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It had been difficult tracking down somebody with enough power to send Sam back in time because it had to be somebody who wasn't involved in either side of the holy war. Harder still to track somebody down without demons or angels catching wind of his plan. But not impossible. Sam knew impossible. Impossible had been being eighteen and leaving behind everything and everyone he'd ever known to hitchhike his way to college. Impossible was dreaming of college at all. Impossible was surviving the panic room. Impossible was living without Jess, living without Dean. Sam had taken his turn learning how to do each of those things. He'd figured it out.
Time travel magic was... wonky, to say the least. Sam wasn't sure when or where exactly he'd end up. But he cast the spell knowing it would work. The witch who'd given him the instructions had never done it herself, but she hadn't had demon blood coursing through her veins since infancy; she wasn't as dark as Sam; she still had lines she wouldn't cross; she hadn't done the things he'd done.
If I didn't know you, I'd wanna hunt you. Sam knew now that Dean should've killed him. He'd had enough opportunities. If he could see Sam now, practicing witchcraft, candles along the motel windowsill, chalk outlines on the ceiling, the room so dark, the flask of demon blood in his hand—well. He would take the shot. Sam is certain of it. If death would take, Sam would've even wanted him to do it.
That was the problem, though. Dean could break down the door and put a bullet through Sam's eyes and it still wouldn't matter—Lucifer was free, and he'd just raise Sam from the dead, reassemble his perfect vessel. If Sam wanted to prevent all this—the apocalypse, Lucifer's cage opening, Dean going to Hell, even Jess's death—Sam had to die before Lucifer was free to resurrect him.
The witch said the spell needed demon blood, but if Sam was already tainted with it... You didn't need the feather to fly. You had it in you the whole time, Dumbo. Ruby had hooked him on the blood in order to make him dependent on her, not because he really needed it to use his powers. He should've known better—it's not like the other ones like him at Cold Oak had been addicted to demon blood when they were mind controlling people—but he'd been afraid of what was inside of him; he'd needed the reason to be something he was doing to himself, not something he already was. Would he be powerful enough, already ruined enough, to work the spell without drinking the blood that the witch recommended? Sam had been indecisive when he first went through the list of ingredients, and he'd bled a demon so he could make the choice later—now it was later. Sam eyed the flask in his hand. You bloodsucking freak.
Better not to risk failure, he decided. If this counted as a relapse, it's not like he would be around long enough to face the consequences. He drank it all.
Sam opened his eyes in a motel room. Not one he recognized—he surveyed the room, everything in it, everything it didn’t have—Dad and Dad alone, he evaluated. Damn. Unless it was one of those times he’d pissed Dad off so much that Sam (and sometimes Dean—group punishments were the worst, made Sam public enemy number one—) slept on the floor. Sam had a long memory, though, and he didn’t recognize this carpet.
He wondered what year it was. Maybe the spell had put him in just the right place—maybe he was meant to enlist Dad’s help in this. The plan shifted and reoriented itself in Sam’s mind. That could work. Let Dad know he’d been right about everything, that the darkness he was seeing in the kid version of Sam was real, that no version of Sam could be saved. Dad would realize what had to be done. He already had, in Sam’s timeline; he'd made it more than clear in his dying words to Dean. If only Dean had listened.
Sam settled in a chair far from the door and waited for Dad to come back.
It didn't take long. Sam waited until Dad flicked the lights on and toed off his boots before Sam said a quiet, "Hey."
Dad pulled his gun, and Sam carefully didn't move.
"I'm not a threat," he said. "I'm just here to talk."
"Who the hell are you?" Dad said.
"This is gonna sound crazy," Sam said, "but I'm Sam."
Dad took a second, and then his eyes narrowed further, and he kept the gun steady.
"That does sound fucking crazy," he said. "You wanna try again?"
"Hear me out," Sam said. "What year is it?”
“What the hell kind of question is that?”
“Humor me?” Sam said.
“It’s 1993," Dad said. "July 18th."
