Chapter Text
Sam’s in his car now. Not some soulless vehicle assigned to him by his superiors, nor even his lucid memory, but the actual bonafide car that he’d been dreaming about for as long as he could remember.
Dean had brought him out to it only a few minutes ago, had carefully led him by the hand into a massive parking garage that connected to the base they’d been staying in. There were over a dozen antiques all sitting in their designated spots when Sam had arrived, but Dean had maneuvered him through them to the edge of the small mechanical maze; over to a sleek black Chevy that made Sam gasp.
They both had stopped then, Dean turning around to watch Sam’s expression as he stared at the shiny paint and sparkling windows. Dean had smiled softly, and it’d still been plagued with bone-deep sorrow but also achingly fond.
He’d squeezed Sam’s hand briefly and led him over to the passenger side door, allowing him to run his palm over the frame in wonder for a moment before Dean grasped the handle and slowly opened the door.
As Sam had gazed at the leather bench laid out before him, a sensation of warm tranquility seeped out through his chest, urging him inside. He hadn’t needed Dean’s direction, just sank into the worn leather with a content sigh.
His eyes popped open when the door slammed; Sam hadn’t even realized that he’d shut them. Leaning his head against the window, he watched lazily as Dean weaved around the front of the car and to the driver’s side. The man clambered in hastily, like Sam was a dog that’d freak out if left alone for more than a few seconds. He felt Dean’s eyes on him, knew they were probably examining Sam studiously, but he couldn’t resist the urge to close his eyes again and just be .
And oh , they’d done this once before, hadn’t they? He could feel the memory leaking out of the crack in his head, deja vu solidifying into proper memories of Dean shaking him, begging Sam to give him his location. But, why would Dean have been reaching out to Sam all those months ago, before he’d even begun his assault on Men of Letters’ bases? How had he even known Sam existed?
Why was that memory even worth taking in the first place?
Sam hadn’t been bad, he’d followed orders to a tee. Dean didn’t ascertain any information, and Sam had just been a bit shaken up from the whole experience. Only harmful memories were supposed to be removed, the ones that made him dangerous to his colleagues and the general public.
He… he didn’t understand .
Sam was brought abruptly out of his thoughts when Dean nervously cleared his throat. Head still resting on the window, Sam swiveled his eyes over to his left, meeting the uncertain gaze of his captor. Dean seemed to steel himself, taking one deep breath before exclaiming,
“I’m sorry, Sam. I’m so, so sorry for not getting back quick enough to protect you. I…
When I got back to the bunker and I saw the- the blood, I knew something was wrong. Cas’d been banished and you were just… gone. We tried to track the van they threw you in but it didn’t lead anywhere. You just vanished off the face of the earth and there was nothing I could-”
A sniffle .
“I knew you weren’t dead. Wasn’t based on anything, there’s no way to locate a soul that’d been thrown in the The Empty, I just-”
Pause .
“I actually punched Cas in the face when he suggested it,” Dean was chuckling airly as he recalled that.
“You’d think I’d outgrow that at some point but…
He came up with the Dream Root idea, too. We have tons of that crap in storage, so we just brewed it up and grabbed a hair from the car. Jesus Sam, I clean this thing monthly and it’s still covered in your hairs. You’re as bad as a husky!”
Dean huffed at his joke for a moment, before his jaw started to tremble slightly. Rubbing a hand over his face, Dean continued sorrowfully,
“I had proof you were alive. Wasn’t the relief I thought it was gonna be, though. You just- fuck , Sam, you just looked at me like I was a damn demon. You were so scared , and I couldn’t get you to tell me what was wrong! Couldn’t get you to say anything, period.
Towards the end I could hear these memories of your’s. I don’t know what was happening in them, but you just kept screaming .”
Tears were beginning to run down Dean’s face, uninterrupted streams that landed somewhere on his lap. His shoulders shook with each hitching breath he took. He seemed to be swallowing down an earthquake of grief through sheer force of will.
