Chapter Fifteen

February 2002

The shape-shifter shoved him down to the ground, and Sam wanted to get up and fight, but his knee still hurt from where it was jabbed against with a boot, enough for him to buckle back down if he tried to stand up too fast, and that wouldn't give him much of an advantage in the combat. He planned for a surprise kick to the groin or the stomach or sweeping him off his legs when he got close enough, which he'd have to do if he wanted to hurt him or kill him, considering he was unarmed.

Dean's carbon-copy rubbed his hands, hands completely like the real Dean's, rough and thin, with a wide, vicious grin on lips that looked like his. But that smile had never been Dean's, and it would never be. It made the shape-shifter almost look like somebody else for a few seconds.

"This is gonna be so much fun," he grinned, wrinkling his nose excitedly.

Sam shifted on the floor, on his elbows, head held up. He fought the urge to scramble away as the shape-shifter neared him and stood over him, tried not to remember all the times he had a shadow loom over him while he laid on the ground helplessly, bleeding and begging for no more.

"So you think of this poor pathetic bastard as a brother?" the shape-shifter asked, pointing at himself, and then laughed, throwing his head back, clapping his hands together. "Oh,hysterical. But he already has a brother, didn't you know? He doesn't need another one." He tilted his head, smiling sideways. "He doesn't need you."

Sam's heart clenched slightly, but he didn't show it. Didn't believe it. "Is that your idea of fun? Making up stories about the people you plagiarize?"

"Aw, you think I'm making this up," he cooed mockingly. "Well, why don't you ask him about all the stories then? Oh, and make sure it's bedtime when you do. He used to love reading little Adam books when it was sleepy time."

Sam swallowed, shifted his jaw. Somehow, giving a name made it sound less of a lie.

"Sam. Adam. Am, am. Coincidence? Hm…" fake-Dean said, scrunching his nose up thoughtfully. Sam wanted him to come closer, so that he could finally kick him where it hurt the most.

But when he did step forward, close enough to him to make his move, Sam found himself seized by curiosity, by questions. He couldn't bring himself to do anything just yet.

The shape-shifter kneeled before him on one knee, where he hung his elbow in a casual, easy pose, the other pressed on the ground.

"See, he only keeps you around," he whispered, leaning forward, eyes narrowed, as if he was telling some grave secret. "because of all the trips down memory lane you take him on. Your puppy eyes, your shy little smile, the bookworm act." Then he paused, looked him over with disgust, his mouth curling. "The way you're so fucking needy on him. It's gross. Oh, but he loves it. He loves it because it reminds him of his real little brother."

Sam inhaled shakily, still wondering whether he should believe him. But it no longer seemed like he was just playing around. Maybe he was still trying to mess with him, but it was with the worst kind: the truth. Maybe he was telling the truth.

"But what happens," he asked, inclining his head to the side in question, like he was trying to figure out a mystery, a puzzle, brows pinched. "when he finally sees through that illusion? Sees that you're not Adam? Will he feel bad for you, suffer your existence? Will he get sick of you and kick you out? This liability that he picked off some dirty carpet under the delusion that you were just like beloved little Adam?" He shifted his head to the side, the wild grin breaking out on his face through the seriousness, teeth bloody from where Sam punched him. "Or will he turn around and beat the shit out of you like your entire fucking family did?"

Sam's head was hazy with revelations and the sudden onslaught of doubt and hurt; at what the shapeshifter said about his family (but Dean always told him that they weren't his family. Not really. Because it should be earned). But mostly, it was about what it said about Dean. Was that true? Was Dean going to just leave him when he realized that he was just Sam? Worthless, pathetic, needy Sam? Was that why he ever kept him around?

It happened fast. He was wallowing in insecurities and fear, and it was stupid that he let himself be so affected, so lost in them, in the middle of a hunt. It was so, so stupid, but he did. And then there is a circle of pressure around his throat, tightening more and more, pushing into his windpipe and cutting off air to his nose and mouth and lungs, blood rushing to his face. He grappled against the hands clenching around his neck, hitting it as hard as his suffocating body could, half in his mind wondering why he was so stupid, and the other half just wanting to survive, wanting for this discomfort of hunger in his lungs to stop.

