dime_liora | Memories Without Homes Epilogue (Reply)

Since the day he opened his laptop and stared blankly at the screen, even though Sam didn’t know it, Vincent has been talking to him. Quietly, desperately, and Sam has been trying to listen.

But there was too much distance between them. Too much that Sam couldn’t hear. Unconsciously he’d followed the trail of breadcrumbs that Vincent had left him until he finally reached this point. Until he finally reached Vincent himself in his bed in the hospital. Locked away from the world.

In reality, Vincent was still in the well.

The closer he got to Vincent the louder he was. And Sam had kept pushing. Kept looking and searching while Vincent stayed right behind him whispering. Pleading.

The moment he steps into Vincent’s room Sam knows, just knows, everything that came before and exactly what it was that Vincent was asking him.

He knows and he knows that he has to help.

He can see it clear as day. Vincent’s life. How hard it was to go to school after even the teachers and administrators started singling him out and punishing him. How very few smiling faces he encountered in a day and how sad and lonely he was until Erin came over and wrapped him in a hug. Until Erin became his best friend in the whole world. His only friend. Two extraordinary and gifted children in a place that punished them for both qualities.

And so Sam watches Vincent go to the burned out house. He watches Vincent take out his notebooks. There are two at all times, one that holds the personal stories, the cathartic ones that deal with the darker aspects of his life, and the ones that hold his Sam and Dean stories. The ones that have his hope.

The day it happens Vincent is writing furiously in his Sam and Dean notebook, relaxed in his little room and scribbling away. In his story Sam and Dean have come to Isabella because the little shell of a house is haunted, and since Vincent knows the most about it they’ve turned to him.

Over the course of the story the relationship between Sam and Vincent changes. Grows. And then Sam tells Vincent that he wants to be his father. He wants to adopt Vincent, take him away. And he does. His mother is relieved, she loves him but the strain of raising him is too much for her illness. The people of the town are terrified of Sam and Dean. They won’t let anyone near their new kid.

And Erin? She’s sad to lose her friend, but Sam and Dean promise that they’ll visit. That Erin and Vincent can talk online and on the phone.

He’s going to learn to be a hunter. To learn to be one of the Winchesters. He’s so excited.

Sam’s not sure if the viewpoint he’s at is what Vincent has been given as he stays on the border of life and death or a compilation Vincent built knowing what he knows, but Sam can see Chelsea and the others sneaking up on Vincent. Seeing that his headphones are on and he’s listening to music loudly. And that’s when Chelsea hits Vincent in the head.

The boy lists, flounders, dropping the notebook and trying to scramble up but he’s off-balance and confused. Brandon grabs Vincent and pins his hands while Matthew punches him in the stomach. Thomas looks around nervously, but Chelsea is laughing. Egging them on.

And then they’re dragging Vincent up out of the room and the house. Marching him across the woods until they reach the edge of the farm and the well.

“Hang him over.” Chelsea is grinning broadly, brightly, excited for this.

Brandon hesitates. Thomas does not. He grabs Vincent’s hoodie and pulls him into position before dangling him over the lip of the well. Sam watches Vincent flailing, grabbing at Brandon’s arm in fear.

And then Chelsea steps up and looks Vincent in the eye. She’s smiling maniacally. She’s pumped up. She tickles Brandon once along his side and his hand opens.

Vincent falls, head striking the stone and then it is black and he is in the well.

There’s noise, the kids yelling at each other, fighting about something, but Vincent can’t make it out enough for Sam to make it out either. Tires screeching, gravel flying, and then the sound of metal screaming somewhere far far away like an angry flock of birds descending on prey.

But Vincent can do nothing. He’s in the well. It’s cold and dark and he’s alone, and no matter how he cries out no one hears him.

Sam crouches down beside the boy and pulls him into a hug. Holds him close and tight and rubs his back and Vincent cries in despair and pain. It’s too much for a child to hold up under. It’s too much for anyone to hold up under.

And then Erin is in the well with him. She talks, constantly, but when Vincent responds she can’t hear. She keeps telling him things. Anything she can think of it seems.

She tells Vincent that when he didn’t arrive at her house and he was supposed to she just knew that he was in trouble. That she and her parents were going to the house when they got hit. She tells him that they died, that they’re gone, and it’s just her and Damon now. She doesn’t tell him she lost her fingers, but he can feel the ghost of her mutilated hand when she touches him. The distant warmth of her tears when she cries on him.

Erin’s voice stays with him. Sometimes she’s gone, and when that happens Sam pulls close and holds Vincent again.

He stays, for ten years Sam stays in the well with Vincent and listens to Erin grow ever more bitter and hateful towards the people that destroyed their lives.