Sam was a little taken aback. He hadn't thought he'd have to come this far. He was ten this year; Dean fourteen. July—he and Dean were at Bobby's this summer while Dad was hunting something. A werewolf had broken Dean's arm, so he was a liability on hunts; Dean had spent the summer chasing Sam around the scrapyard and helping Bobby with the mechanic business. It had been a good couple of months.
"I'm from about seventeen years in the future," Sam said.
"Bullshit," Dad said.
It took a lot to get Dad to thumb the safety back on and more still to get him to lower the gun. Sam had to recite everything he knew about his father: his birthday, his family history, what happened with Mom, whom he turned to when he was lost (Missouri, Bobby), Dean's birthday, Sam's own birthday, a few of the hunts Sam remembered that they went on this year. Dad wasn't entirely convinced, though, until Sam brought up Adam—who, if Sam remembered correctly, would turn three years old this year—and that shut him up.
"Where's Dean?" Dad said when he finally, finally tucked the gun at the small of his back.
"Safe," Sam said. "Back in my time."
"And me?" Dad said.
"Dead."
Dad's face tightened and then went blank. He nodded and looked away.
"Did we get the demon?" Dad asked.
"Yeah," Sam said. "Yeah, we got it."
"Good," Dad said.
That seemed to be the end of that. He didn't ask about Adam.
"What are you doing here?" Dad said. He took off his leather jacket and tossed it on the bed.
"There's one thing out there worse than the demon," Sam said.
Dad looked at him sharply. Dark eyes that followed Sam through his childhood, pinned him to the wall like a butterfly, inspected him for any sign of something wrong.
"What?"
"Me," Sam said.
It was hard to meet his father's gaze, harder still to maintain it. Sam managed. Barely. He felt unsteady.
Dad narrowed his eyes.
"You wanna run that one past me again?" he said.
"You know about the demon blood," Sam said. If Dad didn't know by now, he at least suspected. "It's worse than that."
"How can it be worse?" Dad said.
"I'm Lucifer's vessel," Sam said.
Dad looked at him like he was crazy. Sam ignored the sinking feeling in his stomach as he confessed everything—Sam abandoning the family, Sam getting Jess killed, Sam being responsible for the car accident that almost killed Dean and therefore John's demon deal to save Dean's life, Sam's psychic powers, Dean making a deal with a demon to save Sam's life, Sam getting addicted to demon blood, Sam breaking Lilith's seal and releasing Lucifer, Sam being the lynch-pin of the apocalypse. Dad sank onto the bed as Sam spoke. Sam himself didn't rise from his chair. Maybe it was cowardice, but he needed it under him, needed something to cling to while he told his father that he was right about Sam from the start.
"You were watching out for me, waiting for me to turn bad," Sam said. He spread his arms. "I turned bad."
"That still doesn't explain why you're here," Dad said.
"I've got to kill myself before Lucifer's free," Sam said, "so he can't resurrect me."
"You mean kill Sammy," Dad said, and then, "No."
Sam blinked at him, baffled. "No?"
“No,” Dad said. “No—it’s too late for you, but I can save Sammy. I can fix him.”
“You can’t,” Sam said, but his Dad interrupted him again.
It could’ve been heartwarming, this refusal to kill his son, but it just irritated Sam—he remembered Dad's last words to Dean; he wanted to call his father a hypocrite now, even though he hadn’t said the words out loud yet in this timeline. What, so Dad or Dean could kill Sam, but Sam couldn’t kill himself? Dad and Dean could decide whether Sam got to live or die, but Sam didn’t get a say? Of course not. Of course. Sam didn’t know why he’d been so convinced that he could get his Dad on his side. It was Sam suggesting it—of course Dad had to be a fucking contrarian.
Dad selling his soul for Dean, Dad’s last words to Dean, Dad saying nothing to Sam, Sam finding Dad collapsed on the linoleum floor of the hospital—if Sam kills himself now, Dad won’t die, not like that.
