SPOILERS: SEASON 9: ROAD TRIP

A/N 1: Oh my God, this episode just killed me. This whole season is killing me; and the Js are upping the bar every time they walk into a scene. As always, the credits rolled way too soon, leaving me reaching out to my TV as though I could push them out of the way to see what was still playing out behind the screen. They say to write what you want to read, so…

A/N 2: I am a SamGirl first and foremost. But I love Dean, too. I really do. I will never write one at the expense of the other; and if I'm writing from POV, which is my typical style, the thoughts and opinions expressed are what I imagine to be the character's in whose head I'm riding. In all things, I try to stay true to the character—and cannon—as I see them.

I am not a fan of Cas, at all. Sorry, I'm not. His storyline holds no interest for me, whatsoever. That said, I have actually enjoyed the rare scenes we've been given recently between Sam and Cas. Their stories mirror each other so much; it is no wonder that Sam has been able to forgive Cas for every terrible wrong he has done to him: letting him out of the Panic Room, pulling him out of the Cage without his Soul, breaking his Wall. Sam's capacity for forgiveness is staggering—I'm still pissed at my first-grade teacher, for crying out loud! Likewise, I get the impression that Cas respects Sam as a person; for his intelligence, his perseverance, his clemency, and his strength of character.

I'm really looking forward to next week's episode, and I'm hoping we get to see a deepening of their relationship. For all their pranks and razzing of each other, Jared and Misha have such great chemistry together. I really hope the writers don't choose to waste it with awkward stances, shallow conversation, and impersonal interaction.

This is my first attempt at writing Cas—seriously, I swore he would never appear in one of my stories. If Dean hadn't entrusted the responsibility of getting a tortured, still-internally-burned, newly-de-angel-possessed Sam back home safely to Cas, I wouldn't have made the attempt at all. I tried to do his character justice and stay true to the compassionate manner he was showing Sam in those last moments before those dreaded credits rolled.

A/N 3: Thanks to my awesome betas, LoveThemWinchesters and Kailene.

SUMMARY: "Just go." He felt frozen where he stood, hollow, defeated; crushed under a disappointment so profound he didn't know where to direct it. At Dean? At himself? Both? Neither? He only knew one thing: something had to change.

A Road Too Oft-Traveled

The taillights had long since faded from view and yet Sam could still see them. It was as if the after-image had been burned into his retinas, either from the sharpness of the light piercing through the darkness of the night, or from some kind of demented, psychosomatic repetitive stress disorder.

God knew it wasn't the first time they'd played this scene, or the second, or the third for that matter. He'd lost count of how many times they'd parted company. And okay, it was usually him doing the leaving; him running away, him storming away, him sneaking away; angry, frightened, desperate, frustrated; his back against the wall and the weight of everything pressing in on him until the only thing he could do was get the hell out of there or suffocate.

It had been blind self-preservation, every damned time, but they'd never understood that. Dad nor Dean. They'd never seen it as anything but Sam being selfish, Sam putting his wants and his needs before everyone else's, before his family. Maybe they were right; and maybe there was no maybe about it at all, because what else could an unwillingness to sacrifice your entire life for someone-for anyone-else be but selfish.

It was a battle he'd never been able to win, no matter how hard he'd tried; not with himself and not with anyone else, it seemed. It didn't matter that he had sacrificed himself in the end; at Cold Oak, at Stull, in taking back the flayed, mutilated, and malignant pieces of his fractured psyche, and in that abandoned church. Those weren't sacrifices. Those were punishments, restitutions, absolutions, redemptions. Those were his penances for all the mistakes and miscalculations and missteps he'd made in his life; for every bad choice he'd made despite his best intentions.

He'd thought he'd wiped his slate clean each time, that he'd finally made the right choice—and wasn't that what he'd wanted his whole friggin' life: the right to make his own choices about what he did—only to have that choice torn out of his hands, only to have that cosmic tally sheet thrown down at his feet filled with so many new blood-streaked hash marks against him he didn't know how he was ever going to atone.

"Sam."

The hand on his arm was gentle, and yet it hurt. His whole body hurt, deep inside; faint and sharp like the phantom pains of broken glass shredding his intestines, his stomach, his lungs; of steel hooks and serrated knives and red-hot pokers piercing his kidneys and heart, skiving off bone and cartilage, and tearing through muscle and tendons. He shied away from the touch, closing his eyes as though it might shield him, as though that might blot out the bright red streaking across his vision.

Just go.

What had he done? For one fleeting second, he wanted to call Dean back. He even saw himself grabbing Cas and shaking him, screaming in his face to go after him, to bring him back. But he felt frozen where he stood, hollow, defeated; crushed under a disappointment so profound he didn't know where to direct it. At Dean? At himself? Both? Neither?

