As always, many thanks to Starliteyes for looking this over for me.

Broken

Chapter Seven

It turned out it was that bitch Meg, back from the dead. Looked like it really was possible to claw your way out of Hell. She was pretty pissed about it too. All Dean could think was if she had chipped a nail while she was crawling her way to the surface. She always struck him as a vain little bitch.

As soon as he offed Gordon, she was on the phone, cooing at him in Sam's voice. It was enough to make him vomit all the liquor and bile in his stomach onto the hard-packed dirt. She told him what a good little hunter he was, how proud Sammy was of him, how he was going to be the shiniest trophy on her wall.

She loved to talk. Sometimes she called him ten times a day, just to hear him breathing on the other end of the line. She threatened and cajoled, but mostly she just gloated in Dean's ear, right up until she walked into his trap.

Catching her wasn't all that hard. It seemed a demon making collect calls with a silver blood-filled chalice wasn't all that technologically savvy. She had no idea once she switched on Sam's phone, Dean could use the GPS chip inside to track him.

Dean eventually found her holed up in an abandoned motel, nothing more than just a strip of dilapidated rooms, just outside Waco. The roof was falling in and most of the sideboards were stripped, but it offered just enough shelter from the torrential downpour that was drowning the Texas desert in flashfloods.

Dean sauntered into the room, pushing aside a rotting door hanging by one hinge, and completely caught her off guard. She was in the center of the room, a few candles lit, while reading a tarot spread. For a second, Dean's mind blanked out. He wanted to laugh out loud at the vision of his brother, crouched on his knees studying a couple of cardboard cards like they were the map to his destiny. But then he remembered it wasn't Sam he was looking at. It was Meg, with her ice-black eyes, and her yawning grin of pleasure at seeing him.

"Wow, Winchester. You are a half decent hunter," she purred, and Dean felt the bile in his stomach stir.

"You don't know the half of it, bitch."

Dean had a shotgun leveled at Sam's chest, but Meg didn't seem to mind.

With her attention on Dean it gave Bobby the opportunity to sneak in behind her. Half the wall was missing in the bathroom and it was as easy as skinning a possum for him to walk right in. He planted a round of rock salt between Sam's shoulder blades, knowing the blast wouldn't permanently damage the boy, but it completely incapacitated Meg for a time. It gave them a chance to sketch out a Devil's Trap on the bare floor which had long since been stripped of carpeting.

Tied to a chair and looking helpless, Dean could almost believe he was looking at his baby brother. That somewhere along the line a horrible mistake had been made, but then she began to speak and shivers ran down his spine.

"Secretly he always liked it when you called him Sammy. He knew it was your way of telling him you loved him. But after he shot daddy you never called him Sammy again. Ergo, big brother must not love him. Oh, the misery of it all."

She laughed, and Dean backhanded her so hard that he split Sam's lip. He wanted to feel bad about it, but mostly he wanted to get out his knife and see if he could dig right through his brother's sternum and oust the bitch whom was bunkered down in Sam's soul.

"You know, he hunted a bit, all by himself. Found a werewolf in San Francisco. He tried to save her. Tried to prove to himself he wasn't completely useless. Of course he failed. Sammy always was a loser when it came to hunting. He had to shoot her through the heart like dear old dad."

"Shut up."

Dean couldn't stand the look of malicious pleasure etched over Sam's face. It made him sick to his stomach to see it. He hated that she knew Sam had been alone. Dean hadn't been there to protect his little brother like he should have.

"He sat for days in her tiny apartment, that girl rotting on the floor while he stared at your name on his phone. He wanted so badly to call you, to beg you for help, but he couldn't because he was Sam now, not Sammy. Sam didn't have a big brother who loved him. Sam was all on his lonesome."

"I said shut the fuck up, you bitch."

He knew that she was lying. She had to be. If Sam really needed him—really needed him, he would have called and Dean would have been there in an instant. Surely Sam had known that. There was no way his brother believed he hated him that much. It just wasn't possible.

Was it?

Dean threw some holy water on her and she screamed, but it ended with Sam laughing. For a minute, Dean thought he was in a diner in Texas and he fought the urge to check to make sure his hand wasn't glued to the flask he was holding. He clenched his empty fist and sneered at the demon before glancing over at Bobby.

