"Y-yesterday?" Dean stammered.
"Yes yesterday."
"You remember yesterday?"
Fantastic. They were going in circles. Complete circles. Practically nowhere. Sam mentally took back everything he'd thought about yesterday. Today was so much worse. By comparison he couldn't even consider yesterday strange.
"Of course I do."
"Ah..."
"What?"
"What do you remember?"
"What do you mean?"
"Just answer the question Sammy."
"I remember exactly what I should remember."
"Okay...ah...I don't know what to do."
"About what?"
"About this. You. Remembering."
"What, did you slip something into my drink last night to make me forget about the fight we had?"
"Don't be ridiculous Sam." Dean sounded so serious that Sam almost felt bad about his joke. "Do you remember what the fight was about?"
Sam though. The subject of their spat was on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't quite remember what it was. They'd been at each other's throats about something, something Sam was sure had been important. But he didn't know what it was.
"No." Sam allowed reluctantly. "It's a little…blurry."
"I should know how to do this. It's not like I haven't done it before." Dean said, more to himself that to Sam. Sam watched his brother, who was clearly struggling with something. This was all just unrealistic. This couldn't really be happening, this conversation.
"Done what? Will you stop being all cryptic and just tell me what you're not telling me Dean?"
"Okay, okay. I just...don't want to overwhelm you. Not if you'll remember this tomorrow."
Sam waited. Impatience growing. He just wanted to know what was happening.
And them Dean told him everything.
(...)
"So that's it? That's what's been going on?" Sam asked, still trying to take in everything Dean had told him. Dean sighed in what seemed to be relief. Sam didn't blame him, but the noisy breath still annoyed him. Dean was treating this way too lightly. Sure, he may have had to tell Sam this story hundreds of times before. This was normal to him. That didn't make it any easier on Sam. Actually, it made it a hell of a lot harder.
"Yes. That's everything Sam. I know it's a lot to take in, believe me. But it's the truth."
Sam huffed a laugh. "You're right. It is a lot. I mean, one minute I'm ready to skip town, the next you tell me I've been stuck here for over a year."
"Yeah. Sucks." Dean agreed.
"How many Tuesdays did you have, man?"
"Four hundred and twelve."
Sam frowned. He knew what he should feel. Or rather, he knew what he thought he should probably be feeling. And it was so much worse than what he was feeling now. Maybe it just hadn't registered yet, like smoke resolving itself into a nightmare. The calm before the storm.
He'd been living the same day over and over again. In this place. Waking up every morning in the same hotel room, eating in the same café. Nothing had really changed. But none of it was real. Not really. After all, he didn't remember any of it. To him it was like a dream. Forgotten the moment he woke up.
Did it really matter then? It was strange to think that all of that time had been lost. It was strange to consider any of it. But he was here now. And he knew now.
It must have been horrible for his brother, sure. Dean didn't deserve to have that sort of responsibility forcing him to put his life on hold. And Sam supposed that he should be grateful. He was sure that that would come later, when he finally wrapped his head around everything that he'd been told. But, perhaps, it was almost over.
"But this is a good sign, right? Remembering yesterday."
"Yes and no."
Sam's eyebrows shot up. "Yes and no?" Dean didn't miss a beat.
"I mean yes. Yes, it's a good thing."
"And the no?" Sam asked, apprehensively waiting for the information Dean had apparently withheld from him.
"There is no 'no', okay? Don't worry about it. This is good." The relief that Dean had been sporting dissolved and the worry returned. His words almost seemed to be to convince himself, not Sam. "But I've really got to call Gabriel."
Sam did a double take. The name had been echoing around in his head most of the morning, but in light of recent revelations his pleasant memories had taken a back seat. Dean hadn't said anything about the magician since the night before.
"Gabriel?"
"Yeah." Dean hesitated, thinking through what he was going to say. Sam waited impatiently. "He's...well, he's invested."
Oh. Right. Okay. Sam thought.
"So you haven't told me everything?"
"No...but that part isn't mine to tell."
"Dean, what..."
Dean looked at Sam, a little shyly. Sam shifted back slightly in surprise, frown returning in full force. Dean almost never looked shy.
"You're not telling me." Sam floundered, trying vigorously to put the pieces together in his head. "I'm not...me and Gabe?"
Dean smiled, but kept his reserved look. Sam's mind seemed to be stuck on pause.
