trade your heroes for ghosts, a supernatural fanfic

Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural in any way, shape, or form

Warnings: major character death, AU

Title from the Pink Floyd song, "Wish You Were Here"

When Sam Winchester dies, there is not much left of him, just a few bones held together by bags of skin, the withered face of a man who maybe was handsome at one point, and a shepherd dog with blood on his muzzle and DEAN written in permanent marker on a leather color.

It's a fight, it's a struggle, but Dean manages to see his brother just one last time before he's gone for good.

For years, he's wanted to get inside his brother's "freaky head" and find out what's going on, "in there." He stands, solemn, content to sit inside and watch Sam's dreams flicker through his head, wondering if he'll remember them tomorrow. He dances with Jessica until she is swept up in a tornado of tears and fire. He desperately tries to run, run from something deep and dark and howling but his legs are two heavy iron burdens that Dean knows so well.

And finally, it's just what he expects – Sam, on the forest floor, screaming, screaming, pleading for his brother to be saved as he bleeds out, copper red, in the wet leaves, and then he steps in.

And crouches before a wide and wet-eyed Sam.

And whispers, "let me go."

And then God takes him back and Sam wakes up in a cold sweat to the alarm clock on his cell phone, the smell of Dean's aftershave and the smoky way his ashes smelt after they burned lingering, twisting and torturing him like nothing had before.

He talks to Dean, as if he's still living. He'll stand in the line at McDonalds and ask his brother what he wants for lunch, go to fill up at the pump and check his wallet, damn, and stick his head in the empty car and ask nothing if it has a few bucks, 'cause he's short. His gun jams in the middle of a hunt and he turns, in a panic, and tells Dean they're screwed.

So when he finds a very lost looking dog and invites it into the Impala, he decides to name it Dean, because then maybe he won't seem so crazy anymore.

He goes to a PetSmart some weeks later, and Dean nudges his nose at vinyl, synthetic, colored collars, staring up at him with sad, pleading milky brown eyes.

Sam shakes his head and buys a leather one. Dean had a leather fetish; anything else just wouldn't be fitting.

"'No dogs allowed," a gum chewing woman at the front desk of the motel tells him as he rummages through his wallet for money.

He barely even glances up. "That's not my dog. It's my brother."

She scarcely knows what to make of him.

Dean loves the car, maybe even more than his namesake. At first, Sam is wary to let down the window, even though the dog nudges and scratches at it, but soon he just keeps the front passenger window down, and when they get in Dean assumes his position on the seat and leans his head out, feathery tail whipping frantically in Sam's face, waiting for the next adventure to begin.

Smokey the Bear points to large, block lettering on a sign older than Creation: TODAY'S FIRE INDEX and underneath, slipped in on a removable plate: HIGH

Dean is panting in his ear and he's sweating, tshirt sticking to his back. It doesn't surprise him. Fire, after all, is where he began, and he knows it's where he'll end.

He accelerates.

"Mister McNulty, how long has it been since your wife went missing?"

The man ignores Sam, looks directly at the inquisitive shepherd, cocking its head. "Who's that?" he asks, his thick browns scrunching together, stroking bristly overgrowth.

"My brother. Ah," Sam works quickly to correct himself, "my guide dog. I'm legally blind. Anyway, back to my question…?"

Every time before he drives, he pops a pill or four. Motrin, Advil, it's all the same.

Dean's excited; panting. He knows they're going somewhere. He shrugs into his worn coat and reaches for the keys. He picks up a flat can of Coke off his nightstand, as well as an open bottle of ibuprofen. One, two, three, slide down his throat.

Dean looks up at him, wagging his tail. Me too?

Sam snorts, wipes his nose with his forefinger, and reaches down to scratch the dogs head. "You don't want this, buddy."

The dog whines when Sam leaves the motel room, late at night, a Glock shoved into his waistband. "You can't come," he tells the dog absently, while checking, sweeping his hands over the tiny desk, the bureau. Then he turns, kneels down, rubs the dog under its neck affectionately, in the place he knows he loves. "I'll be back soon, alright? Promise. It's too dangerous for you."

The dog whines, but he stands up, gives him one final pat on the head, and leaves the room.

