A/N: Not really sure what to call this. But I liked writing it.
Disclaimer: Supernatural is not mine. I am making no money.
Black and White and In Between
Sammy's always seen the world in shades of gray. It's the thing Dean's always hated most about him—how Sammy's world is filled with Lenores and Amys and Kates, things they should hunt and kill but Sammy sees the monsters as people and it makes things complicated. It's what let Ruby into his head and his bed and his soul. It's why he died that first time, turning his back on a killer in a "there can be only one" situation.
Sammy's world is a blurry sketch filled with shading, and the dark bleeds into the light so slowly it's impossible to find the dividing line.
Dean's world is simpler. Easier. It's stark, black and white without even a bit of crosshatching to shade it. There are blocks of shadows, inky and sharp-edged, and swaths of blinding white. Lucifer bad, Castiel good, and ne'er the twain shall meet. He can kill a monster in front of its spawn and not feel a second's guilt but that kid's eyes haunt him, accusing, accusing, always there and go out and drink and fuck and kill another thing the next day, and his life is good. It's how he can make the hard choices in a split second—monster bad, kill monster. Sammy good, save Sammy. And Sam, even when he's bad…
Well, he's the most brilliant white in the whole damn world.
Sammy complicates Dean's world. He makes him try to cure Madison, and breaks when they fail. He trusts fucking demons when Dean is screaming at him to stop. He is so eager to trust the monsters that Dean wonders sometimes how they came from the same place, the same life, the same father but Dad treated Sammy different, always did to the very end but they did. They grew up in each other's skin, on the road, in the Impala, tangled in the same sheets on the same bed far past the size they should have slept apart.
Even then, Sammy saw the gray. Hunting monsters and saving people—sure, that was important, but there were other things that were important too. Dean glimpsed the gray once, in Sonny's eyes and Robin's arms, but it slipped away and he never caught it again. The world was black, and his family was the only white he could touch. The others, the innocents and civilians who didn't know what lived in the dark—they weren't for him and never would be. He turned his back on gray, and fell into the extremes.
Sammy's gray is all that keeps Dean from becoming Gordon, sometimes.
Sammy sees the world in shades of gray. It's why Sam doesn't give up when Dean's eyes go black and he bathes in blood and evil. Sam's gray pulls Dean back, and maybe he isn't all white anymore but that doesn't mean he's damned, not if Sam can still look at him like he's the entire world. Not if Sammy can still forgive him and find the little bit of white that's left. Sammy sees the world in shades of gray, and it's the thing Dean's always loved best about him.