I wanted to wait until after the season to post this story during the long, painful hiatus but with everything that's happening in the fandom, I figured I'd post it now due to its message. The story was inspired by one of my favorite episodes this season, "Inside Man." Please let me know what you think.

Stand Up

Pain, he had learned, had infinite layers, like the petals of a peony. It went far beyond ache and burn and twinge. For those who had the temerity to explore, to plunge deeper and apply some creativity along with pressure and precision, they can watch that nefarious flower bloom. Smell the its visceral coppery fragrance. Behold nature at work in sputters and bucks and jerks, a ballet of human suffering in time to the symphony of agony.

The hammer was a crude weapon but he wielded it like a surgeon, flipping it between the rounded blunt face and the claw head. He had reached that cold, wistful peak when the varieties of pain had overloaded his nerves and fried them like circuits. Sensation was distant and diffuse, coating him like syrup. If he closed his eyes, he could just imagine he was back there, imprisoned in a door-less cage forged of brimstome and bone, coated with the scorched ashes of his humanity. He could know that while there would be no end to the suffering, he could withstand it because his brother was safe and alive and he'd righted his wrongs.

His ruined body startled with a sickening squelch and a rattle of broken bones, when his fingers were hammered like nails. If he could coast in this purgatory of torture, he wouldn't have to face the true nightmare.

There was an eruption within, eerily cold and then hot and bright and loud like fireworks. Pain became the unslayable beast again, and his eyes and mouth shot open. Tears streaming from one while blood flooded the other. His torturer's face hovered over his nearly nose to nose. Sam's bulging eyes beheld the nose that was slightly crooked (Sam had broken it himself. Twice.), the milky scar just beneath his lip from a violent encounter from a shadow demon, the freckles Sam had teased him endlessly about. It was all there, Dean's face splattered in Sam's blood. The only thing different were the eyes, onyx polluted the eyeball and the sclera, his lips a subtly dusky blue as the sulfur had claimed Dean's lifeless body. Sam shuddered beneath him, feeling the agonizing plink of a hammer against his ribs.

"You thought I was going to kill you quickly, Sammy?" Dean whispered with no breath. "Why would I do that? I went to hell for you. 'Bout time I showed you what I learned."

With a twist of his wrist, Sam's entire being flickered with torment, toes curling, the unbroken fingers of his left hand opening and closing, lungs stalling. Slimy shapes burned through his vision like diluted paint, and he arched, the back of his head grinding into the floor of the bunker.

"Shh, little brother, shh," Dean's hands, the same ones that had stitched and solaced and guided, dipped down to rake the his stringy, sweat-soaked hair out of his face, leaving warm smears of red in his wake. "Big brother's here."

And like the snap of a thread, his insides were on the outside, rubbery intestines brushing against his hip, and finally Sam screamed.

The sound was that of a dying thing, a writhing, tearing rut of a stuck pig or a howl of a dog pierced by a painful trap. It rose to the bunker's high ceiling, reverberated off and bounced about the room like a ping-pong ball, echoing his own pain.

There was a burning pain in his chest it heaved with sawing, desperate breaths. Instincts decided on FLIGHT and Sam scuttled back and away, all graceless movement on tremoring limbs. It wasn't until his tailbone thwacked against the floor, that he realized the pain was receding, plumes of smoke in the wind, a fading memory of the blaze. Blinking the tears from his eyes, he lifted his hands to find them unbroken and pristine, when they had once looked like bloated, blood sausages.

The door to his bedroom flew open, Dean swiftly behind it, Sam's ankle was still knotted in his sheets but he scrambled back, dragging the foot of his bed with him with a screech, a barrier of protection. He held out his hands in surrender, and bleated "S-stopstopstop!" through chattering teeth.

His head, stuffed with the pain that now felt like a fleeting, abstract memory, ached. Sam cradled it carefully, and tried to calm his galloping heart, tried to breath around the phantom feel of a hammer's head tangled in his intestine. Had it really just been in a nightmare? Sam had felt every tear of his skin, every crack of the hammer. Demon Dean's gritty laughter in the wake of Sam's pain grated his resolve raw. It was too much.

A guttural spasm was the only warning his got before he vomited, splattering his lap and the floor below.

The palpable concern in Dean's entirely human voice made his muscles clench. "Sammy..." His hands lifted in surrender but he stood still, rocking in place. "Let me help."

Sam chanced a glance at his brother. It took him a half-second to absorb the sense of pure, sulfur-free Dean. Sam dropped his head again and tried to extract himself from the sheets and the tentaclesque grip of a nightmare.

Dean advanced gingerly, as if he was approaching a frightening deer, leaning over the bed the tug the sheet free from the mattress. "Did you twist it? Your ankle, I mean." He asked softly.

Sam didn't flinch this time. He shook his head just enough so his hair would fall over his face.

"Did you hurt your elbow? When you fell?"

It twinged a little but Sam shook his head.

Dean tossed the edge of the sheet over the puddle of sick. Sam held himself still, refusing to react.

