Forget About the Sunshine
Prologue:
"He's coming," Sam gasped.
As the light poured out of the circle of blood on the floor, the earth under their feet shook. Dean pulled on Sam's arm to lead him away, but his brother was frozen in place, his face filled with horror.
"Sam," Dean said, a warning, but the air around them was screaming. Dean couldn't hear himself over the roar; there was no way Sam could hear him.
The white light stretched out, filled the little church until everything around them was blotted out. Dean looked around, tried to find something – anything – in that unholy blaze, but he couldn't see a thing.
Not even Sam.
When Dean came to, everything had changed. They were in a field in the middle of nowhere. Blond strands of grass surrounded them, lending a slight but vulnerable shelter. The sky was light blue, and it reminded Dean of how the sky looked that first day out of Hell. Sam sat next to him in the dirt, a shadow facing away. Old blood stained his jeans, dry and brown and stiff. He turned a little as Dean stirred, just his head, cocking one ear towards Dean, but he didn't move any further than that.
Dean exhaled and leaned into the cool earth under him. Something new was up with his brother, and Dean wanted to shake him already. Ever since Castiel pulled Dean out of Hell, Sam had kept his own special brand of secrets, and getting him to share any of it was like sawing off his own foot. Slow, painful, and in the end the person who was walking around with a limp was Dean.
He sat up and wiped at the dried blood crusted under his nose. He didn't remember the nosebleed, but he had obviously been out for a while. The passage of time had been just a flicker – felt like he'd blinked and was there more than anything.
"How long was I out?" he asked.
Sam didn't answer, he just shrugged. The silence was a new thing. Dean expected Sam to be all over him once he was awake, trying to explain or apologize again or something, so it was strange that he hadn't said anything yet. Even when he was lying to Dean, at least he was still talking.
Dean touched his shoulder, a soft tap, tentative. There was a chance that Sam hadn't gotten his voicemail, that he'd deleted it without listening, that he was afraid of what Dean might do to him. "Hey, man. Talk to me."
"It's official," Sam said. His voice was rough and raw, like he'd been crying or screaming or both. "I did it. I summoned Lucifer. I'm the –"
Dean cut him off with a cuff to the back of his head. Sam ducked, flinched – whatever – and pulled himself up tight until he seemed to shrink. "Look at me, Sam. Yeah, you fucked up. Yeah, things are looking kinda bad..."
"That's an understatement," Sam muttered, and he sounded so much younger, more like the Sam Dean had known before his time in the Pit. Sam spread his arms open, framing the horizon, shook his head, and then finally turned his head toward Dean. He kept his eyes shut, and his face was pained. "This is what Dad wanted you to stop, Dean. You should have killed me before it happened, before it got this far. Look, it's what he would have wanted."
"It's not what I wanted," Dean countered. The force of his own voice surprised him. "Dad was full of it, he should have never said that kind of shit to me in the first place."
Sam dropped his head, and his hair fell across his face. He still hadn't opened his eyes, and the fact that he hadn't made a cold knot form in Dean's belly.
"Look at me," Dean said.
Sam turned his face away. "You sure? It's not pretty."
"How bad can it be, Sammy? Jesus Christ –"
Sam flinched.
Dean had to remind himself to breathe, had to think about his baby brother and everything the two of them had been through together. Fuck, he had to remind himself that Sam was his brother. "Look at me," he said again.
When Sam turned, it was with his entire body. A surrender, defeat written across the line of his shoulders. "I'm sorry," Sam said, his voice hardly above a whisper. "I'm so, so sorry." And then he looked at Dean for the first time since Lucifer had come back to earth.
Sam's eyes were black.