"Like I said. Not my story to tell."
"At least give me some warning!"
Dean ignored him, his phone already in hand and dialling. Dean had Gabriel on speed dial…
Sam's concentration was lost to the conversation that followed. The smoke monster had resolved itself and he was suddenly swimming in the absolute realization of this conspiracy that Dean just outlined for him.
It was too much. Too much to know, too soon, too unbelievable. Too insane. How could this be happening to him? He would know, surely he would know something.
Maybe it had always been too much to take in, or maybe this new information was just the limit to what Sam could take.
It didn't make any sense. Everything was just…destroyed. Everything he had known. It was a lie. And worse, there was no liar to blame. It was his own mind that had created this false world that he had never been able to escape from. And there was a part of him that had never escaped.
But Sam was having a difficult time with how much it did make sense. It certainly explained some things. The way that Dean had been acting. The way that he himself had been feeling. In a strange and difficult way, it made more sense than anything else Sam could remember.
Dean hung up the phone and shoved it back into his jeans pocket. He sighed and Sam waited for him to speak.
"He'll be here in five minutes."
Sam released the breath he he'd unconsciously been holding.
He glanced around himself, at the colourful interior of the Mystery Spot Café.
"Here?"
Dean looked around too. At the strange walls and dangling paraphernalia. The peculiar 'charms' of the place weren't what was making Sam dubious.
It was the people. The Café didn't seem popular, and Sam wasn't really wondering why, but it wasn't private either. The morning rush was over, and the lunchtime rush wasn't due anytime soon, but there was still the occasional occupied booth.
Sam was growing more and more apprehensive about what was going to happen. It was only minutes away, and his heart rate was increasing exponentially. He didn't think that, in his current state, he was above making a scene.
Then again, after what Dean had just not told him, he wasn't any more comfortable with meeting Gabriel somewhere less public. He tried to imagine seeing the man in the hotel room he'd woken up in that morning. Or in the theatre. Neither option seemed right.
So the Mystery Spot it was. Sam supposed it made a strange sort of sense. The Café boasted it's out of this world specials. This day definitely defied the rules of Sam's old world.
His five minutes were running out. He could have mere seconds left before Gabriel entered the Café. And he didn't know what to do.
He needed to disappear into the background. Just to stop being here, and doing things that mattered more than he could comprehend.
In this ridiculous Café.
In this pointless town.
But he couldn't just disappear. The subdued excitement and hope in Dean's eyes was enough to keep him in his seat. Because after everything that these people had gone through, they deserved this.
Sam had been too preoccupied to notice that he was sitting with his back towards the door, but the fact suddenly slammed into him as Dean focused on someone behind him. Dean was out of his seat and waving in seconds as Sam began wishing he could just melt into the shadows under the table.
He wasn't ready. He would never be ready for the catastrophe that was quickly approaching.
When it did finally arrive, the catastrophe glanced at him briefly before turning to his brother.
Sam's heart beat began to slow and his breathing slowly returned to normal. From what he could see, the majority of the earth had not exploded. Maybe he could do this after all.
Dean and Gabriel exchanged a few glances. Sam didn't know how to interpret what they meant, but he couldn't miss the familiarity that existed between the two. He didn't know how he'd never seen it before, yesterday.
There were no words, but Sam got the feeling that the two people before him were on the same page, same paragraph, reading the same word. Sam couldn't have picked two other people who were more different, or less likely to understand each other without a single word. Especially now that he didn't know anyone else. He didn't think they even liked each other. But the evidence was before him.
Dean frowned but acquiesced with Gabriel's unspoken request and shuffled out of the booth, going to stand by the counter. Out of earshot.
Gabriel moved smoothly into the empty space Dean had left, sitting cross from Sam. Sam looked at the man, trying to reconcile the person in front of him with everything he had been told in the last few hours. In the end he just gave up. There was too much that he was feeling, too much that he believed and not enough of what he knew.
Sam figured that Gabriel shouldn't be so familiar, but he was. There was something about him that Sam just knew. It might have been just the shape of him, or the light in his brown eyes. Sam didn't exactly know. But it felt like something about the man was etched eternally into his memory.
Gabriel was studying him carefully. The man was sporting a small smile, looking at Sam as if he were nothing more than a science experiment. Sam couldn't tell if the man's lack of excitement was genuine. If what Dean had alluded to was true, this was not how the magician should be acting.
