Never Look Back 20/21 part 1
Chapter Twenty
Animus
Spots swam before Dean’s eyes, but he didn’t care. He left the kids, turning his back on them and running full-tilt down the hill and into the quieted masses. The troops stood still, letting him push past, their eyes never leaving the hillside where the two bodies lay.
Dean barreled past Sarah’s limp form, dropping to his knees beside his brother.
Sam’s body lay at an odd angle, a tangle of long limbs. His eyes were closed, his face peaceful. His chest was still, unmoving, unable to draw any breath. Blood slicked his face in a single path from one nostril to his chin. Dean wiped it away.
The older hunter straightened the young man out, setting his arms and legs into a more natural position, blinking away the tears that burnt his eyes at the ease of the movements he was forcing on the body. There was no sign of protest, no sign of life.
There was no reason to hide the tears. He wouldn’t be judged, not here, not now. Not by these things, the ones that had brought death to his family. He had never asked for this.
He sobbed. He sobbed, because he knew that was a lie. He had asked for it, for Sam to take the lead, assume his rightful place, be all that he could be. Hell, he’d practically demanded it. And now his brother was dead.
Dean pulled Sam into his arms, cradling him in an unknown impersonation of the younger man barely four months before. But where Sam had had hope, Dean had none. He wasn’t special, couldn’t do anything more than a few parlor tricks, and even those left him reeling.
There was no way to reverse this. The crossroads demon was dead. The demon that held the contracts was dead. He couldn’t fix it. He could never fix it.
He felt a small hand on his shoulder, soft and young. He turned to see Ben standing behind him, tears streaming down a face that shouldn’t have experienced so much loss in such a small span of time, such a short life.
He had his son. His second son. The one that had been left to him by a dying woman who realized too late that lying had been wrong and she might never be forgiven. He’d forgiven, her, though. He’d taken his boy. He had his son.
Dean turned back to the boy in is arms. His first son. The one left to him by his father, shoved into his arms at the ripe old age of four. This was the boy he’d raised, the one that had somehow grown to resent him. This was the one that had left, only to come back again. This was the one he’d died for, the one he’d faced Hell for. This was the one that he’d promised to protect.
Sam was the one he had killed.
He curled away from Ben’s touch, curled into his brother’s body, and let the tears flow freely.
o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Sam Winchester stared down at his brother, watched the older man shrug the boy away, curl in on himself, close up against everything but the body held tightly in his hands.
It was interesting, having an out-of-body experience. Or, it would have been interesting, if it hadn’t involved his death.
He still wasn’t entirely sure how that had happened. He could remember opening himself up fully, letting the power take him, channeling it toward Lilith, desperate to stop her before she could hurt his family again. He had felt it flow through him, bursting from his brain and into his veins, from his veins through his skin. It had felt warm, had felt right, and in that single moment, he’d known that Dean had told the truth. He wasn’t evil. He could never be evil.
And then it had stopped. It had stopped, and when he had opened his eyes, it was to see Dean running toward him, toward his body.
Sam had been worried at first. Dean didn’t do alone well. But then Ben had walked up, had placed a hand on the older hunter’s shoulder, and Sam had relaxed. Dean wasn’t alone. He would never have to be alone again. He would take charge of the troops, take care of everything. Sam could rest easy.
His shadow spread out before him, which was odd, considering he wasn’t exactly corporeal at the moment. He turned around, toward the odd light, and gasped.
o0o0o0o0o0o
Dean curled farther in on himself, sheltering Sam from the roving eyes of the troops, from the elements, from the horror of what they’d done.
He raked rough fingers through his brother’s too-long hair, rocking gently back and forth- more of a comfort for himself than Sam. He stared into the still face, the pale face.
All was forgotten. His own pain, his own lacerations, everything but the swirling torrent of guilty emotion that reared its ugly head.
A large tear fell from Dean’s eye onto his brother’s cheek and he wiped it away with his thumb.
“Please,” the hunter muttered, his voice broken and soft, weaker than he ever imagined it could sound. “Please, come back. Sammy, please.”
He closed his eyes, his simple plea dying on his lips. What good was being a freak if he couldn’t save his brother? What good was moving things without the detriment of touch if he couldn’t pull Sam back?
What good was winning the war if he lost the most important thing in his life in the process?
As another tear plopped onto Sam’s white cheek, Dean stilled his body and concentrated. Maybe he didn’t have to see what he wanted to grab it. Maybe he could reach out and take it back anyway. Maybe he could still save his little brother.
o0o0o0o0o0o0o
They were waiting for him. His mom. His dad. Jess. Sarah. Everyone he’d loved and lost. Everyone that had loved him back.
Sam glanced back at his brother, almost crumbling under the sorrow that rolled off of the older man. He couldn’t stay. He wanted to go. He wanted peace and safety and rest. Dean would be ok. Dean had Ben. He would move on.
Sam moved to join his family in the light, only to find that he couldn’t. It was like something had a strong hold on his jacket sleeve, something that wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t let him go.
He spun around, looking for the culprit with the inhuman grip, but found nothing. He shrugged it off, took a step toward the light, and stopped.
It was there again, holding onto him, never letting go. He turned around, and immediately wished he had never looked back.
There was nothing on his arm, nothing anchoring Sam to the world of the living. That wasn’t what worried him. It was the fact that time seemed to have stopped, that no one- not the demons, not the kids, not even Dean- was moving. It was the fact that he suddenly wasn’t the only person in two places at once.
