Chapter Text
“Sam, there’s a call for you on line one from a Mr. Shaffer. He’s with J&J Associates out of Topeka, Kansas.”
“Thanks, Maggie.”
Sam released the intercom button and sat back in his chair. Kansas? Sam stared at the blinking red light on his phone like it was an incendiary device. He hadn’t heard from anyone back there in well over a decade. He took a deep breath and picked up the handset.
“Hello? This is Sam Singer.”
“Hello, Mr. Singer, I’m Josh Shaffer. I’ve been appointed administrator of John Winchester’s estate by the Douglas County District Court. I represented him in a civil case a number of years ago. I understand that you are the biological son of Mr. Winchester, is that correct?”
Sam slumped backward in his chair, utterly gobsmacked. “H-he’s dead?”
“Oh! Oh god. I’m so sorry. I thought you would have been notified by now by the coroner’s office.”
“No, I wasn’t…I didn’t know.” Sam swallowed back the lump in this throat. He didn’t think he had any tears left for John Winchester but apparently he’d been wrong. “When did it happen?”
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, Mr. Singer. It was almost eight months ago now.” Josh paused, and Sam could hear him rustling some paper around on the other end of the line. “He um…he died of acute alcohol poisoning.”
Yep, that sounds like John, Sam thought to himself bitterly. Part of him had been expecting this news for a long time now but still it was a shock to actually hear it spoken out loud. “Was there a funeral?”
“No. Your brother-“
“Dean?” Sam interrupted. A long-buried hope sprang to life inside him and he grabbed for it like a lifeline. “You found Dean?”
“Yes. He moved back to Lawrence from Chicago about three and a half years ago. He was notified first as he’s the oldest heir and John didn’t leave a will. To be honest, all this time I thought he was the only heir. I didn’t know about you or how to get in touch with you until just recently. Your brother requested cremation instead of a funeral. He sent a check to cover the costs but since then no one has been able to reach him. Frankly, I get the impression that he’s washed his hands of the matter entirely.”
“Wait. Dean didn’t say anything about me?” That couldn’t be. That just couldn’t be.
“Not until last week. I thought I’d drive over to Lawrence and try to talk to him in person. Hopefully to reason with him. Your brother…he’s an intimidating guy.” The man sounded anxious just talking about it.
“What did he say?”
“He said to leave him alone, that he didn’t want anything to do with John when he was alive and he didn’t want anything from him now that he’s…well, you know. Then he told me about you and that I should give you everything if I could find you. Then he shut the door in my face.”
Dean is alive. Dean is alive. That one fact repeated in his head over and over like an invocation. Sam’s heart crashed and fluttered frantically about his ribcage like a wild thing. Purely for the sake of politeness he tried to compose himself long enough to keep up with what this guy Josh was trying to tell him. “I don’t understand. What do you mean everything?”
“The ‘estate’, as it were, isn’t much I’m afraid. There’s the house in Lawrence, and your father’s car, and a life insurance policy he took out back before you were born. That should cover his outstanding debts with a remainder of approximately three thousand dollars.”
Sam’s mind jammed up like an old typewriter with too many keys being pressed all at once. “Wow. Okay. I’m sorry, I’m not sure how to process all of this.“
“Of course,” Josh assured him. “Why don’t you take a few days and get back to me when you’re ready? I’ll leave my information with your secretary. Then we can discuss how you want to move forward. Again, I’m truly sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.”
Sam hung up the phone and stared out the huge floor-to-ceiling windows of his office. Downtown San Francisco lay spread out before him in shimmering glass and steel. It was no more his home in any real sense than any other place he’d lived in since he’d been a little kid.
In one fell swoop his whole world had been knocked irrevocably off kilter. The father he’d tried to forget his entire adult life was gone and the brother that he’d thought was dead was alive and safe. Sam dropped his head into his hands and cried for them both.
