Same old song,

just a drop of water in an endless sea.

All we do,

crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see.

~~HoV~~

November 12th, 2008

"You don't know what I did!"

He couldn't help but take a step back as Dean turned on him, snarling, raw fury hitting Sam like a punch to the stomach. He gasped, taken aback by the suddenness of his brother's rage, too used to weeks of Dean turning away from him. A shiver crept down his spine as the older man took a long stride towards him, his stomach twisting as he realised he was scared of his brother, gut-wrenchingly, agonisingly terrified of the stranger glaring into his face.

"You have no clue what happened," the older man growled, hands curled into loose fists and trembling at his side. "Don't tell me to talk to you, because you have no idea what happened in that goddamn cellar!."

"If you won't tell me, how am I supposed to know?!"

He felt the tremor shiver through him, wondered how the hell he'd managed to keep it from his voice as he forced himself to hold his ground. He felt as if a chasm stood between them, a mile wide, reaching down a thousand more. He didn't know how to reach across it now anymore than he had as he stood shoulder to shoulder with his brother on the jetty in Concrete, Washington and watched Dean look away, as if meeting his eyes was too much to bear.

And the worst thing was that Sam knew how that felt.

There was too much time between them, too much distance four months of the things they'd seen and the things they'd done, and as he stood and listened to the water slapping at the wood beneath their feet, he heard the truth in his brother's voice. ...there aren't words, there's no forgetting, no making it better...

"How am I supposed to help you carry all of this when you won't let me, Dean?"

This time, his voice shook on his brother's name but he stood his ground, stared Dean down until it was his brother who flinched, eyes flickering down to the empty, worn carpet between them.

"You're not."

Dean's words ghosted from his lips.

"You're not, Sam. So just leave it the hell alone."

It was cold, utterly final and Sam could have punched his brother for it, except that he saw the hurt flash bright in Dean's eyes as he turned away again, fast enough to stumble, one hand reaching out to the wall for support.

He watched as Dean slouched into the wall, shoulder's slumped, head hanging low. Sweat darkened his brother's back, plastered his t-shirt against his skin and Sam could see the ridges of the older man's ribs, could see the regular bumps of the stitches tracing their way from his brother's shoulder to the small of his back.

"No."

He saw Dean's shoulders tighten, the hand at his side clenching as far as the bandages would let it.

"I won't leave you alone, Dean."

"Dammit, man..."

Sam ignored the whisper, tried to pretend he'd never heard the plea in it.

"Not until you let me help."

Dean shook his head, still hanging down and Sam retraced the step he'd taken moments earlier, lifting one hand to the back of his brother's neck.

"Tell me. You don't have to deal with this alone. Tell me what happened. Tell me what you did to try and survive - "

He blinked up at his brother in wide-eyed surprise, his backside aching from its sudden introduction to the floor as he tried to work out how he'd suddenly ended up sprawled there. Head ringing, he reached up to massage his jaw, feeling the deep bruise already forming as he tried to shake the cobwebs out of his head.

"Dean, what the - ?"

"You. Don't. Know. So just don't. Don't ever try and fucking justify it."

Sam sat there, stunned, watching his brother stalk out of the room, fury riding his shoulders. He stared at the empty doorway, jumped as he heard the front door slam and bunched his fist, slammed it into the floor at his side.

"Sam? What's going on?"

Bobby skidded to a halt in the doorway and Sam suddenly found he couldn't meet the grizzled hunter's eye.

"I screwed it up," he muttered, bitterly. "I tried to get him to talk and he took off."

"So don't just sit there, boy. Get after him!"

Sam rubbed at his jaw again, finally offering a dry, rueful smirk at the mechanic.

"I think I might give him ten minutes head start."

Bobby stared at him, finally sighed heavily.

"I'll get you some ice, ya damned idjit."

"Thanks."

The younger man shuffled back across the floor, blinking away the dizziness as the floor tilted away underneath him. He put his back to the closest bed, tipped his head back against the edge of the mattress and scowled at the ceiling. Downstairs, the freezer door opened, slammed shut and he reached up, rubbed at his eyes, trying to work out how they'd gone from one nightmare to the next without any time to catch their breath in between.

He snatched the ice pack from the air without opening his eyes, winced a little as he pressed it against the bruise. The mattress shifted against him as Bobby sat on it, muttering.

"Freakin' glass jaw."

He would have smiled, but his face hurt too much.

They sat in silence, both men lost in thought, the house slowly shifting, settling around them.

"He'll be out in the Firebird."

"Yeah," Sam mumbled, pushing himself to his feet. Bobby's hand gripped his elbow as he wobbled. "He's still got one hell of left hook."

The mechanic chuckled, gave his arm a gentle shove.

"Go talk to the idjit. Take the ice with you, for his hand."

Sam nodded and walked quietly out of the house. Stepping off the porch, he turned without hesitation, weaving his way around the piles of old, rusting cars, making his way to the farthest corner of the yard. He paused as he came out between two wrecks and saw the old Pontiac, sitting in a small clearing, the moonlight glittering from its roof.

Closing his eyes, he remembered the time, years ago, when he and Dean had first found the car, the sun heating the metal until it was too hot to touch. He'd watched as his brother, suddenly silent, circled the relic, eyes somehow sad in the summer sun. It became their place, where they went when life seemed to crush them down, when it knocked them back one time too many. He'd spent a lot of time curled up in the back seat in the final year before Stanford, knew Dean retreated to it's dusty refuge after more than one hunt gone bad.

