All That's Left

By: Ada C. Eliana

Chapter 7: Betrayal

Dean replayed the scene at the ridge over and over in his mind. He saw Sam and that freak Daniel fighting, heard their words. He ran in panic when he saw the house collapsing. He remembered how his breath had burned in his lungs as he turned the corner just in time to see a floating knife heading straight for Sam's back, Daniel right in front of Sam, smirking as it neared its target. Tackling Sam to the ground had been a natural reaction, he had hoped to be in time, to spare Sam (and himself) from any major injury. And he had timed it perfectly.

He collided with Sam and pushed him to the ground just in time for the knife to sail above their bodies, just quickly enough that Daniel did not have time to stop its movement. If he had been slightly to the side, Daniel would have lived to attack them again, but unfortunately for him he was just in front of Sam, directly in front of Sam, and so when there was no Sam for the knife to slay, it instead sliced cleanly into Daniel. He had been slain by his own weapon, killed with his own attempt at murder.

Dean was relieved it had gone down that way, because he would have killed the little bastard himself for trying to touch his brother, but he knew he was out of his element with a telekinetic. And he definitely did not want Sam to be the one to kill him, to watch Sam dispassionately take a human life, not with how messed up his brother was now, not with the look he had seen in Sam's eyes as he faced off against Daniel.

Killing wasn't exactly a wrong in Dean's eyes, not if it was necessary, but it had always been wrong to Sam. He would tell Dean that he couldn't understand how he could so easily make the decision, how he could 'play God' and decide someone did not deserve to live. Sam believed in second chances and talking it out. Nothing was ever black and white to him, a person wasn't simply evil because they did an evil thing, there was gray everywhere in Sam's world, and because of that, committing a murder would haunt his mind forever, haunt him with what-could-have-been and a million other things he might have done differently to avoid it.

Of course all of that referred to old Sam, the kid who disappeared from the hospital after refusing to kill their father in order to destroy the demon responsible for ruining their lives again and again. And somehow, that one choice, the shot that went into his father's leg rather than his chest, that one decision ruined Sam more than anything else. He went after the demon alone, walked headlong into the thing's 'plans.'

And now that Sam was gone.

And Dean could not help but blame himself. Sam, who never listened to anyone, who always did what he wanted, who Dean called selfish again and again, who Dean was so convinced would sacrifice anything in order to stop the demon had missed his opportunity to kill it because Dean asked him not to.

For not the first time Dean wondered what would have happened if Sam pulled the trigger, if Sam wiped their father out and destroyed the demon. There would be no puppet-master demon out to get Sam, maybe Sam would have gone back to college, had a life. Maybe Dean would not have been jealous of that, maybe Dean would have gladly let him go. Or maybe Dean would have been angry with him for going, would have tried to blackmail him into staying. Dean wasn't proud of pondering those possibilities, he knew that he, just like everyone else he knew, was inherently selfish. He had dragged his brother back into the life he hated, wanted him to stay with him and hunt forever even though he knew it would slowly destroy Sam. To Dean, family meant begrudging Sam of any choice, of having anything he wanted.

He liked to think that when Sam walked away, when John decided he was no longer worth searching for, that Dean surpassed the selfishness, that Dean chose Sam like Sam had chosen him. He cut off all ties with his father and stubbornly searched on for any trace of Sam. He thought that once he found Sam everything would be better, everything would be different. And though he wouldn't trade having Sam back for anything in the world, he ached as he watched this stranger in his brother's skin walking around, the way each step seemed to pain him, each sound echoing some hidden horror in his mind. He wanted to know what had happened to Sam but at the same time he didn't ever want to know. He was pretty sure from the scraps he had picked up that once he had heard the whole story he would give anything just to have it erased from his mind, to not know what had been done to his sweet little brother, what they did to change him, to turn him into someone unrecognizable; to not know what Sam was forced to do to stay alive.

He looked past Sam, who was sleeping curled in a ball beneath the covers, and to the calendar at the wall. With everything happening lately he hadn't taken stock of the date, and here it was, New Year's Eve, the time for resolutions and clean slates, and Dean couldn't remember a time when things had been more screwed up then they were right now.

Sam turned in his sleep and mumbled softly, "We have to open the gate… he'll kill us if we don't, and it's only a few hundred demons on the loose..."

