A/N: Now that we've seen S10x07, Girls, Girls, Girls, this story is AU.

Bound By Blood And Bone

The bunker came with an amazing array of All Things Interesting, but the Men of Letters clearly did not number a television set among them. Probably, Dean had announced upon making the discovery that nowhere did a TV exist in the massive structure, they viewed it as a waste of time suited only to lower life forms. Like hunters.

Sam, opting not to regale what would surely be an unappreciative brother with the history of Philo T. Farnsworth's invention and its early years, had found the statement amusing. He knew it had stung Dean to be judged so harshly. Sam had been mildly annoyed, but far less invested in the charge. Because he knew in his heart that part of his being a 'legacy' was that he had been, during the Stanford years, far more a Man of Letters than hunter. But Dean's whole life had been hunting. It defined him. And that was why Sam had never told Henry Winchester that his youngest grandson had in fact attended college. A very prestigious college.

Angels called them 'hairless apes.' Henry Winchester, originally, had not felt much different.

But they were happy to use hunters as the muscle, Dean had said, in a sarcastic tone slightly tinged with anger and resentment, to do all their dirty work. Because the actual Men of Letters undoubtedly never got their hands dirty in Room 7B.

Room 7B. The log books recorded all those interrogated, human and demon alike, from the center of the iron devil's trap embedded in the floor. But the most recent prisoner was one whose name would be recorded nowhere.

Dean, as demon.

It was a memory Sam sorely wished he could delete. Or even have scrubbed by Castiel. The injections he'd forced on Dean, with severe side effects, no question; but also the horrible taunts hurled by the demon. Insults far more painful than any knife wound.

Sticks and stones may break by bones, but words can never hurt me.

That should be tagged False on Snopes.

But Sam also remembered the three words Dean had stated on several occasions when Sam attempted to talk about his own transgressions when he lacked a soul, when Meg had borrowed his body: It wasn't you.

Three simple words were enough for Dean when he spoke about Sam, because Dean made them that way. He treated such 'Sam business,' as he called it, matter-of-factly because he loved his brother, but when it was himself, Dean folded up his emotions and packed them away deep inside until eventually he cracked. He took a tire iron to the Impala. His sense of betrayal was palpable when explaining how wrecked he had been when he'd gone to Lisa and Ben thinking Sam was in gone for good, when in fact he'd been topside for a year.

But the demon had been Dean. The demon had meant everything he said. Which meant that Dean had thought those very things at some point in his life. Maybe not to the same extent, maybe not even close to it, but a grain of truth in every word, Sam very much feared.

It had been weeks since the blood-cure banished the demon, and they still hadn't really addressed the issues. Oh, a little, when they went after the werewolves and found Kate and her sister, Tasha. But even then, they could not look one another in the eye over important things. First, the dark glasses worn not against a sun made pale on a somewhat overcast day, but as shields against what they might see in one another; and a shield again, with Sam in the back seat of the Impala, not next to Dean. It had been a spur-of-the-moment choice Sam made, to put Kate next to Dean. He had intentionally surrendered shotgun to a stranger. To a monster.

Even though he claimed it was to keep an eye on Kate.

He still wondered if Dean would have said anything had Sam been riding next to him instead. The distance from front seat to back was negligible, but it had felt like miles.

And maybe that was why Dean could manage to say anything at all.

Now, Dean was elsewhere in the bunker watching the TV he'd appeared with one day after a supply run. And Sam was in the library, settling down with his laptop. It was easier, less painful, to lose himself in research than in wondering just how long it would take for them to ever admit to one another all that they had done those six weeks when Dean was . . . well, a 'roided up version of himself. Empty of all things human, drunk on the Mark of Cain. And Sam was . . . well, doing all the desperate things he did, those things he judged necessary, justified by circumstances, but of which he was not proud.

As Sam opened the lid and powered up the laptop, his eye was caught by a book on the table. For one fleeting instant, it looked unfamiliar to him. And then he recognized it as the book that was more important to him and to Dean than all of the others in the bunker.

John Winchester's journal.

It lay open. Sam stretched, caught a corner, tugged it over. He'd read it cover-to-cover a couple of times, but not for a long while, using it only to page through for specific information. Dean was the one who pored over it regularly. Obviously, he still did. Sam used it as reference, not a method to conjure up his father. He suspected it was both for Dean.

But the entry Dean had been reading wasn't tucked in amidst all the drawings, diagrams, clippings, reports of strange doings, or John's general notes. It was in the back pages, where John had written brief personal entries as if in diary format. Sam was certain he'd read it at some point . . . hadn't he? Wouldn't he remember? But he didn't recall it.

Dean went solo on this one. Came home on emotional lockdown. Didn't want to talk. Had to get him drunk to find out the truth.

He killed the monster, but couldn't save Edward Trenton. The guy's kid found his father's body. Dean had the bloody knife. Kid swore Dean had done it. Dean couldn't stick around to explain. It's eating at him. These things always do. But with Sammy off at Stanford, he doesn't talk about it. Not to me.

