A/N: So thinking/breathing/sleeping Supernatural right now. So, I had to drabble. Though this is longer than a drabble.
For all his brother's mockery of school, he was always good at math.
It was something Dean had never teased him for—that even though Sam was bright, algebra swam before his eyes. Dean was always there, a softly teasing presence over his shoulder, explaining it all with a deft understanding that would have awed the teachers he mocked.
Oh, math had made sense to Dean.
And so the clock strikes midnight with finality, and fate arrives with punctuality, though the irony of it is afterward drowned in Sam's tears.
Even trades, give and take. A balance of precision. A soul for a soul. It should come as no surprise, that it ends like this—because Dean still believed that since it is possible to sacrifice everything, it is also possible to save everything.
But Sam stares at the wreck and ruin of his brother's body—a last will and testament of love written in blood—and Sam does not know what was saved.