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KING SAMMY
MAY 17, 2009 LAWTON, OKLAHOMA
Dean Winchester would do anything to save Sammy. He would even die if it meant protecting his little brother for one more day. In the end, he did. But his death destroyed Sammy anyway.
Sam Winchester sat at the bar with a beer in his hand. To any other customer, he seemed to be a normal twenty-five year old out for a drink or to meet a girl on a Saturday night. Sitting beside him, Dean Winchester knew better. Once, Sammy had been almost normal. He had studied pre-law at Stanford and had an apartment with his girlfriend. He'd had dreams of being a lawyer and settling down with his perfect, suburban family. Nobody who knew Sammy now would have believed that that boy was the man before them.
When Sam Winchester got angry, his eyes glowed yellow. He knew all the history of evil spirits and curses and he knew how to destroy them. For years, his life had centered on hunting down these creatures and obliterating them. Not anymore. Sam Winchester had a secret. Now, he could control them.
JULY 12, 2007 KEARNEY, NEBRASKA
"What will I do when you're not here, anymore?" Sammy asked Dean, heartbrokenly. Sometimes he wished that Dean had just let him die, so that he wouldn't have to deal with Dean sacrificing himself instead. He couldn't bear the thought of losing Dean within a year.
"You'll be okay, Sammy. You'll keep hunting things. And once you've gotten rid of all the monsters in the closet, you'll settle down and have a family and know that because of you, they'll be safe."
"But you won't be here. I can't go on without you, Dean."
"Yes, you can. You will." Dean sounded so sure that Sam would be okay. He didn't know that on the inside, Dean was terrified. Hell, Dean could deal with. But leaving Sammy alone without his older brother to protect him – that scared him to death. There was an answer out there somewhere, he knew. But by the time he understands, it will be too late.
MAY 3, 2008TUSCAN, ARIZONA
Two weeks before Dean died, Sam understood what he had to do. It had been the plan all along – his destiny since before he was even born. He was the Chosen One. This was the way it had to be. He summoned the Yellow-Eyed Demon in the hotel parking lot while Dean was asleep. He couldn't chance the fact that Dean might stop him.
APRIL 20, 2009STILLWATER, OKLAHOMA
Their lives had become a string of noisy bars and dirty motel rooms. Gone were the days when the Winchester brothers fought evil side by side. Now Sam sent his demon army out to do his bidding. They rounded up the wicked and destroyed the evil spirits that were out of Sam's control. Soon Sam would rule over all the demons. He couldn't wait. He wasn't the Sammy that Dean remembered.
Dean glanced to his left as he sat at the bar. Sam was sitting there watching him, slowly sipping his beer.
"What?" demanded Dean. He still sounded like the older brother, although that was only a pretense now. Both boys knew that it was Sam who wielded all the power.
"Do you remember the old days, Dean?" Sam questioned nostalgically. So it was one of those days. At least he wasn't in one of his angry moods tonight.
"Of course I do, Sammy," Dean replied carefully. It didn't take much anymore to set Sammy off.
"I miss those days," Sammy added. His words were slightly slurred; he was drunk.
"Me too."
"What happened to us, Dean? How did we get like this?" Sam gestured around them at the crummy, backwoods bar. Dean knew Sammy was referring to more than the bar. He was talking about the dull meaninglessness of their lives, or at least half-lives. Neither was fully human anymore. They had both become the things they had sworn to never be. And it was too late to go back.
"We made choices, Sammy. We made the only choice we could to stay together." Dean replied sincerely, sadly.
Sam nodded. "It was the only way to keep you, Dean. I didn't have a choice."
Dean woke up the next morning bracing for a throbbing headache that wasn't there. As so often occurred, he had forgotten that human rules no longer applied to him. He didn't get hangovers. None of his kind did. He would have cried for everything he had lost, but he couldn't. Tears, too, no longer existed for Dean Winchester.
MAY 3, 2009 BOULDER, COLORADO
"Have you completed the task?" Sam demanded of his demon follower.
"Yes," it replied. "We destroyed the amulet. But we may have been seen by the gardener. He walked in on us just as we finished."
"Kill him." Sam told the demon. It nodded and disappeared with a breath of wind.
"Sam, listen to you," cried Dean, turning to his younger brother. "You can't kill an innocent man because he may or may not have seen something supernatural!"
"Shut up, Dean. We can't have our operation compromised." Sam's statement put an end to the argument. Dean stopped arguing. He didn't like it, but Sam's word was law and Dean had no choice now but to do as he commanded.
MAY 7, 2009 BOISE, IDAHO
"Shoot him." Dean looked at his little brother who held out the gun. "Shoot him," Sam repeated. Dean shook his head.
"It's not right, Sammy. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. He didn't do anything wrong."
"Shoot him," Sam insisted for the third time, and Dean squeezed the trigger. The shot echoed in his ears. "Good," stated Sam. "I knew you would do it, Dean."
Dean nodded. He had no choice anymore. Sammy had made it for them a long time ago. He had chosen darkness over losing Dean and in the end it had destroyed them both. But maybe it wasn't Sam's fault at all. Maybe the choice had been made long before, the first time Dean held baby Sammy in his arms and promised to watch over him no matter what.
MAY 17, 2009 LAWRENCE, KANSAS
Dean didn't like coming home. There were too many bad memories associated with this place. But Sam said he wanted to see it all again, to see where it had all begun. Dean leaned against the Impala as Sam came toward the car. Sam had wanted to say hello to their mother, but Dean couldn't face even her headstone. He couldn't talk to her grave knowing what he had let Sammy become – Sammy, who he'd promised to always protect.
"Azazel will try to use him. If that happens, Dean, you have to destroy him."
"You mean kill him, Dad? I can't do that to Sammy!"
"It won't be Sammy anymore, Dean."
"How certain are you that what you brought back is 100 pure Sam?"
John and Azazel's voices rang through Dean's head. He sighed, closed his eyes, and aimed the trigger at Sam's chest. It was the only way to save the situation. This twisted man approaching him was no longer his Sammy. He would shoot this strange, mimicking version of him. It was the only way left.
"Put the gun down, Dean. You won't shoot me." Sam's voice boomed out, unnaturally loud and commanding. That was all it took for Dean to move his finger off of the trigger. Sammy or not, he couldn't kill him. Instead, he turned the gun on himself.
"It won't work, Dean," declared Sam. "You couldn't leave me before, and you won't now."
Dean lowered the gun. "I hate you!" he screamed. "Look at what you've become! Look at me! It wasn't supposed to be this way! I hate you, Sammy! I hate you!"
Sam laughed coldly. "Isn't this what we've always dreamed of? I accepted my rightful place. I am the leader of the creatures of hell. I can control every one of them – including you, Dean. You couldn't let go of this world, of me. Now you are paying for it."
Dean's hand unclenched and the Colt dropped to the ground. He fell to his knees. Sam was the king of the demons and Dean was his dutiful follower that would do anything for him. That was the way it would always be no matter how desperately both wished they could go back, just change one moment in time, and stop it all from happening. But Sam was gone – he had been changed, irreparably, into something else, something evil. It wasn't his acceptance of
destiny that had wrought the change. It was the knowledge that in the end, he couldn't actually save his brother that had. Such was true for both of them. Together, they had been destroyed. It was their love for one another – the desperate desire not to live alone, the willingness to self-sacrifice to save one another, the pain of watching the person they loved most slowly be destroyed by life – that tragedy that had done them in. Their love saved them, and in the end it destroyed them.
"I hate you, Sammy," Dean whispered, defeated.
"I hate you, too," Sam replied.