~~~
Three weeks after the phone call, Sam found himself driving down the highway heading west from the Kansas City airport. The rental car that he was driving was so small he was surprised that it wasn’t actually made by Fisher-Price. He couldn’t believe that this was his life.
The partners at the firm had been very understanding about his decision to take a leave of absence after he’d explained the situation. His parents had been less so, but that was understandable. Bobby and Ellen Singer had been his whole world since they’d taken him into their home. For almost two decades they’d dreaded the mere possibility of Sam’s past catching up with him and upending their happy little family. Now he was running towards that past full speed and they had a hard time understanding why he felt like he had to.
Sam had tried to assuage their fears as best he could. He loved them both dearly and in his heart they’d always be Mom and Dad. If this had only been about John and their father-son relationship that never really was he’d have no interest in travelling down memory lane at all. As far as he was concerned that road had dead-ended at the bottom of a whiskey bottle when he’d still been in diapers. Ever since his wife’s death, John had been a shell of a man. To his young sons he had been an alcohol-soaked burden, a loose cannon, and occasionally a genuine threat - but never really their dad in the traditional sense. This journey Sam was on now through the flat stretch of the Kansas countryside was all on account of Dean.
~1991~
“Sammy?”
Sam blinked his eyes open blearily. An odd tingling sensation prickled over his chapped lips and his red-rimmed eyes. His throat felt like it was full of broken glass and he was so hot that he wanted to crawl out of his skin just to make it stop.
As Sam gradually came to he realized that he wasn’t in bed anymore. He was in the back seat of the Impala cradled in Dean’s arms, soaked with sweat and too weak to move. He couldn’t see much except for Dean’s worried face hovering above him, but he could feel the rumble of the car and see the trees rush past through the window. They must be going real fast.
“Dean?” Sam croaked. His throat hurt so bad that he could barely breathe without pain. He hated being sick and for the past day and half he’d been sicker than he’d ever been in all eight years of his short life so far.
Dean brushed the sweat-damp curls off of his forehead. “It’s okay, Sammy. Your fever got too high. Dad’s taking us to the hospital.”
Dad driving? It was dark outside and Dad never even walked straight anymore at night. There was no way he was sober enough to be driving. They had to make him stop the car. Sam whined and wriggled in Dean’s lap in panic as he tried to sit up.
“Shh! Calm down! Calm down, Sam!”
“Dean! You keep him quiet back there!” John bellowed.
Sam’s panic spiked even higher at the sound of his father’s voice. He’d made Dad angry and now Dean was going to get it. It was all his fault. He was going to boil to death with fever and then Dean would be all alone with Dad.
Tears burned white-hot down Sam’s cheeks and he clung tighter to Dean’s shirt. “I don’t wanna die.”
Dean hugged him against his chest and rubbed his back, trying to quiet him. “You’re not going to die, dummy. The doctors are gonna fix you right up, you’ll see. When you’re all better I’ll go to the store and get us some ice cream. How does that sound, huh? A nice big ice cream sundae.”
Sam sobbed and buried his face against his brother’s neck. He stayed there until the blackness crept into his vision and pulled him back down into sleep once more.
~~~
“He’s going to be just fine now, sweetheart. You and your dad did the right thing bringing him to us.”
Sam opened his eyes. He was lying in a big hospital bed and there was a nurse with grey hair fussing with a bag of IV fluid that was attached to his arm.
Dean was standing by his bedside, hands gripping the railing. “Sammy? How do you feel?”
Sam tried to speak but his throat was swollen up too tight. The best he could manage was a squeak rather than real words.
“Don’t try to talk, honey,” the nurse said. “I’ll fetch your dad. He just stepped out for some coffee.” She hurried away, leaving the Dean to watch over him.
As soon as she was gone Sam looked up at Dean, questions burning behind his eyes. Dean heard them without him having to say a word.
