Today's memory is a real kicker. It's been playing in Dean's head since he woke up to dreaming about it. Screaming about it. If this has been a few years, hell a few months ago, Sam probably would have knocked down the door with a loaded pistol at the sound of his brother's screams. But according to Sam they weren't really brothers so what should he expect, really? Instead, Sam ignores it, and Dean pretends not to wonder what's so important you would ignore the sound of someone's lungs blowing up in the next room over.
It feels real, sometimes. Like he's away from the bunker, back to the asylum. Back before angels and wars and the apocalypse. Before Lilith and Ruby and Lucifer. When it was Dean and Sam, reunited on the road kicking ass and taking names. It feels longer ago than it should, but at the same time, like it's really happening, when his memories come out to play.
Like now, for instance, Dean can practically sense the sensation of the barrel of a gun pressed up against his head. He can almost feel the waves of hatred coming off of Sammy, weapon in hand, moving to aim it at his chest. This is the asylum, from god knows how many years ago. Just after he'd gotten his brother back. Just before he felt like he might lose him again.
Sam, put the gun down
It feels like he's saying it out loud. Maybe he is. It's not like the real Sam would care anyways, probably just call him a nut job and leave. And the fake Sam, well, he's holding a gun to Dean's chest after all.
I'm getting pretty tired of taking your orders.
Dean knows he's heard this before. Not just when this incident happened, but just a few weeks ago. When Sam told him it wasn't his responsibility to look after his baby brother any more, he said it. How he was sick of Dean always being the one to make decisions.
Dean can only ever make bad ones.
For once in your life, just shut your mouth.
There is no tone of brotherly joking, or sarcasm in mind-Sam's voice. There isn't any in modern Sam's either, anymore. Maybe he's right, though. He should learn to shut up. Maybe then he wouldn't be lying all the time. Maybe then he wouldn't feel so guilty.
What are you gonna do, Sam? Gun's filled with rock salt. It's not gonna kill me.
Dean flinches after he hears himself say it. He knows what's about to happen before it happens, and it's not pretty. He feels the sting rivet into his chest, right where his heart is, the rock salt blasting into his skin, digging a welt in place of where the bullet hole would be. He knows tomorrow—No, the day after this takes place, it's a memory of course— A bruise the size of a softball will form in it'll be too painful to move his left arm for weeks. But he thanks god it's not a bullet, that it hadn't been a bullet, because Dean feels it. He can feel the pain in his chest and the tears he's repressing, like its happening. But it can't be happening, because it already did. It doesn't keep him from questioning, though, if the last eight years have just been a horrible, horrible nightmare that he's been experiencing, when really he's just been passed out on the asylum floor because his brother shot him.
But he knows it's all fake. That he's hallucinating or dreaming or whatever the fuck you want to call it. Re-living, most would tell him. Re-hashing bad memories, is more like it though. Maybe next will be hell, as if he doesn't already relive that when he falls asleep every night anyways. As if he isn't living in his own personal one as he sits.
Yes, because he's sitting. In a chair in his room at the bunker. Not writhing on the ground of an abandoned mental hospital. He's alone, here, in reality. There is no ghost. There is no Sam. And Dean can't decide if he'd rather have psycho-crazy killer Sam shooting him full of salt, or no one at all. Neither of them are good options, but they're both his past, and his present. Wonder what the future's delight will be.
He tries to clutch onto this. That it's not real. But he has a hard time grasping the way the chair feels underneath his hands. He can't quite place the sound of the ticking of his wall clock that he should hear. He's too absorbed in the mental pictures playing on a loop in his own head. He's stuck until he gets through it, so that's exactly what he does.
Sam!
Dean pleads, but he isn't sure if that's what he'd said back then, or if he's still pleading with him now. Maybe both. Probably both.
We gotta burn Ellicott's bones and all this will be over, and you'll be back to normal.
We just have to kill Abaddon, and it will all be over. They can go back to normal.
