After All...

2

     When you're feeling lost, take heart. It's just your brain gathering the information it needs to make good decisions.

- Josh Kaufman

———

"Caspian?" Sam called out with a laugh, searching for him in a game of hide and seek. Take one look at the man and you'd never know that the love of his life had walked out on him. He was a happy single father surrounded by children. Dean and Alison, plus their child Sloan who was the absolute cutest. But Sam begged to differ saying that Caspian was way cuter. "Come out, come out wherever you are."

Caspian giggled behind the long curtains of the house they bought, trying to hide his feet. But try as he might, the tops of his shoes stuck out from the bottom giving it away. " Looking for Caspian?" Alison quipped as she entered Sam's room.

Sam grunted and stood up, smiling at her, "Yeah, I can't find him anywhere. Little guy's good." And at that moment, the two best friends thought of one woman: Y/N. She was the best of the best. Better than anyone. Sam and Dean had trouble, Bobby. And Bobby's catch of hunters at his disposal. But enough about Y/N.

Alison looked everywhere, eyeing the feet of the six year old behind the curtain. Another giggled came from behind there, Sam tiptoeing over. "Gotcha!" Sam laughed, picking his son up in arms, happy.

"Again! Again!" Caspian begged, slapping his dad's back lightly. Sometimes Sam wished Y/N were here to handle all this, the have changed diapers with him, to feed their son, to comfort their son. Y/N didnt even seem him off to his first day of kindergarten or first grade. Kid's smart, wickedly so.

"I'm afraid not buddy. Your uncle is making dinner. It's your favourite, hamburgers." At that word, Caspian jumped down from Sam's shoulders and ran down the hall screaming hamburgers. Alison and Sam smiled at his free spirit, long locks and happy heart.

"Do you ever think about her? About Y/N?" Sam licked his cherry lips, smiling at his feet and then funneling his attention to Ali.

"All the time. I wanna know what she's doing, who she's with. How she so easily avoided the life. How she got a get out of jail free card and we didn't. That's all. And one more thing: how could she abandon her own kid?" Alison laid her hand on Sam's shoulder, making soothing motions with her thumb.

"You never knew much of her past, did you, Sam?" He shook his head, creasing his eyebrows and sitting, waiting for more. "She did get kidnapped by the russians, by the sokovians, by people i cant even remember. All of that is true." Sam grabbed two whiskey bottles from the mini fridge, one of which Alison graciously accepted.

"But what happened there is why she left, why she got her get out of jail free card, why she abandoned her own child. What happened? She was tortured, made into... a shell of a human being. She wasn't human, they made her inhuman. One with no feelings, no thoughts and no remorse. They beat her, starved her, stabbed her, put this mask on that electrocuted her brain and erased memories. There's this thing. It's called waterboarding. An interrogation technique, rarely used in America." Sam stopped Alison for a second, downing the bottle. When he gave the all clear she continued.

"They wanted information from her, valuable information on American hunters. She's so fucking loyal, Sam, it's insane. What it is, waterboarding, is a-a form of water torture. It sim-simulates drowning. You put some sort of cloth over the breathing passages and pour massive amounts of water on the person's face. Y/N endured that, for twenty minutes three times a day. She also has missing teeth, only three. Her fingers are all jacked up from being smashed, then healed and smashed again. A-Another form of torture she endured was drilling. They took a drill and used it on her leg. You've seen those circular scars scattering her legs?" Sam choked on his whiskey as Alison took one big sip. "She left because she feared the people and their successors would come after her, or worse. Us." Sam chugged the bottle to about 2/3 before coughing, and setting it down on the desk top. Alison drank about the same, wiping off her dripping lips with the cuff of her jacket.

"I-I understand now. But why didn't she kill them?"

"Sam, she didn't kill them because she knows they have cameras on us. Spies. She didn't have to even see evidence to know. She knows that all her enemies have cameras, and probably guns, on us at all times. If she were to return, they'd kill us and she wont risk it. She hasn't for 16 years. Loyal as hell, I tell you." Alison stood up and walked towards the dinner table, greeting the two little munchkins and kissing Dean.

"Ew!!" Squealed the little boy and girl, fake gagging at the sign of affection. Dean did it again and laughed when they made gagging sounds.

Sam emerged from his room, hiding the pain if the revelation made to him just moments ago. He hid the pain and fear for his lovers life behind the eyes of a happy, single dad with a singular child. Alison smiled at him as if she just hadn't revealed something close to the nuclear launch codes to him without breaking a sweat. She acted like nothing happened, which he was thankful that she hid it so well.

But, regardless of what she told Sam, the five of them sat at the table like a family, enjoying the luxurious dinner Dean served. His food was always amazing, Y/N knew it. Sam knew. The kids knew it. Everyone who's ever served at his pleasure, knows it. Dean, luckily, had given Y/N his recipes so she could live his legacy.