Hey everyone! Shout outs to Emmers, Caladrius, SPNMum, Krikanalo, and Clowns or Midgets for their awesome reviews. And thanks to everyone who has alerted or faved me or these stories. We're going to slow things down a bit with something a little different for this episode. It's a bit talky, but it must be done. We start the narrative with a cold open, but if you forget what has just come before, it's just this: Death has promised to make a deal with Dean to fix Sam, even as Sam appears to be broken beyond repair.

Enjoy!
Age

Lustra: A Supernatural Season 9 AU
Episode 903
"Little Orphan Sammy"

Chapter One

Dean wakes up slow in the morning. His bed is warm, and he's in Montana and it's just coming out of spring here, the late April frosts are warming over and the early buds are pinking the trees. He can see it's cold outside just by the way the sunlight is so thin and white, and he thinks he can smell that it's been raining.

So his bed is warm and not so uncomfortable that he wouldn't rather just hunker in for a while. But there's a ghost and there's a lady and there's work to be done.

So Dean hauls himself out of bed. Swings his legs over the side and thumps his feet onto the cold floor of the motel room. Things aren't that different without Dad. And he thinks, that's sad; he'd have thought everything would have changed if Dad died.

But then he did, and he's gone, almost a year now, and nothing has changed except Dean is alone. He's still on the road. Sleeping in motel rooms. Defrauding innocent civilians to finance his extravagant diner fare and vending machine lifestyle.

Hunting and saving lives and drinking to fill this incredible emptiness that is, he thinks, Dad, being gone.

Dean stumps across the room to splash water on his face, thinks about Dad, thinks about this thing in him that rubs raw like a fresh wound, even though, even though Dad had been distant awhile before he died, and he'd left for longer at a time, forbidding Dean to come with, and then he was gone.

And Dean is okay. Dean is okay. He's been okay for months.

So why is this ache, what is this longing. He had never taken care of Dad, he had never been responsible for Dad, and he thinks, as he looks in the mirror at himself. That little brother he remembers in his arms, he's always thought he'd have been an awesome big brother, he'd have been responsible, he'd have taken care-

And now it's his face in the mirror, his face, lined and aged beyond what he remembers from just yesterday, and then it hits him, it hits him-

Sammy.

Sam is gone.

Dean sits on his bed, knees apart, hands hanging between them, and his heart is broken. Around him, there is no sign of that brilliant asshole mopey sunlit brat that has been glued to his side for some thirty odd years.

There's no second toothbrush. There's no photo in his wallet of a mop of hair and dimples and that face he knew chicks would be all over if Sam would just Winchester up and get after it.

And there's no sense of home here. This place is more temporary, he thinks, than anywhere else he's stayed, even though it's clear his counterpart has been here at least a week. His own belongings are neatly arranged, but he knows that's not him. Or he thinks, that's not me. Sam's the neat one. But is Dean only messy as a reflection of Sam? Is Dean only messy because that identifies them to each other? Because a trait in one brother amplifies the reverse in the other? Is this what a life without Sam is? Alone, tidy, undirected, unloved.

But he's gone through those neatly arranged things, and they're his. Obviously they're his. He knows what this is. He asked for this.

You asked for this. Now Winchester up.

But he sits for another ten minutes, mourning his brother, mourning their friendship, their whatever-this-is-between-us.

It feels worse than he thought it would. It feels like he might as well have let the world end. It feels like the world has ended already.

It feels like there never was a world in the first place.

Dean checks his watch, not because he thinks Death might have screwed up. He just needs to check. He has time.

He'd planned time for this.

He drinks for an entire day.

Four days later, he's travelling past a sign that says "Cold Oak - 24 miles." Sam will be there, fighting for his life, because Dean planned this too. He isn't stupid.

He finds Sam in the middle of a dusty abandoned street, beseeching the other kids. He looks so young when he says "No one's killing anyone, okay? We can get out of here if we just refuse to fight each other and work together."

Dean is so fucking proud that Sam is still Sam, no matter what.

"He's right," Dean says, walking up.

The kids all turn at look at him. They eyeball him, and each other; no one trusts anyone. Sam's face does not light up in recognition.

"Who are you?" the black kid asks. Dean remembers this kid, this thing that took Sam from him. Dean is tempted to end him right here, right now.

"I'm Dean," Dean says. "I just woke up here." He remembers the story Sam told, he remembers the broken sobbing mess of a twenty-two year old who's just realized that he'd died and that everyone else had died, and that he'd killed someone more or less in cold blood, and that his brother was going to go to Hell for him in less than a year.

It'd been a great day. Sam had needed him. Sam had cursed at him and hit him and clung to him, saying How could you do that, how could you make me go on without you.

