Supernatural ain't mine, friends and neighbours.
Lots of thanks and love to sasha2002, rc, bally2cute, PadfootObsessed329, AHR, the Cat's Whiskers, Dean's Girl, carocali, Joou Himeko Dah, Elemental-Animal (x2), Evergreene, MistyEyes, annibal, Kale and teal lover for all their kind words. Extra special thanks to Faye Dartmouth for hounding me until I got this written ;).
rc: I'm glad you enjoyed my other fics! I don't have a beta, since I generally prefer to work alone. But I always appreciate constructive criticism.
bally2cute: I think you might get your wish in this chapter, at least to some extent...
On with the show!
----
But for the Grace, Chapter 4
Wrong. Wrong. This is all wrong.
Dean wasn't sure exactly what he had been doing for the last couple of hours, but apparently it was now two in the morning. The laptop screensaver glowed softly. Sam was still out, absolutely still on top of the covers like he was dead. Except it wasn't him that was dead.
Dean was dead.
No, that's wrong. I'm not dead. No freakin way.
OK, so he had seen plenty of dead people, right? And not in a Haley Joel kind of way either, he had actually seen them and felt them and they were freakin weird, right? They didn't just wander round like normal human beings, hanging out and drinking beer and kidnapping their brothers. Right? Right?
Dean found himself in front of the bathroom mirror, staring. He looked alive. No melodramatic white clothing, skin had plenty of colour, bruise coming on on one cheek – yeah, ghosts didn't bruise, of course they didn't, bruising had something to do with blood or whatever and ghosts didn't have blood because they weren't flesh, they were freakin dead. No way Dean was dead, no way.
He had a death certificate, though.
On the other hand, he reminded himself, death certificates didn't mean anything. In fact, Dean Winchester had had a death certificate since back in St. Louis, and all that meant was that some psychotic evil thing had decided to look like him for a bit (which, who could blame it, really?). Plus, if the death certificate and the newspaper article were telling the truth, he had supposedly died when he was four, so if he was a ghost why the hell would he be the ghost of a ruggedly handsome twenty-six year old with the memory of an entire life that had never been lived? No, it didn't make sense that he was dead. So there was an explanation for this. There had to be. All he had to do was calm down, sit down, and think.
OK, so for the last couple days everything had been shot to hell. Sam didn't remember him, and Sam was different, he was belligerent and bitter and Dean had the feeling that not all of that came from being kidnapped. Sam remembered a life without Dean, a life with no supernatural things, with a mother who just died in a fire and a father who...
Shit.
Dean had his cell phone out of his pocket in no time flat, and had hit the speed dial. The phone rang for too long before a woman's voice answered, sounding kind of pissed at being woken up. Well, screw you, lady, because no way are you having as bad a night as me. And it just got worse, because she'd never heard of a John Winchester, and when Dean asked her how long she'd had the number the answer had the phone sliding out of his numb fingers to the floor.
Five years.
Five freakin years.
Dad's dead, Dean thought frantically, even though it didn't make any sense, none of it. Dad's dead. I'm dead. What the hell is going on round here?
Somehow he lost another hour or so just sitting there doing nothing, and when he finally roused himself, his eyes strayed to the bottle of tequila that stood innocently on the dresser next to the goddamn car key that wasn't supposed to exist. You've caused me a lot of trouble today, goddamn Mexican gutrot, he thought severely. Least you can do now is help out.
A couple of pulls on the bottle meant that Dean's hands were steady enough to type again. It was some godforsaken hour of the morning, and everything was wrong. It wasn't just Sam that was broken: it was reality. Dean was the only one who could remember what it was supposed to be like, and that meant it was up to him to fix it. How he was going to do that, he had no idea, but he was starting here and now with half a bottle of tequila and a silver laptop that looked oddly naked without the decals Dean had bought for it months before.