Dean froze, staring at Sam for a moment until he went quiet again. The situation with Daniel made Dean uneasy (because he certainly wasn't scared, right?). If there were other psychic kids running around out there with hidden homicidal tendencies, then how long before they tracked Sam down, how long before they banded together, how long before he would have to watch his brother kill or be killed? He wanted nothing more at that moment than to spirit Sam away from any threats, to take him to Hawaii or Aruba or even freaking Siberia, just someplace that no one could hurt him, someplace where no one could bring out that expression on Sam's face, that hatred, that resignation to murder. He wanted to rip the psychic powers out of Sam's head so that no one could find him and he couldn't find them.

Sam was quiet through breakfast and the hours following, clearly mulling something over. Dean wished he would just talk about whatever was on his mind. His own thoughts chased each other around in circles as he tried to figure out a tactful way to tell Sam that he had overheard him and Daniel at the ridge. He needed a way to broach the subject of just what the demon did to Sam, what it had wanted, what had happened to it. But every time he opened his mouth he found no words would come out, he just couldn't find a way to say it, to ask. Because he knew Sam did not want to tell him, and part of him figured he probably didn't want to know anyway. Somehow Dean knew that the truth would be worse than whatever answers he imagined.

Sam sat on the bed, knees drawn up, idly tracing patterns on his jeans with his right hand, while the fingers of the left tapped out a disjointed rhythm on the bedside table. He seemed jittery, filled with nervous energy, and it worried Dean. But when Dean decided to go out and pick up some lunch, he asked Sam point-blank if he would be there when Dean returned, and his brother nodded in response, not bothering to lift his head and make eye contact with brother. He did relax slightly as Dean pulled the door open, almost as if he were grateful for the solitude Dean's exit would bring. Dean was not sure how he felt about that.

When Dean returned, lunch bag in his hands, what he did not expect upon his return was to find Sam hunched over in the corner, crouched beside the bed as if he had just slid off.

"Sam?" Dean asked, dropping the bag with their sandwiches and making his way to his brother's side in three quick strides. Sam was making a keening sound, his body rocking back and forth. His brother's head was buried in his hands, but Dean could clearly see blood dripping from his fingers. "Sam!" he said louder this time. When Sam did not respond, Dean forcibly moved his hands and Sam finally seemed to notice him, lifting his head. Rivulets of blood slid from his nose and his ears, and there was a small trail from his mouth where he had bitten into his lip.

"Sammy?" Dean asked as Sam lifted sluggish eyes to stare at him. His pupils were blown and he seemed to be fading in and out, not really aware of what was going on around him.

Finally Sam lifted his right hand shakily and gripped Dean's shoulder, using the contact to anchor him to reality and to the present. "They're really gonna do it," he said and his voice was slurred, difficult to understand.

"Who? Do what?"

"They found it… the Devil's Gate… they're gonna… release the army…" Sam said. He turned from Dean, struggling to his feet. "I gotta stop them."

"You're not going anywhere right now," Dean said, pushing his dazed little brother down on the bed. Once he was sure Sam was not going to get up, Dean walked into the bathroom and wet a washcloth. When he returned Sam was staring at his hands, and did not appear to notice Dean when he sat beside him and began cleaning the blood from his face.

"Now tell me what's going on," Dean said, one arm around Sam's shoulders (to keep him from falling of course…). He could feel Sam trembling, and the blood pooling on his lip finally slipped down his chin. Sam shook his head, but for what Dean could not tell, and anyway Sam winced as he did it as if exacerbating a headache.

Sam licked his lip, trying to do away with the coppery taste of blood in his mouth. He had tasted blood plenty of times, but now it made it hard for him to think, hard for him to put his thoughts in order, because it reminded him of… Brown eyes stared up at him, empty and blank. He tried to erase the image, tried not to think about that, not when something much more important was on his mind. He couldn't change what happened back then, but he could stop the others, stop them from releasing the demons.

"There's a… another Devil's Gate," Sam said slowly, trying to organize his thoughts so Dean could understand.

"You mean a door to Hell?" Dean clarified, slightly horrified, especially at the fact that Sam had said 'another.'

