The body lay sprawled upon the pavement, face down, unmoving.
It had just stopped raining and the blacktop glistened as water droplets reflected the moonlight like liquid diamonds. The body was an ugly dark blot among them – a dark blot that was growing larger as an ever-widening pool of blood spread out around it. Dean approached warily, gun held tightly in his hands. He neatly sidestepped the blood.
Standing at a safe distance, he nudged the body with one foot. It rolled over onto its back. Dean recoiled at the sight of its opened eyes.
Its familiar face.
He didn't know if he spoke out loud.
"Sam?"
Suddenly he couldn't breathe, as if he were struggling for air right along with his brother. The hole in Sam's chest should have killed him immediately but it hadn't. Dean hadn't expected him to live. He hadn't expected to have to look down into Sam's eyes and see hurt and confusion. What had happened?
He'd missed the heart.
Sam was still alive.
"Dean? What….what's going on?"
"Sammy…."
"Oh, God. Please….help me."
Dean dropped to his knees, cradling his brother's head in his arms. A sob choked him."Sammy. Sam, I'm sorry. It was the only way. I'm sorry. I'm sorry! Please..."
A trembling hand reached out to him. Blood dripped from the fingertips. Eyes pleading, Sam begged for help once more before the blood rising into this throat drowned his voice. It didn't matter.
"Dean, save me."
"It's too late for that now, Sammy." The man appeared from the shadows. Yellow eyes gleamed from behind John Winchester's smile. The smile was directed at Dean. "Tsk, tsk. You screwed up again Dean, and now he's mine."
"No!"
Dean sat up, clutching the sheets in his fists and sucking in air with huge gulps. His chest hurt. He could feel his heart pounding against his ribs. Sweat and tears stung his eyes as he blinked rapidly to clear his vision. Distraught and disoriented, the scent of blood still haunting him, he reached to turn on the light beside the bed.
The flickering blue light of the television already illuminated the room. As Dean flipped on the lamp a pale, yellow glow joined it to chase away the remaining darkness. If the big LCD numbers on the alarm clock hadn't given away the time, the infomercial on the tube would have. It was after two – past all the late night talk shows.
Sam was up. He wasn't, however, watching television. He sat in a chair in the corner, in the one corner still shrouded in shadow. The light just barely touched his face, making it look strangely gaunt. For a second Dean thought he was drunk again, but he wasn't. Sam's wrecked expression was from grief, not alcohol. His voice was low and rough as he spoke.
"You okay?"
Dean's voice wasn't much better. He cleared his throat after a false start. "Nightmare."
Sam flashed him a small, wry smile that disappeared quickly. "That's my job."
"I was dreaming about that chick from Chicago? Remember her? Man, was she a freak…." Dean shuddered and rubbed his face with his hands, lest his expression give away the lie.
"I thought her name was Ruth?"
"It was."
"Then how come you yelled 'Sam?' "
Dean didn't miss a beat. "I was yelling for your ass to come get her off me."
There was a long pause as Sam regarded him solemnly. "That's bullshit," he said finally. "I know where your head's at, Dean."
"In Chicago with a psycho chick named Ruth." Dean threw back the sheets and got out of bed. "We got any beer left?"
"No."
He expected Sam to pursue the issue when he came back out of the bathroom, but Sam didn't seem to be inclined to perform his usual psychoanalysis of Dean's mood. Instead he remained sitting quietly in the corner. His gaze was distant as if his thoughts were a million miles away.
No, Dean thought, not a million miles, only about four hundred.
They'd left San Francisco in a hurry, after Dean salted and burned the bodies of both Glen and Maddie in a dumpster behind their apartment building. Sam waited alone in the car while Dean finished the grisly deed. Neither one of them had spoken, not since Sam pulled the trigger and put a bullet through Madison's heart. Even when it was all over and they drove off into the night, Sam sat in the passenger's seat just staring down at his hands and not saying a word.
At one point Dean started worrying his brother might have been in shock. He glanced over at Sam's pale face more than once with some wry comment or another on his lips, hoping to nudge Sam out of it. One look though, and Dean's light hearted words would wither and die, unable to stand up against the pain.
He wasn't good with the important words. That was Sam's job. Now even Dean's ability to provide smart-ass commentary seemed to fail him. He couldn't compose his thoughts. Like Sam's they seemed to be lost in darkness. All Dean heard in his mind was Glen's desperate voice pleading for help. The kid hadn't known what he'd become or what he'd done. He hadn't known the man from whom he begged for help was the one who had killed him.
The line between good and evil was getting thinner and Dean didn't like it. It made him have to think. Dean didn't like thinking. Thinking messed up his aim.
They'd driven through Palo Alto, and again non-stop through San Jose.
"Do you want to stop?" Dean had asked.
"No."
"I mean we could, no problem. I thought maybe you'd want….."
"I said, no, Dean."
