These are the days of miracle and wonder (this is the long distance call) for quickreaver (1/2)
Title: These are the days of miracle and wonder (this is the long distance call)
Recipient: Quickreaver
Rating: PG-13 for language
Word Count or Media: ~10K
Warnings: Depictions of show-level gore
Summary: Sam Winchester's life has been touched by many things - love, loss, fear, hope, pain, and always, in the background, witchcraft.
I. Sandusky, Ohio. Sam Winchester is five years old.
Sam talks to things that other people don't talk to. He thanks the grass for being cool and soft under his feet. He tells the birds their songs are pretty. He doesn't use his voice; he talks to them in his head. And sometimes they answer.
(Not with words. That would be silly. Birds don't know words. Grass doesn't know words. But they answer, all the same.)
It never occurs to him that other people don't do the same thing until the day Dean kills a spider in the bathtub. "Why didn't you just ask him to leave?" he asks.
Dean laughs like it's a joke, and it makes Sam feel inexplicably hot and angry inside. "It's not funny," Sam says. "You didn't have to kill him. You could have just told him to get out of our bathtub."
Dean rolls his eyes dramatically. "People can't talk to insects, Spider-Man."
"Not the way you talk to people, but you can tell them things. You know." Surely Dean knows. Dean knows everything. It's just one of those things everyone can do and you don't talk need to talk about, like the way you can un-focus your eyes, or feel if it's going to rain. Isn't it?
But Dean takes a long time to answer, and Sam gets an uncomfortable feeling deep in his belly. "No, Sam," he finally says. "You can't tell them things. They're spiders. People can't talk to spiders. Not normal people." Something about Dean's expression - a little angry, a little worried, a little frightened - makes Sam think people aren't supposed to talk to spiders. "I mean, you don't think you're really talking to them, right?"
"No, I know," he says quickly. "I was just joking." He doesn't bring it up again. He feels like he did something bad, something wrong, and he doesn't want Dean to look angry-worried-frightened at him again.
~~~
II. Waterloo, Iowa. Sam Winchester is six years old.
Barbara O'Malley meets Sam when his father gets involved in a hunt with her husband. "Decent guy," Andy O'Malley says. "Kind of obsessed, but I guess a lot of us are. I feel bad for the kids, though."
Barbara feels bad for them too, and invites John to leave them with her instead of whatever else he's been doing for childcare while he and Andy do research and reconnaissance. When she finds out that his childcare plans have actually been for them to stay in the hotel room alone, all day, with ten-year-old Dean in charge, she's horrified. She wants to grab John by his shoulders and shake him, scream in his face until he gets it, because losing a wife to whatever lurks in the dark is bad enough, but losing your child? He can't even imagine that pain. How dare he take that risk.
Instead, she calmly insists the boys stay at her house.
Dean considers himself too old to be babysat, and once he determines Barbara isn't a threat to his little brother, he's content to watch TV or read comic books and ignore the two of them entirely. But little Sam thrives on the attention.
"Don't get too attached," Andy warns her kindly. And she knows what he's worried about. In some ways, Sam fills the gaping hole left in her life. It would be so easy to pretend she has Brendan back again. Sam has the same round baby face, same mop of dark hair, same old soul looking out through young eyes. But unlike Brendan's clear, untroubled grey eyes, Sam's changeable eyes (moss green one day, sunflowers against a blue summer sky the next) often seem touched with concern. He's different, this boy. But still, he's sweet and kind and affectionate, and just having him around eases the ache of her loss a tiny bit.
One day Dean arrives, gives her his typical polite but perfunctory greeting, and tells her Sam went straight into the back yard. She goes outside to meet him. "Hey, Sammy," she says cheerfully. "You want to swing today?"
Sam's staring forlornly at the backyard of the house next door. "Miss Barbara?" he says. "That dog is sad. She knocked her water bowl over, and she's thirsty. Can we give her some water?"
Barbara can see the Wilson's old dog, Piper, through the chain link fence. Usually she's happy to nap on the sun-warmed stoop, but today she's whining at the door. "Well, Piper's a sweet dog," she says. "I don't know why we can't go help her, as long as you do exactly what I say." Sam nods eagerly. She takes his hand and leads him into the Wilson's back yard, positioning him safely behind her legs. She shows him how to hold his hand out and let the old dog sniff it. "It's okay, Piper," she says. "You know me, and Sam's my friend."
Piper licks Sam's hand and wags her tail, and Barbara doesn't sense any fear or danger from her, so she lets Sam scratch behind her ears while she looks for the water dish. She finally finds it behind a prickly holly bush next to the small concrete stoop. Which is odd. There's no way Sam could have seen that dish from her back yard. She fills the dish from the outside spigot and puts it on the bottom step.
As Piper eagerly laps up the water, Barbara says "Sam? How did you know she knocked her water over? Did you see her do it?"
Sam stares at her, wide eyed, as if he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "No, I, um... I don't know, I guess she just sounded sad. And thirsty."
"Okay." She smiles reassuringly, careful not to betray anything, and he relaxes. They find a chewed-up tennis ball in the backyard and throw it for Piper to chase for a few minutes, then leave her sunning happily on her stoop.
"So, how does Piper feel now?" Barbara asks casually, as they walk back to her yard.
"She's happy," Sam answers. "She liked playing with us, but she's tired now." He stops with a gasp as he realizes he revealed something he wasn't supposed to reveal.
But Barbara keeps smiling. "That's good," she says. "I'm glad she told you that. She told you about the water too, didn't she?"
Sam looks away fearfully and refuses to answer, and Barbara's heart sinks. This poor little boy has such a gift, and is so afraid to let anyone know, and she wonders what his father has said or done to instill that fear. "It's okay, Sam," she says. "You didn't do anything wrong. You can tell me about it."
He peeks at her from the corner of his eye, and apparently her smile is convincing enough.
"She told me," he says tentatively. "Not with words, just with pictures. I saw her dish on the ground."
"I see," she says, still giving him the warmest, most maternal smile she can muster. "That's a very special trick, isn't it? I can do it a little bit, but not as good as you."
Sam's eyes open wide in surprise - whether it's from someone actually considering his talent a good thing, or meeting another person who shares it - and the floodgate is opened. He tells her about talking to birds, and flowers, and insects, and she nods encouragingly and tries to get him to open up more, but he stops.
