Warning: mention of past abuse

Author's Note: I kinda found a song that can be interpreted in a way that goes pretty well with this story (with the singer, it's about his drug addiction and from his own perspective about how he gave himself something terrible. For the story, it could be from the perspective of Hell and Dean's darkness). At some point, maybe when I have time, I'd like to edit the lyrics into some of the chapters where suitable, but anywho, it's a beautifully haunting song and 11/10 I recommend

I hope you guys like the chapter! Two more to go!

I gave you something you can never give back, don't you mind

You've seen my face like a heart attack, don't you mind, don't you mind

…

Oh, I think I did something terrible to your body, don't you mind

…

I hurt your brother as well, don't you mind, don't you mind

Oh, I was thinking about killin' myself, don't you mind

I love you, don't you mind, don't you mind

-Me, the 1975

Chapter XXI

Real Universe

Sam watched him change throughout the month.

There were days when he would go back to his catatonic state, still and unmoving. Sam took care of him as best as he could during those times, even if his hands sometimes shook and the pit of fear dug deeper and deeper throughout the day into his gut.

Dean came back to him every time, but it never stopped being terrifying.

And each time he came back, he was changed a bit more.

Over these past couple of days since the last episode, he had caught his brother's eyes often, finding him staring at him in a way that tore at something in Sam's chest, but also made him feel a somewhat conflicted sense of relief at the signs of life, of humanness and vulnerability, in his eyes.

If only he didn't look so broken and lost.

Sam saw the gears turning in his head often, like he was trying to clear a fog in his mind, perspectives and ideas and thoughts shifting in a whole different direction than what he had known for nearly half a year, trying to process and understand all the memories of the events that occurred when he was altered, and all the emotions he normally would have felt returning now, that he didn't get to before. He couldn't imagine just how jarring and confusing that had to be.

It was all coming back. Sam knew. Months worth of emotional consequences of whatever had gone down in the other world while Dean wasn't himself. Sam didn't fault him for what might have happened there to him at his hands, but knowing Dean, he would blame himself in every possible way for it all. And to be honest, Sam was not sure if he was prepared to deal with that level of mental ordeal, when it all came crashing down.

But damn it all if he wasn't going to try.

…

"What in the hell do you think you're doing, boy?!"

Sam didn't blame Bobby for his impulsive, angry and fearful reaction, considering his prior encounter with Dean whilst he was fully conscious. He figured it would, understandably, bring back that appalling and horrible experience for Bobby upon seeing Dean freed and unbounded.

But, besides a hushed pang of doubt borne of Dean's past devoted and determined attempts at manipulating him when he first unlocked the handcuffs, Sam had been sure for a while now that there was nothing to worry about. If Dean wanted to make a move, he would have done it the moment he was unchained.

"It's okay now, Bobby," Sam reassured quickly. "He's. He's okay."

He glanced at Dean beside him, leaning awkwardly, uncertainly, against the kitchen doorway. He looked too small and vulnerable for hostile who seemed so frigid and hostile only mere weeks ago.

Bobby eyed him warily for a moment, and whatever he had to have seen there loosened something in his eyes and face, some of the suspicion draining away.

"Alright then," Bobby said, not quite happy, but accepting. That was something. "You two ladies gonna stand there all day lookin' pretty? 'Cause grub's gettin' cold."

Sam appreciated that he was trying to act normal with Dean.

Dean didn't speak all throughout the meal, so he and Bobby took up Dean's usual position of filling the silence, as they have been for a while now, by conversing about any possible ideas they might have had on how to resolve their current situations. Sam told him about his findings on the apocalyptic events occurring out there in the world, and about some ancient artifacts that may or may not be of help in their battle against Lucifer and who they were owned by.

Dean didn't say a word all throughout the meal, and Sam couldn't help but feel his silence in the midst of all the sound anyway.

…

Sam led Dean to the guest room they had both shared before, clutching his arm, and Dean followed him silently, mindlessly, like he was a blind man tied to him, and it was an entirely different picture than what Sam was used to. Dean had never been one to follow anyone, always the commander, the leader. Sam had always been the one walking a step behind him instead of the other way around.

Something about having Dean here again felt familiar and right, because seeing Dean down on that cot for weeks like a captive (like a demon-blood junkie on withdrawals) hadn't exactly been the best.

But it didn't really help the constant, tight ache gripping inside his chest, which had made its home in him now at this point.