Sam still had friends at Stanford. Jessica was buried in San Jose. Dean wanted to stop. Sam's friends might be able to help him, at least distract him. He pictured Sam throwing himself across Jess' grave and just letting it all out...that would be good for him, maybe.
But Sam said, "no."
They drove through. They didn't stop. They hadn't stopped until they reached the outskirts of L.A. and Dean found the seedy little hotel where they now resided.
Dean stood beside his bed almost afraid to climb back in it lest the dream return. Was that how it was for Sam? Did he avoid sleep because of the dreams it brought with it? Not that it made much difference anymore. They both knew the nightmares, the visions, would come whether Sam was asleep or awake.
There was still blood on his brother's cheek, a smeared spatter that made Dean think of a kiss. Madison had kissed Sam as she died, kissed him with her blood, marking him forever. The memory would remain long after he wiped his face clean.
"Sammy….."
He began softly, not sure what he was going to say but knowing at this point he had to say something. Sam was naturally broody, but this...this was different. There was something eerie about it, something not quite right. Madison's death had been some sort of catalyst. Even under torture Dean would never admit it frightened him, but it did. Sam had changed. Psychically null as he was, Dean still felt it. He felt the demon tightening up on the reins.
Sam shifted his weight in his chair. Dean's gaze automatically went to his brother's right hand where it rested upon the tabletop. There beside it was the gun.
THE gun. It had killed Madison. Dean had put it away in the trunk as soon as he'd managed to wrest it from Sam's unsteady hand.
Dean was afraid. He was very afraid. He definitely wouldn't be getting back to sleep this night for fear of waking in the morning to find Sam's brains strewn out across the walls. The note would be simple: "So you wouldn't have to."
"Sam," Dean said gruffly. "Sammy, it's going to be all right."
Sam focused on him slowly, as if Dean's words had roused him from sleep. It was then that Dean realized the expression on his brother's face was not one of grief, but resignation.
"No," Sam said quietly. "It's not."
"Sam."
"I never thought," Sam's fingers stretched toward the gun, giving the barrel a most delicate caress. "It would be so easy."
A chill ran down Dean's back. "What? What are you talking about?"
The fingers stopped moving. Sam glanced up from the gun, back to Dean. "Killing someone." He smiled slightly, uttered a soft, wry, laugh lacking humor. "I should have let you do it, Dean, despite what she wanted." Tears glittered in his eyes. "Because now everything has changed." His face twisted with fear, his voice became a barely audible whisper. "I thought it would be hard but...pulling the trigger and...kill...killing Maddie...it was easy."
Before Dean might have made a denial. He might have mouthed off with a contradiction and worn Sam down with the strength of his optimism.
No.
Things haven't changed.
I won't let them change.
We're going to beat this.
That was before Molly, before Glen, before Maddie, all of them unaware of what they were, what they'd done, and all unable to escape a destiny not of their making. Dean's strength and determination had been compromised, his whole belief system shattered. He couldn't find a denial because Sam spoke the truth. It wasn't just Sam either. They had both changed.
Dean's aim hadn't been true when he'd shot Glen. He just got lucky. A shattered rib had punched through Glen's heart, poisoning it with silver-tainted blood. Otherwise, the wolfman might have lived.
It was a monumental failing on Dean's part. He never missed his target. Never.
He'd hesitated that night. He'd faltered because for a moment he'd not seen a monster, he'd seen….
A victim.
Everything has changed.
Dean crossed the room. He stopped in front of the table and slowly picked up the gun. He stared at it for a long moment before turning his gaze back to Sam. Their eyes met. Something beyond their ability to express in words passed between them. It was nothing supernatural, no psychic connection. It was something in the blood that bound them as brothers, some primal instinct hidden deep within the genes they both shared.
Tightening his fingers around the weapon in his hand, Dean swallowed the lump in his throat.
"I swear," he said roughly. "You won't suffer, Sammy."
"I'm suffering now!"
"Sammy..." Dean shook his head. "Not yet. Not now. It's not time."
"Dean..."
"No!"
They stared at each other until Sam looked away. His silence was a dismissal. He shut down the conversation. That was fine with Dean.
"You've just got to trust me," Dean whispered. "Okay?"
Sam didn't say anything. There wasn't anything left to say. He simply nodded.
Dean quietly went back to bed, turning out the light and tucking the gun under his pillow. Beneath the indistinct bleat of the television he could hear the quiet hitch of Sam's breath as grief and fear took hold again. Dean sighed as he rolled over to give his little brother what little privacy he could.
And as he lay there in the dark, listening to the sound of Sam's tears, Dean recalled Maddie's quiet dignity as she accepted her fate. He remembered the sight of Molly bathed in the golden light of morning as she finally let go and set her spirit free.
What had they found on the other side?
"It doesn't really matter, Dean. Hope's kinda the whole point."
He closed his eyes and slipped his hand beneath the pillow. Cool metal met his fingertips.
You'll be okay, Sammy.
I'll take care of you, like I always have.
I promise.