"Dean said I can't talk to spiders. He said regular people can't talk to bugs and stuff." His happiness fades to guilt.
"Well, no, I guess regular people can't do that. I guess some of us are a little better than regular, aren't we?" Sam's eyes go wide again; the idea that he could ever be better than his big brother is probably heresy to him. This sweet, special little boy just needs a mentor. And with his father and brother prejudiced against his natural talents, he'll likely never have one.
"You know," she says, "there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing bad about what you can do. But only special people can do it, and some people don't understand that being special is a good thing."
"Like Dean."
"Like Dean. And probably your father too. So it would be best if you kept it a secret."
"But I'm not supposed to keep secrets from Dad."
(No, and your father isn't supposed to treat your talents like they're something bad, either. Typical hunter bullshit. Barbara doesn't really care what John Winchester wants right now.)
"Good point. That's a good rule. But what about surprises? Surprises are different, right? Like if you were learning a magic trick, and you didn't want him to know about it until you were really, really good at it?" Sam nods. "So, this will be a surprise for your dad. Someday you'll be really good at it, and you'll show him, and he'll be happy and surprised. But for right now, you just keep it to yourself, okay?"
"But I can tell you, right?"
She wraps him in a hug, and when his tiny arms hug her back, she never wants to let him go. "Absolutely, Sammy. You can tell me anything."
. . .
He's only six years old, too young to really learn witchcraft at all, but he's so intelligent and so eager that she can't help trying. First she performs a simple cleansing ritual, passing an egg over him and concentrating on any impurities transferring to the egg. She breaks it open and finds nothing. He's pure and clean, just as she knew he must be.
Next, she has him memorize a simple spell.
None be harmed
And all be free
This is my will
So mote it be
He takes it seriously, repeating the spell with the exact inflections Barbara uses, tiny mouth forming each word correctly, asking her what mote means, committing it to memory.
"Say that three times every time you get to a new place to stay," she instructs him. "Say it really quiet, so no one hears you. You can go into the bathroom to say it, if you want." He nods solemnly, so intent on doing it right. What she could do with this boy in a few years! But there's no time. All she can do now is give him the basics, and set him on a path of future self-discovery.
"The most important thing is to never use your magic to harm anyone," she says. "Not even if you think they're bad. Not even if they're mean to you. It's not fair to use your powers to hurt people who don't have the same powers, because they have no way to fight back."
"It would be like if Dean beat me up, cause he's so much bigger than I am," Sam says.
"Exactly. It would be exactly like that."
"Dean would never beat me up, even though he can. I'm gonna be nice to other people like he is."
"That perfect, Sam," she says, feeling an odd sense of pride. He's not hers to be proud of, but she can't help it. "That's just what you should do."
. . .
Late one afternoon they're sitting on the back patio practicing simple spells. Barbara teaches them to Sam in sing-song patterns or set to actual songs, hoping he'll remember them better. She glances up at the ash tree, full of crows, and a memory flickers.
"Hey, Sam," she asks, "can you count?"
"Yeah! Almost as high as Dean can!"
She laughs. "I thought so! You're so smart." She takes his hand and leads him into the yard, stopping in front of the ash tree. "Let's play a little fortune-telling game," she says in an almost-whisper.
"Like fortune cookies?" Sam whispers excitedly.
"Just like fortune cookies. I'm going to say a poem, and then we're going to scare all of the birds out of this tree. You see if you can count them, okay? But you have to be really quiet so you don't scare them out until after I say the poem."
Sam nods excitedly, and Barbara softly speaks:
One for sorrow,
Two for mirth
Three for a funeral,
Four for birth
Five for heaven
Six for hell
Seven for the devil, his own self.
Then she runs at the tree and yells boo! Sam joins in, laughing hysterically, then stops to look into the sky and count the big black birds that flap out from the tree's branches. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven! Did I get it right?"
Her heart feels heavy for some reason. It's just a silly rhyme. It doesn't mean anything.
"Yes, you got it right. You really are good at counting."
Barbara stares at the tree, her hands in her pockets. She can almost hear Sam reciting the poem in his head. His smile fades and he looks up at her with eyes that are much too solemn for his baby face. "Seven for the devil? Miss Barbara? Does that mean my fortune is... I'm going to the devil?"
Barbara pats him on the shoulder. "No, silly. It means I'm making us deviled eggs for lunch." She looks back up at the tree. It's just crows. It doesn't really mean anything if it's not magpies. And it's just a silly old rhyme anyway. It doesn't mean anything.
. . .
Andy and John get back late that night. Her husband hugs her tight and tells her the hunt is over, and she wishes she could be happier for him, but the end of a hunt isn't ever going to bring back what she's lost. And this one, as she watches John Winchester gently sling a sleeping Sam over his shoulder, is particularly hard.
~~~
III. Little Rock, Arkansas. Sam Winchester is seven years old.
The city they're driving through has a million stoplights. Dad's complaining about hitting every single goddamn red light, Jesus H. Christ, Sam's hot and tired, and Dean's at that point of agitation and boredom where Sam knows he's gonna do either something awesome, or something awful.
They stop at yet another red light and Dean turns to Sam and says "Wanna see me make it turn green?"
"You can't do that," Sam scoffs.
"Oh yeah?" Dean grins. "Just watch me. You keep an eye on our light, okay?" Sam obediently stares at the light on the corner of the intersection. "One, two... three!" The light turns green and Sam squeals in delight. Even Dad laughs.
"Do it again!" Sam exclaims at the next red light.
"Hold on," Dean says. "Let me gather up my strength." He takes a couple of deep breaths and balls his hands into tight fists, glaring at the traffic light. "Okay, you ready? One. Twoooooo. Three!" Again, the light turns green on cue and Sam shrieks with glee.
"Show me how! Show me how!" he cries.
"You just gotta think about it real hard," Dean says. "Concentrate."
At the next red light, Sam clutches his hands into tight fists, stares at the light, and thinks hard, trying to force the light to bend to his will. "One, two, three!" But nothing happens.
"Do it again," Dean says, patting his shoulder. "I think you're almost there." But Sam doesn't try, and the light changes without any input on his part.
