Chapter Title: Splinters

Author: archi

Chapter Summary: Dean moved to a new tree, breaking it's perfect pattern of interwoven bark. Several more strips of raw wood peeked out light against the surrounding thick skin of the tree, and Dean could relate. Every word, every sentence exposed something new and raw and and it stung like hell, like he was peeling away layers of flesh around his own heart and who knew what would be left by morning.

Sam was playing dirty, and Dean knew it.

Problem was he couldn't be bothered to give a damn.

The manipulative little bastard was suddenly all about rest and salad and friggin' herbal tea and letting Dean make soup while he lay in bed and read books from the Men of Letters' library as Dean played courier. He was kept busy - or maybe he was keeping himself busy taking care of his overgrown, medically-overdue little brother.

Not that he hadn't caught Sam staring blankly at the papers spread over his lap, lips and eyebrows twitching and maybe he was crying but Dean - for all his talk of wanting to help - turned tail and ran.

As long as he kept moving he was fine. His promise to abstain from alcohol remained intact - although he had to avoid that section of the store altogether on supply runs because he could imagine the sweet oblivion it might bring and oh, he wanted it bad.

There were, of course, stretches of time when he wasn't needed, when he stood still for too long and found the secure walls echoing with things he'd rather not think about, rather not remember.

He closed the door to his room and took up residence in one closer to Sam's, grumbling roughly about needing to be closer in case Sam needed someone to give him a sponge bath or manicure. Sam had stared at him a long time before nodding, "Alright."

The third day back Sam said he needed to get out, and although Dean protested - he could get whatever Sam needed - he didn't stop him. Sam had been getting better and even Dean couldn't deny it. His bruising was still fading, but he was losing that sallow look and his eyes were brighter and cheeks warmer. He wasn't coughing at all, and despite the tenderness was moving around with more energy and ease.

So Dean let him go, and focused himself on cleaning out his entire arsenal.

Sam wasn't gone long, but came back with two cups of good coffee. Dean nodded his thanks, and set the coffee aside.

He wasn't going to drink himself into a stupor, but that didn't mean he had to welcome consciousness.

Sam hadn't tried to say anything after the first night. Dean was grateful for that, at least. What could he say, really? That it sucked? That it was unfair? That the price had always been too big and this time it was too much?

So he moved about, ate well, slept fitfully in a bed that wasn't his because he couldn't be where he'd so often called out when he knew that the line had been disconnected and -

He shook his head, and focused on his 1911.

…

Two days later he got a call from Charlie.

"I took some time off and I'm headed your way," her voice was welcoming and alive, and a little bit of Dean warmed up.

"C'mon Charlie, you don't have to -" embarrassment was making his neck hot. Sam had probably called her, and he was half annoyed and half grateful. "We're doing alright."

"Who said it's for you?" she teased, "Maybe I need a vacation - not everything revolves around you Dean." But Dean knew better. She was coming for him because she loved him and Sam had opened his fat gob but it didn't matter so much because he'd felt cold and empty for days but she was warm and bright and would understand.

She'd distract him like Sam, with his careful glances and silent monologues on Dean's unhealthy emotional management, couldn't.

"Alright. I'll make up a room."

"Smell ya later, dork."

"I love you, too."

…

Charlie sat cross legged on the countertop, watching Dean cut vegetables for dinner and discussing the pros and cons of various gaming platforms.

They'd just finished a competition of sorts down in the shooting range - and Dean had just narrowly lost - although it may have been on purpose. He was a gentleman, after all - or he'd pretend to be for her. She was so unintentionally and unapologetically enthusiastic and he wondered if, maybe, given a different life, he might have been like that.

But, no. Her affection for him didn't give him the right to leech on her happiness, to pretend he was anything other than himself.

"Dean?"

"Mmm?"

She paused, uneasiness creeping into the edges of her tone. "What...what happened, a few days ago? With, uhm," she sounded guilty, "Castiel?"

