With a shot at that normal Sam always wanted, he finds himself fighting (literally) to get back to his family. Though he could have waited until after the snow storm!

Dedicated to BlueEyedDemonLiz over at CWESS and a prompt she gave for our Secret Samta exchange that didn't get written. It niggled at me (plus Lizzie is awesome and deserved this!) so I wrote it … slightly different than my norm as the beginning of the story is all 3rd party POV. Don't worry, it's still packed with some Hurt!Sam – and even some Overprotective!Dean at the end.

Her prompt:

1 – fanfic: Teenchesters. Teen Sam is spotted covered in bruises by a teacher and is taken away from John by child services. He gets taken in by a foster family and I'd love the family to notice all the ways in which Sam is different from other children. Some hurt!Sam would be awesome – I don't mind how, perhaps he could get hurt trying to get back to his real family.

Sadly, I don't own them. Though I am still waiting to get in on a certain poker game! Screw added years, I want the Winchesters!

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He wasn't like other children; that much Mrs. McKinley could tell. Though if she were being honest, and giving them a bit more credit, she would have to admit that they weren't really children anymore, were they? Boys and girls on their way to becoming men and women.

She'd gotten into teaching to make a difference, to teach the young values and principles – to make them become better people.

She'd nearly forgotten that calling when Sam Winchester entered her class.

Shy and unobtrusive, Beth McKinley nearly looked right past him on her way to the next period. But something about the young man caught her attention – after all, boys of fifteen don't normally offer to help an old lady with books. And it wasn't just the one time either, and it wasn't just her. She'd seen him step in to defend Bobby Hancock when that nasty Matthew Willowby cornered him in the lunch room. And how he seemed to always be one step ahead – as if he were trained to help others.

So it was any wonder that when she spotted the first bruise that she raised an eyebrow or two?

It was just after Thanksgiving break, and Sam was a day late returning – but that wasn't anything unusual. A lot of children took an extra day when visiting family, but most didn't come back with a faded bruise to their cheek. When asked he gave a shy grin and said he and his brother were wrestling and it got out of hand.

Okay, she could buy that. She'd seen his brother on numerous occasions after school. He seemed to have a fondness for the boy she didn't often see in siblings. But when Sam came back from Christmas break with what appeared to be the fading remains of a fat lip, she began to question her original logic. But it wasn't until late January that she made the call. When Sam returned after being out for three days with a shiner, she was fairly certain that the boy needed help – especially since she could see the other bruises nearly hidden under the confines of his sweatshirt.

She wondered about him later from time to time, but knew she'd done the right thing – even if that betrayed look he gave her haunted her for years to come.

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He wasn't like the other children that he'd questioned. No schooled responses, no look of guilt – as if he deserved to be hit. No, he looked defiant whenever it was even suggested that John Winchester wasn't the proper father that he should have been. Oh and when he started to question about his brother, Dean, Jeff Hanson thought that Sam Winchester was going to start a fist fight with him.

Hell, he almost had!

No, he wasn't like other boys – but Jeff figured he was stepping past his role of abused, and would soon turn to being an abuser. Talk with his teacher said otherwise, but he'd been a social worker for juveniles long enough to know – the abused nearly always directs their pain onto someone else.

It was about time the cycle was broken, that is, if he wasn't too late.

Still, he didn't quite expect the reaction from Sam when he told him the news; that he was now in custody of the state of Iowa. This time he did start a fight; and boy or no, it took two guards to restrain the teen.

Still, Jeff Hanson knew he did the right thing – even if that glare of death given by one Sam Winchester was burned into his memory like a scar that festered long after the pain was gone.

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Ralph and Abigail Fredericks noticed he was different as soon as they went to meet him. Sullenly defiant Ralph had said. There was something in his eyes that said that Sam Winchester could back up every bit the glare he was giving them, though he didn't outwardly defy them.