But what the fuck even is normal anymore?
I am normal. I'm just telling the truth for the first time.
It's Sam's turn to speak again. Fake Sam, that is. And he's mocking, cruel. It makes Dean sick to his stomach, and again he's not quite sure if it's part of the memory or not.
I mean, why are we even here? 'Cause you're following Dad's orders like a good little solider? Because you always do what he says without question? Are you that desperate for his approval?
He hates it. He hates it when people talk about his relationship with his father that way, especially when it's Sam making the jabs. It makes him angry and unwanted. Ironically enough, like he isn't good enough. Maybe he is desperate for approval, but it's his brother's that he craves the most. Then heaven. He needs the angle to approve or they'll cast him away. Back down to the pit with his old pals and their sharp knives.
That's the difference between you and me. I have a mind of my own.
But Dean's not so sure having a mind of your own is such a good thing. It sounds an awful like having a mind alone. Being alone. And Dean doesn't want to be alone. Not again, not ever. Desperate for approval, desperate for company.
I'm not pathetic, like you.
Pathetic is one word for a lonely man, sitting in his bedroom with sweat pouring down his face, in line with the tears he doesn't know fall from his tightly closed eyes, because he can't know what's real and what's not. For a young guy, kicked to the floor and shot down by his own brother, because he can't and won't ever be good enough. Dean Winchester is pathetic, and Sam knows it too.
Well, then here. Let me make it easier for you
He says, or said, whichever's really happening, and passes his Smith & Wesson gun to his bloodthirsty brother.
Come on. Take it. Real bullets are gonna work a hell of a lot better than rock salt. Take it!
His heart is pounding, was pounding, just waiting for Sam to pull the trigger. He knows he does. He chooses not to believe he will.
You hate me that much? You think you could kill your own brother? Then go ahead. Pull the trigger. Do it!
His eyes narrow in on Sam's pointer finger, watching with horror and he flicks it back to press down on that little piece of metal that could have so easily ended Dean's life right then and there. He kind of sort of wishes it had.
But, instead, the gun clicks. Jammed.
Sam tried to shoot him. Sam actually tried to kill him.
It clicks again.
Two fucking times! He's just as shocked the second time, but he can't let it stop him from cross-knocking Sam to the ground and pull himself up.
Man, I'm not going to give you a loaded pistol!
He gets lost for a second in the glare Sam sends burning into him from his spot on the ground. It makes Dean shiver, the amount of hatred held in his eyes. Actually, he's shivering everywhere. Shaking. Someone is shaking him.
"Dean? Dean!" A frantic voice calls, and his eyes snap open. He gasps, and chokes, because it's the same eyes staring back at him. Same eyes, different expression. Sam looks genuinely worried, scared even.
"What? Can't a guy nap in peace?"
"Maybe if that's what you were actually doing!" Sam explodes, now that he can see Dean's conscious and breathing, "I thought you were stopping with the lies, man!"
"I'm not lying!" Dean flies out of his chair, standing to meet his brother in the eye, "I'm sorry I get nightmares, Sam. If it helps any, I'd rather not but—"
"Don't pull guilt shit on me, okay?" Sam spits, but his face still noticeably softens at his words, "there's something seriously wrong with you," he pauses to take a breath, "isn't there?" It isn't quite posed as a question, just a statement that needs affirmation.
"Why would you even… Sam, I'm fine," He says in that way that lets a person know they are definitely not fine.
"Then what's with the… the… drinking and the nightmares and the yelling? You're just not the same, Dean. You've started getting kicks out of killing, and you had some serious fun with torturing that vamp last week… It's just not normal, you now?" He's using the exasperated 'I'm just trying to understand' voice Dean knows he only uses when he's trying to get him to crack and spill information. Not this time.
"I guess I'm not used to my family telling me they don't trust me."
