66 Seals of Doom on the Wall- Chapter 8
Except for a period of time that Sam would rather forget, right after Dean’s death, Sam doesn’t usually drink. Sam almost never drinks to the point of loosing perspective. When he does, it’s because he’s punishing himself for something. Or punishing others.
Since he’s the one with the killer hangover the next day, he’s not exactly sure how that works, but he’s sure he’s a pretty annoying drunk, so it must be that.
Once more, a big thank you to Jackfan2 for the beta work! Any remaining mistakes are probably my fault, not hers.
And now, a whole new chapter, all from Sam’s point of view, because I felt that I was neglecting the poor kid. Enjoy!
From the last chapter:
It was darker now, night fully set in, and the coldness of outside had seeped in to the room. Without the convenience of a working heater, Dean’s legs were freezing.
Slowly, trying to avoid the battalion of pins and needles that he knew would come barging in as soon as he moved, Dean pulled his arm from under him and pushed himself up.
Apparently, it wasn’t Bobby who had to wake up for him to return to his rightful place. Because Bobby was still slumped on the floor behind Dean, lying on his stomach, face lax with unconsciousness, arms pinned beneath him.
Ruby’s knife was nowhere to be seen.
For one frightening moment, Dean thought that maybe Bobby had fallen on the knife that he was holding and accidentally killed himself in the process.
There was no telltale blood pool and from what Dean could see of the older man’s back, he was still breathing, so Dean relaxed a bit and focused on trying to get up and get out of there.
The relief was short lived, however, when he heard the dip of bed springs and found out where Ruby’s knife had gone.
Sam, hands free of the rope that had bound them, stood from the bed and, gripping the knife tightly in his hand, stood above Bobby, determined grim face, ready to strike.
“Sam! Don’t!”
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Chapter Eight
Except for a period of time that Sam would rather forget, right after Dean’s death, Sam doesn’t usually drink. Sam almost never drinks to the point of loosing perspective. When he does, it’s because he’s punishing himself for something. Or punishing others.
Since he’s the one with the killer hangover the next day, he’s not exactly sure how that works, but he’s sure he’s a pretty annoying drunk, so it must be that.
There’s something to be said about drunks… the level that their tolerance for alcohol reaches is simply amazing. On occasion, Sam wished he had one of those. Instead, he’s usually stuck with the girly jokes of not being able to hold his liquor. As if that was a priceless skill.
Bobby knew what was up with Dean and Missouri, but he wouldn’t tell him. Dean was his brother and Bobby thought that he had the right to keep whatever the hell was going on, from him.
For months the older hunter had tried to get Sam to open up to him, had tried to fill some of the void that Dean’s death had created inside Sam. But the last surviving Winchester had just shrugged all attempts away.
Sam guessed that this was Bobby’s revenge.
Bobby was not one to compromise their safety or the success of any hunt just to indulge himself. This wasn’t a hunt, but as missions went, it was the biggest they’d faced in a long time. And Bobby was offering booze.
When Bobby came out with a bottle of whiskey and suggested that they relaxed a bit while waiting on Dean, Sam figured that whatever this was, it was big.
If Dean came back and announced that he was switching sexes and changing his name to Darlene, Sam would not be surprised.
It felt that big.
So, Sam drank. And yapped about being treated like a five year old to whom no one ever told anything. It was a speech that sounded whiney, even to his drunken ears. But that was the kind of drunk he was; annoying and whiney.
Sloppy too, Sam mentally added for future reference, as he watched the golden liquid slosh and spill from his full glass when he made a too wide gesture with his arm.
Bobby didn’t say much, but the more Sam drank, the bigger the satisfied smile on Bobby’s face grew.
Sam figured that something was wrong when, by their second bottle, Sam was seeing two Bobbies and, despite the older man having drunk more than him, both Bobbies were perfectly sober.
That wasn’t Bobby.
Sam’s addled mind tried to come up with reasonable options to what this thing seating across from him could be. His first option was demon, but he knew how good Bobby’s charms to fend off possession were. He and Dean had trusted in the man’s ability to find the best protections, enough to get the symbols tattooed in to their skin.
