A/N: I was very fond of Soul Survivor. Hoping for more Demon Dean this season, because that was like a breath of fresh air, honestly. It shook up the dynamics of everything, and damn, it was awesome. Title is a vague reference to one of the lines in a T. S. Elliot poem, who in turn seems to have taken it from somewhere else, maybe, but hell if I can properly decipher any of it.
Dean wakes up with black eyes and no expression, but it melts into pure green and furrowed brows and a grimace, it melts back into his brother and Sam is hopeful enough to throw holy water in his face. Dean flinches but doesn't burn, doesn't scream and yell and growl, like a predator that's been restrained, it's freedom stolen.
The restraints actually keeping Dean in place are thrown away, and instead, Sam holds Dean with his arms, possibly crushing his bones while he was at it. Dean takes longer than normal to respond, and his arms are sluggish when they do, but it's a great feeling when his brother closes the hug and doesn't struggle.
"S… Sammy?" The words are quiet and it's a struggle to hear them.
"Hey, Dean."
Sam stands up, dragging his brother with him, and Dean is too busy blinking and staring at his hands like he doesn't know them to resist Sam's pull. He tugs his brother forward to his unsteady feet, swaying and unbalanced. Cas flitters at the edges of his vision, close enough if something should go wrong, far enough to keep from suffocating Dean with an invasion of space, air that he desperately needs. Sam isn't an invasion, never has been and never will, and he's grateful in how this makes dealing with Dean a simpler process.
He takes his brother by the hand and leads him out of the devil's trap, for once the guiding sibling, and Dean follows without protest.
Dean says he's hungry, so Sam fetches food he knows Dean loves because Dean looks about ready to collapse and as much as he knows his brother deserves the rest, the sleep, the isolation he wants so he can try to come to terms with things Sam can only see healing with time, Sam doesn't want him asleep. Not yet.
He mostly wants to talk, if not with each other than at least at Dean, before he can throw up walls and defense turrets loaded with words like no chick flick moments or I'm fine okay, because the last year hasn't been great between them. None of the past years have been great at all, really, but recently trying to just be partner and not brothers was hard, for many reasons and he - he's willing to forgive, a little, to be brothers again if that's what it takes for them to heal.
Seeing Metatron plunge an angel blade into his brother's chest sent flashes of Lilith and hellhounds bursting in his mind, and the emotions that came up with them. He'd buried the pain, under layers and layer, beneath the pain of Kevin's death and the betrayal his brother committed for him. And that was something they need to work through.
So Sam gets pie, lots of pie, and other assorted crap that his brother shouldn't be eating but does anyway. He adds a six pack to the cart for himself, because he told Cas he plans on getting drunk and he means it, wants to drink himself into a stupor and ease off six weeks of worry and guilt and that sickening twist in his gut that's been plaguing him since he went to his brother's room expecting a corpse and finding nothing but a note. The lady at the checkout counter gives him critical but a passing glance for the amount he brings up, but he doesn't care.
When he gets back, Cas is fiddling around with some books, unbothered and calm, meaning nothing has gone wrong in the hour or so he's been absent. He thanks Cas and Cas replies something about a female in the car outside and needing to go.
Dean isn't in his room, when Sam comes there to talk and eat their feelings away. He searches other rooms, pausing in particular to view the electrical room through it's hacked through door, and ends up in the kitchen, watching his brother take a swig of a bottle of whiskey and then toy with a cleaver at the table. There's a bright red gash on the palm of Dean's left hand.
Sam leaves the food in their flimsy plastic bags by the door and moves to his brother without hesitation. Dean looks like hell, eyes glazed over and leaning onto the counter like it's the only thing supporting him, and Sam wants to address that, wants to do something about that, but the key with Dean is always starting small, small but direct. He takes the cut hand in his and, as Dean only feebly resists, looks at it with years of experience, in healing and hurting.
It's not too deep. It's deep enough to sting, to hurt and throb for few hours, but not enough to cause lasting damage. It's already weak in it's blood flow, a few drops of red fall on the table but nothing more.
"You can't trust me," Dean says, rough and coarse. His throat is likely going to be sore for a while, with the amount of growling and shouting Dean did during the last portion of the treatment, but Sam doesn't think that's why Dean's voice sounds so flat and like sandpaper now. "You can't. If you even could before. I'm dangerous now, Sammy."
"No you're not." Sam says, "You're my brother."
