It's snowing outside, in LA mind you, the phones don't seem to be working, I don't know where my brother is and I feel totally alone.

I never did know how to be on my own when Dean and I were little. I had to go everywhere he did if I could and being left alone for any length of time made me scared. I don't know how he put up with me always tagging along everywhere but he did.

Pastor Jim took care of us when Dad had to hunt things where he couldn't take us along. He and one or two other hunters like Bobby were the only ones he would trust besides himself to watch over us. I liked going to Pastor Jim's. I remember doing my homework at his kitchen table while he chopped vegetables and made dinner for us to eat. He was the one who saw how hungry I was for books and learning and started letting me read through his library. Dean would wrinkle his nose at it and run outside to do something active but for me it was heaven sitting in Pastor Jim's oversize comfortable chair burying my nose in pages that smelled of old paper and dust.

That was where I learned to pray. I learned from Pastor Jim the words and forms of faith while he rehearsed his sermons in the room where I read. He never insisted that we go to church or say grace before a meal but his beliefs showed in everything he said and did. He's the one who taught me that you can hunt the dangerous things and still be a good person inside.

I still pray everyday and even if I don't always feel like I've been heard it at least makes me feel like I'm not alone.

( Lyrics )

He hadn't talked to his brother for two years or lived with him for four when Dean showed back up in his life to get help finding Dad. How did they end up so tangled around each other's lives that even four years apart didn't undo the strings to each other?

They each knew exactly what words to use to bring comfort to the other or to flay open skin and make them suffer. Sam knew that every morning he would be the one out of bed first and he'd find his toothbrush laid out for the morning ready for him to use. Just the same as he knew that every night Dean was the one that put it there as a habit ingrained from childhood.

Everytime one of them was hurt the other died a little inside.

It would feel so good sometimes to just lay down and let the hurts and the broken hearts heal. But as long as Dean was alive that just wasn't an option.

"Don't make friends Sammy." The school seemed huge when they were standing outside of it looking in. How was he supposed to do what his Dad always told him to in a place this big? He was always supposed to go to his big brother if something happened but Sam doubted he'd even be able to find his way from one room to another here.

"It's harder if you make friends, we'll just have to leave soon anyway." His brother's hand holding his was the only familiar thing here. Sam had always wanted to go to school like Dean, he could read when he was barely four, and now that he was here he wanted to go back to the hotel room.

"Okay Dean." They were moving through the halls of the school swimming through what seemed like hundreds of other kids.

"Where do you meet me when school's out?"

"By the flagpole. Dean what if you're not there? What do I do then?" He looked up at his big brother and was rewarded with a smile.

"I'll be there, trust me Sammy."

That's when Sam knew it would all be okay. If Dean said he'd be there then he'd be there. And looking into the classroom there was a microscope on the counter and books everywhere it was like Sam's idea of heaven. And before the end of the first day he'd made several friends.

And three months later when they left for a new town he cried every night when his dad couldn't hear him for a week.

It was always hard at school to explain the scars on me and Dean. I think half the time we didn't stay anywhere very long because of that and not because there was something else to hunt. Schools don't understand when you come to class with a big knife slash up your arm because you were practicing and got slow.

Dean would have rather cut his own fingers off than give me that cut. Dad said it was my own fault for not paying attention but he's the one who cleaned it out and stuck butterfly bandages all up it to keep the scar from being a big one. Dad was also the one who lectured the hell out of Dean while he thought I was sleeping.

I laid there with the sick pain thumping in my arm and kept my eyes closed to listen. Dad tore Dean six ways to Sunday about cutting me and all Dean did was nod and take it.

I wore a long sleeved shirt for years until that scar faded. Every time Dean looked at it he got that clenched jaw look he gets when I've been hurt and Dad would lecture me to be careful. You can barely see it now unless you know where to look.

Sometimes I feel like one big scar, like the visible reminder of all the things in the past because when Dean looks at me he still gets that damn look on his face that he used to get looking at that scar.

When someone thinks my family is normal I always have to remember that they don't see the behaviors we have that place us firmly in the 'not quite right' category.

I know how to dig a grave to burn bones in less than an hour. Unless the soil is really hard there's a method to strip the sod and get to the coffin in pretty short order. I know how deep they bury coffins in different parts of the united states. Six feet is a misnomer if you live anywhere with a high water table.

I always see hearses. If I'm in a new place and I see one I follow it to get the lay of the land that will be important to me. Sure knowing where to get food and a place to sleep is important but the top priority is knowing where the cemetaries and the funeral homes are. I can even tell you the make and model of the most common hearses used today versus 25 years ago.

