Silent Guilt
It had been two days since they had escaped from the asylum, two days of Dean pretending to be fine and Sam pretending to sleep. The exhaustion was wearing him down slowly but every time he closed his eyes he saw Dean's look of betrayal when he pulled the trigger. When he had pulled it four times. Sam shook his head, he'd rather die of sleep deprivation than see that look again.
The sun was barely rising, the morning was still and cold. Dean shifted position for the hundredth time in his bed across from him with the faint groan of pain. A sound that Sam hated more than any other sound because he knew that pain was from him. He had shot him, he had told him that he hated him and then he had tried to kill him. The reality of it was colder than the frigid January morning. He sat on his bed, half watching over his brother, half just hating himself. He was waiting for Dean to wake up so they could have short, meaningless conversations and continue to ignore what he had done.
The morning crept on and with it the sun rose higher in the sky. Dean swung awake rather abruptly, his eyes were unfocused as he searched the room, looking for anything familiar. His eyes rested on Sam and for a moment Sam saw relief only to be replaced almost immediately by pain. It would have been crushing had it not happened the two nights before. Dean came to full consciousness and slid off into the bathroom for his morning routine of shaving, showering, bathing his wounds, being in agonizing pain, brushing his teeth and then staggering out of the bathroom to pretend nothing is wrong.
Sam tried not to watch as Dean pulled his jacket on roughly, masking the pain in his chest by pretending to cough. Sam sighed to himself quietly, this silence was so awful. They'd been mad at each other before, furious in fact, but never this quiet uncomfortablness. And Sam knew it was because of him.
Sam swallowed hard. "Dean."
The quiet voice responded "yeah?"
Sam looked across the room at his brother who was looking up at him questioningly. He shook his head, his nerve gone. "Nothing."
Dean nodded vaguely. "We should head out today... we'll make good time to Detroit."
Sam looked down at his hands. Detroit. Their next case. That was such a bad idea he couldn't even begin to express it. He was sure that Dean didn't trust him, he didn't have any type of reason to. How do you trust someone who's already betrayed you? How do you recover from that?
Dean's voice jolted him out of his musing. "You coming?" Without waiting for an answer, Dean was out the door and packing up the car outside. Sam realized that Dean had packed his stuff and he went outside into the sunlight. Without a word, he got into the car and leaned back in the seat. Dean came around the driver's side and they took off in silence.
Dean hadn't put music on, they rode in complete silence, horrible, terrible silence. Except for one sound, the constant quiet snap of Sam's black wrist band against his skin. SNAP. SNAP. The silence was deafening but for the noise of plastic hitting skin. SNAP. SNAP.
"Would you STOP doing that?" Dean yelled.
Sam froze, honestly he'd been doing it rather unconsciously. "Sorry." He said in a muted voice.
"Why do you do that anyway?" Dean's eyes were focused on the road straight ahead, the question had been half whispered, so therefore it was rhetorical. Sam rather figured Dean knew why anyway. His way of letting off stress. He worn his band, Dean wore his two, both of them on their right arms. Brothers united, now torn apart by Sam's actions but both still wearing the bands. It was a strange comfort to him.
They arrived at Detroit with no problem and proceeded directly to the cemetery in question. Something about a spirit attacking innocent passerbys by possessing the dead bodies buried here. Or something, Sam didn't know the whole story, didn't really care and hadn't really listened. He was only half here, only here by blind instinct following his brother. He staggered behind him in a mist as Dean got readings and held the shotgun in his other hand. Sam had known better than to ask for a gun. He was so tired that were it not for his instincts alone, he wouldn't have even seen the spirit leap out and attack Dean. Sam moved.
He threw himself directly in front of the spirit, between himself and Dean and just stood there. Waiting. He didn't have a weapon, he was barely awake so all he could really do was just be between Dean and the enemy. The spirit wasted no time and brutally sliced at Sam with its long claws. Sam snarled in pain, staggered back but then stayed where he was. The next blow he all but blocked and the third cracked him across the face, splitting his lip and spinning him around. The next blow would be the last one he knew. He waited, too numb to feel the pain of these new wounds yet. He was so tired.
