The Hardest Word

"I'm sorry," Sam says.

He'd wanted to blurt it out, to just get it out. No carefully calibrated tone, no sympathy or empathy, which his brother would detest; but just to get it out there, fast and hard, from the gut more than from the brain. But that kind of rawness would clang emo warning bells throughout his brother's brain, and Dean would simply shut down.

Sam doesn't want his brother to shut down. He wants his brother to hear him.

Dean is doing nothing Dean hasn't done thousands of times before, be it in the bunker, the Impala, or a skeevy diner in the middle of Dumbass, Nowheresville. Currently it's happening in the bunker, and he is hunched over the kitchen table with a fat, mayo-dripping, tomato-shedding, slapped-together sandwich clutched in one blunt-fingered hand while the other hovers over a magazine, ready to turn the page at need. He is ignoring what went down a mere hour before, when their mother left them.

Sam isn't a car guy, but he recognizes car parts even when the photos are upside down.

Dean, who reads car part language as well as Sam reads Latin, doesn't seem to note that his brother has even spoken.

Perhaps catalytic converters are more fascinating than anything Sam might say.

Except, well, even Sam knows catalytic converters didn't even exist when the Impala was manufactured. Which tells him plenty. Tells Sam, in fact, that Dean probably has a good idea where the conversation might go, were he to respond. And so Dean doesn't.

Not that this tactic has ever deterred Sam. It didn't in childhood, when Dean always failed to ignore his little brother's appeals; and it doesn't now.

"I'm sorry," Sam repeats, putting no emo into it, no demand for attention; he just says it.

On other days—hell, in other minutes—Dean will snark at him with a myriad of deflections. Sam has spent much of his life marveling at how his brother can blatantly ignore emotions that are gutting him, ignore inquiries by others as to how he is doing; does he want to talk about it; will he be okay. Didn't matter who uttered those questions: Ellen, Bobby, Charlie, people to whom he tended to respond more than to others, when it came to "feely" things.

Sam knows that Dean has answered those questions to all of those people, whom he'd loved and were gone. Dean has answered them to Sam, though it often took—and takes—much longer, because Dean doesn't like to remind his baby brother that he's not a superhero after all. Just a man. And a man knitted of brittle insecurities despite prodigious personal power; a man who cannot, until pushed beyond all the constraints he has woven into his soul and then welded solid, admit that he knows very well what his ending will be.

He'd said it to Cole Trenton, in the midst of a bloody fight: 'I'm past saving. I know how my story ends—at the edge of a blade or the barrel of a gun.'

This time, the ending of his story had promised the survival of the world. He had gone to Amara full to bursting of death and destruction, in his own way a terrible god promised to those who believed; but so few people even knew Dean Winchester, those who survived, and none of them worshipped him. None of them believed. Hell, not even Lisa and Ben remembered him, and they had known him better than any in the guise of a normal life.

Everyone else? Hunters.

He was, after all, just a man.

The Righteous Man.

But he was also a woman's son.

Sam had seen her in a handful of photos. Plus in the house in Lawrence, briefly. When Cas had sent them back to stop Anna Milton from killing their parents. And then she had come and rescued him from the British Men of Letters, had played the hunter to save her youngest as well as her oldest; and it was that oldest who knew her best, of anyone who lived. Who knew her at all.

The eldest, who had said: "There's the door."

And it was for Dean's sake, not his mother's, not his own, that Sam told her to go.

"I walked away," Sam says.

Dean's hand pauses in the act of turning a page.

Sam makes it plain. "I walked away."

He sees the brief ripple of incomprehension deforming his brother's brow, and then it smooths into a mask of pristine blandness. But he sees, too, the tension in the eloquent mouth, the defined jaw. Lashes lift, green eyes appraise. They aren't wary, as Sam expects. They are waiting.

Sam thinks of, and discards, so many—so many—things he might say. His response, when she said she needed to go, wasn't to argue, not even to debate or discuss, but to protect his brother. Sam is aware memories that end at four years of age cannot possibly prepare a grown man to grasp the complexities of a dead mother returned to him, and it is no wonder Dean simply could not deal with the emotional context. Who could? Who in the world ever had a parent lost in childhood to a terrible tragedy only to be returned in adulthood—by God's sister?

"I walked away," Sam says. "I couldn't deal anymore. What Dad didn't understand was part of the reason I needed to leave was that I just wanted to go to college, not only to escape hunting. And he can blame himself for that, after annointing me Research Geek. It made me hungry. I wanted more than monster lore."

Dean has put the collapsing sandwich down upon the plate. Fingertips glisten with a trace of mayo residue. His left hand has creased the magazine page as it settled, leaving five faint, damp depressions from fingers upon the slick photos. He is very still, as only Dean gets when he finally stops twitching and fidgeting to avoid a conversation. "Sammy—"

He overrode his brother. "I'm sorry she's not what you wanted. I'm sorry she's not what you needed. But, you know—"

"Sam."

Sam rolled on regardless of his brother's tone. "You weren't the same when you came back from hell. You weren't the same when you came back from purgatory. You weren't the same when you were brought back from demonhood—"

Dean is abruptly furious. "Sam, dammit! What are you trying to say? Stop ducking and dodging and just spit it the fuck out!"

And this, Sam feels, is at last a normal reaction. It is unabashedly Dean, not a deflection, not a duck-and-dodge.

"I'm sorry," Sam says, "that she isn't what you hoped for, in all those dreams. And I know you dreamed. I know this is what you've wanted since you were a kid. But you're thirty-eight, not four; and I'm not six months old. We don't get what we want." He draws in a breath. "I never knew her. I never knew her. But did you? You said it yourself, when we were in heaven thanks to Zachariah, that the marriage wasn't 'perfect' until after she died. But Dean—" He pauses, because the bright, sharp pain in his brother's eyes is impossible to ignore. "I just . . . I just mean . . . " But he can't finish. He just can't find a way to say what he means, not when he so badly needs Dean to understand. And he surrenders, hollow with it. "Forget it."