As he pushes the key into the door to unlock it and gets in, he has no regrets.

Dean will never go on another hunt, as long as he lives.

One night he comes in after a hunt and sees Dean convulsing, those milky brown eyes rolling back into his head, and he throws up blood all over the scratchy carpet.

He throws up twice more in the Impala too, stretched out across the back seat, barely conscious and whimpering and Sam is screaming, "no no don't do this to me buddy you're okay"

When the vet tells him his dog has a virus, he swallows hard and asks if there are traces of sulfur. The vet looks at him like he's insane and asks if he's updated on all his shots.

He stops at a Goodwill in Detroit and walks in, plops a Hefty bag filled with clothes on the counter.

The man opens it, tallies the things slowly, carefully. The air is hot and still. One, two pairs of faded blue jeans. A couple worn, familiar flannel shirts. A pair of boots. A well-worn leather jacket. A black cord with a charm on it.

He snatches the cord, quickfast, out of the man's hand. "I'm sorry, that wasn't – shouldn't have – wrong bag, I'm sorry, very important." He babbles and doesn't care. The man plucks his beard and nods wordlessly, counts pairs of socks as Sam fumbles with the necklace, first enclosing it on his fist, putting it in his pocket, taking it out and running it through his fingers, over and over.

The man looks over the counter at the dog. "Him too?" he says with a chuckle.

Sam's eyes flash up. "Are you kidding me, that's my brother!" Then he catches the man's smile, and gets the joke. Happy funny ha ha ha. He forces a laugh and says goodbye.

He loops the cord around his neck, but it's wrong, so cold against his chest. He tries to put it on Dean, but that's wrong too.

He settles with twisting it around the rearview mirror.

One second he's peeing on the rest stop sign, the next he's gone.

There was one thing consistent in all of Sam's years of schooling. No matter where he went, what state or town, he always could run the fastest mile in gym class.

But damn, he thinks as he runs down the dusty shoulder of the road, screaming for Dean to come back, this dog is FAST

Two years, nine months, and twelve days after Dean, he brings the dog on his first hunt.

He falls out of the tree like an idiot, completely blows their cover, and they barely get away.

That night, he opens up a tiny paperclip and scrapes it along the inside of his wrist, and Dean licks the tiny blossoming droplets of blood clean from his skin.

He's driving through Tallahassee when he swerves to avoid hitting a deer fawn and the charm swings, hits him square in the forehead.

Dean whimpers and whines, but he grits his teeth and ignores him. He rips the cord, accelerates, rolls down the window and chucks it out, lets it fly free behind him.

POLLUTION IS A PROBLEM, a red lettered sign informs him as he yells at Dean to stop trying to lick him, he's fine. "And it's SAM, not Sammy, how many times to I have to tell you?" he barks, irate.

Sam, he'd always tried to keep his secrets, but eventually they'd come out, because it was too much to keep them within himself.

Dean, well, he'd let you think you knew him, let you live under the delusion that you knew what he was thinking, what he'd done, but when it came down to it there were thousands of things unspoken that died right along with him.

Sam swallows an Advil for pain he does not have and watches the dog – just like Dean, a thousand things to say that he's unable to voice.

Once he unlocks the motel room door. "Hey Dean, got lunch," he says, tossing a bag with greasy burgers onto the bed.

No Dean.

"Dean?" Panic bubbles in his throat. He opens the door and peers outside, and sure enough there's Dean, humping the crap out of some lady dog.

He slumps down against the building and starts to laugh but the sound is so foreign and strange in his throat that he stops within a few seconds,

He wakes up in the middle of the night to Dean whining, pawing at the door.

He sits up, circles his arms around square knees, rests his chin on their flat tops. "Yeah, me too."

They walk, far, past all civilization. He brings a leash but doesn't bother with it, follows the dog who keeps his nose to the ground, sniffing. They walk along the shoulder of the road that hitches up with the highway, past twenty four hour diners that close at midnight and blinking neon signs.

He's shivering, soon, realizing that spontaneity doesn't work for him, wishing for a jacket. He can feel blisters on the bottom of his feet popping, and he relishes it, relishes the pain, relishes feeling something. Dean, twenty feet ahead, barks and chases something across the flat ground, a jack rabbit.

