Supernatural, all audiences, future-fic. For Dawn who wnated 10 years after For How Shall I Endure. Merry Christmas, babe.
(1,811 words)

The characters and situations portrayed here are not mine, they belong to the WB. This is a fan authored work and no profit is being made. Please do not link to this story without appropriate warnings. Please do not archive this story without my permission.

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§ And it shall come to pass, that the man whom I shall choose, his staff shall bud forth; and I will make to cease from before me the murmurings of the children of Israel, that they murmur against you.§

~ Numbers 17:5

Dean didn't much care for snow.  A little was okay; a lot was just damn annoying. 

They got snow most winters; not a lot, a few days, maybe a week of white clinging to the grass and the roofs and the trees. Once in a century they got hit by a big one, dumping snow and ice that lasted for more than a couple of days. The town didn't get hard winters often enough for them to have snow plows or even salt trucks. 

Dean couldn't think of much of anything worse than having to shovel snow and ice from the steps and sidewalk but when the big one hit, he did it anyway, not surprised to see a few of his neighbors doing the same along his side of the street. 

Sam liked to walk in the mornings, up to the store on the corner, and the coffeeshop that'd shown up next to it. He was more regular than the traffic lights and neighbors new and old knew Sam. 

But Dean wasn't getting any younger, and he didn't turn Pete from next door down when he came over and offered to help, even after helping his dad clear their own sidewalk. Pete had just turned nineteen and was going to college but was home for the Christmas break. He'd lost the glasses somewhere between twelve and fourteen, with the help of some new fangled-eye surgery and some custom contacts. His sister got married the summer past, was living on the other side of town with her new husband and a baby on the way. 

Kelly still came by once a week at least to play chess with Sam, and it was Miranda that finally convinced Sam to come and read to her middle-schoolers again. They had nicknames now too, The Story Man and The Car Man; those two brothers who live over on Avery, lost their father last year. Damn shame. No, neither of them married…maybe one of them had been. 

The mild rumors had Dean a widower and Sam a little odd in that way, and Dean never bothered to correct them when he heard them. Keeping close on a past that never happened was no different than keeping close on the past that did. 

It had been a quiet year for Sam, only one or two visions, people so distant they couldn't even find them, though Dean had tried. They'd been losing those connections to that past -- most of the folks they knew growing up had already passed on, some from the life they lived, some from just old age. 

Dean was the owner of the garage in all but name, really, but he'd been giving some thought to retiring, maybe. Not just yet but in a couple of years. Had his eye on a couple of the younger ones at the garage who might could take his place. 

Sam still kept his distance from people, never getting too close. He warned Kelly last year away from a take-out place he liked. Three died there, fire again, which Sam couldn't seem to escape. 

Kelly was smarter than most, recognizing that a call from someone he only ever talked to face to face was a little strange. Sam had canceled their game the week after, pleading a heavy work load, but Kelly came over and made his move on the board, and left. Sam responded, and it went on like that for a couple of weeks until Kelly had Sam in check. 

He came in while Sam was studying the board by touch. "I'll cede the game if you tell me how you knew," Kelly said, and Dean didn't interfere.

It was bound to happen, and it was a tiny miracle that no one had put it together before now, given the number of near misses or head's up that Dean had been involved in over the years. A few people had wondered, within Dean's earshot, that he had the luck of the devil sometimes, which made Dean almost laugh at the irony of how close to the truth that was. 

No one had ever made the connection to Sam before though, and despite a couple of decades of living with Sam, Dean wasn't sure how his brother wanted to play it. 

Sam had pulled his glasses off and stared at Kelly, before moving a piece on the chessboard that put him in checkmate deliberately. "I see things sometimes."

"Like the fire."

"Like you dying in it," Sam said, voice steady as his hands.

"Why not warn the restaurant?"

"It doesn't work that way. It's one or the other, Kelly. You or them."

"And you picked me."

Sam cleared the board, resetting it. "I know you."

"Those other people…they had families too."

"I know that."

Kelly sat down then and Dean poured him a glass of whiskey, then another for himself and Sam. "You know when I'm going to die."

"No," Sam said, shaking his head. "Not you, or you but only then. I don't know, right now, if you'll get hit by car when you walk out that door, or die in your bed when you're ninety."

"And Miranda, my kids, my grandchild?"

Sam sipped at his whiskey and set the glass down. Now his hands were shaking. "If I see something, we'll call."

