Trajectory, for amypond45

[summergen-mod.livejournal.com]

Title: Trajectory
Recipient: amypond45
Rating: PG
Characters: Sam, Bucky, Dean, John
Word Count: 6,300
Warnings: Angst, canon-typical violence, questionable parenting choices, young Sam in danger, a little swearing
Author's Notes: For those unfamiliar with the MCU, this will be a SPN fic about Sam befriending a mysterious monster, but for MCU fans, knowing more about who that monster is will provide an extra treat. This fic is technically an MCU crossover, but I don't think unfamiliarity with MCU will infringe on a reader's enjoyment of the fic.
Summary: John has taken Dean on a hunt and left 9-year-old Sam behind. Lonely, Sam winds up befriending the monster his dad is hunting--a man with a metal arm. Violent, reticent, scary, the monster isn't that different from hunters Sam has known, he's just a lot more fun.


Sam, age 9

“... A monster with a metal arm,” Dad was saying.

“Maybe it’s just a man with a metal arm,” Dean said, obviously thinking this would be the coolest thing ever.

Now Sam was paying attention. “Can I come?” he wheedled.

“No,” said Dad. “That’s the whole reason I got a hotel three towns away: to keep you safe.”

“Then why does Dean get to go?” he whined. “I could help. I’ve got my .45.” He mimed shooting things with pinpoint precision, complete with sound effects.

“Because I’m a teenager now,” Dean bragged.

“Barely,” Sam muttered, subsiding back to sulking in front of the t.v. in their cruddy hotel room.

“It’s not a man,” Dad went on. “Super-human strength. Not to mention super-human longevity. There’s reports of this thing killing people all the way back to the forties.”

Sam glared jealously at Dean’s delighted demeanor, his proud strut. Sam never got to do anything cool. “Well, what am I supposed to do?” Sam complained.

“Stay safe,” Dad replied unapologetically. “We’ll be back when we get it or in four days, whichever comes sooner. It goes back into hibernation or whatever it does after about that long.” He tossed two twenties to Sam. “Think you’re old enough to hold down the fort on your own?” he didn’t really ask, since it was not like Sam had a choice. Sam squinted at Dean’s smirk behind Dad, Dean mockingly mouthing what Dad had just said.

“Yes, sir,” Sam grumbled, swatting Dean’s hand away when Dean condescendingly patted his shoulder.

“You hold down the fort, Sam,” Dean said merrily.

“Fuck you,” Sam muttered.



Sam lugged the grocery bags through the heat. It was sweltering here in Virginia in the summer. He didn’t even have school to keep him occupied, and the library wouldn’t issue him a library card without a parent or guardian present. Summer t.v. was the worst. At least there was that lake nearby that nobody ever seemed to go to; they claimed it was haunted. Maybe if he killed a ghost there, he could finally impress Dad enough to convince him he was old enough to come along on hunts, while if it wasn’t haunted, it would be a good place to swim where he wouldn’t have to pay a fee he couldn’t afford, like at the pool.

His eyes were caught by the lights of a police car. No, several--probably all the cop cars this small town had. Sam walked up to the nearest police officer. “What’s going on?”

“Get out of here, kid!” The hysterical edge to the cop’s voice was genuine fear. He waved Sam wildly away, and Sam scurried off, because that cop was freaked. They all were, Sam soon realized as he hunkered down in the shade of an alley nearby to watch. Something was actually going on in this place! He would have a little something to brag about to Dean himself when they got back.

Really something to brag about, he realized as he heard the word bandied about: murder. Sam stood up and craned his neck, but he couldn’t see a body. That cop was looking in his direction again. He retreated deeper into the alley ... and heard a groan.

Sam turned and saw a man behind a dumpster holding his shoulder with his other arm ... which was made of metal. Sam’s eyes widened, and he took a step back ... right as the man’s eyes lifted to his to regard him coldly. The man fumbled for his gun.

