Chapter Text
For a long time, Sam didn't have a proper name. When he was born, his mother would lock herself into the motel bathroom and he would wail in his poor excuse of a crib, wrapped in bloody towels to keep him warm, but the scratching of the rough material against his newborn skin had felt like torture.
Mary, his beloved mother, couldn't stand to look at him. She fed him, but she did not cradle him affectionately nor did she smile at him as if he was a gift from God. No, she would look at him with hatred in her eyes even as Sam fed from her, and when she decides that he has had enough, she would tear the newborn off of her chest and wrap him back up in towels that were tight enough to prevent him from going anywhere.
She would ignore his wailing cries, and she would even leave the room just to get away. The newborn, whom had no name, would soon realize that crying would not bring her back. There was no warmth to greet the child, and so the child would shiver and snuggle further inside of his makeshift cocoon. Despite the scratchy material, he would fall into a restless sleep, all tired out from calling for his mother.
Now that he was four and was able to walk, Mary no longer ignored him. Instead, she took to taking him to church every day, for hours on end. He would be forced to kneel in front of a statue of Mary, whom had kinder eyes than his mother, which says that this Mary's eyes had nothing in them at all. The statue would stare unblinkingly while the boy prayed to be clean of his sins.
When the boy cried out one morning, refusing to step inside the church, knees bruised and sore from kneeling, he would learn the reasoning behind his mother's neglect.
"You ungrateful child," Mary seethes, towering over her teary-eyed child, "do you not understand that the Devil Himself resides inside of you? If you do not pray every day to be cleansed, then God will never forgive you for the sin of being born!"
The boy was unable to understand that words that are spat at him, but he still cries nonetheless, "but, Mama! It hurts... it hurts to pray."
It was the wrong thing to say. Mary's expression twitches into horror, disgust, and pain all at once and the boy is unaware of the bomb he just lit. He stares up at his mother with pleading eyes, but instead of a warm embrace that he desires, he finds himself stumbling to his knees at the staggering impact of his mother's hand on his cheek.
He stares wide-eyed at his mother, and for the first time - he's unable to ignore the pure hatred that swims in her eyes. There was no love there. He feels cold just looking into her eyes.
It only takes a few more seconds for his mother to explode.
"I'm not your mother. You are a demon. A monster. You were not meant to be saved, after all! You were never human to begin with, were you? You were never my son; you were never meant to be my Sam! You demon. You swallowed him into the womb, didn't you? You took my son away from me!"
Despite the hurtful words, the boy perks up at the name 'Sam'. Was that who he was meant to be? Did he have a name, after all?
"I don't know, Mama, I don't know!" The boy, Sam, cried, "please! Mama, I love you. Please don't be mean. I love you; I love-"
Again, another impact is landed on his other cheek, and he is silenced. He hiccups as his little heart his torn in half.
"You do not call me that!" Mary screams, "and I will never... never love a monster like you."
Sam bites down his lip to prevent a sob and he keeps his head down, shoulders shaking as big fat tears rolled down his stung cheeks. He doesn't know what his mother is talking about, but it sounds bad. It sounds like he's a bad, bad kid. It sounds like no matter how much praying he does; his mother will never look at him kindly the way that the young priest with storming blue eyes does.
Later into the night, when his mother has disappeared along with the wind for a little while - Sam lets the hot water from the shower steam up the room. He scrubs his skin raw with the scratchy material of the rag that he is intimately familiar with. It is another thing that he does every night. He hopes that it would make him a little less infected, since he sees the way that hot water and soap would wash away the dirt in the tub. Perhaps if he scrubs hard enough, he will be a little cleaner.
Maybe his mother would love him if he scrubbed off the multiple layers of his skin until there's nothing left but the bones underneath. Something tells him that it wouldn't matter, though.
He exits the tub, and he allows himself to drip, drip onto the floor while he crawls up onto the edge of the sink. The boy reaches out with his tiny hand, and he writes on the fog of the mirror.
S...A...M
While his heart is broken from the knowledge of being unloved, he can't help the burst of happiness at knowing who he was.
Sam.
Sam.
His name was Sam, and it was the one thing that he wouldn't allow his mother to take away from him.