The gun shot made him jump it was so loud and so close. The rock salt shotgun blast splintered the spirit into thousands of pieces which rained down upon the ground and the dust fell on Sam. He didn't even flinch. Rock salt. He just stared at where the spirit had been and shuttered suddenly. Strangely empathic, having a sense now of how much that would have hurt. Trying not to remember how he had loved shooting Dean with the same gun. Dean who was now striding up to him quickly, a look of pure fury on his face.
"What the hell is wrong with you? You just stand there?!" Dean was pacing madly in front of his brother, ignoring his wounds, not even looking at him. "Well? What the hell were you thinking?"
Sam shook his head. So tired. "I couldn't do much, it was instinct."
"Instinct? Instincts are supposed to help you survive not get you killed! Is that what you want Sammy?" Sam looked up at Dean when he finally recognized the emotion in his voice. It wasn't anger, it was fear.
"No."
"No? No what?" Dean was still yelling.
"This is not what I want Dean!" Sam was yelling back. "I don't want any of this. I never did. I hated this ghost, spirit whatever hunting crap. All it did was cause us pain."
"We do this for the greater good - " Dean was about to go on but Sam cut him off. Years of resentment and pain bubbling over.
"Fuck the greater good. What about us? What about what we wanted? Dad never seemed to care about that. Oh sure, send us into a dangerous place to protect the innocent, that would be fine. But what about US?!" Sam was screaming now, all his emotions pouring out in massive waves. "Sure son, go to this town and almost get killed by an avenging angel with a hook, sure son go to this haunted asylum and almost kill your own brother! Sometimes I wonder if Dad just enjoys torturing us." He had gone to far. He knew it the second he said it. It wasn't really Dad's fault that he had lost it and pulled that trigger. He was just so beyond everything at the moment that he really didn't care. He knew it would get a reaction and he got it fast.
Dean threw his hand back and surged forward but stopped inches from punching his brother in the face. Sam hadn't moved, hadn't flinched, hadn't done anything. Largely he was too tired to react, too emotionally destroyed to care much if his brother did hit him and of course, there was the fact that he deserved it and more.
Dean lowered his hand and swung his body away from Sam. Sam's voice was quiet. "You can hit me if you like. If you think it'll help."
Dean snarled. "No Sam, you might solve problems by attacking your brother, but I'm not like you."
That got to what little was left of Sam's ego. "That's right, I forgot. You're like Dad. You don't solve problems at all, you just run away from them."
Dean spun back to his brother. "I'm not running now. So whatever it is you have to say to me, you say it. Because I'm sick of this silence. You want to tell me you hate me, you want to tell me to leave you the fuck alone, you just TELL ME NOW!"
Sam looked down at his feet. The world swayed slightly and he sank slowly to his knees, exhaustion catching up to him. He could taste his own bitter blood running down his throat from his lip. His chest stung with the fresh cuts and he's brain was so fuzzy from sleep he could barely understand what Dean was saying. "What do you want me to - " He couldn't finish the sentence because the blood was coming back up. He turned from Dean and vomited his own blood onto the ground.
"Goddamnit Sam!" Dean knelt next to him finally seeing his wounds, his anger melting away and guilt replacing it. "Why did you just stand there?"
Sam was spitting up blood now, trying to get the taste out of his mouth. "It seemed like the thing to do at the time."
Dean scoffed, pulling Sam to his feet and back towards the car. "Next time you just let me shoot the damn thing. No more playing hero." Dean's voice was even but Sam could tell that he was still very upset. It was just that now his concern for his younger brother's injuries was taking priority. "Let's get you back to the hotel. I'll patch you up there. Then," Dean's tone was very decisive. "Then you're going to tell me what the hell you thought you were doing."
