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Nothing that you bring here, of course, is truly lost.
But it will remain hidden from view forever.
- Welcome To Night Vale, Episode 101: Guidelines For Disposal
Old Sam wouldn’t have been caught dead like this: a smear of salad dressing crusting on his cheek, fork forgotten to the side in favour of picking out each leaf with his bare, giant mitts.
No, old Sam was a far neater eater. Practically sat with a napkin in his lap and pinkie held out - at least by Dean’s standards. He wasn’t a sloppy guy like his brother; he ate with intention - everything chewed carefully and precisely, never a bite taken without thinking it over first.
Of all the changes, Dean doesn’t know why this one bothers him so much. It’s harmless, really, and shit, he still has better table manners than Dean himself, if he’s honest about it. Still goes for his frou-frou salads and buddha bowls, still chews with his mouth closed, still says his thank yous and tips way, way too generously considering their financial situation - just, well, eats a little messier.
Still, it gives him a migraine every mealtime. He’s got a paper napkin in his hand right now, hidden under the table, clutched in a fist, practically vibrating for the second he gets an opening to swipe that crap off; has barely touched his own food since he first noticed it because he can’t freaking focus on anything else.
It just makes him so damn tense watching this person with his brother’s face eat like a rusty machine on the other side of the table.
Which isn’t fair to say, yeah, he knows that. Neither is calling Sam from four months ago ‘Old Sam’, like he’s a different person altogether. Even though he may as well be.
He’s working on it. He is, he swears, but God, is that hard work. And so is fixing the endless pile of mess Sam got himself into with this one.
Speaking of, the kid’s finished eating.
Here’s another thing Dean never thought he’d miss about Sam: his animation. Before, he’d known when Sam had finished because he’d already be halfway out the door and groaning at Dean to get a move on, half-finished meal on his plate be damned. Or if not that, he’d be whipping out his laptop and typing away, creating the constant clack clack clack leitmotif that used to follow him everywhere, eyes darting all over the screen.
Now, Sam just sort of stares. Realises there’s nothing left to do, no obvious direction to go, and gives up altogether. Sits and blinks, hides inside his head. Maybe looks out of a window if he’s lucky, spies at the people outside living their lives with his dead eyes and a look on his face that says nothing at all.
“You got a little…” Dean motions towards his cheek.
Sam looks up. Cocks his head, blinks a few. Reaches a hand to the wrong damn cheek, which is right when Dean, more than anything, wants to reach over and just do the job himself, scrub that napkin so hard and fast it takes the dressing off and more.
“Other cheek, moron,” he says, handing over his sweaty, near-shredded napkin, and Sam takes it. Does a clumsy job, but hey, at least it’s gone.
At least he did it himself today.
Here’s something else: Sam stumbles now. Takes these heavy, shambling footsteps; hits the ground with two left feet. Will trip over his own boots every other step, then glare down at them with a huff and furrowed brow as if they’re what’s at fault in this scenario. As if they’re what’s changed, not him.
He can be a little aimless now, too. Stick him on a street and tell him to walk, and he’ll do it, for sure, but God knows where he’ll end up when you need to find him again. Dean has to guide him, more often than not - giving directions on good days, letting Sam shuffle on ahead a few paces while he steers him from behind, just a hand to the back or a mumbled to the left, Sammy, and dragging him around on the bad ones while he kicks his feet and rolls his eyes and mumbles about how he’s ‘Not a baby, Dean.’
And it’s weird, sure, because old Sam (damn it) used to move like a damn ninja, all agile and light-footed, near silent when he wanted to be; a real hunter’s way of holding himself, just the way Dad taught ‘em. But it seems to Dean that it bothers him way less than it bothers other people.
Some things you just can’t hide the same way you can a distance in the eyes, a stain on a shirt.
They draw attention now, the two of them. Not that they didn’t before - Sam being the giant that he is and that habit of theirs of not so discreetly carrying what most would consider an obscene amount of weaponry - but it’s a different kind of attention this time around. Funny looks and a wide berth, children cluelessly staring while their parents pretend not to look, the occasional sympathetic smile given to Dean and Dean only, as if Sam can’t very well see it.
