Fic: In Hindsight (gen)
Title: In Hindsight
Fandom: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG-13
Beta:si_star_x
Word Count: 690
Summary: In hindsight, nothing Sam had done with Ruby had been a good idea.
A/N: Written for gutsparfait (I hope you like this!) who asked for a fic based on the prompt ‘in hindsight it wasn't such a good idea.’ I really enjoyed exploring the aftermath of season four in my fic Follow You Home and I wanted to do it again. So here it is.
The bones had lit up well, the fire in the grave casting an amber glow over its surroundings. Running a hand over his face, Sam turned away from the burning bones and stared out into the darkness. He could feel Dean standing at his side and didn’t need to look to know that Dean’s eyes would be fixed on the fire, that there would be a smile playing around his lips; his brother had been taking lots of pleasure in killing things recently.
The hunt had gone well, had been easy and there hadn’t been any complications. The interviews with the witnesses had gone smoothly, there had been no problems with the police and the spirit, a dead farmer who had been taking revenge on the builders constructing on his land, hadn’t even shown his face.
It had been too easy. All the time, he had been almost hoping for something to go wrong; a cop to show up at their motel room, the spirit of the farmer to attack them at his graveside, anything to ease the tension that existed between him and his brother.
Dean had refused to talk about anything over than the hunt for the two days they had been in town, had been making decisions without asking for his opinion. Sam couldn’t blame him.
Family. Family and being able to trust the people closest to him were the most important things to Dean. For as long as Sam could remember, Dean had trusted him wholly and without hesitation. He had betrayed that trust. It hadn’t been a good idea.
In hindsight, nothing he had done since Dean had gone to hell had been a good idea.
He had been slipping even before Dean had gone, had sided with Ruby over Dean more than once and that had been bad enough. Dean had never chosen anyone else over him, had always put him first even when he had left for Stanford, asking his brother to just let him live a normal life.
The fight had been lost from the moment he had agreed to take the blood; he could see that now. It had set him on a path that he couldn’t get off, had carried him so far away from the life that he know - the convictions that he had - that he couldn’t stop until it was too late. He had lied to Dean, had made bad decisions and risked the lives of those close to him. He had starting the freaking apocalypse.
But he still craved the blood. Part of him still wanted the power that came with it, the ability to control and to be stronger than Dean. And Dean knew it, was distancing himself because of it even though he had called Sam back and had promised that they would work things out.
Being with his brother but not acting like brothers was killing Dean. Sam knew his brother well enough to know that, to know how much it had to be hurting him to ignore rather than protect, to be silent rather than crack jokes.
All of it was his fault.
He deserved to be ignored.
Betraying Dean was the worst thing he had ever done.
He needed something to happen; a hunt to go wrong, Lucifer to show up somewhere, anything to push Dean into being Dean again. He didn’t deserve his brother but Dean didn’t deserve to be alone, either, and that meant that they had to be brothers again.
Turning around, he looked back at the fire as Dean brushed past him on his way back to the car. By now, the bones would be reduced to ash ad there was no need for him to stay here any longer. He wished it was different. This was the third hunt in a row that had gone well and any other time he would have been relieved. But something had to change, it had to because he wasn’t sure how much longer he could go on like this; fighting the cravings on his own, living with a shadow of the brother that he knew.
He needed his brother back.