Thinking quickly, Sam ran forward and kicked it out of his hand, where it went spinning down the alley. The man must have been in pretty bad shape; he vaguely reached after it, then slumped back where he was. “You’re a monster,” Sam informed him loudly, though he was shaking. Wouldn’t it be something if Sam was the one who killed the monster? Dad would have to let him come on the next hunt, then.

The man was breathing hard. He seemed to be in pain. “I know,” he said.

“So what are you? Vampire? Shifter?” Sam demanded, throwing out some of the theories Dad had.

“Just a monster,” the man gasped, returning to holding his shoulder. Sam now saw blood on the metal hand.

Sam ran for the gun and retrieved it, and pointed it at the man, hand trembling. “H-how do I kill you?” he finally asked. He told himself it was that he didn’t want to make a mistake and only end up angering it or something, but the truth was that though perhaps Dad and even Dean could have done it, this was starting to feel like an execution. Maybe he had a metal arm, but ... he just looked like a man. Dad had told him monsters often fooled people into having mercy and that that was part of being a hunter: never having mercy, but metal-arm had had tons of opportunities by now to attack Sam, and he was still sitting there in the shade of the dumpster, looking at Sam like he was just ... waiting to die.

Sam glanced anxiously down the alley. All eyes were on the crime scene and people had seldom strayed far enough down the street to see into the alley, but he didn’t want anyone to catch him here, pointing a gun at someone, especially now that he could hear a helicopter in the distance, coming this way. The point was moot when the helicopter’s sound stuttered and changed pitch, and an explosion rocked the ground. All the cops shouted; some people screamed. The metal-armed man’s face betrayed one emotion, finally: dismay. “The extraction team,” he grunted. “They were shot down.”

“By the same people who shot you?” Sam said, alarmed. Whoa. This was way bigger than a monster on the loose. This wasn’t what Dad thought at all.

The man heaved himself to his feet. He staggered down the alley in the direction of the explosion, the other way from where the cops were all gathered.

Someone else suddenly appeared at the end of the alley in the direction metal-arm was headed. They held a big gun, which suddenly spattered the alley with bullets. Abreast of Sam now, the metal-armed man unceremoniously knocked Sam to the ground, retrieving his gun from Sam’s hand in the same moment with his metal arm, returning fire. Sam looked up just in time to see the assailant at the far end of the alley fall to the ground, dead.

Sam stared up at metal-arm. He could have just taken the gun. He didn’t have to knock him to the ground, out of the line of fire. Hell, he could have used Sam as a shield, but he didn’t. He’d saved him. Looking into those sad, dark eyes ... Sam couldn’t see a monster. He was human. Strange and wrathful and distressingly competent with violence, but human. Just like Sam.

Metal-arm looked down the alley as sirens screamed past. The cops were headed for the site of the explosion now. The man stepped against the wall of the alley so as not to be seen, pushing Sam flat to the ground with his foot at the same time. Once they were past, he started making his slow way down the alley again, completely ignoring Sam.

Sam scrambled to his feet, gathering up the scattered groceries and rebagging them. He tried to keep a wary distance--even wounded, the man had still been able to kill someone--but Sam figured he’d have killed Sam by now if he planned to, and anyway, he couldn’t resist. He was so cool. Sam had always hoped he would be so brave and stoic and capable when it came time for him to be a hunter. Anyway, it seemed like metal-arm was a sort of hunter himself; he didn’t seem very different from other hunters Sam had known. He kind of felt like family. “Were you shot?”

Metal-arm nodded.

“Well, um ... my dad has gauze and bandages and stuff back at the hotel. And I’m really good at stitches. I’ve stitched up my dad a bunch of times. I’m really good at it--he says I should be a doctor, except that I have to be a hunter. You can come there with me ... if you want.”

The man only gazed down at him impassively, yet when Sam led the way, he followed.



It was awesome having someone to talk to. Every time Sam tried to tell Dean something, Dean teased him about it, or interrupted him, or bragged about something; he did anything but listen. Dad flat-out said he was too busy to listen most of the time. Metal-arm just sat there perfectly still, taking it all in as Sam stitched him up. Sam poured him a glass of whiskey to help with the pain. Dad always drank the whole thing, but metal-arm didn’t touch it.