Kelly nodded and polished off his glass, got to his feet. "You choose…when you see it. You choose who lives and dies."

"No," Dean said, putting a hand on Sam's shoulder. "Not who lives and dies. Only who we can save. He never really sees things happen to people he doesn't know -- or care about. Only the ones he does."

"Sometimes the choice is harder than others," Sam said and found his glasses to put them back on again. "Sometimes it's not." He patted Dean's hand with his own and got up. 

"Sam," Kelly said before Sam could escape the living room into the kitchen or up the stairs. Sam stopped but didn't turn round to face him.  "Thank you," Kelly said finally and then left quickly. 

Kelly showed up the next week like nothing had happened and Dean was never sure if he said anything to his wife or to anyone. He didn't notice any odd looks and no one came knocking on their door wondering if Sam could tell when or if their terminally ill loved one was going to die. 

They added three names to the book they kept, but Dean used Sam's braille typer to start a new page with the names of everyone Sam had saved and how many times. He left his own name off -- that was likely to need a whole book of its own.

Dean didn't know and probably never would if the reduction of the number of Sam's visions had to do with the fact that they knew fewer people, or that Sam had maybe reconciled himself to the fact -- finally -- that he could only save a few. It didn't lessen the regret at the loss of life, but it didn't haunt Sam's dreams or bring him nightmares as often as it once did. 

They talked occasionally of moving on, setting up somewhere else or maybe just hitting the road. Trade in the house for a Winebago, maybe go see the new wind farms in Montana, or take a riverboat down the Mississippi, spend a summer on the coast of Maine, or winter on the gulf. 

Maybe when Dean retired. 

"Still some icy patches," Pete said when he and Dean finished clearing the sidewalk outside of the house.

There were, and the new people in the middle of the street hadn't cleared their walkway yet. Funny as it might be to see Sam go face first in the snow, Dean really didn't want Sam getting snow down his shirt unless Dean himself put it there.

"I'll call in late, give him a ride if he wants to go. Might melt off by afternoon. Thanks for the help, Pete."

"No, problem, Mr. Winchester," Pete said with a grin and jogged back to his house. 

"Sidewalk's still covered in places," Dean said when he came in, to see Sam already dressed. He had a cup of hot coffee waiting for Dean and a muffin breakfast, Winchester style. "I can run you up, if you just want to get out."

"I'll make you late," Sam said.

Dean shrugged. "So, I'll be late. Chances are there won't be much business this morning anyway, given the road conditions. I'll probably close early too. You just won't get to hang out and flirt with those Barrista girls."

Sam grinned and shook his head. "Naw. I'll be okay. I may go stir-crazy if this last for more than a couple of days, but I'm good. Our stairs and sidewalk are clear, right?"

"Yeah. Pete came over and helped, just don't go much further than that though, Sam. I can see the ice and already ended up on my ass twice."

Sam's dimples got deeper. "I am so sorry I missed that," he said, but walked with Dean to the door and out to the porch. 

"Sam." Kelly was at the end of their walkway, bundled up and gloved. "Thought I might head up to the coffee shop and get the paper. Looks like our delivery boy didn't make it out in this. Thought we'd walk together if you don't mind the company."

"Not driving?" Dean asked, tossing his own keys in the air.

Kelly grinned wide. "Only idiots drive in this weather. We closed the office until this afternoon."

"Let me get my coat," Sam said.

Dean eyed Kelly for a long moment. "You don't drink coffee, as I recall. Thanks."

Kelly shrugged. "I do read the paper."

Dean eyed his own paper laying in the snow, snuggly wrapped in its plastic sleeve.  He picked it up and tucked it under his arm. "You got a camera in your cellphone?"

"Doesn't everybody? Why?"

"Because if Sam ends up on his ass in the snow I want pictures. Have a good one, Kel," Dean said and got in his car.

He let it warm up a bit as Sam came out, pretty cautiously, cane in hand and didn't hesitate to hook a hand through the crook of Kelly's elbow. 

Dean pulled out just as cautiously, watching for the icy patches, but until he hit the middle of the block, he had his eye on the two men, arm in arm, walking along the white-edged sidewalk. 

He could see Sam's smile from here, and he was pretty sure Kelly was wearing one too.

He didn't hide his own, and cranked up the radio, not even annoyed by the hundredth time he'd already heard "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" over the last few weeks. 

The snow didn't bother him at all.

~end~

12/25/2007