As they studies each other, Sam was briefly distracted by the memory of the kiss, but he put it out of his mind. Now was not the time.
"Heya Sammy."
It's just Sam, Sam wanted to say. But he was silenced by the odd sensation that it was not his place to tell this man what to call him.
"Hi Gabriel."
"Gabe." Gabriel insisted. Again, Sam felt that he was in no position to argue the matter.
"Gabe."
Gabriel didn't say anything further, just continued to watch Sam. Sam was uncomfortable. Nothing about this meeting felt right. They shouldn't be doing this. In a perfect world they wouldn't have to be doing this, but the world was anything but perfect.
"Dean says that you remember yesterday?" Gabriel asked. Sam just nodded.
"What do you remember?"
Sam shrugged. "Waking up. This café. The show. Dean. Castiel. You." He listed. "Everything I guess."
"Everything?"
Sam frowned. "Not everything. Some things are a little hazy."
Gabriel's smile widened. "This is good news Sam. It means that you short-term memory is somehow getting better."
Sam smiled back at him. It was a good thing.
Yes and no.
Dean's words from earlier came back to him.
Gabriel had more questions, and he asked them without hesitation or pause. Sam answered them as well as he could, but as he did, something resolved itself in his mind.
Yes and no.
"Sorry…ah…" Sam said, cutting off Gabriel's latest query. "I just… this is all so strange for me. Do you think that you could give me a minute?"
Gabriel faltered but nodded and got up, saying something about talking to Dean that Sam barely heard.
Sam didn't really need a minute. He wasn't being overwhelmed anymore. But he couldn't listen to the innocent questions that Gabriel was asking anymore. With each answer Gabriel was growing more and more excited, just as he had on stage, and the no Dean had been talking about was suddenly clear to Sam.
He needed to think about it. Everything had slipped out of his hands and he was having enough trouble trying to hold onto what he knew.
Dean knew. That crucial piece of understanding that Sam had made, but Gabriel seemed to be ignoring.
Sam remembered yesterday.
Nothing beyond that. No one week ago. No one year ago.
Whoever it had been who had lived those days for him, was gone.
That Sam was lost, completely.
Gone.
Gabriel's Sam was gone.
He doesn't remember knowing Gabriel. Doesn't remember knowing Cas. Or living in this place. Or anything.
Nothing beyond yesterday.
And it was probably permanent.
Those memories were gone.
That him was gone.
Which meant that he was not that guy.
Sam thought about it. Tried to think about everything. Gabriel couldn't see what this meant. Sam didn't want to be the one to show him.
But there were few things that he knew for certain, and this was one of them.
So he made his choice.
(...)
By the time Gabriel came back, Sam had reconciled himself to his fate. There was no other possibility, he knew that.
With a sheepish smile and a promise to take it slowly, Gabriel sat down opposite him. Sam smiled, glancing around to see his brother still standing by the counter, arms folded and gazing back at him, unsmiling.
Gabriel spoke for a while, trying to figure out the first thing Sam remembered before yesterday's Tuesday. Sam told him.
Sam watched Gabriel. There was something about the man, a sort of flash every time he so much as moved. The world seemed to move around him in sparks and commotions, movement and enthusiasm. Sam couldn't help but laugh with him.
Being close to Gabriel had an effect on him that Sam had never even imagined before yesterday. It made him feel whole, right and balanced in a world he'd never truly belonged to.
If Sam had ever believed in loving only one person, it had only been because he never thought he would find the one.
But apparently he had. If this was the way he had always felt around Gabriel, it wasn't difficult to magician the man rewriting all the rules Sam had once lived by.
It was that feeling that told Sam exactly what he had to do next.
Pretty soon going slow was forgotten. Sam was okay with that. He had a feeling that Gabriel didn't see things in boundaries and propriety.
"Here. I can give this back to you now." Gabriel held out his hand towards Sam, who was too surprised to do anything but mimic the action himself. Gabe dropped the thing into Sam's waiting palm.
Looking down at it, it was surprisingly unimpressive. The shy, almost weary look on Gabriel's face had had Sam expecting something revelatory. Then again, it could be just that. Sam wouldn't know either way.
It was a very short section of thin string, very worn and almost bleached completely white.
"This is mine?"
"Yeah-huh. You used to wear it all the time. Never took it off."