Turned out it seemed like Sam had a lot of stuff he wanted to say; hours later, he was still talking as metal-arm rested in a naugahyde chair, sipping the water Sam had brought him. He had wounds other than the bullet wound in his shoulder, but they must not have been as bad, because he wouldn’t let Sam touch them. Sam jumped up. “I can make some food! I’m a good cook.” Sam kept turning around to check on metal-arm as he quickly worked to put something together, afraid he might slip out as mysteriously as he’d appeared, but he was always still there, big as life, metal arm gleaming in the golden hotel lighting.

This was the coolest thing ever. It was like having Stretch Armstrong or He-Man or Evel Knievel or someone in his living room, only life-size, and apparently fascinated with everything Sam had to say! And a METAL ARM! Sam had stared at it as much as possible as he stitched the other shoulder. He’d even brushed against it a couple of times. It was absolutely the coolest thing he’d ever seen in his life. To top it all off, his own personal Rambo was also his protector, because he cared about Sam. He must, or why else had he saved him?

Sam talked all the way through the creation and consumption of the dinner. He told himself it must taste good, because metal-arm ate it methodically, without wincing or anything, but truth be told, it wasn’t Sam’s best effort. He would do better tomorrow.

That night, he lay in one of the hotel beds, watching metal-arm through half-closed eyes. Dad lived a dangerous life, that exposed his kids to a lot of danger, but Dad was also fragile. Not like metal-arm. Sam had never felt so safe in his life.

Sam had offered the other bed to metal-arm, but he’d demurred, nodding off silently, still in the chair. Sam grinned and hugged himself. Dad and Dean would be gone for three more whole days for sure, because the thing they were hunting was right here in this room. What would he do with his giant robot tomorrow?



Before they could do anything, he’d have to wake up. Metal-arm went on slumbering unmoving there in the chair. Sam noisily made breakfast. Still he didn’t wake. Maybe he felt as safe there with Sam as Sam felt with him.

Finally Sam couldn’t stand it anymore. He leaned over him. “Hey. Metal-arm. Hey. Guy.” Still nothing. Sam reached out and touched his non-metal arm lightly--and found himself flying across the room, past the room divider, to land ten yards away on one of the beds. He lay perfectly still where he landed, in shock. From the murderous look on metal-arm’s face in the split second he’d glimpsed it before he was airborne, he expected to have gone through the room divider, but in retrospect, he’d felt something, a change in trajectory as he released him, as if he’d started out intending to kill and managed to alter the direction he threw him, even if he’d changed his intent too late to prevent throwing him entirely.

Sam moved a little, feeling at his joints. Due to the force of the throw (he’d used his metal arm!), he’d bounced up when he hit the bed and knocked against the wall, but not hard enough to hurt that much, and anyway, so worth it to get to FLY THROUGH THE AIR. Just like the time he got to ride a rollercoaster, his first thought after shaky wonder that he was still alive by the end was an instant, overpowering need to ride it again immediately. Sam jumped up.

“That ... was ... AWESOME! Let’s do it again!”

“No.”

“Oh, come on! Why not?”

“I will damage you.”

“But--” Sam whined, and suddenly had a thought. “The lake! You could throw me over the lake, couldn’t you? I couldn’t get hurt then!”



As Sam sailed over the lake, he knew he’d never had this much fun in his whole life, and he never would again. A mysterious metal-armed man had appeared fortuitously, right when life had gotten intolerably boring, and made everything magical and wondrous. Today, there was no drudgery, no pouring silver bullets into molds or cleaning weapons or learning bow-hunting. Dean wasn’t making fun of him or bragging about how he got to go hunting with Dad or rolling his eyes at how ‘childish’ Sam’s interests were (even though they had been Dean’s interests, too, until just recently--hell, the only reason Sam was even into half those things was because Dean had been into them first, so it especially stung now when Dean ridiculed them). Today, he wasn’t sitting lonely and bored in some hotel room, knowing the only thing worse than Dad and Dean coming back to make his life hell was Dad and Dean being gone in the first place. Today ... today, he had a friend.

