Disclaimer: If I owned Supernatural, they wouldn't be brothers.
This is dedicated to those who say I can't write angst (even though really I do totally suck)
Down the Road
They had wanted him. They had always wanted him. They had never been able to get to them. There had always been someone (a short, blond, ethereally beautiful person) standing between them and him. His mother had been innocent of all sins, and ignorant of all evil, but she had known, instantly that there was someone, something, in her child's room. She had sacrificed her life, and died a slow and painful death, to save a child that she had never known. The second person to die for him directly (although many others had been sacrificed for him, for a boy that they had never known) had been the first woman that he truly loved. She was all that was good and beautiful in the world, and he would have died to ensure that the evil never touched her. She died instead. He knew that she wouldn't have, not if she'd told the creature that wanted him where he was, the demon wanted him too much to not offer a chance an oath. She could have saved herself, he wished (more then anything) that she had, and the demon would have kept its oath. When he had been awoken by her blood it had shattered them. He would have let the fire consume him, he would have let the monster win, but his third protector (his last chance for salvation) had saved him, for the second time from the all-consuming heat.
Now the third guardian, the first person he had ever loved, the only person that he had never not loved, was laying on the bed across from him. He had taken a hit that was meant for Sam. It would have killed him, it almost killed Dean. The monster had wanted him, wanted whatever it was that ran like poison through his veins. Wanted his 'light' he said. Sam had refused the demon's offer, his blood for his life, he would rather die then give the demon what he wanted. The demon hadn't been cunning, not like the others. He had operated on the principal that demons run on, anything to save yourself, he hadn't thought like a human. If he had taken Dean Sam would have slit his own wrists to have him free and unharmed. But instead he had threatened Sam and forgotten Dean, forgotten that the brothers would die for each other, forgotten that the boys would kill anyone that had touched their brother. Dean had jumped in front of the angered demon, and Sam had filled the creature with every type of bullet imaginable. It had been too late. The creature had broken five of Dean's ribs and punctured his lung. It had taken them seven hours in surgery to repair his lung, and Dean had been confined to bed rest for a month.
He had lasted a week before being irritable (Sam had thought it would take half that time) and Sam had taken to drugging the water he forced Dean to drink, so that his brother would rest. He looked at his brother, dragged into this world of strife and discord by himself, and the guilt overwhelmed him. He knew now that Dean would die first, that he would never let anything bad happen, and instead of being reassured he felt an overwhelming surge of dread. Sam had confiscated the long and lethal knife after the third time Dean had threatened to kill him, just so he could leave the room, and he held it contemplatively in his hands. He ran a finger over the sharp edge and drawing back when the slender line of red appeared on his finger.
He didn't fear pain, hadn't since his father had started training him. Not since he began going to bed with bruises and cuts, not since he had first popped a dislocated bone in place, not since he had learned how to set a broken bone while on the road. He didn't fear hell, he was going there anyway, damned for eternity for the sins he had committed to save others, for never in God's eyes is a sin justified, and he was not repentant. He feared being alone, being without his brother, his first and last protector, for the first time in his life. He feared for his brother, and what the guilt of knowing that he couldn't save Sam from everything, that he couldn't save Sam from himself, would do to him. But more then anything he feared losing Dean, of having to be the strong one for once, of having the third die for him. Dean always had been stronger, losing Sam wouldn't break him, not the way losing Dean would shatter Sam.
He got up and silently (he didn't remember when he had stopped making noise as he walked, didn't remember ever doing it) padded over to his brothers bed. He pulled up the covers and laid a quick kiss on the innocently sleeping Dean. This would be the last time he saw him, for one as good as Dean would not be allowed into hell, one who shone as brightly with good would have no choice but to join those who had already died for Sam.
He remembered being told by his older brother 'Down the road, not across the street. People who slit their wrists across don't really want to die'. He followed this advice, the last advice he would ever follow, and a tear slipped down his cheek (not from the pain, pain had never made him cry, he wept for the loss of his beacon, and the pain he would cause) as he made the first cut. Quickly, before he lost all feeling in his hand he slit his other wrist, and closed his eyes to die. He never saw Dean opening his.