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in terror the Boy ran toward the village shouting “Wolf! Wolf!”
But though the Villagers heard the cry,
they did not run to help him as they had before.
the boy.
He’d been stopped in some six-street town in Kansas off of Old Highway 40 when Claire first called him, so that’s where he was when the call abruptly dropped and nearly three minutes passed before his brother finally picked up the returned call. So, of course, that’s where Sam was—standing next to his car, running the pads of his fingers over the names carved into the dash so he could always have his family close—when Dean broke the news that the Devil was out of the pit.
Sam doesn’t remember ending the call. He doesn’t remember climbing back into his car or turning the key in the ignition or pressing his foot to the gas pedal. It’s hard to recall things as trivial as operating a car or turning onto a new road when the world has been tilted on its axis. Sam does remember though, somewhat hysterically, that he’d passed a sign as he’d left. Detroit, Unincorporated, it had said.
He almost laughs about it now. Lucifer had always told him it would happen in Detroit.
It’s a six hour drive back to Bennett, give or take, though Sam isn’t sure that’s where he’ll go. His phone is blowing up with text messages from Cas, begging him to come home. He ignores all of them. Wonders if he should turn around and head east instead until he finds Stull Cemetery again and decides to wait there for whatever comes next.
There was a moment a long time ago when a decision was made, by creatures holy and divine and nearly clinical in their uncaring, that lead to the creation of two perfect vessels. Made for the purpose of fulfilling a prophecy that they would spend two decades of their lives unaware of. This creation of perfection, this destiny bestowed upon an unsuspecting bloodline, killed the existence of free will in Sam Winchester’s life before he was even born.
Everything since has been out of his control. Even the moments he thought were his own.
Sam has two decades of life to review and to pick apart and to decide which parts of it were actually his and to guess which parts he never had a say in. And he has a hundred years of memories fighting their way to the surface, uncaring about whatever life he lived before he fell into the Cage, all demanding to be heard. To be felt. To be remembered.
It dawned on him, a couple weeks ago, not long after he’d gotten back in his car and left Bennett yet again, that he had spent more years in Hell than he will ever get to spend on earth. It’s one of the things that keeps him up most nights.
For as much as Sam struggles to know what belongs to him and what was chosen for him, he has been given things that he knows with total clarity are the truest things he could have. His brother, healthy and alive and nagging at him to come home. A best friend, a fallen angel who once believed him to be an abomination but who told Sam the other day that he had learned forgiveness by watching him. A niece, unconventional as the whole situation is, who asked him to hold onto something for her because she believes it’ll keep him safe. This is not the story that the heavens wrote for any of them. This, Sam knows, is as real as anything gets.
Dad’s worried about you, comes a text from Claire. Hers is the only one Sam doesn’t ignore. He does stare at it for a long while, though, wondering how much of everything Claire knows and whether or not it’s fair to her to tell her the truth. There’s so much of Dean in her, so much that it sometimes takes Sam aback that she wasn’t always his to begin with, but there’s this spark in her eyes and this hunger for a hunt that Sam only knows so well because he’s seen it in himself. And that frightens him. He doesn’t want to imagine her out here, living a life like this.
Hell, he doesn’t even want to be out here half the time. It’s something he’s only just realized.
When Sam first woke up on the topside, he had thought that the only thing he needed was to be back on the open road. To return to some semblance of normalcy, even if normalcy was cleaning out vampire nests and burning old bones. But now there’s a house that doesn’t move, and a brother and a best friend and a niece who call him damn near every day, and there was a brief and shining moment where Sam had truly believed that he’d get a chance to settle his roots in there, too. If Dean could do it, he could do it, too.
But the Devil is out, despite everything Sam did to lock him up, and the sinking feeling that Sam has felt every day since coming back finally has a name.
“I wanna run,” Sam whispers, to a starry sky that’ll keep his secrets better than anyone else. He used to think there were angels up there. Now he knows that they won’t listen to him anymore; they’ve got no reason to. He served the purpose they needed him too. So it’s to the night sky that his friend built once before the earth even knew how to properly turn and it’s to an empty wheatfield in Kansas that sways in the wind like they’ve got secrets to tell, too. “I don’t wanna do this. I don’t want another apocalypse, I don’t want another hero’s death. I don’t want to face him. I just want to run. I just…”
He breathes out deep and slow through his nose. Run, he thinks sourly. It didn’t do him much good the first time he tried. Palo Alto was warm and it was steady and it was wrong even in the ways it should have felt right, and it had treated him the same as any other place he’d ever gone. Running, Sam knows now, isn’t worth shit when you’re only running because someone else told you to.
