and push himself to standing. Following Dean took every bit of strength and focus that he had, and a few minutes later they were inside the room they shared. Dean left him standing in the middle of the room to lock the door and wedge one of the room's chairs underneath the doorknob. What good that would do to keep a determined John Winchester out, Sam didn't know.
His legs threatened to give out beneath him as his mind became too heavy to carry on his own. Fortunately, that was the point where Dean noticed and dragged him over to one of the beds.
It still took him a minute to realize that Dean was kneeling in front of him, worry written across his face, and rising panic in his voice. It was like listening to him speak underwater. Shell-shocked, his mind thoughtfully supplied. You're shell-shocked. The world will come back in a minute.
The world where his dad wanted nothing to do with him, was more than happy to leave him in the middle of nowhere in order to keep Dean, his good, older son who apparently wasn't going to do something dramatic to the world in the future.
Like a rubber band that'd been pulled too hard, everything came back with a quick snap. “-me, dammit Sammy, answer me-”
“Dean?” he managed, voice choking up. Because they were going to get split up like a litter of fucking puppies all because his dad wanted to. And Dad had decided to keep the prize pup to himself.
In an instant his brother's arms were wrapped tightly around him. “I'm here,” Dean swore in his ear. Sam buried his head into the space between Dean's shoulder and neck and tried to blink back tears. “I'm here, Sammy.”
“For now,” Sam managed to get out. “Until tomorrow.” Because he knew Bobby would let them stay. Not for their dad's sake, but for his sake, and Dean's. They'd get one last sleep, and then-
And then.
“No,” Dean said firmly. Sam lifted his head and sat back, wiping at his eyes. Dean knelt before him, determined and strong and fully capable of wrecking anything he saw fit to destroy. He usually looked like that on a hunt, ready and willing to kill anything that tried to hurt Sam.
He wasn't on a hunt now. But he was completely willing to destroy the threat against Sam, even if it was their own father.
God, Dad.
“Don't,” Sam whispered. Besides the fact that Dean, though nineteen, wasn't big enough to hold a fight against their dad, Sam sure as hell couldn't. He'd shot up a couple of inches over the past few months, but nothing spectacular. He was still small, still easy to pick on and bully, and still the weakest member of the Winchester family, though only in size. No matter what their dad said, he could handle any weapon with ease, could out-translate Dean any day, and had no problem putting the pieces of a hunt together.
But it obviously wasn't good enough. Nowhere near good enough to let him come along, to not let him get split up.
Dean was either getting psychic, or he'd seen something in Sam's eyes that somehow transmitted some of his inner thoughts, because the next thing Sam knew, Dean was frantically cupping his face and leaning his forehead against Sam's. “We'll be all right,” he promised. “I'll get us out of here.” I'll keep you safe.
Sam wrapped his hands around Dean's bigger wrists and nodded against his brother's head. It was acknowledgment and trust all in one small move, but they'd never needed anything else. Who the hell needed words when you knew that your brother would rather die than watch you bleed from a shallow cut? That your brother would give up anything just to keep you safe, keep you happy?
Who needed words when your brother knew you'd do the same and anything more if he asked?
“When?” Sam asked instead. They couldn't leave now, because their dad was still awake, and bound to come up and check on them as they supposedly slept. And it couldn't be early morning, because their dad was up at the crack of dawn. Sam's eyes skittered over to the clock in the corner, heart sinking at the time. Almost midnight. Even if they left now-
God, how the hell were they supposed to get out of there at all? Bobby lived in the middle of nowhere.
A tap on his cheek brought his attention back to Dean. Once he had Sam's attention, he gave a small grin. “I'll get us out of here,” he said again. It was a promise and a threat.
For the first time since he'd heard his dad's decision, Sam felt the world even out and settle to a balance. Dean would handle it. Dean would keep him safe. His own personal mother hen, constantly keeping him from harm.
Sam had never had a mother growing up, but after meeting the moms of friends at school, he'd decided that while he'd wished he could meet his own mom, he hadn't felt like he was missing something.
He'd had a Dean, and he felt horrible for the rest of the world who didn't have one.
“Bed,” Dean told him. “Hair above the blankets, eyes closed and visibly so from the door.” Like all the other times they'd played hooky and stayed home from school 'sick', or when they'd pretended to be asleep only so they could keep talking through the night.
Sam scrambled into bed, only to be stopped by Dean. “Get dressed and packed first,” his brother told him quietly. This wasn't just for fun. Tonight, they were letting go of this life for good. Of their life.
Of their dad. Sam swallowed hard but nodded and turned to his duffel. It was cold outside: something warm, but not too warm so that he started sweating under the sheets while they waited for their dad to come up and check on them.
By the time he was finished dressing, Dean had removed the chair from the door and was just throwing on his t-shirt. “Are you okay?” Sam asked softly.
Dean turned towards him, eyebrows raised. “I think I should be asking you that, Sammy,” he said, equally as quiet.
No, Sam wasn't okay. But Dean worshiped their dad. This recent turn of events, this being forced to choose between their dad and Sam, it had to be nothing less than a betrayal in Dean's eyes. “I just,” Sam started to explain, then stopped. There was no real way to put it into words.
Dean let out a small sigh and looked away. “I know,” he said finally. “But this is the right thing to do, and you know it.”
Didn't make it any easier. “I do,” he said anyways, just to have something to say. Then, “I'm sorry,” because he hated this. Hated that Dean was in this position, that Dean was hiding his hurt, his pain, from Sam. That their dad had turned on Sam.
“Don't be,” Dean said immediately, eyes darkening. “This was his choice, Sam, not yours or mine. We're making ours tonight. We're not getting split up.”
No further words needed. He hadn't just turned on Sam, he'd turned on Dean, too, and Dean couldn't be clearer about it. They were fighting this together.
Sam nodded slowly, and Dean gave one terse nod in return. “Bed, if you're packed,” Dean said. “I'll get us out of here.”
If they could make it past their dad. Make it past John Winchester, one of the best damn hunters in the business.
Forget sleeping: breathing was the more important thing to focus on as they waited for their dad. Sam swallowed and pulled the covers up just enough. If they could pass the inspection. Then, they'd go.
“One step at a time, Sammy,” Dean said from the bed across the way. Sam lifted his eyes and met Dean's fierce gaze. “And I'm stepping with you.”
Hopefully between the two of them, they could out-step their dad.
Sam closed his eyes and focused on breathing.
Part 2
~Nebula