A/N: I know the last couple of chapters have been Dean-centric, but I promise that the next chapter will be all Sammy! Again, many thanks to Starliteyes. She's more than just a beta, she's a great sounding board as well. And a person…did I mention she's a person? LOL. Thanks Star.

Spoilers for Bloodlust.

Broken

Chapter Three

The day after Sam left, Dean was pulling out the Impala's bench seats so he could rework the twisted frame. Scattered across the floorboards, he found his dad's phone and the remains of the laptop. He looked at them for a minute, his throat tight, and his eyes stinging, but in true Winchester style he shoved the rampant emotions away.

He picked up the phone first, gently cradling it in his palm. It was plain and compact, with no flip top or extending speaker to be broken. It was encased in a worn, black leather case meant to protect the innards from dirt and water. It was simple and practical, just like John. No fancy bells and whistles, just a tool, nothing more.

Dean swallowed hard a couple of times, embracing his daddy's voice in the back of his mind that told him that big boys don't cry. He could hear John's brisk, dry order to work through the pain, to control it before it controlled him.

Breathing steadily, Dean looked at the phone as his father would have, as a tool. The voicemail on the phone was password protected. Dean fiddled with it for a while, delaying the inevitable, but he didn't have the patience Sam had. He threw it into a cardboard box of junk, refusing to look back.

The laptop was bashed all to hell. The lid was torn off and Dean could see the blue and black band stickers still clinging to the silver top. It looked nothing like John's phone. It had personality. It was a reflection of the outgoing character of its owner. Decorating his tool with the stickers had been Dean's passive way of rebelling against his father, however slight. A method of defining a personality for himself that wasn't within the set guidelines of being a soldier or a guardian. It was his way of saying, this is me, this is Dean.

Now it was gone, and so was he. There was nothing behind that defined him. No father to give him orders. No brother to protect. There was only a widening void of darkness where his heart used to be.

Dean shifted, and stared at the broken remains with watery eyes. Most of the keys on the laptop were missing and the hard drive was completely trashed. The old Dean would have been pissed that all the files on their recent cases were lost, but all he could think about was how Sam wouldn't be able to do his homework without a computer.

Sam's laptop had been lost in the fire back in Palo Alto. He had nothing to call his own, but a few changes of clothes and the gun that Dean had given him. Sam didn't even really have a family anymore.

Dean threw the broken pieces of the computer in the cardboard box and stalked away from the Impala. He borrowed an old, rusted van from Bobby and drove to the nearest city. He wandered around the outskirts of the town until he found a sports bar filled with deer hunters on a weekend away from their wives, with money to burn in their pockets.

It took him longer than it should have to hustle the money he needed. His easy smile had disappeared, leaving behind a toothy, shark's grin and cold dead eyes. No one trusted him, and they didn't want to put their money down on any table that he was working. It took three days to put together the four grand he needed for a more than decent laptop. He wanted Sam to have one of those fancy ones with all the bells and whistles, and a three year everything warranty. Dean even bought him a couple of extra batteries as well. He knew how long his little brother could spend in the library getting lost in words on a page.

If it had been five years ago, when Sam went to college the first time, Dean would have ended every night with a bar fight. He had carried around a lot of anger back then. He had been hurt at his brother for leaving him, pissed at his dad for pushing him out the door. But mostly, he had been disgusted by himself and the deep, bone-aching fear of being alone that permeated his everyday life.

This time around, at the end of the night he would casually thank whoever he was playing, take his last swig of beer and walk out of the bar without looking back. He could no longer summon up the rage or pain to remind himself that he was still alive. His heart was dead. It was only a matter of time before his body fell in line.

Once he had enough money, he purchased the best laptop he could find at the electronics store. There was a Virgin Records next door, and he stood outside the automatic doors for the longest time, listening to the rhythmic swish and watching people walk in and out. From where he stood he could see a display of stickers, and briefly he thought of buying some to send to Sam, but in the end he just walked away.

He cruised back to Bobby's at fifty miles an hour, afraid that if he pushed the beat up van any faster, it would fly apart on the road. He drove up around lunch time and set the laptop on the kitchen table with a thump.

"You have Sam's address." It wasn't a question. Dean knew that Bobby had been talking to Sam almost daily. No doubt they were comparing notes on Dean, but he didn't care.

Bobby looked up from the fridge where he was contemplating the makings of a sandwich. He lifted a shaggy brow as he looked at his houseguest.

"Yeah."

"Send this to him why don't ya?"

Dean made it to the backdoor before Bobby replied.

"Why don't you?"

Dean paused, the screen door braced open while he looked out at the twisted piles of rusted metal cars in front of him. Though summer was drawing to a close, the sun was still hot on his face, and sweat rolled down his hard jaw.

"It's better this way."

"For who?" Bobby sounded disgusted, but Dean couldn't bring himself to care.

"Sam."

Dean stepped outside, letting the door slam behind him with a decisive crack.

