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It was only after Dean died that Sam could understand his perspective on things.
It had been easy to question Dean’s detached agreeable patience, because all Sam felt was the weight of freedom, the heft of forever, like chainmail draped over his chest. He was safe, so terribly impenetrably safe, and for what? Life on the other side of victory chafed against the man that Sam had become. There was a version of him, soft and pink and hopeful, somewhere deep in the past, that could have called it a blessing.
Dean’s patience – that’s what it was, he decided, in retrospect – was more alarming than any tantrum he could have thrown, any depression he could have drifted down into, any bender he could have let burn him clean from the inside out.
At the time, he’d figured that it was Dean’s clumsy hollow-eyed attempt at inner peace. That he’d given up on wanting anything but another sunrise, another day where God wasn’t taking a set of pinking shears to the edges of the fabric of their lives. And Sam, he could respect that kind of humility. The thankfulness that can only be welcomed without expectations. A kind of relief that disappears if you hold onto it too tightly.
Now that Dean was dead, he understood that it wasn’t peace that Dean was giving a chance to. It was patience.
Now that their lives were truly their own, Dean could just wait, and rest assured that sooner or later, he would die. And he did.
It didn’t matter anymore, what it was that made Dean look forward to his death so serenely, clear eyed and graceful, but Sam spent plenty of time wondering about it anyway.
Spending day after day alone in the bunker, with no one to keep him company but Dean’s orphaned dog, Sam wondered if it might have been loneliness that got him, in the end. If death was so alluring because it marked either reunion or oblivion. Either Dean wouldn’t be alone anymore, or it wouldn’t matter.
He had that thought over breakfast, dog snoozing beside him on the floor. And it was his sign to pack up and leave.
+++
Everyone was alive again, Sam knew. Jack had brought them all back.
When Dean was alive, he had suggested to Dean that they reach out – to Jody, to Donna, to Claire, to Bobby, to Charlie, to Eileen. To anyone they could point to, could say, ‘look, they made it, it was all worth it, of course it was’, because Sam thought he needed that.
Dean had looked at him, unnervingly calm, as he always seemed to be these days. Said he wasn’t really feeling up for that kind of thing.
Everyone was still alive again, even though Dean was dead.
Now that he didn’t have Dean to ask, as if he had even needed to ask him in the first place, Sam found that he wasn’t really feeling up for that kind of thing, himself.
+++
Getting his transcripts from Stanford was easier than he wanted it to be. It was something he’d thought about on and off for years, any time it seemed like maybe the horizon was clearing, maybe their lives were settling somewhat, he’d consider getting his ducks in a row, but he always came up with some reason or other to put it off, and another catastrophe would beg for their attention again.
Moving out of Kansas, that was easier than he wanted it to be, too. He had no idea where he wanted to end up. He’d been to every contiguous state in the country at least once, and still had no preference for any of them. Not California, he supposed. And not Kansas, obviously. Two down, 46 to go. He drove awhile, ended up in Michigan. It seemed as good as anywhere else.
He drove so far north that the land just stopped, and he realized he’d hit one of the lakes. He rented a motel room, which was more of a miniature cabin than a traditional motel room. It faced the lake. He was too embarrassed to ask the clerk which lake it was, so he looked it up online once he was in his room. It was Lake Huron.
The town he’d ended up in, Cheboygan, was slow, disinterested in him as he was in it, and he liked that. He got the impression that it was more of a summer place, arriving as he had in early October.
He and the dog had been at the motel for two weeks when he started looking for local jobs. It had been years since he’d interviewed for a job, and suddenly he had four interviews lined up. Two for basic clerical work, one as a paralegal, one as a library receptionist.
The interviews went well enough, and he was offered a position in all cases, except one of the clerkships. He’d expected it to be harder to come across as normal, after everything he’d been through. It felt wrong, to be able to smile at a hiring manager, to be able to shake hands with some small town attorney with the same hands that had pulled his brother’s dead body off of a spur of rebar. It should have been impossible, to act like he was just a normal guy. Instead, it was easy. Much easier than he wanted it to be. He accepted the paralegal job, because it paid the most. Had the best hours.
Working at the little law office was simple enough, and he liked that his job didn’t require him to talk to anyone too much. Fall melted into winter, and the motel was shutting down for the season, so he got an apartment in town, a few minutes away from the law office. Finding the apartment was easier than he wanted it to be, too.
+++
At some point, Sam got tired of cooking for himself. He made enough money now that he could afford to get takeout most nights, could afford to buy himself a coffee and a sandwich from the bakery cafe across from the firm in the mornings. He didn’t bother with lunch. He wasn’t ever hungry in the middle of the day anyway. Then again, if Sam only ate when he was hungry, he wouldn’t eat much of anything.
