Mad World

Chapter Seven: All around me are familiar faces

He was dreaming again.

It was the same scene, the same feelings; weight of the shovel in his hands, hard ground beneath his feet. Despair, as his big brother did nothing to hide his grief from the world - and helplessness as Sam could do nothing but watch.

More of the details came into focus this time. He saw more of the people.

Old friends from college. Becky and Zach sat a few seats back from Dean, teary eyes and tired looking.

Sam saw his freshman roommate in a back row. He and Sam had hated each other mutually - but in a way that made each of their respective first years away from home much more bearable. Sam realized with a pang that, had the situations been reversed, he probably would have attended his funereal as well.

Then he remembered he was dreaming.

That knowledge was lost quickly as he saw more familiar faces - an old professor. His mentor, actually.

Missouri.

Joshua.

Mac.

A few other of dad's remaining hunting buddies that he and his brother had known as children.

Jo sat in the chair next to Dean, he finally noticed. The girl was paying more attention to the elder hunter that to his ongoing funeral procession, but Sam didn't mind. Was glad for it, in fact - because at least Dean was being looked after by someone.

Perhaps after his death, Jo and Ellen would keep Dean afloat. Keep him breathing.

None of this shocked him now, none of it anything more than a few dreamy feelings of familiarity and truth.

Until he looked up at the front row.

There sat his mother and father - in perfect corporal form, hands twined together, looking at their youngest son's casket with sad acceptance. Dad didn't look any older than he had the day he'd died. And mom… Mom looked just like she did in every picture Sam had ever seen. Just like she had in Kansas. Beautiful.

Sam's head snapped back to his brother at once, to see if Dean too bore witness to this phenomenon. Yet his brother's gaze remained steadily fixed to the Priest or Pastor, or whomever the man in black robes standing behind his coffin was.

He was speaking, that man was, but Sam couldn't make out the words - just accepted the noise they produced as a steady background hum. Choosing not to focus on him, not to hear.

For the first time in his life - that he had conscious memory of - his family was all together. Shattered in ways not even this nightmare could comprehend, but together.

And Sam was still holding onto that when he woken up.

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His life had been intertwining moments of good and bad. Denial and fake acceptance. He'd decided at one point, a few days after they'd been arrested, to never tell Dean the truth - to keep it away from his brother until the autopsy reports came back - but he'd woken up that night so scared and desperate, that he'd actually had a panic attack.

Full blown, with closing throat, tunnel vision and a panicked big brother.

Dean ended up having to calm him down, soothing him like he hadn't since they were children. It was a colossal chick-flick moment, as they had ended up squeezed together in the same bed all night.

Dean hadn't even tried to diffuse it, either. He'd wanted to talk. Outright demanded it, in fact - but Sam had put it off.

He knew after that incident, though, without question, that he would have to tell Dean. Now it was just a matter of when.

Then they had discovered the crossroads.

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When Sam had turned off the music, Dean had been silent.

When Sam had started screaming, his anger coming out in bursts that could have shaken the earth, Dean set his face and remained quiet.

When Sam started in on dad, well, he didn't get too far.

"Oh, you know what, Sammy?!" Dean finally shouted, "I'm sick and tired of your fucking shit."

"My shit?!" Sam screamed ludicrously.

"Yeah," Dean responded affirmatively, quickly, but barely had time to shout the syllable before Sam was on him again.

"You were gonna make a deal with the devil Dean! With a fucking demon!" The youngest remaining Winchester was seeing red. He could never, in his whole fucking life, recall ever being so utterly pissed about anything. He wanted to shout - was shouting. He wanted to hit something, to hit his brother. To force Dean to understand.

"No I wasn't!" Dean defended.

Words couldn't convey it, how angry Sam was at the moment. He wasn't thinking about his impending death - not really. His mind was lost in the thousand or so possible scenarios that had sprung to life since they'd left the crossroads.

A thousand or so possible scenarios that all had Sam living out the rest of his life alone. Alone. by himself, with no one.

Without Dean.

Tunnel vision clouded with memories, mixed with fragments of dreams, weighed down by inalterable truth - his breathing sped up and the world unfocused. It was too much for him to hold onto, too much for any one person to handle.

Just like his brother after dad's death - only shorter lived.

Dean had beat the crap out of the Impala, had decapitated a vampire ruthlessly, had punched Sam and buddied up with Gordon. Found any excuse to fight and blamed innocent people.

And now Sam understood why. He connected with his big brother - through that anger that was really quite sad when you thought about it logically - because it only meant death and pain. In the same cycle he'd grown up with.

So when his anger finally did burst - he was relieved.

He was Dean with that crowbar.

His father with his vengeance for the demon.

He was a psychic freak with a message to send and an unrelenting anger to unleash.

The passenger side of the Impala shattered.

Just…exploded, raining Sam with small bits of glass, non one piece larger than his thumbnail. Because that's ho angry he was, that's how much he needed Dean to understand.

