Moments Like These

Description

Sam has another hit to the head, he starts having nightmares, reliving traumatising events in his life. Moments involving Dean, Jessica and Bobby, all Sam's greatest hits. With each nightmare, he and Dean talk through these moments that both had tried hard to forget. When Dean suggests confronting the stars of these nightmares and they start talking back, will this finally help Sam to forgive himself and his past or will he be lost to his nightmares.

Chapter 1 – The Last Straw

Dean feels like he is in molasses as he watched his brother crumble to the ground. The monster they were hunting, stands over him with a large rock clutched in his hand, now covered with his little brothers blood. He starts moving and everything is in slow motion, he raises his gun and fires twice into the monsters head, he watches the bullets moving towards the monster and for a second he thinks they will miss but when the world finally catches up and starts moving again, the bullets hit the creature right between the eyes and it falls to the ground with a thump. "Sammy!" he yells as he runs toward his fallen brother, worry making his stomach turn, his head replaying the hit to his little brothers head on a loop.

His brother hadn't moved since he fell, like a puppet with its wires cut. Blood was slowly trickling from a large gash in his brother head. His long hair matted and sticking to his head. "Shit Sammy…" Dean muttered as he looked his brother over, memories of Sam, his wall coming down, writhing in pain and memories of over a hundred years in hell. Seeing nothing externally wrong with his brother, he pats Sam on the cheek to try and wake him as gently as he can.

"Sam… wake up for me" he said softly, knowing Sam was probably going to have a monster head ache and blurry vision. "Come on Sammy… open your eyes" he says again. With no response, Dean pats his face but when his brother only moans in response, he sighs knowingly, it's going to be up to him to get them both out of there.

Dean pulls his brother onto his feet, his arm over his shoulder and slowly makes the long journey back to the Impala. Of course the monster of the week had to be living out in a forest, which so far away from civilisation that there was no cell service and that the hike in, was arduous but the trek back, with an injured little brother was going to be a total crap fest. His only thought was of the hour long hot shower he would demand and six pack of beer he would polish off, that kept him going. The sun was setting by the time he leant his still barley conscious brother against the gleaming black car they called home. He opened the passenger side door and poured Sam into his usual seat. He ran around to the driver's side and had the car moving in a second.

He was suddenly pulling into their motel, what felt like minutes later but was in fact 2 hours. He dragged Sam, who was now awake, blinking sluggishly, into the room, onto the bed furthest from the door. When Sam was finally sleeping restlessly, now in his soft sleeping pants and a faded Stanford t-shit. Dean took a moment to breath and gratefully acknowledge that neither of them had been fatally injured. Sam had inevitably been hurt, another head injury which was still something that Dean feared, still had nightmares about.

Sam had his soul returned to his for months now but they were still walking on egg shells with each other. Both still wary, clingy and dependant on each-others presence. Dean had a panic attack whenever he saw Sam sleeping he would put a hand to his chest to feel the slow rise and fall of his breathing. Sam worried himself sick and worried that everyone they met was someone his soulless-self had hurt or worse.

Sam's breath even out in sleep and Dean settles into the nearest chair watch over him and be ready if his little brother had any more nightmares.

Sam is standing in a dark corner and in front of him is something he never wanted to see again. He can hear the hell hounds and he watches as his younger self is forced to watch his brother being ripped apart. The pure terror and sadness on his young face makes tears come to his much older eyes. He sees his older brother trying to be brave and to not show just how scared he really was. Sam is filled with a sadness that is threatening to pull him back in to the black abyss he had gone to after watching this the first time. He never told his brother just how close he came to following his brother into hell.

Suddenly the scene fades and restarts at the beginning and he tries to close his eyes so he didn't have to watch it all again. However the pain filled screams and non-human noises coming from his brother make it just as bad as watching it. Tears run down his face as he prays to just wake up.

He watchs as Sam's eye's flutter and he moans as he starts to toss and turn. "Noooo De'n…" Dean furrows his brow, not really understanding what his brother is seeing "Don't goooo De'n"

"Come on Sammy… wake up for me" Dean says softly giving him a little shake.

"Noooo… De'n… don't go… not…. Hellll" He looks down at his brothers distressed face, tears gathering in his eyes and wonders yet again, what on earth his brother's pained mind was thinking about. "Sammy?"

It has been so long that he hadn't really thought about his time in hell in any great detail. More accurately he had trained his mind to not think about hell, buried it all in the deepest depths of his mind, unfortunately it was always a word away from flooding right back. The sounds, smells, the pain, all bubbling under the surface, keeping it buried so his brother never noticed.

He knows his brother had been though worse torture in Hell for a heck of a lot longer that he had, having two archangels as your bunk mates was exponentially worse than what he had experience, both on and off the rack but if anyone could understand, could sympathise or just listen, it would be him. It was just not something they ever wanted to share with anyone, much less each other, that experience. Dean hated watching his little brother walk around with that burden on his already heavy shoulders, maybe he had to share more of his own experience in Hell, maybe his own closed off, emotionally stunted manner, made Sam believe he couldn't share with him, that it was not the Winchester way. Well Dean was going to have to change that.

"Oh God De'n… I'm sorrrryy" Sam mumbles and tears gathering in the corners of his eyes like a storm and start running down his face, Dean can't wait any longer while his brother relives some horrible memoriy from his past.

"Sammy!, come on, wake up now… Sammy!" Dean shook his brother a little more harshly.