Sam looked down at the thing lying against his skin. For only a second it made no sense to him. Why would he wear a scrap of twine?
Then it clicked, and suddenly Sam understood exactly why Gabriel was acting the way he was.
He looked at the man before him, trying to keep his own sadness out of his voice.
"You gave this to me?"
Gabriel nodded, then shook his head. For a moment he seemed to be lost in memory, but then he shook himself slightly and looked back at Sam.
"Yeah. About four months after we met. You were moving into my house. Well, you said you were moving into my house. I don't know whether bringing a single box of possessions and a backpack full of clothes can really be called moving. Anyway, that's all you were bringing with you. Apparently there was nothing else you needed. The box was so worn that you had it tied up with a piece of string. Didn't stop it from falling to bits the minute you got inside."
Gabriel was smiling at the memory with so much fondness, the amusement filling his eyes, that Sam couldn't help but smile back at him.
"Your stuff was lying all over my floor. A real mess. And you were just holding the remnants of this box and a tangle of the string. But you smiled at me and said that it didn't matter. You weren't planning on going anywhere anytime soon."
Sam looked down at the string, still in his hand. It was all so confusing. Gabriel was talking about him. He knew that. He could hear himself in the actions and words Gabriel was describing. He recognized himself in Gabe's description. But he didn't remember any of it. It wasn't him.
"I took the string out of your hand. Wrapped a bit of it around your finger. Promised that one day I would use my amazing magical powers to turn it into something real."
Sam was hyper aware of his heart beating, though he could have sworn that it had stopped. All he could manage was "Oh?"
"You laughed, told me that it was the worst proposal ever. But that it didn't matter, because it was already real."
Sam listened to Gabriel, still smiling, but he felt his heart breaking. Breaking at the loss of this, of who he had been and what he had had.
"Did you…did you ever just want to give up?"
Gabriel's smile fell a little as he considered his answer. Sam had already noticed that it was never truly absent. The trickster's mask, hiding everything that the man was truly feeling, everything that his eyes couldn't conceal. It couldn't hide everything and Sam could see too much sadness behind the smirk.
"Nah." The magician's voice was too casual to be natural, the inexactness affecting Sam more than almost anything else. "Why would I do a thing like that?"
The trickster, the showman was back. Gabriel was performing again, only this time Sam knew it was all an act. Gabriel couldn't laugh his way out of the mess Sam had dragged them all into.
"Be serious."
Gabriel looked squarely at him, dropping the mask for a brief second. It was enough to tell Sam everything he needed to know. God, it made this so much harder.
"I never wanted to give up on you Sammy. But sometimes I thought it was too much. Sometimes it was too much."
"Why did you stay?" Sam pleaded, needing to know but dreading the answer. He didn't want to ask. He didn't want to say what he was going to say. He wanted to close his eyes, to sleep and pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. That he was just in some random town. That he would wake up in some cramped hotel room that looked exactly like all the others. He just wanted to wake up tomorrow and feel normal again. But he couldn't. The truth had knocked him completely out of order and he couldn't claw his way back. He was tired, and he was sorry and he was lost.
Gabriel sighed so briefly that Sam almost missed it, and covered it up with a grin.
"Because."
"That's it? Just because?" Sam could feel the pout on his face, but he couldn't bring himself to wipe it away. He couldn't care that the man before him was basically a stranger. He couldn't care that nothing Gabriel said would make sense. He just wanted to know.
Gabriel was still smiling, but there was nothing humorous about it now.
"Because I love you."
No. They were the words that Sam had been waiting for, had known were coming, but they didn't make anything better. If anything they made it worse. Sam desperately clung to his resolve, trying to ignore the dull ache in his chest. Where his heart should be. He thought that he had wanted to hear. He thought that he needed to hear. But he didn't deserve it. Not after what he was about to do.
He tried to steal his nerves. He took a deep breath. He did anything to try and stop feeling what that he was feeling.
"But you must have known...even if I did improve, I wouldn't come back." Sam paused. "I'm not him, Gabe. I'm not the guy who moved in with you, or who wore this ring. I'm not the guy you fell in love with."
"Sam." Gabriel paused for a moment, looking into Sam's eyes. Sam could see the pain that his words were causing the man, but he could also see determination, enduringly fixed in the golden irises. "One or two days I would call a coincidence. Four hundred, Sammy. Over four hundred days. And each and every time, you would find your way into the show. You found me. And I know that you're confused, and dazed, and muddled up, right now. But I know that you still feel something for me. Nothing matters but that."
