To Live on One's Own Terms

Summary: The curse is broken. Maybe Sam is too. (Sequel to For Your Own Good)

A/N: Once again, I'm sorry for the lateness. The editing took longer than I thought it would but I'm finally done. Here's the final part.

Chapter Five

Bobby calls early the next morning. Dean answers the phone quickly while still half asleep – Sam is sacked out beside him with his face buried in his pillow and Dean doesn't want him disturbed – and has a hushed conversation that feels more like a dream than reality, until some time later when a knock on the motel door rouses him again.

Sam jerks awake. He jolts upright in a panic, eyes wide and wild. One of his hands reaches out for Dean, twisting in his t-shirt. Dean covers it with his own and gives it a reassuring squeeze.

“Relax.” Gently, Dean untangles Sam's fingers. “It'll be Bobby.”

He makes sure that Sam has started breathing again, then rolls out of bed and pads over to the door, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Who izzit?” he calls, just in case, and grins back at Sam when he gets a brusque “Who d'ya think it is; the tooth fairy?” in response. Sam gives him a shaky smile in return.

It is, of course, Bobby, with coffee and a bag of bagels.

“Oh hell yeah,” Dean crows appreciatively.

Bobby rolls his eyes, handing over the bag and one of the cups. “You're welcome.” He steps over the salt line and into the motel room.

“Mmm.” Dean drinks deeply, nudging the door shut with his elbow. “Thanks, Bobby.”

To Live on One's Own Terms

Summary: The curse is broken. Maybe Sam is too. (Sequel to For Your Own Good)

A/N: Sorry for the wait. I got sick and my brain turned to mush for a few days.

Chapter Four

Sam, it turns out, has absolutely no idea what he wants to do.

They finish up at the diner – Dean leaves a hefty tip to thank the woman serving them for her kindness towards Sam – and return to the motel to figure out their next move but this is where they get stuck.

Sam doesn't know where he wants to go. Dean suggests heading to Bobby's salvage yard, tosses down Pastor Jim's place as a possibility, and floats the idea of just getting in the Impala and seeing where she takes them. Sam is quietly non-committal, shrugging indecisively. He grows steadily more distressed the more Dean tries to work an answer out of him, twisting his hands together and shrinking in on himself, no matter how calm and casual Dean tries to keep the conversation. When Sam's breathing starts to speed up, threatening tears, Dean drops it and turns on the TV. There's no rush. Sam can take time to sort out his head if he needs it.

To Live on One's Own Terms

Summary: The curse is broken. And maybe Sam is too. (Sequel to For Your Own Good)

Chapter Three

Sam is already awake when Dean opens his eyes the next morning but he hasn't gotten out of bed. He isn't drifting, like Dean is tempted to do. Sleep tugs on his eyelids and the urge to press the snooze button on responsibility is strong. He could do with, like, another month of rest. But Sam is doing his statue impression, lying motionless on his back and staring at the ceiling, and if Dean leaves the kid alone with his thoughts for too long who knows what might happen?

Dean studies his brother through slitted eyes. Sam looks better than he has in days. Healthier, at least. He still seems somewhat lost and shell-shocked – Dean doesn't like the statue thing – but there's colour in his face. The fever Sam has been rocking looks to have finally broken and exhaustion is no longer bruising his eyes. He seems to be lost in thought, unaware that he's being observed, but after a moment he speaks.

“I don't know what to do. Usually there's a whole list of things I have to get done and now there isn't.” Sam frowns at the ceiling. “And I can't think of what to do. I don't know what I'm supposed to do, if I'm not doing what Dad says. I can't remember what I used to do.”

This is a lot for first thing in the morning. Dean scrubs sleep out of his eyes. “What's the time?”

Sam glances towards the alarm clock. “Just after eight.”

To Live on One's Own Terms

Summary: The curse is broken. And maybe Sam is too. (Sequel to For Your Own Good)

Chapter Two

It's late afternoon by the time Sam wakes up.

Dean is checking the warding on the windowsill – and scanning the parking lot for John's truck, just in case – when he hears a noise behind him. He turns and Sam is standing in the bedroom doorway.

He looks thin. Dean hadn't fully appreciated, until he'd found himself with an armful of unconscious little brother, just how much weight Sam has dropped. It must have happened gradually, making it harder to notice, but any trace of baby fat has been replaced with lean muscle. Sam is strong – Dean has the shiner to prove it – but he lacks bulk. He's all slender limbs, sharp angles. He looks small in his sleep-rumpled t-shirt and sweats.

“Sammy. Hey. You're awake,” Dean states, stupidly. He tries to smile – that's comforting, right? And encouraging. Like 'hey, I'm happy to see you, out of bed and free of curses, isn't that great?' - but it feels stiff and unnatural.

“Uh, yeah.” Sam's eyes flick nervously around the room, towards the second bedroom. He runs a self-conscious hand over his hair, a habit he picked up a couple of weeks ago, after he decided... after John decided to cut it short. “Um, is Dad here?”