The same woman worked every morning at the bakery, took the same five dollar bill from Sam and gave him the same buck fifteen in change every morning. He wasn’t her only regular, in a town this small, but he was the only one she made such a herculean effort to small talk with.
“Gettin’ to be spring out there, feels like.” She offered one morning late in March. It was about 45 degrees out, and there was still snow packed against the curbs.
“Maybe.” Sam hedged, taking his dollar fifteen and dropping it all in the tip jar, just like every morning.
“You likin’ it here?” She asked, on a different day, sometime in April. He’d seen her every morning for the last five months, minus holidays.
“It’s….” This was the first time Sam had to use his brain to respond to one of her questions. It was the first time he had to look into her eyes, to not just see her, but look at her. She had brown eyes. Brown hair. She was smiling, but not in the customer service way. That’s what made him speak, at last. “It’s better, than where I was before.”
“Yeah?” She sounded surprised. She probably was. It was the first time he’d answered her in more than five words.
“Yeah, I.” He paused. It had been a very long time, since he even wanted to talk about himself. Did he want to, now? “My brother died, and I just. Had to change something. Be somewhere else.”
He wished it was a weekday, so that he’d have the excuse of going to work. It was Saturday. He had nothing to do but stand here with this woman he saw every day whose name he didn’t know.
“I’m so sorry,” She said, and meant. He was a little startled, to see tears welling in her eyes. She coughed a little sound and wiped hard across her eye sockets with her palm. “Sorry, sorry. I just. My parents have been dead a long time. This was their shop, actually. And my brother. Bradley. He used to run it with me. He died, just about a year ago.”
Sam wasn’t sure what to say, so he said nothing. She went on.
“I thought about selling the place. It felt so empty without him. Which. That’s ridiculous. We have four bakers on staff, and Elliot takes over the till at eleven.” She sighed out the hot breath that was trapped inside her chest, that was forcing tears to form. Sam knew that the sighing helped. It always helped him, too. She smiled again, sadder, but truer. “But for a while there, I just couldn’t be here, without missing him.”
“That makes sense.” Sam nodded. It did make sense. He smiled at her, too. Just as sad, and not quite as true. “I’m glad you didn’t sell it. Where else would I get breakfast?”
“Yeah,” She laughed, a genuine laugh that seemed to startle out of her. “We’re just about the only game in town until the season starts back up in May.”
Sam glanced at her name tag, and she didn’t seem to notice, because someone in the back handed his sandwich out through the pass-through and called his order number, and she scrambled to grab it for him. Danielle.
“You wanna eat this here, maybe? I could take my break. We could chat?” She asked, hopeful.
“Sure.”
+++
He dated Danielle for a year and a half before they got married. Neither of them proposed, exactly. They just discussed it, over dinner one night, in January. Danielle, petting the dog under the table, finished with her food faster than Sam, who still wasn’t hungry enough to eat with any degree of urgency.
“I don’t really have a strong preference,” Danielle started, “But if you want to get married, I think that would be nice.”
“Yeah?”
“I like you. I like spending time with you.” She elaborated, she was looking at her plate, at the dog, at her own forearm, resting on the table. They weren’t the kind of people who told each other they loved one another. He didn’t mind. It didn’t seem like she minded either. “I don’t really know why else people get married.”
“Me either,” Sam lied. “I think it would be nice.” He said at last, and Danielle looked up at him over the table and smiled.
“Don’t really want a wedding, though.” She amended, and he smiled back.
“Me either.”
+++
Sam did not want children, until his son was born.
It had been an accident, and Danielle had asked what they should do. She didn’t sound like she had a strong preference, one way or the other. She often didn’t, even about big things. Sam didn’t mind. He studied her face, and he could catch something, just in the set of her jaw, in the lines around her eyes, that convinced him. She wanted to keep it, but only if Sam wanted to. It wouldn’t be enough, to say he didn’t care one way or the other. He could appreciate the reasons that might be.
He smiled at her.
“I’ve always wanted,” He lied, “to be a father.”
+++
They didn’t talk about baby names. He didn’t want to. Maybe Danielle didn’t want to either.
When a nurse came in and asked what they wanted to name him, Sam cradling this warm thing against his chest, Danielle shrugged, looked over at Sam.
“Dean,” Sam said, and Danielle smiled. “Dean Bradley Winchester.” He added. May as well name him after both of their dead brothers.
Parenthood suited them, because it was the ultimate distraction. A parent isn’t expected to have a personality, or a life, outside of their child, and it was a welcome refuge.
“Do you ever feel,” Danielle asked, one night, many years later. Their six year old son was asleep in his room down the hall. “Do you ever…feel like…?”