“Crowley showed up,” Dean finally managed to continue.
“Told us he’d seen you hunting, but that you weren’t… you. Didn’t recognize him, didn’t recognize your own damn name . How some group showed up to drag you out and exorcize him back to Hell. I didn’t know what to think.
But, it was a lead. Wasn’t too hard to start piecing things together after that. I just asked around, crashed a bunch of hunter bars ‘till I got lucky. There were rumors of a foreign hunter organization reaching out to hunters to collaborate. They were British, well coordinated, and fucking creepy according to everyone I spoke to. Some seemed to get pretty aggressive with their recruitment methods.
From there, me and Cas started tracking them down. I guess they told you about that. Cas found you first. You blindsided him, just showed up out of nowhere!
He told me what happened and I- well I guess I lost it.
I didn’t- Sam you gotta understand! You were gone for so long, and- and you clearly weren’t okay. I know it wasn’t right but I needed answers!
Eventually they started ratting each other out. That’s how I found out about the doctor.
Sam, I swear to God , everything else I did might damn me to Hell but I gave that monster exactly what he deserved. I know you don’t remember the things he did, but he told me . He didn’t get to walk away after that.”
Dean was clenching the wheel with both his hands, knuckles turning white. He seemed to be restraining himself from grabbing at Sam, making physically sure that he knew exactly why Dean was justified in his actions.
He took a few calming breaths, and then plowed on.
“They called me after that, the British Men of Letters . Such a stupid fucking name. They’re the ones who told me you’d be in that town. It was obviously a trap, but it was the only opportunity we had.
And we did it. We actually did it,” he still sounded like he was trying to fully convince himself of that.
“I failed you, Sam. I fucked it all up so bad. Keeping you safe was the only job I ever wanted, and now you’re- you’re-”
Dean had to break off then, choking down the sobs that rose up from deep in his chest, curling into himself like he would after a gut punch. His tears seemed to fly out of his eyes with every shake of his shoulders. Even as he clenched his jaw closed, a hissing sound of agony escaped with each gasp.
Sam stared through the window, through the walls of the garage to somewhere deep inside his own mind.
He was so distracted that he never even noticed the tears that pooled down his face as well.
Like a duckling, Sam follows Dean silently around the bunker. He’s a shadow, watching Dean go about his day without interfering or contributing.
When Dean scrambles eggs at eight in the morning, Sam observes from his seat by the table.
When Dean’s sprawled out on the sofa watching TV at an ungodly hour to avoid sleep, Sam’s memorizing his expressions from the other end.
When Dean spends hours monologuing about their lives together, Sam pays dutiful attention.
He knows that he’s supposed to be bringing Dean in, that this is a complete breach of every command the Men of Letters have ever given him, but the orders that seemed to dictate Sam’s every waking move for so long are now… muted.
Like when he knows he should be drinking his coffee black in the morning, just like it had been served every day, but allows Dean to hand him the creamer and sugar anyway. It’s small things, little habits that slowly begin to breach protocol more and more with each passing day.
It should terrify Sam, but as he spends longer and longer with Dean, he begins to pray that this strange dream never ends.
“They’re not coming to steal you away again, Sammy,” Dean tells him one day.
“When word got out about what they did to you every hunter in the country made those assholes public enemy number one. They’re a bit too wrapped up fighting a guerilla war to worry about getting you back under their thumb.”
They’re both at the kitchen table, Sam at the head seat and Dean to his left. They’re going over pictures again, Dean explaining the stories behind each of them while Sam feels the cloudy memories slowly trickle back in.
It’s all very confusing, and more often than not Dean will need to stop mid sentence to make sure that Sam is not too overwhelmed. An overwhelmed Sam is liable to lash out, screaming and trying to strangle whoever is closest to him. It usually ends with Cas knocking him out and waking up restrained in his bed.