Dean tried to avoid going out so much at the start. More for his sake than Sam’s, really; it’s never seemed to bother him in the slightest, not in any way he cares to show, but Dean didn’t like all the confirmation that this change in Sam was so visible.
But Sam wouldn’t have it. Said he wanted the fresh air, the sunlight, and would at least attempt to pick any lock in his way - failing that, sit by the door and claw. And the thing is, he’s vocal about so little now that even Dean admits it would have been a step too cruel to deny him that.
Sometimes, he wonders if it has something to do with the Cage. Always does, these days, when there’s something so particular about him.
He doubts Sam’s ever gonna be able to give him a straight answer, though.
Whatever. They’re getting used to it. He’s getting used to it. And today, when Sam stumbles for the third time down the same stretch of busy sidewalk, Dean’s right there and ready to steady him on again.
Hunting is off the table, of course. Unofficially, technically, neither of them having said anything outright, but it’s pretty damn clear to both of them what the deal is. At least, Dean hopes so. It’s hard to know what Sam’s thinking these days.
It’s not that they didn’t try. They did. He damn well made them.
From the second Sam first managed to brush his own teeth, Dean was practically forcing him into his jeans and out the door. Two whole weeks of watching Sam resting - mostly spent eyes closed, wordless, empty; the picture of a corpse in a ratty twin bed - and he was chomping at the bit for things to start moving again.
He wasn't an idiot, knew Sam wasn’t right, wasn’t quite the same, but still, that slight, slight glimpse of himself, of awareness, wellness, Sam had managed to show by simply swinging both legs off the bed and rising to his feet filled him right to the top with useless, naive hope - this idea that, okay, a setback or two, but he’ll get back on track. It’ll be like normal in no time.
So, he started them off small. A simple salt and burn; child’s play to them.
Rumours were going around of a house experiencing some slight difficulties - cold snaps, lighting issues, chairs left upside down, tables on the ceiling - and a husband who died of tragic circumstances right outside the door. Even better, said husband’s body was buried in a small, unmonitored graveyard not two miles from the house. He couldn’t have asked for something so cut and dry.
Issue was, Sam’s heart wasn’t in it. That much was clear from the get-go. Even at the worst of times, when hunting was the last thing he wanted, something he was willing to cut all ties to get away from, he still gave it his all, knew just what was at stake. But now, it was like he was watching it all happen from behind a screen - no sense of emergency, no compassion, no initiative.
Even gave the widow a worry when he blanked out mid-conversation. Poor lady had enough on her plate already with a dead husband and a haunted house. Didn’t need some ‘FBI agent’ with empty eyes and clumsy feet shutting down on her while she cried about it.
He’d read any maps or newspapers Dean threw his way, albeit slower than usual, and even had the honour of chucking the lighter into the ditch Dean dug out all on his lonesome, but there was no real participation. It was like he didn’t even know he was there, like some part of his brain was still there, in that bed, miles away, rotting.
Now, Dean has no problem making Sam show when he doesn’t want to be there - but if he’s not gonna be of any use either, well, what’s the point?
A couple cases after that, just to test the waters, push his luck. Kept Sam away from any witnesses, any manual labour, any hint of danger - mainly stuck him on the books in the car and told him to holler if he found anything useful. But it just didn’t feel right. Not the way it used to. It was a rhythm neither of them could settle into.
And he’d do it himself, has done before - a risky business, hunting solo, but considering the cosmic bullshit he’s had to deal with these last few years, he’d say he’s seasoned enough to cope - but the one roadblock that came cropping up whenever he’d get to thinking about it was who’d keep Sammy going if he didn’t come back. If some vamp bled him dry one night or, hell, even if a broken leg and no reception was what got him in the end, how would his brother manage now that he needs an extra hand?
There’s no one else left.
‘Course, he’d never tell Sam that. He gets wildly defensive about being told what he can or can’t do for a guy who hardly has the dexterity to tie his own shoelaces. So, it’s unofficial. A holiday, of sorts.
Not ideal considering the whole world-ending catastrophe their bastard angel friend dug out from purgatory, but what can you do? They’ve saved the world enough for their lifetimes. Give some other hunter a turn, let them make that their claim to fame.