Sam frowned, found the hunt date jotted down: June 21st, 2003. But the journal entry was dated five weeks later.

Two years, give or take a few months, before Dean came to Stanford saying Dad was missing and he needed Sam.

The Stanford years equaled a Winchester family hole. The vicious argument with John that defined Sam's final night at home had kept him from contacting his father, and John was too stubborn to make the move himself. Even fitful contact with Dean had faded when Sam found new priorities. Dean knew nothing about Sam's life at Stanford unless Sam discussed it, but Sam didn't say much because there was no context for his brother. And Sam really only knew what their father and Dean had done via the journal, which was mostly factual entries. Dean spoke about some past hunts, but only if they had a direct impact upon what he and Sam hunted these days.

Why was Dean reading - now, tonight - what was a very personal entry by their father about his eldest son, yet referred to something dating back more than a decade?

It's eating at him. These things always do. But with Sammy off at Stanford, he doesn't talk about it. Not to me.

By 2003, Sam and Dean weren't talking at all. And Dean apparently wasn't talking to his father about a kid who found his father's dead body and thought Dean had done the killing.

Was it some kind of perverse Memory Lane thing? Certainly that impulse resided in his brother's wheelhouse.

Sam had taken plenty of psych in school. It was easy to make the jump.

Was Dean, unable to talk at length to Sam about what he'd been and done only weeks before, harkening back to another time he was unable to talk about something? Something that sent him into what even their notoriously focused, obsessive father described as an emotional lockdown? And would Dean have said anything to Sam about what happened on June 21st, 2003 had Sam not been at Stanford?

Hell, had Sam not been at Stanford, he likely would have been with Dean on the hunt.

"And maybe," Sam murmured absently, thinking two men might have made a difference, "this kid's father wouldn't have died at all."

But Dean was alone. And it had taken five weeks and getting him drunk to make him speak of details even to his father, whom he idolized.

Maybe that was why.

Sam heard the step and looked up from the journal. Dean, freed of TV, came into the library with two freshly opened beer bottles in his hands, presented one to Sam, lifted his own to drink . . . and froze, staring at the journal with Sam's hand upon it.

Dean's eyes came up to meet his brother's. Sam saw the faint flicker of ice, the minute flash of anger, of something akin to accusation, which immediately confirmed the importance of the entry.

Maybe once he'd have let the subject rest, would have allowed Dean his privacy. But not now. Too much had happened. So Sam pushed back. "You left it here, and you left it open," he said steadily. "And you know I've read Dad's journal any number of times. Why does this entry matter?"

Predictably, Dean's expression shifted to denial as he opened his mouth to answer in what Sam knew would be typical forestalling aggression designed to control the discussion, to end it.

But Sam overrode it. Shut it down. "Don't even try, Dean. Not after these last few weeks. Maybe before I'd just shrug it off, let it go, but not now. Not tonight. Your 'tell' gave it away."

Dean's brows shot up. He reassessed his brother briefly, and when he spoke his tone was mocking. "My 'tell?' Do tell, Sammy, what is my 'tell?'"

Sam's smile was pointed. "You remember how you're always instructing people to look into your eyes so they know you're saying the truth? Well, I just did. And you care, Dean. You care that I read it. It matters."

Dean took a long pull on the bottle, swallowed beer, then smiled thinly. The anger was gone from his eyes and most of the ice, but not all. The chill remained. Sam wondered, uneasily, if sense memory of the demon remained stronger than was healthy. Or was it the Mark? Dean was cured of the demon, but the Mark remained a brand on his forearm, and an issue between them.

For now, Sam shrugged such thoughts away. "Maybe you never cared before that I'd read this, but tonight you do. Why?"

Dean swung, walked away. But it wasn't to leave. Sam knew the the posture, the body language. It was a delaying tactic. Dean was looking for footing, for a way around the topic without giving up something of himself.

Yet when he turned back, when his posture eased as he took those steps toward his brother instead of walking out, Sam realized he might get more from Dean than he expected. There were no sunglasses on an overcast day, and they weren't in the Impala with Sam in the back instead of riding shotgun. Only John Winchester's children, here and now, open to one another for the first time in nearly a year. Bound by blood and bone.

"You were unconscious," Dean said.

Sam didn't immediately follow. "What?"

"Outside the bar, when that kid knocked you out."

It took Sam a moment to knit it together. "Who—wait, that guy Cole?"

Dean's eyes were steady. "Cole Trenton. Son of Edward. From Nyack, New York. And on June 21st, 2003, he found his father lying dead on the floor."

There it was. The date from the journal. Now it all came clear. Sam remembered what Cole the ex-soldier had said. That Dean had killed his father. But Cole had not named the place or the date, merely told the tale he believed.

Dean had the bloody knife. Kid swore Dean had done it.

And Sam had believed Cole, because Cole believed. But Dean had killed the monster, not the father. The child misremembered. Or never knew. John's journal entry said Dean couldn't stick around. It wasn't what hunters did.

