A/N: Thank you so much to ImpalaLove for reviewing the last chapter! I'm warning y'all... This one is dark, even for me. This is a continuation of the last chapter.
Spoilers: 10x21
Lebanon, Kansas
May, 2015
Dean tries not to look at his reflection anymore, tries not to see the man the monster masquerades as on a daily basis. But right now he stands over the sink, washes Charlie's rusty blood off of his hands and stares at the mirror as the water runs red.
There are lines creasing his face, bags under his eyes, but he still recognizes himself. People say, 'I don't even know who I am anymore,' and look at their reflections like they're somehow different, like they've been physically altered, like it's just so obvious what's wrong with them. Smash the mirror. Shatter the image because you can't bear to look at it anymore. 'Who am I?' they'll cry to the heavens.
But the movie script was off on this one; it's just not the case. He looks the same. He's been called pretty-boy more times than he can count and, to be fair, he does see something incredibly punchable in his cleft chin and model-lush lips. He's always had a 'you're-stuck-with-me' kind of face. Now more than ever. He's older, sure, but the same. And it's almost worse this way, because one part doesn't match the other.
He bows his head over the tap and scrubs frigid water into his skin, like he might wash away the illusion. When he lifts his face his skin is numb and feels stretched too-tightly over his skull, but he is visibly unchanged. His eyes, maybe, are hollow, but that's it.
Maybe he's missing the point. Maybe the sameness is supposed to remind of who he is, who he was. He was good once, wasn't he?
He's flip-flopped between each extreme – the vessel of God's greatest warrior, and God's most abhorrent mortal creation.
He wonders briefly which dismal fate was better, but attempting to choose between the two is fucking exhausting. What's right? What's wrong? How can he know? His conscience, that little rig float dangling somewhere in his chest, has been abused out of existence, swallowed up in the tumult. Left is right, right is wrong, and he has lost all direction. Moral compass? Yeah fucking right. Like he should be so lucky. That was taken away, too.
And it makes him angry. He's been toyed with his whole life, amounted to nothing more than a goddamn puppet. His choices brought him here, yes, but he didn't bring himself into this world, didn't throw himself into these circumstances. He never wanted to be here. He never wanted to be this.
Some of the lore says the Mark of Cain is a huge, hideous scar, a mark across the forehead. He wishes it were true. He wishes he were deformed. Stay away from me, it would warn. Because why else won't they? Stay away? He pushes and pushes and pushes, and no one ever listens.
And it makes him angry, it does. But he's also so, so tired.
He turns around, away from the mirror. Turns his back on himself. There's a gun on his bed, in a room filled with guns. There's a black book on his dresser, a Bible. It's there strictly for research purposes. That's the story, anyway, the story they all tell.
His eyes flit back to the gun.
The Bible would say this is wrong, but it doesn't feel that way. Who is he to know the difference, after all?
I didn't ask for this, he tells the book. You pushed me to it.
Push push push. All he does is push, be pushed, and it does no good.
He's ready to feel something different. And when he looks at that Beretta, he does.
He feels a pull.
He tried. He tried so fucking hard, he tried harder than anyone else would have. He tried. And in trying, he turned his brother into a monster too. He should be mad at Sam, shouldn't he? Shouldn't he? Why isn't he? He just wants to bring this endless line of damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't decision making to a screeching halt.
Because Charlie's death is Sam's fault, it really is. But it's only Sam's fault because Dean put him in the position in the first place. So, it's Dean's fault. That's the infallible Winchester logic.
There's a squeak and a slam in the other room: Sam's back.
. . .
Sam bursts into the room in a flurry, no preamble, no decorum, brain abuzz because he knows immediately that something is wrong-er than usual. It's as though he can read Dean's thoughts.
Maybe he can. But only because he's having the exact same ones.
His eyes find Dean's, then the gun, then Dean's. He goes slack-jawed, like he hadn't planned this far ahead, like he thought he was going to walk in on something other than his brother standing at the sink.
The bunker is suddenly unbearably quiet and astoundingly cold; an icy chill shoots through Sam's spine at the look in Dean's eyes, and the hairs at the back of his neck bristle. If he didn't know any better, he would think there was a ghost in the room with them.
Maybe it's Dean's ghost, because what he sees is something of the sort – his brother has let go. Checked out, just like that. Flip switched to off. Sorry, you've reached Dean Winchester, he's no longer here.
He remembers when Dean died the first time, when he called his phone over and over again just to hear his voicemail, just to hear his voice.
"There something you wanna say?" Dean prods finally.
"I know what you're thinking, Dean," he says all in a rush.
One eyebrow quirks, like they didn't just discover one of their closest friends dead in a bathtub, like some new innocent person didn't just sacrifice themselves for their sorry asses. "Do you?"
He stares down the gun pointedly. "I do," he says at length.
Dean looks sheepish, a kind of 'you-caught-me-watching-porn' kind of sheepish and not a 'I'm-contemplating-suicide' kind of sheepish. Sam had expected guilt, but his brother is unapologetic – he's just embarrassed to be called out on it, to have his inner musings out in the open for them both to verbally dissect.
Sam's phone vibrates in his pocket, loudly. They both ignore it.
Dean sighs, rubs the space between his eyes. "Don't you ever wonder?"
"Wonder what?"
