A/N: Sam's POV. Takes place in chapter 46 of Caught in the Crossfire, just before the boys arrive at the house.

Chapter 34: Sam: Not Saying Goodbye

"A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies."
- Mark Twain

They're about an hour out from the house when Dean speaks. "Dude, you gotta tell her."

"No," Sam says. He looks over at his brother. "And I'm asking you not to say a word."

Dean glances over at him. "You want to say yes to the devil and jump in that hole and you're not even going to tell her? You're not going to say goodbye?" He looks incredulous.

"Dean, just drop it," Sam snaps. He ignores the way Dean's eyebrows raise and turns to stare out the window. It's not that simple.

It's not that he doesn't want to say goodbye. He does, but he knows that Michelle will ask why. She'll ask him to explain and he can already picture the hurt and resignation in her eyes. He can already see her pulling away from him, hoping to distance herself from him before he's even gone. He doesn't want that. He wants to spend some of his last days with her, with his brother. He wants to pretend, even just for a day, that everything is going to be okay. That he's not giving up something he didn't expect to ever want again.

Because he can picture himself with Michelle if he stays. He can imagine that they keep this up, that he gets her to open up fully to him, that the house becomes a home...even to him and Dean. He can't see either of them giving up on these girls that have wedged themselves so completely into their lives without ever intending to. And he has to let that go. He has to hope she'll forgive him and that she'll be okay, that she'll take care of Dean when he can't.

Maybe that's part of the problem. He doesn't want to say goodbye because he doesn't actually want to leave. Not now. There's no choice though, not really. If he wants to protect them, to save the world, he has to say yes. He has to hope that he's strong enough to hold on and jump. He has to fix his mistake. He just...he also wants Michelle to ask him to stay. He wants to hear her plead for him not to go, to know that she feels that strongly for him...but if he does that, he won't go. He won't want to give her up.

It's not fair that he has to. But this is his fault. He's the one who opened the door. The least he can do is try to shove Lucifer back in and close it.