i've got soul but I'm not a soldier
Dean stumbled into the motel, drunk off his ass. He held a bottle in his hand, brown paper bag nearly slipping off. Tripping over the entryway, liquid sloshed out and onto Dean's shirt.
"Dammit!" he slurred, slamming the bag and bottle onto the cheap motel table. He sat down on the edge of the single bed, and fumbled with his shoes. After a considerably long time, he got them off and then proceeded to scooch up onto the bed so his head was aligned with the pillows. He turned fitfully, trying to find a comfortable position.
However, he moved too quickly, and suddenly his stomach's contents spilt onto the floor. Wiping the mess from his lips, Dean began to shake.
Sobs wracked through him, and he muttered a quiet, strangled word over and over.
"Sammy, Sammy, Sammy."
Castiel stood, invisible to Dean, in the corner of his room. He had taken to keeping a permanent watch over Dean after Sam's death. The wall fell through, and all of Hell poured into Sam's mind. For days, Dean watched as his brother lost it.
The nightmares had come first, restless nights tossing and turning in uncomfortable motel beds. Screaming in the middle of the night, so loud it would have woken Dean if Dean wasn't already wide awake every night.
After the nightmares came the flashbacks. Dean could relate to that, and tried to offer comfort to his younger brother. But there would be times where Sam would just curl in on himself, fists balled up, eyes screwed shut, and all Dean could do was sit there helplessly and wait for it to pass.
Sam pretended none of this was happening, he pretended demons and the devil himself weren't running through his brain. Until the hallucinations.
The hallucinations would torture Sam for a week or so at a time. Dean would lock him in Bobby's panic room, so he couldn't hurt anyone. They tied him down to the bed, and tried to ignore the screams and howls floating up from the basement.
Dean remembered every second of Sam's decline. It was this that made him tip back the third bottle of beer, chug the fourth, drain the fifth. All of those memories needed to be suppressed, and if there was any way Dean could do that, it was alcohol.
So, on nights like tonight, which is to say every night, Cas would watch silently as Dean drunkenly mourned. In the mornings, he would watch Dean rise, and pretend to be the hunter he always had been. But Cas knew that he would trip over the next motel door frame, and tangle up the next motel's sheets with his fitful sleeping.
Tonight was different though. The sobs stopped, and Castiel thought Dean had finally drifted into something resembling sleep, but soon enough, the hunter's eyes opened. Dean sat up, rubbing at his face. He stood, tripping over his feet, but managing to avoid the mess on the floor. He made his way over to the army green duffle that carried his sparse possessions. A few smelly tshirts, some worn out jeans, they all were thrown out onto the floor.
Finally, Dean withdrew two things from the bag. One was a blue and white plaid shirt. It had been Sam's, left in Dean's bag a long time ago and never removed. Dean kept it there, pushed deep down under all the other clothes. In Dean's other hand was a small, shiny gun.
Dean stared at the gun for a long time, turning it over in his hand. In a slow, exaggerated motion, Dean cocked the gun and started to raise it, staring straight down the barrel.
"Dean!" Cas shouted, blinking into view. Startled, Dean dropped the gun, and it shot off, nailing him in the foot. He let out a howl of pain, and grimaced, gripping onto the desk.
Cas pushed the desk to the side, and bent down to look at Dean's foot. It had clipped his ankle, but had not gone through. Cas touched it lightly, and the skin stitched itself back together.
Dean's breathing slowed down, and he looked at Cas with red rimmed eyes. They were blank, hopelessly empty.
"Dean. What were you going to do with that gun?" Cas demanded, his gruff voice ringing in Dean's ear.
"What the hell did it look like, Cas?"
"Dean, that is not an acceptable way to end pain. You should have called for me. Perhaps I could have been of assistance."
"The hell it isn't. Bam, no more pain. Simple as that Cas." Dean turned away from the angel, anger simmering under his skin.
"That is not true. Your life is worth preserving."
"For what? There's other hunters. All my family members have caught a one way ticket to Hell. I should just go join them. I'm not leaving anyone worse for wear." Dean fumbled for his bottle, and tried to take a drink. Nothing came out, and he threw it down angrily.
Cas stared at Dean in silence for a long time, and Dean never once looked back at Cas.
Without moving, he spoke, "How did you know I was going to do it?"
"I have been keeping an eye on you." Castiel hesitantly admitted. "I was worried that something like this would occur."
"Great. So I'm on angel suicide watch."
"Dean, I simply wish for you to be safe." At that, Dean swung his head towards Cas.
