A/N: A companion piece to Sam's perspective of this "How It's Supposed to Go." You don't have to read that, though, to understand this.

I own nothing but my feels and oh, but do I wish I had Dean ;)

Reviews are love.

The silence is worse than shouting—it crackles with anger, with hurt, and worst of all he knows that this is it. The end. The fighting's over; the shattering has passed and everything's in pieces now.

They're in pieces.

'Don't go,' he says, but it just echoes in his head, doesn't come out. Sam won't want to hear it. Sam's pounding shirts folded with furious precision into a duffel bag, mouth set in a granite line.

'Don't go,' he says—wants to say—but Sam is too stiff and strained to listen, his shoulders too squared as he walks out the door, duffel slung over his shoulder, eyes fixed on something (anything) but Dad.

Usually Sam's eyes would be a little teary, even though he's mad as hell, but they're dry. Dry and hard. Somehow that's worse.

'Don't go,' Dean says—starts to say—but Sam slips into the passenger seat and there's not a trace of Sammy on his face, not a trace of the innocent, wide-eyed baby whose eyes reflected flames licking the night sky and his brother's tears…of the earnest questioning of an insatiable ten-year-old…of the moody and exasperating but still rather lovable teenager who had no idea what to do with his arms and legs. Dean doesn't know what to say, how to ask anything of this new Sam—all of eighteen but so grown-up and distant and cold, with something behind his eyes that's long past anger.

'Don't go.' He doesn't even try to say it, now—doesn't try at all the whole car-ride, just lets the silence reign and wonders if there's some part of Sam that doesn't disdain him for who he is. What he is. Why he's staying.

He nearly breaks at the bus stop, because just for a moment Sam becomes Sammy again, eighteen to eight in a matter of seconds. His face twists up (twists Dean's heart with it) and he chokes out, "Dean—c-can I go?"

'Don't go.' Hell, maybe Sam wants to hear it now, and the words scream over and over again in Dean's mind—Don't go. Don't leave like she did, like he did, like they did. Don't leave me by myself.

'Don't go.'

He keeps his lips shut tight, doesn't let a sound out. 'Don't go.'

Hugs Sam and pushes him away. Prays he won't look back; is crushed when he doesn't.

The bus roars off and he sits. In his car, in all he's got left. It's empty, but for him.

Except he's empty too.

"Don't go."

And this time he lets himself say it out loud, because he knows that Sam can't hear him anymore.