"What it would be like if we didn't have to do this anymore."
Sam cocks his head to the side, scanning his brother's face like a Xerox machine. "No," he says, like it isn't all he ever thinks about.
Dean glares at him, challenging: Lie to me one more time. See what happens.
"Okay," he confesses immediately. Sam's not up to snuff to play this game with him right now. He will lose. "Yes, of course."
The other sucks his teeth and nods, like they actually agree on something for once. His neck is bent towards the floor, but his gaze jumps around the room sporadically, settling on anything but Sam.
The gun on the bed keeps catching Sam's eye – the Bible keeps catching Dean's.
"Whaddyou wanna do?" Sam asks finally. "Make a suicide pact?" He expels one short, breathless laugh from his lungs, like it's just so fucking funny. It comes out deranged.
Dean looks at him then, snaps his eyes to him, and Sam is filled with grief. A sort of hot, tingling grief that completely overshadows his guilt over Charlie, that fills him to the brim with panic. He's actually considering it, thinks it's a viable option. They've been following one another to their graves for most of their lives – why stop now? It might be easier, right? If they just did it together?
Sam thinks he might be sick again. Bile percolates in his stomach.
Because he's considering it, too. Not because he wants to die, but because he knows Dean could never go through with it, could never let him die. And how completely selfish it is, but he would do anything, even exploit Dean's worst fear. He would make Dean live in agony rather than live without him. Dean would kill more people. Sam would clean up his messes. Their own little happily ever after. And that's when he realizes: he would sacrifice all the world if it meant he could save his brother. There's something wrong with that.
And saving him is the same as keeping him alive, right?
His phone buzzes again.
"What have we done?" Dean wonders absently, like he is not one critical component of the 'we.' Like he is removed. Like he will be. Like he can ever be. There's a 'to each other' hiding somewhere at the end of his sentence.
"You kill yourself-"
"No, Sam, stop it," he curbs him urgently, re-entering the conversation, anticipating his next words. He is very animated all at once, like he's been shocked.
Sam presses on, firm and unfaltering: "You kill yourself, Dean, and I will follow you to Hell."
Dean either laughs or sobs – he can't tell which. "We've always known it might have to come to this," he grinds out, like it's some consolation. He looks abruptly up at the ceiling, trying to keep his unshed tears at bay.
"No. No, we didn- it doesn't."
"I'm… I'm a liability, Sam. This has to end."
"No, you're not. Stop." His lungs feel heavy inside his ribcage and it's getting harder and harder to breath properly, but his heart is racing to kill him first. He can hear his blood pounding in his ears, da-dump-da-dump-da-dump. It's all too much.
"I'm doing this for you, for everyone."
"Stop! You're not doing anything!" he cries suddenly. "You're not! Just shut up, okay? Just shut the fuck up. You're not doing anything. So help me God, I will lock you up if I have to. Don't you dare leave me, Dean. Don't you dare even think about it."
"Do you have any idea what it felt like to have you – to have all of you – lie to my face like that? I gave you a chance to come clean – I tried so hard to let you, to give you an out!" He presses his hand to his chest, the closest he's ever come to admitting heartbreak. "Do you know what it's like to watch that? Watch you all tiptoe around me like I'm a fucking time bomb?"
"Of course I know," Sam bites, furious. "Of course I fucking know. Do you remember Ezekiel? Gadreel? Remember that?"
The elder brother's features soften. "I'm a monster, Sam. A bonafide, claws-and-fangs monster. I've gotta be put down before I hurt anyone else," he says, like he's nothing more than a rabid dog that needs to be taken behind the barn and shot.
Sam is sure he's said these exact words before. "I was Lucifer, Dean. I was Satan, and you never gave up on me."
"You were possessed," he corrects harshly. He takes a step towards his brother and points an accusatory finger towards his own heart. "This, this is me."
"It's not you. It's the Mark."
Dean laughs again, his oh-so-merry barricade walls creeping back up, and turns away from him. "I'm not so sure about that."
"The demon blood? That was me. I came back from it, but I never could've done it without you."
Dean remembers all too well his little brother's heartrending withdrawal, the shrieks of anguish ricocheting off the iron walls of Bobby's panic room.
"You never killed anyone," is all he says.
Sam is at a loss. "We've all done things. We all have. Charlie is dead because of me," he chokes. "There's… there's blood on my hands, too. But In all the bad we've done, there's also been good."
Dean thinks he's probably right, but he can't remember one good thing he's done in the past year.
"It's not enough."
They watch each other. The brotherly bond they once shared is starting to feel like a pair of shackles. A blood-bond forged in other people's blood.
"I'm going to hit the hay," says Dean, giving him his cue to back the hell off.
"I'm not leaving you," Sam replies incredulously. "Not after everything you just said."
He shrugs. He's not afraid of Sam; he doesn't think he could stop him, even if he tried. "Fine, suit yourself. Babysit me."
Sam's cellphone keens one last time, and he wants to destroy it.
"You gonna get that or what?" Dean demands, agitation finally cutting into his tone.
He shakes his head. It's Cas, he's sure, and he can't have that conversation right now, not after everything.
Dean carefully removes the gun and flops back on the bed, like everything's normal, like he actually sleeps nowadays, and Sam watches helplessly. He moves to the dresser and picks up the Bible.