"Do you have a weird power too?" Sam asks.

"I can uh, I can kinda see the future."

It's not even really a lie.

Sam looks at him with that little wrinkle over his eyes, and Dean knows it's because Sam can see the future too, and right now Sam is wondering if Dean and he are related somehow. And he wants to say Yes, yes it's me, you're my brother.

But that would defeat the purpose of all of this.

So Dean shrugs and says, "So can Ava."

Ava blinks at him from behind the rest of them where she stands. She and Sam don't appear to know each other, and Dean is grateful, because finding her apartment bloody and her fiance dead had wrecked Sam for months. Now she's just another anonymous kid Sam has never met or had to console or fought to save.

"And so can I," Sam says then. "And Jake is super strong, and Andy-" Dean recognizes Andy then, a beaten down kid with a scar across his face that Dean doesn't remember. Dean guesses he'd taken on his crazy evil twin on his own and maybe barely won, or even lost. Either way, his twin isn't here in Cold Oak, and this kid looks nothing like the stoned, cheerfully nervous kid Dean and Sam had met. "Andy can make people do things with his voice."

"But I don't really use it," Andy says. He wraps his arms around himself.

Ava is shaking her head. "I don't want to fight either. But what else can we do? This thing has already killed Lily."

Dean frowns and follows Ava's line of sight up and behind him. A girl's body hangs from a windmill, gruesome, and definitely more of a sign to the kids than a monster killing indiscriminately.

"We gotta get inside, get shelter," Dean says. "Find salt, anything iron you can swing."

Sam is wrinkling his nose. "Salt? Iron?"

Against logic, Dean finds himself irritated. "Yeah, salt and iron." Then he rolls his eyes. "You don't even know where you are, do you." Sam's blank look matches the other kids'. "This is Cold Oak, South Dakota. The most haunted town in the world. The thing that brought you- us here. It's a demon. But it's not what's going to kill us if we just hang around outside, okay? We need to get protected, like now."

It takes a moment of doubt and thought, but after a long look up at Lily hanging from the windmill, the kids turn to head into one of the abandoned shacks.

That moment of doubt returns in the form of bitchiness once Dean starts laying out a plan. "The name of the game is defend," he says, and tells them to salt the doors and windows. "We're going to beat back every son of a bitch all night long, and then in the morning, we'll head out, armed."

But Sam isn't buying it, and because he is tall and sincere, he's still the one the others look to, even if Dean is older and more obviously experienced.

"Armed with what? Salt? You're going to get us all killed."

"I'm trying to keep you all alive," Dean counters. "Salt and iron are our best defenses against the ghosts that haunt this place, and for the demon, holy water."

Sam presses his lips together and he almost looks like he pities Dean, like Dean is crazy, and isn't that just hilarious.

"Listen," Dean continues, "you're psychic. And you're having trouble believing in ghosts?"

"Uh, yeah," Sam says. "Because I'm not insane."

"Thank god for that," Dean mutters, but aloud he says, "You're telling me you've never noticed anything odd that you couldn't explain."

"Just because science hasn't-"

"So you have."

Sam is quiet. Dean can tell he's hit on something, but he doesn't have time to find out what, because Jake is coming back into the little shack in a hurry, saying he's found the jugs of water Dean asked him to look for.

"Okay, now, no one leaves. Everyone got your weapons handy?" The four kids, and Dean includes Sam in that even though it cuts his heart in half to consider Sam just one of these potential victims rather than the hero he's supposed to be, brandish their fireplace pokers and crowbars. "Great." It's going to be a long night.

Dean doesn't sleep. He spends the time with his head bowed over a rosary, blessing water. Inside of him, there is a stirring feeling, a wriggling thing. Someone else saying, what am I doing here? What has happened to me? Memories assault him, of a baby in his arms that he never sees again, of questions his father refuses to answer. Of his father's absence for days whenever they'd pass through Kansas. And there's this strange bewildered hope whenever he looks at Sam, calls him Sam, loves Sam - is that Sam? Tell him I'm here. Tell him I never forgot him. And when he looks at Sam, he feels these things, these desperate things and he shoves them down, because he's not staying with Sam after this no matter how much that other voice protests.

That would defeat the purpose.

But he wants to. He needs to. He's desperate for some family, even if there's over twenty years of distance between them, even if Sam doesn't know him. The part of him that has been alone for almost a year after Dad's death is breathless for even a stranger named Sam.

This is the Dean Dean replaced. Part of his deal with Death. You gotta put me there, a week before Cold Oak. Sam won't know how to save himself. I won't be there.