...

Nowadays, all they did was sit in front of the TV and not watch what was playing on it.

Sam leaned their shoulders together, once he learned that Dean didn't mind it much when he was in a state like this, and hoped that he would feel less alone in whatever he was lost in, even though, logically, Sam knew that Dean was alone there and he couldn't do a fucking thing to help him find his way out and Sam couldn't really understand as much as he wanted to.

But he liked to think Dean felt his comfort and reassurance. He liked to think Dean felt his presence, that he knew Sam was here for him.

The silence had become a part of them now, hours and hours. Sam usually read his books or used his laptop or just watched whatever crap movie was playing on TV. Sometimes he put all of Dean's favorite movies and TV shows on the DVD, but he wasn't quite sure of what he was hoping for when he did this.

And sometimes he just sat there as well and lost himself in his own thoughts, wishing he could meet his brother in the world he was lost in, in more ways than one.

...

Sam woke up to a weight dipping his mattress from behind him, a hand draping tremulously over his bicep.

Sam knew the warmth of that hand like the back of his own, but in the haze of sleep, in the vulnerability of it, his mind recalled memories he hadn't let himself think about in waking moments.

Of waking up to hands wrapped around his throat and of knives and blood and white-hot, throbbing agony in the joint of his shoulder and bicep, the conflicting ripples of overwhelming nausea over the ache of starvation and dryness of dehydration. Words echoing in his head of a voice that belonged to his brother, but didn't quite sound anything like him. In and out of consciousness, to a daylit room and then a room drenched in pure, endless darkness, nobody calling back to his weakened screams.

It sent his heart pounding, fingers curling around the pocket knife under his pillow, not with the intention to hurt, but to ward off long enough to—

And then he was being gathered, pulled by hands around his biceps off the bed and into the solidity of a chest, into gunpowder and leather and warmth, arms wrapping around his back and shoulders too tightly for him to be able to breathe properly, one hand clutching the nape of his neck.

Sam was too shocked to really bother trying to breathe anyway.

"It's okay, Sammy, it's okay," Dean was whispering, his voice rough and brittle and raw, trying to sound harmless and comforting and only managing to sound like he was a thread away from breaking. "Everything's okay. It's gone now. It's all gone." He was rocking them both slightly, like he used to when they were children, soothing him back to sleep after a nightmare. "Won't hurt you anymore, okay? Don't be scared. I'll take care of you… I'll take care of you…"

Sam vaguely thought of Cold Oak, of Dean's fading words in his ears, his voice tender and afraid in a way it had never been, as darkness began to pull him under.

Somehow it was even worse now.

Saying the words out loud seemed to make something fold and break into two in Dean, because then he crumpled in his voice and body, in all of him, doubling over Sam like something was physically shredding him apart from the inside, a shattered, mournful, hitched gasp of, "oh, God," ripping from his throat.

Never had Sam heard him sound like this, or act like this, and in all honesty, he hoped he never would again. The sound and sight tore painfully into his chest like a gash.

"Dean? Hey," he said softly, tried to tug his hand out of where they were trapped between them and touch his arm. Sam felt at an awful loss on what to do right now, what to say. He had known this was coming, but trying to prepare for it all mentally was an entirely different thing than really being in the situation. "Hey. It's okay. I'm okay. Everything's okay."

Sam wasn't entirely sure that Dean remembered the kind of situation they were in. He didn't really know if it was right to remind him that he wasn't his Sam.

And then Dean was burying his face into his hair and he was weeping, painfully silent, all attempt at maintaining composure drained right out of him. His body was seized and he was crying so hard he wasn't making a sound, dripping salt water into Sam's hair, and he was trembling all around him like a mini earthquake with his grief, and Sam didn't know what to do to make it better, had never really thought in his life that one day he would have to see his tough-as-nails, snarky and stoic big brother like this and try to comfort him.

So now he just felt utterly lost and helpless, and like there wasn't enough space in his chest for the sorrow swelling up his rawed heart and pressing up against his sternum.

He had seen him break only a handful of types; the time Sam got hurt bad enough that he almost died in a hospital, the first time they were too close to losing their father, and when they did lose him, and when he spoke of what their father did to save him and of what happened to him in Hell…

But he couldn't remember a time that he had crumbled like this.

