To everyone following my latest Dark Angel fic CheckMate, I'm still in full swing with it (though I'm holed up in bed right now with what appears to be tonsillitis...and a hallucinogenic fever :D). But this little oneshot just flowed into my head so strong after watching the last episode of Supernatural. Sort of a sick person's ramblings - I just felt that even though Sam's behaviour in this Season has been atrocious and unjustiafiable, I sort of indentify with the concept...anyway this isn't so much exploring Sam's pschye as it is presenting a possible basis for his actions (again, inexcusable actions). Read and review with your thoughts!

-- Tyler

Don't apologize. It's not your fault. It's not your fault that you lied to me over and over. I get it now – you couldn't help it.

Actually, I could, Dean. I just…didn't.

Trembling with the first stages of the massive withdrawal that was beginning to ensue, Sam Winchester cupped his damp forehead in the palm of his hand and leant deeper into his slumped sitting position on the bed.

The ceiling fan was pumping brisk, stale air into the panic room, flooding through the iron compendium and somehow failing to reach Sam at all.

As if he deserved fresh air.

Sam sighed, a deep, shuddering inhale as he scrubbed a hand across his jaw and squeezed his eyes shut against the throbbing in his head. He silently wondered if the action would cause his brain to implode – not that he'd ever get that lucky.

In fact, luck had never been Sam's most prominent card in the game of life. The only saving grace in his twenty-six years on this wretched earth was his older brother, Dean.

But not anymore. No, for months now, years even, Sam knew he had ceased to be Dean's little brother, and had instead become his problem and now even his prisoner.

The disappointment shining in Dean's emerald eyes had become default to Sam. He'd shut off his conscience after becoming aware of the fact that no amount of feigning the desire to change could materialize it.

Sam inhaled and rotated his neck on the axis of his spine, feeling sweat trickle down the sides of his face. The shaking was getting stronger.

If I didn't know you, I would want to hunt you – and so would other hunters.

Let them then. Sam thought with a grim sort of resignation, shifting his legs to prevent them from cramping. Just let them fucking hunt me, Dean.

Dean's stubborn shielding of Sam from the consequences of his actions was a source of deep-rooted, inexplicable bitterness for his younger brother. A bigger part of Sam then he was willing to admit wished that Dean had caught him in the act of sucking Ruby's blood the first time around. He wished Dean had been there to haul him home and beat the crap out of him, cuss Sam out till he felt lower then the dust (the way only Dean had ever been able to).

I can't believe you're treating this like some kind of ridiculous drug intervention!

If it smells like a duck…

Again, Dean was still barely scratching the surface, reacting to the physical manifestations of a much deeper thread that had wound itself into the fabric of Sam's mind and actions.

And it's not Dean's fault, Sam ascertained as he felt his skin begin to crawl and resisted the urge to panic. It's mine.

Sam had been desperate to confide in Dean during the crucial, formative months leading up to his decision to take his training with Ruby to the next level. But he had been too terrified to do so. Not of Dean's reaction – he knew his older brother would love him no matter what, would do whatever it took to help Sam recover his morals and retrace his footsteps back to the path of his former self.

No. Sam hadn't been afraid of Dean pushing him away. He'd been afraid of Dean drawing him close again. Because as much as Sam would say it (and do his best to mean it) – he didn't want to change.

Changing meant abandoning the comfort and security Sam had finally created for himself after years of upheaval and unstructured living. His powers, the abilities he was honing and had come to confide in, the absolute of Lillith's death bringing a meaning to every sacrifice and every lie and every depth sunk to – it was the cake Sam got to have and eat as opposed to chasing a thankless life.

Sam's eyes flicked around coldly at the muted whispers dancing in his ears. Paranoia had become a luxury Sam couldn't afford – along with a conscience, a hope of attaining to the clean standard of behavior that would evoke Dean's pride and the angels' approval.

Fuck the angels. And fuck their approval.

Ruby had her secrets and her motives, that much Sam knew. He wasn't an idiot – despite Dean's apparent opinion to the contrary. Well…Sam wasn't naivety's fool, at any rate. He was just his own.

Sam had created his own bed of nails, and now he would sleep in it without complaint. Because what nobody seemed to grasp was that Sam had come to embrace the painful isolation into which his choices had confined him. What other option did he have?

Oh yeah. There was changing – climbing the steep staircase of redemption to a state of being that Sam wasn't even sure he wanted. Sure, he wanted the peace of mind which would accompany it, but was that worth the price?

Sam didn't know.

Dean knew. Sam wished he could be as stoic and assured as his older brother. For all his frolicking on the borderline of standard, frowned-upon behavior, Dean saw the world in the blacks and whites that Sam had used to.

Used to – because now everything was blurred into shades of gray, and Sam didn't know right from wrong anymore. The boundaries which had once seemed so defined to him now overlapped in strange and unprecedented ways and left him confused.

The only constant in Sam's life was the isolation into which his decisions had quarantined him – Bobby's panic room was a physical manifestation of that.

And as with both, Dean was at the door, Sam's only hope of escape, ready to help his brother on the uphill road to recovery, but barred from being by his side until Sam was ready to accept his help.

It cut Sam to the bone to know that Dean would have to remain shut out of his life until all of this was over.

An unpleasant thought flitted through Sam's mind, and he batted it away as he sank to the floor, curling into a ball.

Dean wasn't shut out.

Sam was shut in.