Losing Sam, Arc 3.9, Supernatural, Keeper!Verse, R

[phantisma]

Fandom: Supernatural, Keeper!Verse
Title: Losing Sam, Arc 3.9 (All Keeper Verse Here, including Arcs 1 & 2)
Rating: R
Word Count: 37,625 (total arc)
Pairings/Characters: Sam/Dean (long term established wincest), John, Dana (Dean's daughter) Missouri, OFC & OMC
Summary: Dana contemplates Bellius and herself, Sam remembers.


A/Ns & Warnings: This story pics up after arc 2 as written by shotofjack. It would never have happened without her. From the original concept to her beta, this fic owes a good amount to her. Expect a chapter a day until it is finished. Posting early today in case this afternoon is insane as yesterday's was. Enjoy!



“You know what he was. You know he didn’t deserve it.”

Dana shook her head, turned her face away. “I’m not listening to you.”

“You know what you’re becoming, because of him. Let me help you, cleanse you. You could be pure again.”

She raised a hand and the containment field constricted, pressing in against him. “I’m not letting you into my head.”

Maybe I’m already there.

Her head whipped around and he laughed. She slammed up the walls and guards that Sam had helped her develop. The front line defenses were still down after he’d ripped through them, but that didn’t mean she was completely defenseless.

Bellius had managed to disable the chains and he paced the small space left to him, two steps one way and two steps back. “You feel sorry for me. Sorry for yourself…you think you’re like me.”

“Shut up, or I’ll put you down again.” Dana scooted her chair back away from it.

“Tarnished, not pure, not perfect…not quite unholy, not bad enough to send to hell…unwanted, unloved.”

Dana raised her head. That was one thing she knew was wrong. She was loved and wanted. “You wouldn’t know what love was if it hit you between the eyes. Love is what changed Sam, what made him a man worthy of the gifts he had. Love has the power to do that.”

“Love is nothing but brain chemicals on overload.” Bellius said. “What do I need with love?”

“What you need is to shut up and leave Dana be.” Missouri said suddenly appearing behind Dana. She handed Dana a cup of coffee. “My turn. You go get some breakfast, your daddy’s in there making waffles.”

To Dana’s surprise, Bellius shut up and retreated to the back wall, slumping down to the floor. “How’d you do that?” Dana asked, sipping at the coffee.

“I know me a thing or two about angels, Dana. Especially them fallen ones. Go on now.”

Dana kissed her cheek and withdrew to the house where she was indeed greeted with the smell of waffles and maple syrup…the real stuff. Dean looked up and smiled as she came into the dining room. “Well look at you. Almost look like my father again.” Dana said as he put a plate of waffles on the table.

“Very funny young lady.”

“I take it you slept?”

He nodded and sat beside her. “Better than I have in a while.”

“Good.” Dana cut into her waffle and took a bite.

“How are you?”

Dana looked up. She could feel his concern, fear…his anger seemed to have washed away. “I’m…dealing.” The blowback was lingering, but not debilitating, and she was already working at repairing the damage Bellius had caused.

“Missouri said you want to wait for Sam before you decide how to deal with it.”

She nodded, watching him closely. “Only fair, right? He’s the one who was hurt the most.”

Dean nodded slowly. “If you think it’s best.”

She squinted at him, wondering what had changed. “Okay.” She took another bite then decided they should talk about it. “If we do decide to kill it, we need to know what we’re doing. I don’t want to risk another attempt like at the church.”

“Missouri pointed me to some references. I’ll be ready.”

She nodded and sipped at her coffee. “There’s also the idea of sending him to hell. I don’t like it, but if we can’t kill it…it’s a choice.”

“Let’s just get through the next few days and see what our options are.” Dean patted her hand. She wanted to ask him what had changed, but she ate her waffles instead, trusting that Missouri had finally beaten some sense into his thick skull.



Sam tossed in the throws of the nightmare, reliving memories of bad days and worse nights. Some part of himself, the part that was separate and apart, tried to calm him, reassure him, but there was no calming him, or the gifts that had begun to manifest more strongly.