They stop at the next light while it's still yellow, and Sam has plenty of time to concentrate. Instead of tightening, he relaxes. Instead of demanding, he asks. He closes his eyes and talks to the light, just like he talks to grass and trees and birds. Turn green, turn green, turn green, please. The light isn't alive; it's made out of metal and glass, but something in his mind flutters like a butterfly beating its wings against the back of his eyeballs, and he knows that when he opens his eyes, the light will be green.
It is.
Dad eases into the intersection, only to be met by the blast of a horn and a squeal of brakes as they're nearly t-boned by another driver. The guy throws up his hands and points to his light, which is clearly green. As green as theirs. Dad and the other driver look at both green lights, stare at each other, and look at the lights again. Eventually Dad waves the other guy through, and then checks for oncoming traffic before he proceeds slowly through the intersection. "Guess you forgot to turn that guy's light red," he laughs nervously.
Sam's heart sinks, because he did, he did forget to turn the other light red. He should have known he'd never be able to do it as well as Dean. "I'm sorry, Dad," he says, past the tightness in his throat and the hot sting of tears. "I did it wrong. I almost made us wreck."
Dad laughs gently. "Sammy, you didn't do anything. You can't change the lights. We were just joking around with you, son."
"But you did it," Sam says, turning to Dean. Sam's not as old or as smart as Dean, but if Dean can change the color of a light, doesn't that mean maybe Sam can do it too?
"He didn't do anything," Dad says. "He was watching the other light to see when it turned yellow. That's how he knew ours was about to turn green."
Dean looks confused. He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it and ruffles Sam's hair. "It's a dumb game anyway. Let's do something else. Want me to read King Arthur to you?" He pulls the book out of Sam's bag, but Sam just stares out the window. He doesn't want to hear about knights who were pure and good and never accidentally hurt someone just because they changed a light wrong.
. . .
Later, when he's pretending to be asleep, he overhears Dean and Dad talking.
"It's not one light that changes color. There's a separate green light and a red light."
"I know how traffic lights work, Dean."
"But the green light didn't come on. The red light just changed colors."
"That's not possible."
"I know. That's what I'm saying."
"No, son. You imagined it, or it was a trick of the light, or something."
"I was watching, Dad. You weren't. I saw it."
"Dean, it couldn't have happened that way. Don't worry about it."
Sam hates making Dean worry about anything. He doesn't let himself talk to the traffic lights again.
~~~
IV. Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Sam Winchester is thirteen years old.
John Winchester's boys are growing up brave and smart and strong, and Caleb knows John is so proud of them it makes his heart hurt sometimes. But he also knows that a small part of John, the part that doesn't come out when he's sober, has no illusions about how he's raising his sons, or how Mary would be horrified at the life they're living. And since John spends a lot of time being not-sober, Caleb also knows something of his concerns about Sam. Something, not much, not enough for him to understand why John is so hard on the boy, why he keeps him held so tightly under his thumb, why he watches him with worried eyes.
They're dismantling a witch's workshop, trying to determine what needs to be burned and what absolutely should not be burned, when Caleb notices Sam flipping through a small leather-bound book.
"Whatcha got there, Sam?"
Sam jumps, startled. "Just a book of spells."
Dean snatches the book out of his brother's hand. "Throw that on the burn pile, dude."
"Wait!" Sam reaches for the book. "We might need it!"
"For what? Do some spells of our own? This is witchy shit, Sam," he spits. "Why would you wanna hold onto this kind of crap? Monsters can't help being monsters, but witches are people who choose to be monsters."
Sam flinches at his brother's words and turns pleading eyes to John. "But what if we need to undo a spell? What if we need to understand what they're doing, so we can stop them?"
John wordlessly extends his hand and Dean obediently hands the book over. After flipping through its pages, John passes it to Caleb. It's a journal, much like a hunting journal, that someone has half-filled with handwritten spells. Luck. Healing. Good weather. Love. A happy home. Nothing particularly important to this witch, since she left it behind when she fled. Nothing that would hurt any of them. Nothing likely to break bad in inexperienced hands.
"It's harmless," Caleb tells John. "White magic. Very basic."
Sam's face is a carefully arranged neutral expression, attempting to hide a world of hope. But John shakes his head. "Then it's nothing we'll need to understand or undo." He turns to Sam and fixes him with a look. "You find anything else like that, bring it to me."
"Yes sir." Sam's expression shutters and he turns away. But when Dean calls his father to look at a discovery, Caleb takes advantage of the distraction to place the book on a table before joining them. If it doesn't end up in the burn pile, well. A little white magic isn't the worst thing the boy could get into.
~~~
V. Waterloo, Iowa. Sam Winchester is fifteen years old.
Barbara O'Malley knows something is coming. She's seen the portents, felt the change in the air. But she's still surprised when she answers a knock at her door and sees the boy on her front porch. He's taller than her now, and his sweet round baby face has grown lean and angular, but she'd recognize that smile anywhere. And those eyes; moss green one day, sunflowers against a blue summer sky the next.
"Mrs. O'Malley?" he says, earnest and polite. "You probably don't remember me, but when I was little, my father -"
"Sam. Little Sam Winchester. Don't just stand there, boy. Come here and give me a hug."
He stops with a look of shock, and then his smile widens. "Hey, Miss Barbara," he says, enveloping her in a hug. "It's good to see you again."
. . .
He doesn't know how long he'll be in Waterloo. Until the end of the school year, he hopes, but it depends on John's hunt. It breaks her heart to learn that not only is John still obsessed with the quest to find his demon, but that Dean and Sam are mired in the seemingly hopeless hunt as well. She doesn't know many hunters any more, and hasn't really seen any since Andy died, but she's sure most of them wouldn't choose to drag their children into the life. But Sam assures her he plans to get out when he can, and until then, he wants to learn how to keep his little family safe.
So she teaches him. She tells him when to harvest marigold and St. John's wort, explains which plants will slow bleeding, which will prevent bad dreams, which will protect, which will purify. She teaches him rituals and sigils to protect a loved one and to ward against an enemy, and he dutifully copies spells and recipes into his little black leather journal. She shows him how to cast a circle, anchoring it with earth, air, fire, and water. She shows him how to make a sachet using protective herbs that can be found at any grocery store, and they make tiny bundles of cloth filled with basil, rosemary, and tarragon to tuck into secret spots in cars and houses. He solemnly recites the spell to charge them: By water, earth, fire and air, respect that for which I care, and transcribes it into his journal.