He and Sam? They’ve got more important things to focus on.
Dean’s starting to get real sick of teaching Sam the same things he already taught him years before.
There were bigger things at the start, more important, devastating, like getting him to remember to put one foot in front of the other, to chew before swallowing. But all that came back quick enough, natural, like riding a bike. It’s just all those tiny, tiny bits that make up a functioning human being he needs prompting with now, and somehow that grates on him even worse.
Like brushing his teeth. He knows how to do it, knows why, knows it's something he’s always done, will always have to do. Can even pluck out random memories of it, like being too small to reach the sink and Dad having to lift him up to spit, or dry brushing while leaning on the hood of the car, staring out at the High Plains.
But the when, the how long for - that’s what trips him up.
Dean's taken to setting a timer. Two minutes on the dot, morning and night, and they’ll do it together. Probably helps both of them, really - God knows he’s guilty of slacking when it comes to dental hygiene, has fallen into the habit of a thirty-second rinse these recent years, and only when his mouth is practically glued shut when he wakes.
That’s not the point, though. The point is, he shouldn’t have to.
Shaving, too. He hadn’t thought anything of it at first, hadn’t even considered it, until one day Sam left the bathroom with at least five nicks across his face and a patch of unshaved hair he hadn’t even touched towards the bottom of his jaw. He’d had to go over that all over again, the same way he did when Sam was newly fourteen, using the same old razor all three of them shared. And still, more often than not, he’ll need a guiding hand towards the end.
But it’s not just limited to things around the house - or rather, whichever two-bed, low-rate shit tip they’re holed up in. It’s things like forgetting to shut the car door once he’s made his way in, and waiting there, blank-faced and oblivious, until Dean forces a cough and nods his head towards it. Or stalling in the car, twiddling his thumbs when Dean’s filling up the tank instead of going in to grab the road snacks like he always, always used to do.
Their whole rhythm was thrown off. Things he thought were a part of them, natural as breathing, hardwired into their DNA just… gone.
And then there's how he needs to remind him to apologise to folk on the street he bumps into when he’s not looking where he’s going - which is too damn often - and leaving things under his bed, forgetting to lock doors after himself, leaving taps running.
He still has the good sense to keep himself safe, though. Mostly. More than once, Dean has been victim to a flying fist when he caught him off guard. He still insists on sleeping with a gun under his pillow, no matter how hard Dean has tried to snap him out of the habit.
Some things you just don’t forget. They’re in the Winchester blood.
Maybe the most frustrating part is how damn petulant Sam gets about it. There’s never a Thanks, Dean, never a smile in return for his reminders - all he ever gets is a huff, a roll of the eyes, some sulky remark about how he doesn’t need to keep telling him, about how he used to know how to do that, about how it wasn’t always like this.
If you know something’s wrong, why can’t you just fix it? is a question that Dean keeps having to bite back. Though he figures, when he gives the thought the time of day, that if Sam could have helped himself, he would have already. It’s clear enough he’s not enjoying this any more than Dean is-
Shit. Maybe Sam’s starting to get real sick of being taught the same things he’s already been taught years before.
He fucks up a lot; he knows he does. Drinks too much, shouts even more, and doesn’t know how to grieve without some unholy combination of the two. Uses his fists before his words, his rage before his reason. Sees a little more of his dad in the mirror every day and doesn’t like the look of it.
This isn’t a new problem, but it causes new complications.
Sam’s not so good at pushing things down anymore. Wears his heart on his sleeve. Whatever is left of it. Emotions - visible emotions, anyway - come few and far between these days, but when they come, they come fierce. Unbridled. They come as endless tears that Dean has to dry for him because he doesn’t think to do it himself; as anger so brutal it once ended in a broken finger, a hole in a wall, and a lost deposit.
And, hey, maybe that’s a good thing in the long run, learning to process emotions properly, honestly, instead of stuffing them so deep down they turn septic - which seemed to be his coping method of choice for most of his life, and look how well that turned out - but right now, for Dean, it’s nowhere near ideal. Means he’s got to learn to be careful, hold his tongue, handle his brother like he’s made of the same glass he’s downing whiskey from.
