Sam.
Sam.
Sammy.
And the Dean can't see, can't see because that's Sam laying there with all the Kansas bled right out of him. Tongues of that sweet summertime cupped red and inevitable in his flannel shirt cuffs, grinding shiny crimson mountain ranges across his broken chest.
Dean lurches and he sees them all, like a twisted omnipotent God.
Mom, Dad, Sam. Their names exhaled out in staccato succession like salted rounds. Like it's the very first time. But he's always known, really, that it was his mother's flames had kissed him into wandering. The restless, livid blood of his father set too deep.
Now Dean's an arid calm that presses into him like a gravity well. There's this crime scene in front of him, his splintered brotherly crime scene, that has shaggy hair and dimples and was the best kind of good he could know, Christ he'll never really get to figure out. What kind of man that little bitch is gonna be, or if he wanted bacon with his eggs for breakfast tomorrow, or how he was going to track down that next demon or spirit or whatever.
A total, indestructible mystery.
He always knew that his broken-axis life was haunted, a rot carried like an amicable old wound.
His hand knows the hilt of the gun, so familiar-smooth he's not afraid, all those Winchesters weren't meant to last long anyways. They were just too good at their job, always hit 'em right in the sweet spot.
I'm so sorry, Sammy.
Sam stares at the ceiling with ramshackle eyes.