It was exhausting, swimming through the murky water and the mossy seaweed back to the shore, but so worth it for metal-arm to throw him again. Clambering out of the water, Sam ran back to him. “Throw me really far this time!” Sam cried. “As far as you can!”

Sam watched anxiously as metal-arm backed up twenty or thirty feet. Was he thinking better of this whole tossing-Sam-across-the-lake thing?? Then he saw metal-arm eyeing the lake, the ground, nearby trees, and saw that he was only considering the factors and obstacles. He’d backed up so he would be sure not to throw Sam over the lake and miss it entirely, landing him on the far shore. Sam cheered. Best day ever! Dad would never in a million years let him do something this dangerous. As he flew over the earth so fast it was a blur, over the lake toward the trees swaying in the late-summer haze, Sam knew he would remember this moment for the rest of his life.



Sam jumped up and down, yanking on the metal arm. “Let’s go to the arcade! Or I know! Let’s go to the school. You can push me on the swing so I go all the way around!”

“You’d get tangled up in the chain and damaged.”

“Then only push me hard enough that I go around once!”

Metal-arm considered. “As you descended from the second upswing, you’d probably bash your head on the top bar.”

“Let’s try it anyway,” Sam suggested, throwing caution to the wind completely. Nothing bad could happen today!

Metal-arm said nothing.

Peering at his face, not wanting to displease him, Sam took a new tack. “Well, then ... let’s, um ... let’s go to the library! You can pretend to be my guardian so I can get a library card.”

“There must be no witnesses,” he reminded him in his impassive way.

“Oh, right.” Sam skipped, then hung off the metal arm, swinging from it, as he’d been doing all day, which the man hardly even seemed to notice. Abruptly, the man ducked into an alley, where he suddenly sat down in the shade. His expression was blank, but his metal hand went to his shoulder again, and Sam was reminded of his wound. “You’re tired? Okay, let’s just go home then.”

It was hard to read his expressions, or even tell if he was feeling anything at all, but Sam was beginning to sense things deep beneath the surface. The man seemed ... grateful for the lunch Sam made them, and if not actually entertained when Sam started reading him one of his favorite books, then ... soothed, perhaps.

Sam changed his bandage that night. He’d decided Dad had to be completely wrong about his being a monster, that he was just a man, and his only superhuman strength came from his metal arm ... but looking at his wound tonight, seeing how quickly it was healing ... he wasn’t human, not entirely. It didn’t matter. He was still metal-arm, his friend and protector.

“Why did you kill those people?” he blurted out. He’d told himself it was okay, that metal-arm obviously liked and protected good people if he liked and protected Sam, but it had been niggling at him, and now it suddenly burst to the surface.

“Those were my orders.”

“Oh!” Sam knew all about orders. “From, like, your dad or someone?”

Metal-arm said nothing, unmoving, for a long moment, then finally nodded uncertainly.

“Me, too. All I do is follow orders.”

Metal-arm nodded. Sam felt now like he understood him perfectly: metal-arm had the same deep underlying rage and sadness and hopelessness Sam had, just ... more. Way more. Well, he was older and had been doing it longer.

“What’s your name?” he finally thought to ask.

Metal arm seemed ... displeased with the question? Troubled. “I don’t know,” he answered eventually.

“Oh.” This seemed pretty normal to Sam. Robots weren’t given names, generally, Sam figured. “Well, I’m Sam.”

The slight expression on metal-arm’s face seemed ... happy, with the knowledge that someone, at least, had a name.

“I’m going to call you Quicksilver,” Sam announced as he taped the fresh bandage into place. He grinned into Quicksilver’s face, to see how he was taking it. “Because of your arm.”

“It’s not made of silver,” Quicksilver replied stonily. “It’s a vibranium alloy--”

“Yeah, but it’s silver-colored, and anyway, Quicksilver sounds really cool. Just like a superhero!”