8888

A month later, Bobby dug up a hunt up in Red Lodge, Montana. There were reports of cattle mutilations and recently a murder of a young girl. Bobby thought that it might be a chubracabra, but he wasn't convinced. Dean was more than happy to go. Bobby kept giving him angry sideways looks that made him antsy. By now the Impala was repaired, and purring like a beautiful woman in love. He floored the pedal on the open road, listening proudly as she roared down the blacktop. He made a stab at being happy, but when he grinned and glanced over at the passenger seat his face collapsed. He dropped back down to the speed limit as he drove down the empty road, windows rolled up and the radio silent.

He met a man in Red Lodge. They killed some fangs, bonded over beer and headed back to Dean's room to plot. Dean listened to Gordon's sad story of his sister and sympathized. The man asked him about his family and Dean told him his parents were dead. He thought of Sam, happy and chasing the dream in California, but couldn't bring himself to mention him.

Gordon left late with a promise to be back in the morning so they could check out some potential nests together. Dean intended to turn in for a couple hours of sleep, but he was jumped before he had the chance. Bound and blindfolded he was taken out to a farmhouse, where he had a very interesting talk with a pretty vampire girl. He didn't pay her much mind, and it wasn't until later when Gordon was standing over her, torturing her with dead man's blood that Sam's voice chimed up in his head.

Gordon had her tied to a chair, looking pale and helpless, just like any other woman Dean had tried to save through the years. Every time Gordon stabbed her with the knife coated in blood, black spider veins would crawl under her skin, and she would moan like a wounded animal deep in the back of her throat. Occasionally, she would crack open her swollen eyelids and her dark eyes would glitter tearfully from behind her lashes. She never once asked Dean for help, and for some reason that made him feel like the lowest kind of bastard.

"You know, she said that they were the ones behind the cattle mutilations. She tried to tell me that they don't drink human blood anymore."

Gordon was grinning down at Lenore, with an open, white smile that made Dean's stomach sour. When he spoke, Gordon's chocolate eyes rolled over towards him, and Dean could see the whites of his eyes were starting to yellow around the edges. Too many long nights hunting and drinking were taking their toll on the man.

"You think a leopard can change its spots? You think a predator can suddenly settle down and play good little house cat? She's nothing but an animal. She's lying if she says otherwise, and I can prove it."

Gordon stabbed the blood-coated blade deep into the wooden table he was standing beside and pulled out a ten inch Bowie. Before Dean could protest, Gordon held out his arm over Lenore's head and sliced a nice clean cut over his forearm. Dean watched with a start of concern as fresh blood dripped onto the tortured vampire's face, Gordon smiling madly the entire time.

She bucked as soon as the droplets struck her. Her face contorting with raw hunger as her fangs descended. She opened her mouth, extending her tongue, trying to snatch the blood out of the air as it fell. At the last moment she turned away, her face smoothing out, her fangs hiding themselves behind her pink gums.

"No," she moaned, low and tight. Dean would have thought it was a ploy if she tried to look at him with even an ounce of pleading, but instead she closed her eyes tightly, averting her face as if she was ashamed at her own weakness.

Gordon looked perplexed for a moment, but he shrugged it off quickly and picked up his previously abandoned knife. Dean took an almost involuntarily step forward.

"Do you think your sister would have wanted this? This isn't the fang that killed her."

Where did those words come from? They were something that Sam would say, not him. Dean was a hunter. That's what he did, without compassion or remorse. John had taught him to hate every evil sonofabitch on the planet and to kill them as quickly as he could. And he did. It was never his place to question his father's teachings. But Sam did. Sam questioned their father nearly every damned day of his life. Sam was the one who thought about stupid things, like what kind of person a vengeful spirit was before they died. He would read their terrible history, sympathizing with the abuse that made them helpless in life and so angry in death.

"My sister? You think that filthy fang killed her? No, he turned her, man. Made her into a monster just like him. So I tracked her down and I killed her."

Dean's entire body stiffened as if he had been struck. Even Lenore, as far gone as she was, went still in her chair. Her lashes fluttered, and Dean knew that she was praying for an easy death.

"You did what?" Dean tried to force the words out demandingly between his cold lips, but they were breathed out in a soft whisper instead. His heart thumped irregularly in his chest, and he wondered if it was possible to have a stroke just from pure shock.

"She wasn't my sister anymore, man. She was a thing, a fang. She was nothing more than a monster."

"She was your sister." This time Dean's words were strong and forceful. His shock passed, and in its wake was a blaze of white hot anger. From out of nowhere, Dean tackled Gordon, taking him to the ground smoothly. Dean straddled him, rising up to punch him repeatedly in the face.

"You don't kill family. You just don't." Dean slammed his fist into Gordon's nose, ignoring the spray of blood. "No matter what. No matter how evil they are. How changed. How possessed." Dean wrapped his hands around Gordon's collar, tugging his upper body off the floor, so he could scream into his face. "You just don't shoot them. You save them. You help them. You keep your family together no matter what." Dean head-butted Gordon in his already broken nose, releasing the man so he could collapse back onto the floor. Still in the throes of fury, Dean hit him again and again.