Dean seemed to be just as surprised as Sam was to be standing outside of his kneeling body. “Sammy?”
Sam just stared, unable to respond as he took in his brother’s condition. Ragged cuts sopped blood down both ankles, over shredded feet that shouldn’t have been able to support his weight. A large chunk of his side was missing, bone poking through the gaping hold that spilled blood over his body. His collar bone, starkly white against the sweat and grime that had settled on his face, stuck up at a ninety degree angle to its usual position. Blood trickled from his brother’s mouth as the older man struggled to smile. “Sammy.”
“Dean,” the younger man finally managed to breathe. “Man, what the hell happened to you?”
He looked down at himself, his eyes going wide for a moment. He shrugged. “Hell.”
Sam looked over his brother’s shoulder. “Shouldn’t you be…?”
Dean turned, looking back at the scene on the hillside. “I dunno. I think… I think I came to get you.”
Sam shook his head. “That’s not possible. You… this is…”
The older man smiled. “Man, you look good.”
There was no way to respond to that but to look down at himself. Where Dean was covered in dirt, sweat, blood, and bone fragments, Sam seemed whole, not a scratch nor mark on his soul.
His soul…
He was dead. He was moving on, trapped between two worlds. Dean wasn’t dead, shouldn’t have been there.
“You have to leave. You have to go back.”
“Not without you.”
“No, Dean,” he argued, “you can’t. I’m gone, but you-”
“You don’t get it,” Dean said, an unflattering note of raw desperation in his voice. “You can’t leave. Not yet.”
“I’m dead.”
The older man flinched. “Sammy, you have to help me.”
“What?”
“You have to fix me.”
Sam shook his head. “I don’t… I don’t understand.”
Dean took a slow step forward, his broken feet protesting the movement. Sam was stung with a sudden pang of guilt-I did that- as he watched the older man struggle. Dean came to a wobbly stop, his body sagging with pain and fatigue. He held up his hands for Sam to see.
They should have been the most broken part of Dean’s soul, nearly ripped off when he’d swung down toward the depths of Hell. Surprisingly enough, his hands were almost whole. A single, deep gash marred each wrist to the palm, but that was all. There were no bones popping out at odd angles, no fresh blood trickling across his skin. Just a slash that went clean through, but appeared to be healing.
“Look,” Dean said, holding his hands closer to his brother, something like awe in his voice.
“What happened? Dean, what are trying to tell me?” The light behind him shone brightly, inviting, trying to pull him in. But his curiosity had been piqued. He had to stay, just to find out what his brother was getting at.
Dean’s voice was soft and low, that astonished quality never leaving it. “You did this. You did it, Sam.”
“Yeah, I know. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but I had to get you back.”
The older man’s face clouded with confusion. “No. Sam. This.” He shook his hands slightly. “You fixed it. You fixed me. I didn’t think anyone could.” He sighed. “I thought this,” he gestured down at his battered soul, “was it. I thought this was what I had to look forward to, but maybe not. I know it sounds crazy, ok, but I could feel it happening. You can fix this, Sam, all of it. But you need to be here to do it.”
Sammy shook his head. “You’re crazy. Dean, I can’t. It’s too late. You were right, I could handle it. And I did. I killed her. Everything’s gonna be all right now.” He smiled. “Take care of Ben.”
He turned back toward he light, toward his family, toward his eternity. He hated leaving Dean, hating walking away after everything they’d been through, but that light was so warm, so welcoming, so nice.
A hand wrapped itself around his arm, fingers clutching tightly at the worn fabric of his jacket. Warm blood, sticky and wet, seeped through the sleeve to his skin.
Time seemed to stop again as Sam stood there, suspended by the feeling of his brother’s blood, blood that had stopped flowing because Sam had fixed him. In that moment, he knew what Dean had gone through in Hell. He felt the pain, the hopelessness, the sheer panic rush through his body in a wave.
Grief hit him hard and fast, a torrent of emotion so strong that it threatened to bury him. He knew suddenly, as surely as he knew his own name, that there was something wrong with him. He was marred, covered in sweat, blood, and dirt. He was torn. He was broken, and no one ever stayed to fix him.
His shoulders strained under an invisible weight, a responsibility dumped on them before they were ready, a responsibility that bent and broke them, building him back up into something deformed, something that never could see its worth.
And suddenly, he knew. He knew what Dean had been talking about back at Bobby’s, how he had known that Sam was good and pure and everything that he believed that he could never be.
Dean pulled his hand away, clutching it to his chest as old wounds reopened, spilling more blood down his already drenched shirt. What was left of it hung at an odd angle, flesh and bone split down the middle. It didn’t even look like a hand anymore.
Sam stared at his brother, at what he was doomed- no, damned- to be for all eternity unless someone was willing to do something, unless someone was willing to fix him. Broken, bloody, dirty, unworthy. Sam had felt his brother’s soul, had felt the weight of responsibility thrust upon him, the scars that years of rejection had left, the grooves that the life and soul of another had dug out of him.
He’d felt his brother’s soul, and had found nothing good. There was only selfless dejection, misery and pain so deep that it cut at his still heart, threatened to tarnish his own spirit. There was merely a sliver of light, or happiness, of innocence and hopes and dreams and goals and purity left. He had put it there.
He’d felt his brother’s soul, and because of that, he knew what he had to do.
Part 2