Sam lies still, his eyes schooled in careful blankness, his limbs spread like a boneless offering on sterile white cotton sheets, and all Dean can see is the one-two-three list of things that make up Sam littering the roadside of their lives like discarded wrappings, like someone's old treasures lost to junkyards and riverbanks, and when the thin-lipped nurse enters the room, razor in hand, and Sam grabs Dean's wrist and his eyes turn to begging, pleading that it be Dean, he wonders when it started and how he never noticed.
Maybe with the angel, the violation of his brother's body in what he knows Sam considers rape, but there Sam was, chatting up Death like the oldest of friends, ready to die, to leave Dean behind, and what was he to do?
The gauze around his brother's skull unwinds with the stickiness of sweat and old blood and the scent that wends its way around the room teases him with undesired memory, and bloodlust flares hot in the mark on his arm and he curses the hammer that cracked Sam's skull, curses Cas for bringing him back, back, back to this hell, and wonders when it all began.
Maybe with the text, that stupid girl he'd never imagined had meant so much to Sam, the wounded burn of anguished betrayal stark in his brother's eyes, but there Sam was, bullheaded as always, ready to throw himself between rabid hunter and loss-crazed vampire, and the cost would have been Sam's blood, thick and heady to one fresh from Purgatory, and two brothers lost to Dean in one day, and what was he to do?
His fingers probe around the wound, cautious, almost gentler than the mark can bear, and the nurse snaps her gum impatiently and tells him with barely disguised indifference that she can do it, if he'd like, and Sam's eyes skitter to his, edged with panic and so much trust and Dean doesn't know why that hurts like it does, the fear and the dread and the thin wire of faith all twisted into one, but he lifts the razor to Sam's neatly-cropped head, breathes in the scent of medicinal shaving cream, and wonders how it came to this.
Maybe it was the ping-pong game of Sam's head, Sam's wall, Sam's soul, his brother's essence sliced and diced like bounty in the endless machinations of angel vs demon vs God vs Death, divided up like colonial Africa in a war that wasn't his, tossed and shoved and stolen and shattered and never Sam's will considered, but there Sam was, eyes empty or wild, bright like a mirror reflecting back sunlight, or later, just as bright with the fever of Lucifer's taunting, bright eyes, bright teeth, and life slipping like sand through the cracks in Sam's mind, and what was he to do?
The razor hums, electric and mindless as it skims the landscape of his brother's scalp, dropping tufts of spiky hair that pepper the floor or cling to the wet trails on Sammy's cheek that Dean pretends not to see, his hand so steady it must belong to someone else because his heart is pounding, ripping in half and he's not sure why, this is hair, just hair, will rise from its death as surely as a phoenix or a Winchester, but the hair falls and catches on its way something deep in Sam's eyes, dragging along on its descent to the floor yet another piece of his brother's soul, and Dean's chest is too tight and he wonders whether there's anything left.
Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't the war or the text or the angel, maybe it started a long time ago, when Sammy lay happy and safe with another, and Dean burst in for Dad and himself and burned his brother's life on the ceiling, or maybe when Dad's eyes went cold and Sam was hurt but less surprised than a college-bound teenager had any right to be and Dean hid his pain with hardness and turned his brother away, or maybe that Christmas when snow and darkness stole Sam's childhood, a quicksand of lies sucking down any faith he'd had in his father, the amulet, that amulet, the sweetness and childish innocence of Sam, the symbolic passing of hope from father to brother tossed out like rubbish in a no-name motel, just another piece of Sam left by the wayside, or maybe it started even before with a fire and a boy with a car for a home and a wide-eyed kid for his only parent, town after town after town after town, rootless and aimless and shaped by another's lust for revenge, but there Sam was, blood on his mouth and soot in his hair and take your brother outside as fast as you can, and what was he to do?
The room is silent, Sam's fingers clutch his own, and Dean sees the whiteness of Sam's knuckles and the pale confusion in his brother's face, and thousands of memories of loss and betrayal reflect in the shiny wound of Sam's sudden baldness and Dean sits on the bed, traces tentative fingers along Sam's shoulder, and swears to himself that the angels and demons and monsters and humans can all go to hell, that the world can burn and he'll dance in its ashes because Sam's given enough, because this is the very last piece of his brother he'll let them gouge away, but the shadow inside him laughs and laughs and the mark on his arm echoes it back and a voice in his ear whispers "too little, too late," and what's left of his heart breaks into stained-glass shards because the voice is his own, and what is he to do?