She didn’t need to finish the sentence. Sam wasn’t sure how she would have captured what they both felt in words anyway. He rolled over and wrapped an arm around her, pressed his face into the nape of her neck. He nodded, hard enough that he knew she could feel him nodding.
+++
Danielle died when their son was a high school senior. Breast cancer, caught too late. He wished he had it in him, to mourn her harder. To mourn her like they’d mourned their brothers, the way they’d made space for each others’ grief over the years. She deserved it, but it didn’t matter, because he didn’t have it in him to give.
The kid took it hard, but life had been kind to him so far. They’d both made sure of that. It was the worst thing his son had ever gone through, losing his mother, and Sam was so grateful, so proud, that he could say that with certainty. That nothing worse had ever happened to him, than this pedestrian tragedy.
He wanted to delay college, because of it. Take a gap year, or stay at home and spend one more summer by the lake. Sam told him he could, if he wanted. But that it was okay to go to school anyway. It didn’t mean he’d loved her any less. So he started his freshman year at the University of Michigan that fall, and Sam found himself, somehow, even more alone than when he’d started.
He went out to the garage and pulled the tarp off of the old car. It was a once a year sort of indulgence, something he only let himself do when he could pretend it was for maintenance.
On this day, he didn’t bother lugging the toolbox over, or a bucket and sponge. The car was fine. It had been fine for over two decades, now.
In the front seat, he let his hands touch the wheel, and something inside him snapped. Tears he held back for years, that may as well have fossilized, or turned into perfect crystals of aquamarine and blue topaz, spilled free, and he wanted them to hurt more on their way out, like passing a kidney stone. Instead, they poured out of him smooth and easy. It was still all so much easier than he’d wanted it to be.
Once he’d touched the wheel, he couldn’t stop touching the car – the upholstery, the dash, the vents, the gear shift. He was crying so effusively that he couldn’t see, everything around him just a wet blur. His leg curled under the bench seat, tapped impotently against Dean’s box of cassette tapes. He dragged it into his lap with shaking hands, touched a few of the cases with a reverent fingertip. Most of them had probably last been touched by Dean. How many items on this Earth could that be true of, anymore?
He put the box back where it had been, suddenly feeling protective of this dwindling resource, this final stash of Dean’s mark on the world, his last fingerprints. He opened the glovebox, and gasped out a painful laugh at what he found. A gun, of course. About a million fast food napkins and plastic forks and salt packets. Three cell phones. Two were ancient, the kinds of flip phones they don’t even bother manufacturing anymore, ones that predate the camera feature. But one was a smartphone, something they must have had around the time Dean died. He fished it out and found a charger to go with it. Took it with him when he went inside, plugged it in and let it charge.
All their phones, they used to pay by the minute. Burners. This one was no different. And even though it had been powered down for longer than his son had been alive, it still had coverage left.
The phone had about a hundred missed calls. The voicemail box was full. He deleted it all without looking at the names, or listening to the messages. There were hundreds of text messages waiting. He deleted the messaging app. At some point in his life, this had been his very own back up phone. Free of the weight of those dangling conversations, he scrolled through the old contacts list.
Alicia and Max Banes – just listed in there as ‘Banes’.
Bobby, though of course, not his Bobby. He was long dead. Probably this one would be, too, by now.
Cas. He swallowed hard, skimming past.
Charlie. Also not his Charlie. He liked to think she was still out there somewhere. Maybe even happy.
Claire.
Dean.
Donna.
Eileen.
His eyes hovered on that name.
Eileen.
He pressed the video call button before he knew he’d done it, and the tinny warbling ring echoed in his kitchen. There was nothing alive in this house besides Sam. Not even a dog, anymore.
It almost went to voicemail. It didn’t.
“Sam?” She had so much gray in her hair, but she looked just about the same. Her brow was pinched together, and he couldn’t look away.
“Hey,” Sam choked out, “Hey, how are you?”
“Sam, I…” She stared, like she was seeing a ghost. Maybe, in a way, she was. “It’s been so long.”
That was true. Sam laughed, and it hurt to laugh. It hurt so terribly. This was what it was supposed to be like, he thought, it was supposed to be this hard, the whole time.
“I know, it has.”
“Where…where are you? Where did you go?”
“I’m in Michigan.” It seemed like the wrong answer somehow. Or, like she’d asked the wrong question. It seemed like the most unimportant thing, right then. He just as easily could have been in Florida, or New Mexico. It had been a random decision to come to this place then, and it was a random whim that kept him here now.
“Michigan…? Why?”
He shrugged, helpless.
“I’m in Ireland.” She offered, when he didn’t ask. “I live over here.”
“Do you like it?” He asked, and it seemed like the most important thing in the world, just then, that he know she likes it. That her life has been good.
“I really do.” She gave him a sad, knowing smile. Because Eileen was so smart, and she knew Sam so well, and she understood how important it was.