"What the fuck?!" Dean shouted, head snapping to his brother; covered in bits of glass, his breathing sporadic. Dean sounded scared. "What the fucking hell was that?"

But Sam couldn't respond, he just clenched his teeth and fought himself, reigning in the rest of his temper, because he didn't know what he might destroy next.

Dean pulled the Impala to the side of the road immediately, killing the engine and turning to face his brother. Sam could only see him out of the corner of his eye, but he knew Dean too well. He knew what face his brother was sporting.

"What was that?" He asked again, his voice a more controlled level of desperate. "Sam."

"Did you consider it, Dean?" Sam asked slowly, seeing nothing. "Did you seriously consider making a deal with the devil?"

It took Deana moment; mostly, Sam thought, because he was debating what was more dangerous; telling the truth and having Sam go off, or lying and getting the same result.

He spoke though - spoke the truth.

"Yes."

With one word, Dean changed everything.

He changed the entire foundation on which Sam had been basing his life. Not just for the last few months, but for his entire life.

Family was supposed to come above all else. Family was all there was. That's what Dean had taught him; that no matter how fucked up life got, no matter how many bad decisions you racked up, that was supposed to be the one inalterable truth. The one law that had no loopholes. Family.

Then Sam wanted to cry, because Dean hadn't changed his policy, hadn't become a hypocrite and went against his lifelong philosophy.

He'd chosen his family.

"It's dad." Sam muttered, only half recognizing that he'd said it aloud.

'What?" Dean sounded like he had tears in his eyes, but Sam didn't know. wouldn't look at him.

"When we were kids," Sam's mind saw so many events; instances in which he thought only he could see the true side of his brother. "You always… I mean, me and dad fought so much.

"Yeah…" his breathing was hitched, the word confused, frightened.

"You never really chose sides. I mean, I don't know how you did it, but you never turned on either of us." Sam felt long ago shame flare up, but pushed it back down. "Even when we asked you to."

"I'm Swiss, dude." Dean's childhood mantra was brought back, and for a moment, Sam was fifteen, John was shouting, and Dean was sitting at the kitchen table, watching cartoons.

Dean could always do that - if only for a split second.

Dean could make him remember.

"I always thought, if it ever came down to it…" Sam's throat threatened to close, but he pushed on, focusing intentionally on that part of his mind that had destroyed the window to the Impala, making sure it didn't rise and concur again. "I always thought you'd choose me."

"Sammy," the word contained something beyond raw pain. Something new and undefined.

"I was wrong."

"Sam,"

"I should have never been born, Dean," he explained with sudden understanding. "I caused this. All this. And you know it. My powers brought the demon. Mom and Jessica died because of me. Dad-"

"Stop it, Sam." But he was so beyond hearing now.

"If mom hadn't died, dad wouldn't have started hunting, he wouldn't be dead. You wouldn't be contemplating selling your soul to a demon to get him back." Sam shook his head. "It's a chain reaction. It's a chain reaction that I started. I should have never-"

Dean reached over in a swift movement and fisted the front of Sam's shirt, yanking the younger man forward, swiveling his body slightly in Dean's direction, before slamming him back into the corner of the seat, half up against the door, crunching stray bits of glass as he went. There wasn't much force behind the rough treatment, but it certainly got Sam's attention.

"Shut up. Shut up!"

"Why?" Sam screamed back, with more anger than was safe. "It's true! Everything would be alright if I-"

"Stop it, Sam!" And that's when he saw the tears in Dean's eyes. Close to overflowing in his green orbs, and Sam didn't know how to respond to them. He never had. "Please."

He'd never heard Dean beg before. Never.

So he did. He stopped. Trapped in that same position, Dean gripping his shirt, facing him with emotion that he couldn't…

"I would choose you, Sam." Dean balled his fist tighter and squeezed his eyes shut for a fraction or two of a second. "Is that what you want to hear?" He was desperate. "I would choose you. Over anything."

"Except dad."

"No," Dean sounded firmer, the tears were still there, but so was something else. Something strong. Something that made Dean, Dean. Something that no one - be it supernatural or human, family friend or foe - had ever been able to tangle with and come out of successfully.

"Ten years isn't anything, Dean." Sam pointed out, fighting instinctually. "You would have died. What do you call that, if not picking dad over me?"

"That's not, not choosing you," Dean bit, "It's not choosing myself."

"It's choosing to leave. To give up. To not fight." It was coming out now, the anger, the regret, the sorrow. "How could you do that? How could you decide to die? How…"

"It didn't happen, Sammy." Dean reminded harshly. "I didn't do anything. I didn't choose anything. I'm here. I'm right here."

"But you don't want to be."

"Yes I do," he grasped desperately at fading straws. "I do."

Sam focused his gaze out the windshield, at the dark, at nothing. He was going to become that. Nothing, he thought vaguely, shouldn't be a state of being.

"You should have made the deal."

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TBC…