"This is not about how I feel, Gabriel. It's about who I am."
"And who are you Sam?" Gabriel asked forcefully.
"I'm not him." Sam answered. It was getting easier. With each word they got closer to the end. Soon this day would be over.
Gabriel chuckled softly into the quiet of the emptying café. People were still walking in and out, unaware and going about their own ordinary day, in their own normal lives. They didn't have to watch everything being torn down around them. They didn't have to cope with the uncertainty of having lost all trust in oneself.
"But you are."
"No." Sam closed his eyes as he shook his head. The Sam Gabriel knew was long gone. There was too great a chance that no generous amount of time would bring him back.
"You could be."
"He's not coming back, Gabe." Sam pleaded, his voice rising. "And I want to be him, so bad. So much that it hurts. But what if I can't? To me, you're nothing but a stranger." Sam finished softly. He knew that the words would hurt, but he had to make Gabriel understand what he was saying. It was important for both of them. He would give anything not to have to hurt the man. But he had to. He had to hurt him now to avoid endless pain in their future.
"Do you usually go about kissing strangers? See that's easily fixed." Gabriel exclaimed, grasping at an almost joke. Sam could see that the shorter man was beginning to panic, that he was beginning to understand what Sam was saying. Where this conversation was headed.
"I'm sorry." Saying it didn't make Sam feel any better. Hearing it wouldn't make Gabriel feel any better. But Sam felt like he should never stop saying it again.
Gabriel deserved so much more.
"What are you saying, Sam?"
Sam couldn't answer. Gabriel already knew anyway.
Gabriel's eyebrows shot up his forehead and he stared at Sam with unabashed shock. "You...you don't know what you're asking me to give up. I never gave up on you. Why would I start now?"
"I'm not asking you to give up on me. I'm asking you to give me a chance. I can't stay here."
Gabe glared at him, confusion, desperation and betrayal fighting for dominance behind his expressive eyes.
When he finally found his voice it was low and silky smooth. It was the dangerous sound of a final effort, and it would remain in Sam's mind forever. Even if the amnesia overtook him once more, he knew that he would never be able to rid his ears of that sound. It would remind him for the rest of his life that he had been the one to walk away.
"Do you know what it's like to wait for someone for years? To never know if they're coming back, just that you have to live without them in the slight chance that one day you won't have to? Do you have any idea?"
"I'm sorry…I just can't…"
Gabriel appeared to be stricken, frozen as Sam rose from his seat in the booth.
Sam didn't look back as he walked out of the café.
(...)
Sam just walked the streets. He should just go straight back to the hotel room. That would be where Dean went to find him. They could pack up their stuff and just get out. There was no reason to stay. He was giving this to Gabriel. He was giving Gabriel the life that he couldn't have with Sam. This was the only way he could be fair to Gabriel.
Gabriel…
He wandered aimlessly. The feeling from yesterday was back. He needed to turn around. He could feel the dull urge as deep as his bones. Walking away didn't feel right, even if it was the right thing to do.
He tried to stop thinking about it. Tried to stop thinking about everything. But it wouldn't stop. Gabriel's words, Gabriel's voice was indelibly etched into his soul, his own word black marks against gold.
He didn't know what he did, or where he went. He thought he might have sat on a park bench for hours, because the next thing he knew night was falling and there was an empty playground encroaching on his field of vision.
It was time to go. He couldn't put it off anymore. Couldn't wait until morning. His resolve wasn't impermeable to the attack of time. He needed to get back out onto the road.
He started walking again. The road back to the hotel took him past the old building Sam recognised from the day before. He meant to continue walking past it, but something stopped him.
Somehow he knew that Gabriel was in there. He couldn't leave things the way they were. Seeing him now wouldn't make a difference. He had to go in. The show would have ended by now. The adoring fans would have had their fill of the short talent.
He didn't have to go far, finding the magician alone in the lobby. Sam approached quickly. As difficult as this was going to be, it was important to him.
Gabriel glanced up as he heard Sam's footsteps. He straightened up, smiling ruefully. He didn't wait for Sam to stop walking before he started speaking.
"So, you're really leaving then? This is good bye?"
"I just wanted to drop by on my way out." Sam answered, trying to keep the strain out of his voice. "See you...and Cas." Sam added as an afterthought.