Maybe he was shapeshifter… or a revenant… or an evil twin… or maybe he was getting drunk and paranoid at the same time.
And yet…
Ever since he had allowed Ruby to teach him to use his powers, Sam felt a strange tingling inside his bones whenever he was near a demon. Something that he could only describe as a fizz vibe, like carbon gas escaping a liquid drink.
Even with the all the alcohol in his blood, numbing all of his other senses, that feeling was still there, crystal clear.
Sam had to be sure. He just had to know.
“Crrr… Cwiistou!” Sam said, hoping that the slur was close enough for effect.
The chuckle that escape the demon inside Bobby as his eyes turned black told Sam that the reveal was more out of boredom on the demon’s part than actual compulsion in answer to the powerful word.
“Took you long enough, boy! Everyone has you pegged as being smarter than this, you know?”
Suddenly, the world was tilting dizzily around Sam, the sense weightlessness turning his stomach upside down and bounce around at the same time. Realizing he was airborne, he slammed his eyes shut, bracing for impact. He gasped when he felt a soft cushioning underneath him, and the world settling, confused for a second as to why there was no pain upon landing.
Sam looked around, recognizing the rumpled purple bedspread as is own bed. Bobby, or rather the thing inside Bobby, was still seated at the table, like it was none of his business. Or that it hadn’t been responsible for the seven feet that Sam just flew.
Dean had Ruby’s knife with him. These days he never parted with the thing, as if expecting a demon at every corner. Sam hadn’t really cared because he had his own kind of weapons to defend himself. Even if he did have it with him, Sam wasn’t sure he could bring himself to use the knife on Bobby.
Reacting like it was a second nature to him, Sam extended his arm, the palm of his right hand outward, toward Bobby.
Ruby had laughed her demonic ass off when she saw him do it the first time, explaining that he didn’t needed the choreography. It was just a matter of getting his mind in the right place.
After the first couple of disastrous attempts at exorcising demons with his power, Sam figured that, ridiculous or not, the hand thing helped him focus.
He did not wanted to hurt Bobby, but he needed to act fast. Dean would be coming back anytime now, and even if it were the last thing he ever did, he would not let any Hell spawn hurt his brother ever again.
It was like the past four months had never happened.
The will to force a demon out of someone, something that Sam could now do with almost no thought behind it, wasn’t coming. That part of his mind that Sam had to access to unleash his power was gone, numb. Powerless.
The demon chuckled, getting up from his chair. “Doesn’t work so good when you’re drunk, does it?”
Sam just tries harder, because what good would it be to risk losing himself in Azazel’s given powers when such powers failed him when he needed them the most?
The trickle of blood running down his nose went unnoticed as Sam focused instead on the demon, slowly walking towards the bed. Teasing him.
“Look at you now… all powerless and defenseless,” the demon said as he began searching the bags lying on the other bed. “Bet you’re hoping your big brother comes rushing through that door to rescue you now… or better yet, Ruby.”
Sam lowered his hand and gripped his head instead. It felt like his skull was about to crack open and spill his brains all over the room. He could barely hear the demon’s baiting over the roar in his ears.
“You and your private bitch demon have been such a juicy bit of gossip by the demon’s water cooler that I’m almost disappointed that she’s not here with you,” not-Bobby said, producing a piece of rope from Bobby’s duffel. “But then again, your brother and Bobby are still in the dark about that particularly nasty piece of development, aren’t they?”
Sam kept silent, watching as the demon bound his hands behind his back and pushed him back to the bed, banging his head against the hard wood headboard. The world spun crazily around before fading to black for a few seconds.
When the youngest Winchester looked around again, the demon was back at the table, waiting.
“Don’t worry Sammy-boy… your brother will be here to rescue you in no time,” it said, taking a small knife from one of Bobby’s pockets and picking his nails with it. “In fact, I’m counting on it. Lilith’s been missing him terribly.”
Despite his struggle to keep his eyes opened and his mind working on the matter of freeing his hands and getting that demon out of Bobby, Sam fell in to a drunken sleep, feverish dreams of killing Bobby or watching Bobby kill them, running non-stop through his mind.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Thump. Thump. Thump. THUMP!
