Spoilers for 10x04 (basically spans the entirety of the episode, so some context would be helpful aka watching the episode =P). Sam's POV.

Vicious Cycles and Open Wounds

I'm angry with him.

And that's wrong of me, right? I mean, I just got him back. All those months, all that time spent looking for him, all things I had to do. And now we're sitting here, right where we're supposed to be, side by side in the Impala, heading off to obliterate a little more evil from a world that is somehow still spinning, and I'm fucking angry with him. Again. Already.

But I think it's logical that I'm mad. I deserve to be a little upset. I mean, he brings up Lester like he expects an apology or something. Like he expects regret. And it's there, believe me it's there. Condemning an innocent man to Hell (no matter how much of a douchebag he may have been) was never in the cards, was never something I thought I was capable of. But there's another side to the guilt I carry. The man sitting next to me, his green eyes highlighted in the headlights of the other cars; he's the counterweight, the one who keeps it all in balance. Keeps me balanced. He's here, and he's here because of what I had to do. And that means that whatever I had to do- it was worth it.

I don't expect a 'thank you.' I don't deserve one, don't want one from him. But I also don't want his criticism. Because I know the truth. How funny it is that his words from that night in the bunker's kitchen so many months ago come back to me now: if the situation were reversed, you would've done the same thing.

And I know that he would've. Because he has done it all before. We have done it all before. The self-inflicted curse of the Winchesters, doomed to repeat the same desperate cycle the moment one of us has strayed too far, gone off the deep-end or tumbled headfirst into oblivion. We are opposite poles. North and south, positive and negative. Doesn't matter how far we go, how long we are apart, we will always be slammed back together by an unworldly force.

Usually, it is a force of our own making.

Dean has gone to the ends of the earth for me. And I know that without a second glance, he would've done everything that I had done if it meant bringing me back. So I'm angry with him. Angry that he chooses to question what I did for him.

But I also know him.

So I know it's not really about Lester, not even really about me. It's about Dean. It's how he copes with all the shit flying around in that self-righteous brain of his. I know he's tearing himself apart, dissecting every horrible moment from when he was a demon and replaying it over and over again until the images blur together and the guilt pours over him like a waterfall. It's just who he is, what he's always done. Like a reflex.

I watch him from the passenger seat, see the confirmation of these thoughts reflected in the hard planes of his face and the rigid set of his jaw.

I see it in the way he aims his gun and in his insistence that Kate and her sister need to die, that they are monsters who can't be redeemed. He's never liked werewolves, but this is more than that. Dean wants black and white. Dean wants to do what we always used to do in those early days on the road together- find the monster and kill it, no questions asked, no room for doubt. If I'm honest with myself, I find myself wanting that too. It would be so much easier to pretend that things are the way they used to be, back when we never had reason to actually hold a conversation with the things we hunted, to realize that maybe we weren't always doing the job we thought we were. Back before we'd gotten in so deep, seen and done all the things we have now.

But there's no turning back the clock. We've figured out a lot of things over the years, but time travel isn't one of them, so we're stuck in the here and now.

And in the here and now, I am trying not to be angry with my brother.

But my God does he make it difficult.

It's after he asks if it's 'right' that he's still breathing. After he questions the Mark on his arm, wants to know if everything I've done for him means anything. That's when I try to make him see. That's when I tell him about the hardest thing I had to do, about carrying his body in my arms and laying him down on his bed and knowing he was gone. The words catch in my throat, sticky and coated in grief, but he still hears them, nods his head and blinks slow, and for once I think I might've done enough to break down the barriers that surround his heart, the filters that refine his every word. I think he might tell me all the things I'm terrified to hear, the things he did and the people he hurt and the images that crawl their way across his nightmares.

But he doesn't.

He thanks me.

He's been so good at giving me all of the things that I've ever needed since the time we were little, so it makes it all the more infuriating now. Because this isn't what I want and it's not what I need either, and I tell him so. And so the moment passes and his sarcastic deflections are back and the road stretches on and the conversation is closed.

And then I open it back up again after Kate and Tasha are in our rearview, because it's never been in me to just let it go. And it's another rare moment of honesty between us that seems to have become common somehow. After all, it's the third 'talk' of ours in about as many days, so something tells me we're getting better at this. But only just a little.

Because Dean's walls are still up, but they aren't quite so unyielding. I try not to speculate too much on why that is. On what could've made them crumble and weaken. Instead, I try to be grateful for it, try to see what goes on behind those pillars he holds around himself. And I find most of what I need to know in his admittance that maybe he isn't ready, that maybe neither of us are.

"But I'm just trying to do the right thing, man. Because I am so sick and tired of doing the wrong one."

His words push against the doors of the Impala, echo off the seats and find no exit. They hover in the air above us, and I repeat them back to myself, burn them into my memory, because I know this is important. This is Dean's greatest torment, his deepest scar, and he has finally let me catch a glimpse of it, of all the things that pound insistently against his heavy heart.

I see his shame, his utter disgust at having become the very monster we have spent our entire lives destroying. I see his fear, the doubt of who he is, of what remains of him now that he can no longer hide behind the darkest parts of himself. I see the hurt, the broken shards he's trying so hard to pick up off the ground, despite the fact that all he gets in return are cuts across his palms, bleeding hands to remind him of the lives he's taken.

We sit in familiar silence on this unfamiliar road, and I watch my big brother in the seat beside me. And I can see it all.

And I cannot be angry with him.

Thanks for reading (as always)! Reviews are lovely and much appreciated (as always)!