I know a hearse like other people know a Ferrari. I also know how to hotwire one in case you need to look official at a cemetary when you are digging up someone's loved one to salt and burn the body. No one will ever question you if you are driving one of those and have a shovel in hand. No one wants to be that close to someone who deals with the dead.

Guess that's why I don't tell people these things that often. Those of us who deal in the dead and the monsters aren't that great at dealing with the living sometimes.

//locked from family//

You know who you are. I don't know why I even bother to write this down since you seem to know what goes through my head anyway and I wouldn't know where to mail it even if I intended to send it. It's hard to address stuff to Hell and I don't need more attention from you than I already get.

I hate you. And that opens the whole philosophical point of my hatred of you might just make you stronger and more able to get to me but I can't help it. I hate you for everything you've done to my family and keep doing.

I hate that I wear the remains of your seal on my arm, I hate that you put that haunted look in Dad's eyes, I hate that you took away our choices of being normal when you came after us. I hate that I will never get to step away from this because of what you did to us and to me. But the thing I hate most is how you keep using me to hurt Dean. Everything you do to me kills him a little inside and for that I'm going to kill you.

Because I won't turn against my family no matter what you do to me, so fuck you you're dead.

Sam Winchester.

//locked from everyone//

We have a sister. For the longest time, ok technically our whole lives, we thought that it was the two of us, me and Dean. I saw her when we were in the water after the yacht went down. A vision of her dancing in the middle of all the violence in the other visions that were being shoved down my throat. I really didn't understand it at the time but finding out she was our sister made sense. Dancing in the middle of violence.

Funny how we ran into her and Dad out of the blue. I kind of have the feeling Dad wasn't planning on introducing us for a while. It's been almost impossible to get an entire sentence out of Dean since then and it's starting to get old. When he's not running out the door to work on a case he's at Nicole's. When he's not there he's unconcious on the couch until he can run back out on the cases he's working.

Both of us are going to have a talk with Dad at some point. He and I could never really get into it the way we normally do with Alex there. You know how it is you don't want to make someone think you're a complete asshole on the first meeting. It made us behave more than we normally do. There's things we have to talk about still.

But Alex, what can I say she dealt great with one brother fleeing the scene, the other being borderline arguing with her newly discovered Dad and finding out we hunt demons and I had visions of her. Of course then I found out she was a slayer so I think it all evened out. The tension was pretty much thick enough to walk on so after the major revelations we all went our separate ways.

I asked her to meet me for coffee though. The whole idea of having a sister really wasn't that hard to get used to. She said I could tell Dean whatever I thought he could handle. The only problem is that Dean has been stuck in don't talk to me Sammy mode since we met her.

There was a time I didn't want to see any of my family again. When I went to Stanford I cut off communications and tried to get the hell out. I never wanted to hunt, I was going to just make my own family with Jess and be out of it all.

Now it's funny, I can't imagine cutting Dean and Dad out of my life again. And the same goes for a new sister I didn't know I had.//end locked//

//locked to Dean//
Yo dude, I'm turning 24 on Wednesday, I expect you to take me out and get me smashed or some other brotherly ritual of your choice.//end locked//

//locked to Fred//
Hey, can I take you out before my birthday? I'm going to try and weasel Dean into talking about things on my birthday. Guilt is a cheap shot but whatever works you know?

Maybe we could head out for a couple of days? //end locked//

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From: winchester_sam
To: Gabrieldavis
Subject: Hope I have the right address

Gabe,

Your name came up recently when I had an unwelcome visitor. I need to pass a warning to you if you're the person I think you are, if not ignore me I'm nuts.

Do you have an interest in haunted houses?

Sam Winchester

They say confession is good for the soul, which is of course a crock made up by the people who want to know what you're thinking. I'm not even sure if I have a soul, but I have a confession to make anyway.

( I remember it all )

Dean, Fred and I are back in LA.

I don't want to talk about it.

note for future reference stun guns hurt.

((open to either Dean or Fred, whoever's closer to the cell phone lol))

There was blood on my hands.

It was like swimming up from someplace black and far away but there was still a hand on his ankle ready to pull him down. I was in a hotel room I didn't recognize and there was blood on my hands.

My phone was still in my pocket, there was about 400 missed calls, not really hard to guess who from. Dean was #1 speed dial and after a moment of hesitation I held down the button and waited for someone to pick up.

Sam's laptop is open with a scattering of papers around it. Haunted house articles from websites and newspaper archives are mixed with pages of handwritten notes. A half empty cup from Starbucks sits on top of it all holding it down in case there's a draft. Poltergeists, violent hauntings, suspicious house fires. It's quite a stack of research.