Indecision wrenched at him - the one side knowing if he shrugged it off and asked not to talk about it then she'd respect him, the other side of him stomped a foot, yelling about having been quiet for days and it was time and if there were anyone he could talk to about this, it'd be her.

He bit his, lip, then, soothing it, turned back to chopping the pepper on the cutting board

"There was a...uhm, a footnote, I guess - part of the trials, added in as a sort of afterthought. Sam did the trials alright but it needed a little more TNT to take effect. So Cas, he flew up right to the frontlines and, ehm..." he cleared his throat, "Put his grace there. There was an…explosion and after it all just went still. Got Sam back into the car and came here."

She didn't respond but he wished she would because his mind was filling up the silence with things he hadn't let himself consider, hadn't allowed to develop but oh how they sprang to life now and he shook out his head and bit his lip again but his voice came out all the same, gruff and compensating.

"I just...he always takes things by the horns, you know. Raphael, Leviathan, now this...and it's always so big but this one was too big. I dunno how many 1-UP mushrooms he took to get this far but he ran out...

"It's all just...too much. And it always is, always has been," Dean ran a hand over his face. "I can't keep up with it, with him. And I shouldn't have expected him to slow down, but...he always put it on me - the things he did - for me or because of me or because I wasn't there - but never let me in, let me help..."

"I just...there was so much stuff between us - good and bad...and he had just barely come back and now..."

He breathed, wet his lips, and turned to look at Charlie. There was something off in her expression. A weird lining to her concern and sympathy that didn't make sense.

"I'm really, really sorry, Dean," she looked so pained.

He wanted to shrug, but instead he just sort of jerked non-committally. "I just gotta get it in my head what I can and can't handle. But, ah...thanks...for being here."

Charlie let out a breathy laugh, "I'm not doing anything except bumming a bed and working on my aim."

"Don't sell yourself short there, kiddo," Dean said, half-smiling. "You're doing a hell of a lot more than you think."

She nodded, looking down, suddenly so very young and Dean wouldn't pry, but something wasn't quite right with Charlie Bradbury.

…

The evening passed in relative quiet - dinner, a movie set up in a comfortable lounge area and then they went their separate ways. Sam turned in with another stack of library books, and Charlie was fishing her laptop and headphones out of her canvas bag and settling comfortably in one of the more plush chairs. Dean bid her goodnight and headed to bed.

The small gateway that had opened this afternoon had seen a steady trickle of traffic through. Once he'd spoken to Charlie, it seemed, his mind had taken it as permission to dwell on things in a way he couldn't stop. He'd stared at the screen while the movie played this evening but couldn't focus, ignoring the glances exchanged between Charlie and Sam.

He got undressed and lay on his substitute bed. The walls were bare and the mattress not as comfortable. Sans the sketchy stains and smells, it was very much like the motel rooms he'd grown up in. Non-committal, just a place to lick his wounds before he got back on the road.

He got up, slipped his robe on and walked down the hallway, pausing briefly before Sam's open door and listening to the reassuringly un-haggard breathing and gentle page turning. Then he stood before his own door. His fingers glanced around the edges of the knob. He was terrified - he knew the anxious feeling that wound through his veins well enough to admit that much. He heard uneven breathing and realized it was his own, so he grabbed the doorknob, eyebrows pulled in and turned the knob.

Logically, he knew the room must be empty. There was no reason that it should have been occupied. Yet a part of his mind still staggered back at the vacancy. Just a few clothing items tossed onto the bench on the right, his bed made up as he'd left it. What had he been expecting?

Half-formed pictures erupted in the forefront of his mind. The back of a tan overcoat, the partial profile of his face, a hand carefully touching the edges of the photographs on Dean's desk - a soft remark of how Mary Winchester had been a very pretty woman.

Or set, stony shoulders in the same apparel. Disdain dripping from accusations. You should have been prepared better. You could never have hoped to close the gates of Hell alone and I paid the price. Again.

Or just a corpse. Crumpled and bloody like he'd seen it too often. As if, after everything, Jimmy Novak's body had made it here as a testament of how Dean Winchester had failed. Again.

How Dean Winchester was alone, again.