"Hmmm." Gabriel went back to what he had been doing before Sam had come in.
"I thought you might be doing a show." Sam prompted.
"Yeah, well. The show's over. For this town at least. We're all packed and we're shipping out first thing."
"Oh." That was all Sam could think. "Where are you going?"
"Someplace. Didn't care enough to ask."
"Oh."
The silence was awkward. It bordered on hostile, but Sam didn't blame Gabriel for that. After what he had said, an almost hostile silence was better than anything else the man could have given him.
Thinking about what he had said reminded Sam that he needed to leave.
"Look. I just came in to say goodbye. And that I'm sorry."
"Well," Gabriel drew out the word. His performer's voice was back, but they both knew that it was just a show. "Fat lot of good that'll do me."
Sam took a step forward, holding out his hand. Gabriel almost took what he was holding out, until he recognised the piece of string he'd given Sam earlier. He stepped backwards and crossed his arms against his chest.
"You're going, Sam. No point leaving anything behind. Take it with you."
Sam persisted, still holding his hand out to Gabriel.
"It's not mine.
Gabriel shook his head, smile always flattened to a straight line.
"Well it's not mine either. I don't want it."
"But-" Sam began, but Gabriel cut him off. The magician took a step further back, throwing his hands out to the side in a wide gesture.
"For crying out loud! It's just a piece of string. If you don't want it, throw it in the bin on your way out."
Sam retracted his arm, shoving his hands back into his pockets.
"…goodbye then."
"Goodbye." Gabriel said, not looking up at Sam.
Sam turned and walked away from Gabriel for the second time that day. For the last time.
When he passed a bin on the way out, he almost took Gabriel's advice. He didn't have the heart to throw the rope away though. He couldn't wear it either, so it stayed in his pocket, forgotten as he made his way back home, so that he could leave it again.
(...)
The door crashed open and then slammed shut as Dean exploded into the hotel room. It had to be Dean. Who else was there left to care?
Sam didn't turn around. His hands were wrist deep in his only backpack, roughly pushing the contents from side to side. Pretending that he was actually doing something important. Pretending that he was doing the right thing.
The energy with which Dean had entered the room must have fizzled into nothing, because his brother was standing completely still behind him. No words, no yelling. Or at least not yet.
Sam already had everything that he needed. Everything he would take with him. But he wasn't gone yet.
Maybe the silence wasn't a good thing, wasn't a sign of Dean calming down. Maybe it was like the utter calm before total catastrophe. Knowing his brother, that was pretty likely. He'd thought that things couldn't get any worse, but Dean was never one to conform to expectations.
Sam couldn't stop rummaging around in his bag. Pushing things from one vacant space into another. Convincing himself that he couldn't stay. Because he couldn't stay.
The silence dragged on, and it was no longer the comfortable silence of their mornings. They were both different people now.
Sam didn't understand it. Any of it. It was all too new, too broken and too confusing. It was too much. What was he supposed to do?
He'd been falling in love, every day. He could feel it, the residual echo left behind by years of the same euphoric feeling. Even if he couldn't remember it explicitly, he couldn't deny it either.
It had been so much easier when it didn't mean anything. When falling in love had been saying good bye. When he knew that he was leaving.
Now it was so much harder. Because now it wasn't for today, or the next few days. How was he supposed to accept the way he was feeling when he knew what it would mean?
He couldn't stay and pretend that he was okay with it. So he had to leave.
The pressure in the room reached the limit of Sam's ability to withstand, and he turned around.
Angry Dean was scary Dean, and both were silently fuming in the dim lamp light. It was already night, a lifetime away from the yesterday that Sam shouldn't have remembered.
"What are you doing Sam?"
Sam winced as Dean's voice cut hard across the silence.
I don't know.
"Leaving."
Dean continued to glare at him, giving no sign that he even heard.
"I suppose that's what you do best. Leave everything behind and start again. You're a real jerk, you know that?"
Yes.
"Dean..."
"No. How could you just...leave?"
Sam felt his own anger rising at the unadulterated blame Dean was throwing at him.
"What did you expect to happen? Huh, Dean? What do you want me to do? How was this going to have a happy ending?"
Dean took a step forward, baited by the anger in Sam's voice.
"You weren't supposed to leave. Geez, I don't know what good he saw in you, but it certainly wasn't this."