In a way, it's fitting. That he should have to suffer two different lives competing for space in his head, in order to spare Sam a similar fate. That he should have to shuffle between his own memories and the memories of the Dean he is inhabiting. That he should struggle to separate himself out in the jumble. That he and this other Dean will have to spend the rest of their lives together, fighting it out, for Sam's sake.

But he knows himself. Neither Dean would hesitate to pay any price.

The others take turns dozing. Sam drops off despite trying not to, and he's out for maybe ten minutes before he jerks awake in a panic. Dean is at his side in an instant, and Sam is babbling about a demon and his mother for a long moment before they both seem to realize this level of closeness is inappropriate, Dean remembering belatedly that this Sam doesn't know him, Sam seeming to come to his senses only to find he's chattering to a stranger. They push apart and Dean frowns.

And then Sam says, "Where's Ava?"

"I'll go find her," Jake says.

Dean frowns. He doesn't want to leave Sam, but he doesn't trust Jake not to kill Ava when he gets the chance. The young soldier has seemed pretty earnest and nice enough so far, but all Dean can see when he looks at him is Sam dying in the street, in the dirt, in Dean's arms. Andy, on the other hand, Dean knows. Andy won't kill Sam. Andy looks like he never wants to use his powers again.

"I'll go with you," Dean says.

Andy is rubbing drool from his mouth and he says, "I'll stay here."

Sam laughs short and says, "I'll go-"

"You stay," Dean says. He eyebrows over at Andy, and Sam's shoulders relax into understanding when he sees the sleep-honest fear lining Andy's face.

"I'll stay," Sam says. He picks up his crowbar and smiles at Andy, who smiles back gratefully.

Dean and Jake are out ten minutes, stumping through the streets and back alleys with one flashlight between them. Dean tries to make smalltalk; Jake doesn't engage much. And then there's a shout from back at the shack and Dean and Jake run full tilt.

There's a demon swooping at them, incorporeal, but shaped like a little girl that Jake appears to recognize. Sam is hesitant to strike at her, but Dean lunges in and takes a swing. She vanishes. Sam looks up at Dean, bewildered, but he nods then, and in the battle that follows, Andy is injured, Jake and Sam and Dean are fine, and Ava rushes in breathless when it's over.

"I heard a scream!" she says as she skids to a stop. "You're all okay!"

"Yeah," Sam says. He's still who they all look to. "We're fine. Are you okay? You can't go running off-"

"I'm fine. I just. I panicked, I had this dream. I had to get out. But I got to the forest line and it got scary, so-"

"It's okay. You're okay," Sam soothes. Dean smiles. This is like seven years ago for Dean, and while Sam hasn't lost this softness, it's a lot rarer where Dean comes from. Where Dean comes from, Sam has stopped talking to people. He wanders off and lets Dean wrap it up. He goes to sit alone in the car while Dean tells the victims to call again if they ever need help. He sits alone, he speaks to no one, back where Dean is from. Contrasted with this Sam here and now, it's obvious, and Dean feels like shit for not noticing how solitary his brother has become.

"We're all okay," Dean says. "Let's just fix this up and then I gotta try to figure out how the demon got in. Stay alert, and we'll get through it." He looks at Ava. "And no more running off. Got it?"

She smiles. "Got it."

Andy helps Dean fix the salt line at the door that he and Jake broke running back in. Sam is running his finger along the windows and the other door. When they're all done and meeting back in the middle, Sam says, "Hey, can I talk to you for a second?"

Dean nods and tries to pretend they are strangers. Sam leads him toward the back window, saying, "So, iron is a good weapon. I was wondering about..."

And then Sam is trailing off and looking out at the others gathered in the middle of the room and he kind of looks down, drawing Dean's eye to the window sill where three lines have been dug into the salt pile like fingers have been scraped through it, and Dean swears.

And now when he looks out at the others, he sees how fake she is, how she's just a bit distant from the rest of them, laughing only when the others look at her after a joke, nodding a bit too sympathetically.

"Oh dammit," Dean says. "You didn't tell me about Ava."

Sam is bewildered by this, but then she's looking at them, and Dean says, "Make a circle of salt on the floor around them-"

Just as the wind picks up again and black smoke billows up out of the window frame. Sam urges them all into the middle and throws out a salt line like this is in his blood it's in your blood, Sammy, and the demon is on Dean, and Ava is laughing for real now, and the demon has Dean against the wall, and he's seeing stars, and Ava is saying "You don't know how powerful you can be if you just give in to it! It's exhilarating!"

The world is going gray.

And then there's a shriek and it stops, and the demon is funneled away and Sam is standing over Ava with his crowbar and she's on the ground.

And Sam is expressionless.