SEVERAL YEARS LATER
On May 2nd, 2000, Sam turned seventeen. While other teens boasted about Sweet 17, Sam dreaded it. At midnight while Mary slept into one of the beds and Sam was locked inside of the bathroom, his body cramped inside of the small tub, he made a singular wish. He puts his hands together, fingers tightly intertwined, and he closes his eyes.
God... if there is a part of you that still consider me one of your children... please... please allow me to die painlessly...
He repeats it inside of his mind like a mantra, and the words echo inside of his dreams as he is soothed into sleep by the drip, drip of the sink faucet.
A bang against the bathroom door jerks Sam awake which causes him to wince, his body aching terribly, and he barely had enough time to drag himself out of the tub before the door is slammed open. Standing in the doorway was the one and only Mary, and Sam felt pitiful with the way he's kneeling on the moldy tile floors in front of her. Unable to look at her, Sam stares down at the tiles unblinkingly.
"Get out," Mary sneers, voice sharp like a knife, but Sam is immune to the mistreatment. He goes to stand up, but he remembers that his mother does not like it when he did that. Ever since he began to tower over Mary, he was forced to crawl whenever she was within sight. He stays on his knees and begins the shameful routine of crawling out of the bathroom as if he was a dog.
Well, if he was a dog, he would be loved. Unfortunately, he is stuck inside this human body that Mary says that he stole.
Sam kneels at the end of the single motel bed, where Mary can keep an eye on him, and Sam knows better than to be out of sight. Especially today. He listens to the water running in the shower, the plop of his mother's clothes, and he smells the sweet vanilla scent of Mary's body wash which makes his stomach coil with nausea. Sam can smell it faintly on himself, aware that it's ingrained inside of his skin, where her hands have left behind cuts and bruises.
He's floating somewhere far away when he's brought to reality due to a sting to his scalp. His eyes open to find that Mary's fingers are curled tight around his hair, pulling to get his attention, and Sam feels that nausea traveling upwards to settle into his throat. If he makes a sound, he might throw up.
"You understand what today is?"
Yes, he spent most of the night wondering how he could escape it. He flinches when his hair is yanked backwards, and he's forced to make eye contact.
"I asked you a question, boy."
Sam gulps, "yes, ma'am, I understand."
She frowns down at him when he speaks, and he feels a stab of irritation at her reaction. Don't tell me to respond if you're not going to like hearing it, he thinks to himself, nostrils flaring. Over the years, anger and hatred started to replace the love and desperation he had felt for his mother. Now, he can't look at her without feeling disgust. There are days where he thinks about killing her, but that would prove her right, wouldn't it? That he was a monster?
"So what if we are?" A voice asks him, residing in the corner of the motel room, but Sam doesn't look. He knows it's not real. He knows that if he looks then he'll see a shadow that doesn't quite belong to him. His mouth twitches nonetheless at the question. Yes, so what if I am? Sam thinks.
No.
He can't go down that road.
He can't allow himself to disregard what he's made himself to believe all these years.
That he's human.
A sigh of disappointment comes from the shadow, but Sam doesn't allow himself to think about that either.
"Today is the day that I finally get to sacrifice you," Mary's smile is so bright as it shines down at him, but Sam doesn't feel as chipper about the revelation, "God will forgive me if I offer you, the Devil, to him. The angels have hunted us for so long, but I was not going to let them take this great pleasure away from me."
Sam's nose is assaulted by the scent of vanilla when Mary cradles his cheeks in her bony hands, smiling so widely that it's downright creepy, and Sam feels incredibly uncomfortable. He shifts on his knees backwards as to try to escape her grip, but suddenly Sam's cheeks are being dug into by his mother's sharp nails to keep him in place.
"I despise you with everything inside of me," Mary whispers as if she's sharing a secret that she swore to never tell anyone, "but you might be the greatest gift that I've ever been given. You know why?"
Sam gulps as he's forced to look inside of her gleeful blue eyes, "no," he answers her just as quietly.
It's clear that responding to her was the right choice since she loosens the grip on his cheeks just enough for Sam to not be physically smothered by the scent of vanilla. He bites back a gag, quieting the sound before it could make itself known.
"Because I get to kill you," Mary says happily, almost dreamily, "I get to choose how you die... and trust me," she then sneers, "it will not be painless."
Like being submerged in an ice bath, fear had Sam frozen in his kneeling position. The color in his face drained away as goosebumps rapidly attacked him, causing him to shudder violently at the sudden chill that he felt. It's been a while since he's felt this cold terror in his bones, but he stares wide-eyed at his mother as his worst fears are confirmed.