The problem is he’s no good at that. And it’s a hard time at the moment - too hard for any kind of major self-improvement. Not just dealing with everything going on with Sam, but every other mess they’ve found themselves in, too.
He misses Bobby like he’d miss a limb. Knows that for certain, because it happened once in Hell; lost his left arm for two years on the rack, and even that hurt less than this. Misses Cas, too, even for all the bullshit he put them through in those last days, for breaking Sam’s head and leaving him to deal with the fallout. Even Lisa, Ben. Even Dad, Mom.
He still sees Alastair in dark corners. Still feels his heart pound when dogs howl. Still itches for the relief of the blade. And there's only one thing he knows that is tried and true to relieve that.
So maybe he’s just gonna have to keep fucking up for a while.
He considered leaving only once.
Somewhere in the beginning, maybe month one or two, that funny in-between period, past the worst of it, full of quiet vigils and uncertain nights and relearning how to be, but before the trajectory tilted anywhere near upwards. Back when all Sam was to him was two blank eyes and no damn answers, and the prospect of hope seemed a cosmic joke.
He’s ashamed of it now. Wasn’t at all back then, as he spent his morning packing bags under Sam’s listless gaze, downing gulps of whatever they had in the mini fridge in the spaces left between his tight-jawed, acid-laced, rambling assertions that he won’t be gone long, not at all, that he was just heading to the launderette like usual, alright?
He had thought to himself: Sam’s never had any problem pulling a runner on him, so why the hell should he? Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth; Sammy always used to eat up all that Bible bull.
(He hasn’t prayed once since it happened.)
It was ten in the morning when he left, and he didn’t stop driving until the next day had dawned, the only destination on his mind being far away from there. He travelled miles in that time, numbly watching as the view from over the dash morphed from steel warehouses and gated communities to vast, rural nothingness, where hundreds of acres of land were broken only by slanted telephone poles or the odd soon-to-be-gone family farm.
He had stopped, finally, on some dusty, scrub-lined back road towards the border of Oklahoma. Hadn’t known why until he was kneeling on the roadside, bringing up four beers and a chicken sandwich, hands clawing at packed dirt, chest aching more fiercely than he’d ever felt, and unable to think of anything but Sam.
Sam, who forgets to use the toilet without someone’s prompting, who takes ten-second blinks, who has nobody else in the world. Sam, whom he carried from the fire, who he taught to shoot at the age of ten, who hugged him before he left.
Sam, who begged him - begged him - not to shove that rancid soul of his back inside his body, then screamed his throat raw when he commanded Death to return it anyway.
Fuck.
It shouldn’t have taken him four states to remember. He needs Sam as much as Sam needs him. Maybe even more.
Just before midnight that very day, he was pushing his way through a door he’d never thought he’d see again, crawling towards a brother lying in the exact spot he left him in. He’d held him close that night, closer than they’d been in a long time, too long, and didn’t stop whispering into his hair how sorry he was.
For what? was all Sam asked.
He hadn’t even noticed he’d been gone.
Sometimes - God, he swears just sometimes, in moments like these: Sam sitting patiently, eyes closed, head tilted back, unguarded, while Dean trims his hair - he almost thinks he prefers him this way. Pliant and agreeable, completely defanged, something closer to the little brother Dean grew up with than the man he grew to be.
There’s no running off to college while he’s like this, no sinking his teeth into the neck of some skank demon, no choosing anyone else over his own flesh and blood.
‘Almost’ being key.
Truth is, now he doesn’t have it, he can’t help but miss the Sam who bit back.
“You saved the world. You remember that, right?”
He throws it over his shoulder to Sam in the back seat, peers through the rearview to see if it lands. He can’t be sure it does, not with how Sam’s holding himself back there, head to his knees and arms around his head. It’s weird to have to direct it back there, rather than to his side - even since it happened, he’s always sat up front.
He asks because it’s been a bad day. A properly bad day. What he used to think were bad days have faded over time, become normal, good, even, as the two of them have gotten used to it, used to each other. So when a bad day comes along now, it tends to knock them both sideways.
They haven’t had one this bad in a long while.