He was aware of Ally in the room, but only vaguely, distantly. He wanted to reach for her, but he was behind the walls. The nightmare was a trap, he’d been stuck inside it forever. Even Ally couldn’t lead his younger self free of it.

“Daddy.”

He heard himself, felt the craving for strong arms. Then he felt them.

“Sammy…Sammy….Daddy’s here.”

He was wrenched up out of the dreams and threw himself into his father’s arms, sobbing, his entire being shaking. All around him things crashed to the ground, but he was only vaguely aware of it. Daddy’s arms were around him and he was safe. Safe.

Sam panted and slowly calmed. They shifted so that Sam was all but in his father’s lap. He lifted a tear streaked face and his father kissed over his cheeks, whispering too him. “Daddy’s right here, Sammy.”

“I couldn’t find my way out, Daddy. They trapped me and it was dark and he hurt me…kept hurting me.”

“I know Sammy, but you’re okay now, you’re safe with me.”

Sam buried his face in his neck, held on to him and tried to regulate his breathing. Sam was distantly aware of Ally touching his father’s shoulder and his father’s rumbling voice. “I’m not leaving him.”

He clung to his father, big and strong. In his mind he knew he wasn’t the gangly, skinny thirteen year old that all those bad, bad things had happened to, but the memories were fresh and the wounds deep. It took some time for him to find the power to sit up on his own. He blinked, realizing he was still in his bedroom in the sanctuary, which meant Inda or Ally had gone and brought his father in.

“Thank you.” He said it to Ally who nodded.

“I thought it wise when I couldn’t rouse you.”

“I got stuck. Like they were real.” He rubbed his head, remembering the way the demons had circled around him, made it so he couldn’t escape his dream, the same way they had when it actually happened.

“I know Samuel, I am very sorry.” She touched his head, and he could feel her thoughts as well. He felt some of her concern. “The trauma was worse than I understood. We will be more careful next time.”

Sam groaned and curled into his father. He wasn’t ready to think about next time. Inda was at the top of the stairs. “Is he well?”

“Well enough. Though we will need to sweep the room clean. The kinetic energy released with his fear was potent.”

“He’s never floated stuff before.” His father’s arms were curled around him protectively.

Ally nodded. “I feel there will be much he can do now that he never did before. We will give you both some time to recover, and we can eat supper when you are both ready.”

“I’m sorry Daddy.” Sam said, shifting away a little, trying to be the strong willed boy he knew he had been once.

He shook his head. “No, it isn’t your fault, Sammy. I’m happy you wanted me, happy I could help.”

Sam moved off his lap, but held on to his hand. “I knew if you were here I’d be okay.” He licked his lips. “I knew you’d take good care of me.”

“Always, Sammy.”

Everything had shifted in the last two days. He was so much older, remembered so much more. He could read the emotion coming off his father with surprising ease, and his foremost thoughts. He was worried about Sam…about Dean and Dana. Sam squinted at him, surprised when his father’s eyes lifted and seemed to know what he was doing.

“Dana…I know her?” Sam asked, squirming a little.

His father nodded. “Yes, Sammy, you do.”

“She’s…Dean’s little girl.”

He smiled. “Yes.”

“I don’t mean to stick my nose in.” Sam gestured vaguely at his head. “Sometimes it just happens and I don’t mean it.”

“It’s okay, Sammy. You just have to use it responsibly.”

He squirmed a little. Ally had told him the same thing. “I’m going to try.”

“Good. Now, why don’t you wash your face and I’ll go down and see if I can help with supper.”



John got as far as the bottom of the stairs before he sat and lowered his head into his hands. Ally’s hands touched the top of his head. “It only gets worse from here.” John said. “Right now it’s physical abuse and oral sex. At fourteen it evolved. By sixteen it was gang rape by demons. How is he going to handle that?”

“We will work with him.”

“What if it isn’t enough?” He was wrung out from the physical effort of getting through the psychic energy Sam had been slamming into the room on top of the run up from camp, and the emotional toll of seeing Sam like that.

“We are experienced with trauma like Samuel’s. Now that we know how deep the damage runs we will be able to assist his assimilation of those memories.”

