23

Sam stopped beside the coffin. There was a pile of dirt, a shovel, and a small puddle of vomit.

Dean was asleep inside the coffin. If it weren't for that he had taken a curled up position—not lying flat—Sam would probably be more panicked than he is now. Or maybe not, Sam didn't know if he was capable of feeling more afraid.

Dean was lying dead still, the inside of the coffin was stained with his blood all over. Is he still alive—he's in a coffin—is he still alive?

Sam took a step closer, he didn't realized he was holding his breath, crouching down, he said: "Dean?" He brushed his fingers against his brother's shoulder, it was solid, the body temperature was slightly low, but at least it was still warm, "Dean, wake up."

After a little while, which was already the longest Sam could bear, Dean finally opened his eyes. It seemed like he was in a daze, his lips moved: "Sammy?"

Sam immediately dragged him up and held him into his arms. His arms closed tightly around Dean and his heart was pounding wildly against his chest.

Dean gave him a slight push. He looked around, and his current situation began to slowly come back to him: he's not dead.

Sam took off his jacket and put it over Dean. Sam asked him: "Can you walk?" He tried to pick him up, Dean refused: "I... just gonna sit here for another while."

Sam didn't like this scene, he didn't want Dean to sit in a coffin, not even his own, especially not his own.

Dean asked him: "How's the engagement?"

"Not exactly good, but it's done." Sam said, "Don—Amelia's ex husband, he's a twigs and twine doll, he was lurking around me all these time waiting to set us up. I'm so sorry I didn't discover this sooner. I was way too unwary."

"As long as you're okay." Dean said, "Amelia? She's fine?"

"She's fine. You've already gotten rid of the dolls, and she wasn't the target anyways. She's perfectly safe." Sam said reassuringly, then double-checked with him, "The dolls were gotten rid of right? No one's after you anymore."

"You're the only one who's after me." Dean tried to make a joke. He told Sam briefly about Benny and Crowley. Sam drew a breath, "I'm so sorry, about Benny. But that wasn't your fault, okay, Dean, you can't save everyone, you know."

Dean was too familiar with this whole speech. He couldn't tell at the moment what he had done wrong again that he needed to hear this "you can't save everyone" thing.

Sam noticed that Dean wasn't quite in the present moment, he must be exhausted, he needs medical help ,now. "Listen, we gotta go to the hospital, Dean, you're hurt, we can't just stay here like this."

Dean nodded heavily. He brushed away Sam's hand, "Okay. Gimme the car keys."

"You can't drive!"

"I just drove from Catskills, I can drive under any circumstance, trust your big brother." Dean smiled with all his teeth.

"No, I'm driving." Sam clenched the car keys tight in his pocket. For a while they had a standoff, then Sam pulled him out carefully, using his hands as pads to protect Dean's back, "I'll go to the hospital with you. Then we're gonna come up with a good story to tell the police, use your imagination, Dean, don't sleep, keep your spirits up and stay with me."

Sam was more worried than when he first found him. It felt as if he was watching Dean flowing out of his body, like a leaking balloon. He was about to vanish. Sam's throat was seized by this indefinable fear.

Dean patted him on his shoulder: "You should go, man." He could barely stand, "You should go home, I'll...what is it?" he looked at worrying Sam and remembered , "hospital, right, hospital, I'll drive baby to the hospital... you're not unwilling to give her back to me are you?"

"I'm not leaving you here, Dean." Sam half-hugged him. Dean was even more stubborn than when he was wide awake, it took him a long time before he responded with a muffled grunt. Sam wrapped Dean in his jacket gently and took him towards the direction of the Impala. Perhaps he should let him stay here while he go and bring the car around. Sam stopped: "You wait here." He sat Dean on the ground carefully.

"Where're you going?"

"I'm getting the car."

"You're leaving?"

Before Sam had the chance to answer, Dean lifted his arms and made that "I knew it" expression, "Of course you're leaving... I know, I let you go... to where again? That fiancee of yours, Ame, Amelia." He nodded to himself, "That's right, you should go—leave, you should leave."