----
It was almost eight o'clock before Sam surfaced, groaning slightly and then tensing as he saw Dean watching him. He looked like shit. Dean figured he didn't look much better, having been up all night (and spent a good portion of it wondering if actually maybe he was, y'know, dead), but he definitely felt better than Sam looked. He had had a long time to think, and he had made a plan. OK, so he had pretty much noticed that his plans all went to shit when he didn't have anyone to bounce them off, plus this plan was kind of lame, since it tailed off fairly shortly after getting Sam to tell him exactly what was different between their two sets of memories in the hope of finding some clue as to what the hell had happened, but he had something to focus on other than the feeling of fear in the pit of his stomach, and that was good enough for him.
"Here," he said, crossing to the bed and handing over a cup of coffee and the bottle of aspirin. Sam looked at him with a hint of suspicion, then sighed and took the items with the hand that wasn't chained to the bed. He sat up awkwardly, swallowed the pills, took a pull on the coffee, and then set the cup down, his eyes never leaving Dean. Dean returned to his chair and sat down. He wondered how to get Sam talking.
"Tell me about your life," he said. Oh yeah, that would totally work. He sounded like a total loser.
Sam looked briefly startled, then frowned. "What is this, story hour?"
"Just tell me," said Dean. Still sounded like a loser. Needed to come up with some better lines.
Sam watched him for a moment, then turned his face away. "What do you want me to say?" he asked. "I was born. My mom died. I went to school. My dad died. I went to college. My... I got car-jacked by some crazy guy. The rest, as they say, is history."
OK, that wasn't exactly the life story Dean had been hoping for. Remind me never to ask you to write my eulogy. He needed to break through somehow. "Where were you born?" asked Dean. Easy questions first, questions he knew the answer to. A warm-up.
"Lawrence, Kansas," said Sam. "But I only lived there six months. We moved right after Mom died."
OK, so that was kind of the same, but different too. In Dean's world – No, that was a weird way of putting it. Hm. OK, the way Dean remembered it, they had stuck around in Lawrence for about a year after the fire, until John had learned all he needed to to start on the trail of the demon.
"Where did you go then?"
Sam met Dean's eyes again. "Why do you want to know all this?" he asked, and he didn't seem angry for once, just confused.
Dean shrugged. "I'm curious. You're stuck with me. I'm gonna keep asking till you tell me, so you might as well get it over with."
"You can't make me tell you anything."
"Wanna bet?"
"I don't understand what it is you want," Sam said, almost as if talking to himself. He took another swig of the coffee, and Dean thought he wasn't going to answer the question, but then he suddenly said, "I don't know where we went. We moved all over. I don't really remember the names of any of the places. Dad would get a job at a garage, and six months later he'd fuck it up, come in late and hungover too many times, so we'd move."
OK, that pretty much sounded like Dad too. Except for the garage thing. And the drinking thing. Plus, no demon hunting. What was it Sam had said once? A little more tequila, a little less demon hunting. OK, he was so not letting his brain go there. Time to think of a new question.
"Did he ever..." Dean stopped. Getting into the hard questions now. "Did he ever say anything about your mom?" He was pretty sure, what with the timing and the fire and everything, that Mom had died the same way he knew she had, but Sam didn't seem to know a thing about the supernatural, and obviously it had been different somehow, or Dean would be alive. Which I am.
Sam stared at his coffee cup. "Sometimes he'd tell me she was beautiful," he said, and was Dean imagining it, or was there a hint of wistfulness in that tone? Maybe this Sam wasn't so different after all.
Dean cleared his throat. "Uh... actually, I meant did he talk about how she died?"
Sam glanced over at him and frowned. "No, never. They said it was faulty wiring."
Yeah, they said that to us, too. It was as lame then as it is now.
"Must have been rough," Dean said. "All the moving and shit. Did Dad... did your dad look after you OK?"
Sam let out a bitter laugh. "I guess, if by OK you mean most of the time he earned enough for us to have a couple of meals a day with a bottle of vodka for him for dessert."
