Relativity

[tea_and_ink]

Title: Relativity
Author: Paola
Rating: PG
Word Count: 903
Disclaimer: I've said it before, I own nothing, which is awesome because knowing myself... I'd have ruined it a whole long a go. Possibly. So, no suing necessary, mmkay?
A/N: this is from Sam's POV, which automatically makes it experimental, meaning that it could be somewhat OOC. Also? it could possibly be mostly wishful thinking on my part. Either way, I'm not gonna know anything for sure until I've tried out, right?
Summary: it all depends on where you're standing when you look at it.

Relativity

 

Normalcy is a subjective concept. It took a long while for Sam to figure that one out; so much, he felt a little ashamed of himself about it; but it was true what people said, that one only sees what one wants to see.

 

In all honesty, Sam couldn’t remember when exactly had he started wishing for something more. He did remember though, that back then normal was to read in a dim light, waiting for Dean to walk in and tell him Dad was home again. Alive and sound.

 

Normal was Dad putting together a hasty dinner so they wouldn’t hit the road on empty stomachs. At the moment, Sam thought this measure was meant to avoid fights on the back seat, or to early quash well-plotted team work directed at getting him to pull over at a gas station to replenish their unholy supplies of M&Ms and chips. Now, Sam understood that Dad only wanted them to fall sleep faster (whether to avoid the back seat fights, or maybe to make the leaving easier on them, or for the sakes of peace and quiet, or possibly for all the previous reasons together, he did not know) and often times, Sam would wake up to Dean’s dark form curling itself next to him on a bed that smelled like too many people and felt like too many bugs, while Dad made work of Dean’s shoes and tucked them both in.

 

Normal was kneeling on the back seat of the Impala, chest against the seat's back, facing the glass, chin on overlapped hands, listening to Dean hum softly to some beat in his head, all the while staring at the road’s lines run away from them in a blur of color and dust. And Dean’s humming.

 

Normal was gripping the bed comforter with fisted hands, biting down hard on his lip to stop the pain from coming out in a scream that would alert the neighbors, while Dean stitched closed the gash on Sam’s shoulder; his big brother’s heavy and callused hands trying to be gentle, knowing from personal experience how painful it was to be sewn back together.

 

***

 

Then normal was Jessica. And for the first time, Sam felt like everybody else, only particularly especial because he had Jess and the rest of the world didn’t. Normal was coming home to the smell of freshly beaked cookies and soft, small hands playing with the bangs at the back of his neck.

 

Normal was hearing her laugh over the phone during her Sunday’s phone calls to her mother.

 

Normal was meeting up with friends and going to some bar after school and talk about stupid things, made important and transcendental by the blend of alcohol and his never-extinguished greed for normalcy. Reveling in conversations that didn’t dwell on unexplainable deaths and furry creatures that lurked from dark corners, waiting for their next victim.

 

Normal was Jess mocking him for checking twice on dark alleys and over-grown shadows when they went out for a night walk, calling him paranoid, or coward, or “you, big baby” or whatever other quip she could manage to fit into an excuse to borrow closer into him and cuddle for the rest of the road.

 

***

 

For a while, normal was Dean’s voice, whether he was bouncing theories back at him, working on a hunt, cleaning guns, Dean was always talking.

 

Now, normal is Dean’s quietness, as scary as it is. Normal is driving away from another town with a new concern, a new burden to add to their already-too-crowed back seat.

 

Normal is this feeling of desperation and hopelessness. Of uncertainty. The fear of not knowing, but at the same time of knowing. He didn’t know what could save him, or if he could be saved; in fact, he didn’t even know if he was gonna turn evil at all. But he did know that all the ones before him had, somehow, gone down that path; one way or another, for one reason or the other.

 

Normal is to question his previous beliefs, his previous conceptions. Now he can look back and realize that nobody he had ever encountered was entirely and unapologetically normal; actually, everybody wanted to be normal because they weren’t. There was no normality; there was common, there was regular; but there was no normal.

 

“Normal” meant getting used to something, a situation, and accepting it as your reality because that’s what you saw every day, he’d decided.

 

Coming to think about it, it seemed plausible that the reason why he’d lasted this long was his knowledge of this world. Maybe all those years walking in the darkness were keeping him from succumbing to it. But then again, there was Maddie and he still wasn’t sure what was the lesson there.

 

His newest theory claimed that he now understood that, while actions were the ones that actually had consequences, thus they were the ones that counted, the feelings and intentions, the reasons behind those actions were the ones that truly mattered. Well, at least in this world he was living in now, anyway.

 

These trains of thought were normal these days, too.

 

And Sam couldn’t help but wonder if he’d ever get used to them being normal; to question himself and to the fear that maybe, this change of heart was but another step into his seemingly inevitable fall into darkness.

 

***