Weaver
Title: Weaver
Summary: At Stanford, Sam learns to answer difficult questions.
Word Count: 1,162
Author's Note: Written for Tumblr's spnwritingchallenge. The prompt was 'Maybe I'm making it all up'. Contains themes of Mental illness, most likely PTSD.
It was only a little thing at first. During his first night in his college dorm, Sam sat in the corner as the rest of the students got to know each other. He was sipping his beer, trying not to think of what he had left behind, when a guy from the room next door asked him, "Where did you grow up?"
He didn't even pause to think when, "Lawrence, Kansas," came tumbling out of his mouth. It wasn't a lie, not really, it was just not entirely the truth. Sam had been born in Lawrence, that was very much true, but he'd never been there when he was old enough to remember.
There was a second when his neighbour didn't say anything and Sam felt his chest grow tight with the irrational fear that maybe the guy somehow knew that he was lying. But instead the kid just smiled and told him it was cool and went off to talk to someone more sociable.
It was one tiny white lie. He'd only said it to avoid awkward conversation and the difficult questions that would surely follow if he'd told the truth. It was rule number one: never tell anyone about what we do.
It didn't mean anything. It wouldn't hurt anyone.
That one tiny lie was the seed that planted the great, blossoming tree of Sam's customised childhood.
The second lie was small, yet bigger than the first. He was in an art history class and some of the girls were talking about their family pets. With nothing to offer to the conversation Sam remained silent at the end of the table, feeling the distance between himself and the others grow wider by the second.
"I had a dog called Bones," Sam said. And maybe it had been a thought that hadn't stayed in his head because he wasn't completely sure he'd said anything at all until everyone turned their heads to look his way.
"What breed was he?" one girl asked, she was smiling at him like he'd been part of the conversation all along.
Sam hadn't meant to speak at all but it wasn't a lie, he had had a dog called Bones, even if it was just for two weeks. "He was a golden retriever," he told her, and that was supposed to be where it ended, but then more words came flooding out with no indication of stopping, "My dad got him for me for my fourteenth birthday as a surprise."
He wished he could stop talking but everyone was smiling at him and he actually felt like he had friends for the first time in his life. "Yeah," he cleared his throat, he kept going, "I'd been begging him for a puppy for years and every time I asked he'd say no. So it's my fourteenth birthday and I come home from school and go up to my room to do my homework and there's a freaking puppy on my bed. He was a skinny thing, came from the shelter, so I called him Bones. I really miss that dog."
Lying through his teeth had been as easy as breathing, after all, he'd learned from the best.
He lied whenever someone asked about his childhood. From little things about the colour of the bedroom he never had or the fajitas his dad never cooked each Saturday, to the big things like the time he never snuck out to go drinking and got caught on his way back into the house or the time he spent with the grandparents he never knew during the holidays he never had. The words would slip right off his tongue and everyone would smile or laugh or tell him about their own similar experiences, and Sam let it happen because for once he didn't feel like a freak. It was enough for him to pretend.
The easier the lies came to him, the harder they were to distinguish from the truth.
It had been harder to lie to Jess. For one, he actually really liked her and he felt guilty for not being as honest with her as she was with him, for another thing, Jess asked a lot of questions. Still, Sam would tell her the version of his life that he wished he could have had.
It was safer for her to not know the truth.
The only thing he never changed was what happened to his mother.
"I'm so sorry, Sam," Jess said after Sam told her, she softly brushed a hand across his upper arm, "It must have been hard."
Sam shrugged. "Yeah... but I was only a baby. I don't remember her much. It was harder on Dean."
"But both of you lost her," Jess said, "I know that I have't experienced anything like that, but you both lost your mom, even if only one of you remembers her."
Sam had never thought of it like that. He had never really been allowed to ask about her when he'd been with Dad and Dean, he had never felt like she belonged to him in the same way she did to them.
"But you must have a lot of great stories about her, right?" Jess prompted gently, smiling, "Your dad must have told you all about her."
He didn't. He hadn't. The threads in Sam's mind were already weaving together their own unblemished portrait of Mary Winchester.
"She liked baking, Dad told me, especially pies. I think that's why Dean loves pie so much. And Dean told me that she used to tuck us in at night, she'd always read me Sam I Am by Dr Seuss and Dad read to me after she died. She loved animals and she was a great horse-rider, she won a ton of competitions when she was younger and we had her ribbons up on the wall. She was a crappy gardener, couldn't keep a plant alive no matter how hard she tried to make it grow, Dad says she used to drown them by mistake..."
He went on with the story of his imaginary mother for an hour and a half and Jess soaked up every word of it as she lay curled up under his arm. The more he spoke, the more he believed his own words too.
It took him four years to build up his perfect past with stone falsehoods and twisted truths. And it took seconds for his perfect future to burn up in flames and scatter away to nothing.
When he told Dean that Jess had known about their lives and the real way they grew up, that she accepted it, that she was going to marry him despite it, he finally realised that the lies weren't there to protect others from the terrible reality of monsters.
The lies were a road he'd pathed for his escape from a childhood he had never wanted.
And, in the end, it was an escape he couldn't make.