Dean sat back and closed his eyes for a moment. His father had always loved him and Sam, he knew that, had always wanted to keep them safe. But somehow, he'd often forgotten that safety didn't just come from blowing away the ghoul in the closet or dumping salt on the windowsills, that food and clothes and a place to live were part of it too. Sometimes, when Dean had had to go to the kitchen to tell Dad that they were out of formula and Sammy was hungry, and had found him hunched over a map or making furious notes from a dusty book, he had wished that Dad didn't have his revenge quest, because then maybe he would focus only on Dean and Sam. Of course, straight after that thought that he had always felt like a sorry son of a bitch, disloyal to Mom, because of course finding her killer was important, more important than remembering every little domestic duty, and anyway, Dad had Dean there to help him out, so they were gonna be OK, right? Over the years, he had trained those thoughts out of his conscious mind altogether. But now, it seemed like Sam had had that childhood, the one with no revenge, no hunting, even no Dean, nothing for Dad to focus on except Sam. And John had just found something else to distract himself with. And this time, Dean hadn't been there to help out.
OK, well, enough dwelling. This whole thing wasn't real anyway, so it didn't matter what Sam remembered Dad doing. It hadn't really happened.
"Um, how about school?" Dean was trying to think of other questions to ask, because he really didn't freakin feel like asking the one he knew was coming.
Sam shrugged. "I went. Didn't learn much. Every place had a different curriculum."
"Must have done OK to get into Stanford," Dean observed.
"Once I learned how to read and was old enough to get to the library by myself, I was fine," Sam said flatly.
"OK," said Dean. He glanced around the room, trying to think of something else to ask, anything except what was really on his mind. No such luck. He was just going to have to bite the goddamn bullet. "So, uh..." He cleared his throat. "Your dad... How'd he die?"
Sam's head jerked round sharply. "Jesus," he said. "What the fuck do you want to know that for?"
Dean just shrugged. "Does it matter? I'm a psycho, remember?"
Sam looked away, then looked back at something over Dean's shoulder. "If you really want me to talk about this shit, you're gonna have to give me a little help," he said.
"What're you talking about?" Dean asked, glancing back. The bottle of tequila stood on the dresser behind him, now only a quarter full.
"Care to share?" said Sam, with a twisted smile.
Dean sighed. If he was honest with himself, the little buzz he had gotten off the tequila was beginning to leave his system, and he could do with a pick-me-up too. Drinking in the morning was never a good thing. But then, quizzing your amnesiac brother about the death of the father you knew was still alive wasn't the greatest of freakin shakes either. "Hair of the dog?"
Sam's smile twisted a little more. "Something like that."
Dean nodded, reached for the bottle and took a swig, before getting up and handing it to Sam. Sam took a long pull, then set it down on the night stand next to the coffee. His hands were trembling slightly. He didn't say anything though. The little bastard was going to make Dean repeat the question. Goddamn.
"How did your dad die," Dean said insistently, and hated himself.
Sam cleared his throat. "He killed himself."
OK, so Dean hadn't really known what to expect, but it wasn't that. No freakin way. That was crap. "You know that for sure?"
Sam stared at him. "What the fuck does that mean?"
Dean shook his head. "Nothing. Carry on."
Sam reached out and took another swallow of tequila. "There was no note or anything, but I wouldn't have found one anyway. There was nothing left."
Damn, this was kind of confusing. Dean wondered if he should interrupt Sam to ask him what the hell he was going on about, but Sam didn't even seem to be talking to him any more. He was talking, though, and that was what Dean wanted (and damn, if he hadn't just spent the last half hour trying to get Sam to talk about his feelings, Jesus, he was never going to live this down), so he just left it alone and let Sam carry on, hoping he would catch up eventually.
"The house was gone," Sam said. "They never found the body. The firefighters said he must have fallen asleep with a lit cigarette, but I know he did it on purpose."
