A wind picks up, colors whirl around him, and as nausea rises in his throat, everything settles. He's standing in front of what can only be called a wall of steel filing cabinets. Not just a few stacked on top of each other, but hundreds, rising at least five times his height and far, far on either side. The room he's in is giant, with an odd, padded floor and iron-bar walls, as if a prison. Dean steps closer to the cabinets, and can see that each one is labeled by a small orange sticker and words written in black pen in Sam's handwriting. He steps closer, and scans the cabinets, reading random labels:
Amelia. LARP-ing. .45 shotgun. Grand Canyon. Jessica. Christmas '93. Shtriga. Hand. Mom. Failure. Failure. Betrayal. Failure. Failure. Failure. Betrayal. Lies. Lies. Lies. Failure. Failure.
Dad. Hellhounds. Doubts. Lilith. Samuel. First Hunt. Fireworks. Michael. Lucifer. Soul. Wall.
Dean hesitates, hand reaching out, then chooses First Hunt. He opens the cabinet, allows it to slowly slide out, than peers inside. It's lined with black cloth, and, carefully placed in the middle, is a photograph, one of the rare ones that Dad occasionally took.
It's of Sam. He's looking toward the camera, arm outstretched over his head as he holds up a small dagger. There's blood spattered on his face, and though his mouth is smiling, it doesn't reach his eyes. Dean closes his eyes in a sudden sting of pain, for he understands why Sam isn't happy, and he remembers that moment so well. Sam had been given the job of delivering the final blow, his first kill after at least two years of pleading with John and Dean. He'd been so excited, Dean remembers, jouncing in the backseat of the Impala and trying hard to contain himself while his father and brother kept up a slower pace into the woods. A crocotta, that's what it ways. A particularly filthy one, too, it had been hiding in the woods of northern Pennsylvania and mimicing human voices to lead unwary hikers to an unfortunate end. He and John had found it and riddled it with stabs from their knives before Sam was allowed to step in and take the last stroke. Dean can recall his face so clearly, pale in the light of their flashlights, hands trembling as he strode forward on small legs, screwed his eyes shut, and flung his arm down. He missed, actually, thanks to the fact that he refused to open his eyes for the kill, but John had quietly stepped in and finished off the job before Sam had looked.
Dean isn't sure whether to smile or frown at the memory, so instead he gently closes the door, and continues down the line of files.
The room is quiet, but he can see a door at the far end and he jogs toward, then stops short as he comes close enough to see it properly. It's not just any door, it's the door to their childhood home, the door through which he pulled Sammy on that fateful night. It's disconcerting to see it again after so long, and his hand quivers just a little before he grasps the knob and steps forward.
This time, he's in the nursery, and before he can think he's lunging, leaping forward at the hooded figure bending over baby Sam's cradle. Yellow eyes flash under a dark cloak, but as he fires the shape twists, pulls in on itself and suddenly evaporates with a small flash and the smell of sulfur lingering in the air. Dean draws a breath of relief as he, much taller than all those years long ago, rests his elbows on the railing and watches the little boy sleep, unstained by blood or evil.
"Quick reflexes," a familiar voice remarks behind him, and Dean jerks in surprise, twisting on his heel as he turns.
Then gasps.
He'd know the voice anywhere, but the face is almost unrecognizable, wrinkled and flabby and speckled with age spots, framed by a halo of thinning white hair.
"Sam?" is all he can choke out of a throat that's suddenly tightened, cutting off his air and making his chest heave.
"Of course, who d'you think it would be? Kids these days, huh! " Sam lounges in the rocking chair, gnarled and veined hands clutching the armrests, slippered feet towing it up and down, up and down, up and down while his old-fashioned, too-long nightshirt drags on the floor. "I see you found my memory files. Well done, Dean."
"Yeah, I, uh, I found them. Listen, Sam, you're stuck in Bobby's panic room, you just got your soul back and you're definitely not a billion years old. We gotta fix these issues and wake you up, ok?"
Aged Sam pulls a butterscotch hard candy from a deep pocket and pats his flabby stomach distractedly, gnawing and sucking loudly. "Would you like one?"
Dean glares at him. "No, Sam, I would not like a freakin' old person candy, I want to get you better and back on the road."
Sam bites on his candy contentedly, and Dean winces. God, his teeth must be like rocks.
The baby in the cradle starts crying, and Dean leans over, shushing him gently but to no avail. He picks him up, awkwardly trying to bounce him to sleep, but Sam screams even louder, eyes tightly shut and tiny mouth open in a never-ending wail of discontent.
"Uh, Sam? You're…um…your young side is crying, what I am supposed to do?" Dean turns back to old Sam, than wipes the look of annoyance off his face. "Hey, no, it's ok, Sam, it's ok, I gotcha." He puts the baby down and crosses over to the chair, rubbing Old Sam's arm and gazing at his face.
Old Sam's eyes are rimmed with red, and tears well up to slip silently down the papery cheeks.
His voice is a raspy whisper, and Dean leans closer to hear. "We're crying because it's our time, Dean. I've had a good long life, he's only had a little taste of life, but that's how it goes. Fate can be cruel, and Death takes those whose time has come."
He coughs weakly, and blood dribbles out from his lips as his head tips forward, eyes half closed. Dean grabs his chin, raises his face and is reminded of another occasion, of cold wet mud and a dark night and a dying little brother.
"Sam, Sammy, I don't care how old you are, you're my brother and I'm going to save you, ok? You'll always be my little brother, never too old for me to take care of you, you hear me?"
The wind picks up again, more blood falls from Sam's mouth and drips redly on his nightshirt, fluffy hair whipping into his face and sticking to his scarlet mouth.
The mobile above the cradle begins to spin, faster and faster, the baby's screams fill the air as the cradle tips and twists as if carried by the waves of a stormy sea.
The rocker is tipping harder now, too, Sam's elderly rhythm falling apart as he jerks backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards. Dean's there each time, catches him as he tips out of his chair, but then Sam is ripped out of his clutching hands again as the chair falls backward, and then again he's back, falling forwards and into Dean's embrace and it's too cruel, too cruel because this is what hurts Dean the most of everything in his hellish life, that he tries to save Sam and there are so many close calls and saves that end only with Sam being torn away later, and he lives in fear because one day he won't be able to catch Sam, won't be able to pull him out of danger and in that moment the end of the world will truly have come.
Dean doesn't know which way to turn, he's torn for he can only save one, and which one is the unanswerable, paradoxical question for they are both the same person and yet so different, he knows them both like the back of his hand and yet both are strangers for neither is the Sam that he needs to hunt beside and care for and tease and worry over and even in their worst moments of betrayal and hurt and broken promises and lies, he wouldn't exchange that Sam for any other.
The lights are flickering wildly and Dean feels his heart being ripped apart as stands straddled between the cradle and the rocking chair, reaching as far as he can in both directions at once, so close but so far and if he grasps hold of the one, he loses the other and the choice is impossible. The old needs comfort and safety in the final years of life, knows life well and would find it hard to leave, and yet he's had so much and the infant is innocent and young and has yet to taste the flavors of life. Is it fair to deny life to the one who has yet to live in precedence for the one who has seen so much, and is it fair to condemn the immature and whole to endure the perils and evil of a life riddled by badness and danger?
Dean couldn't choose, can't choose, will never be able to choose, so he gets down of his knees between the two, in the midpoint of the timeline of life, and, sheltered by the ancient and the infantile, covers his face with his arms, closes his eyes, and calls for mercy as the world comes crashing down, and darkness descends.