Then she tells him that she’s found a way. A way to bring the real Sam and Dean. A way to make all of Vincent’s dreams come true. She couldn’t help her parents, that ship has long sailed. She couldn’t get justice for Vincent, but by God now Vincent can do it.

Now Vincent can be the one that puts terror in their hearts. All of them.

And then Vincent is both in and out of the well. He’s with Sam. He sees the first motel, the car ride to Isabella, and the resulting investigation. The stories take him along so that he’s sweeping his relieved mother away into the darkness, killing the preacher that riled up the town’s hatred and bile. The pages drag him away from Sam at the sheriff’s office, where he cannot stop himself from enacting his childhood vengeance even though he no longer has the taste for it that he once did.

Vincent cries for help, for himself and Erin, but only the present Sam can hear him clearly. Sam holds Vincent close and tells him that this isn’t his fault. That he can’t be held accountable for what’s happening now.

Sam watches himself enter the room, the moment of clarity, and then he is back in the present. Inside the well with Vincent and outside of it with a trusting Erin and a confused Dean.

And Sam can see Vincent, clear as day, curled up inside of his much bigger body and looking to Sam for help. Sam sits down beside him and leans in to whisper.

“Vincent. I’m here. It’s ok. I’ve always been here.”

The boy nods, eyes huge and full of tears, and he links his ghostly fingers with Sam even as Sam takes his unresponsive hand in the living world.

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t want to abandon her.”

Sam smiles, softly, and squeezes both hands gently.

“It’s ok Vincent. It’s ok. You know I wouldn’t lie to you right? That I’m here to do what’s needed to help you both. To save you both.”

He nods, eyes huge and trusting, wet, and Sam distantly hears Erin screaming. He knows why. It’s coming to an end now.

“I know. What do I do?”

Sam leans forward in the afterlife, presses his lips to the boy’s head gently.

“Let go. It’s ok to let go now. You did what you were supposed to, and everybody is going to be safe now.”

Vincent throws his arms around Sam as the living version of the boy’s heart stutters and stops.

“I love you Sam. You’re my hero.”

Sam feels the tears on both sides, and he pushes them back and hugs Vincent close.

“I love you too.”

And then both Vincents are gone, and Sam is left in the living world with a screaming Erin and a Dean that is obviously trying his best to keep the girl up and together.

Sam gets up in what feels like slow motion, slightly unsteady now being in just one place after so long. He crosses the floor and takes Erin from Dean.

“It’s ok. It’s ok now. That’s what he wanted.”

Erin’s head starts shaking, and she beats weakly at Sam’s chest.

“No. No he wouldn’t leave me! He’s my friend and he loves me!”

Sam closes his eyes and loses the fight with tears.

“He does. He loves you more than life, but he wanted to go. He didn’t want the violence or the pain anymore. And he was too far on the other side to come back Erin. Just too far.”

She stops hitting. Covers her face and sobs as her body goes limp in Sam’s arms. He picks her up easily and carries her out of the hospital, past the staff members who are still sleeping under the influence of the spell.

Past the sleeping town.

He can hear Dean’s feet hitting the ground behind him, perfectly in step, and eventually they reach the motel and Sam waits for Dean to open the door before he goes to Damon and puts his sister in his arms.

The man is blinking, face pale and confused, and Erin clings to her only family tightly. Sam can’t stay here anymore. He’s done his duty, and he knows that she won’t forgive him for that for a long time.

She’s an adult in many ways, grown in a way that her friend could not, but Vincent was so much older at the end.

Dean helps him pack everything up, and they drive out of Okeene, far away from Isabella, without a word spoken between them until they reach the border of Oklahoma. Then Dean pulls over and rubs his face.

“You ok Sammy?”

Sam nods, and then feels his face crumple as his control breaks.

You’re my hero.

Dean’s arms wrap around him and Sam falls into the hug. Let’s his brother hold him close and comfort him wordlessly. Soaks in the sounds his brother is making to try to soothe him.

Eventually Sam will be able to speak. Eventually he’ll be able to tell Dean everything that happened to him. That happened to Vincent and Erin and the two tiny towns. But this is not that moment. Sam did what he had to do. Sam was Vincent’s hero.

And Sam will never be able to forget the cost of that. Even if it brought him back to Dean. Even if it feels like it took some of the darkness that’s stayed with him so long.

Sam will never forget the cost of finishing Vincent’s story.

Ethan: I wrote about you, but I don’t know if I created you.
Prosper: You made me real.
Ethan: I can’t go yet. I have to finish my story about you. I wrote stories about everyone.
Prospero: I know you did. But my story’s done. And it’s a fine story.
Ethan: I can let go?
Prospero: You can let go.
Ethan: What happens then?
Prospero: Another story kid. What else?

-The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

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