Sam was about to step away, he stopped, he retrieved his step, now he couldn't walk away to anywhere. He waited for Dean to stop his long line of mutter, then he held his shoulders firmly: "I'm not going, Dean, I won't leave you."

He looked into his eyes, promised.

Dean's eyelashes fluttered as if Sam had said something that was difficult to understand. He smiled slowly, like a response to a joke, the kind of laugh you gave reluctantly when someone else told a bad joke that wasn't funny but you didn't want to harm their feelings.

Sam lowered his head a little bit more, he moved closer to Dean, so that he could make sure that the expression Dean gave just now wasn't a sign of him admitting his own mistake.

Dean was frowning, he corrected him: "You will, of course you'll leave."

"What? No—"

"Grow up, be a big kid, Sam." Dean made a gesture with his hands, "I thought you know, it's kind of—an understanding, between us."

Sam didn't know what to say.

"You've been running away from me the whole time. You left home, left dad, left hunting." Dean revealed a fact, "leaving is something you'd do."

Even until much later, what Dean said this night still shook Sam. This wasn't like when you've been unjustly accused and you feel the need to rebut with all your might, or the kind of wild reaction villains give when people are finally told who they really are. Sam was simply shock that Dean had thought of him like that the whole time—and that he had indeed acted like that the whole time.

Sam froze. Suddenly the hands he had put on Dean's shoulders couldn't support his brother anymore.

Sam reminded himself to breathe, breathe in, the faint smell of blood, not even the faintest smell of pie, breathe out, his lungs became crisp and hard crust that would take only the slightest movement to break it.

Dean was still talking: "Stanford, you left, four whole years. It was already my fault that time when I pulled you back into this, I should've let you continue staying there, you shouldn't have let your apple pie life be interrupted. For a while even I thought that you've gotten used to hunting, that you could come back, that's what I told myself. You came back, we overcame it all, even though dad's dead, even though I went to hell, but we still stopped the Apocalypse. I really thought you wanted this too. But no, you just sacrificed your own will to do the right thing. Look what happened after I'm gone, without me tying you down, you immediately went back onto that right track you had gotten off—you didn't even bothered to look for me, you don't want this kind of life at all, I shouldn't have dragged you down. Of course you deserve to live properly like anyone else, you've done a better job than all of them, so, you should leave."

He had a bunch of words on his mind, just waiting for the moment to burst their banks. Dean had thought that he would never say all these in his entire life, it would make him look like a mournful widow, but he couldn't help but to say it while Sam could still hear them. He would have left anyway when he was done talking, for the first time in his life he could finally do something regardless of all consequences.

Sam looked extremely hurt. His eyes were now glistening with tears, anguish of being wronged, complete disbelief, he didn't know where to start.

He digested Dean's words for a moment before he asked: "You want me to go back to Amelia? To be a lawyer, not a hunter?"

"'Staying is good, leaving is bad.' These were all dad's cliches." Dean wetted his dry lips, "Listen, there's no right or wrong here, I'm not blaming you, Sammy, I'm just saying, you can do this. And now I've accepted it completely, that's why I didn't come looking for you after I came back." In fact even if Sam had showed even the slightest intention of trying to look for Dean, at that time, at any time, Dean would show up immediately. He didn't mean to hide from him, he just respected his brother's choice. Dean didn't go on.

"It's that what you think? I'm sorry, about not looking for you." Sam sighed, "I'm just tired of stepping into a bigger trouble after we've solved one, like we always did. We never really saved anything, we were just slowly decaying. And the biggest trouble I've been through is just, it's only—you, you died, Dean, at least that was the case for me. You vanished, and clearly not to some paradise. I was never really able to rescue you from death: it was dad who made a deal with the demon, it was Cass who raised you from perdition, and all I did was going after those demons who wouldn't help me at all and thus did things even more wrong. I couldn't do that again. I also had no confidence that I would get you out. And you were dead, Dean. I was without you, so I couldn't do anything. I really was a mess, I thought that was the end. It's a stupid thing to let you live while I go die, and the only thing more stupid than that was me carrying on living after you died."

"You didn't just not look for me, I'm not blaming you," Dean stressed again, "but you even gave up hunting too didn't you? What you really want to do is to be a normal person. You get the freedom that you've never had before: normal life. I'm not taking that away again."