"Y…yeah… umm… they found it… he… he wanted us to open them… release the demons… but uh… the first one… shut…" 'Ain't that Johnny's kid?' Eyes full of accusation meeting his across the dark cemetery. Sam wanted to explain but everything was jumbling and his head was pounding and on second thought maybe he really shouldn't be telling Dean any of this. He lowered his head into his hands, hoping to make it stop hurting so much.

"Sam, hey," Dean said gently. "You look like crap man, why don't you just get some sleep, we can talk about this later."

Dean sat down in the chair beside Sam's bed, watching as his brother dropped off into a peaceful sleep. Dean rubbed his hands over his face. Despite having cared for Sammy for most of his life he felt completely lost. And now the Devil's Gate… He had said it once back with the demon that kept making those planes crash; demons made him nervous, he didn't feel like he had enough experience with them to take them on confidently. And now Sam was talking about opening a gateway to Hell that could release hundreds, or thousands of them? He was out of his element here, he needed help.

As much as he had wanted to keep Sam all to himself, to separate the two of them from John – John who had given up on Sam, left him to whatever the plans the demon had for him, abandoned his own son – Dean knew that his father would have some idea of what to do next. So as much as it pained him to admit it, he needed to call his father.

"I'm sorry." The words were whispered and jolted Dean out of the light doze he had fallen into, his journal stretched across his lap, his father's last known number scrawled haphazardly on the open page. Dean turned to his brother, now awake and sitting up, head in his hands.

"What are you sorry for?" Dean asked, incredulous.

"I thought it was over… I never would've come back if it wasn't over. I was wrong, I'm sorry. I didn't want you to be a part of any of this." He sounded defeated, tired. And Dean could only imagine how it must have felt for Sam to go through whatever he had been through and then, having it finally be over, and then realizing there was more to it, that he wasn't finished yet. He wasn't quite sure what to say now, what he could say to Sam to change any of the way he felt, to assure him that whatever he had to face, he didn't have to face it alone. But then Sam spoke again and Dean just listened. "When I left… back in Missouri… I didn't know… I didn't know what it would be like, what I was walking into. And after… when they… I just… I was glad that you didn't have to… that you wouldn't see… wouldn't know… I didn't want you to look at me different… look at me like he did…"

"Like who did?"

"Dad," Sam whispered, and that one word made him sound so defeated, so broken.

"You've seen Dad?" Dean asked, on his feet and to his brother's side in an instant. "When? Where?"

"First time was… a year after Missouri," Sam whispered. "Then again seven months ago."

Dean felt as if his blood was suddenly turning to ice, his whole body frozen as he repeated Sam's words over and over again his mind. One year after Sam disappeared, John had made that phone call to Dean, the one where he told him that Sam was most likely dead, that he had to give up on Sam.

Sam turned to look up at him, and Dean wondered if he was reading the thoughts right out of his head, listening in on Dean's memories of John's betrayal. His hands clenched into fists and he wanted nothing more than to pound John's face in. Because he knew, he knew over a year ago that the demon had Sam, that Sam was in trouble, that Sam needed him. He knew and he lied to Dean about it, lied and tried to make him believe his brother had been killed, tried to make him give up the search.

And he had been thinking about calling that bastard up and asking for his help? Not now, not ever. He was done with John Winchester, forever.

It was bad enough when Dean had thought that John had just given up on looking for Sam, but for him to call off the search when Sam had been victimized, had been used, when Sam needed their help – that was unforgivable.

"What happened Sam, tell me what happened when you saw him," Dean ordered, voice icy, anger directed at John leeching out of him.

Sam just shook his head, burying it in his hands again. "Sam, tell me!" Dean shouted. Sam flinched and Dean immediately regretted his tone. How could he have yelled at Sam? This wasn't Sam's fault.

"I… I can't…" Sam responded, his voice cracking, and Dean thought he might be crying.

"Sammy, I'm sorry," Dean whispered, putting his arms around Sam and pulling him close. "I'm sorry." He ran his hand over Sam's too-short hair and pressed his head against Sam's, tears prickling in his own eyes.

"I don't blame him," Sam whispered. Sam said nothing more and Dean couldn't think of how to respond so he remained silent.

A/N: I figured that was a good place to stop. Action starts next time!

-Ada