He's an excellent student, just as she always knew he would be. It's in his blood, in his bones.
"Anyone can do a simple spell," she tells him. "But those who are born with natural magic can bump it up to the next level."
"I don't need anything super powerful," he says. "I just want to keep us safe."
After a few weeks, he tells her his father finally called. The hunt is over; they're leaving in a couple of days. Barbara has him cut a limb off the ash tree in the backyard and they carve and sand it into small, smooth ovals to be carried for protection and healing. Sam burns a protective sigil into two of them and makes them into keychains for Dean and John. "I'll tell them I did it in shop class," he says, with a wicked grin. "They'll trust anything that comes out of shop class."
On Sam's last evening at Barbara's, they go into the backyard, under the old ash tree, and she goes through every kind of protective ritual she can remember. She smudges him and his weapons with smoke from burning cypress and carnations, anoints his forehead with rosemary-infused oil, and tucks pressed angelica flowers into his wallet.
As sunset approaches, he looks up into the tree, now rustling with crows. "Hey, Miss Barbara, do you remember the fortune telling rhyme?" he says. He recites it without waiting for her answer.
One for sorrow,
Two for mirth
Three for a funeral,
Four for birth
Five for heaven
Six for hell
Seven for the devil, his own self.
He tosses a stone into the tree and crows scatter across the ink-blue sky. Three, and then another three, and then one. And her heart sinks a little.
"Did you count them?" he asks.
"Oh, no," she lies. "My old eyes have a hard time counting crows in the dark."
"It was seven. It usually is." He looks at her with those solemn eyes, the windows to his old, old soul, like he's looking for an answer.
"Hmmm." She puts her arm around him, leading him back into the house. "It's probably because you're growing into such a handsome devil."
It's just crows, she reminds herself. Not magpies. You really need magpies to do it right.
Barbara feeds him dinner, writes her phone number in his journal, sternly instructs him to call her if he ever needs anything, and sends him away with ziplock bags full of dried herbs and a kiss to his rosemary-scented forehead.
She doesn't hear from him again.
~~~
VI. Bitterroot National Forest, western Montana. Sam Winchester is sixteen years old.
Sam's calm, way too fucking calm, which can only mean he doesn't get it, he doesn't see what's happening, he hasn't noticed how the entire leg of John's jeans is dark and heavy with blood, how their father isn't speaking and is only occasionally tracking them with his eyes.
"Get my bag," Sam says, still infuriatingly calm.
"Jesus, Sam!" Dean yells. "We can't fix this! We've gotta get him to a hospital!"
Sam just adjusts his hand over John's injury, pressing down hard (like it makes a difference, like a pressure point is going to be enough to get him to the hospital alive, oh jesus fucking christ) and digs his knife out of his pocket. "Dean," he barks, channeling John's Marine voice, "There's no time to get to a hospital. I need you to go right fucking now and get my fucking bag."
Something about that snaps Dean into action, triggers the part of his brain that follows orders. It seems like Sam has a plan and god knows Dean doesn't. He scrambles to the Impala and drags Sam's bag from the back seat. When he gets back, Sam has sliced John's jeans open, exposing the nasty claw wound across his thigh, and the slow pulse of blood oozing out makes Dean want to fall to his knees and vomit until there's nothing left inside.
Instead, he kneels next to Sam and takes his place putting pressure on the wound while Sam digs for something in his duffel, coming up with a plastic bag full of some kind of dried plant material. He pushes Dean's hand aside and begins pressing the greyish-green substance into the wound, muttering something Dean can't really understand, something with a distinctive rhythm. Whatever it is, he repeats it several times, and the blood seeping from the injury finally comes to a stop. And Dean can breathe again.
. . .
He figures it out, of course. Eventually. He's not stupid, and he's not naive about the existence of witches. Just in denial about his own little brother being one.
. . .
It's a couple of weeks before he brings it up. John has gone out for a drink or two or three or a dozen - it's that time of year - and while Dean normally likes to warm a barstool next to him and hear his war stories, he doesn't like listening to the things that come up around the anniversary. He stays at the motel with Sam, with the busted TV and and the ancient rattling heater, and they both end up lying silently in their beds, wide awake, staring at the ceiling.
"So," Dean says, without looking at his brother. "That thing you did, with Dad, after the black dog. What was that?"
Sam doesn't answer for a few seconds. "Just comfrey," he says. "Stops bleeding. You know that. You've seen me use it before. I used it on you after the thing with the teeth."
"And you said it was, what? Some old Indian remedy?"
"Native American, yeah. Why?"
"Just, that chant of yours. It didn't sound Indian. Native American."
"Dean, if you're getting at something, just come on and say it."
Fine. "It sounded like a spell, Sam."
Sam's quiet for a long time. Finally he sighs and says "Because it was a spell."
Dean sits up, astonished, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. "You used witchcraft. On Dad."
"Not the first time," Sam says, still staring at the ceiling. "Won't be the last."
"What the fuck, Sam? What were you thinking?"
"What I was thinking was that I had to do whatever it took to save his life. Same way I've saved yours, by the way, in case you weren't aware."
Dean wasn't aware, not consciously, but he can't say he's entirely surprised either. He remembers wounds that healed too quickly, claws and teeth that went wide when they should have caught him easily, near-misses that should have been hits. And wonders how he never got it.
"I've been using witchcraft to protect you since I was thirteen years old," Sam continues. "And I'm not gonna stop just because you're freaked out about it. So you're just gonna have to deal with it."
Dean lies back on the bed and contemplates this new information. On the one hand, it's witchcraft. Even someone as stubborn as Sam should understand the basic rule of hunting is that you don't become what you hunt. On the other hand, it's Sam. And it's not necessarily a bad thing, what he's doing. It saved their father. It's saved his own ass a time or two (and he's not thrilled to realize that things he attributed to his own skill as a hunter might have been done with Sam's assistance, but he can think about that some other time). Sam's trustworthy. Sam knows what's out there. Sam won't do anything stupid.
"You're not gonna do anything bad with it, right?"
"Never have," Sam says. "Never will."
"Well, okay then. See that you don't."