Staring at the once sleek, clean lines of the car, Sam sighed; eyeing the shadow slouched moodily in the front seat. He walked across the empty ground between them, tossed the ice pack in through the missing window then clambered into his place in the backseat.

The same old smell of rotting leather and rust bit at the back of his throat as he settled into it. On the front seat, Dean didn't move, gazing out through the cracked windshield, the ice pack sitting unnoticed, ignored in his lap.

"You want to take another swing?"

Dean flinched and Sam cursed himself, catching the flicker of guilt cross his brother's face in the mirror.

"Use the damn ice, man."

Silently, the hunter reached down, picked the pack up as if it were made of lead, pressing his hand into it.

"Talk to me, Dean," Sam murmured, pleading, heard his own voice in his head; I'm losing him, Bobby. He's right there but I'm losing him again. It felt as if they were dangling over a cliff edge and he was the only thing stopping his brother going over, falling straight back into the pit but his grip was slipping, inch by inch, every nightmare pulling them a little further apart. Waking up earlier, ripped out of his own dreams by the sound of his brother's hoarse cries, had been the final straw. Exhausted, terrified, he'd finally dug his heels in and pushed right back at the older man as Dean tried to shove him away.

Insects buzzed outside as he waited, their hum loud against the silence between the brothers.

"After you went to Stanford, Dad took off."

Dean voice was soft, low, somehow brittle, struggling to carry over the short distance between them.

"He went on a hunt, I think. Still don't really know. When he came back, it was like nothing had changed. Except you weren't there."

Fleetingly, he looked up, met his brother's eyes in the mirror then turned back to his fingers, the ice slowly melting around them.

"We just carried on. He'd found reports of a shape shifter down in Montana so we headed there. Only, it went sideways. The whole damn hunt was screwed from start to finish. The 'shifter was a kid, just a kid, maybe fifteen years old? She didn't even know what was happening to her, been thrown out of home when she was six, lived on the streets. She couldn't control it, kept shifting at random, the pain must have driven her crazy long before we got there. When we found her... she cried, man. She just cried."

He could feel Sam watching him, the weight of his brother's eyes almost enough to hide the feel of her thin, broken body in his arms.

"Afterwards, we came back here. She'd put Dad down pretty hard, he had a nasty concussion and a dozen stitches in his head, so we crashed here for a while. I almost called you."

Sam gasped behind him and he flinched, gulping around the hard lump lodged in his raw, aching throat, forcing the words out, knowing that if he stopped now he'd never finish.

"I sat out here one night and I almost called you, just to hear you bitch at me."

He shook his head, eyes still fixed on his hands, wishing he could forget the feel of bone cracking beneath them.

"You should have."

Sam's brow creased in a guilty frown he didn't need to see.

"I couldn't."

Dean looked up, met his brother's eyes again in the mirror, trying to find a way to explain it, the feeling of the world slipping away beneath him, trickling out of his grasp as he'd sat, uncertain in the dark, fingers trembling, punching numbers into his phone from memory. It hadn't stopped until he'd snapped the phone shut without completing the call and threw it out through the missing window. The same feeling of losing his grip, sliding back, falling, that dogged his heels every day since he'd woken up in a pine box and clawed his way out.

Black dog on my trail.

He sucked in air, felt his aching ribs groan as the action stretched them too far but he held it, held on to it as the cold nestled at the base of his spine drowned out the fire, the burn in the scars he only remembered.

"I can't."

Sam stared back at him, eyes wide in the dark, the wasteland beyond the yard lit silver by the moonlight behind him. Dean felt it pull at him, the empty space that could swallow him, hide him but he kept his gaze on his brother's as Sam nodded slowly.

"Okay then."

"That's it?"

The younger man grinned quickly, crookedly at him.

"I'll wait, man."

Dean blinked slowly.

"You'll wait?"

"Yeah. When you're ready, talk to me. I'll wait."

The older man stared at his brother in the mirror, feeling the pull of the emptiness ease a little as Sam just smiled at him and shrugged.

"You ready to come inside now? Or you want to sit out here in this heap of junk freezing our asses off a little longer?"

"Hey! She's a classic, Sammy!"

The name slipped from his lips before he could stop it, and his breath caught, waiting for the flash of memory to hit him again. It never came and he sank back into the seat as Sam laughed in the background, muttering something about '...freakin' unhealthy relationship...'

Dean lifted his hands, skimmed them over the steering wheel before him, hanging at a steep angle. The dried leather flaked under his fingers, tumbling away into the footwell and the hunter watched them fall, traces of times long gone disappearing into the dark. He wondered why it had to be so hard to let the memories fade, shivering as he felt a chill breeze brush his cheek, a dead boy's cry echoing in his head with the screams that broke against him for so long...

He died because I forgot. Never again. I won't let anyone suffer for me again.

The hand that appeared in his vision made him jump.

He looked up, saw Sam leaning in the open door, arm outstretched.

"Come on, man. Before I get freaking frostbite."

He took his brother's hand, grunting softly as he climbed out of the old car, pausing to pat the battered, weathered roof as they walked tiredly away, the gulf between them seeming just a little less impassable.