The louder bang of something hitting the wall did no favors to the splitting headache that Sam was trying, and failing, to ignore.
The smell was familiar, that odd mixture of disinfectant and old booze that screamed the same no matter where you were.
Sam could vaguely remember checking in to a motel room but that, given his lifestyle, didn’t help him much. What he did know was that something was wrong. Deadly wrong.
There was this sense of doom and impending death centered on Bobby that was oppressing his heart, but Sam couldn’t really remember why. And then there was the fact that, even though they hurt like a bitch, he couldn’t move his arms from the awkward position that they were in. These were not good signs in the Winchester book of crap.
Cracking his eyes open just a slit, knowing that any light from outside would just fuel the already nasty pounding in his head, Sam looked ahead.
There was an unimpressive wall of dirty white paint and something blue that soon focused enough to be translated as a pair of jean clad long legs.
The wear and tear of the plain brown leather belt felt familiar, as did those jeans with the tear at knee high so big that he could see the bony knee underneath.
Dean.
Now that he knew his brother was there, it made sense why he kept hearing Dean’s voice calling his name, even if, for now, Dean was just a jeans’ clad knee.
“Dween?” Funny, that had sounded right in his head, but had come out a bit weird.
Wasting a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out why his mouth was rebelling against his brain and why Bobby was laughing about that, unconsciousness claimed Sam once again.
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It was a strange feeling to keep losing huge chunks of time like that but, if the thing that had crawled in to his mouth to die and his head were any indication, Sam was sure that somewhere along the line there was alcohol involved and that it was probably Dean’s fault.
Sam knew how he was when he drank, and he knew what the price to pay the next day was. Still, he had apparently let his brother drag him out to ‘unwind’ in some cheesy bar. Again.
Oddly enough, it didn’t felt like the next day.
It was dark outside, for one. He remembered coming to the room sometime after lunch. It should be brighter outside, like dawn-of-a-new-day brighter.
The room was silent. Not peaceful silent… eerie silent, like sound had been rendered non-existent.
The image of Bobby’s grey eyes turning oil black was suddenly very clear in Sam’s addled mind. Bobby had been possessed, he had been overpowered and Dean was about to walk in to a trap.
Turning around, Sam couldn’t see anyone else in the room. He was almost sure that he’d seen Dean there before… or at least he remembered Dean’s knee.
Sam’s heart started pounding inside his chest in tempo with his head, thoughts of Dean back in Lilith’s hands, him and Bobby being forced to witness whatever that bitch had planned for his brother.
Fingering the knots of the rope he could feel tied around his wrists, Sam rolled onto his side and pushed himself up using his right elbow. There had to be something in that room that he could use to cut that damn rope. And then he could panic about Dean’s whereabouts.
The second his boot clad feet hit the floor, Sam knew that he wouldn’t have to search far for his brother.
His breath caught in his throat, Sam looked at the two bodies lying on the small space between the bed and the wall. The demon was on his stomach, apparently incapacitated for the moment and Dean… Dean was a mess.
Alive, or so Sam could gather from the quiet movements up and down of his turned back, but a mess still.
At first glance, Sam could see the blood on his forehead and neck, still slowly seeping in to the grey carpet, drops of deep red soaking in to the fibers and turning them the color of rich red wine.
Dean’s pants were down and there was blood pooling beneath his left leg. Sam broke in to a cold sweat, franticly searching for something with which to free his hands. He fought a sudden urge to call out to his brother, get his attention so that he would turn around, to make sure he was alright.
He kept quiet, afraid to attract the demon’s attention instead.
Ruby’s knife glinted from the floor, like a bright beacon, discarded near Bobby’s head.
Sam jumped from the bed, the adrenaline cursing through his veins, clearing his mind from the remains of the whiskey. His concern for what was now happening enough for him to ignore the spinning and nausea that the sudden movements caused.
Hands still tied behind his back, it took some contorting of his tall frame to lean down, grab the blade from the floor and maneuver it to the rope behind him. But after some cursing and some finger fumbling, Sam gasped in relief when he felt the knife handle precariously gripped between two fingers.