"But you didn't do it," Sam said. "Dean, you didn't do it."

"He told me," Dean said tightly, "before I beat the crap out of him. And I couldn't even remember." Abruptly, he jerked out a chair and sat down across the table from Sam. "That kid was 13, found his father bloody and dead on the floor, and me right there with a knife in my hand. What else should he think in the midst of a nightmare like that? Hell, I didn't even know there was a kid in the house. I was just tracking a monster . . . and I got there too late, anyway, for the father. By maybe a New York minute."

Sam nodded understanding, empathy. It was a hard truth among hunters: they didn't always win.

"He'll never believe I didn't do it. Hell, Sammy, I don't think I'd believe it. But I didn't remember when he spilled his guts outside the bar, and it's no different than me seeing Mom pinned to the ceiling burning alive. You don't forget something like that. That night will haunt the kid his entire life." A brief sheen of moisture glinted in the always-expressive eyes, while bitterness and self-recrimination underscored his tone. "And I didn't remember."

It was difficult to hear. Painful to witness. But it was expiation, and explanation, and neither was Sam's to alter.

After a moment he drew in a careful breath, steadied his voice before speaking. "You weren't exactly yourself, Dean."

"Oh, but I was, Sammy. I really was." Dean shook his head. "Just—more me. All Dark Side me." He gulped beer, then set down the bottle with a loud smack against wood. "And I didn't give a crap that I didn't remember. I told him everything just blended together. I blew it off."

"Dean, it wasn't really—"

But Dean cut him off. "It was me, Sam. All of it. And I might not have remembered that kid and his father, but I remember everything else." There were no more masks in his eyes, no anger, no ice. Just self-immolating guilt.

The word Dean had used in the car that night was 'embarrassing.' Which some of it was, Sam knew; but he realized now that had also been Dean-speak, a way to deflect the deeper emotions. He'd mentioned Crowley, the note. But Sam remembered all the things Dean had said in the bar before Cole's smoke-bomb, in the Impala while handcuffed to the door, from the chair in the midst of a devil's trap.

And what he'd said a few weeks before with Kate riding shotgun instead of his brother: I am just trying to do the right thing, man . . . 'cause I'm so sick and tired of doing the wrong one.

That was as much of a soul-baring confession as Sam had ever heard. That was Dean's apology.

And, too, it was Dean, for the first time, stepping away from the emotional lockdown their father had described, freeing himself of the temptation to pack it all away. Dean admitting, acknowledging, that he'd said terrible things to his brother. It was possibly the healthiest thing Dean had ever done for his soul, and it filled Sam's heart with hope.

But it hurt to see his eyes, because now he hid nothing. And they were vulnerable human green, not indifferent demon black.

None of it mattered to Dean, and never had, that others knew he'd done good, much good, in his life. That others tried to convince him of that. He would never be convinced. Not even by the angel who had yanked him out of hell. Because all he thought about were failures, not successes.

Sam said simply, "A man should measure himself by the trust he engenders in others."

After a moment the intensity eased in Dean. His frown expressed genuine puzzlement, even curiosity. "Who are you quoting, College Boy?"

Sam smiled. "Me."

"That's a Sammy quote?"

"That's a Sammy quote. And I mean it. You matter, Dean. Far more than you think." Sam sat more upright in his chair, leaned forward to make his point. "Look, you didn't kill Cole's father. And clearly you remember him and his father now, or you wouldn't have looked it up tonight in Dad's journal. So it doesn't matter that you couldn't remember at the bar. Yeah, you were Dark Side. But I'm not exactly a poster child for mental health, either."

Dean's brows quirked. "So, you're saying both of us are screwed up?"

"Oh, I think we went beyond that years ago." Sam smiled ruefully. "In fact, I'm pretty sure we're two whole planets past dysfunctional."

They stared at one another, agreeing on the assessment; then realized what they shared, in that moment, was mutual recognition, mutual forgiveness. The tension was gone. They were free of it all. In the space of a few sentences they'd passed Go and collected $200. They'd rounded the board, and the game was rendered merely memory of past, no longer part of present.

A corner of Dean's mouth twitched in a wry smile. He picked up his beer bottle, tipped it toward Sam, held it out in invitation.

Sam lifted his, met Dean's with it. Longnecks clinked.

"Here's to two planets past dysfunctional," Dean said. "Better than the alternative."

Sam raised his brows. "What's the alternative?"

Dean drank, then clarified. "Dark side of the moon, Sammy. Been there, done that, both of us. Got us a whole friggin' boatload of t-shirts."

Sam grinned abruptly as a memory out of the blue popped into his head: a night in heaven and Dean's childhood memory, conjured courtesy of angels. "At least none of mine say I Wuv Hugs."

And Dean was, finally, all Dean again, slanting at his brother a brief, but very welcome, stink-eye glare.

~ end ~

This story is complete in itself, but a sequel has now been posted.