His death will be done by her hands, and it was not going to be merciful. Mary is going to slaughter him under the guise of sacrificing him.
Distantly, in the back of his mind, a song that he remembered from reading a nursery rhyme book is being sung by the shadow in the corner. He had been in the baby books section when he had first started to adventure inside of a library, and when he happened upon that book with so many songs that were meant to soothe children... well, he found himself tucking the book underneath his over-size sweater that stood out with dark orange and sneaking out of the library.
He had read that book every night while Mary was gone, until Mary had found it and reduced it to ashes. Sam remembered being tied to the radiator as Mary made him watch the book go up in flames. His precious book with pictures of familial love that Sam has never experienced, and those precious rhymes that he sung to himself so quietly as to soothe himself into sleep. He had cried so hard that he threw up bile.
Sam never allowed himself to step inside of the baby books section in a library again.
Mary had a little lamb... its fleece was white as snow... and everywhere that Mary went... Mary went... Mary went... everywhere that Mary went... the lamb was sure to go...
He had longed to be loved just as dearly as the little lamb had been.
It is with startling clarity, however, that Sam has always been the little lamb. He used to yearn for his mother and follow her, but not once did Mary look at him as if he were a child that needed care. Mary saw him as the little lamb that was sacrificed in the end as an offering to God. No matter how obedient or small Sam tries to be, he was never going to be anything else.
Looking into his mother's crazed blue eyes, Sam comes to a decision.
It was either kill or be killed.
And Sam...
Sam didn't want this.
Mary had never smiled at him. She smiled around him when speaking to others, but when she notices him, that smile disappears. Kindness was not meant for Sam, and Sam has learned to shove the hurt deep down, but now? Sam can feel it surfacing in response to his mother's glittery smile.
All because she was going to kill him.
She was going to kill him, and she was smiling about it.
She was going to kill him, and she looks so gleeful.
He's going to die and it's making her happy.
Sam has never brought happiness to Mary.
So, this?
Once it clicked in his brain just exactly what he was witnessing, hatred overwhelmed his fear. His position becomes tense as he seethes, and he's digging his fingernails inside of his stained jeans hard enough that he's mildly worried that he's going to create more holes.
Never mind that, Sam thought, I need a plan.
Ever since Dean was young, he had felt that something was missing from his life. At first, Dean thought it was his mother, but whenever he saw a loving mother doting on her beloved child, the longing hadn't felt as severe as he thought it should be. Instead, he would only feel envy towards the mother rather than the child.
After ten years of being separated from his mother, he finally asked John about the hole in his heart.
Dean Winchester, fourteen years old, has been watching his father clean the rifles for the last five minutes while gaining the courage to ask the question that's been wiggling around in his brain for so long.
"Dad?" The young teen ventures carefully, aware that John doesn't like to talk about his ex-wife.
John grunts in affirmation, "yes, son?"
Dean nibbles down his bottom lip, taking a breath, "ever since we left Mum... I feel like there's something missing... but, it's not Mum, y'know? So... I wanted to know... did we leave something behind?"
The older man freezes in his ministrations of wiping down the rifle, but he doesn't look annoyed by Dean's prying question. If anything, he looked to be ashamed.
"Dean," John finally says after a few moments of tense silence, "I..." he seems to be trying to find words, but defeat appears upon his face, "yes, we did leave something... or rather, someone behind, but it wasn't your mom. You see, when Mary and I got divorced... she was pregnant. She was pregnant with your baby brother."
Dean blinks at his father in surprise at how easy it was for John to talk, but once he processed what was said, his heart dropped to his stomach.
It must've shown on his face because John grimaced.
"Baby brother?" Dean repeats, eyes wide.
John looks at his son with sad, yet fond eyes, "yes... you were still a toddler then, but when we told you that you were going to be a big brother... it was all you'd ever talk about. You'd press your hand against Mary's stomach and tell your brother how much you loved him. How good of a brother you were going to be. How you'd give him all the lucky charms in the world. All you wanted to do was talk to him, and you'd be so happy when he'd kick to the sound of your voice. You believed that you were his favorite because he'd kick only when you talked to him. His name was going to be–"
"Sam," Dean interrupts, breathless, "Sammy."
John nods, and Dean can feel the corner of his eyes burn.
