Epilogue
When Sam finally falls asleep, when his heart monitor reads a slow, somewhat steady beat, when the doctor and the nurse arrive to move Sam into a recovery room, Dean feels like its okay to leave his brother's side, just for a minute.
He doesn't smoke, but he tells the duty nurse that's why he's going outside, because he can't say he needs to work some feeling back into his leg where his brother was laying on him, and 'getting some fresh air' sounds lame. After breathing that rubbing-alcohol hospital smell, the outside air does feel good, though.
Once he's a little ways away from the building and he's sure no one will see him, Dean pulls something out of his coat pocket, and it's not cigarettes. It's a small white packet, the same one he took out of Sam's jacket this morning, and it still contains twelve oleander seeds.
Dean told Sam that he burned them. He hates lying to his brother, but he rationalizes it this way: Sam lied first.
Sam's the only person who can scare the living shit out of him. After today he's the only person who has ever made him doubt that he could save his brother.
He rolls the packet over the backs of his fingers like a casino chip and replays Dad's words in his head:
You have to watch out for Sam. You have to save him.
Whatever else Sammy is, he's still human, still vulnerable to all of the things that kill humans. He just had to go and prove that to himself.
If you can't save Sam, you might have to kill him.
A dozen poison seeds. That's his Plan B.
He told himself that he'd never kill his brother. Then like a jackass he went and promised Sam that he would if he had to. Dean can feel that the day is coming when he will have to choose which promise he will keep.
When it does, the oleander seeds aren't for Sammy. Dean told the truth about one thing at least: he can't live with Sam dead. God knows eating a bullet would be a whole lot easier, but Sam doesn't have the market cornered on melodrama.
Dean pockets the seeds and begins walking back to the hospital.
About fifty feet from the glass doors he comes to an abrupt halt, and with a sudden, angry movement he pulls the seeds out of his pocket and pitches them as hard as he can off into the trees by the side of the building, because you know what?
Fuck Plan B.
Dad taught him how to follow orders, keep promises. The never-say-die optimism, though, that's all Dean, and his two sides don't always get along.
He's going to save his little brother.
Dean folds up the empty packet and tosses it in the trashcan outside of the hospital's main entrance. He goes inside, smiles at the duty nurse when she tells him his brother's room number. She doesn't smile back.
Dean pauses outside Sam's room for an instant with his hand on the doorknob. A wave of irrational fear washes over him. Maybe he'll open the door and find an empty bed on the other side, and a nurse unplugging machines…Oh Mister McGillicuddy, I'm sorry…
But Sammy is there, safe and sound and whole, chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm of sound sleep.
Dean sits down by his brother's side. He takes Sam's hand in his, just like when they were little and he was afraid of losing Sam in a crowd.
Dean and Sam.
Sam and Dean.
As far as Dean's concerned, they're both going to live forever.
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End.
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