Sam shook his head, "I went to law school, got a job, met a decent girl, and settled down. That's because it's the best way I know to keep me alive. There was no ways for me to continue hunting without you, that's a dangerous job, first of all I would easily die, and not to mention, I wouldn't be able to control myself not to seek my death deliberately." Sam tried to tell him, "I lived, only because I thought you wouldn't want me to be dead."

Dean was thinking chaotically. He thought that they had reached an agreement a long time ago about Sam's actions, that this was an occasion to let go, but Sam was being aggressive, he would always fight and contradict against his elder brother. Dean frowned. His little brother was an incredibly articulate lawyer.

Bitter wind blew through the narrow gap between them, Sam paused, he confessed: "What supported me to live was, as each day passes, I'm one step closer to death. I'm one step closer to you."

There was cool-toned sadness in Dean's green eyes, it was almost guilt, which wasn't the reaction Sam expected to get when he was apologizing. "You shouldn't blame yourself, you did nothing wrong, man, you can enjoy all these."

"I'm not—defending myself, how are you still not getting this, the reason I didn't look for you isn't that you're unimportant, god, no one in the whole world is more important that you, Dean."

"You're more important than me." Dean cut him short, "You need think seriously for yourself, okay, what's best for you."

Sam set his lips tight.

"You're just, because I'm your elder brother, so you think it's right to be with me, even if it means doing things you don't like. But we can live our separate lives, since the things we like are different, why not chose the smart way around it?"

Sam said feebly: "I like being with you."

"You like doing things normal people do, you like a stable life, I've been watching you, whatever you say to me, I know what you truly want."

"You don't know."

"Are we really gonna bring this up? You left and went to Stanford." Dean turned around to look at the gravestone, "And this, empty—I get it. Don't say no more."

Sam growled: "I did not leave you! And it isn't empty!"

He was even somewhat hysterical, as if he was back in his teenage years again, already given up trying to let his father and his big brother understand him, always justifying his actions when faced with pale truth.

Dean couldn't be more familiar with his anger. He widened the distance between them a bit, made his own summary: "You've moved on, Sam, I'm proud of you."

Sam's eyes were wide open, he was annoyed at Dean's i-don't-care attitude: "You call this 'moving on'? Try 'heartbroken'."

Dean pressed his fingers against his temples, his gaze rested on Sam's heaving chest, he payed no further attention to what Sam had said but turned to a new topic, or he was paying attention to what Sam had said and it just led his mind to the new topic. He looked up, directly into those wet eyes: "Sam, do you love me?"

Sam froze, his breath caught. He felt a wave of lightheaded dizziness.

"In the same way you love Amelia? In the same way you love a normal life?" A new expression came onto the tip of Dean's tongue, he asked with uncertainty, "In the same way I love you?"

It seemed that the weather just suddenly got even colder. Another gust of bitter wind whipped at Dean's ears, he heard Sam forcing himself to give an answer:

"No."

Dean coughed, Sam reflexively threw his arms around him, this hug Dean immediately broke free from: "I'll go to the hospital myself."

Sam wouldn't let go, Dean said tiredly: "You're out." He took the car keys out of Sam's pocket and turned away from him, "You're just gonna stand right where you are, and watch me go. Now I'm leaving too, don't blame yourself, this is my decision."

Until the lights of the Impala disappeared from his sight, Sam still hadn't moved even an inch, Dean had taken away his jacket, it's so cold today.

He muttered: "I'm out."

And that's the end of chapter 7 in the original work.

About the two sentences "You're out" and "I'm out" at the end of this section, I can't take credit for them myself, it was the author had written like a note in the original work. If I translate the the two Chinese sentences directly, "You're out" would mean "You leave" and "I'm out" would mean "I'm out of the game" :)

Also in this chapter Dean and Sam did a lot of talking, and I suspect the original author used a fair amount of sentences the characters had said in the show, trouble is that I can't remember them all in English, so if you're reading and come across a sentence that Dean or Sam had said in the show with the same meaning but had a different way of phrasing it, do let me know, I really appreciate it :) Thank you all for reading :)