Written for Prompt: "Yearn" from LJ community spn_30snapshots.
Here by Whilom
"You were gone. I was here."
As if those two sentences could scrape up an explanation for why my little brother had turned dark side and was commanding demons to return to Hell. As if those six words could placate me into understanding why he was doing what he was doing. He offered other words, too. Other pieces of explanation. I gave him some of my own. But those were the words that stayed with me after I finally scooped my bag off the floor and tossed it on the bed, gentler with it than I had been with Sam, and left for a bit, for breathing room.
You were gone.
As if I needed the reminder. The memories are coming back, slowly but surely, an insistent pressure against the dam in my mind. They wait for me to close my eyes before they leap into action—but a man can't stave off sleep forever. And thank you, Sam, for reminding me of how I spent my summer.
The rest of what he said I can't quite shake off. Everything I had worked for during the 365 days I had left with him, every joke I said, every prank I pulled, every awkward moment I pushed through to show him how to live without the brother who loved him more than life, it was all a waste. Because what I did hadn't made it any easier. In fact, it had probably made it worse. Maybe if I hadn't showed him the ties that bind us together, maybe if I had ignored him, brooded more, gone off on my own for quiet-time-with-the-universe—maybe then he would have been able to cut the strings and lived on his own.
Instead he had been dragged to Hell with me. Not physically. But his soul had been right there next to mine, suffering just as much.
His face is different. His eyes are different. Everything about him seems like broken glass, raw and jagged with awkward smooth spots that make you slip and cut your fingers. It's the lucky ones that get away with sliced fingers—I'm the one who slips and cuts my heart. Probably because other people keep him at arm's length but I bring him to my chest.
A smart man wouldn't make the same mistakes twice. But I wanted the explanation, even if it was the fumbling one coming from his mouth about justifying evil because of good intentions. And at some point, it doesn't matter what he says, what words he strung together as an offering to appease a wrathful brother. He already said everything he needed to. Here wasn't just a dirty motel room, a state or a town, the condition of the weapons. What he meant to say was I can't live without you, Dean, not really live, and I was just barely holding it together, and there was no answer when I asked what I was supposed to do, and I couldn't breathe from all the screaming my soul was doing, and, Dean, you were gone.
I was here.