Word count: 1,448. AU at the end. Beta'd by the amazing Hazelmallorn. Many thanks.
[stage vi]
-::-
(As soon as we are born, we are destined to die. As soon as we draw in our first gulp of breath, we are destined to stop. As we live, the mechanical hands of time tick and tock and run short, and as we live, we die. Every second lived is a second lost.
We are bound in this fate.)
-::-
stage i. zygote
When Dean is first allowed to touch the baby, he is ecstatic and rushes forward to embrace his younger brother, taking the china-fragile infant into his arms. He looks at Sam's nose, the round shape of his face, the feathery locks of chocolate hair, the shapes and curves in his ears molded as carefully and as gently as an artist molds clay. The baby giggles at him.
This is the day Sam Winchester is born, and this is the day he looks at his brother for the first time.
(Twenty-four years, five hours, and thirty-three minutes later, Sam Winchester will look at his brother for the last time.)
-::-
stage ii. cephalization
After Sam learns to speak, the first thing he asks is about his mother. Days have turned to weeks, and weeks have stretched to months, and months have extended to years since the night Dean carried his brother in a bundle of blankets through the front door, panic in his throat like wildfire and the fear of a mad man in his eyes.
"Why don't we have a mom, Dean?" Sam asks. He is four years old, the innocence of an infant shining in one eye and the suffering of an old man tainted in the other. His voice is high-pitched like a sparrow's.
"Because we don't," Dean replies. He always replies with short answers, hoping to discourage Sam from asking his questions. Ignorance is bliss, and knowledge is pain.
"But why?" the younger brother insists.
Dean takes a step forward, trying to peer around the corner of the street. The bustling cars whizzed by and blew a wind through Dean's hair, vehicles scuttling like insects towards their destinations with columns of gray smoke and exhaust dispelled in hacking coughs of carbon dioxide. Unthinkingly, Sam begins to walk forwards as well to follow in Dean's steps, keeping both of his eyes on Dean as he awaits an answer.
(That is how it always will be, the little brother following the elder.)
With a jerk as swift as the blinking of an eye, Dean pulls his brother back just in time as a black sedan crashes past them, falling and rising with the curve of the road. The honking of a horn fills Dean's ears.
For the first time, Dean gets the inkling of a feeling that perhaps—just perhaps—his brother is not immortal.
-::-
stage iii. mitosis
When Dean first bears witness to Sam's fight with his father, he is twelve. Sam is eight, still young, still innocent, yet still scarred.
Sam has always been the rebel, burning rage inside of him like suppressed flames threatening to melt everything around him. He has always been the essence of coals put under pressure, and that night, a spark lit his anger aflame.
"I can go one night without practicing with a shotgun!" he shouts.
Scattered pages of notes scrawled in graphite upon loose leaf sheets of notebook paper are littered on the motel bed, overlapping diagrams of the water cycle and other scientific things Dean did not understand at Sam's age. Dean's eyes trace the curve of a perfect and elegant arrow casually drawn on one of the papers as he avoids the confrontation.
Sam Winchester is growing, growing in both height and in mind, gathering all the knowledge he can possibly accumulate into his mind. Dean's little brother is a sponge, trying to soak in everything around him until he is satisfied and full.
"I have a biology test tomorrow; I need to study!"
Dean laughs internally, bitterness on his tongue, grated like sour lemons over his teeth. Even though his brother is not blind to the fact that John stumbled in hours past midnight reeking of a whiskey bar and nursing a broken wrist with a machete stained with flaking pieces of now-brown dried blood, he does not comprehend the meaning of what he sees. Tomorrow, they will be long gone.
He still has a lot to learn.
-::-
stage iv. meiosis
The night Sam Winchester leaves for Stanford, Dean prepares to tell him.
The four words Dean has in mind are nothing special, perhaps even as dull and redundant as the flaking coats of white paint on the motel walls or the rust and mold they find in the showers.
Sam probably already knows what Dean plans to say from the way his older brother still checks the street before they cross and from the way he still sleeps with one hand hanging off the bed out of habit just in case Sam has a nightmare about the monsters they see (or the monsters they are). It is written, splattered in a watercolor palette of pastels across the Christmas tree Dean stole from some house down the street along with a stack of gift-wrapped presents, snapshots of the gift-wrapped lives they will never have yet Dean gave and still gives to his sibling, the way that the first and last words scurrying across Dean's mind every day before he goes to sleep and when he wakes up are about looking out for his little brother.
("I love you, Sam."
You could paint a sunset with those words.)
Sam looks at his brother as if for forgiveness, for some sign of consolation that he is doing the right thing and that his older brother is okay with him leaving, the desperation of a drowning man in his eyes. Dean bites down on the sides of his cheeks, hard and persistent and vicious until he tastes copper.
The door slams after Sam, but the goodbye is still on his tongue.
-::-
stage v. apoptosis
(It has been said that when a parent dies, a child feels their own mortality, but when a child dies, it is the parent who loses immortality. What do they say about brothers?)
Twenty-four years, five hours, and thirty-three minutes after Dean held his baby brother for the first time, Dean holds his brother for the last time.
He is wounded when he falls into Dean's arms, still young, still innocent, yet still scarred. Dean's hand reaches behind his back and a pain rips through him as if it is his life that is draining before his eyes in shades of crimson and scarlet instead of his brother's.
"It's okay," he whispers, panic in his throat like wildfire and the fear of a mad man in his eyes. "It's going to be okay, Sammy."
His brother looks at him, unhearing, words on his lips like sparrows ready to fly from the tip of his tongue. Sam's mouth moves to form syllables, but instead what comes out are crying rivulets of blood replacing his last words, streams of red that threaten to overwhelm Dean's vision. In the last moments of his life, Sam Winchester looks at his brother with the desperation of a drowning man in his eyes, as if to say I don't want to die.
(Either way, Sam Winchester's last words ends up being his brother's name.)
Sam's lifeless head falls onto his shoulder, and Dean Winchester screams.
-::-
(Days have turned to weeks, and weeks have stretched to months, and months have extended to years. Years later, Dean asks the angel Castiel if there is any hope of bringing Sam back; he knows the answer before it is said.
When the reply is given and the finality sinks in, Dean feels a little bit of himself break as his last hope slips through his fingertips like water. He wants to see his brother's face again, wants to hear the sparrow-high pitch of his voice, wants for a few more years of time for his little brother, wants the hours that fell away like autumn leaves to be worth something, wants a reply for all the days he spent screaming at the sky to give his brother back until his lungs burned like the whiskey in his throat—wants, wants, wants so desperately for a stage six of his life—
—all patients know there is no stage six.)
[the end]