Sam could tell he was happy to have a name now. So why did his words also seem to make him so sad?



When Sam awoke the day Dad and Dean were to arrive, Quicksilver was gone, not a trace of his presence left. The bloody bandages in the wastebasket had disappeared, along with his used towels (also a little bloody). Even the tiny spot of blood on the chair had been wiped away. He’d thought of everything. Now Sam knew why he’d refused to sleep in the other bed: something of him would have been left behind: blood, hair, sweat, but the chair could be cleaned as if he’d never been there.

Sam was crushed. Quicksilver hadn’t even said goodbye. And he’d had a whole day’s worth of ideas for fun things they could do together. It had finally occurred to Sam to think about things Quicksilver might enjoy doing. A military robot who hardly had emotions was hard to think up fun activities for, but Sam had managed. He’d even gathered together and loaded the couple of guns Dad had left behind so they could go target-shooting, an activity Sam generally hated, but Quicksilver would have made it fun. Just being with his friend was so fun. And now he was gone.

Worse still was when Dad and Dean got home and Sam told them all about him, only to get accused of confabulation. “I know you’re lonely, Sam, but you’re too old for this kind of thing,” Dad said angrily, later deciding Sam must have made up the story to explain away the disappearance of the towels, which Dad assumed Sam must have destroyed getting up to some mischief or other.

Dean was even worse. “First Sully and now this?” he’d said merrily. “You’re straight-up crazy in the head. Can’t you tell the difference between fantasy and reality?”

“You’re just mad because you hunted him and failed and I’m the one who found him!”

“If you’d really found him, I’d have come home to my son’s dead body!” Dad yelled. He was always his worst when he failed at hunting something that continued killing people right under his nose. “A hunter’s son would have killed him first. For God’s sake, I at least hope you wouldn’t have been stupid enough to invite him into your home and feed him soup!” he roared. “Now tell me what you really did with all those bandages, Sam! You know we don’t have the money to keep buying that crap!”

Dean made the ‘you’ve really done it now’ face and made himself scarce, and Sam seethed as Dad made him clean all their guns as punishment. Quicksilver would never have treated him this way.



Sam, age 12

“It’s not a serial murderer,” Dad was saying to Dean as he looked for a hotel in this town. “Doesn’t fit the profile. There’s no m.o.; this thing kills in whatever way is handy. More like a shifter, quick and dirty. Sam, get me a beer.”

Sam glared briefly in his direction before irritably retrieving a beer from the cooler and handing it up to his dad. He’d tried giving him the ‘don’t drink and drive’ speech before, and gotten a brutal dressing-down along with being tasked with organizing the weapons cache in the trunk for his trouble. Dad cracked open the beer, driving with his knuckles.

Sam tried to pay attention to the book he was reading for school. Even last year, he’d have hoped this thing they were hunting was Quicksilver, that they’d see each other and become best friends again, that he and Quicksilver could run away together from the cruel fathers who gave them cruel orders and tried to make them into something they weren’t, but Sam had been gradually convinced (okay, mostly by Dean’s ridicule) that he’d imagined the whole thing, just like Sully. Sully had seemed so real, real enough to hug, but Dad and Dean couldn’t see him, so he must have made him up. A robot-man who saved his life and took him under his wing was even less believable, especially since by the time Dad and Dean returned, the police claimed a murder and a helicopter crash had never happened. Sam swore up and down that it was a cover-up because Quicksilver was special enough to warrant it, but ... no, he’d probably made the whole thing up in his mind, that bored and lonely, he supposed. Of course he had. He’d never really have a friend like Quicksilver. Life was, after all, exactly what he’d always thought it was before Quicksilver came along: work, pain, hardship, loneliness, boredom. Nothing more.

Maybe it was a flash in the shadow that caught his attention, maybe it was just a feeling. Sam looked up, right into the face of the man standing unassumingly in the shade of a tall building. It was Quicksilver.