The youngest Winchester's eyes suddenly flew open with a broken off yell and he shoots up into a seated positon, arms flailing wilding, knocking Dean on his butt.

"Shit!" Dean exclaims as he lands hard, his hands taking the brunt of his weight, when he tried to brace his fall, a sharp pain running right up his arm.

"Dean?" Sam croakes out, his voice rough.

"Yeah Sam, it's me... who else would it be?" Dean says a little harshly as he cradles his hand.

"Sorry" Sam replied in that shattered little boy voice he only uses when he has no fight left in him and just takes his brothers words without complaint. Sam sits up a little more and puts his head in his hands, breathing deeply, trying to stop the shaking that he hopes his brother doesn't notice.

Dean watches his little brother and half loves him for not wanting to discuss his nightmare or hell in any detail and half hates that he is just giving up, because it means that whatever he had been dreaming about was worse than he could imagine. "No… I'm sorry Sammy" Dean puts his hand on his little brothers head and swipes his hand through the soft strands. "You scared the crap out of me" he states gently, still moving his hands in his hair.

Sam still hasn't lifted his head, he is still reeling from the scary as f$#k nightmare he just witnessed, little shudders running through his body. He knows it wasn't real, that whatever it was, was just his overactive imagination and his misfiring brain. He breaths out and tries to stop the tears but they start running from his eyes, blurring his vision without his consent. "Sorry" he mutters when his finally lifts his head and Dean is suddenly wrapping his arms around him and rubs his back smoothly in his big brother way.

"Hey… what's going on Sammy… what on earth happened" Dean asked more worried now than before.

"Sorry" Sam says again, not really knowing where to start.

"Stop Sammy… just stop apologising" Dean replies gently.

"That was… not… pleasant at all" Sam said whipping his eyes and moving away slightly.

"Yeah, I can tell.. you want to tell me what that was about?" Dean still didn't really want to talk about hell or be reminded of it but if Sam needed to talk about it then he would suck it up and just listen.

"Not really… I don't even know why I was seeing it… it was so long ago" Sam said looking away, hoping Dean would just put two and two together.

Dean was getting a clearer picture of what he had seen but he needed Sam to say it so he could try to move past it. "Doesn't matter how long ago it was Sammy… it's obviously still affecting you"

Sam looked at his brother then and marvelling at just how well his big brother knew him. "It's not something I'll ever forget Dean… it was one of the worst days of my life… seeing that" Sam's eyes were watering again so he looked away trying to get a handle on his emotions.

They both knew what the youngest Winchester was talking about, it was the elephant in the room and Dean was grateful that his little brother was only alluding to it. "I… I can only imagine… that whole situation… was hard, for both of us..." Dean stopped when Sam started talking over him.

"No! I'm not trying to compare myself to you Dean… what you went through… I don't… I just wanted to say that watching that, from the other side, was hard too" Sam tried to explain but Dean out his hand up to stop him.

"No Sam… I… look that whole thing… was tough…" Dean signed because really, that wasn't a big enough word for it. "and I know that when I came back, I wasn't all that happy with how you were spending your time… or who you spent it with… and after all these years, after everything, I understand… I do… I understand that it's just as hard on the ones left behind" Dean said shaking his head, wondering why had they hadn't talked about this, why they held on to these terrible things and let them stew and fester.

Sam was looking at him through the hair that had fallen over his face, reminding Dean of his innocent little brother who hadn't been tainted by evil or lies and destruction. "Really?" Sam asked sceptically.

"Yeah Sam, really… I've had a lot of time to think about it all" Dean replied not elaborating further.

Sam nodded, smiling a little, then he shook his head in confusion. His brother had always said that he forgave him, that he wanted a clean slate on the past and to move on, but Dean had thrown it all in Sam's face and blamed him for everything bad in their lives, when he had been free of his inhibitions. Sam had always been sensitive, he had always taken what people said about him, to heart and when his brother spouted on about his failures and his mistakes, he knew deep down that it was what his brother really believed.

"It's not a time that I'm proud of… in fact it's one of the many things I will regret for the rest of my life… As much as I had told myself that what I was doing was for the right reasons, that it didn't matter if I died as long as I made amends and killed Lilith… it didn't really work out though…" Sam still had his head down, his hands shaking like mad, tears falling down his face. Dean had forgotten just how much Sam carried his shame and guilt around with him every day.

"it's all in the past Sammy…" Dean replied moving his hand so he was touching his brothers head, giving him comfort "Do you want to tell me about what that was? You were knocked out and suddenly you're having this nightmare" Dean asked gently, with his hand moving to his brothers neck, giving his a small squeeze.

"I… I don't know…" Sam said, his hands moving to his face, wiping his nose, reminding his big brother of a much younger little brother "I blacked out and suddenly I was watching myself, watching you getting ripped apart. It was like it was a 3D movie or something… after… after you had died, the whole scene just reset and it started again" Sam replied, his brow furrowed like he couldn't figure something out.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Dean asked seeing the change.

"Why? Why would I see that? It wasn't a vision, it wasn't some spell… I don't understand?" Sam asked shaking his still fuzzy head slightly. He could feel a head ache coming on.

Dean didn't know what was going on but that look of worry and shock was not staying on his little brothers face. "Hey, maybe it's just one too many hits to the head?" he said with a small chuckle trying to lighten the mood. He hoped to god that he wasn't right.

TBC