A/N: Part Three, guys! Thanks for reading...hope it was worth it :-) I enjoyed writing it a lot!
As usual, major angst ahead. And some language/slight goriness, I guess.
Disclaimers apply as usual.
Review? :-)
The motel room is empty, and Dean feels as though he's entering a tomb. His tomb. He manages to flip on the lights, kick the door shut behind him, before he stumbles, slumps, falls on the floor by one of the rickety beds.
He rights himself shakily after a moment (nobody else to do it) and rests with his back against the bed. Hardly comfortable, but at least he's stable.
Gingerly, he peels the blood-soaked cloth away from his shoulder, grimacing down at it. Awkward angle to see—worse to clean and suture.
(Nobody to complain to.)
He scrabbles through the duffle that he's dropped haphazardly at his feet, looking for the kit. Alcohol. Needle. Thread.
He grits his teeth, wonders if he should press a scrap of leather between his teeth.
(Then again, nobody to hear him if he cries out.)
Hope Palo Alto is freakin' fantastic, Sammy.
The thought burns caustic in his mind, but the truth is, behind the scorn and flippancy and pain, he really does. Really does want it to be good, really does want Sam to be living his life, picking up chicks (or books, to be realistic), to be laughing and making friends and being a gigantor nerd and to be anywhere but sliced up by a goddamn ghost in a crap motel room, bleeding out onto a filthy floor, still trying to be too manly for tears.
He swears more than he needs to (nobody's listening) when he pours the whiskey over the wound, clenches his teeth (it's a wonder they're not worn down or cracked open by now) when he makes the first stitch.
The agony of the piercing and pulling brings him back…Sammy, thirteen, sewing his innards in on a motel bed like this one, or like a thousand others.
Dad, stabbing down in anger that was aimed at Sam but crept into his hands instead, aiming at Dean. He didn't mean to, Dean knows. (It still hurt.)
And there's more—lots of time, stitches and scars, crisscross lines of angry red and black. They don't heal perfectly (Nothing does).
Dean finishes, cuts it off, tries to squint down at it. (Nobody to check his work.)
If there's one prayer he'd pray, it's that Sam never has to do this again.
Sam, capering around a damn college campus, no doubt playing the whole normal thing to the hilt.
Dean smiles through the pain, smiles till the pain overtakes it.
He sacrificed his chance at that so that Sammy could have his.
They weren't whole, neither of them were, when they started this life…Sammy with no memories of Mom, Dean with a handful, and one above all. But Sammy doesn't know, so he isn't broken. Scarred and scratched and a little bent out of shape, sure, but he doesn't know (the pain, yes, but not the despair).
Plenty of people lead happy lives when they're ignorant. It's the knowing that gets to them.
Dean's sure of that.
The whiskey's gone before the night is over, and not for the wound.
(Nobody's here to stop him.)