Contains dialogue from the episode Dark Side Of The Moon, it belongs to Eric Kripke and Andrew Dabb.
Part of my Deleted Scenes series. Full list of fics in reading order available on my profile page. They will make more sense if read in order. :)
I will not be with you anymore unless you destroy whatever among you is devoted to destruction.
Joshua 7:12
Dean wakes up in his car. He doesn't know where he is, or where Sam is, or how he ended up on a deserted highway in the middle of nowhere in the dark, alone. He's scared for a moment or two, until the sound of the trunk slamming behind him makes him turn around and the sight he's met with stops his heart for a few seconds. It's Sam, except it's not Sam now. It's Sam a decade ago – more – and it's haunting. Dean's used to ghosts. He isn't used to the ghosts of people he knows.
"C'mon, let's go!" Sam says, his arms full of fireworks and his voice exactly how Dean remembers it.
He knows this kid. It's been years since Dean has seen this Sam but he knows him, maybe even better than he knows Sam now. He's a fireball of energy and light and laughter when he's around Dean – a sulking, moody, pre-teen mess when he's around Dad. He likes milkshakes and hates hunting but still does it because he wants Dean to think he's cool. He aches for a normal life, to be just like the other kids in his class, but he aches more for his big brother to like him, notice him, want to be around him. And Dean does. Dean's scared by how much he wants to be around Sam.
All the time, wherever they are; whoever else Dean is with even if it's a girl and she's riding him like a mechanical bull, even then somewhere in the back of Dean's mind, all he really wants is Sam. Sam's happy smile and the smell of his hair and the feel of his soft, spindly body when he presses up against Dean in his sleep when neither of them are quite conscious enough to remember that they shouldn't. Dean wants him so much it's terrifying, so he withdraws sometimes. To protect them both, but mostly Sam. He shouldn't be tainted, ruined, by Dean and his sickness. But it's the 4th of July and Sam deserves fireworks, so here they are. The way Sam smiles with his whole face as the sky explodes in color and fire is worth it.
Then Sam's gone, and Dean remembers guns and blood but not much else, until Castiel's monotone growl sounds through the Impala's speakers and Dean understands what's going on. He needs to get to Sam, and Cas says to follow the road, so Dean does.
Heaven is horrible. What everyone thinks, that it's fluffy clouds and harps and happiness, isn't true. Maybe it's better than downstairs, like Pamela points out in Ash's celestial Roadhouse. But it's not good either. The memories of Sam's they find themselves in tear Dean down, one fiber at a time, until he's got nothing left. His soul disintegrates and flies away on the breeze. He doesn't want to believe it, but the cold, hard fact is that Sam's version of Heaven doesn't include Dean. There's no escaping it. Dean knows if he was up there alone, he would remember the Christmas Eve before he went to Hell. The day he taught Sam to ride a bike they found in a junkyard. The first time Sam kissed him and meant it. The night they fell into each other's arms again after the smoke from Jessica's death had cleared. If Sam died on his own, and Dean was still on earth? Sam would spend the rest of eternity jumping between the memories of the few times in his life when Dean wasn't with him.
He'll deny it, if Dean asks. It won't matter. He knows now. Knows exactly what he means to his brother. Knows it's next to nothing.
Dean always knew he needed Sam more than Sam needed him. He just always thought Sam did need him, even if not as much. He never realized Sam's only been with him, this whole time, because he has nowhere else to go. It makes Dean wish Joshua hadn't sent them back. He'd rather be up there in the fake, plastic movie of his life than down here with a brother who has never really loved Dean back. At least not the way Dean loves him.
They were in Heaven for less than a day, Dean figures out by checking the date on his phone. Less than 24 hours, and in a series of fleeting moments, Dean's entire reason for existing crumbled to dust and what's left is nothing but emptiness. It's sad to think everything he's ever been could be wiped away in such a short amount of time. Dean always hoped he was more substantial than that. He always hoped he meant something to someone. But if it isn't Sam, then there's no one else.
Castiel doesn't answer when Dean calls him. He leaves a message and hopes Cas gets it soon, because the last thing in the world Dean wants right now is to sit in this room with Sam. Even fire and brimstone would be preferable at this point. His gun is an attractive option again.
"Are we okay?" Sam asks softly, from somewhere behind Dean.
Dean looks down at the dried blood on his shirt, feels his own chest for where bullet holes should be but aren't, and clenches his jaw in a useless attempt to keep himself from screaming or crying or grabbing his gun and taking the decision out of the angels' hands. There are still holes inside him, even if they're not there to physically touch with his fingers.
"Nope," he answers, not even able to lie to himself anymore. There's no use in it.
"Dean …"
"What, Sam?" Dean asks harshly, turning briefly to glance at his brother but angered by the sadness on Sam's face. "There's nothing to say. We both know … just leave it."
"I'm sorry."
"For what?" Dean challenges. "That all your happy memories involve you getting away from me?"
"No, I'm not sorry for that. Because that's not true."
"You sure about that? I was there, and it looked pretty true to me."
"Those were only three memories, Dean. Out of a whole lifetime. Are you really saying you've never even cracked a smile when I wasn't around? Shit, I wasn't in your memory with Mom! I'm not sitting here thinking it means you hate me."
Dean doesn't answer. He doesn't want excuses, or explanations. Or even reasons.
"When we were in that memory? With Mom, at our old house?"
"What about it?"
