Disclaimer: Not mine.

Author's Note: So… I had this written and ready to go. The next tag might not be up quite this quickly, but I'll try to make it soon.

Who else thought the last episode was one of JP's best performances ever? :-)

Thanks to the people who reviewed the last chapter: cold kagome, kellywinchester, doyleshuny, nupinoop296, Kirabaros, godsdaughter77, SandyDee84, twomom, Phoenix80hp, criminally charmed, Branch Super, agent iz hyper, SPN Mum, Eavis, giacinta, putmoneyinthypurse and Scribble2Much.

As always, thanks to Cheryl for the help.

Summary: Tag to 7.13, Slice Girls. Sometimes the job is just too much.

Keep Fighting

I'm used to waking up in the middle of the night to find that Sam's not sleeping. The only times he actually sleeps at night like normal people are when he's injured, sick, or his dark circles have gotten so bad that people are asking if he's in an abusive relationship. (Seriously, random do-gooders in diners, have you actually seen Sam? The only person who could possibly beat him in a face-to-face fight is me, and if you're suggesting that I'm hurting Sammy…)

The only other way to get Sam to sleep is for me to put him to bed practically at gunpoint. It's so routine now that when I wake up and find that he is sleeping, I go straight to the nearest twenty-four-hour pharmacy for some heavy-duty antipyretics.

Normally this doesn't worry me too much, because he sleeps while we're on the road. All it means is that he's a little sleep-deprived on hunts, but Sammy's a big boy. He can live a couple of days without sleeping.

Tonight?

I know something's wrong as soon as I wake up.

Sam's not missing. I can see him sitting on the floor by the window. He's got a book, although I think it's just a comfort thing because I'm pretty sure he can't read in the dark. (Unless he actually is Geekboy, in which case that would be his superpower.)

I can't see his face – it's too dark – but the air is thick with angst. It hasn't been this bad since he was a teenager.

Even worse, the air is thick with the smell of cheap brandy.

I get out of bed. Sam looks at me.

Good, so we're not pretending that I don't know he's awake.

I pad over to Sam and drop to the ground next to him. He nods in acknowledgement of my presence. Then he disentangles one hand from the book to grab the bottle that's on the floor on his other side and offer it to me.

It's unusual to have Sam actually offering me alcohol, since his default state these days seems to be one where he makes half a bitchface, like he can't decide whether to yell at me or not, and then bookmarks websites about liver disease on my laptop. For a moment I'm tempted to take it, because who knows when this will happen again, but I resist because one of us needs to be sober, and if Sam's breath is any indication then it isn't going to be him.

"Dude, what the hell?" I say, keeping my tone light but chiding. "Isn't this supposed to be me?"

"What?" Sam slurs.

"The cognac. And it's not even your kind of cognac. This is the cheap stuff, isn't it?"

Sam laughs. "Couldn't afford Courvoisier. Haven't been shooting much pool lately, have we?"

"No, but that doesn't mean you give yourself alcohol poisoning – or something worse." I take the bottle. "Seriously, Sam, what the hell? I could smell you all the way across the room."

Sam shakes his head. "You can't talk."

"I'm your older brother, so yeah I can. Dude, drinking problems away? That's not usually your way of dealing with things."

Sam shakes his head. "Not true. I mixed whiskey and Jäger that time at Pierpont… You remember? With that creepy old guy who thought we were gay." Sam laughs suddenly. "All your fault. You were overcompensating because you're short."

"I'm not short, Sam. I'm a normal human being. You're a giraffe."

"You're short," Sam insists.

Then he sighs and reaches for the bottle of cognac. I hold it out of his reach, grabbing his wrist and holding it still.

"Don't be stupid, Sam. You really are going to give yourself alcohol poisoning, if you haven't already."

"I'm sorry," Sam whispers, and then he's looking at me with those eyes. "I'm sorry, Dean. I didn't – I don't – I'm sorry."

I'm not quite sure what to say to that, because it sounds like a bit of an overreaction to a warning about drinking too much. But I'm pretty sure Sam'll tell me if I can figure out the right questions to ask.

Sam moves, a little hesitantly, like he wants to get closer to me but he's afraid of being pushed away.

I sigh – inwardly – and hold out my arm. "OK, kiddo. Come here. Free pass for the rest of the night if you promise to tell me what you're angsting about." Before I can blink, Sam's snuggled up to my chest. I lower my arm, wrapping it around him, and say, "Fine. Girly enough for you? Now talk."

"I'm sorry," Sam says again.

"Yeah, I got that, Sam. Why are you sorry?"

"I'm not enough for you. And she might've been but I had to kill her."

Yeah, that's my boy. I ask what's bothering him, thinking we can deal with the issues one at a time, and he hits me with about six of them at once. I pick the first one based on what I think Sam's likely to be agonizing about the most.

"This about Emma?" I ask.

There's another apology. Fortunately this one's a little muffled because Sam's decided that he's going to talk to my shirt instead of to me. If I'd heard it out loud I might just have killed him. And killing a kid who's nestled up to me like a trustful puppy is low, even for me.