“I wish…I don’t know what I wish anymore.”

“You are tired.”

John nodded. “My boys have always been exhausting.” He smiled as he lifted his head. “I’m fine. I promised Dean I’d watch out for him. I told you I’d father him. I aim to keep my word.”

She smiled at him softly. “Samuel is lucky to have family so devoted to his well being. Come, there is food prepared.”



John helped tuck Sam into bed, kissing his forehead as he drifted off to sleep, after fighting the notion for a long time. It was well after midnight. At least an hour in there were no dreams.

He sighed and headed down the stairs. Inda met him at the door. “I was hoping I might speak with you, Mr. Winchester.”

“John, please.”

“John.”

“Of course.” He followed Inda out onto the porch.

“This is highly unusual, our inviting you here.”

“So I gathered.”

Inda turned his face up to the stars. “Then, Samuel is a highly unusual man.”

John nodded. “That he is.”

“You have not always felt this way about him.”

John looked at him, then off into the trees. “No, I haven’t. When I first found him again, he…he was not a good man. He’d been corrupted by those people who took him. It took a long time for him to earn my trust.”

“And yet now you love him as though he has lived his whole life with you.”

It wasn’t a question. John inhaled the cool night air. “As far as I’m concerned, his life began when he came with us. If I could take away all of the hell he went through, I would. But he wouldn’t be the man my son loves, he wouldn’t be our Sam.”

“I will be honest with you, John.” Inda turned to him. “I was not certain when Missouri brought Samuel to us. I was not certain of the man he would be when this is over, but I have seen his struggle, and I have seen him fight free of those things that once pulled him under. I can not guarantee that he will ever be whole again, and I feared that restoring his gifts to him would unleash an unspeakable being on the world. There is a reason he was kept so tightly controlled.”

“The demon that took him was afraid of him.” John said. “Afraid that Sam would destroy him.”

“With good reason. Sam has gifts I have seldom seen, and I have worked with some of the most gifted in the world.”

“You think he’s something, you should see my granddaughter.”

Inda actually smiled at him. “I would find that meeting very enjoyable, if what I have read of her from Samuel is any indication. Perhaps she can come to visit us one day.”

John chuckled, then yawned. “I should head down.”

“I would prefer you stay inside the wards tonight. In fact, I think I would prefer you stay inside them for the next few nights. I will offer you the couch for the night. In the morning, we will move your camp within the second barrier.”

“I don’t want to interfere.”

Inda shook his head. “To my amazement, your presence is less interfering than I would have predicted. Indeed, it seems Samuel needs you close.”

“Well, if you put it that way.”



Sam sat in his robes on the picnic table, holding a tennis ball in the air above his palm. He was sweating lightly, his concentration intense, despite the thoughts and images flying at him from Ally and Inda. He was going to break his record.

Do not let your pride derail you.

He took a deep breath, changed the spin on the ball to a more clockwise rotation. Inda was pushing strongly on his defenses. Sam pushed back, keeping a tendril of attention on his spinning ball, and forgetting that Ally was as much of a threat.

The ball went flying away from him, almost into Ally’s hand before he snapped his attention back and pulled it to him. The pressure stopped, Inda actually looked winded.

“Very good Samuel.”

He wiped his face on his sleeve. “It felt good. I had a lot more control.”

“You still seem to have issues with defending against more than one of us.” Inda said, throwing him a towel. “We have a few techniques we will teach you that will help.”

“Show me.”

Ally shook her head and rested a hand on his knee. “Not today, Samuel. You have stretched enough for today. You should rest, the afternoon’s session will be working on your internal defenses again.”

Sam groaned and moved to get off the table. “It’s going to be bad.” He knew what was coming, in the sense that he understood the facts, but the memories came live and in color, so to speak. He had achieved the mental and emotional equivalent of sixteen. Basically what she was telling him was that he was about to re-live the events that had left his right side so permanently altered.

“Your father will be here for it.” Inda said. “I have already spoken with him.”

Sam nodded. “I should sleep then.”