Sam would have responded with a bitter comment but the world chose just then to fade to black. Exhaustion had finally caught up to him.
As the world faded back in the first thing Sam noticed was a biting pain in his chest. That, and the fact that he had no shirt on. He came too more clearly, shaking off the remnants of his usual nightmare about Dean and found himself lying on a hotel bed with his brother staring at him from his nearby bed. Sam sat up, grimacing as the movement pulled his wounds.
"What are you staring at?" Sam asked, annoyed for no particular reason at his brother.
"You haven't gotten any sleep in days."
Sam just shook his head slowly as Dean nodded his understanding. "Nightmares."
Dean cocked his head slightly. "Nightmares about what?"
"Do we have to do this now - "
Dean stood up abruptly, causing the first ad kit he'd placed on the edge of the bed to clatter violently to the floor. "Yes Sam, we have to do this now! Since when do you cry out my name in your nightmares? I thought you had them about Jessica?"
Sam froze like a deer in headlights. Oh god. If he called out Dean's name then he probably had said some other things too. "I have nightmares on a varitey of subjects." Sam's voice was cold, detached. He had wanted a little more time before this conversation. A little more time with Dean maybe before he had to tell him the true horrors of what he had done.
"This is about the asylum."
The statement was so flat out ridicules that Sam actually laughed. "Of course it's about the asylum, you know Dean, the place where I shot you and almost killed you..."
"You didn't kill me Sam. I'm still here."
Sam looked away. "Only because you gave me an unloaded gun. I can't believe I did that Dean. I can't believe I pulled that trigger." Four times. His memory of it was clear and thick with hatred.
Dean walked over to sit on the side of the bed. "It wasn't all you."
Sam shook his head in shock. Why was he saying this? "It was me, just ... magnified. Out of control. I would never try to..." Sam stopped his statement feeling that it was a lie.
"What Sam, you would never try to kill me? Yeah I know, I know."
"Except that I did, four times. Before that I shot you with the shotgun, just for fun. Because I knew it would hurt you and I wanted it to." Sam closed his eyes. He waited for a different blow to fall. Not a physical one, but a mental one, one driven by betrayal and new found hatred. He waited until he heard Dean's soft voice.
"Look at me." Sam did, he meet his brother's eyes. Determined at least to give him that. "Sam, I know you're angry at me. I know that I took you away from your home, from Jessica when she needed you the most-"
Sam interrupted suddenly "I've already told you that I don't blame you for that."
Dean nodded. "Yeah well maybe you should, but let me finish. You're angry at Dad for forcing you to a life you never wanted. You hated me for getting all of Dad's praise. But Sammy, listen to me!" Sam's head had dropped back down and at Dean's insistence he raised his eyes again. "Nothing you do, nothing you say will ever stop us from being blood, being brothers and from," Dean swallowed and pressed on "from me caring about you. Nothing."
Sam choked back his tears. Dean would just be uncomfortable anyway. "Dean I'm sorry. I don't know how you can ever trust me again."
Dean tilted his head, struck by a thought. "Is that why you jumped in between that spirit and me tonight? To prove your trust?" The room grew colder.
"Instinct, Dean. My instinct was to protect you."
Dean stood up suddenly. He began pacing the room again like he had done in the graveyard. "You're instincts should be to protect yourself."
"I don't care about-" Sam tried to stop himself. He couldn't believe he had just said that.
Dean slammed his hand against the wall. "You don't care about yourself? When did you get this new suicidal tendency." Dean wasn't turning around.
"I'm not - I just wasn't thinking at all. I just stood there because it was all I could do. It wasn't like I didn't-" Man he was tired. Gotta stop speaking before thinking.
Dean hadn't moved from his spot across the room. "Didn't what?"
Sam knew he would have to say it. Still he was rebellious by nature, too much like his brother. "Nothing."