"What was it your daddy used to tell you? Oh right. Why don't you put everyone around you out of their misery, and die," fake-Dean says, grinning, squeezing tighter. "I don't want you, Sam. I just want Adam. But you're not him. You'll never be him."

And suddenly, in the lack of oxygen, in being on the edge of unconsciousness, trying to pull him in and in and in, it was Dean in front of him. The real Dean. There was no shape-shifter, and the breathlessness in his chest was also the sobs he was trying to hold in, the heartache that choked him.

Because Dean had never wanted him. He wanted someone he thought he was like.

And the saddest thing was, he didn't ache because Dean hadn't kept him around for who he was, but that he couldn't be who Dean wanted him to be.

And then it was all forgotten in the blackness that blanketed over him.

…

He came to with Dean's concerned face hovering him, and John's in the back. He glanced to the side, and there, a few feet away from him, was the monster who made his heart feel heavy, lying dead with a silver bullet in its head. He wished it never told him, and he could go back to the bliss of his obliviousness, back to being happy and light the way he'd been for the past year and a half, being reassured that he was wanted unconditionally.

But he knew now, and there was no going back. He knew it was never him that Dean wanted.

…

From the moment Sam got into the car, quiet and subdued, Dean knew that something was wrong. Something to do with the shape-shifter. He was alone in there with the thing for a long enough time to have said something shitty and horribly fucking untrue to Sam. Sam was a boy still healing from a lifetime of emotional wounds, which meant there was a lot to pick on, and that bastard must have carved into them again to have made Sammy look this sad and confused. Dean was determined to find out what it was, what that thing said, to put that look on the kid's face.

He opened his mouth, ready to bombard him with questions, when Sam mumbled something over the low music thrumming from the cassette player, indistinct and incoherent, clearly directed at him even though he was not looking at him at all.

"What?" Dean asked, brows furrowed, hands on the wheel clenched tightly.

"Adam," Sam said, louder and clearer and seizing Dean's heart with that one name, causing him to almost swerve the car into a tree.

But he just pulled the car up at the side, turned the engine off and turned back to Sam.

"The shape-shifter told me," Sam said softly. "He's... was your brother."

Dean stayed silent, and Sam turned his head to him, seeking clarification.

"Yeah," Dean said, cleared his throat when it cracked. "Yeah, he was. He... he is, I guess. I mean, him being dead doesn't stop him from..."

Sam smiled a little, but it also seemed too brittle. He glanced down at his hands, smile falling away. He looked back up.

"Tell me about him."

And Dean did.

Dean told him about the things he liked; turkey sandwiches and banana milkshakes and salads, dogs and books and research. He told him about how smart he was, how he was a little shy at times, how kind. How much he cared for people. Dean told him about all the ways he was good, and Sam listened and thought that the shape-shifter was wrong. He was nothing like Adam, because Adam was good and Sam wasn't. Adam was smart and kind. Sam fucked up all the time and got everyone hurt or killed, and he wondered how Dean ever saw someone like Adam in someone like him.

He wondered how long it would be until Dean realized all these things and decided it wasn't worth sticking around.

...

"He hung himself," Dean told him that night, while they were lying in bed, and John was snoring away on the couch.

Sam froze at that, at the quiet confession, so suddenly in the silence. He couldn't deny that it was one of the things he had wanted to ask, but after hearing what Dean had said, he wasn't really sure he wanted to know anymore. Still, Sam knew it was important to Dean, and so he turned over onto his side, facing Dean wholly, and let him know that he had his undivided attention.

"He, uh... he never liked the life...y'know?" Dean muttered, staring at the ceiling. He never faced Sam. "He always tried to keep us together. Didn't like it when we left him behind for a hunt, or when Dad left us for weeks. Whenever he tried to come with us, we told him he was too young, that he had too much to learn. When he tried to make us stay, we always told him that people were dying, that he didn't understand."