After one such incident, Sam wakes to Castiel running a hand over his forehead, watching attentively. Dean’s had him do that sometimes; Cas will periodically assess the condition of Sam’s broken mind. His reports have been tentatively positive these last couple of times. While he doesn’t really understand what the Men of Letters did to Sam, Cas is slowly beginning to recognize the state of Sam’s mind as resembling closer and closer to that of a normal human.
When Cas meets his gaze, Sam is suddenly shown a much colder, empty pair of eyes. They bore into his soul, leaving him raw and exposed.
“ The Boy with the Demon Blood ,” Sam murmurs softly as he looks away, completely unprepared for the hand that grabs his chin.
Cas’ hands sharply force Sam’s gaze to meet his. Eyes filled with pain and regret seem to plead with Sam before he hears Cas begin urgently,
“Sam, I want you to listen to me. I was wrong when I said that. I assumed that you could only exist as the product of Azazel’s actions, that there was no option for you to be anything resembling righteous.
But there was always a choice, Sam. You may have started with demon blood in your veins, but you chose to make yourself into a good man. You chose every day to be better than the monsters that tried to define you.
I know that all those little choices felt insignificant to you in the grand scheme of the nightmare that your life often turned into, but it’s the decision you made every few minutes of the day to try and be better that defined your character in this world.
And I want you to know, you still have time to make a choice.”
He leaves Sam then, off to find Dean and inform him that his brother has finally woken up.
Sam chooses to lay there, staring at the empty door frame like he’s contemplating the cosmos.
Sam feels weirdly floaty as he sinks into a chair in the map room. There’s a hurricane raging through his body, forcing his breaths to come in choppy gasps and his heart to beat like it’s hours behind schedule.
His head feels strange, dizzy and fuzzy and roaring with disjointed memories and malformed thoughts.
They tell him his name is Sam .
His vision is almost completely offline. There’s little black dots flickering across a screen of gray-white, perfectly in sync with the overwhelming ringing that’s traveled from his ears down the canal and into his brain.
They tell him lots of things in the early days, about monsters and hunting and the order of the world.
There’s tears on his face, Sam’s sure of it. His skin feels oversensitive, the air around him prickling his exposed arms like needles in a pin cushion. The rest of his body is painfully confined in stiflingly hot flannel, but his rubbery fingers no longer have the strength to tear the shirt off.
There’s a white marker on a tree, Sam notices as he runs through the woods.
The dam is breaking now, the walls screeching and thrashing with the desperation of a dying animal, clinging onto life for the sole sake of survival. The pain is enormous, but Sam claws away at the fracture points with reckless abandon, needing this incomprehensible monster to GET OUT OF MY HEAD .
When he focused, he could see a blur to his left, a dark swatch of leather bleeding into the glimmering light of a fond grin.
“SAMUEL WINCHESTER!”
BANG.
BANG.
“Dean Winchester is an incredibly dangerous man.”
“...TALK TO ME! WHY WON’T YOU SAY ANYTHING!?”
“You still have time to make a choice.”
“Sammy, talk to me, what’s happening?”
Dean materialized from nowhere, gripping Sam’s cheeks and squatting right down to his eyeline.
Sam’s sobbing now, he knows this as Dean quickly thumbs away each agonized tear. His hands grasp his brother’s wrists, desperate for him to stay, desperate for any contact that means safety and love and family and big brother .
And when he meets Dean’s eyes, he chokes out a sonorous,
“ Dean.”
And it means brother, and love, and sorrow, and motel rooms, and spirits, and jokes about haircuts, and watching the stars, and the stars themselves, and each morning, and evening, and everything in between, packaged up into one neat little word for him to explain himself.
It means Sam Winchester, and every small detail that makes him alive.
He’s brought into a bone-crushing hug and they’re both sobbing now, their grief ricocheting off of each other and slowly melting into something else, something warm they can share between each other, the way it was always meant to be.
It means that even as Dean whispers, “Oh God, oh God, Sammy ,” into his hair while he runs his palm over Sam’s neck desperately, they can both wear a joyous half-smile that comes with the unshakable knowledge that their other half stands right beside them, never to be moved.