"That was your memory, Dean." Sam's eyes are bright and his forehead is furrowed like he's desperate to make Dean understand. "You in a stupid kiddie t-shirt with Mom there, loving you and making you pie. You have memories like that. I don't."
Dean groans and rolls his eyes. "Not this crap again. You're really trying to make this okay by sayin' our childhood sucked?"
"No, your childhood sucked. And you know why it sucked? Because you had happy memories to compare it to when stuff got bad. My childhood didn't suck, because there was never a point when it was anything different. It just was."
"Like that makes it harder for you?" Dean scoffs.
"No, it doesn't make it harder. It makes us different," Sam returns angrily. "Because when Dad was dragging us around and teaching us about monsters and ditching us as Bobby's for months, you had four years of memories with Mom to look back on. I didn't. Your shitty childhood was my whole world. The only reality I have ever known. So I had to cling to whatever little bits of normal I could find. And if that's somebody else's Thanksgiving, I don't think that's so unreasonable. It doesn't mean I ever loved you any less!"
"You had me! Why did you always need more?" Dean cries. He always wanted so badly to be enough for Sam. He lives and dies for it.
"Yeah, I did. And you're remembering things different than they actually were if you really think I didn't love having you. But as good as we were, what we had still wasn't normal and you know it."
Dean shakes his head and glares at his brother. He doesn't care if he isn't being fair. He wants to hurt Sam, to wound him like their trip to the cloud city wounded Dean. "And we all know how much you've always wanted your precious normal. So much you were willing to split on your family so you could run off and create a better one."
"Wanted," Sam repeats, drawing the word out like it's important. "At the time, I wanted it, yeah. I was a fuckin' kid and I wanted to be on a baseball team. I don't understand why that's such a damn tragedy to you."
"Because it means I wasn't enough! No matter how hard I tried, I wasn't good enough to make you happy!" Dean feels ripped open. Stripped down and cracked in two and spilling his guts at Sam's feet. "I mean, that's why you left, isn't it? Why you ditched us for Palo Alto? And see, I thought that night was as shitty for you as it was for me. Come to find out it's on your greatest hits album."
Sam stares at him, his eyes darkening with intensity. When he speaks it's slow and deliberate and dangerous. "I know that you're still hurt by me going to school. Okay? I know you've got issues with that, and that's okay. But if you seriously think, after everything we've been through since then, that the night I left is actually a happy memory for me? Seriously? There's no way you're that stupid."
"That's what Heaven is, Sam!" Dean yells. "It's a montage of the good shit that happened in your life! My memories were hanging out with you on the 4th of July and being with Mom in our old house. Yours? Were Thanksgiving and Flagstaff and the night you left me! All apparently happy memories for you, none of which had me in them! So what the hell am I supposed to think that means?"
"I don't know, maybe that Zachariah was the one controlling it?" Sam snaps. "Have you really not considered that? That he was the one pulling the strings and he put us in memories that he knew would piss you off and drive a wedge further between us? Push you a few steps closer to saying yes to Michael?"
Somewhere, deep down, underneath the anger and the hurt and the betrayal, Dean does realize Sam has a point. But he doesn't want to hear it right now. It doesn't help, either way. How they got here isn't important. The conclusion is the same.
Cas appears behind Sam, so Dean doesn't have to answer. He looks excited and curious and then he deflates when Dean gives him the short version of what happened.
"Maybe Joshua was lying," Cas says, his voice almost hopeful, as Sam and Dean change out of their bloody clothes and pack up their meager belongings without looking at each other.
"I don't think he was, Cas," Sam replies sympathetically. "I'm sorry."
Dean doesn't feel bad for the angel. He doesn't feel bad for any of them. They're the ones who let this happen.
Castiel takes a few steps into the middle of the room and tilts his head up to the ceiling. "You son of a bitch. I believed in …"
He doesn't finish the sentence. Dean can't tell if he just isn't able say what he was going to, or if someone is speaking to Cas that he and Sam can't hear. He doesn't ask.
Cas turns around and pulls something from the pocket of his trench coat. "I don't need this anymore," he mumbles, dejected like a child, and tosses Dean his amulet. The one that was supposed to help them. "It's worthless."
"Cas, wait," Sam begins, but Cas is already gone.
Worthless. The word reverberates in Dean's head. It is worthless. It always has been. Dean doesn't know why he never saw it until now. He was so stupid, all these years. So blinded by his pathetic, irrational need for Sam to be the other half of his broken self.
"We'll find another way," Sam says to Dean. "We can still stop all this, Dean."
"How?" Dean asks.
"I don't know. But we'll find it. You and me. We'll find it."
You and me. Like there has ever, for a second, been such a thing.
Dean picks up his bag and walks to the door. He tosses the necklace into the trash on his way out. Worthless. Like him. Like them. Sam's audible gasp just before the metal pendant hits the bottom of the can should hurt Dean. It should make him want to reconsider. To pull Sam into his arms and apologize and promise everything will be okay. But it doesn't. Because it won't be okay. Not this time.
Sam still tries to mend it. "I know you heard Ash," he says, a few minutes later, in the car. "When he said we were soulmates."
"That's not what he said."
"Yeah, it is, actually." Sam pauses, and then his voice goes soft as he asks, "Can we please talk about this?"
"No," Dean answers shortly.
"Please?"
"Sam, if you say one more word I swear to fuckin' whoever I will stop this car, kick your ass out, and drive away," Dean growls. He means it, and Sam goes silent.
Worthless. Seems about right.