Realization strikes like a match. Heaven has already decided he’s unclean—Hell poisoned his blood to prove their point. Somewhere out there is a woman who’s carrying the spawn of Lucifer, and creatures who have long since forgotten what it means to be human have begun deciding how this story will go without giving it a chance to play out on its own. Somewhere out there are angels preparing to send this woman and her son down the same path Sam has already walked himself. Down the path he very likely carved himself.
His whole life, Sam has struggled to find the line between making Dean proud and making his dad proud and making himself proud. He was undeserving of the treatment he got from his father, but he was unworthy of the loyalty his brother continually shows him. Sam told Dean, once, that he understood why Dean thought he wouldn’t be able to beat the devil. Sam didn’t even have faith in himself. He was the least of all of them, and he feels that way still.
But. Sam can prove he’s a good man now. He can write his own story for a change and he can hand the mother of this child a pen so that she can write her own story, too. Sam can protect her, and he can let her choose what comes next. It’s more than he was awarded. But it’s enough to prove that he’s not ruled by the blood that flows inside of him.
He’s not going to run. He’s going to find this woman, and he’ll face the Devil head on if that’s what it takes.
the village.
Sam meets Death at a barbeque joint on the outskirts of Amarillo.
When Death asks, Sam hands him a wet wipe and takes a seat across from him.
“I appreciate the fact that you didn’t attempt to sneak up on me like your older brother did,” Death comments. His ring glints in the light, nauseatingly new compared to the pale and bony finger it rests upon. The last time Sam had seen that ring, he’d paid the price for it.
“You left signs leading me here,” Sam says. He’s been tracking the omens for just over a month. It was the reaper sightings thick enough to swim through that eventually led him through these doors. “Why?”
“Speaking of your brother,” Death continues with a sigh. He ignores Sam’s question entirely. “I believe he intended to break a promise he made to me. Though I suppose I can commend you for taking matters into your own hands and fulfilling it for him.”
“How’d you get your ring back?” Sam presses, unrelenting. “And how are you still free? Why didn’t the angels throw you back into your prison?”
A server stops by the table and places a platter in front of Death before walking away with a dazed look on his face. The rest of the restaurant is empty; Sam wonders, mutely horrified, if the server is under Death’s control.
The platter is filled with various types of meat. When Death starts eating, Sam looks away before he gets sick.
“You come with a great deal of questions considering this is only our first meeting,” Death muses. “Well, I suppose… Our first time that you remember. You Winchesters seem to have an affinity for dying and coming back to life. Not unlike cockroaches.”
This, at last, makes Sam pause. Makes him wonder if all the deaths he endured before all of this were predestined for him, too, or if they were moments where free will cracked through just enough until he was forcibly rewritten on the page.
“I don’t have time for chatting,” Sam mumbles. It takes a great deal to pull him out of his own head and to remember why he’s here. He tries to look at Death again, and this time he holds the gaze of the primordial being more powerful than he can comprehend. “If Lucifer is free, then I need to find him and stop him.”
For some reason, Death chuckles at that. “Oh, now, I wouldn’t worry about him. He’s dead.”
The vice grip around Sam’s lungs gives him a single inch of air to breathe. Punched out, Sam asks, “He’s what?”
“The Devil is dead, Sam,” Death repeats. He pushes a plate of cornbread across the table to Sam. As though he hasn’t just announced that the truest embodiment of evil is dead with the same ease someone would announce that a meeting was about to begin. “Care to eat? You look as though you’ve seen better days.”
Sam slides the plate closer and eats the cornbread.
“In another world, you know, you and I may have worked together,” Death comments wryly. Sam still can’t quite look at him. It doesn’t seem to phase Death, though. There’s probably not much that does phase him. “The underbelly placed a crown on your head and tried to hand you the keys, but you just locked yourself up instead.”
“So that’s why you’re here,” Sam guesses, blood curling. “You want me to work for you?”
Death, again, just laughs shortly. “Did I say that? I have plenty of employees, I certainly don’t need one more. We only would have worked together because of the chain that was around my neck and your fighting conscious rattling inside of Lucifer’s skull. But I can’t say that it doesn’t compel me, the fact that you were able to overcome the most powerful archangel in the world. I have to wonder how you were able to do it.”
