"It wasn't stupid."
The drive from Sioux Falls to Lebanon is five, maybe five and a half hours, and we were about four hours into it when Sam said that. I knew what he meant, what he was referring to. What he was answering.
I'd said that saying 'yes' to Michael was stupid. Now, on an empty road, in the dead of night, three hours or more since I'd said it, now Sam was going to tell me why it wasn't wrong. Now he was going to argue with me.
For Sam to take three hours or more to get to the point of arguing meant he'd taken that long to come up with the argument, or that he'd taken that long to bring himself to say it out loud. Either way I was about to have no choice but to listen to him.
"You saying 'yes' to Michael, that wasn't stupid."
I had no intention of answering him, but that wasn't going to stop him. Anybody who ever said it takes two people to argue never met Sammy.
Sure enough –
"Okay, sure, if you hadn't said 'yes', maybe Michael wouldn't be out there now, doing – doing whatever it is he's doing, but we don't know that for sure. Yeah, Jack injured him but not necessarily enough to ground him. Maybe he would've found another vessel. No, not 'his' vessel, but he obviously didn't need one for very long, certainly not long enough to burn through. I mean, he didn't suddenly turn into a good guy just because Jack handed his ass to him, did he? He had a deal that Lucifer got Jack and he got our world. Maybe Jack didn't agree to the deal but I doubt Michael was going to give up his claim because of that. He was down but he wasn't out."
Well, Sam had put those three hours to good use, coming up with that argument. It wasn't bad. Still -
"And – you saved me." That got said in a voice a lot quieter than he'd just be using to argue. "From Lucifer. You saved me, you saved Jack, you saved the world, maybe even the universe, from whatever he had planned. That's not stupid. How could that be – I mean – "
He broke off and shook his head and rolled his hand in a gesture of aggravation and impatience with himself.
"I'm sorry you suffered – I would've done anything to spare you that. But of all the nightmares I suffered these past three weeks, for the first time in years, in years, none of them were about hell, none of them were about him. That's – that was – I just – it just feels like I can finally, finally, let all of that go. You know? You saved me from that. From all of that. You don't know what that means to me."
He stopped talking and I didn't start. Yeah, I saved Sam's life and no, I never meant to imply that I thought that was stupid. But I also never thought, never realized – years he'd suffered nightmares of hell, of everything he'd suffered in hell, of everything he suffered every time Lucifer escaped the Cage and walked free. Decades of torture that lived in years of nightmares that probably didn't only come only when he was asleep. I mean, I saw the look on Sam's face, I remembered the look on his face when Lucifer was finally dead. It was more than relief, it was damn near joyful -
"So – that's – that's just – that's not stupid," he said.
– because after years of trying and failing, I'd finally, really, protected my little brother from his greatest fear.
"No, no, that's not stupid," I had to agree. I looked over at Sam, he was staring out the windshield. I couldn't let the depressing moment stand. "But, you know -"
"My beard is not stupid either," he said immediately, knowing immediately exactly where I was going. Then he turned to me. "But I'll shave it off when we get home."
A lump the size of Little Rock stuck in my throat. As far as separations between us went, hell, death, purgatory, whatever, this one had hardly been a blip. But the feeling of being back and safe and with my little brother was just as strong and almost as overwhelming as it ever was.
My scruffy little brother.
"As soon as we get home?"
The End.