"I don't think we can ever be what we were, you know? I just don't think I can trust you."
"You're not you anymore. And there's no going back."
Sam's been stabbed in the back before. That felt like this does. In the way that a papercut feels like a knife wound.
He'd hoped, after Dean came for him at the convent, that that voicemail had been fake. Somehow. The Dean who left that message couldn't be the Dean who asked if Sam was all right without Ruby's blood to drink; the Dean who said he was done trying to save Sam couldn't be the Dean who'd tried again anyway.
He knows better now.
Dean pauses on the way to the car, looks back. Sam doesn't move. Can't. Living without his right arm, his right leg, his right brain and his right lung and the right half of his heart, that's like living without Dean; he learned that in the months after and before Broward County. Ruby was a crutch strapped to his shoulder, one he should have thrown away the moment his other half crawled out of the grave, but he was so used to walking with one leg and a crutch—and now the crutch is ashes and he needs to stand on his own two feet but he doesn't have two feet to stand on and he does not have his brother to lean on.
"And there's no going back."
xXxXx
"We're family. And no matter how bad it gets, that doesn't change."
Dean doesn't like finding out that he's a liar.
Well. Not when he doesn't mean to be. He doesn't want to have been lying to Sam from the Heaven Hilton. And yeah, he'd meant what he'd said in Cold Spring, and Sam knew it, and he knew Sam knew it and Sam knew he knew Sam knew it, and they both knew Bobby knew and Bobby knew they knew it (knowledgeable family), but if anybody knew they were allowed take-backs on words said in the heat of the moment, Sam knew. (Funny word, 'knew'.) Same words, even.
But if Sam had heard Dean's voicemail—even if he hadn't, because Dean knows Sam's smart enough to realize that Dean wouldn't have come back to Sam if he meant to stick to his guns about not letting Sam come back to him, but Sam doesn't do the deleting-messages-content-unknown thing for anything but spam emails—because Sam heard Dean's apology and still sided with Ruby...
The last time Dean had felt like he was getting his heart cut out with a rusty knife—not counting in hell where it was literal—Sam had been dying with a rusty knife in his spine. And why the fuck not count in hell? Dean isn't sure if he'd have broken if it hadn't been a damn good imitation of Sam holding the blade.
But this isn't hell. This Sam is the real McCoy, and he's standing fifteen feet away instead of following Dean to the car and it's like Dean's trying to walk with only one leg, and he wants to trust Sam like someone with emphysema wants to breathe free (Sammy, I'm sorry) but he can't.
Dean takes it back. This is hell.