“There’s something stronger out there than even self-proclaimed unlimited power,” Sam answers. This time, he’s finally able to look Death right in the eye. “It might even be more powerful than you.”
Death wipes at his mouth with a napkin and hums, low and quiet. His head bobs up and down slowly, and the corner of his old mouth curls. “Love.”
“Yeah,” Sam agrees, voice quiet. He looks away again.
“That may be so,” Death allows. “There are certainly factors in this universe that I will never understand. But even so, Sam, it wasn’t love that rescued you from Lucifer’s Cage. It was me.”
It’s there, then, in a small barbeque joint somewhere in Texas, that Sam gets the answers he’s been hunting for a great time. Death tells him the story about a chain around his neck that bound him to the Devil’s bargains. He speaks of an unholy anger at being strung up and used like a toy, and of a broken seal that sprung free three brothers that Death had never asked for. Before there were any of them, there was Death, and before him there very well may have been nothing at all. His is a power that is older than the turn of the earth, and older than the core of the sun, and old enough to grow resentful when bound by an archangel that’s practically a toddler throwing a temper tantrum.
“I wanted Lucifer thrown straight back into the pit,” Death hisses. And with the Devil went Sam, and with them went a brother each, and the four of them fell unwittingly with Death’s restraints following close behind them.
Death was free. His brothers were powerless. The universe needed balance, and so Death provided.
“I restored the angel Castiel, as a thanks to your brother for holding up his end of our bargain,” Death murmurs. “And I freed Bobby Singer’s soul from its contract with the King of Hell, as well as all the other souls he was unjustly holding that was tipping the scales out of balance, and with his soul freed Bobby was brought back to life. I collected mine and my brothers’ rings as a reward. I figured it was only fair.”
“So, what, you decided to play God now?” Sam asks.
When Death glowers at him, the lights of the restaurant flicker with his narrowed eyes. “Don’t mock me, boy. If I had it my way, I would have wiped my hands of this the moment I was freed and the ring was back on my finger. While God can go around creating things willy-nilly, I will always be the one left to clean up His messes. To collect the broken souls of His creations when they inevitably fail and disappoint Him. Don’t let modern religious practices fool you. God wants chaos. All I want is balance. Life and death the way it should be.”
“Then why—?” Sam starts.
“God is either dead or a deadbeat, and His Heaven was on the brink of a civil war,” Death says flatly. He sits back in his chair and steeples his fingers together. “The only thing keeping it in check were the archangels. One dead, two locked in a cage. Which leaves only the power-hungry vengeful Raphael. The angel you domesticated may have stood a chance against him, but he proved to be a no-show, and no one else was stepping forward.”
Sam leans forward, heart pounding. “You brought Cas back human, though.”
But Death just raises an eyebrow at him. “I restored the angel exactly as he was. It's not within my power to alter the humanity of angels. To the best of my knowledge, at least.”
So as it is—Heaven on the verge of decimation, and billions of souls at risk of wandering with nowhere to go. Balance, Sam learns, is all that Death wants. And with balance comes compromise. In order to spring Michael from the Cage so that he could return to Heaven and stabilize it, all other occupants would have the opportunity to be freed as well. Michael and Adam returned to Heaven. Sam was dropped in front of a house he never grew up in.
And Lucifer escaped.
“Lucifer hoped that laying low would save him,” Death murmurs. “He was buying time. Hoping to bind me again, waiting until he was powerful enough to take me on and win. He jumped into a new vessel—some distant relative of yours, from a bloodline that’s dying out. It wouldn’t hold him forever, but it would last him for a moment.”
But Lucifer was cocky, as he always tended to be. He got comfortable in a new body, in a new place, with a pretty woman on his arm who didn’t really know why he was acting a bit different but didn’t bother to ask why. He got cocky, they got reckless. A nephilim was created, and a surge of power shook through angels and demons and reapers and anyone in between who knew well enough to understand what it meant.
“So that’s how you found him again?” Sam asks.
“Yes,” Death agrees. “And when I found him, I did what should have been done the first time he betrayed the heavens. God may have been too sentimental to kill his favorite son, but I don’t hold the same sympathies.”
“And the nephilim?” Sam presses. “And the mother? Did you kill them, too?”