Dropping back on his stomach against the bed, Sam worked feverishly to maintain a steady back and forth, back and forth motion, sawing into the ropes, at the same time keeping one eye on the demon and the other on his brother.
Now that he was focusing on details and not on the general, rushed view, Sam could take a better look at Dean’s face. Under the smudges of dried and fresh blood, his brother was pale and sweaty and… Sam could’ve sworn that his lips were moving, like he was talking to someone, the sound cut off like in a silent movie.
When the rope finally gave way with a humph of defeat, falling to the bed sheets, Sam jumped off the bed, springs bolting and singing against his weight.
Sam knew that, whatever had happen to render the demon unconscious, would not last. He had a split second to decide what to do.
The weight of Ruby’s knife on his hand was burden with guilt, because Sam knew it was the sure way to finish the demon and help his brother. It was also a way that left Bobby’ survival out of the question.
There was no time to draw devil’s traps; there were no ropes that would hold a demon still until he read a whole exorcism ritual.
Or he could try exorcising the demon with his mind again. From the way his head was feeling, Sam figured that he would have as much success now as he had had before. He could not afford to make the same mistake twice. Not with his brother bleeding all over the floor.
Knowing… hoping that Bobby would understand his decision, Sam advanced resolute towards the fallen demon. It had to be done… there was no other way.
“Sam! Don’t!”
So focused he’d been on the demon, that Sam failed to see his brother starting to stir and move. Even though relief flooded like cool water over Sam’s tired body, he didn’t move from his position. He knew that Dean would try to plead with him, but Sam knew that once one demon knew where they were, they all knew. They could not take the risk of staying too long in the same place.
“Sam, please… listen to me: that’s Bobby!”
Sam looked at his brother pleading face, his memory taking him against his will to another time, to another version of a bloodied Dean, pleading for the life of another possessed man. Pleading for the life of their father.
If only Sam had been brave enough to pull the trigger there and then, in that abandoned cabin, far from civilization and regret…
“He’s possessed, Dean,” Sam argued, knowing that to his brother, that was a poor argument.
Dean struggled to get up and physically pry the blade from Sam’s hands.
“Not anymore… he’s just Bobby now.”
“That’s impossible,” Sam half sobbed. He remembered Bobby’s eyes turning black. He remembered his promises to deliver Dean to Lilith.
Why was Dean trying to trick him? Couldn’t he see the danger they were in if that demon woke up now?
“Do whatever you want to test it, but this,” Dean said, finally on his feet even if he swayed from side to side, “this is Bobby... trust me.”
Sam’s grip on the knife just grew tighter. Something was off.
“So, even though he was winning, the demon decided to go? That he had more important things to do?” Sam asked doubtfully. The way his brother had been slumped on the floor, it didn’t look like a battle that he had won. “Or did you just exorcize him when he had you trapped against the wall? Stood very still while you recited all that Latin that you still don’t know by heart?”
Dean looked embarrassed for some reason that Sam could not understand.
“Something like that… bottom line, Sam, is that Bobby is demon free, so don’t go making new holes on the man,” Dean said without meeting Sam’s eyes as he busied himself pulling his jeans up.
When Sam still didn’t move from his attack position, Dean looked up again.
“Sam?”
“Did you exorcize Bobby?” Sam asked very slowly. There was no such thing as a ‘sort of’ or ‘kind of’ or ‘almost’ exorcism. Dean knew that. So why was he being so evasive about this?
The sudden suspicion that the demon had jumped from Bobby to Dean made Sam’ stomach roll. He took one step away from Bobby, eyeing his brother’s every movement, looking for some give away that Dean was not Dean.
“I’m not a demon, Sam,” Dean said in annoyance, his face coloring bright red the second the words left his mouth.
The mind reading thing was a dead give away for Sam. Only demons could do that.
“Like hell you’re not!” Sam said, moving towards Dean, one hand around his brother’s bloody throat, the other hanging limply by his side, holding the knife.