Sam sat up and turned around to keep sight of him as they passed, but however long he looked, he didn’t disappear ... and he didn’t break eye contact with Sam. Quicksilver was real.



Sam, age 14

He hadn’t been able to find Quicksilver, however hard he searched around town that day, and Dad and Dean hadn’t caught him, either. It didn’t matter. He was sure now. Quicksilver had really been there, been his friend. It made him rethink all kinds of things he’d perceived over the course of his life that Dad and Dean had dismissed as fantasy. It had made Sam learn to trust his own perceptions. During the hardest, loneliest times, it had given him strength. Even if he couldn’t find a friend in any number of towns they passed through, he had once been able to make the coolest friend of all.

They were in a new town now, hunting a monster that could disappear into thin air and kill with a touch of its magic hand. Though Sam had managed over the years to see a description of Quicksilver in any number of monsters Dad was hunting, it didn’t occur to him this time ... until he saw him again. He saw him! Standing in the shadows of a bunch of pines, just like that day at the lake, ubiquitous gun at his side.

Sam ran toward him. Quicksilver turned to watch his approach, taking in every detail of his appearance--his clothes, his expression, probably whether he carried any weapons, after his habitual fashion--but when Sam reached him, grinning huge, rather than a friendly greeting, Quicksilver grabbed him by the face and slammed him against a tree. “Where is it?” he hissed menacingly, observing the sudden abject terror on Sam’s face dispassionately.

“W-what? No, it’s me, Sam!”

Letting him go, Quicksilver calmly put his gun to Sam’s head. Sam’s eyes widened with horror. What--he didn’t recognize him? Had he really imagined everything after all, then? “N--Quicksilver, it’s me!” he cried desperately, seeing his brief, lonely life flash before his eyes, cowering.

At the sound of the name Sam had given him, there was a jolt, a brief expression of bewilderment ... and he was gone.



Sam, age 15

Sam had thought about it a lot, though naturally he hadn’t shared anything on the subject with Dad and Dean this time. In fact, most of what he thought about and experienced these days, he kept private.

It hadn’t surprised him to see Quicksilver get violent--even with Sam; after all, it had happened multiple times before, including in the first minutes of their acquaintanceship. It was that Quicksilver didn’t remember him. That devastated Sam even more than believing Quicksilver had been an invention of his own mind ... at first. In time, though, things Quicksilver had said during their three days together came trickling back: how he didn’t remember his own name, or anything. He never had a word to describe his job, his commanding officer, his feelings. He hardly even seemed to have feelings, or at least, to consider them relevant. Then there was his futuristic arm.

Quicksilver really was part robot, Sam was pretty sure, like a Borg. He had a brain, but it had been programmed--erased. He’d had to look at it from every angle before he could feel satisfied it wasn’t just wishful thinking, but he had finally had to conclude the reason Quicksilver didn’t kill him that day was because he did remember him in the end--at least, enough to throw him off from his initial intention. Enough to change his mind and spare his life, and that made all the difference. In whatever way he was capable of it, Quicksilver really had considered Sam a friend, even if someone had later erased it. That was all right. Dad and Dean had been able to erase it from Sam, too.

Nonetheless, Sam figured he’d seen the last of Quicksilver. Their lives had conspired to make it so they couldn’t be friends except those three stolen days. Yet Sam had gained everything he needed to from seeing him again the other two times: faith in himself, strength, resilience.

He thought about Quicksilver often, actually. Dean had always and obviously modeled himself after their dad, but Sam could never do that. He took his cues on how to be a man from other people he’d met in his life: Bobby, Pastor Jim, Mr. Wyatt, other hunter friends of his dad’s he’d met here and there whom he could respect. Quicksilver was among them, though: his quick competence, his confident precision, his stoicism, his courage. His mercy toward Sam--a mercy Dad would never show him in return.

Sam walked out of the high school to the waiting Impala, Dean standing there beside it, nodding at female students, looking for all the world like a dressed-down chauffeur, except that once Sam reached the car, Dean didn’t open the door for him, just got in the driver’s seat and peeled out.

