It was the day after dad’s death that Deanna Winchester realised her hair had gotten longer.
It all started when they had been kids. After mom died, De didn’t really have women in her life anymore. By age six her hair was long and ratty, and Sam’s was always a mess. It had been her fault- when De was seven they’d been staying in a cabin around Crescent City, CA on a hunt when Sam got her hair stuck in some branches walking to the bathrooms. She screamed so much, terrified that a spirit had gotten ahold of her that they’d had to leave the campground and almost had to give up the hunt. The next day, dad went out to a CVS and came back with an electric razor. Since then, De had always shaved her head, even after she got older and could take care of herself. In fact, most things that made her a girl were a sign of weakness. She tried to distance herself from anything that made her feminine, because there were no hunters that were girls. Nobody outright said it, but whenever dad mentioned to the others he met that he had two daughters, De felt their disdain, and so she tried everything to make sure that she and Sam weren’t an inconvenience.
She was shit at teaching Sam, though. De didn’t even know about periods until she was thirteen, and due to her piss poor diet and the physical demands of her life on the road, she didn’t get them. Sam got hers first. She was horrified and embarrassed, could barely even tell De that something was wrong. They both panicked, Sam because she had no idea what was going on and De because she had no idea what to do. De had never felt so unprepared, and it stung even more knowing she was supposed to be the responsible one, knowing she had let Sammy down. She didn’t tell dad. Instead, De took to shoplifting, breaking into the dispensers at gas stations and restaurants when she could. De never told dad any of the girl stuff. If he knew that she’d been hiding shit from her, that Sam hadn’t come to him, he’d be pissed. They needed to keep a low profile, after all. Stealing when it wasn’t necessary wasn’t a risk they could take. So De was careful. She didn’t need to give dad any more ammunition for when he would inevitably fight with Sam.
And they did fight. De was older when mom had died, so she had more of a grasp on the situation, but Sam was just a baby. She didn’t remember mom, so she wasn’t nearly as gentle with dad when she wanted her way. When she was little, it was more understandable- Sam was a neurotic, freaky kid who would scream at the slightest inconvenience, but De could usually deal with her. They grew up on the few channels that were available for free on motel TV, toys De skimmed from the checkout line at the dollar store and candy grabbed by the fistfull from offices and other stores. Sam would usually shut up if De could get her some sugar. But when she got into the double digits, it was harder. Sam started to pride herself on knowing things. It was helpful in cases sometimes, a little bit of knowledge that she’d picked up doing research, but when it spanned beyond that, it annoyed the hell out of De. She’d start to correct De, sometimes when she was being snippy, but often with no malice at all. It was little things, like state capitals, scientific facts, historical facts. De usually teased her back, but it made her feel deeply inferior. De wasn’t good at the whole learning thing, to be honest. The couple weeks a year that they were able to spend in school, De just didn’t get it. All of this stupid shit about the quadratic formula, or similies vs metaphors, or even basic things about historical events didn’t matter. If she couldn’t use it to help or hurt, it wasn’t worth taking up space in her head. Plus, every person she met at school was awful. Girls would look down at her, scrawny and short with calloused hands and no hair. Boys didn’t give her a second glance, and she just kept her head down and tried to get through each day. She didn’t see the point of it. The only things she was ever good at were things she could do with her hands, not this useless intellectual shit which wouldn’t make a difference when you were lighting a corpse on fire. While De couldn’t tell you anything about the green light across the bay and sure as hell couldn’t divide fractions, she could operate about ten different guns, change a car battery, and keep herself alive. But the worst thing about school was how it separated her from Sam. De knew Sam could hold her own in a fight, but it worried her to no end that she couldn’t be there to back her up. Sam was too anxious for her own good. Besides, their skill set didn't really function in an environment where they had to keep a low profile. What De hated most, though, was how much Sam liked school. When she’d come to pick her up and walk her back to where they were staying that month, Sam would talk incessantly about things she’d learned, things she’d overheard. She tried after school stuff sometimes- soccer once, and De had sat awkwardly in the bleachers by herself during their final game. It was great, watching Sam come into her own, but it hurt terribly to feel her pulling away. Dad liked both of them to be self sufficient, but he didn’t like that Sam cared so much about a life outside of hunting. De understood and agreed with him, but she wondered sometimes if it was just a way to pick a fight. Not that Sam was any stranger to needling him- when it came to a head, she and dad would spar so violently De would just leave until they tired themselves out.