Sam pushed his brother’s unresisting body against the plaster wall, the sickening sound of head meeting wall bringing bile to his mouth. Sam needed the demon to show itself, to provoke it in to action because, if Sam thought that the idea of stabbing Bobby was hard, the idea of doing the same to Dean was unbearable.
“Sam… Sammy, what are you doing?”
Dean’s voice was calm, smoothing, like he was talking to a mad man. The demon wasn’t that far off from the truth.
“Cristo!” Sam yelled in his brother’s face, gazing at the familiar green eyes and waiting for them to turn black.
Nothing happen.
“Happy now?” Dean asked, still not struggling, even as his face kept steadily turning slightly redder from the pressure on his throat. “The demon’s long gone and we need to hightail out of here before his buddies show up.”
“How?”
How did you managed to exorcize the demon?
How did you know what I was thinking?
How can you be so calm when I was seconds away from killing you?
Dean had no time to answer him as their attention was diverted to the front door. One swift kick and Ruby’s figure stood in the doorway, brown hair ruffled from the wind outside.
“Did I miss all the fun?”
“Ruby,” Sam whispered in relief, forgetting for the moment that Dean didn’t even know that she was back from Hell too. All that Sam could think of was that she could see for sure who was a demon and who wasn’t.
“You can drop your brother, Sam… the demon is gone.”
“You sure about that?” Dean growled, his voice suddenly stronger.
The sarcastic reply brought Sam’s illusions crashing back to earth. He released his brother’s neck, wincing at the redness that he had added there.
“Dean… I can explain this,” Sam said, hating the fact that he sounded like he was five all over again.
“Don’t bother… I already knew,” Dean said tiredly. “I know everything, Sam.”
Sam should’ve been surprised by the confession. After all, he had been extra careful with his extra curricular activities ever since Dean’s return. But no… it was the tone of voice that his brother had used that truly surprised Sam.
Rather than acting smugly like Dean would’ve been, rubbing Sam’s most treasured secret in his face, Dean had sounded defeated… guilty.
Sam was the one who should’ve been feeling guilty. He was the one who had been fooling his own brother for this long.
Unless he wasn’t the only one doing the fooling…
Sam looked in to his brother’s eyes, trapping Dean between him and the wall with nothing but the weight of his gaze and the couple of inches he had on his brother. Dean had always been a great liar but his eyes were not his best tool. They were too honest, too open, too explicit.
It was all there, plain to see in the green and gold. Sam just hadn’t gone to the trouble of seeing it before.
Dean had as many dark secrets as he had.
“If you two love birds are quite done with the eye-fuck, you think we can get out of here now?” Ruby’s crass voice broke the spell.
The moment Sam wasted throwing a warning glance to Ruby, Dean had diverted his eyes to the floor, ignoring her and focusing on Bobby instead.
“We should see how he’s doing,” Dean said as he knelt down beside the unconscious hunter.
“Sam…”
Ruby was quietly urging him to listen to her, to do as she advised. It was the same tone of voice she used whenever he was reluctant about using his powers, or when he refused to hurt a possessed human even though he knew that demons rode them until they dropped dead. It was a tone of voice that, as he had learned the hard way, meant that, even though he didn’t like it, Ruby was right.
Dean was gently tapping Bobby’s face, urging the man to wake up. It wasn’t lost on Sam that his brother hadn’t even taken the time to see if the older man was in fact injured or just asleep… like he knew what was wrong with Bobby.
“She’s right… let’s just carry him to the car,” Sam said, kneeling beside Dean and grabbing Bobby’s legs. Dean’s hand on his arm stopped him.
“She’s not going with us,” Dean said. Commanded, actually.
“’She’ is standing right here, you know?” Ruby huffed from the corner of the bed where she sat.
The look that Dean gave her was… odd.
Sam was used to the murderous looks that Dean often threw Ruby, at least the blond version of Ruby. Heck! He was even used to his brother acting on those murderous glares and actually taking a swing or a shot at Ruby. This was different though.
Dean was looking at her almost in the same way he had in those last few hours before he died. Dean was looking at her like he was seeing more than a short, sassy brunette.