“Why do you even get out of the car if you’re not going to help me with my stuff?” Sam asked peevishly, lugging his heavy backpack and sports bag across the seat onto the floor.

“So the chicks can see the full package,” Dean announced. He turned to waggle his eyebrows at Sam. “If ya know what I mean.”

“Nice,” Sam growled.

Spying some of those high-school girls at Dairy Queen, Dean pulled over. Sam didn’t even bother to argue; this was standard procedure whenever Dean picked him up from school. It was still better than having to walk.

Dean was just starting to introduce himself to the girls when he interrupted himself with a “Whoa! Does that guy have a metal arm??” Dean sounded like he thought this was as cool as Sam did when he was nine. Dean was so immature.

Sam followed Dean’s gaze ... and jumped instantly out of the car. Dean was walking toward the guy with a ready smile to ask him about the arm. Sam managed to tackle him first and drag him back. “Dean, no--he’ll kill you!”

Sure enough, just then Quicksilver yanked a bolted-down metal table out of the cement on the sidewalk in front of Dairy Queen with his metal arm and threw it at a passing cop car, demolishing it. The students and other bystanders screamed and ran.

“Holy--!” Dean fumbled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed, huge-eyed. “Dad! I’ve got a twenty on the monster! ... I can’t tell what it is! It just looks like a guy with a metal arm. Shit--I don’t have any silver bullets or anything; I just have my .45. Should I--should I go ahead and try to shoot it? Dad?” A flash of memory of sewing up Quicksilver’s bullet wound exploded in Sam’s mind.

Sam pushed Dean out of Quicksilver’s sight against the far side of the building. Thinking quickly, he said, “No, Dean, tell Dad I’ve seen this on the internet. It’s a robot. It’s impervious to bullets. It’ll only make it mad.”

“Sam says it’s a robot, that he’s read about it. Okay. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.” Dean hung up the cell phone, peering around the building, trying to see the havoc Quicksilver was wreaking over there, but Sam kept him down and hidden. As long as they didn’t get in his way or threaten him, Sam had every reason to believe Quicksilver would act like they weren’t even there.

“We need to get out of here, Dean.”

“But the Impala--!”

“Leave it! There’s nothing we can do for it now, anyway. If Quic--if he decides to destroy it, there’s no way we can save it. We have to save ourselves.”

Dean’s fractured attention was suddenly caught on Sam. “You seem to know an awful lot about .... ‘Man with a silver arm,’” he muttered, then incredulously, “Sam, that big story you told about the guy with the silver arm when you were little--was that true??” he spluttered. “Dad never could figure out what you did with those towels ....”

“Of course not,” Sam said dismissively, peeking around the building. He saw Quicksilver stopping traffic, striding in his purposeful way toward another street. He’d spied his target and he was en route to intercept. “Okay, we can get the Impala now and get out of here, just drive THAT way,” Sam said firmly, pointing in the opposite direction from where Quicksilver was headed.

Dean obeyed Sam’s directives as Sam hustled him back to the Impala, but Dean kept glancing at him wonderingly, almost as if in awe.



Sam, age 33

Sam balled up the remnants of his meal and got out of the Impala. There were some dumpsters behind the roadhouse where Dean was currently living it up; no sense hauling around any more trash than living out of a car for days at a time already necessitated. He also collected some of Dean’s ubiquitous garbage to throw away.

There was a dumpster-diver back there. Politely, Sam averted his eyes. It’s not like he hadn’t been there in his life, more than once, though he sure was glad the bunker had brought better days and greater comfort, a more stable existence for him and Dean. Sam was grateful for that every time he thought of it.

One thing he’d brought to toss was a stale bag of Funyuns, but he knew that when he was desperate for food, he’d have been thrilled with such a thing. “Hey,” he said. “Here. You can have this, if you want it.”

The man emerged from the dumpster, and Sam couldn’t believe his eyes: it was his friend, looking not a day older than the last time he saw him. “Quicksilver?!” Sam gasped.