"I'm not doing this for me, Dean."
"Well then who are you doing this for? Gabriel?"
Sam couldn't meet Dean's gaze or bring himself to answer. He was doing this for Gabriel, but...
Dean read his look anyway and carried on, exasperation mixing with the anger and blame.
"What, you think he deserves someone else? Someone less like you? He's no saint. No, Sam, that man deserves all the bad hair days you can throw at him. And then some."
Sam finally found the words that he'd been trying to find since he'd left the magician in the Cafe. His eyes snapped up to Dean's face.
"He deserves someone whole. Someone who isn't broken. Not like I am. So yes, he deserves someone a lot less like me."
Dean fell quiet. He didn't look sympathetic, and the anger certainly wasn't gone, but when he spoke he was a little softer.
"Maybe he does deserve better. But you, going, it's not going to help him find it. You're not even giving him a chance, Sam."
"He's better off without me around. I'll just remind him of the person he lost."
"I don't think you understand Gabriel, Sam."
"How could I? I've only known him for two days."
Dean almost laughed. Sam huffed out a chuckled, and Dean shrugged. It wasn't happy, and it wasn't easy between them but perhaps it was enough to let them get past this.
They would be on the road again tomorrow, falling back into the routines that were almost all Sam could remember. Sure, that might mean Dean had to brush the cobwebs off his own recollection, but they'd muddle through. They always had in the past, and this time shouldn't be different at all.
Sam no longer felt the urge to push the contents of his bag from side to side. With his brother next to him he was as prepared as he needed to be. It would be natural again, one day. He might never stop looking back, but it wouldn't stop him from looking forward, either.
"You really shouldn't go, Sam." Dean's arguments were growing weaker. "Just stay in town one more night."
"I can't, Dean."
"We don't know about your memory. You might wake up tomorrow and remember nothing again. You shouldn't be alone."
"I won't be alone." Sam was a little taken aback by Dean's latest objection. "If anything goes wrong, you know how to handle it."
Dean paused for a split second.
"I'm not coming with you Sam."
"What are you talking about? Dean."
"I'm not coming."
Sam had a split second of simultaneous understanding and confusion. Confusion because it had always been the two of them. The Winchester brothers. On the road. Dean took the wheel and they both took shifts sleeping. If anyone had even thought about leaving that life behind, it had been Sam. Understanding because everything else had changed. Of course this would too.
But it unsettled him. His entire plan had focused on him and Dean leaving. Going back to the life that he remembered.
He suddenly became angry. Why did Dean get to choose? If he got no choice, why would Dean get to choose this? It made no sense anyway.
"What, because of Cas? Come on Dean. You've never been cut out for the quiet life. You think that you can just settle down? Live the apple pie life? Never." Sam reasoned. "Certainly not with another guy."
Dean froze, face falling.
"Wha-Why the hell not?"
Dean had quickly recovered and was frowning angrily. Sam tried to placate him, lowering his tone and taking a small step backwards.
"I know you, Dean. It's just not...you." Sam trailed off as Dean stepped angrily forward. He was livid, and Sam didn't think he'd ever seen his brother so angry.
"Don't you dare pretend that you know anything about me. You don't get to tell me who I am. You have no idea."
Sam just stared at him. He saw realisation flicker on Dean's face just as he came to the same conclusion.
They'd become complete strangers.
They didn't know each other anymore, even after all the time spent together. Dean was not the man that Sam remembered. He didn't resent the change in his brother. Dean deserved it.
He understood the dangers of going out on his own, the way his mind was, but nothing could keep him in this own after what he'd done.
Still in a state of shock, Sam's mind regressed to the last logical thing it could remember.
"I have your number. I suppose you'll be the first person I'll call if something happens, whether I want to or not."
Dean nodded tersely. Sam took a few uncertain steps towards the door.
"Can I take the Impala?"
"Take your own car. It's parked in front of 102."
"Thanks." It wasn't much of a goodbye. But then again, they'd never really known how to say anything to one another.
Sam expelled himself from the room, out into the cold. The last person he knew, in the entire world, stood silhouetted in the doorway.
The night wrapped itself around him. A small scrap of string hitched a ride, forgotten in his front pocket.
If he continued to walk away, he would have no one at all. He was alone. Absolutely and utterly alone.
But that was okay.
Dean was right.
Sam had always been good at starting again.