You Can't Fix This
Synopsis: Facing down his demonized brother Sam is forced to confront the path of destruction laid down by the Winchesters.
Short Introduction: I realized yesterday that it's been almost four years since I last wrote any fan fiction. Needless to say there are excuses for not writing but I won't list them here because the list is very long, and very depressing. As it's been a while I'm starting off slowly with a short story. Let me know what you think if you have the time. (P.S All grammar and spelling problems are mine because I'm out of practice.)
Copyright: Dean and Sam still don't belong to me. Which I don't understand as I've been paying them off in installments.
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He was somewhere in Dakota, standing in a warehouse that was falling to pieces while he tried not to fall to pieces himself. Here he was again, standing in front of his brother and wishing he wasn't. Here he was again trying to figure out how to fix this.
His brother's eyes were the same color they'd always been but the expression on his face was as cold and as dark as the many nights they'd spent together trying to mend whatever had gone wrong.
They had spent their lives trying to put things right. Hunting things. Saving people.
But Sam was having an epiphany. It was the realization, finally, that they were both self-involved deluded fools. The number of people they'd killed, whether deliberately or accidentally, far outweighed the people they'd saved. Anyone and everyone they had formed a relationship with was dead, damaged or merely existing. The Winchesters were about as useful a cure as the tincture of mercury handed out by doctors in the 19th century to cure syphilis. The Winchesters presumed to know how to fix the universe, that somehow God didn't have a plan and that they - the Winchester Brothers - would make everything right. Upon reflection their arrogance was nothing short of astounding.
He arrived at this insight as he watched how his brother was holding the First Blade. His brother standing straight backed and self-assured in a way that would have made Sam proud only a few years ago. God's plan – Sam realized - was that Sam should have died at Cold Oak. If he'd died as intended then nothing else would have happened. Not the Apocalypse, not the angels falling, not Metatron, not Abbadon and certainly not this.
This... Well, without Sam dying, the prophecy was going to make itself turn out anyway it could. One of the Winchester Brothers was going to turn into a monster. One of them would kill the other one. With Sam saved, with both of them breathing, they had spat in the face of both God and the devil and they'd paid the price.
As always when Sam confronted Dean in Dean's newly anointed state of unstoppable killing machine he found himself shifting to trying to be reasonable. Trying to bargain.
"We can find a way out of this."
"I doubt it." Dean turned away, looking towards the warehouse door that was marked 'Exit'. He was already bored by the conversation. The same one they'd had twice already. The conversation that came to nothing.
"What do you plan to do now?" asked Sam. As if the answer might change.
"I'm a Knight of hell. I can do anything I want."
"Which is?"
"Kill Crowley for a start. Then Metatron. Tell them all - angels go back to heaven, demons go back to hell. Never walk the Earth again."
Sam felt a shiver run down his spine. His brother's voice was like the well-tempered steel of a sword. There was no humor, there was no lightness. He had stated his position.
His brother started walking to the door and out of Sam's life.
Something in Sam - the same desperate something that had forced them to stick together because they were two outsiders who had no one else to share the terrible sights they had seen and the awful secrets that they knew - suddenly overwhelmed him. His understanding and logic was replaced with the suffocating clinginess that had always been their mutual undoing.
"Please... Please don't go. We can figure this out," said Sam. "We're brothers. You save me. I save you. That's how it works."
Dean stopped and turned around again, facing Sam.
"Not this time, Sammy. I'm the start of it all; I'm the end of it all. I'm gonna make everything okay again and this time, no one can stop me. This time everyone will do what they're told."
Sam didn't have an answer for that. There would be no reasoning with Dean. His brother would make this world into his own image and that world would brook no lies, or betrayals or begging or pleading. It would be a black and white world and justice would be quick and it would be merciless.
Dean had told him all those years ago, "Dad told me if I can't save you then I'm going to have to kill you." On the receiving end of the promise Sam hadn't analyzed it much beyond the fact that he might be killed by his own brother. He hadn't ever considered what it was like to be the one saddled with having to keep the promise. It was a knot in his stomach, a bad case of food poisoning, a need to take ant-acids and lie down for a while.
Dean stood where he was, patiently waiting.
Sam stared straight into Dean's eyes and said, "If I can't save you then I'm going to have to kill you."
Dean clutched the First Blade harder in his right hand, barely able to keep his control.
"Good luck trying little brother."
And then he was gone and Sam stood for a very long time in the warehouse before he screamed his frustration out into the night air and waited for some sort of answer.
Neither God nor the devil replied.
The End.