“She can help us,” Sam tried. If his brother could get past the ‘demon’ thing, he would probably see Ruby for the asset she was in their fight.
“She’s tricking you,” Dean said. “You can’t trust her!”
Again, Dean’s voice was wrong. Yes, the words were exactly what Sam would’ve expected from him, but the way he said them… it wasn’t as if he was stating a suspicion, it was like he was stating a fact. Like Dean had just realized that he was right.
“How can you be so sure of that?”
Dean was still looking at Ruby, who in return, looked right back at him, curiosity written all over her face. She knew Sam well enough to know he trusted her. Dean she might’ve not known as well, but his behavior was intriguing her too.
“She… her…” Dean let his head hung against his chest. When he gazed back up, his eyes looked tired and old. “I’m your brother, Sam… can’t you just trust me when I tell you that a demon is using you, tricking you?”
“Sam… we don’t have time for this!” Ruby urged him to make a decision.
If Ruby had wanted something from him, she’d had too many months at her disposal when Sam would have made no objections, when Sam wouldn’t even raise a finger if she wanted to kill him. And as for his powers, Ruby knew that he was now good enough to send her back to Hell if he wanted to. She wouldn’t dare cross him now.
No, this was just Dean distrusting Ruby because of something she couldn’t help being. Like Sam couldn’t change what he was.
“She’s coming with us, Dean… she can help us with Lilith,” Sam said, his decision finally made. He just wished that Ruby would make things easier and wiped that smug smile off her face.
“Damn it, Sam! She’s working for her! She’s one of Lilith’s bitches!”
Sam dropped Bobby’s legs, eliciting a soft moan out of the unconscious man. Was Dean really that desperate to get him away from Ruby?
“What?”
“Ruby, man… she swore her loyalty to Lilith when she was down there… she’s working for her now,” Dean said, the honesty on his face painful to see.
His brother was one terrific actor. Sam was not going to be fooled by his act.
“How can you possibly know that?”
“Because I can hear the thoughts of the girl she’s possessing, ok?” Dean said in an outburst of sound. For a second, Sam could see that this was not something that his brother wanted to confess but was too late to help it now.
“I can hear her begging for help, Sam…” Dean went on, as if a lid had been cracked open and he could no longer stop the contents from spilling. “I can hear her warnings about Ruby… I can hear everything…”
Sam got up. He couldn’t believe his own ears. And yet, it all made much more sense now.
“How… how long? How?”
There were too many questions inside Sam’s head, all pushing for his attention, all demanding answers. This was Dean, his brother, his connection with normal and human… and he was a freak just like him?
“A couple of days. Castiel… he…” Dean stuttered.
Dean never stuttered. Unless he was embarrassed about something or lying about something that he didn’t want Sam to know.
And an embarrassed Dean, rare event as it was, usually involved a blushing Dean, not a pale faced one like he was now.
“Castiel? Castiel! That’s how you knew about Ruby… about me using my powers?”
Even if Dean hadn’t nodded in agreement, Sam knew that he was right. This was what Dean had been truly hiding.
“So an angel gave you this power to what? Spy on me… spy on your own brother?”
“What? No!... Sam, don’t turn this in to something it’s not,” Dean pleaded.
Sam wanted to believe his brother, he wanted to trust Dean in the same way that he had his whole life, but this was not the same man that Sam had known his whole life.
The Dean that had returned from Hell was not the same Dean who used to fix his breakfast before he went to school, was not the same man that Sam respected like a father.
The only thing that Sam could think of was the sleepless nights that he had spent worried about how to tell Dean about Ruby and his powers, how to make his brother understand what he was doing and, especially, why he was doing it.
And all that time, Dean was probably listening in… invading his thoughts, taking advantage of Sam’s ignorance and hiding his own game. Searching his mind for dark secrets that he could tell Castiel.
Dean knew that Sam was feeling miserable with all of this and he did nothing to stop it. How could he climb on his high horse and say anything about him or Ruby?
“Sam…” Dean interrupted his internal battle. “Whatever you think of me right now, this is not the time. Ruby is playing you and-”
“And you’re not?” Sam’s question dripped with venom and hurt. “C’mon Dean, can’t you tell what I’m really thinking right now? Can you feel how betrayed I feel?”
