It said something that when he woke up in what looked like his seven year old body, his first reaction wasn't to freak out but to start swearing his head off profusely in as many languages as he knew.

It said even more that he only calmed down after cursing out a number of entities in their preferred language at least three times over. By that point Sam Winchester had finally calmed down and was taking stock of the situation.

Sam had lived through more than anyone. He had lived through several apocalypses, narrowly stopped said end of the world scenarios through the skin of his teeth with his brother despite opposition from some major heavy hitters on multiple sides, been stuck in hell for far too long for anyone to remain sane, and had become a walking encyclopedia of hunter lore since his brother only ever bothered to learn what was needed to kill or seal something away.

To be fair, Dean had been put through just as much, if not more.

By the time he was eight...it took him a long while to get used to this new situation and hide the truth from an increasingly concerned Dean who was far easier to live with now than he would be in the future...he had come up with a rather simple plan.

During their time in the Men of Letters bunker, Sam had accidentally stumbled across an emergency exit that clearly hadn't been used since the bunker was made. It had taken him hours (mostly because he was waiting for Dean to cool off) but he had found the entrance from the outside. It was overgrown to hell and back, rusted over so badly that it would take either an act of God or something far stronger than a human to open it...and that was only from the inside. Like all entrances to the bunker, it was so heavily warded that nothing inhuman could open the damn thing from the outside.

Sam had, during his many times of avoiding Dean for being a complete asshole, managed to get the blasted thing open without telling his brother about it. It was therapeutic and gave him something other than his brother being a bastard to think about for the umpteenth time.

He never told Dean. So long as he appeared within five minutes of his brother calling him on his cell phone for a hunt, Dean never asked where he was or what he was doing. After all, the area was so warded demons couldn't get in and even Castiel had trouble getting in and out of the bunker without going through the doors first.

Sam still remembered where the bunker was. It had become the closest thing to a home he ever had. He also remembered rather vividly where the other entrance was and what he would need to get the damn thing open.

He had over a decade to prepare for when he had the argument with his father and left for Stanford originally. So long as he was discreet about it, John would never know about it or the fact that his son had memories of things he shouldn't.

He had already given Sam dirty looks for studying beyond whatever monster attracted his unfortunate attention that month because he claimed hunter lore was 'interesting'.

Bobby knew something was up with Sam, but had wisely kept his mouth shut because he knew damn well what a paranoid bastard John could be. He was already giving his son looks that didn't inspire the warm and fuzzies.

So when Sam managed to convince John to let him stay with Bobby so he could attend a perfectly harmless school trip, well, Bobby knew something was up.

He did not expect Sam to give him the time date and rough location of a boy his own age. A boy that was suffering from some rather disturbing abuse from his father due to how his mother died.

A mother who was killed in the exact same circumstances as John's wife Mary. A boy who was born in the same year as Sam himself.

Once was bad luck, but after years of Hunting Bobby didn't believe in coincidences like this. Especially considering the fact that the woman was literally pinned to the ceiling and there was no known cause to the fire.

Bobby looked at Sam, who had a neutral look on his face.

"Alright boy, you got my attention. Now what is it you're trying to tell me?" he asked.

He might be a paranoid bastard, but he trusted Sam. And the boy he viewed as a surrogate son had already proven he wasn't a changeling, demon or any other nasty creature Bobby had hunted over the years.

What happened next would set the interaction with Sam for the next five years.

Sam had memories he shouldn't and knowledge that a large number of nasty bastards would happily kill him and anyone he told if they knew he had it. Both above and below.

The problem was that he couldn't really wait the five years before his original argument with John to act. By then far too many people would be watching him, especially the demon that killed Mary Winchester.

Which is why Sam was trusting Bobby.

To say the older hunter was skeptical was putting it mildly, but Sam pointed him in the general direction of someone who could verify his claims about some of the information he had. Though he had to make it look like a complete coincidence that he was in the area or talking to the man in the first place.

By the time Bobby was babysitting Sam again, who was studying for his classes while Dean helped John buy groceries, Bobby was willing to take a leap of faith.

"I've met with the friend you mentioned. He verified what you told me before, and clarified a few things I got wrong," said Bobby.

Sam's information about the now-defunct Men of Letters had panned out. The man he had sent Bobby to meet was the last remaining member of the American branch, and he was more than happy to verify the information, thinking that the one with the key had somehow returned.

Finding out that was not the case had caught him off guard, but he also verified that there was an emergency entrance that had been left unlocked simply because no one could get the damn thing open. It was warded extra because of it, but left alone.

It was going to take a lot of hard, manual labor to get the blasted thing to open, but considering the treasure trove of information inside, it would be well worth it.

Best of all no one would be watching for Bobby or the partner he planned to bring into the endeavor. Rufus was a stubborn son of a bitch, but he was also an unknown and would be tempted with the information inside.

They would have to do this on the sly...if anyone knew what they were up to, a number of forces would target them without hesitation.

Luckily Bobby had a number of people he could trust that could help him.