And Dean will always be there to watch him, anyway, which is how he makes himself okay with it.
~~~
Next
Recipient: Quickreaver
Rating: PG-13 for language
Word Count or Media: ~10K
Warnings: Depictions of show-level gore
Summary: Sam Winchester's life has been touched by many things - love, loss, fear, hope, pain, and always, in the background, witchcraft.
I. Sandusky, Ohio. Sam Winchester is five years old.
Sam talks to things that other people don't talk to. He thanks the grass for being cool and soft under his feet. He tells the birds their songs are pretty. He doesn't use his voice; he talks to them in his head. And sometimes they answer.
(Not with words. That would be silly. Birds don't know words. Grass doesn't know words. But they answer, all the same.)
It never occurs to him that other people don't do the same thing until the day Dean kills a spider in the bathtub. "Why didn't you just ask him to leave?" he asks.
Dean laughs like it's a joke, and it makes Sam feel inexplicably hot and angry inside. "It's not funny," Sam says. "You didn't have to kill him. You could have just told him to get out of our bathtub."
Dean rolls his eyes dramatically. "People can't talk to insects, Spider-Man."
"Not the way you talk to people, but you can tell them things. You know." Surely Dean knows. Dean knows everything. It's just one of those things everyone can do and you don't talk need to talk about, like the way you can un-focus your eyes, or feel if it's going to rain. Isn't it?
But Dean takes a long time to answer, and Sam gets an uncomfortable feeling deep in his belly. "No, Sam," he finally says. "You can't tell them things. They're spiders. People can't talk to spiders. Not normal people." Something about Dean's expression - a little angry, a little worried, a little frightened - makes Sam think people aren't supposed to talk to spiders. "I mean, you don't think you're really talking to them, right?"
"No, I know," he says quickly. "I was just joking." He doesn't bring it up again. He feels like he did something bad, something wrong, and he doesn't want Dean to look angry-worried-frightened at him again.
~~~
II. Waterloo, Iowa. Sam Winchester is six years old.
Barbara O'Malley meets Sam when his father gets involved in a hunt with her husband. "Decent guy," Andy O'Malley says. "Kind of obsessed, but I guess a lot of us are. I feel bad for the kids, though."
Barbara feels bad for them too, and invites John to leave them with her instead of whatever else he's been doing for childcare while he and Andy do research and reconnaissance. When she finds out that his childcare plans have actually been for them to stay in the hotel room alone, all day, with ten-year-old Dean in charge, she's horrified. She wants to grab John by his shoulders and shake him, scream in his face until he gets it, because losing a wife to whatever lurks in the dark is bad enough, but losing your child? He can't even imagine that pain. How dare he take that risk.
Instead, she calmly insists the boys stay at her house.
Dean considers himself too old to be babysat, and once he determines Barbara isn't a threat to his little brother, he's content to watch TV or read comic books and ignore the two of them entirely. But little Sam thrives on the attention.
"Don't get too attached," Andy warns her kindly. And she knows what he's worried about. In some ways, Sam fills the gaping hole left in her life. It would be so easy to pretend she has Brendan back again. Sam has the same round baby face, same mop of dark hair, same old soul looking out through young eyes. But unlike Brendan's clear, untroubled grey eyes, Sam's changeable eyes (moss green one day, sunflowers against a blue summer sky the next) often seem touched with concern. He's different, this boy. But still, he's sweet and kind and affectionate, and just having him around eases the ache of her loss a tiny bit.
One day Dean arrives, gives her his typical polite but perfunctory greeting, and tells her Sam went straight into the back yard. She goes outside to meet him. "Hey, Sammy," she says cheerfully. "You want to swing today?"
Sam's staring forlornly at the backyard of the house next door. "Miss Barbara?" he says. "That dog is sad. She knocked her water bowl over, and she's thirsty. Can we give her some water?"
Barbara can see the Wilson's old dog, Piper, through the chain link fence. Usually she's happy to nap on the sun-warmed stoop, but today she's whining at the door. "Well, Piper's a sweet dog," she says. "I don't know why we can't go help her, as long as you do exactly what I say." Sam nods eagerly. She takes his hand and leads him into the Wilson's back yard, positioning him safely behind her legs. She shows him how to hold his hand out and let the old dog sniff it. "It's okay, Piper," she says. "You know me, and Sam's my friend."
Piper licks Sam's hand and wags her tail, and Barbara doesn't sense any fear or danger from her, so she lets Sam scratch behind her ears while she looks for the water dish. She finally finds it behind a prickly holly bush next to the small concrete stoop. Which is odd. There's no way Sam could have seen that dish from her back yard. She fills the dish from the outside spigot and puts it on the bottom step.
As Piper eagerly laps up the water, Barbara says "Sam? How did you know she knocked her water over? Did you see her do it?"
Sam stares at her, wide eyed, as if he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "No, I, um... I don't know, I guess she just sounded sad. And thirsty."
"Okay." She smiles reassuringly, careful not to betray anything, and he relaxes. They find a chewed-up tennis ball in the backyard and throw it for Piper to chase for a few minutes, then leave her sunning happily on her stoop.
"So, how does Piper feel now?" Barbara asks casually, as they walk back to her yard.
"She's happy," Sam answers. "She liked playing with us, but she's tired now." He stops with a gasp as he realizes he revealed something he wasn't supposed to reveal.
But Barbara keeps smiling. "That's good," she says. "I'm glad she told you that. She told you about the water too, didn't she?"
Sam looks away fearfully and refuses to answer, and Barbara's heart sinks. This poor little boy has such a gift, and is so afraid to let anyone know, and she wonders what his father has said or done to instill that fear. "It's okay, Sam," she says. "You didn't do anything wrong. You can tell me about it."
He peeks at her from the corner of his eye, and apparently her smile is convincing enough.
"She told me," he says tentatively. "Not with words, just with pictures. I saw her dish on the ground."
"I see," she says, still giving him the warmest, most maternal smile she can muster. "That's a very special trick, isn't it? I can do it a little bit, but not as good as you."
Sam's eyes open wide in surprise - whether it's from someone actually considering his talent a good thing, or meeting another person who shares it - and the floodgate is opened. He tells her about talking to birds, and flowers, and insects, and she nods encouragingly and tries to get him to open up more, but he stops.