"Do you want me to leave?" Dean's voice cracked at the end. They both knew what Sam had been dreaming about.

Sam knew it would hurt his brother if he answered honestly. His gaze was trained on the cobbwebbed castors of his bed. "Y-yes."

Dean retreated without hesitation. Sam mentally tracked his progress through the bunker, only moving when his door closed with a purposely pronounced click.

The second the door was closed, Sam found himself on his feet, swayingly gambling down the halls and around corners, fleeing without purpose. He tripped up the bunkers steps, cracking his knee on the rough metal. He shoved through the heavy door and down into the blinding sunlight.

Brisk, damp air settled in his chest. The smell of nature billowed into this senses. Mud sluiced through his toes, splattered the ankles of his track pants. Pebbles poked unpleasantly at the soles of his feet as he walked. There was a space just beyond the bunker where the trees grew greedily, the trunks were fat and tall, the roots tangling with each other, spooling above ground as they competed for water and space. Sam found himself beneath the canopy that hummed with oversaturated green. It was safe here in a way the bunker, with its cold stone and metal, could never be. Birds chirped as he dropped to his knees, closed his eyes and just breathed deep and slow, trying to get heart rate and blood pressure down.

He had never properly addressed the traumas of Dean's death and his demonic resurrection or even the light torture at the hands of a misguided soldier. It was overwhelming him now, bleeding through his cracks and eroding the duct tape that held him together. Sam cried just to relieve the pressure in his chest. He cried because he had washed the blood off of his brother's lifeless body, put him in the bed he loved so much and returned in a haze of regret and grief and alcohol to find him gone. Because he had been beaten and broken and hammered, and denying that the trauma of it effected him on a soul-deep level wasn't working anymore. Sam was still human, no matter how tainted it was, and his life would never be fair, and yet the threat of that humor-less, soulless, light-less creature still loomed every day Dean still had The Mark, pounded him deeper into depression and desperation. Like a hammer did a nail.

And there, through the festering din of despair and grief, Sam found his strength. Borne out of the fear for his brother's soul but also because Sam was probably one of the only people in the world who could save him. And that was the easiest reason to keep fighting.

He pushed the gloom of the nightmares away, coughed out the last of anxieties. He washed the vomit off his hands in a puddle and dried them on his shucked off shirt.

He headed back home.

Though bolstered by determination, it took him a few more hours before he actively sought Dean out. The mess in Sam's bedroom and been cleaned up his sheets were in the washer. Sam tossed in his soiled pajamas too. A scalding shower and some useless research before headed into Dean's bedroom. Sam knocked on the door lightly with a knuckle, and waited through a beat of silence before turning the knob. The door glided open to revealed an empty room.

The bunker was a fortress on the outside and a labyrinth on the inside, designed to keep enemies at bay and anything that breeched it inside. It took Sam a lot longer than he imagined to find Dean. He was in the dungeon.

Sam had abandoned it after Dean was cured. Neither of them had been back sense. It smelled of dried blood, sulfur and mayhem. Back to Sam, Dean was hunched over the sink, his stance straddling the borders of the devil's trap. Sam cleared his throat. "Dean, hey, let's get out of here. Let's to the diner for breakfast."

Dean's back stiffened at the sound of Sam's voice. His left arm moved subtly forward. "You go; gotta finish this."

It was an easy-out that Sam would have loved to have taken but something lilted in his voice that was haunted and desperate.

Instinct had Sam stepping further into the room, stooping so he cleared the bookshelves. A blade glimmered dimly in the light, blood dripping from its tip and cascading down his arm like garishly red paint. Sam sprung forward, snatching Dean's wrist and torquing it just enough to flex the muscles in his hand so it involuntarily opened. The blade clattered to blood-speckled sink. Sam pinned Dean against the wall with a shoulder and locked knees. "What did you do?!" He hollered.

Dean was unresisting; his response bleak. "I just want it gone, Sammy. Get it off me. Get it off me, please."

Sam hushed him, still gripping the bleeding arm. Dean had carved into it like a Thanksgiving turkey. There was the milky layer of fat, the red meat of muscle and if when he wiped away the blood, a flash of bone white where The Mark had been. Sam reached back and snagged the bandana Dean always kept in his pocket and wrapped the wound up, tying it tight. He shoved Dean's arm above his head, and turned around so they were face to face. Sam eased back a bit, giving Dean a chance to breathe, but his legs buckled, head bobbing weakly.

Sam knew what surrender looked like, especially from a man who was consisted of iron will and whiskey. Sam's rock was crumbling at his feet, and he selfishly refused to let that happen. "Hey, it's okay." Sam ordered.

Dean didn't seem to hear him, lost in a cyclone of despair.

Sam flashed with frustration so mighty, it burned like rage. The earlier humiliation of this morning was microscopic when compared to the lifetimes of indignities he'd suffered, partly because of decisions Dean had made, but he had survived it, and he was stronger for it. Even on the days when he woke up, heartsick and shuddering from nightmares or haunted by torture, he was still grateful for the breath in his body and the brother at his side.