Death regards Sam with slow, calculating eyes. After a moment, he says, “No, I did not kill the nephilim or his mother. As I said before, I’m not God, and I don’t want to do his work for him anymore. Balance, Sam. That’s all I want. If someone else wants them dead, I will happily reap them myself when the time comes, but I won’t make that choice today.” He pauses, then, and a near-twisted smile crosses his face. “Besides. I can’t help it if I’m a little bit curious to see how it all plays out, now can I?”
“You know where she is,” Sam realizes. He leans forward again. “Take me to her. Please. I need to talk to her. I can keep her safe.”
“Safe from what?” Death asks. “Me? We both know that isn’t true.”
Sam swallows around the lump in his throat. “Whoever she is, wherever she is. She deserves a choice. She deserves a say in what comes next. I didn’t get that. Let me give it to her.”
Death sighs. For a long, almost suffocating minute, he’s got nothing to say. The lights in the restaurant flicker again. He drops his hands back to his plate and finishes the last bite of a brisket. And after that, he finally says, “Lucifer did quite a number on you down there, didn’t he?”
“He did,” Sam snaps. “And I don’t want to let that happen to another child.”
The lights flicker out, bathing the restaurant in black. Sam’s heart stops beating.
When they return, there’s a woman standing behind Death’s right shoulder. She gives him a small smile. “Hi, Sam,” she says softly. “I’m Tessa. Come with me and I’ll take you to Kelly Kline.”
the wolf.
“This is going to sound crazy,” Sam starts.
“Crazier than having the literal embodiment of death tell me I’m carrying Satan’s child?” Kelly Kline asks him. She’s standing in the doorway of her hotel room, looking tired and wry and not much older than Dean. She could have a full life ahead of her.
Or this baby could kill her. Sam doesn’t know if either of these will be easy for her to hear.
“Fair point,” he says, forcing out a small laugh. “I’m Sam Winchester. I’m guessing you knew I was coming since you, uh. Opened the door and everything. And didn’t run screaming.”
Kelly shrugs. One arm is curled protectively over her stomach. Despite the fact she’s only been pregnant for just over a month, there’s already a hint of a baby bump there. “Apparently I have, um… reapers? I guess. Standing guard pretty much all the time. And Death killed my boyfriend, so.”
Sam flinches instinctively. “Kelly, I’m sorry.”
“Well, he said yes when Satan asked if he could come on in, so maybe I didn’t choose a real winner in the first place,” Kelly murmurs. She gives Sam a small smile. “You wanna come in? I was just about to make some tea.”
“Can you, uh,” Sam starts, before embarrassment catches up with him and he stumbles as he steps into the room. Kelly’s looking at him like she already knows where his question was going, so he finishes, “Can you even drink tea? When you’re pregnant?”
Kelly glances down at her stomach. Her hand is still curled there; now that they’re both inside, he can see the bump a little bit better. He and Cas had wondered if the nephilim would develop quicker, and Sam’s almost certain this proves it. He wonders if that frightens Kelly as much as it does the rest of them. “If this baby is really as powerful as everyone keeps telling me he is, I don’t think it matters if I’m allowed to drink tea or not.”
Sam can’t help but match her laughter at that. “Fair point,” he says again.
Kelly makes him a cup of tea, too, and together they sit at the edge of her bed. It’s quiet for a moment. Kelly stares off into space.
“How are you feeling, with all this?” Sam asks quietly.
“Honestly?” Kelly shoots back. She doesn’t look at him, but she does raise her mug and take a sip before continuing. “I think I’m handling everything pretty well, all things considered. I have had a lot of information thrown at me this month.”
Sam nods. He can’t remember what it was like to learn of a whole world happening alongside him that he hadn’t known about. Hunting had just always been there. It wasn’t like that for Kelly. Hell, it wasn’t like that for most people.
After a beat, Kelly continues in a soft voice, “You know, I grew up with the… bare minimum of a belief in God.” She laughs, self-deprecating. Sam feels it inside his own soul. “I certainly believed there was a God. But I never let myself think about it any further than that. And now there’s not only… a God but there’s a heaven and there’s a hell and Death is a person, and the Devil exists, and for some godforsaken reason, he chose my boyfriend to possess and now I’m carrying a child that will be the only one of his kind. Kind of a lot for the girl who only prayed when her dad made her bless their dinners.”