“I’m glad.” He smiled. “I’m, uh. I’m sorry about…about…”
“You don’t have to be sorry. I know that Dean…that had to be so hard.”
“It was. Is.”
“I wish I could have been there for you. I think a lot of people wish that.”
“I know.” Sam breathed. “I don’t think I get to say I wished that, too.”
“You get to say whatever you want about it, Sam.”
“No, I don’t.” He laughed. She looked worried again.
“What else don’t you get to say?” She asked. He heard something in the background of her call, someone moving. She glanced up at them briefly, smiled reassuringly at them, before giving him her attention again.
“I don’t get to say how much I miss you, I think.”
“Sam,” Eileen’s expression softened, like it always did, opening like a gate into a beautiful garden. “I missed you for a very long time.”
“I’m sorry,” He whispered. If Eileen could hear, it would have been inaudible anyway, but she read his lips, so she understood just fine.
“It’s alright, now.” She assured him. “Are things okay, with you?”
“Yeah, I um. I have a son, he’s in college.” He didn’t mention Danielle. It would be cruel, he thought, but he wasn’t sure if it would be cruel to her, or to Eileen, or to Sam himself. Eileen smiled at that.
“That’s amazing! I have a daughter. She’ll graduate next year.”
“That’s really great,” He smiled. They sat there, just looking at each other, for several seconds. Maybe a minute.
“I don’t want to hang up, but I kind of have to go.” Eileen explained, like every word pained her to say. “Please, don’t let this be the last time we talk, Sam.”
“Hey, no worries.” He forced himself to say, because there really wasn’t any reason to keep her on the line. What was the rush, after all these years? “I’ll keep in touch.”
+++
The next time Sam called was ten years later, and he hung up while it was still ringing. He used his regular phone, this time. The old one just wouldn’t do more than turn on, anymore. She called back, and he let it go to voicemail.
+++
Sam was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just a month before it killed him. His son flew up from his home in Chicago to be with him, because there really wasn’t anything to do at such an advanced stage but wait to die. It was a strangely peaceful time, a patient time. He wondered if that was how Dean had felt, in the wake of Chuck’s fall. If this was the flavor of patience that his brother had tasted, and decided was sweet enough to live on, for a little while.
One night, while his son was asleep in his childhood bedroom, upstairs, Sam fumbled around on the table beside his bed for his phone. The hospice people had brought in a big hospital bed and put it in the breakfast nook, where he used to help his son with homework.
He called her, and she picked up after two rings. He hadn’t even bothered to figure out what time of day it would be, in Ireland. If she still lived in Ireland.
“Sam?” She looked old, now. He felt irrationally angry, that she was getting old. She deserved to stay young forever. To be happy and alive forever.
“Eileen?” He croaked out, throat dry from the meds. It didn’t matter. Eileen could read his lips.
“Are you in a hospital?” She asked, and he laughed a dry rasping laugh.
“No, hospice. At my house.”
“I’m so sorry,” Eileen clutched at her chest, her neck, like she needed something to ground her. It was unfair, how much she cared, after all this time.
“It’s okay.” He shrugged. “I just. I’m sorry about not calling. I don’t know why it was always so hard.”
“It’s okay,” She said back, and she sounded sincere. “Some things just stay hard, no matter how long it’s been. You know. I didn’t call you either.” She pointed out, smiling guiltily.
“You have a family. A life.” He argued, and her brow furrowed.
“So do you, don’t you?”
“I have a son. Yeah.” He conceded, before clarifying. “My wife died when he was in high school.”
“I’m so sorry,” She said again, but softer this time. Mostly to have something to say, he figured.
“I thought it would get better, but it just. Never did.” He mused, more to himself than to Eileen.
“What would?”
“The loneliness.” He explained. “I thought one day, I’d wake up in my house, with my family, and it would just. Be enough.”
She stared at him, and even with his fading eyesight, and the shitty video quality, he could tell there were tears on her face.
“It never was.” He concluded.
“I wish…” She started, taking a poorly timed breath. Probably trying to compose herself.
“I know.” He interrupted. “Me too.”
“I’d say to call me again soon, or stay in touch…” She trailed off on a helpless laugh, kind of a sob, but she had this aching smile on her face, so he’d remember it as the laugh she wanted it to be.
“It’s okay. Thank you, for picking up the phone.”
“Always.” She replied, and he waved, and hung up.
Soon, he thought, there will be nothing alive in this house, besides Dean. And Dean would leave soon enough after that. The house would be empty again, just like when he bought it. Just like the bunker was, still asleep, a treasure laden tomb in the middle of Kansas, like a pharaoh's crypt. It was a lonely thought. A patient thought.
Sam put his phone back on the table beside the bed, and closed his eyes. And he waited.