"Dean said I can't talk to spiders. He said regular people can't talk to bugs and stuff." His happiness fades to guilt.
"Well, no, I guess regular people can't do that. I guess some of us are a little better than regular, aren't we?" Sam's eyes go wide again; the idea that he could ever be better than his big brother is probably heresy to him. This sweet, special little boy just needs a mentor. And with his father and brother prejudiced against his natural talents, he'll likely never have one.
"You know," she says, "there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing bad about what you can do. But only special people can do it, and some people don't understand that being special is a good thing."
"Like Dean."
"Like Dean. And probably your father too. So it would be best if you kept it a secret."
"But I'm not supposed to keep secrets from Dad."
(No, and your father isn't supposed to treat your talents like they're something bad, either. Typical hunter bullshit. Barbara doesn't really care what John Winchester wants right now.)
"Good point. That's a good rule. But what about surprises? Surprises are different, right? Like if you were learning a magic trick, and you didn't want him to know about it until you were really, really good at it?" Sam nods. "So, this will be a surprise for your dad. Someday you'll be really good at it, and you'll show him, and he'll be happy and surprised. But for right now, you just keep it to yourself, okay?"
"But I can tell you, right?"
She wraps him in a hug, and when his tiny arms hug her back, she never wants to let him go. "Absolutely, Sammy. You can tell me anything."
. . .
He's only six years old, too young to really learn witchcraft at all, but he's so intelligent and so eager that she can't help trying. First she performs a simple cleansing ritual, passing an egg over him and concentrating on any impurities transferring to the egg. She breaks it open and finds nothing. He's pure and clean, just as she knew he must be.
Next, she has him memorize a simple spell.
None be harmed
And all be free
This is my will
So mote it be
He takes it seriously, repeating the spell with the exact inflections Barbara uses, tiny mouth forming each word correctly, asking her what mote means, committing it to memory.
"Say that three times every time you get to a new place to stay," she instructs him. "Say it really quiet, so no one hears you. You can go into the bathroom to say it, if you want." He nods solemnly, so intent on doing it right. What she could do with this boy in a few years! But there's no time. All she can do now is give him the basics, and set him on a path of future self-discovery.
"The most important thing is to never use your magic to harm anyone," she says. "Not even if you think they're bad. Not even if they're mean to you. It's not fair to use your powers to hurt people who don't have the same powers, because they have no way to fight back."
"It would be like if Dean beat me up, cause he's so much bigger than I am," Sam says.
"Exactly. It would be exactly like that."
"Dean would never beat me up, even though he can. I'm gonna be nice to other people like he is."
"That perfect, Sam," she says, feeling an odd sense of pride. He's not hers to be proud of, but she can't help it. "That's just what you should do."
. . .
Late one afternoon they're sitting on the back patio practicing simple spells. Barbara teaches them to Sam in sing-song patterns or set to actual songs, hoping he'll remember them better. She glances up at the ash tree, full of crows, and a memory flickers.
"Hey, Sam," she asks, "can you count?"
"Yeah! Almost as high as Dean can!"
She laughs. "I thought so! You're so smart." She takes his hand and leads him into the yard, stopping in front of the ash tree. "Let's play a little fortune-telling game," she says in an almost-whisper.
"Like fortune cookies?" Sam whispers excitedly.
"Just like fortune cookies. I'm going to say a poem, and then we're going to scare all of the birds out of this tree. You see if you can count them, okay? But you have to be really quiet so you don't scare them out until after I say the poem."
Sam nods excitedly, and Barbara softly speaks:
One for sorrow,
Two for mirth
Three for a funeral,
Four for birth
Five for heaven
Six for hell
Seven for the devil, his own self.
Then she runs at the tree and yells boo! Sam joins in, laughing hysterically, then stops to look into the sky and count the big black birds that flap out from the tree's branches. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven! Did I get it right?"
Her heart feels heavy for some reason. It's just a silly rhyme. It doesn't mean anything.
"Yes, you got it right. You really are good at counting."
Barbara stares at the tree, her hands in her pockets. She can almost hear Sam reciting the poem in his head. His smile fades and he looks up at her with eyes that are much too solemn for his baby face. "Seven for the devil? Miss Barbara? Does that mean my fortune is... I'm going to the devil?"
Barbara pats him on the shoulder. "No, silly. It means I'm making us deviled eggs for lunch." She looks back up at the tree. It's just crows. It doesn't really mean anything if it's not magpies. And it's just a silly old rhyme anyway. It doesn't mean anything.
. . .
Andy and John get back late that night. Her husband hugs her tight and tells her the hunt is over, and she wishes she could be happier for him, but the end of a hunt isn't ever going to bring back what she's lost. And this one, as she watches John Winchester gently sling a sleeping Sam over his shoulder, is particularly hard.
~~~
III. Little Rock, Arkansas. Sam Winchester is seven years old.
The city they're driving through has a million stoplights. Dad's complaining about hitting every single goddamn red light, Jesus H. Christ, Sam's hot and tired, and Dean's at that point of agitation and boredom where Sam knows he's gonna do either something awesome, or something awful.
They stop at yet another red light and Dean turns to Sam and says "Wanna see me make it turn green?"
"You can't do that," Sam scoffs.
"Oh yeah?" Dean grins. "Just watch me. You keep an eye on our light, okay?" Sam obediently stares at the light on the corner of the intersection. "One, two... three!" The light turns green and Sam squeals in delight. Even Dad laughs.
"Do it again!" Sam exclaims at the next red light.
"Hold on," Dean says. "Let me gather up my strength." He takes a couple of deep breaths and balls his hands into tight fists, glaring at the traffic light. "Okay, you ready? One. Twoooooo. Three!" Again, the light turns green on cue and Sam shrieks with glee.
"Show me how! Show me how!" he cries.
"You just gotta think about it real hard," Dean says. "Concentrate."
At the next red light, Sam clutches his hands into tight fists, stares at the light, and thinks hard, trying to force the light to bend to his will. "One, two, three!" But nothing happens.
"Do it again," Dean says, patting his shoulder. "I think you're almost there." But Sam doesn't try, and the light changes without any input on his part.
