Wages of the Faithful
Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural, nor do own Sam or Dean, or anything within. I may have gotten some details wrong, but this is just a "what if?" kind of thing. Please R&R! Takes place during "Faith" in the first season. The title comes from Romans 4:4-5.
Sam Winchester will do anything to save his brother. It is a truth firmly lodged in the back of his throat, in the pit of his stomach, fluttering all around his brain in a jumble of nervous thoughts.
He has one idea, then dismisses it. Picks up a book on healing charms, then throws it back down, cracking the spine and not caring that it is a library book. He has read it already. It— along with everything else he has thought— is useless.
Dean is going to die. Sam can work miracles at school, scoring high on his LSATs, acing Dr. Bryant's Constitutional law monstrosity, planning Jessica's birthday party and actually managing to surprise her. But he cannot stop Dean from dying of heart failure at the age of twenty-seven.
The phone rings then and Sam springs for it. He knows, with the confidence of a child, that it is his father and that his father will know what to do.
"Hello?" he answers shakily.
"Sam?"
It is not his father. It is an old hunting buddy of his dad's and Sam feels the disappointment too keenly. "Yeah, this is Sam."
"Sam! Good to hear your voice. Dean around?"
Dean is dying in the hospital. He can't say it, so he only chokes out, "No. Look, Gary, do you—"
Gary cuts him off. "Then I'll just tell you. I got a hunt for you guys if you want it. I'd take it, but I've got a nest of… something slimy here in Boston."
"Gary, sorry, we're not taking any hunts right now."
"Sam, this is a good one. It got the heads up from a friend of mine down in Nebraska. There's this preacher. He keeps bringing people back from the brink of death but then get this— others keep dropping dead like flies all around him."
Sam zeroes in on one part of that sentence. "Bringing people back from the brink of death?"
"Yeah. Cancer, brain tumors, heart conditions…"
Heart conditions.
"What's his name?"
"Roy LeGrange. You change your mind?"
"Maybe. Thanks for the heads up," Sam says, and flips the phone shut.
He googles Roy LeGrange. It only takes him a half an hour to confirm what Gary told him. Before he even makes a conscious decision he has Mapquested the town in Nebraska.
The moment of decision never comes, maybe because there never was a choice. He tells Dean about the specialist and drives to Nebraska. It is the only time Dean has willingly let him drive for more than one day. He drags Dean into the tent and when Dean tries to demur from going to the pulpit he doesn't let him. If someone is going to be healed, if someone is going to die to save someone else... It's going to be Dean who gets to live. Sam means it when he tells Dean he won't let him die, period.
For a moment, after it's all over, Sam thinks that they will get out without Dean ever knowing. But the doctor tells them about the man who died, and Dean is nothing if not clever.
He does the research while Dean is at the healer's, backtracking over bookmarked pages. When Dean walks in, he says it. "I'm sorry."
He explains and Dean is horrified. Of course. He makes the hunt a game, seems to have the time of his life, but he wouldn't do it if it wasn't to protect people. To help them. Dean looks so disgusted with himself, for living, for his heart beating while someone else's isn't, that Sam almost wants to tell him the truth. But then that disgust will be focused on him and Sam couldn't bear that.
"I didn't know," he says and knows that Dean believes him. Because Sam has always been the one who lives in black and white. Because while they had destroyed a hundred demons or ghosts to save each other, Dean knows that Sam would never contemplate taking another human life. Sam proves it when he tells Dean that they cannot kill Roy LeGrange. No one else should have to die.
Sam wonders what Dean would do in his situation, wonders if his decision would be the same. Wonders if letting Sam die would even be an option, because Dean's death is something Sam refuses to allow.
They stop the Reaper, stop Roy LeGrange's wife, and leave behind a town bereft. People will die; people will live. They drive on in the Impala, Dean behind the wheel, as he should be, but quiet. Sam is quiet as well, taking stock within himself.
Sam knows something about himself now, something that chills him. Something that makes him a good brother, but a questionable human being.
Sam Winchester had killed for his brother.
And he would do it again.