De lost her virginity when she was fifteen. It had been a night when Dad and Sam were fighting. It was about something stupid- one of Sam’s teachers had offered to help her enter a stupid writing competition and needed a parent permission slip, and Dad had refused, reminding Sam that if they were lucky, they wouldn’t be in town for much longer. Sam had absolutely lost it, screaming and throwing things and De left through their bedroom window just to escape the noise. She’d taken the car and gone to the shitty bar, knowing that she looked like shit but just trying to disappear. It didn't work. A man offered her a drink. He was older, definitely thirties or forties, and De was nervous about him at first. She knew what men did when they wanted her attention, she wasn’t stupid, but honestly she was terrifed of sex. But for some reason, at that moment she felt stupidly brave. She’d lied and told him she was eighteen, and they’d fucked in the back of his car. De knew it might’ve been stupid, that he might’ve been a serial killer or a rapist or some ungodly horror that was out to punish her for her sins, but she’d made it out alive. He didn’t give orders, had no time to even talk. As she lay there on the seat underneath him, her naked back pressed against the faux leather, she knew this was something that she’d be doing for the rest of her life. Now she had something, something her dad couldn’t do and it was a little exhilarating to have a somewhat normal teenage transgression. Even if she knew the guys were taking advantage of her, knew that she was fucked up and broken and they were just using her, she pretended it would fix things, and that she only had sex if she could get someting from them. From then on, she had a way of getting information from guys. If dad knew, he never said anything when she disappeared for a few hours and came back with key cards, fake IDs, money. As she got older, De would do it with men she didn’t need anything from, playing the innocent runaway in need of protection while not letting herself glance at the waitresses. De knew something was fucked up about this, she knew, but the time she spent with guys was time spent not thinking, and De would take that escape over anything.
It sucked when Sam grew up enough to figure it out. When De would show up late back to the hotel room, Sam would be up waiting for her, that disdainful look in her eyes. De didn’t know if she knew the full extent of what was going on, but she sure as hell wasn’t gonna let her know. Sam would say something snide about how dangerous it was to be out alone at night, and De would cuss at her or insult her appearance, and then put in headphones and play Metallica as loud as she could. De swore to herself that Sam would never have to do anything like that. She swore that she would make sure Sam could be a kid for just a little while longer.
Their relationship was far from awful. Sure, De hated her sister as all siblings do, but she wasn’t gonna let anything happen to Sam. They had a weird childhood, but De thought she did a good job making sure Sam turned out alright. De was charming, which worked for their cons sometimes, but Sam was adorable. While she’d be at the cashier playing the poor kid who’d lost her way, De was in the back pilfering comic books, peanut M&Ms, even a Gameboy one year which they’d destroyed fighting over it in the backseat of the car. They worked well as a team. But Sam always had a fierce drive to be independent. Sam was a big fan of Nancy Drew and Magic Tree House, and she read them at a speed which De could not understand. Sam actually looked forward to the days they’d spend with dad in the libraries doing research into county records. While De lay around bored or tried to get past the catalogue section of the computers, Sam would bury her nose in a book and read nonstop the whole day, lost in a world entirely her own.
That’s partially how she got away with getting into college.
It had felt like a stab in the back when Sam had announced she wanted to go to school. She’d applied and everything, taught herself all of the admissions shit, got herself a letter of rec from a priest they’d helped with a poltergeist problem, and even scraped up enough money and an excuse to get away from dad long enough to take the SAT. When she had left, De had helped her pack, angrily refusing to look at her the entire time. Sam was apologetic, always had been too sentimental for their line of work, but De wouldn’t budge. It was stupid to be mad at her for such a dumb reason, but she was angry that the life she had worked so hard for for Sam hadn’t been enough for her. Then she was gone, and it was just her and dad, travelling around the country, and De kept shaving her head.
It was about a year after Sam left that De kissed a girl for the first time. Dad was out and she was hanging out around a coffee shop trying to get leads when she met Cassie, and they hit it off right away. It wasn’t until De went back to her place and Cassie had tried to kiss her that she knew that she could even be attracted to girls. The kiss had been awkward- they’d both been sitting up against Cassie’s bed, listening to music when Cassie had leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. De froze, practically went catatonic and then practically ran out of her house. De was horrified with herself, and started ignoring Cassie after that, eventually telling her about the hunting because it was easier than trying to work out what she was feeling. Dad didn’t know and she kept it that way, and De never let herself get involved with a girl again. She didn’t let herself linger on any emotions, to think about what it might mean that maybe she wasn’t gonna ever end up with a guy and have the 2.5 kids that normal life had always promised. Even though she’d known that she probably was never going to settle down, she had maintained a kind of stupid hope that maybe one day she could marry some guy and be done with all of this. The fact that she might also have a thing for girls threw a wrench into that- what if, even if she gave up hunting for good, there was always a chance she’d be a freak who couldn’t ever really be normal? Ghosts, monsters, even demons she understood, but De was fucking terrifed of people. So she shut them out, only allowing herself to fuck guys when she could. It wasn’t as if she didn’t like them- she was attracted to men, and she kept it at that. She was getting used to being on her own, actually, until dad went missing.