"Wait a second," Dean said, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. "Your dad died in a fire?" That was not good. "What makes you think he started it himself?"
"Because it started in my room." Sam's voice was so quiet Dean had to hold his breath to hear it. "I was fifteen. He'd been gone three days, and I knew we were going to be moving again soon. And then I woke up, and there was just... fire... everywhere. If he'd fallen asleep, he would have been in his room or on the couch." He suddenly snorted and wiped the back of his hand over his face. "He'd been killing himself for years, anyway. This way was just faster."
It started in my room. Well, that pretty much sealed that. The demon that killed Mom wasn't exactly the most original hell-beast out there. But Sam obviously didn't know the first thing about it. The goddamn idiot thought his dad (his dad) had set his room on fire on purpose. Which, hang on, that meant he thought...
"Sam, you think your dad was trying to kill you too?" Dean asked, horrified. This wasn't just a shift in reality, this was some crazy alterna-world deal.
"No," said Sam, too loudly. "No. I don't think he was thinking at all. He'd just been on a three-day bender. God," he added, rubbing his knuckles into his eyes. "Why the hell am I telling you all this crap?"
Dean didn't really have an answer to that. To be honest, he was pretty freakin amazed Sam was speaking to him at all. "You should eat something," he offered, gesturing at a paper bag that sat on the nightstand. "I brought you breakfast."
Sam glanced at it and made a face. "I'm not hungry."
They sat in silence for a minute or two. Dean was trying to digest what he had found out. Sam thought the demon that killed Mom killed Dad too, which meant that actually, it probably had gone down that way in this bizarro world. Except no, that's not what Sam thought, because Sam didn't know anything about the demon. It was what Dean thought. Except Dean knew the demon hadn't killed Dad, because Dean had seen Dad a few weeks ago.
Jesus, he was getting a headache.
But he was getting somewhere, though he wasn't sure exactly where it was yet. He had to keep Sam talking.
"You're a pretty lucky guy," he said, saying the first thing that entered his head. "Surviving two fires like that."
"Three," said Sam, so quietly that Dean almost thought he hadn't heard it at all. But he had heard it, and he remembered Sam's old apartment building in Palo Alto, still under renovation after being damaged by a fire, and filed that piece of information away for later.
Sam took another swig of tequila. The bottle was almost empty. Dean removed it from the night stand, and Sam didn't protest.
"So what happened after that?" Dean asked.
Sam shrugged. "Went to a couple of foster homes. Got into Stanford. Was thinking about applying to law school before some bastard kidnapped me."
Dean ignored the last part. There was something else that didn't quite fit. "But didn't you... I mean, shouldn't you have already applied last year?"
Sam stared at him, and Dean shifted uncomfortably, setting the bottle down on the dresser. "I mean, you're old enough to have graduated now, right?"
Sam looked away again. "Yeah, well, I took some time off."
"OK," said Dean, feeling suddenly tired. He didn't want to ask any more questions. The answers he had already received were upsetting enough. He dropped back into the chair and stared at his hands, because now was the part of the plan that he hadn't really finished yet, the part where Sam told him his life story and Dean immediately was able to identify some chink, something that would give him a freakin clue, would tell him what to do next. But there was nothing. Just a mental image that wouldn't go away of Sam waking up in a room where their father was burning to death. And damn, that was not something you wanted to be thinking about when you were trying to eat your breakfast.
The silence stretched out. Sam pulled his legs back up onto the bed, wincing a little as his ankle snagged on the covers. Dean slouched back in the chair, lost in thought. Somewhere, a clock was ticking, making the silence seem even louder, and Dean wished it would just shut the hell up. Then finally, Sam spoke again.
"Why'd you want to know all that stuff?" he asked, head on the pillow, staring up at the ceiling.
OK, Sammy question time. Well, two could play at that game. "Why'd you start that barfight, sparky?"