Dean paused, inhaled a shaky breath, and it was only then that Sam found out how good he was at keeping his voice steady, because he barely realized that he was on the verge of breaking until now. "It'd... it'd always end in a fight. He'd tell us that we didn't care about what he wanted, and we'd tell him that he was being selfish. Never felt good the whole ride after and..." His voice broke, and when Sam knew that if he tried looking closer, he'd find a glint of tears in his eyes under the moonlight streaming in. "And god, he was sad. He was so sad. All the time. And I... I think I always knew... but I told myself he was okay, because it was easier to believe that than to deal with the fact that... that he wanted out of this life, this family. And I couldn't do that for him, because I wanted to keep him with me. Because I was the selfish one."

"It wasn't your fault," Sam said softly.

"I could have stopped it," Dean told him quietly, breathing hard, as if he was trying to stop himself from falling apart. "If I had… if I had tried to help him… instead of just telling him to suck it up."

"If you'd known, Dean," Sam argued. "Adam was… Adam was depressed, and this life became too much for him. It wasn't you. That wasn't your fault. It wasn't anyone's fault."

Sam heard a choked-off sob, and he knew Dean wasn't going to hold himself together tonight after speaking about possibly one of the most painful events of his life.

"My mom died in a fire. I carried him out of our burning house, and I took care of him since," Dean whispered, his voice trembling, his gaze distant. "I just... I didn't wanna lose him, but I lost him anyway. I should have done better."

Sam knew, in that moment, that no words would be big or comforting enough to make this better. He got up from his bed, crossed the three feet distance in-between until he stood over him. He quietly sat down beside him, hesitantly reached out and gripped his shoulder, unsure if it would be welcome, or if it would make Dean feel even more vulnerable and he'd push him away.

But Dean didn't say anything, didn't respond, but didn't move away either. Sam took that as permission, and pulled his legs up on the bed, leaned back against the headboard and placed his hand over Dean's head.

He closed his eyes, and he didn't open them, even after he felt a weight fall against his hip. And he tried not to think about the fact that none of this would last anymore, this deep ache in his heart for someone who mattered to him (that he wouldn't matter to after a while), the peace and safety in the silence and Dean's soft breathing against his leg and even John's loud snores from the couch. None of it would last, and he wouldn't let himself watch it end, wouldn't watch Dean realize that Sam was not the little brother he loved and Sam was just worthless, stupid Sam and that he wasn't good enough to keep around anymore.

He thought of all the things his father and Rick used to say, that nobody could want him, that he should consider himself lucky that they even tried to keep him, and wondered if they were right all along.

…

Dean didn't miss the dark shadows under Sam's eyes, didn't miss the sound of rustling sheets every night, the quieter voice and the wavering gaze (right back to square one) and the fact that it had all started ever since Sam found out about Adam.

He didn't know how to approach the issue, still felt pained at the mere mention or thought of Adam, still a little ashamed at his breakdown a week ago.

He cleaned the guns on his bed and watched Sam from the corner of his eye. Sam was reading one of those books that Bobby gave him, a whole stack of them that Dean still remembered his blinding grin at.

Except he had been reading the same page for the past half an hour.

"So, uh…" Dean started, seeing a slight jerk in his peripheral vision of the indistinct shape that was Sam, wiping the gunpowder out of the gun. "Must be a real good page you're reading. Y'know, considering you haven't been able to take your eyes off of it for the last thirty minutes."

"Yeah, just, uh… just thinking," he mumbled, which Dean barely understood from such a distance.

"About what?"

"Nothing."

"Thinking about nothing? Alright. Don't know how that works, but alright."

That got a small smile out of Sam. Dean sighed, abandoned his task and stood up. "Sam," he said, moving to sit on the foot of his bed. "You're not sleeping. You're barely eating. Your face looks like you've just lost your puppy. All typical signs of Sam in Emotional Crisis. What's going on with you?"

"Just one of those times," Sam replied quietly, shrugging, his thumb flicking at the corner of his page.

Dean's eyes softened. "You remembering them again?"

"I… something like that, I guess," Sam said, eyes hidden down with his ducked head, lips pursed, as if he was holding something back.

Then he sighed, slowly closed the book and straightened up from the headboard. His palms pushed down on the bed as he scooted forward, and then brought them back in front of him. He tangled them together and stared at them, hovering over his crossed legs.

