SPN fic: Drive

[faye_dartmouth]

Title: Drive

Disclaimer:  Not mine.

A/N:  Written for summer_sam_love , the episode Dead Man’s Blood.  You all should check out the awesome turnout for S1.  S2 has started posting today :)  Beta'ed by my partner in crime sendintheklowns .

Summary:  It’s wrong that the last time they saw each other, they hugged and fought side by side, and this time it’s been orders and need to know and just like it used to be.

-o-

Sometimes, I feel the fear of,
uncertainty stinging clear.
And I can't help but ask
myself how much I'll let the fear
take the wheel and steer.

It's driven me before, and it seems to a faint,
haunting mass appeal.
But lately I, am beginning to find that I,
should be the one behind the wheel.
-from “Drive” by Incubus

-o-

There’s something wrong with this.

Their father shows up out of nowhere, after months of no contact, and that’s weird, but Sam’s kind of used to weird.  It’s possible they’d cross paths on a hunt.  The supernatural world is bigger than most people think, but still its own little community.

These things happen, and Sam’s okay with that.

And vampires are real, but that’s not what’s really wrong.  That’s a shock, though probably not as much as it should be.  Sam’s used to people taking the bottom out of his world, so he takes the news better than Dean does.  Sam lives from moment to moment with fear and skepticism, even as he hopes against hope that he’ll be wrong about it all.

Sam’s been wrong a lot in his life, but usually not about the good things.

It doesn’t matter that they’re vampires.  It really doesn’t.  They can still live and die, and Sam can hunt one just like he can anything else.  This is what they do, he is reminded, and Sam has resigned himself to that.

But still.  There’s still something wrong with this.  Something wrong with the way their father acts, the way he comes in and starts criticizing.  The comments about Dean and the car.  The soldier mentality.  The way Sam and Dean are following with nothing more than John’s orders to cover them.

It’s not even that Sam’s driving the car, because he does that from time to time.  In some ways, it’s like he’s been promoted, but he knows Dean lets him take the wheel to blunt the edge of their father’s incessant orders.  Sam likes driving sometimes, likes the hum of the car under his hands, but tonight his grip is deathly white on the wheel, eyes narrowed and bared down on the headlights of his father’s truck.

It’s just wrong, Sam thinks.  It’s wrong that he’s been through so much and he’s still playing low man on the totem pole.  It’s wrong that Dean’s still caving in, even when his brother is a hunter in his own right, as good as John has ever been.

It’s wrong that the last time they saw each other, they hugged and fought side by side, and this time it’s been orders and need to know and just like it used to be.

Just like it was when Sam was growing up.

Just like it was when Sam left.

John gives orders.  Dean follows.  Sam is expected to fall in line.

No questions.  No answers.  Just a hunt.  They clean it up when it’s done, and move on to the next.  No questions, no answers.  Just a hunt.

This is the endless cycle of Sam’s youth.  This is the life where Sam is nothing but a soldier in an army, a tool in an arsenal.  They love each other--Sam knows they do--but there is no place for love on the hunt.  There’s just getting the job done, a bigger picture that is worth any cost.

Any cost.

Sam thinks about Jessica and how she died.  He thinks about what he’d give to make that right.

Sam thinks about his brother in a hospital.  He thinks about other kids, just like him, getting powers and using them for the wrong reasons.  He thinks about his scholarship at Stanford, about how much it meant to him, about how he’ll never get it back.

These are things he wants to fix.  These are things Sam wants to understand.  Things of love and loss, purpose and pointlessness.

But Sam’s still following orders, trusting in answers he’s not privileged to know.  This could be vengeance, or it could be a wayward lead.  It could be anything for all Sam knows, because no one’s told him anything.

His father thinks he doesn’t need to know.  Dean doesn’t want to rock the boat.

Sam knows he can’t live like that.

He couldn’t do it when he was eighteen and believed he had a chance for something better.  And he sure as hell can’t do it now when he’s lost so much and been hurt so badly.  This is his fight, not his father’s and not his brother’s, and he doesn’t want to fight it blindly.  This is his decision and he chose ignorance for four years and he can’t let himself fall into that trap again.

He needs to know everything.  He needs to know the truth.  Maybe if he’d known when he was 18, he wouldn’t have left.  Maybe if he’d known a year ago, Jessica would still be alive.

There’s more than something wrong with this.  Everything is wrong with this.  From his father’s orders, to Dean’s acquiescence, to Sam’s inability to change any of it.

This is what drove them apart, all the way from the beginning.  This is what it feels like to be seven years old and suspect that Daddy is telling lies.  Other children have two parents and a home address they can remember.  They have dogs and cats and a father to show up on Career Day.  Sam gets a pat on the head and an extra serving of frozen pizza for dinner.

This is what it feels like to be eight years old and find out that nothing could be trusted, not even his family.  Not just that there are monsters, not just that monsters could kill them all at any moment, but that there is nothing he can trust in.  Dean says they’ll be okay.  Dad says it’ll get easier, but they’ve lied to him before (and they’ll do it again--and again and again).

This is what it feels like to be fourteen and realize that he doesn’t even know what happiness is.  Hunting is a reality now.  Monsters are just another part of his existence.  There should be some clarity in that, but for as clear as it is, none of it makes Sam happy.  Nothing makes Sam happy, and it isn’t until someone asks him that he realizes he wants it at all.

This is what it feels like to be fifteen, sixteen, seventeen and just wanting out--not away from his family, but away from this life that will keep him cloistered until he was insane or dead.  If he lives like this, then he’ll die like this.  He asks questions, challenges orders, because he wants to understand.  He wants it to make sense.  He can’t be duped again.  He can’t, and he wishes they understood.

This is what it feels to be eighteen and leave it all behind.  It’s hard to hurt Dean like that, but Sam doesn’t see it as a choice.  He leaves because it’s the only thing he can do.  Staying is suicide, slow or otherwise.  Sam needs a chance at happiness, at completion, at reality, at safety--once and for all.

This is what it feels like to have your back against a wall.  The further into despair someone gets, the more desperate they are to get out.  His father should understand that.  Dean should, too.  Sam’s not fighting to piss them off, he’s fighting to find his place.  He’ll follow orders worth following.  He trusts leaders who earn his respect.  This is what he’s learned with Dean since leaving Stanford.

This isn’t what is happening now.

There is something very, very wrong with this.  And it’ll kill them, one way or another.  Lies never win.  Secrets never help.  Sam knows this (knows this in his nightmares where Jessica still burns).

Sam’s lived so many years stewing under circumstances he can’t control.  He’s lost so much of himself at the hands of fate and lesser forces.  Sam can’t make it right, but he’s pretty sure he can make it better.

So Sam grabs the wheel, turns it hard, and refuses to play this part any more.