There’s a lump in Sam’s throat that feels impossible to speak over. “Kelly, I know everyone keeps throwing stuff at you, but there’s something else I think that you should know—”
“If it’s about how giving birth to this baby will kill me, I already know,” Kelly interrupts him. Her eyes are sharp and clear when she finally catches his gaze. It’s the look of someone who has already made up her mind. She softens, after a moment, and adds, “Like I said. I’ve had a lot of information thrown at me this month.”
Sam closes his eyes. He wraps his fingers tighter around the mug in his hands. It’s warm, and that steadies him. “I want you to know you have options.”
“I don’t,” Kelly says. She hurries on before Sam can interrupt her. “Stop. I don’t have options, Sam. A month ago, Death appeared in my apartment and killed the man I loved right in front of me. In the same breath that he told me that it was Lucifer and not my boyfriend, he told me I was carrying his child. I was… hysteric. I was grieving. I tried—”
“Kelly,” Sam breathes out, shocked.
But Kelly just smiles. “But this thing inside me, this baby… I felt it when his soul surged through me and brought me back. And it was pure. It was good, Sam. I truly believe that. My son is good. I mean, that feels like a miracle just a bit, doesn’t it? Maybe—maybe everything I’m going through, maybe it’s all happening for a reason. Couldn’t my baby be good for the world? He—he’s half of Lucifer, but he’s half of me, too, right?
Sam meets her eye again. Here is a woman he’s only just met. Here is a woman he’s connected to solely because Lucifer harmed them both. Sam doesn’t know her, not really, and he won’t ever get a real chance to, but right now he understands her. He understands.
There’s a brief, shining moment where Sam wonders if this is how his mother felt about him. This pure, unwavering belief that blood doesn’t determine destiny any more than anything else.
“I believe you,” Sam says honestly, and Kelly’s shoulders sag in relief. “But I need you to understand, this is going to kill you. At the end of this, when your son is born, you won’t even get to know him. I don’t—I’m not going to hide that from you.”
“I’m not afraid of dying,” Kelly murmurs. She pauses. “Well, maybe I am, but… It’s alright. I don’t know what happens next. But it’s gonna be an adventure.”
Sam falters. He puts his mug down and reaches across the bed until he can grasp one of Kelly’s hands in his own. He holds on tight. “Someone’s going to have to take care of him, when you’re gone, you know. Someone will have to. Raise him. And. Kelly, I know you don’t… I know I’m a stranger but. If I could, I—”
He feels it, before it happens. Feels the air crackle outside of the hotel door and smells the sulfur in his nose. It’s not enough warning to do anything other than to give him time to lurch off the bed, angling Kelly behind him.
“Sam—?” Kelly starts, confused, but the hotel door slams open and a force of pressure throws Sam against the wall. He hears Kelly scream, somehow above the ringing in his ears. It takes everything in him to raise his head.
Two demons stand in the doorway. One that Sam’s never seen before. The other, Meg in her brunette host.
“You,” Sam snarls. He scrambles to his feet, but Meg stills him with a bored wave of her hand, pinning him to the wall.
“Don’t strain yourself, Sammy, we aren’t here for you,” Meg croons. The demon with her crosses the room until he reaches Kelly, stopping her before she can try to run away. “Thanks for leading us to the bitch. Reapers are the worst to try and make deals with. You can get them to agree to hand the chick over, but they’re bound from telling us where she is.”
Sam curls his lip, flinching away when Meg reaches up to touch his face. “Yeah?” he says. “Maybe you should take it up with their boss.”
Meg rolls her eyes and steps away. “I would if I could ever get ahold of the guy,” she drawls. “But their boss killed my boss, for real this time, and it kind of leaves a sour taste in the mouth, you know?”
Across the room, Kelly gasps and doubles over. The demon holding her tightens his grip on her arm, and she cries out again. “Get your hands off of her!” Sam spits out.
“Hey, lighten up, Gene,” Meg says coolly. “We don’t wanna damage the bitch before she delivers the litter, do we?”
There’s still a thrum of energy in his blood, and it sends a shiver down his fingertips as though it’s asking to be used. And Sam should be terrified, he knows that, because he hasn’t felt these powers since returning. But. It feels different this time. Purer. Good.
With the small amount of power surging through him, Sam pulls himself off of the wall and out of Meg’s hold, raising his hand to throw both her and her demon friend across the room. Kelly looks at him, wide eyed, but when he beckons to her, she doesn’t hesitate to come to his side. She grasps his hand tightly again, and power surges through him once more.