A moment of silence falls over them as the low-blow comment sinks in the air. Sam's voice comes back hard and cold, unforgiving in the worst of ways.
"You caused that, not me. You made the wrong decision, and you destroyed our trust so don't fire that shit at me."
"You're just— You're—" Dean struggles to find the right words, "You're just a huge-ass hypocrite!" He laughs humorlessly, "Do I have to remind you about everything you were crying about at the end of the trials, Sam?"
"Don't." Sam warns, but Dean's already saying.
"Ruby, and the demon blood, and the goddamn apocalypse. Taking me away from Lisa and Ben after lying to me for a year. Leaving me in purgatory. And then ditching my best friend there after I send him to rescue you! Yeah, Benny, remember him?"
"We've talked about this, dammit! You're the one who started the fucking end of the world with your 'righteous man will fall' thing. Or did you forget that you were too weak to not start torturing people? And If I remember correctly, that whole year and a half you were with Lisa I was soulless, because I jumped into the pit to save your ass! And I'm sorry I decided I wanted a normal life while you and Cas went vacationing to the Hunger Games arena, but it's not my fault you got sucked in with a Leviathan and became all buddy-buddy with a blood sucking son of a—"
"Boys." Castiel's sudden interjection stops Sam from saying something he knows he would have regretted tomorrow morning when there was an icepack pressed against the spot dean would have chosen to ram his fist into.
"Hey Cas," Dean smiles sarcastically, "you know, I would really appreciate it if you could exit the room so I can rip his fucking lungs out!"
"He needs those to breathe, does he not? I think it'd be unwise to—"
"Dammit Cas!" Dean yells, "Flutter away, we're dealing with something here!"
"Indeed, you are," Cas nods grimly, "I can see the Mark is emitting it's hallucination stages. And," He presses his hand up to Dean's forehead, "You're running a fever. Why haven't you called? I would have come with your prayer. The war in heaven—"
"Is way more important than my health habits so if you could go back to playing sergeant…"
"I'd really appreciate it if you weren't cutting me off every second. You know I dislike people who interrupt me when I have important information."
"And I hate it when people leave me out of conversations about my brother's heath so…" Sam rolls his eyes, looking at the angel for some insight. Instead, he gets one of those head-tilted, squinty looks, like Castiel's peering into your soul.
"Yet, in this moment, can you really afford to call him your brother after everything you've just said?"
Castiel's voice has never sounded so cold.
"Cas, I—"
"He is not in his right mind, Sam."
"Hey!" Dean objects, but is disregarded.
"He's feverish and slightly delusional, and extremely confused. He doesn't know what he's saying, and if he does, then it's the first time in a long time that he's actually spoken his mind. You are one hundred percent conscious, and responsible for your own actions. Actually I came here because I just wanted to inform you that any and every awful thing anyone he cares about has ever said to him is currently replaying on a loop in his head and there's a hell of a lot of you on that track. You may have even just added another memory to the long list of self-loathing moments throughout his life. He is just starting to go through something so emotionally and physically draining, that there's a high probability of loss in his mental heath as well as permanent physical injury. You're only making it worse by saying what you have been. He has made mistakes and so have you, but now is not the time to go duking it out with him over a petty argument. Put your issues aside, or I'll have to push you aside in order to save him. Finally, think before you speak."
No one says anything, not at first. Castiel's words loom over everyone like a weight. Both Sam and Dean get two different messages.
Sam, you're being a dick and
Dean, you're dying.
"Hey, woah, woah. No one needs to be saved here. I'm…"
"If you say fine I am throwing you back into the pits of hell myself," Cas says with such seriousness, Dean can't tell if he means it as an expression or not.
"Cas…" Sam trails, guiltily, but he's not in the mood to hear it.
"Get him in bed, I'll get the water. He'll be suffering dehydration symptoms shorty. I don't know much about the Mark, but I know one thing. If he spirals out of control, people will die. I can't guarantee it won't be him. Or you."