Sam didn't answer. After a while, he said, "My dad was in Vietnam, you know. He was a marine. Fucking pathetic, right?"
"What's pathetic about it?" Dean asked. OK, this whole thing was getting kind of weird now. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear Sam badmouth Dad any more, even if it wasn't really Dad.
Sam snorted. "All of it. You know, Semper fi, do or die, and then wind up burning in some freakin rented dump where all you own's a Chevy Impala and an impressive collection of empty bottles. Defending his country. Something worth dying for." He laughed, with that metallic sound than Dean was coming to know and loathe. Goddammit, Sam, could you just manage to laugh like you freakin mean it, just once?
"You don't think it's something worth dying for?" Dad had never really talked about his days in the marine corps, but Dean had always regarded them as kind of an earlier version of their life after the fire: hunt evil, save people, always watch out for your unit. "What would you die for, Sam?"
"Nothing," said Sam flatly.
Dean felt his hackles rise. "Jesus, man, and you think Dad's pathetic?"
"No, you misunderstood," said Sam, sitting up again. "Death doesn't work that way. It's not about dying for a cause. It just happens. One minute you're there, then you're gone. There's nothing freakin glorious or ideological about it. You're just dead. So when I die, man, it'll be for nothing."
Dean blinked. "You really believe that?"
"Yeah," said Sam. "I really do."
Dean didn't know exactly what happened, but suddenly he was mad. Real mad. "Goddamn, Sam, you of all people?"
Sam stared. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"You think this is all random? That it's a coincidence? Mom and Dad and Jess?"
Sam's brow creased. "How...?"
But Dean was not about to let petty concerns like the fact that he was totally revealing his hand stop him. "Jesus Christ! The fire that killed Mom started in your room, too, didn't it? And Jess? Three people burn to death in your room, while you're freakin there, and you escape every time and you think it's a coincidence? God, Sam, I thought you were meant to be smart."
"I don't understand what you're trying to say," Sam said, looking nervous. "What, I attract arsonists?"
Dean leaned forward until he was right in his brother's face. "Open your goddamn eyes, Sam. Something's after you. It wants you. It's killing to get to you."
"What? What the hell gives you the right to say shit like that to me?" Sam was yelling now, his jaw thrust out like it always was when he was angry. "You don't know what the hell you're talking about!"
"Yeah I freakin do, Sam," Dean yelled back, knowing he was on the verge of making a mistake and not caring.
"How? How could you know?"
"Because I'm your goddamn brother, that's how!" yelled Dean, and then stopped suddenly.
Silence fell. Sam stared at him with bulging eyes. Dean was finding it kind of difficult to breathe. Shit. That was really freakin smooth, Dean.
"No," said Sam quietly. "No, you're not. I don't have a brother."
Dean closed his eyes. In for a penny, in for a pound. "Yeah, Sam, you do," he said, opening them again and reaching for the laptop. He pulled up the article about the fire and moved it so that Sam could see the screen. "See?"
Sam sat, looking kind of dazed, and read. He read for so long that Dean thought he must have read the damn thing three times, and probably he had. Then he shook his head.
"No," he said again. "Dad would have told me."
Dean held back a snort. Yeah, like Dad ever tells us anything. That was so not the thing to say right now. He needed something better, something that wouldn't send the walls slamming back down. "That's your mom, right?" he said as gently as he could, pointing at his mother's name on the screen. "And that's me," he pointed at the other name. "Dean Winchester."
"You faked the article," Sam said, reaching for the laptop. "You did... something."
Dean watched silently as Sam checked out the source of the webpage, and then double-checked it. After a long moment, his fingers stilled on the keys, and he looked up, looking completely lost. "But... it says you're dead."
Dean let out a laugh, because maybe Sam didn't really believe him but he was beginning to accept the possibility, which was really a damn sight more than Dean could expect, given the circumstances. The really freakin weird circumstances. "Yeah, that came as kind of a surprise to me, too, Sammy."