Dean shakes his head. He drops his attempt at smiling. (He probably looked deranged anyway.) “No. Hell no. And he's not coming back here either. Bobby's making sure he leaves town.”

To Live on One's Own Terms

Summary: The curse is broken. And maybe Sam is too. (Sequel to For Your Own Good)

“The greatest joy in life is the ability to live on one's own terms.”

Chapter One

Sam is barely holding on to consciousness by the time they arrive back at the motel.

Dean leads him inside and helps him out of his sweatshirt, then kneels to tug off his shoes. Sam watches him through heavy-lidded eyes, silent and half-asleep. He practically collapses sideways onto the bed when Dean applies the slightest bit of pressure to his shoulder.

Dean fusses with the pillows and blankets, more than he really has to. He just needs to do something to calm his anxious, fidgety hands. He presses the back of one to Sam's forehead – hot but not too hot, not time-to-freak-out hot, not anymore – and turns to get water, in case Sam is thirsty.

Sam's fingers close around his wrist, surprisingly strong. Dean stops, turning back. Sam's eyes are only half-open and struggling even with that but he looks up at Dean with determination.

“Don't go,” he says. Surprise, and then relief, flutters across his face. “Stay. Please.”

For Your Own Good

Summary: “Don't worry, Dean. I'll be a good little soldier and do everything Dad says. Promise.” Sam doesn't know how right he is.

Sam is sixteen. Dean is twenty.

Chapter Eight

Sam rouses to the sound of raised voices outside his bedroom door. He surfaces slowly, through layers of soupy sleep, and rubs exhaustion from his face, blinking blearily at the ceiling.

“Of all the damn fool things I've ever heard! Have you lost your damn mind!”

Bobby is here.

“How I raise my boys is none of your business!” John thunders. “You have no right to tell me-”

“You have no right to use witchcraft on your own son!” Dean cuts their father off, an unheard of display of disrespect. His voice is almost shrill with unbridled rage, hurling words violently across the room. “How could you do this? To Sam? I can't fucking believe you.”

There's a beat of ominous silence before John speaks again, using his low dangerous don't-mess-with-me voice. The one that usually sets Dean back on his heels. The one that, once upon a time, in a life that seems long ago, Sam would always argue with. Sometimes just for the sake of it, to prove that he wasn't afraid.

That had been a mistake. He should have been scared. He should have listened.

“I'll do whatever I deem necessary.” John says coldly. He sounds a long way from apologetic.

For Your Own Good

Summary: “Don't worry, Dean. I'll be a good little soldier and do everything Dad says. Promise.” Sam doesn't know how right he is.

Sam is sixteen. Dean is twenty.

Chapter Seven

Getting out of bed in the morning is impossible.

The pain behind Sam's eyes blurs his vision. It pulses angrily, thumping against his skull, and does its best to claw its way out through his eye sockets. His joints feel like they're made of rusty metal. Sam curls up into a ball and coughs until his lungs are raw and his chest is aching. Dean wakes up and rolls out of bed to bring Sam water and Tylenol, saying something about getting 'something for that cough'. Sam isn't really listening. His head hurts too much to think.

Luckily, John never bothered to include an order to attend school – why would he? John doesn't care about whether he goes to school. It's probably only a matter of time before he forces Sam to drop out altogether - so nothing prevents Sam from rolling over and pulling the blankets over his head. He breathes the humid recycled air and falls asleep.

XXX

An insistent tugging in Sam's bones drags him back to the waking world.

He surfaces unwillingly, clutching at the last dregs of sleep, but the pull is unignorable and the heat beneath the blankets has become unbearable. Sam claws his way free, gasping for fresh air. He's feverishly clammy. Suffocatingly hot. Sweat clings to his skin and dampens what's left of his hair, making him feel uncomfortably sticky and gross.

For Your Own Good

Summary: “Don't worry, Dean. I'll be a good little soldier and do everything Dad says. Promise.” Sam doesn't know how right he is.

Sam is sixteen. Dean is twenty.

Chapter Six

Sam thinks he gets it now.

Looking in the mirror, at the new him, he thinks he finally understands what John has been trying to teach him all these years. What Dean already knows. The thing Sam's brother and father learned the night their house burned and Mary Winchester died. The lesson behind the spell.

Life is hunting.

Everything else can be taken away.

John claps him on the back and instructs him to take a shower and wash off all the scratchy scraps of hair that itch beneath his shirt. Sam stands under the spray, running his hands over and over his head, exploring the unfamiliar fuzz that stretches up the back of his neck, where he's been shaved almost bald. The hair on the top of his head is a little longer. The short strands feel sharp, like fuzzy little spikes.

He doesn't cry. He thinks he should be crying but he just feels hollow. Resigned. He watches the last few strands of his long hair disappearing down the drain and wonders how he could ever have been so foolish as to think there could be more to life than this.