Summary: At Stanford, Sam learns to answer difficult questions.
Word Count: 1,162
Author's Note: Written for Tumblr's spnwritingchallenge. The prompt was 'Maybe I'm making it all up'. Contains themes of Mental illness, most likely PTSD.
It was only a little thing at first. During his first night in his college dorm, Sam sat in the corner as the rest of the students got to know each other. He was sipping his beer, trying not to think of what he had left behind, when a guy from the room next door asked him, "Where did you grow up?"
He didn't even pause to think when, "Lawrence, Kansas," came tumbling out of his mouth. It wasn't a lie, not really, it was just not entirely the truth. Sam had been born in Lawrence, that was very much true, but he'd never been there when he was old enough to remember.
There was a second when his neighbour didn't say anything and Sam felt his chest grow tight with the irrational fear that maybe the guy somehow knew that he was lying. But instead the kid just smiled and told him it was cool and went off to talk to someone more sociable.
It was one tiny white lie. He'd only said it to avoid awkward conversation and the difficult questions that would surely follow if he'd told the truth. It was rule number one: never tell anyone about what we do.
It didn't mean anything. It wouldn't hurt anyone.
That one tiny lie was the seed that planted the great, blossoming tree of Sam's customised childhood.
The second lie was small, yet bigger than the first. He was in an art history class and some of the girls were talking about their family pets. With nothing to offer to the conversation Sam remained silent at the end of the table, feeling the distance between himself and the others grow wider by the second.
"I had a dog called Bones," Sam said. And maybe it had been a thought that hadn't stayed in his head because he wasn't completely sure he'd said anything at all until everyone turned their heads to look his way.
"What breed was he?" one girl asked, she was smiling at him like he'd been part of the conversation all along.
Sam hadn't meant to speak at all but it wasn't a lie, he had had a dog called Bones, even if it was just for two weeks. "He was a golden retriever," he told her, and that was supposed to be where it ended, but then more words came flooding out with no indication of stopping, "My dad got him for me for my fourteenth birthday as a surprise."
He wished he could stop talking but everyone was smiling at him and he actually felt like he had friends for the first time in his life. "Yeah," he cleared his throat, he kept going, "I'd been begging him for a puppy for years and every time I asked he'd say no. So it's my fourteenth birthday and I come home from school and go up to my room to do my homework and there's a freaking puppy on my bed. He was a skinny thing, came from the shelter, so I called him Bones. I really miss that dog."
Lying through his teeth had been as easy as breathing, after all, he'd learned from the best.
He lied whenever someone asked about his childhood. From little things about the colour of the bedroom he never had or the fajitas his dad never cooked each Saturday, to the big things like the time he never snuck out to go drinking and got caught on his way back into the house or the time he spent with the grandparents he never knew during the holidays he never had. The words would slip right off his tongue and everyone would smile or laugh or tell him about their own similar experiences, and Sam let it happen because for once he didn't feel like a freak. It was enough for him to pretend.
The easier the lies came to him, the harder they were to distinguish from the truth.
It had been harder to lie to Jess. For one, he actually really liked her and he felt guilty for not being as honest with her as she was with him, for another thing, Jess asked a lot of questions. Still, Sam would tell her the version of his life that he wished he could have had.
It was safer for her to not know the truth.
The only thing he never changed was what happened to his mother.
"I'm so sorry, Sam," Jess said after Sam told her, she softly brushed a hand across his upper arm, "It must have been hard."
Sam shrugged. "Yeah... but I was only a baby. I don't remember her much. It was harder on Dean."
"But both of you lost her," Jess said, "I know that I have't experienced anything like that, but you both lost your mom, even if only one of you remembers her."
Sam had never thought of it like that. He had never really been allowed to ask about her when he'd been with Dad and Dean, he had never felt like she belonged to him in the same way she did to them.
"But you must have a lot of great stories about her, right?" Jess prompted gently, smiling, "Your dad must have told you all about her."
He didn't. He hadn't. The threads in Sam's mind were already weaving together their own unblemished portrait of Mary Winchester.
"She liked baking, Dad told me, especially pies. I think that's why Dean loves pie so much. And Dean told me that she used to tuck us in at night, she'd always read me Sam I Am by Dr Seuss and Dad read to me after she died. She loved animals and she was a great horse-rider, she won a ton of competitions when she was younger and we had her ribbons up on the wall. She was a crappy gardener, couldn't keep a plant alive no matter how hard she tried to make it grow, Dad says she used to drown them by mistake..."
He went on with the story of his imaginary mother for an hour and a half and Jess soaked up every word of it as she lay curled up under his arm. The more he spoke, the more he believed his own words too.
It took him four years to build up his perfect past with stone falsehoods and twisted truths. And it took seconds for his perfect future to burn up in flames and scatter away to nothing.
When he told Dean that Jess had known about their lives and the real way they grew up, that she accepted it, that she was going to marry him despite it, he finally realised that the lies weren't there to protect others from the terrible reality of monsters.
The lies were a road he'd pathed for his escape from a childhood he had never wanted.
And, in the end, it was an escape he couldn't make.