“I’m trying to save your life,” Sam hissed. “I’m trying to save Dean’s life.”
If nothing else, Sam thought Dad would’ve understood that.
Sam stood. Dad went for his gun. He was fast, but Sam was faster; Dad was exhausted, had just come from a hunt, and Sam was young and well-rested and had the advantage of being far more desperate than Dad could know. Sam knocked the gun out of his hands and tackled him to the ground. He took a hit to the jaw before he managed to wrestle Dad close enough to the radiator to cuff him to it. An uncharacteristic stroke of luck—he didn’t know why Dad needed handcuffs for whatever case he was working but he decided not to question it. He frisked him and took his knives, wallet, and car keys.
The gun on the floor, Sam took that as well; he already had one in his waistband, so he tucked Dad’s into an inside pocket in his jacket.
“You bastard,” Dad spat. “You sick fuck. I’ll kill you.”
“That was the idea,” Sam said.
“You stay the hell away from my sons.”
Sam ignored him. He found a notepad in the bedside table drawer and hastily scribbled some instructions on it.
"This is what you need to kill Azazel," he said. "You can summon him with—" Sam wrote a few more things down, everything he could remember.
He added a quick note about Adam, too; one more thing he could make right. If Dad warned them, then maybe the Milligans wouldn't be killed by ghouls.
"Look. Get it done," Sam said, "but then you have to quit hunting."
Dad scoffed. Sam looked up sharply.
"You never change, do you?" Dad said. "Hunting wasn't good enough for you?"
"I'm done running away," Sam said, "but you've got to be done running, too. Avenge Mom, but then you've got to stop."
"There are other monsters out there—"
"Let somebody else handle them," Sam said. "Dean's fourteen. He—he deserves a life."
Dad was silent for a minute.
"You think he's gonna want a life without his brother?" Dad said.
Cheap shot. Sam whirled on him.
"You should've thought of that before you told him to kill me," Sam snarled.
Dad just stared at him. Sam dragged a hand over his face and reigned in his temper. He was being unfair; this version of Dad hadn't said that yet.
"This is for the best, Dad," Sam said. "You know it is. Deep down, you know."
Sam left without waiting for a reply.
By the time John got out of the cuffs, Sam—or that giant of a man claiming to be him—was long gone. He'd looked very tall when he was sitting down, but it wasn't until he'd lunged from the chair that he'd become something almost frightening; the man's body language in the chair had been small, defeated, almost slouched; when he came at John, he loomed. He had to have been, what, 6'4"? 6'5"? It was impossible to imagine tiny Sammy ever getting that big. And this larger, older Sam was determined to make it so that Sammy never would.
John used the phone behind the motel check-in desk to ring Bobby's landline, but he didn’t answer. Good for nothing son of a—
His keys were stolen, but fine; John could hotwire his own car—at least, that was the plan until John made it to the parking lot and saw that all four of the Impala’s tires were fucking slashed. No time to get new ones—John stole a car instead.
He could catch up. He could beat him there. He could. Nobody was killing his damn son. Not today.
He slammed on the gas as soon as he hit the highway.
When Sam arrived at Singer Salvage Yard, Bobby's blue truck wasn't there. Fine. Sam could wait until they got back from wherever they were. He broke into the house, started thinking of where to lay in wait—and then he froze. There, in the kitchen, reading a worn paperback, was a ten-year-old boy.
‘Sammy’ is a chubby twelve-year-old, Sam had said once. Only partly true—Sam as a child was baby-faced but always lean with hunger or muscle or both. Skinny, scrawny, usually short, until his growth spurt. Sam towered over his ten-year-old self. He was still just a boy. Still just Sammy.
"Are Dean and Bobby here?" Sam said.
"They're coming back soon," Sammy said, a tremor in his voice, putting on false-bravado.
"It's alright," Sam said, and then his throat closed up around, I'm not here to hurt you, because it wasn't true.
“Who are you?” Sammy said.
“I’m you,” Sam said,
He wished it was harder to remember ever being that small.