How he must resign himself to that.

It was then that something totally different - something simmering quietly - rose to a full boil inside of him and he dressed quickly, grabbed his car keys and strode out of the bunker purposefully.

The night air was still warm from the heat of the day, a cool breeze winding through the trees - but the air seemed only to swarm around his ears, whispering, alone alone alone alone alone until the word roared through his body like a tidal wave and he threw open the trunk to the Impala more forcefully than he should have, taking only a second to locate the old, heavy axe. Without bothering to shut the trunk he walked deep into the woods surrounding the bunker, until he was at a place he was sure he didn't have to ever see again.

He wouldn't burden himself with this after tonight. He would leave it here. Leave Castiel here in the quiet wood and never never think of him again.

alone... alone... alone alone alone Alone Alone ALONE ALONE ALONE ALONE

He swung the ax into a large trunk.

He swung and he swung and he swung the axe until he stopped seeing trees he just felt the impact shudder down the tool, up his arm and vibrated through his rib cage and his hands were going numb from his grip and he was burning hot, blinking burning sweat from his eyes and maybe there were tears too but he didn't stop them as he kept swinging, punishing this little section of wood for all the hurt and loss and dammit, Cas.

He went until he couldn't feel his hands and the grain of the wood splintered identical patterns through his own bones. He hacked at the bark of one tree until he'd reduced its face to raw splinters and then turned to another. And another and another.

Distantly he heard the gasps and heavy breaths and groans he knew must be his but he couldn't stop.

He pulled Cas' face up, the expression he'd made in those last few minutes - apologetic and gentle - and Dean swung harder.

He'd kissed Sammy's head like his sasquatch brother was a child.

He shattered another section of bark.

Powerless, always so powerless and would no one just stay with him?

Wooden shrapnel flew and he squinted to avoid it although it grazed his face and caught in the folds of his shirt.

These people, these creatures that he surrounded himself with that cared, but never enough to stay, like they couldn't and Dean was so small and never enough.

But the ghost of chapped lips pressed chastely against his own, and every explanation neither of them would never give, apologies never spoken, the mile wide pile of stuff that would never be sorted compiled, as if that gesture in those moments could compensate for the impending nothingness when the other shoe dropped.

But what else could have been said?

All at once the fight left him. His stiff fingers protested as he wrenched them, knuckle by knuckle from the worn wood and heard the soft thump-thump as the head first and then the handle of the axe landed on the leaf-strewn ground.

He felt his chin trembling and his shoulders fell and he tipped his head back, breathing and choking has he registered his own tears. They filtered through the bags under his eye and the lines leading to his mouth, salty and hot. One dipped into his ear and he focused on the minute sensation, steadying his breath.

"Dean?"

He stared, and nearly tripped backwards as he whirled around. Sam's outline was just visible in the dark.

He steadied his breath, and wiped his face, "What the hell are you doing out here, Sammy? I thought you went to bed."

"Honestly? Making sure you didn't come out here to kill yourself." Sam's voice was deadly serious.

Wow. Don't sugar coat it. "No point in that Sammy - I'm no good at dying," Dean scoffed bitterly, "Just getting people dead."

"Dean -"

"Sam..." Dean couldn't see his face. But it was probably pained and sympathetic and scrunched around the mouth and Dean was grateful it was dark. "I know you want me to sit down and cry about my feelings, but..."

He heard Sam's feet coming closer. His head fell heavy on his damp chest and he sighed.

"I'm not pretending to know what's happening with you, Dean, or how you have to deal...I just wanted to make sure you were safe."

"I just -" Dean shook his head, eyes burning again, "He was family, dammit. Why can't the people I care about just..."

The axe lay at his feet and he bent down to scoop it up into his grip again. He didn't want to hear about how Sam was here and Charlie was here because dammit, he knew but right now Cas wasn't.

The blade stuck into the bark and Dean yanked it out again.

"Bastard would never stick around," he grunted, swinging again. "Didn't matter - after everything - I'd never ask - I wanted it to be his choice...shoulda known."