Sam abandoned the earlier gentility and adopted his Winchester-grade gruffness. He patted Dean's cheek hard enough to hurt, the skin flaring to red beneath his palm before fading back to an iridescent white. "Stand up, Dean. Now." Sam shook him a bit. "Lock your knees and stand the hell up." Sam barked.

One by one, Dean's legs straightened so he could support his weight.

Sam grabbed his face in one hand, his grip harsh enough that Dean shoved at him a little. "So you can fight back? Good, because you don't have the luxury of giving up, Dean. No matter how tired you get or how much it hurts, you have to keep fighting because if you stop, people will die. Do you understand?"

Dean's eyes were bloodshot and saturated with anguish but the futility had dissolved. He nodded.

Sam exhaled, letting the anger flow out of him with the useless carbon. "Let's get you stitched up."

The bunker was outfitted with an infirmary. Once they had moved in, Sam had wasted no time in liquidating some of the useless antiques to make money to purchase medical-grade suture kids. Sewing yourself up with dental floss instead of catgut and whiskey instead of Lidocaine was only alluring and badass in the movies. For hunters, it was a traumatic occupational hazard.

For hunters that had both been to hell, every tortuous stitch was a dangerous flirtation with a catastrophic breakdown. Dean was all palpable and rigid tension, a human grenade with a half-pulled pin. So Sam was startled when Dean spoke while he waited for the lidocaine to numb the wound.

"I never apologized. For what I did to you when I was a demon."

Sam shot him a stunned glance before continued to prod the wound, making sure it was numb. Dean didn't flinch. "It wasn't you, not really."

"It's all a jumble, ya know. The memories of it, they don't feel like mine," Dean muttered. "It's all a friggin' mess in my head."

They hadn't had in-depth conversations about Dean's summer with black eyes. Even Sam who liked to verbally process his tragedies had been unable to find the words. It was only brought up in vague references or despairingly sarcastic remarks.

"I get it, man, I do." Sam began to stitch, brow knitted together in concentration.

"So the nightmares are just…"

Sam huffed a laughter that was devoid of life and mirth. "Just another one to add to the pile, man."

"They haven't been that bad since…"

Sam dabbed at the blood oozing from the gaping wound, obscuring his view. "Since I got better at hiding them."

Dean sputtered, rendered speechless for a moment. He sank back against the padded gurney with a limpness that had worried Sam. Blood soaked Dean's jeans, and even Sam had a healthy amount smeared on the shoulder and flank of his flannel. Dean's eyes, with his ridiculously thick lashes, fluttered rapidly. Sam cursed but didn't stop suturing. If Dean was succumbing to blood loss, the faster Sam closed the wounds the better. "Hey, hey, hey!" He barked, said loudly. "Dean, talk to me. Don't make me slap you, dude."

Dean shifted a bit on the gurney, his fist was balled up in his lap. Dean wasn't sinking into unconsciousness but being overwhelmed by the earlier defeat. "…it's creepin' in and I'm not even aware of it. S'not like I'm changin', it's just like the line, the one I swore I would never cross, moves a millimeter at a time…and then I look back and I'm miles away from where I used to be. How d'you fight that? How'd you do it?"

Sam's stomach clenched and bubbled with nausea as his mind surged through a kaleidoscope of struggle: Lucifer, demon blood addiction, that final, agonizing leap into the cage, the power of the Trials slowly burning through him from the inside out.

"Because I knew the fallout was always so much worse than my pain. I turned to the law because, yes I liked the structure of it, but I've always wanted to help people. But when I had to lockdown Lucifer or resist demon blood craving, I knew what would happen if I didn't…Jess, Mom, Dad, Bobby…all of that was unthinkable. And, if I'm in this life, I'm going to be a hunter, it has to mean something good. So I stood up even when I think it would kill me."

Dean pinned Sam with a gaze imbued with love and hope and unveiled pride. "There are some things that I don't know about you, huh?"

A smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth. "A few." The moment was fleeting and Sam licked his lips. He would never get another chance for unfettered honesty, to plant the seeds of motivation within his brother who was on the verge of giving up, of falling on his sword. "There's one thing I can't do, Dean, one thing I will never be able to do no matter how right it may be. Dean, I cannot hunt you again. I cannot kill my brother. I couldn't do it then, and I can't do it now. Please, please don't make me. Because that's my greatest fear, and it's far worse than any freakin' nightmare. That's what keeps me up at night." Sam said, his voice flickering out as the lump in his throat grew bigger, along with the ache in his chest.

"I got this, Sammy. And when I don't, you'll show me how. Right?"

Sam nodded. "Of course."

Sam finished the last two stitches and wiped the wound clean. They both stared at the maimed arm, the Mark that had been hacked off stood out among the pieced-together flesh. Sam disinfected it and bandaged it without a word. He patted Dean on the shoulder. "Research?"

Dean shimmied off the gurney, still pale but clear-eyed. "Pancakes, then research."

Dean's stride was weaving and weak. He tripped over his own large feet. Sam caught him easily, helping him stand once more.

Fin.

Always keep fighting.