“I didn’t have a choice, Sammy. I had to get you here and Dad was the only way. I hid the bottle from him and I made him drink a whole bunch of coffee first. But hey listen, you’re doing great now,” Dean told him. “Your fever is down. It was real high but Dr. Kasmin is super smart and he knew just what to do to fix you. He said your tonsils are no good and they’ve got to come out. But don’t worry because you’re going to be asleep the whole time and you won’t feel a thing. Isn’t that cool?”
Sam shook his head. That wasn’t cool. That was scary. He didn’t want to sleep anymore. He just wanted to go home.
“You scared?” Dean asked.
Sam nodded and grabbed Dean’s hand. Dean didn’t like Sam holding his hand now that he was twelve and almost a teenager, but he knew that his brother would let it slide this time. It had been a while since they’d had to visit the hospital but it always made Dean nervous.
Sure enough, Dean linked their fingers together without resistance. “Don’t be scared, Sammy. I’m going to be right here the whole time.”
A red-haired man with a white coat and a folder in his hand walked into the room. “Hi, Sam. I’m Dr. Kasmin. Glad to see that you’re feeling better. Your brother tells me that you want to be a magician when you grow up? Is that right?”
Sam nodded shyly. Dean squeezed his hand, quietly reassuring him.
“That’s pretty cool. I used to do a little magic when I was your age. Check this out.” Dr. Kasmin took a pen out of the front pocket of his coat. He turned it over and around in his hands to show that it was just a normal pen. Then he stuck the whole thing through his ear and pulled it out of his mouth. “Ta da! What do you think?”
Sam smiled and gave him a thumbs up. That was a pretty neat trick.
“Alright, I better stick with my day job for now and leave the magic to you. How about you let me listen to your lungs?”
Sam nodded and Dean helped him sit up so the doctor could press his stethoscope to Sam’s chest and back.
The doctor listened to him breathe and seemed to be satisfied by what he heard. “Sounds good, Sam.” As he straightened up and slung the stethoscope back around his neck, he paused and a line of concern furrowed his brow. “Dean, what happened to your finger?”
Dean froze for a moment, caught off-guard. Sam looked over at him anxiously. This is exactly why they didn’t like hospitals. Too many questions.
“Let me see,” the doctor said. It wasn’t an order exactly but it wasn’t a request either.
Dean recovered and shrugged like it was nothing. He held out his left hand. The pinky finger was bent at an odd angle from the knuckle. “It’s fine,” Dean said coolly. “I slammed it in a door on accident and it got a little banged up. Doesn’t even hurt anymore.” He’d gotten to be a good liar over the years because he always threw in just a big enough dash of the truth to sell it. It had been broken in a slammed door but it hadn’t been on accident. John might have been drunk at the time but he had known exactly what he was doing.
Dr. Kasmin looked at his finger, testing the joint gently. “How come this was never set properly? Didn’t you show this to your dad when it happened?”
Dean didn’t have a ready answer for that. He took a quick step back as he started to make up an excuse but he didn’t notice the chair that was right behind him. The back of his knees hit the edge of it and Dean stumbled, sitting down hard on the seat. He hissed in pain and winced on impact.
Sam lurched up, his head throbbing dully with the sudden movement. “Dean!” he exclaimed hoarsely.
“You okay, Dean?” The doctor said, coming to his brother’s side. “Are you hurt?”
“No!” Dean shouted. “Don’t touch me!”
Dr. Kasmin studied Dean’s face for a long tense moment. Sam could feel something shift in the silence of the room. Like a terrible storm was building over the horizon and heading straight for them.
Dean grew paler by the second under the doctor’s stare. He’d seen Dean wince and he wasn’t buying the story about his finger anymore.
“Okay, boys,” he said finally. “I’m going to go talk to your father. I’ll be right back.”
The doctor left, closing the door quietly behind him. Sam and Dean looked at one another knowing the thing that they’d been dreading was finally happening. People were going to find out. People were going to find out and send them away.