They stop at the next light while it's still yellow, and Sam has plenty of time to concentrate. Instead of tightening, he relaxes. Instead of demanding, he asks. He closes his eyes and talks to the light, just like he talks to grass and trees and birds. Turn green, turn green, turn green, please. The light isn't alive; it's made out of metal and glass, but something in his mind flutters like a butterfly beating its wings against the back of his eyeballs, and he knows that when he opens his eyes, the light will be green.
It is.
Dad eases into the intersection, only to be met by the blast of a horn and a squeal of brakes as they're nearly t-boned by another driver. The guy throws up his hands and points to his light, which is clearly green. As green as theirs. Dad and the other driver look at both green lights, stare at each other, and look at the lights again. Eventually Dad waves the other guy through, and then checks for oncoming traffic before he proceeds slowly through the intersection. "Guess you forgot to turn that guy's light red," he laughs nervously.
Sam's heart sinks, because he did, he did forget to turn the other light red. He should have known he'd never be able to do it as well as Dean. "I'm sorry, Dad," he says, past the tightness in his throat and the hot sting of tears. "I did it wrong. I almost made us wreck."
Dad laughs gently. "Sammy, you didn't do anything. You can't change the lights. We were just joking around with you, son."
"But you did it," Sam says, turning to Dean. Sam's not as old or as smart as Dean, but if Dean can change the color of a light, doesn't that mean maybe Sam can do it too?
"He didn't do anything," Dad says. "He was watching the other light to see when it turned yellow. That's how he knew ours was about to turn green."
Dean looks confused. He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it and ruffles Sam's hair. "It's a dumb game anyway. Let's do something else. Want me to read King Arthur to you?" He pulls the book out of Sam's bag, but Sam just stares out the window. He doesn't want to hear about knights who were pure and good and never accidentally hurt someone just because they changed a light wrong.
. . .
Later, when he's pretending to be asleep, he overhears Dean and Dad talking.
"It's not one light that changes color. There's a separate green light and a red light."
"I know how traffic lights work, Dean."
"But the green light didn't come on. The red light just changed colors."
"That's not possible."
"I know. That's what I'm saying."
"No, son. You imagined it, or it was a trick of the light, or something."
"I was watching, Dad. You weren't. I saw it."
"Dean, it couldn't have happened that way. Don't worry about it."
Sam hates making Dean worry about anything. He doesn't let himself talk to the traffic lights again.
~~~
IV. Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Sam Winchester is thirteen years old.
John Winchester's boys are growing up brave and smart and strong, and Caleb knows John is so proud of them it makes his heart hurt sometimes. But he also knows that a small part of John, the part that doesn't come out when he's sober, has no illusions about how he's raising his sons, or how Mary would be horrified at the life they're living. And since John spends a lot of time being not-sober, Caleb also knows something of his concerns about Sam. Something, not much, not enough for him to understand why John is so hard on the boy, why he keeps him held so tightly under his thumb, why he watches him with worried eyes.
They're dismantling a witch's workshop, trying to determine what needs to be burned and what absolutely should not be burned, when Caleb notices Sam flipping through a small leather-bound book.
"Whatcha got there, Sam?"
Sam jumps, startled. "Just a book of spells."
Dean snatches the book out of his brother's hand. "Throw that on the burn pile, dude."
"Wait!" Sam reaches for the book. "We might need it!"
"For what? Do some spells of our own? This is witchy shit, Sam," he spits. "Why would you wanna hold onto this kind of crap? Monsters can't help being monsters, but witches are people who choose to be monsters."
Sam flinches at his brother's words and turns pleading eyes to John. "But what if we need to undo a spell? What if we need to understand what they're doing, so we can stop them?"
John wordlessly extends his hand and Dean obediently hands the book over. After flipping through its pages, John passes it to Caleb. It's a journal, much like a hunting journal, that someone has half-filled with handwritten spells. Luck. Healing. Good weather. Love. A happy home. Nothing particularly important to this witch, since she left it behind when she fled. Nothing that would hurt any of them. Nothing likely to break bad in inexperienced hands.
"It's harmless," Caleb tells John. "White magic. Very basic."
Sam's face is a carefully arranged neutral expression, attempting to hide a world of hope. But John shakes his head. "Then it's nothing we'll need to understand or undo." He turns to Sam and fixes him with a look. "You find anything else like that, bring it to me."
"Yes sir." Sam's expression shutters and he turns away. But when Dean calls his father to look at a discovery, Caleb takes advantage of the distraction to place the book on a table before joining them. If it doesn't end up in the burn pile, well. A little white magic isn't the worst thing the boy could get into.
~~~
V. Waterloo, Iowa. Sam Winchester is fifteen years old.
Barbara O'Malley knows something is coming. She's seen the portents, felt the change in the air. But she's still surprised when she answers a knock at her door and sees the boy on her front porch. He's taller than her now, and his sweet round baby face has grown lean and angular, but she'd recognize that smile anywhere. And those eyes; moss green one day, sunflowers against a blue summer sky the next.
"Mrs. O'Malley?" he says, earnest and polite. "You probably don't remember me, but when I was little, my father -"
"Sam. Little Sam Winchester. Don't just stand there, boy. Come here and give me a hug."
He stops with a look of shock, and then his smile widens. "Hey, Miss Barbara," he says, enveloping her in a hug. "It's good to see you again."
. . .
He doesn't know how long he'll be in Waterloo. Until the end of the school year, he hopes, but it depends on John's hunt. It breaks her heart to learn that not only is John still obsessed with the quest to find his demon, but that Dean and Sam are mired in the seemingly hopeless hunt as well. She doesn't know many hunters any more, and hasn't really seen any since Andy died, but she's sure most of them wouldn't choose to drag their children into the life. But Sam assures her he plans to get out when he can, and until then, he wants to learn how to keep his little family safe.
So she teaches him. She tells him when to harvest marigold and St. John's wort, explains which plants will slow bleeding, which will prevent bad dreams, which will protect, which will purify. She teaches him rituals and sigils to protect a loved one and to ward against an enemy, and he dutifully copies spells and recipes into his little black leather journal. She shows him how to cast a circle, anchoring it with earth, air, fire, and water. She shows him how to make a sachet using protective herbs that can be found at any grocery store, and they make tiny bundles of cloth filled with basil, rosemary, and tarragon to tuck into secret spots in cars and houses. He solemnly recites the spell to charge them: By water, earth, fire and air, respect that for which I care, and transcribes it into his journal.
