The boys are not mine. I wish they were!

Pain came in two categories, physical and mental. Given a choice between the two, Dean would have picked physical every time. He knew from experience his body could take physical pain. With physical pain, there was a limit to how much something could hurt. Eventually the needle would crawl into the red zone and it couldn't feel any worse after that. And then your circuits would overload and you'd be out cold and you wouldn't feel anything else. The body had limits.

The brain though, the brain was different. Every time Dean thought this. this is the most I could possibly hurt he found out he was wrong.

Dean had been shot a few times—he didn't think it was helpful to keep an exactly tally, but more than twice. And Sam had operated on him in damp motel rooms, using dental floss and a fifth of jack and a needle he'd run through the zippo a few times. Despite the size of his paws, Sammy was gentle—he was a better field surgeon than Dean, anyway—but even Sam couldn't make pulling a bullet out of torn flesh anything less than completely excruciating. Both times had ranked up towards the top of the pain limit, but even in the thick of the pain and the blood Dean knew neither time ranked anywhere near how much it had hurt when Sam had left.

The thing about the mind—unlike the body—is it seemed to have an almost infinite capacity for pain. When Sam had left, sneaking out in the middle of the night, leaving Dean betrayed, alone, Dean thought he'd found bottom. At Cold Oak, he'd realized how freaking stupid he'd been to think he knew what pain was. Dean's life had basically been a perpetual pain machine since then. Unlike his body, his brain never healed, and each new loss or betrayal or shame or personal failure was just another open wound on top of his already flayed psyche. You could drive and drink and throw yourself into work, but you couldn't escape, not even in sleep.

And tonight, tonight he was yet again setting a new personal friggin' record for pain.

If Sam could have seen into Dean's mind, he would have been horrified at what he found there. Most people's minds had dark corners, places they wouldn't want anyone to see, but they also had stacks of first kisses and perfect fall days to flip through too. Sam had more darkness in his mind than most, but compared to Dean's, his mind was a well-lit suburban neighborhood.

But Sam couldn't see into Dean's mind. In fact, Dean was pretty damn sure Sam wasn't ever going to open his eyes and see anything, ever again.

Death had given Sam his soul back, and now Sam was never going to wake up. Dean had tortured and killed his brother slowly instead of just killing that man who wasn't his brother anymore. Like a coward. The thought was a hot knife in Dean's brain. I am such a frigging coward. Dean scrubbed his hands over his face and leaned against the wall of the panic room.

But Dean was never going to learn his lesson. He wasn't going to man up and live without Sam. He couldn't—he'd tried. At Lisa's he'd come as close to happiness as he possibly could and even then he knew it was hollow. Life wasn't worth living and the world wasn't worth saving without Sam. Dean was never going to be able to pretend otherwise again. He'd failed with Lisa, and he knew that he would have even if Sam hadn't come back. His life was fraying around the edges even before then. And Dean could fake it—Dean was a freaking champion at faking it—but not forever.

So Dean had had two choices: get Sam his soul back and risk this, or kill Sam and empty some lead into his own head. He'd picked wrong.

Option C, All of the Above, was looking increasingly likely every minute Sam stayed unconscious. Coward. He should have saved Sam the torture of having his soul forced back in him and just manned up. Dean slammed his fist into the wall, half hoping to break something—to give him a different, better pain to focus on.

"Boy?" Bobby called down the stairs, worried.

"Sorry. I'm okay, Bobby." Both of them knew this was a lie, but Bobby let it slide. There was nothing he could do to make Dean feel better. He'd tried. He'd tried to get Dean to eat, to sleep, but Dean could not be persuaded to do anything other than just be near Sam and torture himself. And Dean was the heavyweight title holder at self torture. Bobby had never seen anyone quite so adept at it. He wasn't quite sure where Dean had learned it. His Daddy certainly wasn't that conscious of all the pain he caused. But Dean—Dean took all the pain he'd ever caused and then some and he never let himself off the hook for anything.

Dean held himself to a standard that would have been impossible for a civilian, but for a kid who had to make the kind of choices Dean did? Bobby just wished Dean could see himself through his eyes. The boy had made mistakes, but everyone did. In Bobby's eyes the kid was a freaking hero.

If Sam was going to die, Bobby hoped it would be soon. He didn't think Dean could take much more before he broke into so many pieces that Bobby would never be able to put him back together again.

Dean also wanted this to be over, whatever this was. This waiting—not knowing—was agony. He crossed the room and kneeled next to his brother's lifeless form. Sam was breathing. Dean checked his brother's pulse—normal—and then brushed aside Sammy's hair and held his hand to his forehead, just like when they were kids. No fever. The IV was still dripping.

Physically, Sam was fine, outside of the not waking up thing. There wasn't a single damn thing Dean could do. So he paced and he cleaned his guns. Then he cleaned Sam's guns. Bobby thought that seemed hopeful-Dean thought Sam might need his gun again- but it wasn't. Dean just didn't want to leave Bobby a bunch of dirty guns.

Dean's head ached—he was probably dehydrated, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten something—and his hand was throbbing a bit, though he could tell he hadn't broken it like he'd hoped. He wouldn't take something, and he wouldn't ice his hand, either. He was sure, now, that his brother would never wake up. He deserved worse.