No one had believed Dean’s lies or John’s excuses no matter how many times he tried to deny it. Especially not after they’d checked Dean’s medical records and did the math on how many times this one scrawny little kid had accidentally broken or dislocated his own arms. Dr. Kasmin had insisted on giving him a full exam to check for further injuries. That’s when he saw the fresh bruises on Dean’s back and thighs.
Dr. Kasmin left the exam room where Dean was still trembling in fear on his table and made a beeline for the nurse’s station. He grabbed the attention of the first RN he saw.
“Caroline, I need you to page the on-call social worker right away. I think we’re going to have to get Child Protective Services in on this one.”
~~~
Things happened pretty quickly after that. Sam and Dean had been sent to a group home and put up for adoption as they had no other family to claim them. Sam had been adopted right away by the Singers, a childless couple who were both anthropology professors at the University of Kansas. Dean however hadn’t been so lucky. To say he didn’t react well to being separated from Sam would be a gross understatement.
Dean had been a tough-edged little kid to begin with thanks to John’s intermittent bouts of rage and neglect. Sam hadn’t understood what was happening when it began because he’d been too little and Dean had sheltered him from much of it. He didn’t know why his father and brother fought all the time. When he got older, he’d seen the situation for what it really was. Rather than let his little brother get hurt, Dean had been drawing the fire to himself.
Without Sam by his side, Dean just stopped caring about anyone or anything. He was bounced from foster home to foster home, giving them all kinds of hell at every turn. Most of the foster parents that he was thrust upon treated him like garbage and the social workers he encountered were spread too thin to notice. Not that Dean trusted any of them enough to actually talk to them anyway. As for the other kids he was forced to live with, his new “brothers” and “sisters” – they were just plain afraid of him. According to what he told Sam whenever they could arrange visits with each other, Dean preferred it that way.
~1995~
“Dean!”
Dean turned and saw Sam running toward him full speed across the park, the smile on his face bright enough to rival the noonday sun. His cheeks were getting rounder with baby fat now that his new parents were feeding him like they were trying to make up for lost time. It made Dean happy down to the soles of his feet to see his little brother looking like any average twelve year old kid.
“Heya, Sammy!” Dean grinned and held his arms open wide. He was nearly knocked back into the grass when Sam plowed right into him and gave him a bear hug.
“I missed you,” Sam said, his words muffled against Dean’s t-shirt, “It’s been a whole month this time.”
“I know, I know. I couldn’t help it. They moved me to a new place and it took a while to get it all settled so I could come.” Dean released him and they walked together over to their usual picnic table under the shade trees. The park was their favorite meeting place because it was an easy walk from the bus station where Dean would arrive into town from wherever his current foster home might be.
“They moved you again?” Sam asked. “What did you do?”
“Nothing!” Dean hopped up on top of the table, sitting with his feet on the bench and his elbows resting on his knees. Sam mimicked him, taking a seat next to him, hip to hip. “They wanted to call me Daniel.”
“Daniel?” Sam said, scrunching up his nose in disgust. “But you already have a name.”
“That’s what I told them! They said that Dean was a heathen name and that I needed to be baptized like a good Christian with a name from the Bible. I guess they rename all their fosters like we’re some goddamn rescue dogs or something. I told them they could kiss my ass.”
Sam giggled at him. It was Dean’s favorite sound in the world. “You didn’t.”
“Course I did,” Dean said with a snort, “Then these morons sent me to my room with no dinner and locked me in. Like I’m fresh fish or something and I don’t know how to pick a lock. I was halfway to the bus station to come surprise you when the cops picked me up and brought me back. Fucking bastards.”
“So where do you live now? Are they nicer than the last ones?” Sam asked him hopefully.
“Shawnee. They’re alright so far,” Dean shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s only been a few days. Young couple with no kids. I’m their first foster so I think they don’t know what they hell they’re doing yet.”