"But... you said that Mum was sick, that she wasn't safe to be around..." Dean says shakily, "why did we... why did we leave before he was born?"
"Your mom... when I first met her... she told me how she used to believe that monsters were real. Vampires, ghosts, demons... any kind of fictional monster... but she told me that she got over it. That she was better and on meds," John winced, "and I believed her, and I think she was better then. We got married and then we had you and everything was fine. But... then four years later, she was pregnant. For the first few months, we were excited. Then she started having dreams... and she became so hell-bent on the idea that your little brother was the Devil Himself..."
Dean sits down, shaky in the knees as he starts to remember the blurry memories of feeling so much joy at feeling the little life that was growing inside of Mary's tummy. He briefly remembers going to kindergarten and boasting about how he was going to be a big brother.
John looks at Dean in concern, but he continues, "then you asked her when Sammy was going to be born, and she told you that she wasn't going to let him be born. You asked why and she told you that Sammy was evil and that Sammy couldn't be born. Then she told you that she would make you a new baby brother, but you'd have to wait a while. I was at work then, but you called me somehow, crying that Mama was going to kill your brother. You were distraught."
The teen could feel his heart shatter, sudden grief swallowing him whole, yet he feebly says, "and?"
"I dipped out of work and rushed back home. I entered the house to find you screaming at Mary, telling her that you'd kill her if she killed Sammy. Your face was red, and you were shrieking. But Mary's face... the way she looked at you..." John trails off and he shakes his head as if to get rid of that thought, "I just had to get you out of there."
Knowing that John couldn't say anymore, the grief and self-resentment clear on his face, Dean nods, "so... we left behind Sammy."
John's expression twisted into pain, "I'm sorry, Dean. I just... I had to do what was best for you. And... there was nothing I could do for a child that hadn't been born."
"Sammy could be dead," Dean says, voice quivering as his heart aches for his Sammy, "my baby brother..."
"I'm so sorry, Dean," John repeats, sorrow and pity filling those eyes, and Dean feels a flare of irrational anger, but he doesn't say anything yet.
Dean stares at John blanky, but despite the ache in his soul and the misplaced rage blooming in his chest, he says, "I know, Dad."
That was the first and only time that Dean talked about the hole in his heart, and John never brought it to attention again.
Ever since knowing that that the missing piece to his life was his brother, Dean continued to long for him. He had spent so many nights wondering what he would look like. If he was alive. If Sammy's favorite cereal was Lucky Charms like Dean's was. If Sammy would be delighted or disgusted at the recipes that Dean would make out of curiosity, like marshmallow fluff and mac 'n cheese. If Sammy would like hunting as much as Dean did. If, if, and more ifs.
He turned twenty-one once the clock striked midnight, welcoming the 24th day of January. Twenty-four days into the year of 2000, and Dean feels Sammy's absence like a missing limb. Even though he's never been able to meet Sammy, Dean has made himself believe that his little brother is out there somewhere. His boy, his boy... he's always repeating the same mantra.
SammySammymybabySammySammySammymineminemine, it's constant. Even more so than before, Dean becomes increasingly desperate every year to have Sammy by his side. He grieves the years and the time that passes by without knowing Sammy. If Sammy were alive, would Mary tell him about Dean? Would Sammy have the same ache in his soul that Dean has?
When he's setting up the rifle, getting ready to shoot an unsuspecting rabbit, Dean thinks of Sammy. His finger pulls the trigger, and the echoing shot rings in his ears, yet all he thinks about is Sammy. If Dean skinned the rabbit, and presented it to Sammy on a silver platter, would it be accepted? Would Sammy be kind, empathetic towards animals, and reject Dean's offering? Dean feels that as long as Sammy was there, Dean wouldn't care whether Sammy ate it or not.
If Sammy rejected it, Dean would find something he'd like. Dean's good at hunting, he could provide for his baby brother. He'd sacrifice anything, anything, just to know if Sammy was even still kicking.
Dean skins the rabbit with the delusions of giving it to Sammy rattling around in his brain, and he sticks the meat on a stick to set it over the fire. He waits for it to cook. The flames lick at the meat, and Dean wonders if Mary followed through her promise on burning Sammy. When the meat is cooked enough, Dean removes the stick, and he doesn't allow himself to think about that as he sinks his teeth into the meat. The juice spills in his mouth and–
Dean yearns.