"Yeah? And whole lot of good that did as a defense." Dean rips his hand away. "I tried to kill you. I almost did. And it'll happen again. The Mark is gonna turn me, when I die. And I will die, sooner or later. Because I don't have the blade but it'll kill me until I get it. And I will kill to get to it. Maybe not now. But later? It won't even be a choice."
"We'll fix you, Dean."
"Will we, Sam?" Dean looks away. "Because I'm doing everything I can not to run out those doors and never come back. And I'm not convinced that I shouldn't do it anyway."
The conversation is too familiar, and Sam wants absolutely none of it. None of the lies, of the evasion, none of the pain and guilt that Dean is threatening to drown in. He's left Dean wallow in his misery before, because his brother wanted space and time, but instead of repairing the cracks Dean just covers them up.
He grabs Dean's gimp hand on the first try, with his brother's reflexes so shot to hell it's not even a contest when he tries to evade, to pull away but gets caught all the same. Sam's had enough practice with Dean, growing up and growing apart and then coming back to put the pieces together, and if Dean is going to try to use his past logic against him, logic they've never listened to and logic they've lived their whole lives by, then Sam can do it too.
He drives his thumb into Dean's cut.
Dean hisses and tries to yank his arm back, to step back altogether, but Sam keeps his grip firm they both stay in place.
"You wanna know how we're going to do this? It's starts with believing in me, Dean. We are going to fix this. You gotta believe me." Sam says, as gently as he can. Dean's eyes dart back up to him, wounded and guilty, lips pressed together, his shoulders tense. "You gotta make it stone number one and build on it."
This isn't how things usually work, but it needs to be done. What he's asking for is more than just trust, more than faith, it's an imbalance of what they've always done, regardless of whether or not it was fair or what either of them really wanted to do at any given time. He's asking Dean to remove a load from his side of the scales, the guilt and prime directive that dictates the primary safety of Sammy above all else, and Dean looks like he's being asked to rip out one of his organs.
He's known he could trust Dean all his life, and even though that trust was breached, Dean is only ever doing what he knows how to, the most important thing to him. And while Sam is willing to forgive, to fix things and make them right again, it's not Sam's forgiveness that Dean doesn't have. It's his own.
"You gotta believe me," Sam says again, and Dean tries to lash out some words back at him, something sarcastic, something vengeful, something evasive, something just a little too close to the truth of what's going on inside. Nothing comes out. "I mean, c'mon, you've never listened to me all those time when I said it was dangerous to keep me around, after all, and things turned out alright."
His brother shakes his head, and Sam can hear the unsaid words of that was different.
It's not, though, even if that's not how Dean' sees it, with how he twists the past until he can always find a way to blame himself. The past is littered with things Sam blames himself for, things Dean blames himself for, and mix of things they refuse to blame each other for. Somehow, Dean always manages to one-up him on that.
This whole Mark of Cain business, though. Dean blames himself for it, doubtlessly, but so does Sam. He let Crowley talk his brother into this road, and he let Crowley whisk his brother high off the demon life further away and deeper into the dark, both by not being there when he should, even if looking at Dean those times was a searing pain of betrayal and how could you and this never should have happened. They had reasons, excuses, but somehow they never quite support the ends, never quite justifying the means. Demon blood and demon marks.
The parallels were there. Sam saw them, watching Dean follow the path of addiction with all the signs and warnings all there, shining in his face at every turn, pointing to a bloody end. The difference is he knows better, knows how to deal with the withdrawal and the guilt. Dean doesn't. Doesn't know how much of the problem was him or the Mark.
"You're my brother, and you know what that means," He says, easing off the pressure on hand but keeping it in his, preventing his brother from pulling away, physically and emotionally. "So I'm asking you, let me take care of you this time. I believe in you, Dean. All I'm asking is for you to believe in me too."
Dean stares at him, and swallows a bit like he has a block of cement stuck in his throat. His eyes are a little wide, his breathing is a bit shallow, and while Sam's not sure if it's because Dean is minutes away from passing out or because he knows he's asking Dean to take a running leap right out of his comfort zone that's lined with walls and barbed wire. But he knows Dean can do it. That Dean will do it.
"Okay?" Sam says.
Because Dean is his brother. Sometimes, they're the least similar people possible, so much that relation through DNA is questionable. But then the likeness shines through in shows of devotion and promise, in faith and fury. Dean can't refuse him any more than he could let him down in the beautiful room with Adam and Zachariah, no more than he could let him die after the trials.
"Okay," Dean says, barely above a whisper. "Okay."