"Sam." I rub his head. "I know you had to do it. She was one of them and she was going to kill me."

"I didn't hesitate. It wasn't even difficult, not once I realized she wanted to hurt you."

"So?"

"She was my niece. I'm a horrible person."

I rub Sam's head some more, thinking about that one. Not the part about him being a horrible person – he's Sammy, it's ridiculous even to suggest it – but about Emma. My daughter Emma. She was a monster, and I don't blame Sam for killing her. I… couldn't. But it had to be done, and I know that and Sam knows that.

"You know if you really had kids I would give myself back to Lucifer before I hurt them," Sam whispers to my top button.

"Yeah, Sammy," I murmur, and if my voice is a little thick there's nobody to hear it but me and Sam. "I know. I know you had to do it. She was the kind of niece who would've eaten you at the annual Thanksgiving dinner."

"Dean?"

"What?"

"If we'd had normal lives – you know, normal normal, not hunting normal – do you think we would have had an annual Thanksgiving dinner?"

"No way, dude. You would've been having Thanksgiving dinner with Jess's family, and I would've been having it with… I don't know who. Maybe Michelle Orman." I nudge Sam. "You remember Michelle Orman? She was in my chemistry lab in Little Rock."

"Dude," Sam protests. "You were twelve."

"And a red-blooded Winchester man." Sam shifts, and I raise my arm to let him draw back and sit up so he can face me. "Know why we wouldn't have had Thanksgiving dinner together?"

"Why?"

"Because we would've got houses side-by-side in one of those pretty suburban neighbourhoods, and we would be having dinner together almost everyday anyway."

Sam laughs. "There's no way you believe that."

"No, you're right. What probably would've happened is that you would've married Jess and had a house full of kids, and I would've been Uncle Dean and lived with you because your kids would've needed a positive male role model –"

"Hey!" Sam protests. I silence him by punching him in the arm.

"And we would've had Thanksgiving dinner together but that would've been perfectly normal and we would just have called it dinner."

Sam sighs. "I'm sorry I had to kill her."

"So am I, kiddo. Sometimes the job sucks." Sam nods, still sad but no longer desperate. Right. So that's Problem Number One dealt with. "Now what the hell was that about you not being enough for me?"

"For you to keep going and not get killed." Sam's voice is tiny now, and he's in my arms again. "But maybe we could get the Impala…"

"Sam, what the hell?"

"I'm not enough of a reason for you to keep fighting," Sam says. I don't reply, because I can't get my mind past what the hell is the moron thinking and who the hell else is supposed to be a reason for me to keep fighting. Sam burrows closer to me and goes on. "I'm sorry, Dean. I'm trying – I really am – but I can't –"

"Can't?" I hold Sam close and tight, tuning out the world so that all he's aware of his himself and his big brother. "Can't what, Sammy?"

"Can't be the same," comes the agonized whisper. "He's in my head, Dean. I've tried, and I can keep track of things, usually, but he's always going to be in my head."

"I know that, moron," I tell him. "You spent a very long time being Lucifer's chew-toy. That doesn't go away overnight."

"But you deserve…"

Sam trails off, and I feel a spike of hot anger. "I deserve what, Sam?" I demand, shoving him off me and shaking him. "I deserve better, is that what you're trying to say? I deserve a normal brother? One who isn't seeing Satan every minute of the day?" Sam flinches and ducks his head. "I deserve not to have to worry about when you're going to go batshit on me? I deserve for my little brother to have survived two hundred years of torture without any side-effects, so I don't have to waste time helping him cope? Is that what you think I deserve?"

"Dean –"

"Because if you do, you're a moron, Sam." Sam stares at me: he wasn't expecting that. Idiot. "You're my brother. No matter how screwed-up you are in the head, you're my brother. You know how I know that? Because you shot Emma, not knowing how I was going to react, not knowing if I was going to turn on you for it, you did it to save me. And this crazy, messed-up thing between us is the only reason I've ever kept going. Sure, I might get a little cranky sometimes, but…" I gesture vaguely at him. "You didn't see me when you were gone."

And that's the problem. That's always been the problem. If we'd had a normal sibling relationship, like brothers who send each other Christmas cards and coo over each other's kids and then go for each other's throats when it's time for the will to be read, we would've known how to handle this. But, no, we're us, and even Sam, for all his claims to the contrary, feels too strongly and too fiercely and too much for normal to be anywhere in the picture.

Sam settles back down against me, and I can tell he's thinking the same thing.

"What are we going to do?" he asks.

"We're going to fight." I curl my arms around him. "Know why?" Sam shakes his head. "Because you, little brother, have an awesome track record of not giving up, and I am not going to let you break it."

Sam smiles, and I let my hand rest on his back, and maybe, maybe, this'll be enough. We've lost all our friends, we're relying on a paranoid geek for intel, we're up against an enemy nobody's ever fought before, and to make things worse we just had to hightail it from town to escape being arrested for the murder of my… daughter.

But we're us, and as long as we're us there's always going to be a reason to keep fighting.

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