The splinters flew again. Sam didn't try and move any closer - a smart move, for once. And now Dean was going, and he would keep going.

"I dunno whether to be pissed at him or the universe," he moved to a new tree, breaking it's perfect pattern of interwoven bark, "Dunno if he'd have stuck around anyway. I never know -"

Several more strips of raw wood peeked out light against the surrounding thick skin of the tree, and Dean could relate. Every word, every sentence exposed something new and raw and and it stung like hell, like he was peeling away layers of flesh around his own heart and who knew what would be left by morning.

"I told him, Sammy, told him I needed him! And the bastard left. Made himself into a supernova and I get why - it all makes sense on paper but here," he turned back to Sam, using his free hand to fist his shirt over his heart, "It was wrong and I couldn't stop him - he just left."

Another several minutes he spent defacing another trunk, going as deep as he dared, cutting deep, as if he could get to the center of this tree and hit it hard enough, carve away until there was nothing left then maybe he wouldn't have to feel anymore. His shoulders and muscles screamed to stop and finally he stepped back, tossing the axe aside and breathed.

"I'm never enough, Sammy. I mean you must just be too stupid to stay away because everyone else gets the picture..."

He stepped forward, pressing himself into the tree, feeling the shattered innards of years of work - destroyed in minutes.

"I thought he was back for good. We were family. He was gonna stay in the bunker and watch stupid movies and we could finally sort through all that shit he had and we had and we never got to it. Didn't have time."

Pinpricks of the wood pressed into his hands, threatening to break skin and leave splinters and suddenly he pushed off, hands protesting at the needles of pain and then he yelled,

"YOU SON OF A BITCH! I NEEDED YOU AND YOU NEEDED ME YOU BASTARD! WHY COULDN'T YOU JUST STICK AROUND?" the words echoed oddly through the trees, "IF I MEANT SO MUCH WHY COULDN'T YOU JUST STAY?...WHY? DAMMIT, WHY?"

Splinters pushed into his skin as he curled his fingers into fists. "Right, there wasn't another way," he said humorously. "Like hell there wasn't another way, there's always another way - we always find something and why'd he have to do it? Honorary Winchester, we're all dumb as shit when it comes to self-sacrificing! Stupid bastard..."

He sighed, suddenly so tired. He felt every swing of the axe in his chest and the bloody pulp of his insides still beating and churning.

"I just wanted him to stay, Sammy," he said, knowing how broken and desperate and pathetic he sounded but now wasn't the time to put up a pretense of dignity. "Just wanted to work through all that crap that's piled up and now he's gone. And I miss the bastard, but it felt like half the time I didn't even know him. And I gave so much but he never let me in - and then when crap hit he goes and..."

His voice died and he had to consciously keep his body from sagging to the ground.

"he kissed me, Sam." His voice was little more than a croak, "And it wasn't about the kiss so much as it was like...the first time I understood, finally, like he'd been saying how he did all this crap for me and profound bond or whatever the hell that means and I'd been saying how I needed him and how he was family and neither of us really heard each other until then. And god dammit Sammy...I felt it..." He turned to his brother and stepped forward, advancing until he was grinding out his next words in Sam's face. "Cas cares a whole hell of a lot and maybe you're right- maybe the stupid shit loves me but he's gone so what the hell does it matter anyway!?"

He stood there, trying to force his breath into an even pattern, unclenching his fist and swallowing to soothe his throat. He wished Sam would say something. Anything really, because he was out of words.

Sam's face was contorted, mouth twisting and eyes squinting and blinking to push out another and another in a steady stream of tears and the big brother in Dean wanted to pull him close but the selfish part of Dean was angry again and wanted to punch his brother out for presuming to feel anything about this.

But Dean didn't get the choice as Sam pulled him in, and he didn't let his hands shove - maybe they tried but they ended up just clutching at his brother's shirt. Trying to steady his breath had been in vain as the gasps and shuddering breaths wrenched from him and his face screwed up, chin trembling against his brother's shoulder and the tears were coming out in earnest now. And they kept on coming.