It had started from the second he opened his eyes - two hours later than Dean, mind, which isn’t usual for him. Maybe he’s not the same early riser he once was, but he’s still a damn light sleeper, and the sound of Dean hauling himself out of bed is almost always enough to rouse him. Then it was another hour or two on top of that before Dean could convince him to get up, get washed, get ready. There was no go in him, none at all. He’s used to less, not quite nothing.
He’d struggled choosing what to wear, had to ask Dean to pick something out for him. Then refused to eat anything for breakfast because a family of four wouldn’t stop staring in the diner - which wouldn’t be so bad in itself, but he hadn’t eaten last night either, and the kid’s starting to look like a ghost of himself. Then stumbled in the pharmacy car lot when they’d gotten back from buying some melatonin, skinned his hands real bad, and got honked at by an old bastard in a busted Ford pickup.
And now they’re driving. Have been for hours. To nowhere in particular, though the hour’s getting late, the sky’s getting gloomy, and Dean wouldn’t be averse to stopping somewhere at some point for a quick bite to eat if Sam finally agrees to get out of the car.
“‘Course I do,” Sam mumbles into his lap after a minute of silence, the words hardly decipherable over the purr of the engine, the scratching of gravel under tyres, his tone flat, bored, as if what he’s saying, what he’s done, doesn’t mean a thing to him at all.
It still makes Dean’s skin itch, even after all this time.
“So don’t be getting all mopey on me, alright? You know what you’ve done, even if no one else does. And you’ve done enough.”
A moment passes, then another, and Dean begins thinking Sam’s given up on the conversation when he finally hears a small voice chirp up from behind him.
“It’s just hard sometimes.”
He’s never spoken about it before. Dean’s hands instinctively clench on the wheel.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he says, still into his knees, still so near silent Dean has to strain to hear, “Like, how everyone treats me differently now. They talk all slowly ‘n carefully, like I’m a kid, or, like, not one of them. Or they just keep looking and looking and pretending they’re not, and I think they think I don’t notice, but I do.”
“Yeah, well, screw ‘em. That’s what I say.”
He gets nothing at first, just the road ahead and a shadow in the backseat, the quiet hum of a track he’d put on in the background. And then so, so quietly, he almost thinks he’s imagined it:
“You do it, too.”
There are times when he really, really wishes he could blame Sam for what he did.
Days where the hours pass too slowly, the liquor doesn’t do its job, and all that frustration, all that resentment, builds and builds and builds with nowhere to go, no release. Days when he fantasises about gripping his brother by the neck and holding him to the wall, asking him how he could do this to them, whether he even knows the extent of what he’s done.
He’s no good when his anger doesn’t have a direction, when he can’t find anyone deserving to take it out on. It all ends up turning inwards instead.
But he can’t pin this on Sam. No matter how hard he tries. Because to be the way he was, to be given an offer like that?
Anyone would have taken it.
Anyone.
Dean often thinks of the Sam before, but really, he’s thinking of the Sam before before. The Sam who hadn’t taken his swan dive into Hell and been spat back out, shattered. The Sam whose head wasn’t filled with rubble and hellfire, who didn’t walk the earth so carefully, as if he didn’t deserve to be there.
It’s hard to remember Sam the way he was after that. Harder, even, he thinks, than knowing Sam the way he is now.
It hurt Dean just to watch him. To see the way he’d cower in the smallest corners like a beaten animal, and babble ancient languages under his breath when English escaped him, and flinch at every blink because of the horrors which lay behind his eyelids. The lingering, horrified gazes sent behind his shoulder, to empty seats, invisible people.
How his nails had been bitten down to bloody stumps, how permanent knots made their place in his shoulders, how some nights he’d wake with the sheets soaked through and his face beet red.
And, well, Sam was hurting, too - obviously, more than he was letting on - so he decided to take matters into his own hands. Found a way to save his life while changing it completely in the process.
He still doesn’t have all the details. Doubts he ever will. The most Sam has ever come to explaining what he did, why he did it, was in those first few hours after the cab dropped him off outside their motel door, two days after he went missing - or, as Dean would find out, left.