No, he was compliant enough. Got in the car without so much as a word. Not one. Not the normal questions, not even an ounce of interest. He just kept staring out the window as if he were taking to memory the landscape around him.

When they arrived at the house, Abigail had so wanted to mother him, Ralph could see it in her eyes – but the first reach of her hand and Sam had backed away, as if her touch were poison. Though it wasn't with the gun-shy duck of an abused child – no, this was more stubborn and willful defiance, as if Sam were going to do everything in his power to make this hard on them.

And he did for the week and a half that he stayed there. A week and a half of refusing to eat at the table, yet on more than one occasion Ralph had caught him in the middle of the night rifling for food. But still, he refused to allow them to be anything remotely close to a parent.

Oh but Abigail tried!

Sam told her, on the fifth day, that he already had a mother, and she'd died. It nearly broke Abigail's heart, though not as much as the way he said it. As if he wasn't trying to inflict pain, but just stating a fact and nothing they did would change it.

And it didn't, because on the evening of the ninth day Sam Winchester disappeared. Oh Ralph knew how he'd gone – an open bedroom window was a testament of how – it was the when that bothered the foster parent so badly.

Sam had chosen the night of the snow storm, while the power was out, to sneak out his bedroom window.

Later, after the police left, Ralph thought maybe Sam knew that was the night. He'd stopped on his way to his room and looked back at them, and in a voice so unlike the defiant looks he gave, said a quiet, "Thanks." But before either Ralph or Abigail could respond, he'd walked off.

It was that thanks, so unlike the rest of his demeanor, that niggled at Ralph long after Sam Winchester climbed out their window.

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Why in the hell his luck always seemed to suck out loud, he wasn't sure, but this … this took a piece of that damn pie Dean always wanted. Sam blamed the teacher, the social worker, hell, even John Winchester himself for this crap that had him out in the middle of a snow storm, working his way off the beaten path to somewhere nondescript – a place he could find a payphone to call Pastor Jim or Bobby without being picked up (again!) by the police.

But Sam was nothing if not resourceful, which is why he'd purposefully been caught in the middle of the night eating – if the Fredericks thought that Sam was gorging himself while they slept, well, then they'd be none the wiser for the missing food that was stuffed neatly underneath a blanket or two in his backpack. His clothes, well, he wore most of them in layers for ease of carrying, not to mention warmth – and he'd chosen when the power went out to slip from his bedroom window into the night.

Funny … in another lifetime he might have liked it here. Here with the white picket fence and family values. Not like hunting a rawhead (how he got the bruise on his cheek), or a poltergeist (which resulted in a fat lip), and one werewolf later gave Sam a black eye – good thing Mrs. McKinley didn't ask to see under his shirt at the spattering of bruises across his ribs from being tossed into the nearest tree.

But that was the price of being a Hunter's son.

Sam, he understood that price; that sacrifice … it was what taught him enough to make it through the snow by way of back routes and seldom thought about side roads to this little speck on the map that he was certain they'd never been to before. But then again, all of these one-horse towns looked the same with their sheriff that everyone knew, one traffic light, local diner owned by someone named Millie, and late night bar that the locals referred as rough.

Psh! Rough was walking into a biker bar with dad and Dean and being the one to hold the keys to the Impala just in case things got too rough and he had to go start the car for a quick getaway. Sam wasn't legally old enough to drive, but hunters didn't always obey the rules.

Hell, who was he kidding? They never obeyed the rules!

While Sam, at least some part of him, wanted to follow the straight and narrow, it was that hunter's instinct that had him sneaking off in the middle of the night to dial Pastor Jim collect just outside of the only place left open at this late hour – the seedy bar.

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Being a hunter meant you didn't always follow protocol, didn't always abide by social politeness … so when his phone rang in the middle of the night, he wasn't surprised. What surprised him was not the fact that his phone was ringing, but who was on the other end.

"Collect call for Bobby Singer…"

"Who's calling?"