Bobby was staring at Sam with horrified blue eyes, his lips barely moving over the exorcism. Maybe Dean should have known then that something was wrong, but all he wanted was for his Sammy to be back.

"Eventually he scrapped her cold, stiff corpse off the floor and threw her into the tub, along with the sheets he had fucked her on. Burned her to a crisp while he barfed in the toilet." Meg laughed again, but all Dean could see was his baby brother.

"It was so easy to slip inside after that. All that misery and heartache. His despair all but opened the door for me."

Dean flung more water at her, but she just laughed and began her own Latin incantation. The room rumbled and a crack raced along the aged plaster. The floor buckled, boards splintering and cracking until the Devil's Trap collapsed. She flung herself from the chair, fraying the ropes like they were straw. She landed on Dean, using all the strength of Sam's arm and just a little more from the depths of Hell to pound Dean's face in. He was pinned beneath her, staring up at his baby brother's face twisted into a snarl of hate, and for just a moment he thought he saw Sam peering out from behind oil-slick eyes.

All that hate. All that bitterness and sorrow. It wasn't all Meg's. Some of it was Sam's too. Dean had done that to his little brother. He had pushed Sam away so forcefully he had fallen back on the only things he knew. Anger. Hurt. Regret.

She almost brought the whole place down before Bobby figured out she had bound herself into Sam's body. One minute she was pulling back Sam's fist and the next moment she was flat on her back writhing in pain. Once the binding link was broken she turned tail and ran faster than a cottontail being chased by a tundra wolf. Dean didn't care, because she was gone, and he had Sam.

The second she expelled herself, bright rivers of blood began to gush from Sam's mouth and his white shirt blossomed crimson flowers. Sam had been hunting Hunters for three months, and they weren't the kind of men who missed when they pointed a gun.

Dean gathered up Sam, rocking him gently in his arms. Tears ran down his face, and for once he didn't try to hide them away. He looked down at his brother's upturned face, and Sam's cloudy, hazel eyes watched Dean's tears slide down his cheeks.

"Dean." His name was soft and wet, and it was carried on another wave of blood.

"Shush, little brother. Don't speak. It's going to be okay."

Bobby was off calling an ambulance, but Dean knew that his words were a lie even as he spoke them.

"Thanks for getting me. I was so afraid that I would never be free. The things she made me do," Sam whispered distantly.

Dean dropped his head until their brows met. He didn't have the fortitude to tell his little brother that if he had known he would have never expelled Meg. He would rather his brother be possessed and still have hope than dead and cold in his arms.

"I'm sorry, Dean. I'm sorry about Dad. I wish I had never done it."

Dean's arms tightened around Sam, and he clenched his eyes closed.

"No, Sammy. You were right. The yellow-eyed bastard needed killing and you were strong enough to do it. I need you to know, Sam. I never blamed you for that. Ever." Dean opened his eyes as he spoke, making sure he punctuated every word with a direct stare into his brother's eyes.

Sam's eyes darkened, reflecting such a mountain of pain and despair that Dean's long dead heart gave a wail of remorse at the sight.

"Then why did you send me away, Dean? Why?"

"Because it was the only thing that I could give you. It was what you needed."

"No, Dean. I needed you. You could have come with me. We could have stayed together."

Sam shuddered and when he coughed droplets of his blood splattered Dean's cheeks. Dean felt the warm spray and wondered if his tears would wash it away. Sam reached up a big hand, curling his fist into the label of Dean's leather jacket. He held onto him, as if by grounding himself he could stay in the mortal plane just a little while longer.

"You're right, Sammy. I should have come with you." Dean could barely speak, his throat was so tight.

The pain in Sam's eyes receded and his fingers uncurled themselves from Dean's jacket. Sam pressed his hand flush to Dean's chest against his pounding heart.

"You would have loved it. College chicks for days," Sam gasped, the air rattling from his lungs. His hand flopped into his lap, his eyes dulling a bit before extinguishing completely.

"Yeah, Sammy. I would have loved it."

When Bobby walked into the room to announce that the ambulance was two minutes out, he found Dean wrapped around Sam, his face buried in his brother's chest, his rounded shoulders quaking with his sobs.