“I’m from the future,” Sam said. “I need your help.”
He tried to make it serious, tried to make it gentle, mostly just felt ridiculous. And tired. So bone-tired.
“No way,” Sammy said, looking suspicious. “Not possible. You’re a—a shapeshifter or something.”
Sam let Sammy find a silver letter-opener and test him with it. Holy water came next, and then iron.
“You’re human,” Sammy said finally, “but that doesn’t mean you’re me. What’s something only I would know?”
“When we were little, Dean used to read to us. There was this one comic book," Sam said. "The Knights of the Round Table. They were looking for the Holy Grail."
“Anybody could’ve guessed that,” Sammy said.
“There was a picture of Sir Galahad,” Sam continued, as if Sammy hadn’t interrupted. “He used to kneel, light streaming over his face. Remember? We knew we could never do anything like that. Go on a quest, or whatever. Be holy. Be clean.”
Sammy quieted.
“We’re not clean,” Sam said. “We knew even then. We’ve always known.”
“I’ve never told anybody that,” Sammy whispered.
“I can tell you why,” Sam said. “Why you don’t feel clean. Why Dad looks at you the way he does.”
Sammy waited with wide eyes.
“We’ve got demon blood in us,” Sam said. “The thing that killed Mom, it was a demon named Azazel, and he fed us demon blood, and we’ve been tainted ever since. Dad knows. He’s waiting to see if we go dark side. And we do.” This was the hard part, looking at Sammy’s horrified expression, admitting this and knowing he’s about to feel even worse. “We do. And it’s bad. We put everybody in danger. That’s why I’m here.”
“You came back to fix it?” Sammy asked.
“Yeah,” Sam said, heart heavy. “I did.”
Sammy didn't want to believe him.
“Prove it,” Sammy said, with a hint of the stubborn spark in him that Sam remembered from being an angry child, an angry teenager, an angry college student, the one who had to question everything, the one who was always looking for an exit. “Why should I believe you? Prove it.”
Sam lifted Dean’s amulet out from under his shirt.
“That’s Dean’s,” Sammy said, fear on his face. “Why do you have it?”
“We screwed up,” Sam said, “and Dean threw it away.”
There were things Sam couldn’t say. I fished it out of the trash. I wanted him to wish he hadn’t done it. I wanted to give it back to him. I wanted him to want it back. He never forgave me; he never spoke of it again.
“Dean wouldn’t,” Sammy said. “You’re lying. Dean would never. You took it from him. You stole it to trick me.”
“No,” Sam said, but he didn’t know what else to say; he wondered what else he was supposed to do, wondered if he was going to have to kill a child who was resisting. He didn’t want to be a child murderer. He tried to remind himself that he wasn’t human, not really, that he’d been a monster since he was six months old, and he knew what he had to do, but why couldn’t anything be easy? What kind of trial was this?
He shifted uneasily, and he realized in the middle of the movement that he had one more thing. Sam took his cell phone out of his pocket.
“There’s a voicemail,” Sam said. He swallowed. “From Dean. A year ago, my time.”
Sammy quieted.
“I want to hear it,” he said.
Sam didn’t want to play it. It felt cruel. But he’d saved it for a reason, hadn’t he. For his own listening, his own flagellation, his own penitence. For him. These were still his ears, just fifteen years younger. All things considered, it’s not the worst thing he was willing to do to save Dean’s life.
He showed him how the cell phone worked.
“You might not recognize his voice,” Sam said.
Sammy held it up to his ear.
Sam was close enough that he could pick up on the faint, tinny sound of Dean’s voice through the phone speaker. He couldn’t hear it very well, but he didn’t need to. He remembered every word. You bloodsucking freak. The memory of listening to that voicemail for the first time—and every time he listened to it again after that like a self-inflected wound—echoed around in his head. I'm done trying to save you. Sam watched Sammy’s face crumple. You're not you anymore.
Sammy was in tears by the end, but he blinked them back, trembling with the effort to keep himself together. Sam reached for the phone, but Sammy didn’t seem to notice, just stared down at it in his tiny hands.