Sam ducked his head and stared down at his sneakers. “You could try, you know,” he said softly. “If they like you then maybe they’ll keep you. Shawnee isn’t so far away. We could see each other more often.” Sam swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “I just miss you so much.”
Dean couldn’t stand to see his little brother unhappy. Even worse, it was all his fault for being such a fuckup. He just couldn’t help himself sometimes. Angry, hurting, and rudderless, most days it was all he could do to keep himself together - nevermind trying to deal with the parade of assholes that he was forced to live with. He didn’t give a damn about any of those sons of bitches and he wasn’t shy about making that fact clear. The catch was that when they inevitably got fed up with him he’d be relocated, and his constant moving made it hard for him and Sam to see each other. He knew that Sam worried about him and the last thing that Dean wanted was to make his life any harder. He deserved much better than that.
Dean leaned over and hugged an arm around his brother, resting his head against Sam’s. He missed this most of all. That closeness they always shared. Not having Sam within arm’s reach anymore felt like a part of him had been amputated. He needed the security of that contact more than he’d like to admit, even to himself. “Don’t be sad, Sammy,” he said, his voice pitched low for Sam’s ears alone. “Smile for me. Everything’s right again in the world when you smile.”
Sam nuzzled his head against Dean’s, shivering with excitement for that affection like an eager puppy. Dean felt the smile that spread across his face and he heard it in his voice. “You’re the best, Dean.” Then he shifted, curling up on the table top with his head resting in Dean’s lap.
It was a familiar habit of Sam’s and Dean knew his part well. Obligingly, he pet his brother’s hair, scritching the base of his scalp like he liked. Absolute love and trust radiated from Sam’s face, reminding Dean of the china angel that their mother used to cherish.
When Dean was a baby, she would often say, “Angels are watching over you.” She was gone now but she’d left him an angel of his own to watch over.
~~~
Later that night, he was sitting in the livingroom watching some boring as hell reality competition show with his new foster parents, Caitlin and Tom. They kept glancing at each other and then back at him with nervous smiles on their faces. They were desperately trying to make this family ‘quality time’ thing work. It was awkward and forced but he’d promised Sam that he’d try.
All of a sudden the telephone rang. Caitlin lowered the volume on the TV and picked up the wireless handset. “Hello? Yes, hold on he’s right here.” She held the phone out to Dean, tucking her dishwater blonde hair behind her ear with her free hand. “It’s for you.”
Dean took it from her and sprang up from his seat, hurrying off to the privacy of his bedroom. The only people who would ever call for him would be his case worker Karen – fat fucking chance of her actually deigning to check up on him – or Sam, who he’d given this phone number to only a few hours ago. Sam calling him so soon after they’d just seen each other was out of the ordinary enough to have Dean good and worried.
He closed the bedroom door behind him quietly and sat on his bed. “Hello?”
“Dean!” Sam cried, hiccupping through a sob on the other end of the line. “We’re moving away.”
“What?” Dean prayed that he’d heard wrong. This couldn’t be happening to them again. Not when he’d finally found a decent home that was closer to Sam than he’d been in a long time.
“W-we’re moving,” Sam repeated, sounding miserable and scared – almost as bad as the night the authorities had taken them from John. “Bobby and Ellen got offered jobs at another college. I guess they’d been talking about it for a while but they didn’t know for sure that they both got it until today. Summer’s almost over so we have less than a month before we have to l-leave. I don’t want to leave, Dean. I wanna stay here with you.”
Still reeling from the news, Dean heard the desperation in Sam’s voice so he tried to put on a brave front for his sake. “It’s okay, Sammy. We’ll figure something out. Where is the college?”
Sam starting crying in earnest again. It took a few moments before he could get out the words. “V-Vermont. They’re taking me to Vermont with them.”
All the blood drained from Dean’s face and he dropped the phone on the floor with a hollow clatter. He could hear Sam yelling his name through the phone but it was very faint, almost drowned out completely by the roar of his own heartbeat in his ears. Something in his chest seized up like a clenched fist. They were taking Sammy away from him again. Thousands of miles separating him from his brother, his best friend, the only person in the world who cared if he lived or died.