"No," Dean says. "Say it, Sam."

He draws a breath, lets it go. "Look, I shouldn't have started this—I can't know what you went through, when you were four. I mean, you guys were a family—"

"And you were part of it," Dean states. "Yeah, I remember how in that heaven she cut the crusts off my bread, and you said you never got that, but what maybe you've never realized is that you were there, too. So yeah, she and Dad were separated for a week—it was a week, Sammy!—and she did all kinds of shit for me, but you were there. We just didn't see it when Zachariah sent us there. You were a blob asleep in the nursery. But you were still part of the family."

Sam very carefully folds up and packs away all the emotions he feels, and relies on pragmatism. On logic. He had once intended to become a lawyer; he could be one even now.

"A week," he says. "Mom and Dad. Separation. It must have been a major thing, for them to split when you were four, and I maybe six months. I mean, if that's true, it's not long before Azazel showed up in the nursery."

"Sam, dammit—"

"But they did reconcile, because that night they were together, and happy, and under one roof, and then all hell broke loose. Literally. Don't you think Mom knew what she'd done? What it meant? That the deal she'd made to bring Dad back had come due, and I was the payment?"

"Sam—"

"Dean, that's her last memory! On our earth, that is. She's spent three-plus decades in heaven with her four-year-old Dean and her six-month-old Sammy . . . do you really expect her to simply embrace two big, full-grown men she doesn't know at all, in any way, shape or form, as those children?"

Dean's face is pale. Sam has seen it before; Dean colors up in anger, amusement, physical exertion, but when shocked or stricken or injured, he goes corpse-white and all the freckles stand out.

Dean says, with moisture in his eyes, "I can't help what I feel."

"No," Sam says, "nor should you." Which elicits a twitch in his brother's eyebrows. "I just mean—I'm sorry. I'm glad to have her back in any form, because I never knew her—but you did. You knew her. It's natural to have expectations. It's natural to have memories—"

His brother cuts him off. Dean has flattened his left hand across the magazine page. His right hand, empty of sandwich, has become a fist against the table. "But you think I'm 'projecting'"

Sam ignores the tone, the body language. "No," he says. "I think you remember. That's different."

The purity of Dean's face is marred by an expression that is a mixture of emotions Sam can't begin to decipher. There are things about his brother, much as he loves him, that escape his comprehension.

"But you think I'm wrong," Dean says. "That after all this time, I've got what Amara believed I wanted more than anything, and I'm an ungrateful asshole."

Sam shakes his head. "No. I think Amara had no clue about human emotions; why should she? And while what she gave you was Mom, the Mom in heaven with her kids—which is understandably what you might desire in your dreams—it wasn't what you need."

Dean jerks back, goes rigid upon the seat. The magazine page, beneath his hand, rips from the glued gutter. "And just what the hell do you think I need?"

Sam draws in a breath. He is looking at the tabletop, but feels the rise of tears. And finally, finally, he lifts his eyes and meets Dean's. "I don't know. I wish I did. I wish I could give it to you."

"Sam—"

"You had Mom. You had Dad."

"Sam—"

"I'm s—"

But he breaks off because Dean has lunged across the table, has clamped a hand down upon his wrist. Sam can't help but suck in a pained, hissing breath, because Dean is damn strong.

"All I ever wanted, all I ever needed, is you." Dean's deep voice is choked in the throat. "I don't know what Amara thought, or why—hell, she wanted to kill me, remember?—but I do know she was dead wrong. Yes, I wanted Mom, and maybe I needed her, then, but it was about a life growing up with a baby brother." Dean cracks a grin that dies immediately. "God, Sammy, you don't know what I felt when I leaned down into your crib that night and told you goodnight. And then all the flames, and Dad shoved you into my arms and told me to take you outside. That's all that's ever mattered. Ever." He sucks in a breath. "I loved the Mom I knew when I was four. God, I loved her. And yeah, it hurts like hell that she's walked away now . . . but all I've ever had is you. And you're still here."

"Now," Sam states. And when his brother doesn't understand, he says, "I left. I went to Stanford. Mom—Mom left an hour ago."

"Oh, Christ." Dean releases Sam's wrist, sits back. "Dammit, Sammy, I always understood why you wanted to go. Was I pissed?—hell yes, I was pissed! I wanted you with us. It was a family business. And it took me a long time to cool down, and I cussed you out plenty, but I never didn't understand why you left. Don't compare yourself to Mom. Don't stack whatever you felt the day you left for Stanford against what Mom just did."

Sam can barely speak. "But you wanted her so badly."

"Yeah." Dean blew out a breath on a choppy gust. "Yeah, I did. But I let you go . . . I can let her go."

Sam expels it sharply. "That's bullshit, and you know it. I know it."

Dean's smile runs crooked. "Yeah. Okay. You got me."

After a moment, Sam locks eyes with his brother's. "I'm sorry you never got what you wanted. I'm sorry you never got what you deserved. And I'm sorry it's too late to think that you ever will."

Dean might have shrugged it off. Might have snarked. Might have rolled his eyes.

But he just looks back at Sam and says, "I've got you. That's enough."

Sam knows Dean means it. He knows Dean probably has never meant anything more.

He knows, too, that it isn't the truth.

Because he knows his brother.

~ end ~

Would love to know what you think of this tag, and your opinions of Mary and what the show did with her.

(The title comes from Elton John's 'Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word.')