When love hurts in the end

-Tag to Beat the Devil- The chapter title is taken from the song that inspired it. It's called "Out of My Head" by John Newman

The day came to save Jack and Mom. Sam had never had that much hope, in all their waking years. Dean's hopes were too fragile and his fears too steep to say a word of protest. He dared not let the truths come near him. Love would hurt him in the end. It was all he knew.

He swallowed it down that night when Sam pledged they would die together this time. It couldn't happen any other way. Dean would not survive it a second time. He remembered the last time. The last time Sam had thrown himself into a fire to save his brother and the world. The one and only fire that Dean had not pulled him out of. Dean remembered the pain of the days that followed. The first 16 weeks that ended with Lisa hospitalizing him for alcohol poisoning. Waking up in the hospital forgetting that he even had a brother.

He'd shut out being lonely by stepping outside of his head for a while. Dean had never told Sam. He just kept pushing it down. He remembered.

"Do you know me?" Lisa touched Dean's hand.

"My girlfriend, I hope?"

"Yes, baby."A strange feeling of hope in her voice. Her shining eyes. This could be any woman that he wanted. Dean didn't care. She was here with him now with his side pain making him like a gutted animal. She was here and that may as well make her an angel.

"Do you miss anyone right now, Dean? Is there anything making you sad? You can tell me…"Lisa smiled. Why she had asked that Dean would not remember for a few days.

"Honestly, Leese…" Her name came back. "I'm so outta my head right now... how would I know?"

It wasn't fair to compare his grief to Sam's cage, but he did. Dean knew that his brother's soul had been skinned over and over again by Lucifer's claws. Sam forgot when he'd charged into this Apocalypse world that he and Dean were one soul. That they'd shared a heaven once. That last time when the Apocalypse had hunted them down, they were both tortured in Hell. Dean's hell had just been right there in his apple pie life. Sam fell in a Cage and Dean slipped down a bottle, and both of them were damned.

For all the crap said and done between them, there was one binding cord that Fate would need to cut at the same time if they had any chance of retaining humanity after death. Dean didn't care what happened to him. God, he knew Sam was right. This would end bloody and bad. He just prayed, he begged all of destiny to not let it be the same for Sam.

Sam had forgotten that putting himself in any kind of raw danger was like standing Dean in front of a firing squad.

When that vamp's nest came for Sam, Dean lost every empire that he could have ever built and every gospel ever written. Every time that Dean lost Sam was the same. He was in a broken home alone, no matter how many people were around him. No matter who needed saving or what needed killing, he would have no purpose. No memories to cling to that could bring back the vibrant color of that mutual life.

Dean dragged his own dead body down the road looking for Mary. Had to save Mary or Mom or whoever that woman was to this dead man he had once been. He couldn't remember because he couldn't remember any other love. Why would he love anyone? Love hurt in the end.

Love was like hellfire as he remembered his brother in a thousand smiles. A thousand tears. In heavy fisted fights, and the lonely silence of splitting up, and the laughter and forgiveness of coming back together again.

To shut out feeling lonely, Dean left his head behind in that cave with Sam. He kept walking away from that spot, heedless of the danger he was walking into. He was a tin soldier on the road to another pointless war. There was nothing to fight for. It was just getting by now.

Beaten and broke, he only moved like a puppet to fight the people charging him and the other silhouettes standing around him. He knew that they were Cas and Gabe and Maggie. Friends and people he's saved, maybe. Or ragdolls being escorted by a tin soldier to nothing and nowhere important.

His mother. He saw her finally. She was beautiful. Like a star in the winter sky. And Dean's eyes followed that light, that hope and grace that had been Sam's gospel. Sam's lost gospel and martyrdom by the grace of God.

Dean didn't feel Mary hugging him. She was hugging someone else. An imaginary son in her imaginary world where Sam was still alive. She wasn't hugging the tin soldier who was out of his mind.

"Dean...Where's Sam?" Mary looked up into Dean's face.

And that's when he felt it. The tears running down his imaginary face. His weak paper eyes lifting up to look away back where he came wondering the same thing. The love like hot wax pouring down his paper face, putting a seal on that love letter, that suicide note he was spelling out with expressions. Honestly, all over again, he was so out of his head, how would he know? It hurt. That was all. Love. He understood love only one way. He equated it entirely as it turned around Sam.

No one else understood that. They called it sick or weird or unhealthy. How to explain it? How come they never asked him how he really felt? Even Sam didn't know. His one-world reference and center of gravity came down to the boy he'd pulled from a fire. The truest, purest bond he'd ever known. His family. The love of his life.

Why did he love Sam so much? Why did he keep allowing his heart to collapse under the weight of loving him that much of liking it and needing it to be that way? Love hurt in the end. God, it hurt.

Mary's face moved with whispers of understanding. Dean was caving on the inside all over again.

Into his mind flashed the memory of Lucifer trying to kill him.

It's okay, Sammy. I'm here. I'm here. I'm not going to leave you…

It hurt like that all over again.

It's okay, Dean. It's all going to be okay…

Sam standing at the mouth of the hole, accepting Death. He'd beat the devil.

I'm not going to leave you…

Dean's heart twisted in a coil and bit him like an adder remembering the look in Sam's eyes right before he jumped. Because today he had left him. He'd had no choice. And Sam had died alone. And that loneliness coiled back and twisted around Dean's neck and garoted him for the sin.

Love always hurt him in the end.

Here I go again, Sammy…

Dean felt himself falling. Back down that genie bottle. Back into the oblivion of unnatural plans. Like going after his brother's body. Like dying with him in the dark.

Something that would get him out of his head, so he could forget. But how immense, that love. Beyond what could be forgotten.

His heart twisted and broke like a thousand stained glass windows. Dean was selling his soul again, on Alistair's rack again, in the teeth of Hellhounds again, under Lucifer's fists again, begging for Sam's life in a church again, making a deal with Billie again….Every tragic ending that Dean fell into and every sacrifice that he had ever made bled into his heart again. But he was out of his head and no one was going to ask him how he was. He was a champion when it came to walking on the waves of all the blood his heart kept bleeding.