Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing.
Warning: Violence, Unbeta'd (all mistakes my own)
Spoilers: General Season 1-4, 5x01-5x04
Description: Because everyone has a breaking point whether they know it or not. It's all a matter of finding it. Five years is plenty of time to figure it out. Missing Scene for 5x04 - The End.

A/N: Started off as a drabble for You Can't Explain That and promptly exploded into something more.

Detroit was in shambles. Burning buildings were ripped into scattered pieces, the stench of fried bodies and ruptured military tanks pervading the air. The shredded remains of streets rippled up and down the city.

Sam staggered over to a house which, by the looks of it, had been hit by a cluster of intense bombing. A crushed arm sprawled out from underneath a slab of cement. Emma, Ben, Carl...all dead along with everyone else in the resistance group he'd been working with. Hell, even most Croats were dead. The only sign of life was a lone Croat shambling towards him from the right. With practiced ease, Sam aimed and fired his gun. Another one dead. Sam let out a toneless laugh, the gun falling from his numb fingers. So many dead. Oh, how he wished he could be one of them.

Ever since that night nearly five years ago, when De—when it all started, he hadn't been able to die. He'd tried. Hundreds of times.

He glanced down at himself and immediately wished he hadn't. The white peaking from his left arm (snapped when a Croat knocked him off a second story building) declared a serious break. His whole torso was littered with small spears of rocks and metal. Beneath his ribcage, a steady stream of blood was gushing from a sharp piece of shrapnel angled upwards into his lung.

Ignoring the coppery tang of blood in the back of his mouth, Sam swallowed back the sour bile that had vaulted up his throat. Dying didn't get easier no matter how many times it happened. But he still had an hour or so before he dropped, so he might as well search for survivors.

Sam.

No. Ignore him. Not here. He's not here.

Sam. Is this what you want? All this desolation. All this destruction.

Deliberately ignoring him, Sam staggered onto a pile of rumble, biting back the agony radiating from his chest.

Those children in the school down the street. Did you want them to die?

The memory of the children's rotting corpses slammed into his mind and suddenly he didn't care if Lucifer was only in his head. "You killed them!" He shouted. "All these people. It's you. You did this, you murderous lying pit of evil and I will never say yes to you." Something inside Sam's chest snapped and he slammed into the ground desperately gasping for air as grey spots danced behind his eyes. Two boots stepped into his field of vision.

Dean?

Lucifer knelt down beside him. His vessel, Nick, had large chunks of skin peeling off his face, giving the impression he'd been filleted by a cheese grinder. "Sam." Lucifer's face filled with intense sorrow. "Why do you keep blaming me for things you cause? Haven't you realized yet Sam? This is all your doing."

Maybe it was the despair that had been steadily building over the years, maybe it was the excruciating pain in his chest, (probably both, Sam's mind supplied tiredly), but for the first time in over four years, lying amidst an abolished city and the devil crouched beside him, Sam was struck by an overwhelming urge to cry. A desperate "Dean" slid through the blood clogging his throat.

Lucifer gently stroked his hair. "Dean hates you, don't your remember, Sam? He hasn't talked to you for almost five years." Sam scrunched his eyes desperately. "Do you want to know how he would respond?" The hand disappeared. "I'll show you."

"Sam."

Sam opened his eyes and garbled out a pleading "No."

Nick was gone. Lucifer stood in from of him as...Dean. He strode over and crouched down, his face—Dean's face—towering over him with unforgiving eyes.

Five years….almost five years since they had last talked, since Dean had ordered him to stick to his side of the hemisphere. No calls, no word, no sign his brother was ever going reunite with him again. Months passed and with it much of Sam's hope that he and Dean would reunite. When Europe fell, though, Sam considered common sense to rejoin. The more manpower the better. The closest he ever got to Dean was a note in an abandoned hospital containing the phrase, "My side of the hemisphere, remember? Stick to yours."

"Not him." Sam begged, tears welling up in his eyes. "Anyone but him."

"Shut-up Sam!" Dean snapped in a voice deeper and rougher than Sam remembered. "You know, I refused to help you five years ago. What the hell makes you think any of that'd change now? Now that we get to see the exact results of your mistakes. Everything that's happened to us. Everything we've lost. It all comes back to you. Mom. Jess. Dad. Me. If you hadn't been born none of it would have happened. We'd have lived. All of us." He spat on the ground viciously. "But the kicker was Ruby. I mean, Jesus, Sammy, you chose a demon over your own brother. The brother who went to hell for you. You released Lucifer from his cage. This is your fault."

Dean shoved his face inches from Sam who flinched backwards into the ground with a strangled, "Dean." Dean's voice lowered into a cold whisper. "You could die right now and it wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't give a damn. Hell, I wish I was here so I could finish the job myself."

Tears squeezed from the corners of Sam's clenched eyes as he struggled to force past the blood in his throat to respond. But no matter how much he wanted to deny it, Dean was right. He'd known it after Jess's death, after Dean went to hell, after he released Lucifer from the cage. Azazel was right. Everything came down to him. "Dean."

"You're not my brother. If you ever were."

For a moment those words hung in the air, then crashed down.

Lucifer morphed back into Nick and gazed sadly down at Sam who was sobbing deep, uncontrolled sobs which wracked through his shattered frame.

"Sam," Lucifer murmured softly, "I'm sorry, but I would never lie to you. Not about anything, never about this. Dean hates you."

Sam's agonized weeping shifted to strained wheezing as he began to drown in his blood-filled lungs.

"All these years, you've fought so desperately to redeem yourself. You've suffered and lost so much. I can never take away the pain you've experienced, but I can promise you this-you won't be awake for any of it. I'll keep you asleep. No memories. Nothing. Just like death. You'll finally be able to rest."

Dean starting prank wars. Dean pulling him from the fire. Dean talking with his mouth full of a burger. Dean waking him from nightmares. Dean hitting on random waitresses. Dean shouting his name. Dean talking to the Impala. Dean holding him while he died. Dean giving him his first beer. Dean being torn apart. Dean mocking chick-flick moments. Dean coming back from hell. Dean putting on the necklace. Dean protecting him. Dean always there. Dean the big brother.

Dean.

You're not my brother. If you ever were.

"Yes."

Please drop me a note on what you thought of it—praises and critiques. I know I always feel lame for just saying 'good job' or 'bad job' to a fic, but honestly, as a writer, even that is greatly appreciated.

- Nox