For a while, Dean just stared at him, not sure what he was really waiting for. Sam just sat there, seemingly preparing himself for something.

Then he pulled his head up, looked him right in the eye with a heaving breath, his own eyes wide and drooping with sadness and a small smile desperately trying not to show it. And there was that gratitude again, the one he saw when they celebrated his birthday in 2000 and when he taught him how to drive.

"Thank you," he said softly. Dean was going to ask for what, but Sam continued before he could. "For taking me in. For, uh… listening. Helping me. T-telling me that I… I'm not what they told me I was."

The room was silent, and Dean thought about how there was something in the way he spoke, in his words, the emotions on his face, a sense that Dean couldn't put his finger on. It wasn't a good sense, but he forced a smile anyway and messed up his hair, then reached out an arm to wrap it around his neck and pull him into a headlock. Sam laughed as Dean rubbed his head with his knuckles, his own fists coming up to shove at Dean's fists, and then Dean just held him close with his cheek against his shoulder and sat quietly and realized with a cold jolt that that something was that it sounded a hell of a lot more like a goodbye than a thank you.

…

Sam had made up his mind.

He knew it was stupid, making assumptions about what could be and leaving the best thing in his life behind based on it, thinking of the worst. But here, the worst was something that he wasn't sure he could bear, because even the thought of it made him feel like he was dying. He didn't know if he'd be able to take it, to keep himself together, if it came to happen in reality.

And the truth is, he couldn't see anything else happen.

And that was why he had to leave before he saw it. It was cowardly, running away from it the way he was, but he couldn't see that look in Dean's eyes, the same way his family once looked at him, like he was nothing. Or worse, like he was just trying to tolerate him after realizing the truth. Whatever Dean felt for him, that illusion of a bond between them, it was fragile, balancing on thin glass, and the moment it slipped, it'd be gone, because Sam was not Adam, and he would never be (never be as good as him), and there was something pitiful about his priorities, how he felt sad about that, that he couldn't be who he wanted him to be, more than anything else.

He glanced over at John snoring on the ragged, small couch, the man who had accepted him regardless of their fall-outs, despite his causing so many issues for him, let him come on hunts with them even after his first impression on him and had saved his life like he saved Dean's many times (maybe more out of virtue and righteousness than anything else, but still) throughout these years and even began smiling at him the way Dean did for the past one.

He watched Dean breathe in the hushed night, chest rising and falling, and a burn of longing washed over in his veins, remembering the serenity and security he had always felt with him, everything he had gotten to feel that he had never felt before. He moved towards him slowly, bag slung over his shoulder, lightly knelt down so that he didn't make a sound. He put a hand tenderly on Dean's head, fingers in his blonde hair, hoping he wouldn't wake him.

"Thank you again," he whispered. That was the best thing he could say, because everything Dean had given him in all these months, it was too big to put into words. "For everything."

He stood up, turned and strolled off to the door before he could change his mind. He pulled it open, and with one last look at the only place that had ever felt like home (hunting with John, at Dean's side, in the passenger seat with him as they drove past the world), he walked out.

Author's Note: All credits to ktdog1 for the shape-shifter idea, which was also a good place to reveal about Adam. Thank you so much, sweetie, for suggesting it! I loved it and started thinking about it the moment I read it.

Big thank you to:

StyxxsOmega

babyreaper

ktdog1 (Thanks again!)

Souless666 (I gave Dean and Adam the same background as in the show, with Mary being killed by YED in the fire and John becoming a hunter to avenge her. I should have mentioned this though, so I am very sorry. As for Adam, his death was mentioned in the very first chapter.)

jensensgirl3

ArtistKurai

Tie-Dyed Broadway

Ghostwriter

lenail125

SuperDragon (by the way, about the 'auroral' word. I did not use it in the way you are referring to. I found this word in dictionary . com, and if you look there, it has two meanings, one of which is 'of or like the dawn', and so this was what I meant, which was most likely not obvious. I apologize for this and have changed it to avoid causing further confusion)

AlElizabeth

for their lovely feedbacks! And thank you for any new tags to me or my story. I am very grateful to you all.