He's an excellent student, just as she always knew he would be. It's in his blood, in his bones.
"Anyone can do a simple spell," she tells him. "But those who are born with natural magic can bump it up to the next level."
"I don't need anything super powerful," he says. "I just want to keep us safe."
After a few weeks, he tells her his father finally called. The hunt is over; they're leaving in a couple of days. Barbara has him cut a limb off the ash tree in the backyard and they carve and sand it into small, smooth ovals to be carried for protection and healing. Sam burns a protective sigil into two of them and makes them into keychains for Dean and John. "I'll tell them I did it in shop class," he says, with a wicked grin. "They'll trust anything that comes out of shop class."
On Sam's last evening at Barbara's, they go into the backyard, under the old ash tree, and she goes through every kind of protective ritual she can remember. She smudges him and his weapons with smoke from burning cypress and carnations, anoints his forehead with rosemary-infused oil, and tucks pressed angelica flowers into his wallet.
As sunset approaches, he looks up into the tree, now rustling with crows. "Hey, Miss Barbara, do you remember the fortune telling rhyme?" he says. He recites it without waiting for her answer.
One for sorrow,
Two for mirth
Three for a funeral,
Four for birth
Five for heaven
Six for hell
Seven for the devil, his own self.
He tosses a stone into the tree and crows scatter across the ink-blue sky. Three, and then another three, and then one. And her heart sinks a little.
"Did you count them?" he asks.
"Oh, no," she lies. "My old eyes have a hard time counting crows in the dark."
"It was seven. It usually is." He looks at her with those solemn eyes, the windows to his old, old soul, like he's looking for an answer.
"Hmmm." She puts her arm around him, leading him back into the house. "It's probably because you're growing into such a handsome devil."
It's just crows, she reminds herself. Not magpies. You really need magpies to do it right.
Barbara feeds him dinner, writes her phone number in his journal, sternly instructs him to call her if he ever needs anything, and sends him away with ziplock bags full of dried herbs and a kiss to his rosemary-scented forehead.
She doesn't hear from him again.
~~~
VI. Bitterroot National Forest, western Montana. Sam Winchester is sixteen years old.
Sam's calm, way too fucking calm, which can only mean he doesn't get it, he doesn't see what's happening, he hasn't noticed how the entire leg of John's jeans is dark and heavy with blood, how their father isn't speaking and is only occasionally tracking them with his eyes.
"Get my bag," Sam says, still infuriatingly calm.
"Jesus, Sam!" Dean yells. "We can't fix this! We've gotta get him to a hospital!"
Sam just adjusts his hand over John's injury, pressing down hard (like it makes a difference, like a pressure point is going to be enough to get him to the hospital alive, oh jesus fucking christ) and digs his knife out of his pocket. "Dean," he barks, channeling John's Marine voice, "There's no time to get to a hospital. I need you to go right fucking now and get my fucking bag."
Something about that snaps Dean into action, triggers the part of his brain that follows orders. It seems like Sam has a plan and god knows Dean doesn't. He scrambles to the Impala and drags Sam's bag from the back seat. When he gets back, Sam has sliced John's jeans open, exposing the nasty claw wound across his thigh, and the slow pulse of blood oozing out makes Dean want to fall to his knees and vomit until there's nothing left inside.
Instead, he kneels next to Sam and takes his place putting pressure on the wound while Sam digs for something in his duffel, coming up with a plastic bag full of some kind of dried plant material. He pushes Dean's hand aside and begins pressing the greyish-green substance into the wound, muttering something Dean can't really understand, something with a distinctive rhythm. Whatever it is, he repeats it several times, and the blood seeping from the injury finally comes to a stop. And Dean can breathe again.
. . .
He figures it out, of course. Eventually. He's not stupid, and he's not naive about the existence of witches. Just in denial about his own little brother being one.
. . .
It's a couple of weeks before he brings it up. John has gone out for a drink or two or three or a dozen - it's that time of year - and while Dean normally likes to warm a barstool next to him and hear his war stories, he doesn't like listening to the things that come up around the anniversary. He stays at the motel with Sam, with the busted TV and and the ancient rattling heater, and they both end up lying silently in their beds, wide awake, staring at the ceiling.
"So," Dean says, without looking at his brother. "That thing you did, with Dad, after the black dog. What was that?"
Sam doesn't answer for a few seconds. "Just comfrey," he says. "Stops bleeding. You know that. You've seen me use it before. I used it on you after the thing with the teeth."
"And you said it was, what? Some old Indian remedy?"
"Native American, yeah. Why?"
"Just, that chant of yours. It didn't sound Indian. Native American."
"Dean, if you're getting at something, just come on and say it."
Fine. "It sounded like a spell, Sam."
Sam's quiet for a long time. Finally he sighs and says "Because it was a spell."
Dean sits up, astonished, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. "You used witchcraft. On Dad."
"Not the first time," Sam says, still staring at the ceiling. "Won't be the last."
"What the fuck, Sam? What were you thinking?"
"What I was thinking was that I had to do whatever it took to save his life. Same way I've saved yours, by the way, in case you weren't aware."
Dean wasn't aware, not consciously, but he can't say he's entirely surprised either. He remembers wounds that healed too quickly, claws and teeth that went wide when they should have caught him easily, near-misses that should have been hits. And wonders how he never got it.
"I've been using witchcraft to protect you since I was thirteen years old," Sam continues. "And I'm not gonna stop just because you're freaked out about it. So you're just gonna have to deal with it."
Dean lies back on the bed and contemplates this new information. On the one hand, it's witchcraft. Even someone as stubborn as Sam should understand the basic rule of hunting is that you don't become what you hunt. On the other hand, it's Sam. And it's not necessarily a bad thing, what he's doing. It saved their father. It's saved his own ass a time or two (and he's not thrilled to realize that things he attributed to his own skill as a hunter might have been done with Sam's assistance, but he can think about that some other time). Sam's trustworthy. Sam knows what's out there. Sam won't do anything stupid.
"You're not gonna do anything bad with it, right?"
"Never have," Sam says. "Never will."
"Well, okay then. See that you don't."
And Dean will always be there to watch him, anyway, which is how he makes himself okay with it.
~~~
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