The Evil Within

I only own two dogs and neither of them is Sam or Dean!

He has been tracking his brother for six months now and the trail is getting easier to follow.

At first it was just the occasional bloody corpse; a mocking signature in blood; bones laid out in a certain way. Now it is sobbing parents, dead children, people left so badly injured they are only able to tell him what he wants before they succumb to either coma or death.

He cried the first time but now he feels immune, numb. He deals with each individual the best he can. Kind words often don't cut it, but he has always had a way with people and he manages to calm them enough to find out the important facts and to help them move on; if indeed they can.

He throws up the contents of his stomach only once. Harvelle's Roadhouse is burnt to the ground; Jo and Ellen strung up like pigs outside on the dying trees; Ash lying in a pool of his own blood and filth; his tongue cut from his mouth with a certain precision. He gives Ash the mercy he deserves and salts and burns the corpses. When he is finished he feels more alone than he has ever done in his life and he sits in the Impala and wishes he could cry; but his tears are long since dried and he can only rock and keen, mourning for those he barely knew.

Bobby won't answer the door to him and he doesn't blame the man. Although he isn't the perpetrator of these atrocities, he could have prevented them. How he wishes now that he had been stronger, all it would have needed is one pull on the trigger, one bullet to the brain. He couldn't do it though…couldn't kill his only brother; his friend; his one constant companion. Now there was nothing left but guilt and he knew what he had to do – but would doing it be any easier this time?

At night he would think of his father; of the deal he made; of the words he whispered on that fateful night. He wondered what John Winchester would think now, if he could see his sons. One rampaging across America; killing everything in his path; the other broken and lost, intent on ending not one life but two.

He finally tracks him down in a bar in Kansas; ironically close to their old home. The patrons are dead or dying and the scent of blood is heavy in the air and thick in his nostrils. Outside the rain pours down and it feels as if it is the end of the world.

His brother cowers in the corner, barely recognisable, all traces of humanity gone. His teeth are bared as if in pain and his eyes are flashing from green to yellow and back again. He doesn't know if his brother even knows him, but he moves slowly, his voice gentle and reassuring.

Again he thinks of his father; how could John Winchester, the great hunter, the driven husband, the living legend, have been so wrong. How could he have misread the signs so badly? How could he have failed his sons so spectacularly? One had lived with the fear of becoming evil; the other had caved in under the guilt of what would happen if he did. This had been John's final gift to them; his whispered death bed secret. As one brother knelt before the other, he wondered if his dad could see them from hell; see his spectacular mistake; see how much pain and anguish it had taken to put things to right. He wondered if this is what the demon had meant, about his plans, about breaking them, beating them. It wouldn't win now, but that was little consolation, to either the living or the dead.

The thing in the corner shivered; a hand reaching out in dumb supplication

"Sammy" it murmured, humanity flaring, briefly, in its eyes "Sammy"

The colt fired.

FIN