A shiver ran through his body, and the hand on his arm became two; strong, impersonal, and yet supportive if not in the way Sam truly wanted than at least in a more practical way that kept him from tumbling over backwards into the water below.

"Sam, please," Cas said. "May I take you back to the bunker?"

Sam snorted, "Can't stop you." The bitterness in his voice surprised even him.

"No, you can't," Cas answered succinctly, and yet he made no attempt to move Sam at all. "I suppose I could simply wait for you to pass out and then take you there, but that could take a while. You are quite stubborn when it suits you to be so." Sam looked at him through the screen of his hair. Cas looked pensive, as usual; but there was also a note of emotion Sam wasn't used to the angel directing at him. He wasn't sure he wanted to try to name it. "I thought you might choose to go while you are—"

It was the word 'choose' that nearly unmanned him where he stood—swayed. "Yes," Sam answered abruptly. "Th—thanks."

There was no transition; no feeling of movement or of falling, only of landing. In the length of a single breath, the rain-soaked desolation of the long, empty pier disappeared and they were standing in the middle of the library. Cas tightened his hands on Sam's arms and steadied him until he'd recovered enough to stand on his own. Sam nodded his gratitude, then turned towards the table.

At the sight of the room, he gasped.

"Oh God, did I..."

Books were strewn all over the floor. The orange lamp that was probably older than Sam lay in pieces by the wall, shards of the glass shade scattered several feet in all directions. The heavy wooden chair, in which he'd spent so much of his time researching, lay on its side, two of its legs snapped off at the seat.

"No," Cas answered.

Anger flared, in no mood to deal with semantics, and Sam snapped his head around with a glare. "Fine, did HE do this?"

The angel looked down for a moment. "No, Sam. Gadreel did not do this, either. Dean was... distraught over Kevin's death."

And just like that the anger left him. Sam looked around bewildered and sick. Kevin was dead, and by his own hand. It didn't matter who had been driving the bus at the time. The memory was inside him, playing like a movie on loop in his mind's eye; his wide palm pressing against Kevin's forehead and his long fingers wrapping around the contours of his head and through the fine strands of his hair; the raw power emanating from his hand strangely similar to that which used to draw demons from their hosts, only much stronger, more… righteous. He could see the flash of white light exploding out of Kevin's eyes, his ears, his nose, and mouth; and the young body flopping to the ground like a discarded ragdoll, its eyes two blackened and scorched craters in its lifeless face.

They were his memories now. Just as all the others were; his fingers squeezing around the trigger and his mouth pulling into a cold, cruel smile as the bullet slammed into his brother and knocked him off the pier; his fist driving into his brother's face again and again until the bones of his skull were as lose and mobile as beans in a bag. It may have been Meg or Lucifer who had sent the signals to his hands, but it was his mind and his body that remembered.

He'd sworn to himself after Death's wall had come down and all the horrible, inhumane, and unspeakable things he'd done had flooded into his mind; that he would never let himself be used like that again. Somehow—God, he didn't know how, exactly—but, somehow he would die first before he'd let another's will use his body to hurt anyone ever again.

And he'd tried. He remembered that, too, like a hazy fever dream; a cabin in the woods, a dark, rustic room with a fire burning in the fireplace, and Death offering him repast that he didn't have the constitution to accept. There'd been respect in the ancient being's wizened face as he'd tipped his head and said in a voice as sardonic and somber as a grave, "Well played, my boy. Well played."

"Sam—"

"Did you know?" Sam asked. He forced himself to look at the angel, knowing full well that the truth might be the last straw for him. He had to know, though; had to see the truth as it flashed across that stoic face no matter what came out of his mouth. For all that Cas had lied to them in the past, he was surprisingly terrible at it.

Cas sighed heavily and Sam saw only sadness. "Not at first. I knew only that the trials had injured you and that you were dying. Dean had found an angel who was willing to help heal you, an angel whose name I knew and trusted. I—I did not know that healing would entail possession. I learned that much later.

"By then, it was too late to interfere. We believed Ezekiel was doing as he'd promised; that he was healing you and himself, and that he would leave you willingly when you were well enough to heal on your own. He had given Dean his word, and Ezekiel had always been an honorable and ethical soldier of Heaven. There was no reason to suspect he'd be anything less on Earth."

"And so you took off thinking—" Cas looked away suddenly, but not before Sam saw the look of hurt betrayal that flashed across his face. "It wasn't your idea to leave the bunker, was it?"

Cas shook his head. "No. Ezekiel… Gadreel,"—and the name was like the vilest of epithets on the angel's tongue—"told your brother that my presence would draw more angels to you and that would put him in danger. If I stayed, he would leave and, in your condition, you would not have survived. Dean had no choice but to ask me to leave."