John had spent the morning hiking down to the road where he could get a cell signal. He vacillated, then called the house. He was only a little surprised when it was Dean who answered. “About time you were functional.”

“Hello to you too Dad. How’s Sam?”

“He’s doing really well. I figured you’d be getting anxious to know.”

“Tried calling a couple of times.”

“It’s about a five mile hike to get a signal.”

“How much longer?”

“Don’t know. A while.” John licked his lips. “You’d be so proud, Dean. He’s working really hard…He’s making a lot of progress.”

“What are they doing to him?”

“It’s hard to describe.”

“How close can you get?”

He wanted to tell Dean the truth, but he was afraid it would only hurt him to know John was there, holding Sam while he cried while Dean was miles and miles away. “Close enough.”

They were both quiet for a minute. “Dana’s going to be sorry she missed you.”

“She in class?”

“Yeah. Won’t be here until dinner.”

“Tell her I said hello and hug her for me.”

“I will.” Dean cleared his throat and John could almost imagine him scratching his head. “Hey, Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Bring him home to me?”

“I will Dean.” John hung up the phone and took a deep breath. Obviously Dean had gotten his anger under control and Dana had started school. All good things. He turned back the way he had come and headed back to the sanctuary. He’d promised to be there for the afternoon session.

Sam had started acting like a teenager, moody and sensitive, though when they were alone, he still called John ‘Daddy’. He was quiet and determined. He also asked a lot more questions. Harder questions. Things about Dean and Dana, things about Mary.

Sometimes it was exhausting just being with him. As he turned around and started the hike back, John imagined that it would only become harder now, at least until Sam was able to re-integrate himself.

Seeing the powers unleashed almost made John glad Sam hadn’t had use of them fully when he first met Dean. Sam might have been unstoppable. Sam might never have had the opportunity to change.

Now though…now John was watching his boy become a man right before his eyes. As he neared the sanctuary, he could smell lunch cooking. Inda had told him that he would get an hour or so alone with Sam before they started the afternoon session, to help him prepare.

Ally smiled as he came into the kitchen. Sam seemed sullen and withdrawn, hunkered down over his soup.

“Did you have a nice hike, John?” Inda asked as he joined them.

“Had to go check in with my other son, make sure everything is okay back home.”

Sam’s head came up. “Dean? You spoke to Dean?”

“Yes, he misses you.” He nodded thanks to Ally who set a bowl of soup in front of him.

“And, is everything okay?” Inda asked as John lifted his spoon.

“I think so. Dean sounded more like himself.” John watched Sam go back to his soup. “Dana started school.”

“So Dean’s all alone?” Sam asked from the other end of the table, his face sour.

“Not totally, he’s got the dogs. And Dana’s coming by every evening.”

Sam nodded, but didn’t seem all that convinced. He pushed his chair back and stood. “I’m not really hungry. I’m going to stretch my legs.”

John sighed as the door closed behind him.

“He’s angry.” Ally said as she sat.

“Frustrated.” Inda corrected. “He knows what is coming, and he wants to go home. He still tires quickly and his control is still shaky.”

“He must control his anger.” Ally said. “Or he will be vulnerable.”

“Maybe I’ll go talk to him.” John stood, following Sam out onto the porch. “Hey, you okay Sammy?”

He nodded tightly, but otherwise didn’t move. He sighed, staring out into the woods. “I’m…scared Daddy.” He said it softly, stiffened as John touched him.

“Scared of what?”

“Me.” He inhaled deeply. “Can we…walk or something? I don’t want to be here right now.”

“Yeah, sure.” John stepped off the porch and Sam followed, his hands in his pockets. They walked in silence a ways before Sam stopped. John turned to look at him.

“What if I can’t handle it?”

“Handle what Sammy?”

“It. Me. What if it’s too much? What if…I can’t control it? What if I just lose control?”

“You won’t.” Of course, they were empty words, and they both knew it. John wasn’t even sure what all of Sam’s powers were.

Sam turned and shook his head. “It scares me. There’s all of this stuff inside me…and I’m angry. I’m so angry Daddy.”