"I don't... understand."
Dean took a deep breath. "Look, Sam, I don't totally understand what's going on either, but..." Shit. How the hell was he going to explain this? It didn't make any freakin sense even to him, and he had the most twisted mind of anyone he knew. Not that he knew that many people, but most of them were pretty goddamn twisted. Slowly, he crossed to the bed opposite Sam's and sat down. "I think..." he started, then stopped. Sam watched him, still looking dazed. "I think something...changed reality. Made it so that I died in the fire that killed Mom. I don't know why it didn't just kill me, but," Dean gestured broadly, "here I am. And it seems like I'm the only one who remembers what it's meant to be like."
Sam just stared. OK, that was fair enough. It wasn't exactly the most believable thing ever. Not even the second most. "Sam," Dean asked. "Say something."
Sam blinked. "I don't understand," he said again.
Dean closed his eyes. This could take all day. Well, if it took all day for Dean to get his brother to believe him, then that's how long it would take. And knowing Sam, he would string it out for as long as he could while his geek brain went through every possible implication. Bastard.
"OK, listen," said Dean, deciding on a different tack. "I woke up in a motel room in this stupid town two days ago with nothing. I had the clothes on my back and nothing else. I'm twenty-six years old, and I remember spending the last twenty-two of those years being your older brother."
As he talked, some of Dean's tension ebbed away. He told Sam about their lives, their childhoods, their mother's death and their father's revenge quest. He was sure to make it pretty goddamn clear that the John Winchester he knew was a good man who loved his kids, and OK, maybe he wasn't going to win any father of the year prizes, but hey, those things didn't really exist anyway, right? OK, maybe they did, Dean didn't know how you found these things out, but he was sure the whole thing was rigged anyway, and they probably all went to some white tax attorney in the suburbs who bought his kids Porsches and expensive educations. Anyway. He talked about the demon, and the things that lived in the dark, and then he talked about what had happened to him two days ago and what had happened since. He talked more than he'd probably talked for about, well, ever, and the sun rose in the sky and shone through the window until Dean closed the blinds because it was giving him a headache and because he was nervous and looking for something to occupy his hands. And through it all, Sam just sat there and stared.
Finally, Dean's flow of words shuddered to a stop, and he stared back. Sam didn't move, didn't speak, didn't say a word. And goddamn if that wasn't kind of unnerving.
"Sam?" Dean asked. "You been listening, buddy? Cos that's not the kind of thing I really want to repeat, you know?"
Sam's head jerked forward, and he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, that hard, unfamiliar look was on his face, and it made Dean feel pretty much like shit because somehow in all the talking and the remembering he'd kind of let himself forget that this Sam was different.
"Jesus, you need help," said Sam with a harsh laugh. "A demon killed my mom? You seriously expect me to believe that? She died in a fire. A fucking act of God. And I don't mean that literally either, I mean as in a totally random, unpredictable event. And you're my brother? I don't have a brother. Even if I did, you showed me the goddamn news article that says he's dead, so you kinda shot yourself in the foot there."
Dean felt his leg start jiggling up and down. "I told you..." he said, but Sam interrupted.
"Yeah, I heard you loud and clear, buddy. You're crazy-"
Dean opened his mouth to retort, but then he noticed that Sam had suddenly stopped his tirade and was looking devastated.
"Oh," he said softly. "Oh."
"Sam?"
Sam shook his head, looking away from Dean now, looking down. His hands were trembling again. "Listen man," he said, not looking up, his eyes hidden by his thick bangs, "I'm gonna need some time, OK? I need to think."
Dean was startled by the sudden change in Sam's demeanor. He'd seemed like he was gearing up for a pretty long rant (and God knew, Sam could sustain a rant for what felt like freakin hours) and then he had just stopped. Then again, kid always had been a moody little brat. Plus, it totally made sense. It wasn't exactly your everyday experience, even for a Winchester, to have your long-dead brother who you didn't even know existed show up and fill you in on the side of life that most people thought was just fairy stories. Not to mention tell you everything you remembered was wrong. And to be honest, Dean really wanted to get out of the motel room for a while. So he went to get lunch.