“Back on demon blood, huh, Sammy boy?” Meg laughs. There’s blood dripping from her smiling mouth, and her eyes are dancing. “Guess some vices are harder to kick than others. Luci would be so proud to see this if he were here.”
Sam tightens his hold, and Meg and the other demon choke. “Shut up,” he snaps. “Or do you want me to send your ass scrambling back to Hell? How long will it take you to crawl out again this time, Meg? Especially if I drop you right on Crowley’s doorstep.”
Meg sneers. “You don’t have the juice.”
He doesn’t see it, but Sam can feel it when his eyes flash gold. Meg’s eyes go wide as he says, “Wanna bet?”
“Sam,” Kelly whispers urgently, squeezing his hand. She’s frightened. Probably of him. He looks at her through golden eyes, but he’s not looking for himself. Kelly Kline’s son clings to the image of his mother and sends another joyous surge of power through Sam.
To Meg, to her friend, to any demon or angel or reaper or vampire that even thinks about coming near them, Sam says, “Stay the hell away from Kelly Kline. She’s under Winchester protection now, and her son will be, too. Anyone who wants to challenge that will have to go through me. And I beat the damn Devil .”
“How is this possible?” Meg snarls.
Sam just grins. “Call it a miracle.”
He holds tight to Kelly’s hand, and together they run from the hotel.
(sheep in wolf’s clothing.)
“Is it weird that I already think we could be best friends?” Kelly asks later, from the passenger seat of Sam’s car. She’s smiling when Sam glances over at her, palely illuminated by the streetlights they pass underneath. “Thanks for saving us back there.”
Sam shrugs. “Wasn’t really me. Most of it came from the little guy.”
“I told you he was good,” Kelly says smugly. Then her smile fades. “Sam, before the—before the demons came in. You were saying something.”
“Oh, don’t,” Sam starts awkwardly. He drops his head, sheepish. “Don’t worry about that, alright?”
Kelly shakes her head. “No, listen. By the end of this, I’ll be gone, and my baby will be born into this world with no parents. You’re right, Sam, someone needs to raise him, and that someone needs to be a really special person. You get that, don’t you? It’s why you offered.”
“Kelly,” Sam tries to say.
“He chose you, Sam,” she whispers. She reaches forward and grabs his forearm. The warmth of the nephilim’s energy touches him, recognizing him. Pleased and content. “You feel that, don’t you? We don’t have to wonder who will protect him, who will guide him when I’m gone. He already knows that it will be you.
Sam shakes his head. “Kelly,” he says again, “He didn’t choose me. What if he just. What if he recognizes me? Because I’m…”
Kelly squeezes his forearm tighter. At a red light, Sam finally looks at her. There’s a certainty in her face that Sam has only known one time in his life. She tells him, “It’s not because you’re Lucifer’s vessel. He knows you, Sam. He doesn’t care about anyone else. I don’t know why it’s me. And I don’t know why it’s you. But I know that he loves us, and he is good, and he knows that you will raise him to be something great.”
In his entire life, Sam had never entertained the idea of having kids. It was an afterthought, something he dismissed as impossible and improbable before he could actually do anything like think it through and start to want it. He was terrified to bring a child into a world that he himself didn’t understand. And he’s never been good with babies, never good with children. But.
Something changes. Something clicks. Kelly tells him that her son loves him already, and Sam thinks about this child that will be born on the same path that Sam was, and he thinks about what it means to get a chance to do something right. His chest swells. The nephilim can feel it, too.
“I wish I had your certainty,” Sam tells her.
Kelly lets go of him, sitting back in her seat. “You will,” she promises. “Where are we headed, anyway?”
“Somewhere that we’ll keep you and the baby safe until it’s time,” Sam tells her. “We’ll be able to protect you, really protect you. And you can meet everyone. My family. They’ll… they’ll be his family, too.”
For a moment, Kelly just looks at him with eyes that well with tears. “He’ll have a family,” she repeats. She starts to cry. And Sam understands that, too. He wonders how it feels to know that your son will grow up without you, but that he will grow up surrounded by love.
Kelly believes it’s all worth it. Sam will believe it one day, too. And he’ll spend as much of his life as he can convincing her son that all of this was worth it, that he was worth it, too.