"Safe? I have never been safe in my life, Cas. Never! Ever since I carried Sam out of our house, I have been in danger. My whole life, I've practically been running after it. For twenty-six damn years. The only way for me to be "safe"," Dean paused, tears running down his cheeks again. "Is to be dead. If you wanted me to be safe, you would've let me shoot that damn gun."
Dean stood up, pushing the chair back, and went to go lay back down on the bed. Cas continued to sit there, afraid to leave Dean alone.
"What made tonight different?" The angel asked, and Dean was silent for a long time before he replied.
"I was thinking about the last thing he said to me." Dean said, mostly to the pillows.
As the hallucinations grew worse, so did Sam. They exhausted him, he was unable to eat, drink, or sleep the days he had them, and it would take him days to recover, only to be wracked by a new set of horrors. Soon, the hallucinations began to occur closer and closer, at some points, there only being hours between them. Sam could barely tell what was real anymore. He began to lock himself up in his own mind, unable to move from his bed except for extremely basic needs. Dean could hardly blame him.
Dean would spend hours watching over Sam. He had gotten past the point where he screamed and tore against the cuffs on the bed. Dean had undone them weeks ago. Now he just slipped into an almost comatose state. The only way to tell if he was hallucinating or in the real world was to watch to see if he got up to eat.
Sometimes, he would talk. They were usually silent mumbles, or nonsensical cries. However, on occasion, the Sam that Dean knew would break through.
Dean remembered very vividly one night when Sam was having one of his longest spells yet. Dean was slouched in the corner of the panic room, a bottle of beer unopened in his hand. Sam curled tightly against himself on the bed, his breathing heavy and exaggerated as his mind tortured itself.
All of a sudden, the sound of Sam's hyperventilation stopped. Dean flew out of the chair over to the bed, and knelt down next to Sam. He shook his shoulders, "Sammy? Sammy! Can you hear me, Sam?"
"Dean?" Sam spoke, his voice hoarse from days without water.
"Sammy. It's me. It's Dean."
"Dean. I'm not, I'm not mad at you." He struggled to push the words through his throat. "I'm not mad that you gave me my soul back." Sam took a deep breath, his whole body shuddering. "I wanted to thank you. Cause if I'm gonna die, I want to be me, y'know?" Sam laughed a little, which sent him spiraling into a violent cough. Dean reached for the ever present water bottle under the bed and handed it to his brother.
"You're not gonna die, Sammy. Not like this. Not today."
Sam chugged the water in a few gulps, and looked back at Dean. Sweat plastered his long hair to his face, and his lips were chapped and bloody. "I'll fight it. I'll fight it for you, Dean."
Sam closed his eyes again, and curled back up into a ball. Another hallucination had begun. Dean slumped onto the floor, and stared up at the ceiling. He began to shake himself, silently crying. He let the tears fall, and when they stopped. He stood up and left Sam in the panic room.
Days later, Dean sat down and had a long conversation with Bobby. No beer, just a dusty old table between them. Sam had gotten much worse in the last few days, so bad that it seemed like the hallucinations never stopped. It was always just one after the other, and it was all Sam could do to keep breathing. He had tried to fight, he had tried to be braver and stronger than any soldier, but how does someone fight his own soul?
That night, while Dean sat at the same dusty old table, he heard the shot. Softened by floorboards and beer-clogged ears, it didn't seem that loud. Not to Dean. But to Bobby, it was like a rocket going off.
That was the first night Dean had gotten helplessly, vomit all over the floor, drink until you pass out with the bottle in your hands, drunk. That was two months ago, and Dean had spent every night like that since.
Recalling the memory again sent Dean into another round of sobs, and Castiel desperately tried to make his presence in the room imperceptible. He felt as if his person hung heavily in the air, that he unwantedly pervaded the room. It seemed impossible, and soon, Cas just gave up trying, and sat silently in his corner of the room.
Without raising his face from the pillows, Dean sobbed something out. A normal person would have not been able to hear it through the muffled sheets, but Cas was not a normal person.
"Cas," he heard, "Sammy is gone."
Cas rose from his corner, and came over to the bed. He settled himself down next to Dean, and draped an arm over his back.
"Yes, but you are not alone, Dean Winchester."
With Castiel's arms around him, Dean's sobs faded out, and he fell asleep. Cas lay awake, never moving except to adjust his arms as Dean moved, in order to keep him close. He held him as Dean tossed and turned, and as he spoke to himself in his sleep, and as he tried to ward off the nightmares and sweat off the booze.
And as Cas listened to Dean fight his own silent battle, he swore to himself that never again would Dean have to fight alone.