The People You Need
K Hanna Korossy
Dean had never cried.
He must have at some point; Bobby couldn't help but see the bloodshot eyes, the chin that sometimes trembled. But starting from the moment Bobby had returned from his fruitless chase of Sam's killer, Dean had been emotionless, hollowed out, as if along with Sam he'd also lost the ability to mourn.
Sam was sobbing.
The poses were similar, one brother clutched in the other's arms. But Sam's whole body shook, the sounds of his anguish filling the room. While something had gone missing from Dean with his brother's death, losing Dean broke something in Sam and the tears seemed without end.
In fact, they were just the beginning.
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Dean had shut down.
It had been all Bobby could do to coax him—them—out of the empty street. He'd finally gotten the boys into the car, drove them as far as the sturdiest building he could find in Cold Oak, then watched Dean move his brother's body inside to a stripped-down bed. And then Dean had just…stopped again. Sat and watched over Sam's corpse and refused to eat or sleep or talk. Therein ended his purpose, even if the world went down in flames around him.
Sam was all motion and plans.
They were in somebody's house, bodies and recently vacated demonic hosts all around. It had only taken a few quiet words from Bobby before Sam took a deep breath, then began to gather his brother up. We need to get him out of here, he said, as if Dean were the one in trouble. Sam had carried his brother to the car alone, settled him carefully in the back before sliding into the driver's seat, then stared at Bobby until Singer shook his head and headed for his own truck.
Sam had led the whole way to Pontiac.
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Dean never touched his brother's body once he'd laid him down.
Bobby had watched through silent tears of his own as Dean had reached out a few times, but his fingers always curled back inches from Sam, unable to close the circuit. Maybe it was because he couldn't bear the confirmation that Sam was gone, or maybe it was some kind of misplaced guilt. But even while Bobby let himself softly tousle the dark mop of hair, Dean just stared, hopelessly distant.
Sam couldn't seem to leave his brother alone.
Bobby didn't know to whom the little house in Pontiac belonged, but Sam had picked the lock without hesitation and seemed confident they wouldn't be interrupted. He'd cleaned the blood off his brother's body in a back bedroom—a room with two beds—sewed up his wounds with perfect stitches, redressed him reverently. The whole process felt like a ritual, unbearably intimate, and Bobby finally couldn't stand it anymore and had to leave the room.
Sam was still in desperate contact, curled forward, forehead against Dean's shoulder, talking softly to him, when Bobby looked in on them next.
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Dean refused to hear anything about laying Sam's body to rest.
Cremation was the hunter's way: it avoided your body's misuse after death, the unwilling retrieval of the soul, a restless spirit. Bobby suspected Sam had feared fire, and there were ways to seal a coffin permanently, protect the soul from wandering. He also knew it was what Sam wanted. But it was one of the few topics that drew any kind of reaction from Dean, a startlingly vehement rejection. He couldn't put Sam in the ground.
Sam never seemed to consider any other plan.
He'd buried his brother in a reverent solitary, unmarked grave not far from the cabin where he'd prepared Dean's body. No urging had been necessary on Bobby's part, although his recommendation that they burn the body had been flatly and instantly turned down. Sam had built the plain wooden box himself, taken Dean's amulet from his neck, settled him carefully, then dug the hole alone, refusing help.
The fact it was only two feet deep should've been a giveaway, even if the choice of burial hadn't already been.
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Dean hadn't let anyone be there for him.
Bobby would never forgive himself for letting Dean kick him out. He knew how desperate the boy was, knew he wasn't thinking straight. He'd feared for Dean's life, and turned out he'd had good reason to be. Maybe he'd have been able to talk Dean out of the desperate deal he went and made not long after Bobby left him be…but then Sam would've been gone for good, and how much of Dean would've been left to save?
Sam hadn't pushed him away, not at first.
Bobby had towed the kid back to Dakota with him, was with Sam when he threw himself feverishly back into research, searching now for a retroactive save rather than a preventative one. Bobby had been there when Sam had exhausted his last resource, when he'd gotten falling-down drunk in his defeat. Then he'd finally shoved Singer aside to stumble out in his brother's footsteps and try to make a deal. Bobby had only heard snatches after that, of a desperate and foolhardy hunter leaving behind a trail of empty bottles, exorcised dead, and crazy, dangerous queries.
He was pretty sure the only reason the kid hadn't gone completely kamikaze was that he had to be alive to find a way to save his brother.
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So different, those two, from the first day he'd seen them: a kid with old eyes planting himself in front of a bubbly toddler. Kind of ironic, how Sam eventually ended up the quiet one and Dean full of life, even when he had to force it. Still opposites of each other, though, in balance to the end.
Neither of them accepted that end, though, the loss of his brother. Neither could let go.
When it came down to it, Bobby mourned, Sam really had become like his brother, after all.
The End