Quicksilver tilted his head. “S--Sam,” he said, as if calling the memory from a distant place. Another lifetime. “You ... grew up.”

“You didn’t!”

There was that sadness again. That silent acknowledgment. Dad had been right about everything: the metal arm, the superhuman strength, the longevity. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask and finally know, after all this time: “What kind of monster are you?” but he didn’t say it. He didn’t need to. Looking into his eyes, he knew his friend was no monster.

“It’s so good to see you again,” Sam gushed. “Ever since those three days, I always wondered--I wanted to be able to say to you--I mean, just, I’ll never forget that day at the lake as long as I live,” he finished finally, feeling awkward as Quicksilver’s impassive gaze rested upon him again, after all these years. He remembered believing Quicksilver was riveted by all his blather, that he’d actually enjoyed throwing Sam into the lake over and over while wounded. Stupid.

But Quicksilver said, “Me, either. Or, well, I’ll never forget it again.”

Sam grinned. He’d spent hours of his life imagining what he’d say to Quicksilver if he ever got another chance. How likely was it that he would? He’d lost hope over the years, deciding he must have finally been killed on one mission or another, but his relationship with Quicksilver was just that magical, that unbelievable. Quicksilver wasn’t like anyone else. Still, it had been years since he’d thought consciously about him; Quicksilver had long since become an inextricable part of him, indistinguishable from all the other factors that had contributed to Sam becoming the person he was today.

The words weren’t coming easy, but he got some out. “My dad wasn’t much of a role model. You came along at a time when I didn’t have a single friend, and you ... it made a big difference in my life. So thanks.”

“You too,” Quicksilver said unexpectedly. “Sometimes I caught a glimpse of my arm, and that word you used to call me came to my mind, and though I couldn’t remember, it still stopped me from-- it-- it changed the way a lot of things would have gone. You probably changed ... my trajectory.”

“Yeah,” Sam said warmly. “You too. Changed my trajectory. Thanks. Thanks, Quicksilver.”

“It’s Bucky.”

“You remember now?!”

Bucky nodded. “I remember everything.”

Sam beamed. Two and a half decades later, this whole secret aspect of his life was finally acknowledged, validated. Remembered.

“SAMMY!” Dean bellowed, staggering out of the roadhouse out of their sight, but fully audible all the way back here. “Sammy, I think it’s a better idea if you drive.”

“That’s my brother,” Sam told him, rolling his eyes, suddenly that irritable nine-year-old kid all over again. “We’re hunters. He would hunt you if ... I mean, he still talks sometimes about the monster with the metal arm who got away. I tried to convince him I saw on the internet that you’d finally been killed, but ... then he figured out how to use the internet for himself. Free porn is a big motivator for him.” Sam smiled ruefully.

Bucky only nodded.

On impulse, Sam hugged him, remembering too late that Quicksilver--Bucky--had a tendency to react with sudden, extreme violence when threatened or surprised ... but Bucky just hugged him back. Sam felt the metal of his arm pressing carefully against him.

Letting him go as he heard Dean bellow again--he’d reached the car to find Sam not in it, which meant he’d be right here within a minute--Sam brushed at his eyes. “SAM!” There was that note of frantic desperation in Dean’s voice. Suddenly he was a lot less drunk. Sam looked over to gauge how long it would take for Dean to find him, and looked back to find Quicksilver gone, disappeared, like he’d never been there.

Dean stumbled up and grabbed his shoulder. “Sam? Didn’t you hear me? What the hell are you doing back here?!”

“Just, um ... letting go of some stuff.”

Dean looked over the dumpsters, and scowled. “Is that what happened to my Funyuns?? I noticed you weren’t the only thing missing when I got back to Baby. Sam, how many times do I have to tell you--!” Dean hauled him back in the direction of the Impala, ranting the whole way. Sam thought it was a good thing he hadn’t also thrown out that unopened bag of expired potato chips.

Sam let himself be dragged back to the car, back to the life all those old experiences had finally led him to. He turned around to glance back into the forest behind the dumpsters, and smiled.