Right now, Sam really didn’t care for the defeated look on his brother’s face or the way his eyes were glistening with unshed tears. Right now he just wanted to get out of there and NOT see Dean.
What is it they say? Better the devil you know?
Well, that certainly applied to his life right now. Even God had given up on him.
“Did he tell you that you might have to kill me, Dean?” Sam asked quietly, eyes hard and cold and wet, taking secret pleasure in the pain he knew those words would cause. “Did Castiel told you to kill me, like dad did? Is that the big mission that God wants from you?”
Dean looked too miserable to form any words, his face looking down as a stray tear escaped his eyes and ran down his cheek. Sam’s heart twisted inside his heart, conditioned response to seeing his brother looking so lost and sad.
Sam just couldn’t figure if what he was seeing was because of the harshness of his words or because he had actually guessed Castiel’s proposal.
The Dean of before, the Dean that went to Hell for him, that Dean had been certain that, despite what their father had said, he would never kill his own brother. That Dean Sam could trust.
The Dean that had return from Hell was a stranger to him. This Dean could very possibly believe that he was doing Sam a favor by killing him and, therefore, save his soul before he could damn himself.
That was a risk that, no matter how much he loved his brother, Sam could not take.
Sam had to look away, keep his brother only visible in his periphery before he crumbled and couldn’t get the words he needed to say, out. “I need some time alone to digest this, Dean, so just… please, don’t follow us.”
The look of surprise in Dean’s face was almost comical. After all the crap that Sam had dealt with because of his powers, did Dean truly believe that Sam was going to forgive him this?
“No!” Dean shouted, climbing to his feet. “Sam… she’s…” He looked like he was ready to grab Sam and tie him to a chair if that’s what it took to get him to stay.
“She’s evil, I know,” Sam finished, glad that Ruby was wisely keeping her mouth shut through all of this. “But she’s an evil that I can deal with right now and, frankly, she understand me better than you do on this… she understands why I have to use my powers and you… you couldn’t even confess to yours.”
Dean took a couple of steps in Sam’s direction, his eyes hard as steel. Dean on a mission.
“I can’t let you leave with her, Sam. You might not believe me, but I’m telling you the truth about her intentions… you can’t blindly follow her like that! I won’t let you!”
Sam didn’t realize that he’d been the one doing it, until he looked from his brother’s still figure, pressed against the wall, to his extended hand.
That had never happened before, but then again, Dean seemed to bring out the worst of his powers to the forefront. This was what he now was. Might as well show all of his cards to Dean and let him deal with it.
“How are you going to stop me?” Sam asked, echoing the same words he’d said to Dean when he’d gone after that Frankenstein doctor.
The look of fear and despair in Dean’s face still had the power to make Sam’s stomach turn. He had done that. He had put that look in his brother’s eyes.
“Sam, we have to go…” Ruby interrupted. “Lilith’s goons will sense your presence here… the farther you are, the safer they’ll be,” She placed a calming hand on his shoulder.
Like doc Benton, he was the monster here. Despite everything, Dean and Bobby would be safer without him.
“Don’t think like that… you’re not a monster, you’re my brother, Sam,” Dean said, no longer pretending that he was not spying on Sam’s every thought. “Please don’t do this.”
Sam raised his hand once again, spreading his fingers to send more pressure, pushing Dean harder, enough to steal the breathe from his lungs and make him shut up but not harm him.
“Stay out of my head… and stay out of my life. This is my problem now,” Sam whispered, taking one last look at his brother.
If Heaven thought him dangerous enough to have his own brother spy on him, then Sam was probably better off staying away from Dean. And he had Lilith do deal with. Mind reading power or not, Dean and Bobby wouldn’t stand a chance against her. Sam did. And he would do that for them.
The sound of the door banging as Sam left with Ruby was not enough to cover the sobbed whisper of ‘Sam’ that followed him outside.
And if Sam weren’t so focused on the brother that he was leaving behind, he would’ve probably noticed the satisfied smile that crossed Ruby’s face.
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