Chapter 22.
The bunker was quiet and everyone he had to worry about, with one notable exception, was accounted for, so Sam headed for his room. He would call Sarah at about 10 am and make sure she was okay and had no huge concerns over him. At the same time, he could talk to her about Cas and whether she could get him to go to the farm or at least look Jules in the eye.
He was troubled that Cas seemed likely to stay outside all night. The cold would not trouble him, but he went out there to think and solitary thinking never seemed to end well with Cas. Perhaps he should have insisted on a conversation, tried again to invoke the Winchester Pact, but it was hard for him to spend time around Cas, seeing the pain he was in and knowing that he could have spared Cas all that grief if he had acted sooner, to stop Lucifer, to take away Michael's leverage over Dean.
Thinking of Dean was a bad idea. Immediately, his mind started listing all the times his actions had harmed Dean. In the brutal balance calculations of his brain, it was pretty clear that his birth had been the single worst thing to happen to Dean. All the bad stuff had flowed from that. His existence was Dean's destruction, now possibly literally.
He reached under the pillows and took out a small bottle of whisky. He lay on the bed and drank slowly from the bottle. Apocalypse World was what happened when he and Dean had never been born. That was something to argue that his birth had not been a completely terrible thing.
He wondered if he should check on Cas, maybe try to get him back into the bunker. At some point, they would have to talk, if only so he could point out to Cas that the guilt eating away at him had no real foundation. It didn't even make sense.
He wanted to kill Michael. He wanted to finish him forever. Not while he was in that body, though. Even if Dean were dead, Sam was not sure he could kill his corpse. When Dean had been a demon, he had tried and failed to consider ganking him like any other demonic nasty. How could he kill an archangel who was wearing his brother?
At some point, Sam fell asleep and he found himself walking down a dark alley, littered with refuse. A figure sat huddled to the right, turning a knife over in his hands. "Get me out of here." said Dean.
"Where are you?" said Sam.
Dean looked up, a flickering street light illuminating a face devoid of hope. "Lost." he said.
"Helpful." said Sam, "You gotta give me more than that."
"Why aren't you trying harder? Don't you want to find me?" said Dean.
"That's not fair." said Sam, all too aware it was his own subconscious accusing him.
"Dad would have found me by now." said Dean, bitterly, "I would have found you by now."
"I'm not Dad." said Sam, "I'm not you."
Dream Dean smiled grimly. "That's okay. I'm not me either."
"Are you alive?" said Sam.
"Was I ever?" said Dean, "We don't get lives, Sam. We just have the job. We fight until we can't fight anymore and then we fail and we fall and we get lost."
"No." said Sam, "I don't accept that."
"You never did."
"I never can." said Sam.
"What do you need?" said Dean.
"My brother. I can do anything if he's with me."
"If I never make it back, can you fight on alone?"
"I can get revenge. It's as good a reason as any to keep going." said Sam, "But that is not permission for you not to make it. These people here need a leader and they deserve a better one than me. And Cas needs you. He's not doing so well."
"So fix him. Get Sarah to fix him. The least you can do is help Cas."
"Why don't you get back here and fix your own damn angel?"
"Maybe you need to stand on your own two feet now." said Dean.
"No. Don't say that. Don't even think it." he said, not sure if he spoke to Dean or himself.
"Sooner or later, everyone dies." said Dean calmly.
Sam opened his eyes. He was still holding the bottle. He hurled it against the wall and felt a moment of satisfaction as it broke, followed by the realisation that half a bottle of good whisky was now trickling down the wall when it could have been coursing down his throat.
"You don't get to quit!" he said, to Dean and himself and a little to Cas.
He went to the showers and rinsed off his sweat and exhaustion in refreshingly cold water. He washed his hair, knowing that he had to look pretty good to stop the others from seeing how close to the edge he was. He dressed in clean clothes and looked in the mirror. The face looking back at him seemed both eleven years old and eighty.
Without his brother he was struggling even to remember who he was supposed to be. In childhood, Dean had been his hero, in adult life, his guide. Even when they had fought, Sam had defined himself by his opposition to his brother. When they agreed, they were the strongest force on Chuck's Earth. He remembered Jack talking about half of who he was being torn away. That was exactly how losing Dean felt to Sam. Worse, it was the better half.
Dean had always been so good at faking strength. Sam borrowed from him now, turning his weary, unbalanced stagger into more of a swagger, affecting a studious frown of concentration to hide the fact he could barely keep his eyes open and preparing to lie through his teeth to anyone who presumed to care about him.
"We're messed up, Dean." he said to the face in the mirror that was somehow both Winchesters at once.