With every punch, Dean spat out all the poison that had been building inside of him. Gordon tried to block the blows, his eyes screwed up tight so he wouldn't have to see the fury that was etched over Dean's face. He regained his equilibrium, bucking Dean off, and using his bulkier strength to send the leaner man into a china cabinet.

Dean heard the crash of broken glass, and he covered his head with his arms as it rained down on him. A few of the shards sliced his ribs, but there was no real damage, and he was scrambling to his feet as Gordon was.

The black man snatched his Bowie up off the table and Dean cast him a narrowed look. Dean was unarmed, except for his .45 in his belt, but he didn't need it. He had already seen Gordon fight, and he knew he could take the man easily, armed with a knife or not.

Gordon slashed the blade at Dean's belly and he jumped back to avoid the blow. As the man followed through, Dean wrapped his steely fingers around Gordon's wrist, squeezing tightly until he dropped the knife. Gordon huffed, and used his greater weight to ram Dean into the nearest wall.

Dean could feel his spine pop as he collided with wooden wainscoting that caught him across his lower back. He grimaced, but didn't lesson his grip on Gordon's coat labels. He anchored himself on the other man, using Gordon's weight against him, as he slammed his knee into his groin.

Gordon groaned as his knees buckled. Dean kept him upright with one hand fisted in his jacket as he punched Gordon across the face, until he felt his cheek bone crunch and saw white fragments of teeth fly out between his loose, bloody lips.

Dean hauled the moaning man back towards the chairs, efficiently tying him down with his own rope. He then hurried over to Lenore, quickly untying her and hauling her up into his arms. Outside on the porch he was met by Ely and another man, who were coming home after packing up the rest of their clan. Their murderous looks had Dean backing towards the door, but a few quick words from Lenore defused the situation.

Later, he thought that maybe he should have killed Gordon, but even though he was half-way across the country, Sam was still a pain in Dean's ass. Little Sammy wouldn't approve of his big brother killing a human, and something in Dean honored that, even when he couldn't bring himself to honor his promise to always be there for Sam. Dean left Gordon tied up, and called someone three days later to let him go.

Dean thought he would never see Gordon again. Dean thought wrong.

8888

Dean drove two states over and stopped at a dive bar two hours before closing. He bypassed his customary mug of beer and bought an entire bottle of Jack instead.

Snagging the bottle off the bar by the neck, he found the darkest corner of the room, and slumped into the torn, red vinyl booth. He clanked the shot glass and bottle down on the scarred table, pouring himself a drink before they even fully settled. Something hard jabbed into his hip and he shifted, digging into his pocket to pull out his cell phone as he took a drink.

He dropped it onto the table with a clatter, pouring himself another four fingers of whiskey. He shot it back with a hiss, shuddering at the hot slide of alcohol that slithered down into his belly. He sat there for a long time, listening to the subdued chatter of customers as they started spilling out of the bar to head home. He stared at the phone, only taking his eyes off it to belt another shot. Occasionally, he would pick it up to scroll through this contact list, pausing on Sam's name every time.

He desperately wanted to call his little brother. He had the overwhelming urge to share everything that he had learned in the last couple of days with Sam. Dean knew that his little brother would be thrilled to know that there were vampires out in the world that were fighting their evil natures and subsiding on cattle blood. Sammy got off on that shit. Proof that you control who and what you are, no matter your genetics or pre-disposition. Nothing was evil, unless it wanted to be so or was driven to madness. At least that was what Sam thought.

Dean needed to know if Sam was doing okay and if he was settling into his new schedule. Gordon's rant had disturbed him in a way Dean hadn't thought possible since their father died. Dean was certain that he had burned out the part of himself that felt emotion. He was comfortable being a shell. He wanted nothing more than to be empty.

Dean would like to tell Sam about his fight with Gordon. He'd make a big production of it too. Dean would make himself sound almost super-human, then they would laugh about it together. Sam would know that his big brother was full of shit, but he would appreciate it all the more, because he knew that Dean did it to make him laugh.

Dean's hand clenched around the cell, his eyes blurring until the name on the display went from Sam to Sammy. Most of all, Dean wanted to get into the Impala and drive all the way to Stanford so he could make sure that his little brother was protected.

Gordon's callous disregard for his baby sister pierced something deep inside Dean. For the first time he thought maybe he had made a mistake. That he was wrong to push Sam away. All it would take was one phone call and Dean could fix it. Sam would welcome him back, Dean knew that he would. His little brother wouldn't even make a big deal about it. Sam liked to talk, but he knew when to shut the hell up too. That was one of the things Dean liked about his little brother.

The bartender bellowed for last call, jerking Dean out of his dark thoughts. He shut off his phone, pocketing it with a grimace.

It wouldn't matter if Sam did welcome Dean. There was no place for him in his little brother's life. It was better this way. Sam was at school where he belonged and Dean was hunting just like his father would have wanted.

There was no going back for either of them. Destiny's paths weren't meant to be changed.

TBC…