Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.
Sam sat and stared at the blood painted on the wall, applied so carefully to ensure that the spell worked properly. He took a drink from the beer in his hand, lukewarm by now.
He intended to wash the symbol away and be done with it. Just another end to another day, another hunt completed. And the bunker was their home. A place they had to take care of. Maybe it was too common of an occurrence, but they shouldn't leave blood on the walls.
When he was prepared and about to wash it away, he couldn't. He looked over his shoulder and saw Gavin standing with Fiona, both bathed in golden light and incandescent in their own right. Happy. Glowing. Perfect.
For the first time in a long time, he thought about Jess. Beautiful Jess who loved to try pulling him out of his extreme study habits to have fun. Jess who would never be a day over twenty-two. He saw himself with her, bathed in the same light that embraced Gavin and Fiona. That took them back to the place where they belonged.
He took another drink. Jess was dead and happy in her own Heaven (although Sam suspected that if he didn't share a Heaven with Dean, he'd have shared one with her). There had been other women in his life since her death, but it was never the same. There was always a piece missing from him.
His relationship with Amelia lasted the longest after Jess (he refused to count Ruby), but it was never a carefree relationship. She carried her burdens, and Sam carried burdens of his own. Maybe that was the only reason it worked for as long as it did. Together, they forgot that they were broken people on the inside. They forgot about their missing pieces, if only for a little while.
But their missing pieces came back, and then there was no room left for each other.
He never knew that finding comfort in a woman's arms and offering her comfort in his arms would make Dean so angry with him, but he was telling the truth to Dean. He was left alone with no road map. Hell, he didn't have a clue as to where Dean was. By the way guts splattered all over the room they were in, he assumed that death was the only explanation. And if it was death, he wasn't about to pull Dean out of a peaceful Heaven (hoping that was where he ended up).
Blood had been splattered on the walls. Different walls, and not carefully drawn into a symbol, but there seemed to be a theme to their lives.
He reached a hand out and traced the lines of dried blood, rusty against the pale wall instead of bright red. It'd need some work to scrub off now, but he wasn't ready to wash it away just yet.
He needed another moment to say goodbye to the women he'd loved and the women who died for loving him.
Like Sarah, whose death dragged on for too long. Who suffered because of Crowley's threats, only for them to find the hex bag mere moments after it was too late.
Or Madison, who begged Sam to kill her and save her from the life of a werewolf. Save her from the guilt of knowing the danger she posed to innocent people.
Then came Ruby, who deserved her death. Who seduced him into damning himself and the world. Who set off a chain of events that led to him throwing himself into Hell.
Sometimes, he wished that he'd been left to rot there.
During moments like sitting on the floor, staring at the bloody wall, and remembering the happiness that it brought to two people, Sam was left to think about his own life. They were the moments when he remembered that all he accomplished was getting the people he loved hurt or killed.
"Sam? What the hell are you doing?"
Sam looked over his shoulder and watched Dean take a seat on the floor beside him. "Thinking," he said.
"Yeah, with half a dozen beer bottles surrounding you? That's a good sign."
Sam counted the bottles, surprised to find that Dean was right. "I don't remember having that many," he said.
"And that's a great sign," Dean said. "What's got you all bothered?"
"Just seeing Gavin and Fiona so happy. It made me think of Jess," Sam said. "I thought that I let go of that part of my life, but she keeps coming back. For a while I thought, you know, what if I could have that golden moment like they did? What if I could have something I thought I never could again?"
"Sam…"
Sam forced out a strangled laugh and cleared his throat. "I know it's stupid, and I'm not gonna try anything. I'm not gonna try and get something for myself, just to end up ruining it again. Jess doesn't deserve that."
"Sammy, believe me, I'm glad that you're not gonna do something stupid this time, but there's a lot we need to get clear right now if that's how you feel. Jess didn't deserve what happened to her. We both know that, but there was nothing we could have done to prevent it. We didn't know half the things we know now, and if Yellow Eyes wanted her gone, he would have done the job himself if it came to it. None of it was your fault. If you really want to blame someone, you can blame me. I dragged you away from her because I didn't want to look for Dad alone."
"You didn't know, Dean."
"Exactly. I didn't know. You didn't know. Moving on. I know our lives are pretty shitty, and you've never exactly liked hunting, but that doesn't mean you should never try doing or getting something for yourself. We have a home now. Some sense of stability. Isn't that part of what you always wanted?"
"When I was a kid, yeah. It was impossible to make friends always moving around," Sam said. "Now I get that none of that really mattered."
"Mattered to you."
"Not to Dad."
They sat in silence for a long moment.
"I wish I could go back and give you a decent childhood," Dean said.
Sam finished the last of his sixth beer. "I guess there's a lot that we both wish we could go back and change."
"Is it really so bad for things to be the way they are now?" Dean asked.
Sam shrugged. Their mom was still off doing her own thing, far away from them. Cas was looking for Kelly and Lucifer's child. They'd both been to Hell and came back a little more broken. They'd hurt each other more than either cared to count.
But in the end, they still had each other. They were never really alone.
"I guess things aren't that bad," he said.
Dean put his hand on Sam's shoulder with a grin. "See? Now, you ready to get to bed, Sammy? I'm sure that going through memory lane was exhausting."
"Yeah, it was," he said. "But I think I'm good now. Just one of those moments, you know?"
"Yeah, Sam. I know. C'mon, we can deal with cleaning up the blood in the morning."
Author's Note: This season could really use some more brotherly moments.
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