That last was said so pragmatically, as though it had been a perfectly acceptable thing that Dean had done, kicking Cas out into the street, and after they'd driven halfway across the country to find him in the first place. He'd been helpless, clueless, completely ill-equipped to provide for himself; and Dean had sent him away because of Sam?

A tiny spark of... It wasn't happiness. Far from it. Relief? Hope? He wasn't sure what it was exactly that flared up inside of him at that thought, but it brushed like a warm caress against that insecure child inside of him that he'd never been able to purge no matter how hard he'd tried. He hated himself for even thinking it. He was tired of people being hurt because of him. So profoundly tired…

"I'm sorry," he uttered. He turned and leaned heavily against the table. "You needed our help and he..."

"He did what he thought he had to do," Cas said, suddenly just on the periphery of Sam's personal space without Sam even seeing him move. His gaze was intense, his blue eyes piercing and direct, and just a little too invasive in the wake of what Sam had endured. Sam tensed, and Cas's expression softened. "You should rest, Sam. You are still not fully healed."

Sam shook his head. He knew Cas was right, he felt shocky and weak; but the thought of resting, of closing his eyes and welcoming the inevitable dreams sleep would bring, was unbearable.

"I knew I was gonna die," he said instead. He wasn't sure why he said that; but now that it was out of his mouth, he felt a little relieved. "In that church with Crowley during the final trial. I knew I wasn't going to survive it. Whatever the trials had been doing to me..." He laughed, but it came out twisted. "Purifying me, maybe." He shook his head. "Whatever, it was, I wasn't walking out of there. I knew it and I'd made my peace with it.

"I'd confessed all my sins and all my failures, and I'd thanked... whoever might have been listening up there for giving me the chance to finally make it all right. I was ready to finally see something through to the end; finally after falling short so damn many times.

"And then Dean showed up, and... he asked me to stop." He looked up and the angel swam in his vision. "I shouldn't have. I know that now. I should have just finished it. But, Dean said..."

No, he couldn't share what they'd said to each other. Not with anyone. It was bad enough that Crowley had been a witness to the whole scene. Right now he wasn't sure he could even think about it. To do so was like tearing open old wounds and pouring lye into the bloody rents. To do so might insight the anger that was brewing just beneath the surface, and once released, Sam wasn't sure it wouldn't consume him completely.

"He asked me to stop and I did," he said. His throat felt so tight; his emotions all but choking him. "But, it turned out I was gonna die anyway. It was all for nothing."

"You know that Dean never meant to—"

"Don't." Sam pushed himself away from the table, taking a few unsteady steps towards one of the bookshelves. "You don't have to defend him to me, Cas. I know why he did it; why he... keeps on doing it no matter how much it bites us in the ass; no matter how many people get hurt because of it. I just...

"I can't do this, anymore. We can't do this anymore. Something has to change, Cas; and I don't know how to change it. I don't know that I can. I just know..." Sam braced his hands on the shelf and hung his head between them.

"What do you know, Sam?" Cas asked. Sam wondered if he already knew what Sam was going to say; if his new angel-mojo gave him insight into the thoughts, the realizations swirling and coalescing in his head. He kind of wished he did so he wouldn't have to say anything out loud.

"I can't be what we both need me to be," he said. "It's simply not possible. They're mutually exclusive. I'm always going to be his Little Brother; the one he needs to take care of and provide for and protect. He's never going to let me be the one he leans on; the one he looks at like an equal; the one he trusts. Not like he trusted Dad, or Bobby, or... " The name stuck in his throat and he had to force it out. "Or Benny, or you."

He pushed away from the shelf, needing to move suddenly even though his legs felt like the bones were melting. "He thinks he's poison, but he's not. He thinks he's nothing without me, but he's wrong. He's always been wrong about that. His whole damn life."

He stooped to pick up one of the discarded books—one of the heavy tombs on dead languages Kevin had been using to decipher the tablet—and needed the wall to keep from ending up in a heap on the floor. He ran his fingers over the embossing on the leather cover. "If it weren't for me," he uttered, "he could have been anything he wanted to be. Anything at all."

Cas' hand closed around the spine of the book, asking, not taking. "You're right. Dean is not poison. And neither are you, Sam Winchester."

Sam glanced up at him, then back down at the book in his hands. "But, this relationship of ours... is."

"Yes. One that has been making you both sick for a very long time."

The book grew heavy, but Cas took its weight as though it was a pamphlet; and Sam let him take it, his hands falling away as if pulled by strings. He was so tired. "I don't want him out of my life, Cas." A small sob broke by his guard. "I can't—"

Cas took Sam's arm, offering support. "Then we had best figure out how to fix this."

Fin~