----
When Dean got back, Sam was sitting with his back to the door, nervously fiddling with a button on his shirt.
"You OK?" Dean asked carefully, setting down the bag of food on the table. Sam looked round.
"You need to let me go," he said.
Dean snorted. "Like hell I do."
Sam shook his head. "I'm serious, man. You said your piece. You told me you wanted me to trust you. Now you've got to trust me." He held out his handcuffed wrist to Dean. Dean stared at it, and then glanced at the door.
"You gonna run if I let you go?" he asked.
"I don't know," said Sam. "But do you have anything else to tell me you think could make me stay?"
Dean felt his shoulders slump. Stupid body, never quite as tough as he wanted it to be. "No."
"Well, then," said Sam. "I guess you'll just have to wait and see."
That's freakin stupid. Sam was here, and he wasn't going anywhere. Dean had driven for hours to find him, had been through hell to make sure he was safe, and now, here he was and he was asking Dean to just let him walk? What the hell kind of thing was that to ask anyway? How could Sam think that he would just let him go?
Sam was watching him carefully. "Dean," he said, and it was the first time he had said Dean's name since Dean had told him it the day before, and God he sounded just like the other Sam, the real Sam, and it fucking hurt.
Dean turned slowly. Sam was still holding out his wrist. "Were you planning on keeping me chained up forever?"
That would have involved me having a plan at all. Goddammit, Sam was doing that puppy-dog thing, Dean hadn't even known this Sam could do that, and it was just as lethal as ever. The little bastard knew it, too, Dean was sure of it. But then, if after everything he had heard Sam still didn't want to help him, then how could he make Sam stay? Well, apart from the obvious keeping him tied up until Dean managed to fix the whole thing. Which was kind of appealing, actually. He'd have to get a better gag, though, because Sam's hardass thing was kind of annoying.
He couldn't do that.
"Sam," he said, and damn, he sounded like a fucking pussy. He sounded like he was about to cry like a girl. Maybe he was.
"Dean," said Sam again, insistently. And in the end, after everything that had happened, that was all it took. Dean tossed him the keys. Why? Pretty much because he had no freakin willpower.
Sam unlocked the handcuffs and stood up, rubbing his wrist. "Uh," he said, clearing his throat. "I'm gonna get some fresh air, OK?"
Dean felt like he couldn't breathe. "Sam," he said, hating the way his voice sounded, like he was being choked or something. Choking was another thing that happened to Sam, not Dean. Never to Dean. Until today.
Sam glanced at him, looked kind of apologetic, and then just walked out the door. Just like that. Like it didn't even freakin matter. And Dean was left standing in the motel room, willing himself to go after him, but not able to move a step.
Sam was leaving him. Again.
----
Dean didn't know if he cried. He thought he might have, because his eyes felt kind of swollen and his head was thick. Maybe he just had a cold. Yeah, that was probably it.
He knew he paced though. He paced a lot. He didn't know whether to go looking for Sam, or to stay put in case he came back. Yeah, kid's probably half-way to freakin Mexico by now. The tequila was long gone, which was pretty much a pain in the ass because if Dean had ever needed a drink (and he had needed one plenty of times in his short life), he needed one now. But he didn't want to leave the room in case Sam came back for his stuff and Dean was gone and he lost his last chance to talk his little brother round. Or knock him out. That would work too.
Sam had left the laptop and the car. Dean clung to those two items, so familiar from his own life. He knew that Sam was leaving, that he had lost him again, that he had freakin let him go, just like that, but he would be back for those, right? OK, so he had said he hated the car, but Dean knew he loved that goddamn laptop, he practically snuggled up to the damn thing at night, he carried it round in that freakin girly manbag of his and they were practically joined at the hip (except laptops didn't really have hips, so that saying didn't really work in this situation, but whatever). So he would be back for it, right?