Dean spun around, shaking his head slightly. His eyes full of fear. "Didn't what Sam?"
Sam shut his eyes and then reopened them to stare at the long jagged cuts that ran the length of his torso. "It wasn't like I didn't deserve it after what I did to you."
There was a long, frightening silence in which Dean seemed rooted to the ground. Finally Dean crossed the room slowly and took his brother's battered face in his hands gently. Sam was shaking, he had no idea what was going on in Dean's head but from the looks of it he was really angry. Dean spoke finally, calmly but his voice shook. "Never say that again. Never think that again and above all, never do that for me. I don't want this. I don't want revenge. You think I enjoy watching you get hurt?" Sam pulled out of Dean's grasp.
"No of course not."
Dean looked at Sam, his anger still flashing in his eyes. "Of course not? You pull what you did tonight in the commentary and you tell me of course not?"
Sam sighed frustrated. "I'm sorry. I didn't know what else to do."
"So you go off and punish yourself? What next, you get yourself killed because you're feeling guilty about something you may have said to me? That's not good enough Sammy!" Dean was yelling again.
"This was not something I may have said. I almost killed you!"
"We've been through this..."
"No! You've been through it. You can pretend your not hurt if you want to. You can pretend that you trust me like you used to. I know better Dean, you can't hide that from me. Things between us are bad and it's because of me. So why don't we just admit that?"
"Because it aint the full truth, is it? And I can't have you running around about to throw yourself at the next demon we meet." Dean's anger was cooling down. He had been furious when he'd seen Sam just step right in front of that spirit and just take that beating like he didn't care. Furious at himself for letting it happen. Furious at himself for not saying a single word to his brother for days. He'd been suspious that Sam hadn't been sleeping but he hadn't known that the nightmares were about the asylum until tonight. He hadn't known the depth of guilt Sam had felt until he'd seem him take those hits so frighteningly willingly. And then what had he done? He'd yelled at him again. What a great big brother he was. "Listen, I'm sorry I freaked out."
Sam looked up. Dean was apologizing to him? "You have nothing to be sorry about."
"Yeah I do... see if I had been doing my job I would have noticed the spirit and shot it before it hurt you, three times I might add. It may have been less than that though if you'd tried to block more than one blow." Dean narrowed his eyes. His fear was still strongly with him but his anger was gone. He had to get Sam back. Nothing else mattered right now.
Sam shrugged. "I was tired."
"Yeah. You were tired and feeling a little guilty for what you did to me. So now you've got these gashes on your chest, I've got my bruises. I reacted too slowly almost got you killed tonight -"
"Dean, are you trying to say that were even? Because this doesn't begin to-"
Dean held up his hand and Sam stopped talking. "Yes Sammy. We're even. Clean slate, fresh start. How's that sound?"
Sam stayed silent. Trying to digest this all at once.
Dean smiled slightly, knowing that he had him. "I'll make you a deal, you stop throwing yourself in front of demons-"
"that's NOT what I did"
"-and I'll focus on finding Dad again. That's what you want isn't it?'
Sam nodded. "Okay. Back to normal them?"
Dean scoffed. "Sure, normal for us anyway. Now get some sleep, you look like you're about to fall down sitting on the bed."
Sam lay down, his chest and face hurt but the dull throbbing in his heart was dying down. Dean walked over to the door, checked again that it was locked and turned off the light.
"Dean."
"Yeah Sam."
"Thank you."
"Shut up and go to bed." But Dean's voice was light and in the darkness his eyes were open watching his brother drift off to sleep. Dean just hoped that Sam would make it through at least half the night before the nightmares where he'd killed Dean set in again. He hoped he could find some peace. If only for a few hours and he knew if there was anything in his power that he could do to make sure it happened, he'd do it. Just like his brother had done for him.
Silently, Dean's fingers played with the two black bands he worn around his wrist. Brothers forever, they'd find a way through.