"A Sam Winchester, do you accept charges?"

"Of course I accept charges ya idjit!"

Bobby was a gruff exterior with a squishy teddy bear underneath, though he would have argued that fact until demons ruled the earth and strung his insides across some desolate place – like Maine.

"Bobby? I'm sorry to be calling so late, but I tried Pastor Jim and he didn't answer…"

Still, he had an affinity for John's sons, and nearly crumbled at the voice on the other end of the line. A voice that sounded lost and alone and made that gruff exterior harden for whatever did this, and made that soft middle turn to mush – something Sam Winchester did easily to most he came into contact with.

"Don't be silly boy! Now what's wrong? Is it your daddy? Is he in some kind of trouble?"

By the time he forced himself to hang up (because he wasn't going to get to Sam gabbing all night!) Bobby Singer was about as shaken as John's youngest was.

"No, it's me, I … can you come get me? I'm in this all night bar in Fort Dodge and I … please Bobby?"

Still, shaken or no, it wasn't fifteen minutes and 5 phone calls later that the demon lore expert was racing out the door like one of those demons was chasing his ass all the way to Iowa.

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"You in trouble kid?"

Sam had still been shivering when he hung up with Bobby, the ten minutes of warmth from the less than savory bar doing little to thaw out the icy tendrils of winter that had been biting at the youngest Winchester for over two hours. Two hours of fighting against snow and wind; down a back road – all because they'd no doubt be looking for him along any major route.

"Cause me and the boys, we like us a little bit of trouble."

Not like here in a bar that he would have rather bypassed for something nicer – like that greasy diner down the road. Unfortunately for Sam, his Winchester bad luck had been firing on all four cylinders and that diner … was closed. Millie (or whatever her name was) having closed up for the night to spend the storm curled up in front of a fire with a good book.

"Specially young trouble…"

So here he'd sat with his duffle and bad luck, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible amidst what appeared to be Fort Dodge's wannabe biker gang; one of which Sam was certain had to be the county's pedophile, what with the looks he kept casting the teen's way. Sam, while uncomfortable, was trained by the best, and chose a seat near the door (for easy escape) with a good view of the entire bar while he tried to warm up and bide his time until Bobby came to fetch (rescue!) him.

"Tell me boy … do you scream loud?"

But the moment he'd looked up to see that group of rather large men encroaching on his personal space, well, that was the moment that Sam Winchester knew he was truly fucked.

No one should have this bad of luck … and still be alive!

"I don't know … do you?"

Later he might have chided himself for letting his alter ego big brother shine through in that snark against four grown men, but at the moment it was fight or flight. And as the knife he always kept at his side came slashing across an unshaven cheek, Sam Winchester was doing both in a fight to make it out the door.

"Ahhhh sonofabitch! Get that little bastard!"

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"What do you mean, he's not here?"

John Winchester had thought his luck was finally picking up when he'd barely caught that call from Bobby Singer. Finding court records on a juvenile wasn't exactly easy, and considering they thought he was an abusive asshole, well, it made it all that much more difficult – so Bobby's call was like a sign from heaven itself, especially since they were only about ninety minutes out.

"He's …."

An hour and a half that John managed to cut down to seventy-eight minutes thanks to a short cut that he'd learned on a hunt when Sam was only 6. Back in a time when his youngest still believed he was the greatest father in the world. A far cry from the gangly teen that seemed to thrive on driving him absolutely insane.

"He's … what?"

"He's … not like any other kid that's come in here!"

Insanity had its price, and John's was anyone hurting his boy. So when facing the tender in a bar that looked like five demons had trashed the place for fun; well, his jaw grit, his hand clenched into a fist, and he spoke through gritted teeth in a tone that might have scared yellow eyes himself – because no one messed with his boy.

"What do you mean he's not like any other kid?"