“He hates me,” Sammy said.
“Your Dean doesn’t,” Sam said, “and we can keep it that way. We can fix it. Your Dean doesn’t hate you, and we can save his life.”
Sammy didn’t say anything for a moment, but when he raised his eyes to meet Sam’s, Sam knew he had him. He wished it felt like a victory instead of making him feel sick.
“Can I say goodbye first?” Sammy said. “Can I tell him I’m sorry?”
“He won’t know what you’re apologizing for,” Sam said. "He’ll try to stop us.”
“Why?”
“Because he loves you,” Sam said. He almost choked on the words. Because you haven’t made him hate you yet. Because even when he hates you, he still tries to save your punk ass. Because he’s Dean. Because he’s your brother. Because he loves you.
Sammy wrapped his arms around himself. He was still holding the phone. Sam didn’t try to take it from him again.
“Can I leave him a note?”
Sam thought of his father, who was almost certainly hunting him down, and of Bobby and Dean, who could come looking for Sammy at any moment. He thought of Dean making a crossroads deal after Cold Oak.
“Make it quick,” Sam said.
John tore into Bobby's scrapyard and leapt out of the car without turning it off, barely remembering to put it in park. Bobby and Dean were unloading groceries, and Dean almost dropped a bag when he saw John.
"Dad?" he said.
"John, are you alright?" Bobby said.
"Where's the Impala?" Dean said.
"Forget about the damn car," John snapped. "Where's Sammy?"
"Jesus, John, he's in the house," Bobby said.
"Are you sure?" John said. "Are you sure he's in there?"
"I'll go get him," Dean said.
"What the hell is the matter with you?" Bobby said.
John didn't get the chance to answer.
"Dad!" Dean shouted, and Bobby and John both looked toward the front door, which Dean came barreling out of. "He's not here."
"He's probably in the scrapyard somewhere," Bobby said, but John was already running.
Sam took the gun out from his inner jacket pocket.
"That looks like Dad's gun," Sammy said.
It was his father's gun, wasn't it? Sam's own gun was in the waistband of his jeans.
"Dad gave it to me," Sam lied.
"Oh," Sammy whispered. "Okay."
Sammy stared at it, eyes impossibly wide, fists clenched, trying to be brave. Sam took a deep breath and tried to steady his shaking hands. This is the same as killing any other monster, he tried to tell himself. You've seen monsters that look like kids before.
"Turn around," Sam said. "Tell me about the cars."
The sun was coming down at the edge of the scrapyard. Sammy turned to face it.
"That ugly one is a 1970 AMC Gremlin," Sammy said. His voice shook. His hand, too, was trembling when he pointed. "The really crushed up one behind it, the red one, I think that's a Ford?" He added in a whisper, "Dean would know the model and the year."
"You're doing good," Sam said. He cleared his throat and raised the gun. Steady hands. Steady hands. "Keep going."
Sammy identified a 1974 Vanden Plas ahead on their left, and another car, and another.
I’m afraid, Sam thought.
Pick a hemisphere, Dean from his memory said. I’m done trying to save you. If I didn’t know you, I’d wanna hunt you. Pick a hemisphere. Pick a hemisphere. Pick a hemisphere.
This one, Sam thought, and he pulled the trigger.
The gunshot rang out while they were still looking. It was over when they found the bodies. Sammy and Sam, collapsed like their strings had been cut, twin holes in the backs of their heads. Blood everywhere. John bent over, hands on his knees, unable to tear his eyes away from Sammy, and he thought he might throw up.
Dean held his little brother's body and said his name over and over like he could beg him back to life. John couldn't hear him over the ringing in his ears, but he knew it was Sammy's name that Dean couldn't stop saying. He knew.
John glanced at the dead man who'd showed up in his room yesterday—this broken creature, this tall stranger—and hated him more than anything, because this was going to break Dean; John was terrified that he had just lost both his sons.