Written for .777, who suggested I do something from Sam's POV when he is sitting in the dark drinking near the end of 9x23. I'm sorry this is so late! Sam's POV.

Echoes

I sit alone and there is no sound. There is only the echo of what once was, bouncing off of this enormous space and reverberating off of the glass of scotch I hold in my hand. I don't even like scotch all that much, but it was one of the first bottles I found and I knew it would burn as it slid down my throat. I thought it might help, at least a little. But I was wrong because that burn is insignificant, completely unnoticeable compared to the agony that writhes inside every fiber, every strained tendon of my being as I sit here, filling and refilling my glass, feet propped up on the table the way my brother usually sits.

The silence is so loud and it just keeps echoing against these wide walls with a dull kind of finality that begins where I sit and ends with the unmoving form in the next room, spread out on the bed as if in sleep. But I know he's not sleeping. I know my brother is gone, felt his life bleed out of him beneath my useless, shaking hands as he told me he was proud of us. Of me. I can still hear those words; they are the only sound in the emptiness that surrounds me.

There is a rough, ragged, gaping hold that has burrowed its way into the center of my chest, taking up residence where I would guess my heart to be. I wonder why it still bothers to beat at all, wonder how I've managed to drag myself all the way back to the bunker, Dean's limp body growing cold in the back seat of the Impala as I drove way too fast, as if rushing him to a hospital or back to a motel room to patch up his wounds like I had done so many times before. It was all I knew how to do, and then I got here and there was no next step. I got here and I carried my brother inside and I set him down on the bed and then there was nothing left to do. No point in cleaning off the blood but I did it anyway. Slowly, gently, waiting for Dean to wake up and tell me what a girl I was being, to snag the bloody rag from my hands and press it roughly against his cracked lips, his broken jaw. But he remained silent throughout the process. He never moved.

I wonder, not for the first time, why it is that I can never save my brother. No matter how much I want to; no matter how much I push or pull away from him. It all leads to the same end result. And I wonder how I'll ever find the motivation to do anything more than this. Do anything more than move this glass to my lips, over and over again until the bottle is just as empty as the rest of this place. It'll be just another thing for this unbearable silence to echo off of. It'll be just another reminder that Dean is dead.

I take another drink and I wait for the world to fall apart.

I take another drink and I realize that it already has.

Thanks for reading. Reviews are always welcome!