He can still feel the weight of his brother’s body as it fell into his arms, deadweight, head lolling and lazy. Remembers pulling him to bed, dazed, furious, asking who the hell did this to him, who hurt his little brother? And how all Sam managed to say was mumbled, slurred, spoken blindly into scratchy sheets: ‘S fine, Dean. Asked ‘em to.
To do what, Sammy? He had asked, gripping his arm, checking his pupils, his pulse, trying to figure out, oh, God, what had he done?-
To take all my Hell away.
And that was it, the extent of what Sam would share. He’d slept for sixteen hours straight that night, and he wasn’t any better when he woke up. Nor was he any better the day after, or the day after that.
One thing he does know, though - the only fact he could discern himself - is that it cost him two hundred dollars. Taken from Dean’s own wallet, of course.
Two hundred dollars and the rest of his life. That’s what they took, whoever they were, from a man in no state of mind to understand, for the promise of a life free from the devil.
He often wonders if Sam considers it a fair trade, but he’s always been too afraid to ask. Either way it goes, it won’t be the answer he wants.
Still, times like this, when that anger is curdling and festering and seeking desperately for an outlet, he can’t help but remind himself:
At least he doesn’t scream anymore.
It’s years into their new normal before Dean finally works up the courage to ask the question that has played on his mind since the beginning:
“Did it work?”
He aims to keep it casual, just tosses the question to the other end of the front seat as if it only holds the weight of a remark about the weather, a plan for a rest stop, but there is no denying the tightness in his throat and the thumping of his heart. It’s already a hard conversation, and it hasn’t even started.
Sam looks up from the notebook open on his lap, a two-page spread of random words and tally marks, a method they found for keeping him present during long journeys. In the hundred miles travelled thus far today, he has counted twelve billboards, five things the colour pink, and three birds.
His handwriting has been getting neater again, Dean notes. More like it used to be, though the way he holds the pen is different, clumsier - one of those small, trivial details about him he never knew he knew until it changed. He still chews the lid, though.
“Did what work?”
“You know, the whole…” He takes one hand off the wheel, makes a fluttering motion beside his head. All Sam gives him in return is a withering look. “I mean, do you still see him?”
“Lucifer?” Sam asks, and God, does it make Dean’s heart skip a beat just to hear. Neither of them has said the name in so long. Only he doesn’t say it now as he used to. There was always a heaviness to it before, an aura, some thick, hazy miasma. Dread used to seep through all three syllables and linger long after.
There’s no fear in there now.
Dean just nods and holds his breath.
“Yeah,” Sam admits, and that one word is enough to send his stomach churning, head spinning, vision bursting into static. For a moment there, the world is grey, the ground is crumbling, and it’s the end of the world all over again-
“But, like,” he continues before Dean can even pull together a comprehensive thought, “he doesn’t bother me anymore.”
“No?” Dean chokes.
“None of it does really. I mean, I remember it all, I still see him sometimes - like, well, he’s in the backseat right now - but it’s just… I don’t know, more distant. I don’t feel anything when I think about it. About him. Not like I used to.”
Dean’s first instinct is to glance over his shoulder, check the backseat. Nothing there, of course, except for two duffel bags and Sam’s invisible nightmares. He wonders, briefly, what Lucifer must be doing. If he still talks, still sings, just in a key Sam can now tune out.
His second instinct is to let go of the wheel and wrap him in a hug. Tell him, sorry for everything, for not being able to protect him, for making him think he had to go at this alone. But he doesn’t. Sam wouldn’t like that, and they’re on the road, after all, and he is trying.
Seriously now, he is.
Instead, he asks what’s most important: “And you’re happy? With the way things are?”
Sam shrugs half-heartedly and starts scribbling in the margins of his notebook. They’ve passed another two billboards in this time, which have gone unnoticed. Dean’s fault for distracting him; he’s no multitasker anymore.
“I’m not sad.”
It breaks his heart, just a little, but it’s a better answer than no. He’ll take what he can get these days. At least it’s honest.
“You’d tell me if you were, though, right?
“I would,” he says, the faintest hint of a smile gracing his lips. He hasn’t done that in far too long. “Promise.”
And that’s all he can ever ask for.