The tender was a beefy man that looked like he'd seen the rough side of the street a time or three – as did the rest of the bunch in the all-night bar; though they were nursing wounds that, had John not been mad enough to spit nails, he might have swelled with pride at the handiwork of his son.

"We was just playing, you know, messing around when the kid brings out this knife and slashes Mickey over there across the face. Then the kid goes ballistic, hitting, punching, and kicking. Aint never seen a kid kick like that before! Does he know that Kung fu?"

He might have gone on had Dean not grabbed his throat to shut the whiney bastard up. "What did you do to my brother?"

"Nothing…" The voice was hoarse, gasped as he was grabbing at Dean's hand. "He ran …" and even quieter, as if on his last breath. (And he probably was!) "About … ten minutes … ago…"

"John! Outside! I think I found Sam's tracks!"

Thank God for Singer, or John might have crossed the line by finishing what Sam started.

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"Step it up, Sammy, gotta keep moving…"

Why was it that Dean chose now to infiltrate his head? He could have used him fifteen minutes ago when he was getting his ass kicked?

"Can't stop now, bro, you're bleeding…"

Sam hadn't even realized he'd been cut until he was out of the bar and the adrenaline began to wear off. And wasn't that just shitty since the downslide had him shivering, hurting, and seeping blood through all those layers he'd managed to squeeze into.

"C'mon Sam, just put one foot in front of the other…"

"This is not … a cartoon, Dean!"

Each step was getting harder, each gust of wind tapping into what little energy reserve he had left.

"Just keep going, I won't let you fall…"

The hand pressed to his side was sticky, making the throb in his head all that much more pronounced. The blinding white snow wasn't helping either – and was the ground moving? Because Sam felt like he was trying to walk across one of those Funhouse floors.

"I can't Dean. Tired…"

"I told you, I won't let you fall, Sam…"

"Sam…..!!"

Black spots danced before his eyes, causing him to blink away the snow caught on his lashes as feet he'd yet to grow into paused in their trek.

"Almost there…

….Sammy!!!!"

"Dean, I don't feel so …"

His fall to the white blanket below should have been met by frigid cold far beyond what he'd already experienced – instead, he felt warm hands grab his arms, and the smell of leather, crisp and cool, against his face.

"Sammy? You with me Sam?"

"You were right … you didn't let me fall…."

And then stark blackness claimed him to a welcoming oblivion that drowned out the blinding white dabbled with drops of crimson.

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Warmth welcomed him with those first touches of awareness. That and the smell of the strongest coffee on earth that could only mean John Winchester made the brew.

"Near as I can tell, he snuck out the window during the storm."

The coffee, while strong, wasn't quite strong enough to drown out the smell of freshly washed sheets in a room that was all grizzled male demon hunter. A smell Sam would have recognized anywhere, what with the dusty old tomes that he'd spend hours scouring through.

"Made it two hours on foot. I guess he felt it was far enough away to be safe before he made the call."

"Scared the hell out of me too, John."

Definitely a place he felt safe – as much a home as Pastor Jim's or Caleb's, though not quite so much as leather seats and the hum of an engine that put him to sleep on many a night.

"Taking out those men though … that was something."

"Definitely a Winchester."

"Damn right he is!"

Even as sleep was still tickling him with soft, lulling fingers, he smiled at the pride he heard in his father's voice.

"I know you're awake, Sam."

And didn't even startle at the deep baritone his brother's voice became when emotions threatened to take over.

Sam, however, just gave a sleepy smile as the lazy slit of his eyes slid back to close.

"Get some sleep. I'll be here when you wake up."

It was that pledge that lured him back into an easy sleep where monsters were held at bay by the promise of a big brother that Sam knew would always be there. Even if all hell did break loose, Dean would be there to catch him when he fell.

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Hope you liked this Liz – and maybe it brought a little bit of cheer to help get you back on your feet from a bad back!

Hey, that's two in a row for me. Amazing these days! If you happened to like, I adore reviews! So press that button … you know you want to!