He lays down in the flat sand, looking up at the twinkling sky. When he was a little kid, Dean told him that up there, in that other galaxy, Mama was smiling down at them.

He wishes it was true, but he's different now, older, wiser, cynical. He knows the stars are just gas burning thousands and trillions of light years away, and there probably isn't even a Heaven, just a Hell, because in the end the only light is the iridescent, cracking fire.

He sits up when he hears a squealing and his muscles tense. Dean? he thinks out loud, but the dog is trotting over, calm as day. "C'mere buddy…" he begins, but his blood freezes when Dean drops the jack rabbit at his feet and sits, swishes his tail as if to say aren't you proud of me?

The rabbit is screaming, blood blossoming from its neck, and Sam chokes as scarlet stains it's tawny fur. "No…" he whispers as the piercing shriek washes over him, growing smaller and smaller and all he can remember is how quiet Dean got in the end as the life and light drained from his glassy eyes. The rabbit's eyes stop moving, slowly the lids droop, not quite closed, pupils wide in fear and slightly unfocused.

"No…" he whispers again, and he looks up at Dean. Blood stains his muzzle. He licks his lips.

"No." He stands, turns, runs hands through hair. "No!" he kicks at dirt and then turns, kicks the rabbit aside. It flops over, extinguished. "No! Damn it, Dean, no!" He kicks the dog, who yelps and staggers backward, doesn't understand that he isn't the dean Sam is screaming for. He twists and falls in on himself, coughs, inhales dirt. Something wet is sliding down his face, and he touches it expecting blood but gets tears.

He turns and looks at Dean, ears lowered, slowly making his way over. He lets out a scream, a silent scream, one after another until his chest hurts. The dog comes over, licks his face, licks away the salty tears. It's gonna be okay, Sammy.

Just like Dean, it has a capacity for love that Sam cannot understand.

Unlike Dean, it killed.

This dog is not his brother.

They cover his body with a sheet and roll him out to the ambulance. Dean jumps up, sits on the bed, whines as he watches. A cop rips a sheet of paper off a legal pad, and smiles sadly at the lone animal, thinking of a dog he used to have. He scratches him under his chin, and the dog looks at him with milky, brown eyes and his breath hitches.

"Scout?"

On the officer's desk are three pictures. One is of him as a kid, in the middle of his brothers, all three identical white smiles and straight, white blonde hair.

The second is him and his wife, on their wedding day, her with brunette curls pinned up under the veil, him with a star struck look in his eyes, unable to believe what has just happened.

The third is him and his boy, sitting on the grass, suburban summer sunbeams dusting their shoulders, and a shepherd dog with milky brown eyes that he'd know anywhere.

He hadn't meant for the dog to escape, but the damn thing just loved to run and one day he'd lingered with the gate open too long and Scout'd taken off.

Cam had cried for days. "Where Scout, see Scout," he begged and begged. Tammy, they'd found out, was infertile. Cameron's birth had been a miracle.

Scout, you see, is his brother.

"Yeah, I know Tam, it's really him. Yeah, I can hear him. I'm sure he is excited. Listen, Tam, I'll be outta here in half an hour, alright? I just got to finish up a report. Roast sounds great. Love you too." He hands up the phone and reaches down, scratches "Dean."

"Poor old boy, saddled up with some druggie for a while?" he sighs. "You'll see Cam soon, I just need to finish this." He sets the font, starts filling in fields with ugly words – overdose, laceration, dehydration, malnutrition (?), dilated. He sighs and looks down at the dog. "What really happened to him, boy?"

Dean, well, Dean sighs in the way that only a dog can, because only he knows how Sam swallowed the pills dry, pierced the tender flesh on his wrist over and over again, cried out. How he flopped backwards, arching his back over the bathtub, and stretched out his neck 'til the skin was taut, till his bushy hair touched the bottom of the tub, and begged Death, "come get me."

When Sammy was a little kid, little enough to believe in destiny and miracles, he'd asked, "Dean, how big was that straw that broke that camel's back?"