A/N: Sorry! I know, I haven't been keeping up with my promises to post every other Friday, but come on! Yeah, I'm talking to you, the three people who will actually read this. I know, it's confusing, weird, hard to understand with a side of bad writing. Don't sue me. I'm on fanfiction after all! Also, don't sue me, I don't own anything. I apologize for misuse of commas, characters, and the word 'and'.
{***}
He closed his eyes.
Dean's gone, but dad was first. There isn't anything left here for him. Sam didn't want to be a hunter. Now it's all he has left.
It's faint memory of what it used to be, of what things used to mean. Dean.
{***}
Sam was seven, he thinks, but memories that old aren't all that reliable. It was noting but them, in that Oklahoma prairie that Dean said was just like Kansas had been.
"It's just like it, Sammy, I can almost see Mom back here."
And Sam thought he could, too. He'd only ever seen the one picture Dad kept in his wallet, but Mom wasn't an image for Sam. She was this feeling, like Dean and home and she was beautiful, like the warm sun on Sam's thighs and the cool breeze; the safety of the salt and his brother's arms when the night would come and creep into the empty spaces in his mind. She was white light and sun silk leaves falling in the wind, and that's all Sam has, but it's good enough.
The golden, fading light cast long shadows across Dean's cheekbones and eyelashes and his freckles. Arms out, falling back, fall-darkened leaves, but Dean's eyes are closed, half smile trade-marked smirk keeping his cheeks soft and smooth.
Sam needs Dean to open his eyes, come on Dean just open your eyes. The moment's gone.
Jess was an angel, too, and why Sam even bothered with the normal life, he'd never know. Hunters were cursed, forever deemed to be the personal entertainment for God when he's bored. It's like he's laughing in their faces: Nothing lasts forever, he says.
Maybe Sam just shouldn't even try. It's just the same old song again and again.
Jess burns, he thinks, like his mother did, with pain and hot ashes. His whole world shattered.
{***}
They burned Dad together, and the fire was hot and angry, burning his father's face from his memories, and Sam says, no, please don't take from me. But the fire doesn't know what it's like, and it drags Dad's soul down to wherever souls go when demons pick pocket them. Dad's gone in fire, just like Mom and Jess, and Sam can't but wonder if death is just the flames that lick your body and whether or not you're really dead before then. It doesn't matter, Dad's gone too soon, just dust in the wind.
We're all just dust in the wind, Sam thinks.
{***}
Sam screams at the sky:
"Why, you damn bastard? Why? You've made life too short, too cruel, too hard. Why can't you bring him back? It's too much, when does the sacrifice become enough?"
The sky doesn't say a thing.
{***}
Sam wonders when he got so old, when his brother's eyes started to crinkle at the edges. He wonders when Dean started to look so old, but the hasn't happened yet, and Sam can't understand when he's seeing or how. It hurts and it throbs, crumbling down like a mud wall but Sam isn't sure where he is until the light wakes him up.
Dean still looks old.
Maybe it's just his soul; it knows it's dying soon and it has to make up for all that aging it's going to miss.
After it all, it still ends in fire.
He doesn't burn his brother. He can't, because then maybe Dean's not dead yet and that gives Sam a little spark in his gut that he thought had died a long time ago, with the rest of his dreams.
{***}
Sam dreamed once, to be a fireman, but he grew out of that real quick. Then he wanted to be like Dad, but Dean got there first and Sam could never compete with that. But then Dad was gone, more ofter than not, and Sam had Dean, the greatest big brother a child could ever ask for.
But Sam never asked for that. He never wanted Dean to have that burden.
He wanted... but that never mattered anyway. Dean sold his soul, but he should have just left Sam dead.
What has he done? Who deserves this?
{***}
Same old song: his world ends in ashes. Everything Sam tried, everything he did amounts to nothing but the ashes of his family.
Dean screamed and thrashed; Sam couldn't help but think: this is what I've done, this is what happens when I believe we last forever.
And when Sam holds him in his arms, he thinks Open your eyes, Dean, but Dean's eyes are open, a cruel joke on Sam Winchester because only the earth and sky last forever.
He buries his brother alone, refusing any help from Bobby, and that's just fine, Bobby said, because this is something Sam needs to do. The hole takes all day, and he makes it deep, straining his muscles and sweating lakes.
He was nine when his brother told him to stop trying, Sammy, stop asking, you don't want to know. And typical Sam keeps on digging and pressing, even when Dean tells him that this is just the way things are.
He thinks he can see that old Dean in the dead eyes of an empty corpse.
He lets his fingers press his big brothers eyes closed. The moment's gone.
{***}
When should a son be allowed to live past his parents, past his older brother, past his younger brother. Maybe he did something, maybe it's Karma, but that's more Islamic and Cas proved that Christianity has more say in the way things go, so he supposes that's not it. Cas tells him so many things have to happen, so many factors even to get two people together so he wouldn't be surprised if all theses things happen just so some future hero can be born, but he really doesn't want to think about that because that part comes later.
So he waits, and drinks, and refuses to burn Dean's body, because if he doesn't burn it, there's still a chance he can bring him back and that's all he needs to spur him on.
Dean told him to hunt. Don't mess with it, Sammy, let me be dead. But Sam would rather he had an angry Dean than a dead one. Flesh and blood mean life and Sam ran out three months ago.
{***}
Ruby comes and Sam is half hopeful that she's gonna kill him because even Hell can't be worse than this. But she doesn't, and that's half disappointing. Sam can't do it himself, of course, because Dean wouldn't have wanted him to.
She says:
"You want your brother back, don't you." And Sam laughs because of all the things she could have said, she said that and Sam just laughed. It was fitting, the simple seven words to sum up a complicated web work of the can be's and the should not's the angels have weaved together. But he doesn't know that yet.
She asks him cooperate because that'll get his brother back, but he isn't sure how when her plan sounds more like revenge than resurrection, and who the hell can blame him in his state of mind for not seeing her tricks.
Same old song. He can't help but hang on, and just hope to hell he can do something to bring his brother back.
He says yes.
He's just dust in the wind, after all, what does it matter?