"Sammy." The name was said with barely any voice, only a tremor of a cracked, frail breath between the soundless sobs seizing his body. Fingers pulled him in closer by the nape of his neck, sliding up into the back of his head. Dean's arms tightened, his crumpled mouth pressing into his hairline.

"It's okay," Sam murmured, blinking back the blur in his own vision, and after managing to free his arms fully, wrapped it around his waist. His heart clenched in his chest with agony. Dean had come trying to comfort him even when he was barely able to keep himself together. Sam didn't know what he did that was so bad that it would rip him apart like this, but it was killing Dean inside and it was killing Sam inside to see it too. "It's okay. I got you."

Everything Sam had done to him, even if it was another world, in a time when his grip over everything was so slippery; over reality, his sanity, his emotions, his mind and his control. Sam had been the oil in his grip, just making it all even worse.

He swallowed down the pain drowning him from the inside, drowning his heart in water. "It wasn't your fault, Dean," he told him, only just above a whisper. Sam tried to look at him, but he couldn't move much in the grasp. "It wasn't you. You didn't do anything wrong."

But Dean was still shaking around him, the grasp around him nearly desperate, like he was the only thing he could hold onto, a lifeline for a drowning man, and Sam didn't know if anything he could say would ever make it better.

Sam didn't really know the right thing to say anymore, so he didn't say anything. He let Dean hold him and held him back and he let Dean fall apart in the dark around him like he had never fallen apart before, wishing he wasn't feeling so helpless and useless, wishing he could take it all away from his brother's mind and heart; all the memories of Hell and the things he had done under the influence of its effects that stole away all of his sanity and control, that changed him into someone full of abhorrence and rage and violence; the shame and self-loathing and the suffocating anguish and grief that filled the room like smoke, that filled into Sam's lungs too and made it hard to breathe.

…

Dean fell asleep around him like that, exhausted from weeping so terribly over whatever memories haunted him in his mind of another world, that Sam would never be able to reach and know of.

…

He brought the breakfast to his brother's bed the next morning.

Dean was awake by then, slumped up against the headboard like he couldn't move any more after that, blanket tangled around his legs. Haunted eyes, red-rimmed and sunken still, stared off somewhere beyond the present moment, towards the window pouring in sunlight.

"Hey," Sam greeted, his voice sounding somewhat tentative to his own ears.

Dean didn't acknowledge his presence right away. Sam couldn't tell if he didn't hear him or just chose not to show any indication of it.

"Got you breakfast." He held up the tray a little higher for emphasis.

Dean didn't give him any verbal answer, but he turned his head and glanced at Sam (somehow entirely different in his motions than he had been before he changed), grim grief weighted and etched in his gaze.

Sam gingerly sat down next to him on the edge of the bed with an awkward smile, trying to make things feel light and easy, except he didn't feel like he was doing it right, trying too hard, everything too forced. He settled the tray down between them on the mattress.

The room collapsed into silence. Sam wracked his brain trying to think of what to say, how to ask about his mental state in a way that didn't sound redundant or stupid.

There wasn't really any way to ask it like that, he supposed.

So he sat silently instead.

He didn't know how this whole thing worked, if it worked in parallel to the other universe, if all of this meant that his own Dean had changed to this extent as well.

Sam was startled to feel fingers on his wrist, and regretted it immediately when the fingers retreated quickly. He looked up to see Dean looking back at him, green eyes brittle and wrecked.

"Sorry, I just, um… I wasn't expecting…"

Dean nodded, looking away.

Sam shifted closer, sitting until his hip was touching against Dean's thigh, hoping that the contact would get the message across. "I'm not scared, you know. I mean, I-I'm not even him. So… so you don't have to worry. About that."

Sam hoped Dean didn't remember what had happened between them before he left, but with their shitty luck, he probably did, even if he didn't mention it.

For a moment, Sam didn't think he would respond.

And then he did. "If you knew how much I hurt you," Dean rasped, voice strained and low and painfully weary, like it was grating him to even talk. "you would be."

"Yeah, well, whatever you did," Sam said. He shrugged slightly. "It couldn't have been anything more than what I had coming."

But the way Dean's face crumpled briefly, still stung red from last night, made Sam think those weren't the words he needed to hear.

"Dean," Sam said, his voice growing softer. "I know you did everything you could to stop it from happening, because I know you. And if it happened anyway? It was because there was nothing more you could have done."