I've ruled out that the person I saw in the vision was Harry Osborn, it was like a younger version of him...and less with the fangs. But I had another vision of him last night. He was driving in a car with this woman with long black hair. The window was down and he was looking out of it with the wind making him squint. The music on the radio was a song that just came out a few months ago. (thank god they have newer taste in music than Dean)

So now all I have to do is track down the house he was in and maybe I can find him. I didn't get either of their names just the music in the ba...

The text ends there but the rest of the journal isn't locked as it is when he's not working on it directly.

The cursor blinks midword waiting for the next letters and dust has begun to coat the keys.

He was having to keep more and more of his journal locked away from the people he knew. Dark thoughts and fears he didn't want to infect on the people who cared about him were locked inside entry after entry as Sam tried to find out what was happening to him. He didn't want to worry them but he couldn't help thinking and it helped to write it down even if no one but himself ever saw it. Just the act of writing helped drain it from his mind so he could concentrate on other things.

He thought he knew why the demon had been so ready to exchange their dad for Dean in the hospital. Dad had known, and he'd obviously been ready to kill him if it was needed.

Dean wouldn't kill him unless Sam made him. He'd let Sam have his life if that's what it took to keep him alive, he'd never believe that his brother could be a monster.

That was why Sam had drank himself nearly unconcious before he forced Dean to promise to kill him. It had taken that to have the courage, to loosen his tongue enough on the terror he'd been keeping in check that he was going to become something evil. It also let Dean think maybe he'd pass out and forget that he'd promised.

But he hadn't forgotten.

And there was a comfort to knowing if he went mad that Dean would stop him. It wouldn't be murder at that point it would be mercy because if he was so far gone he was a danger to others he wouldn't be Sam anymore.

He'd just be one of the monsters they hunted.

So he writes almost everyday on his journal. Entries detailing how scared he is and how glad he's been that he's spending time with Dean...even if he does drive him insane. And he's starting to realise the journal isn't for him. It's for Dean to have in case he does have to fulfil his promise so that there will be a part of Sam to keep with him.

Once he realizes this Sam leaves one more entry, one sentence that stands alone.

Mortem misericors saepe pro vita dabit...Mercy often inflicts death. Thank you.

Comment and I will:
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3) Tell a random fact about you.
4) Tell a first memory about you.
5) Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
6) Show you my favourite user pic of yours.
7) In retort, you must spread this disease in your LJ.

You must be what they want, or be who you say

What's happening to me?

Missouri didn't have any answers when I asked her, and now it seems like maybe Dad did but he sure as hell didn't fill us in on what they were. Instead he told Dean he might have to kill me. He didn't tell him why just that he had to watch me and that someday he might have to kill me.

What is it that I have inside of me that Dad was afraid would make me a monster? Is it the same thing that made Mom tell me she was sorry back in Lawrence?

I've been hunted before, usually by the things we're trying to catch. I'm used to someone wanting to kill me because they are evil, or hungry or trapped on this plane wanting revenge. But this time someone hunted me because of what I am. I was the prey this time and I'm starting to get the feeling that it's going to be something that happens more and more. Gordon wasn't alone, he had contacts that were other hunters. How many of them will be trying to kill me to keep me from hurting people down the road?

And are they the ones who are right?

I keep feeling like the more people I can save the more I tip some sort of balance inside of me. If I do enough good deeds maybe I'll keep from falling into darkness.

Maybe.

What am I thankful for? If I'd tried to answer this a year ago I'm not sure I could have come up with anything. Sure I had my brother, but the price for him being in my life again was pretty damn steep.

Sometimes it's hard, sometimes all I can see is the negatives in my life. And that's not fair to the people that affects. Its just that the bad things like to get right up in your face and piss you off. They like to make sure that you know who hit you and watch you hurt afterwards.

I'm thankful I got to meet my mom, even if she was just a spirit at that point it was still her. And pictures never did her justice she was so much more beautiful face to face. I'm thankful I got to spend the time I did with Jess...even if it just about kills me to think about her now.

I got to know Dad, find out just how we're too much alike to ever have been able to get along. But he could have been like Max's dad, one more drink and one less inhibition and I could have been a lot more broken than I was. Hell, look at pictures of Mom and Jess and we even loved the same kind of woman, no wonder we fought so damn hard all the time.

And I met Fred. And she should really get a long entry on every single reason that I'm thankful for her but I'm terrified to let the universe catch on to how I feel because it might decide to try and take her away.

Most of all I'm thankful for my brother. And sorry, slight chick flick moment warning Dean you might want to look away. He kept my ass sane when I wanted to die and I always know he's got my back.

So long sappy thankful list done for, now we're taking a road trip in a rented car to Kansas to get Dean's Impala back.

Want to go on a road trip to Kansas? We need to drive out to get Dean's car and I don't know how long we'll be gone.