Feet Don't Fail Me Now:
Based on the song "Born to Die" by Lana Del Rey. Tag to "Man Who Knew Too Much" and the "Born Again Identity". Sam wishes he had the words to make Dean understand why this choice was just natural. Brother, dear, we were born to die.
Images of Hell were exploding in his eyes. He was unraveling at the seams of his soul. Every dream he could have had shattered with the wall. He could now see where once he was blind.
Sam blinked as memory after memory overtook him. Every pain he'd felt in the Cage was taking his body by storm. How could he ever make it from the car into the warehouse?
Feet don't fail me now…
It wasn't a sprint. He had to think of it as a marathon.
"Why is this so important to you?" The image of his own tortured self called back to him.
And he had answered almost just as quickly. A small smile curled around his flaming lips.
"You know me…"
Come on, stupid legs. Take me to the finish line!
"You know why."
With every image of the Cage flashed an even fonder image of Dean. Dean who would never know how much his brother loved him. It wouldn't matter at this point. Love was not enough. The road so far had been too hard. Even Sam didn't know why it had to come to this. That Cas, their undyingly faithful best friend, would do this to him.
His heart was breaking with every step. Yet his eyes filled up with the color of green. Green. Dean's color. The color of all life on earth.
His brother. The one who had made him laugh. The driver whose speeds had made him feel high.
Carry on...Just a few more steps. And then, he's mine.
Sam smiled as he thought about Dean. He had given him the strength to reach him. And all the days of darkness that came afterward were somehow made more manageable by the fact that Dean was there.
Sam could greet each new day with a smile. Because it was all fine. He and Dean were born to die. It was something they were good at. Something Sam had done over and over for years and years.
So, he didn't feel it too much when his head finally turned to powder from the long, long days awake. He took a walk on the wild side that night. Ran straight into traffic. He hadn't been hoping to be hit. Hadn't been hoping to be found. He was running, running down that road of too much knowing. Knowing all the while that this was the last set of bad choices he could ever make.
He was out of his head when they put him in a psychiatric room. He barely felt anything until Dean stepped through the door. Dean's sad green eyes, Dean's green shirt. Green. The color of life, of safety, of love…
His Dean.
So sad, so angry...Oh, God. No, Dean.
You'll make me cry…
Sam swallowed. He tried to think. To choose his last words. He had to give him something beautiful he could use in all the days that would stretch out before him. This was Dean's darkest hour. This was the last time they would be face to face.
Sam wasn't worried about the end of his life. Wouldn't let himself worry about where he was going next, heaven or hell. He'd had a better run than most.
He had to think of some wisdom that suffering had passed to him. So that Dean could take it and carry it until his time had come.
"Sam, if I don't find something!"Dean was desperate.
"Then, I'll die…"
I've been trying to tell you, brother. Sam smiled as his crackling voice attempted an explanation.
We were born to die, Dean…
Sam leaned back against the bolster, taking him in. He would be walking away for the last time.
I should have told you while I lived that I came back...That everything, Hell, all my failures...I was no hero. It was you. You made me love and hope and think. You were everything. You were mine.
Sam didn't want to think about Dean alone. Without him or Bobby or Lisa or Cas...Dean would be so alone in a world of ugly that yawned of haunted hallways and more monsters than one man could be forced to face alone. Sam had never wanted his brother to be alone.
Oh, how to tell him. How to make him understand that he would be okay, that they would be together again soon. He looked so tired. Even more tired and worn down than Sam felt. It was making him cry on the inside. Bleed from the eyes of his soul.
"Why does this matter to you?" His tortured self said it to him again as soon as Dean was out of sight. He gaped, horrified by Sam's choice. Sam looked up at the hallucination of himself. He smiled.
"You know me…"
The hallucination Sam bit his lip as the tears ran down his scorched and bleeding face.
"You know why."
Sam swallowed. He figured if those were his last words, then those would have to do. Dean...His reason. He closed his eyes and started to laugh. Laugh because he was dreaming, even if he couldn't sleep. And this was something, for all his background nagging, that Lucifer could never take away from him.
The road had been so long. They had always carried on. They'd had so much fun together even in the meantime of all that.
Lost...but now I'm found. Sam closed his eyes, willing death to come. He was holding on to the memory of the day that Dean had made a deal to save him. How he'd clung to him when he'd been raised from the dead. He hadn't blinked in the face of sacrificial death. He'd been born to die for his brother then.
Sam hoped this was the last time that either of them would be faced with such a painful choice.