But Dean wasn't really listening, wasn't looking at him anymore. He was looking somewhere past Sam's shoulder, but maybe he wasn't really seeing anything at all. Panic began to rise in Sam's chest for a brief moment with a sharp jolt of fear, wondering if Dean was going back into his catatonic state again.

"He… he was crying," he then said, quiet, seemingly watching a memory play in his mind's eye. "And scared. And he was hurt. And I..." His voice caught, mouth closing. His throat flexed in a swallow. "I kept on hurting him. I just kept… he kept apologizing and I kept... I was supposed to protect him. Keep him safe."

Dean's hand raised tremulously, running down his chin. He rested his fingers against his quivering lips, shaking his head. His green eyes were pinched and still afar, rimmed pink, a thin film of anguish and grief and shame shining in them.

"I made him cry," he mumbled, face twisting brokenly. "I made my baby brother cry.'

Sam didn't really know what to say anymore, but that seemed to be a common thing with him now.

He couldn't really imagine it. Dean, hurting him so bad that he could be so shattered over it like this.

Dean was rough, angry and aggressive sometimes if he was provoked or if it was needed. Being a hunter, growing up fighting and killing evil creatures, would harden the edges of anyone like that.

But he was also painfully gentle and kind in ways Sam had never seen in many other hunters. Not necessarily in any obvious way. He wasn't the one that consoled traumatized victims, leaving that to Sam instead. He didn't like expressing emotions and talking about feelings. He was physically affectionate, but only in the subtlest ways, and he wasn't one to tell people he loved them outright.

Sam saw that side of Dean in fleeting moments. He saw it with children, particularly children that suffered something terrible.

He saw it with their father, the way he took care of him when he came back from a bad hunt, or when he was grieving and drunk on the anniversary of their mother's death.

He saw it with himself.

There were a handful of times he had caught Dean looking at him when they were on better terms, a sort of impossible tenderness that vanished in a split-second blink, as soon as Sam looked at him. The difference between his father's hands and his brother's careful ones when they patched him up. And how Dean felt as much as he pretended he didn't, felt so much that Sam worried it was going to break him one day in the life they lived. He felt so much guilt and shame and fear and anger and responsibility. And he felt so much love that, if Sam really thought about it, it came through in so much of what Dean said and did.

Sam couldn't entirely reconcile the man he was with the man that tortured him. In a way, Sam saw him as being controlled or possessed by something. And he called him Dean and he called him his brother but he had never really felt like Dean. Not really. It felt like it was something that was supposed to be fixed, and to imagine that there was a Sam out there who accepted that man as his own Dean, who made it all a part of his life, whose image of Dean was someone who could hurt him deliberately without a shred of remorse, hurt him so bad that it broke him, was…

Strange, Sam supposed.

Sam felt fingers on his face. He made sure to keep himself still.

Dean was watching his own trembling fingers in this glazed and distant way, swollen and raw eyes darting, following, like he was mapping and tracing and recounting. Remembering. The grief and anguish in his pinched gaze was intensifying.

Sam caught his fingers lightly, startling Dean out of his haze. He scooted forward and pulled his brother into a hug by the front of his shirt, pressing his face into his shoulder.

It took a long while for Dean to reciprocate, but he did, hands coming up to his shoulderblades. He choked into Sam's shoulder, maybe on the verge of flying apart again. Sam gripped him tight, smoothing his palm over the back of his neck. "It's okay, Dean," he mumbled, feeling helpless and useless for not knowing what to really do, for not knowing anything better than this. "It's okay. I got you."

Author's Note: Thank you so, so much to:

jensensgirl3, ncsupnatfan, hend eslim, Ellizzle, smscotty, Iuvsbruce, shadowhuntingdauntlessdemigod, lina89, sam x dean, Pie Love Luci, lala, Elliesamdeangirl (19 and 20), Michelle, Guest, SamDeanLove, SupernaturalNova1981, Yuki x Machi, Gohanna, Ellesse . cox, JohnTaylorThomas, Tatsandacat

For all of their kind and lovely feedback, for sharing your thoughts on the chapter! As always, I always love hearing them. And I'm grateful beyond words for all the love and support! Thank you, thank you, thank you. You're all awesome, and I'm so happy you're enjoying the story.

Thank you for all the tags for favorites and alerts! Thank you to everyone reading, silent and otherwise. Thank you so, so much 💙