To a better future

Their saturday nights were usually made of binge-watching sessions in the Dean-cave. Beers and pop-corn were their driving force for the evening. They usually were sitting on the couch Dean had especially set up in front of the big screen. Some other nights, they were going to the movies —which they rarely did in the past.

But that evening, duty was going to prevail.

An empty warehouse, deserted thirty years ago, had some strange —their kind of strange— activity in the past few weeks and the eldest Winchester had decided that it was worth to take a look at what seemed to be a ghost case. Three rash people had died at the place and some survivors had reported violent attacks.

A year ago, they had regained their free will. As it turned out, Chuck hadn't played his last card that day, near the lake. After turning him into a human —at least, that's what they had thought— the Winchester brothers hadn't realized that they just had been trapped in his last scenario.

To remove a threat, you need to make believe to your enemy that he has successfully beaten you. And that's exactly what Chuck had done. He had made them believe they had won. And had largely benefited from it.

The trap had taken the form of an illusion that had led Dean to his death and Sam to the perfect family life he had once hoped for. There had been a shift in the way Sam was feeling though —when he had gotten married, when his son was born, he had felt that something was off, but he had never succeeded to put his finger on what.

Seven years had passed after Dean's death when one morning, while Sam was off to his daily jog, he had found Jack on his porch, waiting for him. He was looking unusually worried, which had led the Winchester to believe that something very serious had happened. Little did he know, by this time, how much his life had been about to change. The Nephilim had then explained to him that he was about to break the divergent timeline Chuck had created and in which he had locked them in. The trick was ingenious, but Jack had been more clever. He had perceived a breach while moving from one world to another —he and Amara were rebuilding the parallel dimensions Chuck had meticulously destroyed, in order to preserve the Balance of the Universe.

It had taken a while for Sam to fully accept the idea that what had been his life for so long was a lie. The illusion created by the former God had become his new reality. Getting out of it was scary and had seemed impossible at first. He had spent hours contemplating the life he had built, watching the son that was born from his marriage —born from an illusion. But looking at him playing in their living room, he had felt very real. When he had called him "dad'', handing him over a drawing he had just made of their perfect little family, his throat had tighten. In the next few days though, he had come to terms with the fact that Jack was right, and a deep feeling of gravity was now taking over. What was about to happen was probably one of the most painful things he ever had to experience. Losing what he thought was real did feel real, but intellectually, he knew something wasn't right. It wasn't who he was, it wasn't his life.

As soon as Jack had told him about Chuck, about the fact that he still had his powers —to some extent— and had only conceded a part of them to him, including Amara, Sam had known he was telling the truth. Seven years ago in that barn, it wasn't the ending Dean had deserved.

It wasn't them back then, it wasn't him right now. Their lives had been taken away from them.

He had finally put his finger on what felt wrong. Jack had then mentioned a certain Eileen, and at this moment, that name hadn't even ring a bell. Donna, Jody, Charlie, Claire... So many people that Chuck had erased from their lives. People that were once family had become strangers. Sam had finally accepted Jack's plan to restore his life and Dean's life the way they were before everything went wrong. The bonds the youngest Winchester had formed in that illusion were left behind, and he knew it was a wound that wasn't going to be easy to move on from. But he knew his brother didn't deserve to die the way he did. It had been enough for him to find the courage to move forwards with Jack's scheme to fix their lives.