Dean watched with unhappy frustration as Sam and his father got into yet another argument over college. Sam wanted to have an actual life away from hunting, and John wanted him to stay close for his own protection.

Sam already had an admittance letter from the college, one that he had hidden from their father.

Sam had a determined look on his face. He was leaving whether John permitted it or not.

Dean didn't want his brother to go, but also knew Sam would resent him for the rest of his life if he did.

Sam waited until John became too drunk to stay awake. But he did take enough time to tell Dean he was going and that he would at least answer his brother's calls.

By morning Sam was gone, and John was pissed.

With Sam...

Sam let out a sigh of relief. This was it. He was finally free of the major scrutiny on him. He had a very limited window to completely disappear off the map from a number of radars that were on the Winchester line.

Bobby had already done his part...the bunker was now open, and being used as the main repository for his rarer books. The older hunter was glad to have a safe place to stash them...they were taking up a lot of space and this freed him to find new ones for his collection.

Sam had already collected what he needed to make the special bags that would make him appear like any other human. He already had the anti-possession tattoo after 'accidentally' discovering it in one of Bobby's many books. John had paid for all three of them to get it.

Twelve hours after leaving his father and older brother, Sam Winchester vanished without a trace. A number of 'interested parties' became slightly concerned when he never appeared in Stanford.

Even more became alarmed when they couldn't find him anywhere for two full months.

During that time a new name sprung up in the Hunter community as the go-to for information and the odd 'credentials'.

His handle was "Archangel" among hunters, but everyone knew him as Gabriel. No one knew what the guy looked like, just that he was scarily efficient at tracking down monsters and how to deal with them.

It took very little time for him to establish himself as someone who knew what he was doing and was likely a former hunter himself who had been sidelined due to the inevitable injuries.

Sam thought himself rather clever for the identity, especially since he knew for a fact the real Gabriel would get a good long laugh at him screwing over his brothers like this without actually killing them. Hell, he'd likely join in on the fun.

The only difficulty he had as the 'messenger' of the Hunting community was dealing with his father and brother. Apparently they had discovered rather quickly Sam wasn't in Stanford and had never actually enrolled. More to the point no one fitting his description had been seen in the area.

John and Dean couldn't exactly file a missing persons report. Hunters lived on the gray area of the law and most law enforcement would believe them to be crazy the second they tried to explain what they did for a living. And half the ones that would believe them were too low ranked to do any good.

Usually those people had a run-in first hand with the supernatural and were more inclined to believe because of it.

Most hunters usually got things done by impersonating out-of-town law enforcement from other agencies. Sam couldn't count the number of times he had 'verified' another hunter's credentials to help ease their job. Hell, he had an up-to-date book on FBI protocol that he used to make it sound more official!

The problem was that was highly illegal, and add in the identity theft, the low-level scams and other activities the law frowned upon...and it made it almost impossible for John or Dean to trust local authorities with the fact that he was missing.

The only reason they didn't completely freak out was Bobby. Not only was he in regular contact with Sam, but Sam himself spoke to Dean after Bobby called him.

He had to change his number twice to be safe.

Sam hated lying to his brother, but it would be too suspicious for Dean to disappear the same way Sam had so soon. Besides, Dean was still trusted John too much for him to be trustworthy. He would want to bring their father into this and it didn't help that Sam already knew how to summon the demon that killed their mother.

The problem was that once John killed him, he would likely want to stop hunting. And the beings after them would never let that happen. They needed Sam and Dean to be hunters. Needed them to act as hunters in order to manipulate them with countless innocents that needed saving.

And Sam had put in far too much effort now to let John's idiocy or paranoia ruin it.

He did love his father, but he had learned the hard way over and over again that dealing with stubborn bastards like him only made things worse if you didn't do it correctly. He had risked enough trusting Bobby and his hunter contacts with the information about the Bunker.

There was too much knowledge in here about the supernatural for any faction to allow the wrong human to get it. And quite a few considered the Winchester family the 'wrong' humans to know about this place.

After all, it meant they ran a strong risk of becoming a genuine threat to them.

"Well, you've well and truly stirred up the pot, you idjit," said Bobby.

He was the most frequent visitor Sam had, next to the odd hunter. Ellen was certainly more inclined to trust Sam over John after the boy's warning had saved her husband. If she hadn't left Jo with the boys and Bobby, John's foolishness would have cost him his life.

"I'm guessing Dean took it badly."

"To put it mildly. John about threw a major fit when I brought up his old man," said Bobby flatly.

Sam knew that would piss his father off, but it was also the only clue he could give his father. If John was a real hunter he'd eventually learn about the Men of Letters, if certain forces allowed him to get that far.

Worst case scenario, Bobby would introduce him to the same man who confirmed their existence...and the fact that John's own father was as close to a supernatural researcher as Bobby himself, but had gone missing rather than killed like John assumed.

He didn't fancy explaining to John about Mary or the fact she came from a long line of hunters.

He still had trouble believing that Sam managed to find an authentic key to the actual front door on an online auction site of all things. Several attempts had been made to reclaim it, but since Sam was literally off the grid the people after the key had been largely unsuccessful.