That John understood. He reached out for Sam. Pulled him into a hug. “I know Sammy, I know. You have every right to be angry. The things that have been done to you…the things that have happened.”

“Ally says I need to control it, not let it control me.”

“I say, you need to let it out.” John said as Sam pulled away.

“Let it out?”

John nodded. “Yeah, pick a target, and just release it. Anger isn’t something you keep inside, Sammy. If you do, it will eat you alive.” He scanned the area around them, then pointed at a dead tree ahead of them. “Use that.”

He’d seen Dana when she had to release the pent up emotional energy caused by the cascade of Sam’s memories inside her. She blown up a few trees. It was safer than the mirrors and furniture Sam had exploded during the blowback and seizures.

Sam looked at him like he wasn’t sure. John just stepped back and nodded to him. “Go on.”

Sam frowned, then turned to the tree. He stared at it for a long time, then his eyes closed, and when they opened, his face was filled with fury.

Sam screamed, unleashing a blast of psychic energy that even John could feel. In the distance, the dead tree cracked, split lengthwise and crashed to the ground. Sam sagged a little, then sank to his knees, panting.

“Feel better?”

Sam grinned as he nodded. “Much.”

“Ready to head back?”

John helped him back to his feet. Instead of heading back up the path, Sam engulfed John in his arms, hugging him tightly. “I’m glad you’re here, Daddy.”

“I’m glad too Sammy.”



Relax Samuel, float.

Floating wasn’t as easy as it had been. Relaxing was harder, knowing what was coming. Sam blew out slowly, blanking out his mind. He poked at the healing blob and felt it ripple through him, bringing its own kind of peace. He centered. Took his time clearing his mind, tidying up and putting order to his mind-space.

Ally moved in when he was done and together they built up a container, a place to store the pain, so that the memories didn’t overwhelm him and trap him again. Inda joined them last, laying down a heavy blanket to suppress Sam’s powers enough that no one got hurt.

Sam could feel the strong, oak-like presence of his father nearby. A part of him latched onto that, anchoring himself as Ally opened up the doors that separated him from the parts of himself he wasn’t ready for.

It was different this time, staring in at himself. He was closer now, and the ‘him’ inside that vault passed across the packets of memory. They were black balls of heaviness, nothing pleasant to be found among them.

Sam could feel his body breathing heavily, his heart racing. The doors closed and he was no longer two people in one body. He was laying in a bed of soft comfort, buoyed by the earliest memories, drawn up out of his past…the feelings of Mom and Daddy and Brother, holding him, making him feel safe.

Shall I begin? Ally asked, brushing against him.

I will. Sam’s hand closed over one of the balls, squeezing it, his thumb pressing in on the memory. It burst over him, his sixteenth birthday, a beating from an older student at school. Black eyes and a broken nose. He reached for another, wanting to get it over with. One by one they flowed over him, pressing into him until he was panting heavily, the last one under his hand. He reached for John, for the strength only he seemed to be able to provide.

His body went rigid as he broke the last ball open. He was screaming, but didn’t hear it. He could only hear the roar of pain, the voices of the Harriers that were ripping into his body. His right side was ablaze with pain and fire and the feeling of blood, of flesh raw and broken.

He fought to release his muscles, to submit…the same as he had all those years before…let go of the fight so that it would end. Sam rolled to his left side, felt his head landing in a lap, warmth, comfort.

It wasn’t enough, but it was more than he’d had the first time. The cold marble floor retreated, and Sam wrapped his arms around the body of his father, the man who would have done anything to protect him from this if he could, and would hold him and help him because he couldn’t.

The rapid rush of memory retreated, leaving him weak and shaken, his body stiff and hurting as if the violence had only just ended. He drew in a shaking breath and poked at the healing power.

Very good Samuel. Very good. Ally’s psychic voice was soothing, her energy smoothing the edges, easing the reverberating pain and shoring up the container holding it. Rest now.

He felt Inda and Ally both retreat and clung to his father. “Stay with me Daddy.” Sam whispered as he let himself drop closer to sleep.

A large hand soothed over his head. “Always Sammy.”