Dean went ballistic. It was like part of him shutdown completely and something else took over, possessing him in a fit of ferocious rage. The lamp on his nightstand was the first victim, shattering against the back of the door. Next was the alarm clock which was flung straight through the mirror over his dresser.
Tom and Caitlin came running and opened his bedroom door to see what was happening. Tom slammed it shut again just in time to avoid getting a picture frame to the temple. “Caitlin! Run next door and call the police!” he shouted. “This fucking kid’s lost his mind!”
Dean was past caring anymore. Another house that wasn’t his home. Another family that wasn’t his kin. What did it matter? They were taking his Sammy away.
By the time the cops showed up he’d broken nearly everything within reach that wasn’t nailed down. He was remanded to a group home to cool off until he could be placed. Three weeks later he was finally sent to another foster family. Two hours after that he was out the bedroom window, running for the bus station as fast as his legs would carry him. He was already too late.
~~~
The night that he’d called Dean to tell him that he was moving away was the last time that Sam had ever heard from his brother. He had cried himself to sleep at night for weeks. The Singers had tried to help locate Dean but it seemed that he’d run away from his last family and stayed gone. The social workers they contacted back in Kansas to help were too overwhelmed to bother with tracking down such a problem child. Ultimately his adoptive parents thought that the best thing for Sam would be for him to put his old life behind him and try to be happy. They had meant well, but they just didn’t get it. Dean wasn’t just Sam’s brother. To Sam, Dean was Han Solo, and Robin Hood, and Indiana Jones, and Batman all rolled into one. He was his best friend, teacher, nursemaid, and bodyguard. The axis that Sam’s world rotated on. And then Dean was gone, and Sam had to learn to become someone else. He quietly folded himself away and became Sam Singer instead. He didn’t really have a choice. There was no Sam Winchester without his Dean.
When he grew older, he tried to track Dean down on his own. The records social services kept on him were spotty at best and ended altogether by the time Dean was sixteen and a half. After that, the farthest he was able to get was a record of Dean’s enlistment in the Marines when he was eighteen years old, his re-enlistment at twenty-two, and finally a record of him going MIA during an enemy engagement in Iraq at twenty-four. Anything past that seemed to be a solid wall of bureaucracy that Sam just couldn’t penetrate. He watched clips of men in camouflage fighting and dying in the desert thousands of miles away on the evening news and feared the worst.
~~~
Now at thirty years old, Sam was thrust right back into the whirlwind of emotions surrounding his past. Dean was alive and he didn’t quite know how to process it. The thought of finally seeing his brother again after all these years was exciting and terrifying at the same time.
Sam spent the whole drive from the airport in Kansas City to Lawrence formulating a plan in his head. He’d go to their old house first and get himself settled in there and then he’d go find Dean using the address he’d been given by their dad’s lawyer. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say yet. How does somebody even begin that conversation? It’s not something he could just blurt out. Would Dean even care? Would there be any place for him in his brother’s life after all this time?
They’d been apart for so long and it wasn’t like the years that they had together had been all sunshine and lollipops to begin with. Dean had spent most of his childhood taking care of Sam. He’d considered it his responsibility to. Sam wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how Dean would still see him, an obligation that he had to deal with. Or worse, a reminder of a part of his life that he’d understandably want to forget. It would explain why he hadn’t ever mentioned he had a brother to their dad’s lawyer before. Maybe as a little kid Sam been more of a burden to Dean than anything else, but that was in the past. He was his own man now and he didn’t need anyone taking care of him. If Dean got to know him a little as a person before he confessed who he really was maybe his brother would get a chance to see that. Maybe even respect him as an equal. Sam would give anything to be able to have a fresh start with Dean. He was going to do everything he could to make that happen.