It was more emotional than De thought it would be, seeing her sister after two years apart. Sam had settled nicely, looking straight from a fucking college fair brochure with the life she had made for herself. It was clear from the start that Sam hadn’t told anyone about her piece of shit dad and her freak sister. It was kind of funny, really, that Sam had been the one to make it out and managed to make something of herself. A pre-law kid with a full ride at Stanford was such a Sam thing to do. But Sam wasn’t the same. De was honestly shocked to see that Sam had managed to get herself a boyfriend at school. Sam was pretty, sure, but she just didn’t really have charisma. Just shy of six feet in flats, Sam was painfully awkward from her teenage years. Back when she’d lived with De and dad, she had attempted to teach herself the basics of styling and fashion, but she’d never had the money and neither Dad nor De could’ve been of any help. De was willing to bet she’d never even kissed a guy before college. The guy wasn’t anything special, a scrawny thing barely taller than Sam, but he was certainly more handsome than De would’ve expected. It was clear from the first second that Sam didn’t want De there, hovering by her boyfriend’s side and not looking De in the eye. De tried not to acknowledge it, trying to mess around and joke, but it hurt really bad to know that Sam was ashamed of her.
There was almost a pleasure in bringing dad up. Knowing that she could bring Sam down a peg, make her remember the kind of hell they grew up in, the hell De couldn’t escape from. De couldn’t ever have the life that Sam had, the life she may have wanted once but had become so far removed from her frame of reference that it wasn’t possible to even really imagine anymore. Sam couldn’t tell her boyfriend about dad, about who they really were. In a way, it made them equal.
When Sam’s boyfriend died and Sam took off with De again, she had no idea what to think.The energy of their hunts wasn’t the same as it had been when they were kids. Sam was much more capable, cooler under pressure, a far cry from the paranoid little girl she had once been. In one way, it was incredible to be with Sam again, to have her within arms’ reach so nothing could ever hurt her as long as De was around to protect. But it also made her vulnerable. Sam had all that hurt and rage beneath the sweet exterior, and De knew that the closer she was to whatever had killed mom, the more likely she was to get hurt. De shrugged it off mostly, the devil you know beats the devil you don’t, after all. But it still gnawed at her that she might be responsible for getting her baby sister hurt. So she kept up all of the little rituals which prepared her to be on the top of her game at all times, which included shaving her head.
When dad came back, she forgot all about that.
It was honestly kind of fucked, how much she cared about his approval, but she didn’t know how much she’d missed him until dad was back. That kind of deep ache in her chest that went away was certainly unhealthily codependent, sure, but nothing about her family’s relationships had been anywhere close to healthy for a long time. They were all so caught up in getting the Colt that De didn’t think about much else, except that she needed to kill the son of a bitch who had cost her her family life that she never had. Then she’d died. After coming back, she’d been too fucking torn up to even think about her appearance until she was standing next to Sam, dad’s body burning to ash in front of her.
It was weird, maybe, to focus on something like her hair when everything she’d spent her life working for had been destroyed overnight, but De couldn’t help it. It wasn’t as if her hair was long or anything, barely a half an inch. But for some reason, that half inch was what made her start to cry.
Sam, who’d been weeping quietly beside her for the better part of an hour looked at De, her eyes wide with surprise. De didn’t cry. She wasn’t someone who let the emotions get the best of her. But that only made it worse. Why would dad trade his immortal soul for a fucking washed up useless daughter who couldn’t survive without her family and was so close to blowing her brains out in her car at the thought of being alone? How had Sammy ended up with her for a sister, a girl who couldn’t protect her, instead of dad who actually had somewhat of a fucking clue? Standing there, with her hand on the fuzz that was her hair, she knew she’d never shave it again. Dad had traded his life for hers. What was the point in keeping up the practice but for the approval of the man who knew she wasn’t ever going to be good enough for. De knew that he was truly gone.
She felt Sam wrap her arms around her before she saw it, and didn’t even resist hugging her back. They weren’t this kind of family either, but what even kind of family were they anymore, without dad? She gripped Sam tightly, her face buried in her jacket, trying to expel the pain and hurt of twenty seven years in a single moment.
It didn’t work of course. Nobody could just walk off that kind of relationship with their father. But as they stood there with the fire crackling beside them, De thought maybe she was ready to try.