But then, Dean didn't really know Sam as well as he thought he did. Not any more.
He didn't know how much time passed. At some point, it started to rain. The food he had brought congealed slowly in the bag, but Dean didn't want it, couldn't eat it, even the smell of it made him sick.
The rain grew heavier. Dean felt like he was growing heavier too, like maybe someone had put a whammy on him to turn his blood into lead or something. Except he guessed maybe lead wouldn't work, because probably it was solid so it wouldn't really flow through his veins. He tried to think of something heavy and liquid. He couldn't think of any liquids except coffee and tequila. He was so fucked.
He had let Sam go.
When a knock sounded at the door, Dean didn't even recognise the noise for a moment. Then he heard it again, barely audible above the pounding rain, and he was across the room in an instant, lead blood or no lead blood, and it was Sam, Sam standing in the doorway, soaking wet, his hair plastered to his head and looking hopeful of all things, what the hell, and Dean couldn't think of a single thing to say.
That didn't matter too much, though, because Sam spoke first. "In... your reality," he started, then faltered. "Jess..." he said, and Dean suddenly realised what he had left out of the stories he had told earlier.
"I'm sorry, kiddo," he said softly. "She's gone there too."
"Oh," Sam said. What else was there to say?
Dean cleared his throat. "Come on in, you're letting the weather in."
Sam sat on the motel bed and dripped. Dean stared at him, hardly daring to believe he was there, he was there and he hadn't just picked up his laptop and left. There was no noise except the roar of the rain.
"How do I know it's better?" asked Sam.
"What?"
"Your reality, the one you say you remember. How do I know it's better than this one?"
Dean laughed with relief. "Jesus, it could hardly be worse."
"Anything's possible," said Sam quietly.
Dean thought about it. Here, Sam was a college student, with a future at Stanford Law and the normal life he'd always wanted. Here there were no evil things for him to hunt, no brother to drag him back in, no absent father.
No. Here Sam was helpless, unprotected. The demon was after him, everyone he cared about was dead, and he was... wrong. Screw normal, if normal changed Sam from a compassionate, sensitive kid into this guy that Dean had just had the misfortune of hanging out with for two days.
"Sam," he said, "in the real world, you're not alone. You have me, and Dad, and we're together. We're going to find the thing that killed Mom. That's got to be better than this."
Sam sat for a moment and just dripped. Then he said, "I don't know how you expect me to help you."
Dean tried to suppress hopeful feelings. Sam hadn't said he was going to help yet. But he practically did, right? "Usually you do the nerdy geek-boy research thing and I shoot the bad guys and save your ass," he offered.
Sam looked up, brushing his wet hair out of his eyes. "Research? I don't think we're going to find any information on this in the local public library, Dean. We need a specialist collection, and preferably someone who knows what the hell they're doing."
Dean grinned. Sam was going to help. "I know just the guy."
"Fine," Sam said abruptly, standing up. "Do we leave now?"
"What about the people who are looking for you?" Dean asked.
Sam shrugged. "I made them up. No-one's looking for me."
"OK, well," Dean surveyed the motel room. God, I freakin hate this freakin motel. And this freakin town. "Let's get the hell out of Dodge."
"OK. But you're not driving my car any more, got it?"
"I thought you said you hated that car?"
"I do," Sam said. "But you're not driving it."
Dean remembered something Sam had said earlier. Semper fi, do or die, and then wind up burning in some freakin nothing place where all you own's a Chevy Impala and an impressive collection of empty bottles. He thought he understood. And to be honest, at this point he would have made any promise at all to Sam if it meant he would stay.
Sam grabbed the laptop and the car keys and headed for the door.
"You know," Dean observed, following closely behind, "in the real world, the car is mine."
"I thought you said your reality was better," Sam noted, and stepped out into the rain.