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Sam finishes the last of the stitches he just put into his own side and releases a shuddering breath. He doesn’t mind the pain much. Everything’s grown kind of numb in the last few months since Dean died - his body, his mind, his soul. If he even still has one. Sam’s not entirely sure.
Everything has narrowed down to a single-minded need - to find the Trickster and make him bring Dean back. And then drive a stake through the Trickster’s heart and look into his eyes while he dies.
A voice at the back of his head keeps whispering that it's hopeless. That Dean’s body - buried in secret instead of burning it - is rotting away and that time has run out. Sam had tried every other option - crossroads demons, spells, reapers. None of it had worked. No demon wanted to deal, no spell could reach deep enough to pull his brother from the depths of Hell, and every reaper had scampered as soon as they’d caught sight of Sam. As the months had passed, Sam’s hope had dimmed and was only kept alive by denial and an insatiable need for revenge.
In spite of the truth staring him in the face, every day when Sam feels Dean’s amulet dangle around his neck instead of his brother’s, in spite of the second empty motel bed beside his, Sam’s never going to accept it - that his brother’s dead and in Hell. Whatever will Sam’s got left to keep going, he’s putting into finding the monster that took his brother. That is his purpose now. Nothing else matters - certainly not the transient pain of a bullet wound.
Sam puts on a fresh shirt and straightens, testing his stitches. They pull under the bandage but they’ll hold. He gathers bandage wrappers, antiseptic wipes and left-over prolene and throws them into a trash bag, along with his ruined, bloody shirt, and ties the bag shut. Back on the road, he’ll dispose of it somewhere where it won’t freak out some poor cleaning lady doing motel room service. Without Dean around, he’s become a bit of a neat freak. Plus, he doesn’t want anyone to alert the cops. After all, he left a corpse behind when taking that bullet to his side. A human corpse. Collateral damage. He has no time for becoming the target of an investigation.
After cleaning up and storing away his suture kit, Sam sits down at his laptop to meticulously update his mission log. One day, all these tiny bits of information he’s been gathering on the Trickster will come together and a clear picture will emerge, a pattern he will be able to follow. There’s no doubt in Sam’s mind that, eventually, he will find the Trickster. It’s just a matter of time and determination.
Sam’s cell phone lights up in the semi-dark of the room, and the familiar electric guitar riff announces a call. It’s Dean’s old ringtone, and Sam should really change it back to his own, generic one, only he hasn’t had the time yet. Bobby’s number flashes on the screen and Sam is tempted to ignore him, again, but this is the eleventh time the older hunter has tried to contact him in the last two days, and if Sam doesn’t pick up, he knows Bobby will track him down and show up in person - something he wants to avoid.
Reluctantly, he punches the “accept” button. “What is it, Bobby?”
“Geez, kid, it’s good to hear from you, too.” Irony is dripping from the older man’s voice.
“I’m busy, Bobby,” Sam says cooly. “What do you want?”
On the other end of the line, Bobby sighs. “What I want is for you to get your head out of your ass and come back to your senses. I want you to stop this madness and come home!”
Home? The only home Sam’s ever had is the Impala, riding shotgun next to Dean, and if he doesn't do something about it that’s never going to happen again.
“I’m not coming to Sioux Falls. I’m hunting. You know that.”
More sighing. “You’re not gonna find the Trickster, Sam - at least not on your own! He’s a friggin’ god, and he ain’t stupid. Smarter than us, and, believe me, I ain’t admitting to that lightly. And even if you find him, I don’t believe he’s gonna bring Dean back. Might be he can’t.” He takes a deep, sad breath. “Maybe it’s time to accept that it’s too late. Time to let Dean go.”
Sam clutches the phone so hard in his hand he’s about to break it. “Never,” he snarls. “I’m gonna get him back!”
Bobby sighs, and Sam thinks he can hear the old man scrub his unkempt beard. “Are you sure this is what it’s still about, son?”
“What else would it be.” Not a question; a statement.
“Well, it looks an awful lot like revenge to me! You’re on a spree, Sam. You’re leaving a trail of bodies, and it ain’t just monsters. That’s not what Dean would’ve wanted!”
Sam huffs bitterly. “You’re wrong. It’s exactly what Dean would’ve wanted! If this was the other way around and I’d be the one dead, Dean would’ve already strung up the Trickster by his balls and taken him apart, limb by limb, for good measure.”
The silence on the other end tells him he’s got a point.
“Yeah. Probably.” Bobby’s voice sounds softer now. “But you’re not Dean. And the last thing your brother would want you to do is gettin’ yourself killed for him.” The old hunter clears his throat. “He’d want you to live, Sam. Hell, that’s what he gave his life for, his soul! You’re gonna honor him by throwing that away?!”
Bobby’s words should hurt. And maybe they do, underneath the dull throb in his side and the coating of hard liquor he’s applied to himself. But Sam doesn’t feel it. He doesn’t feel anything, because if he did, it would cut him off at the knees and he would stay down.
“I’m not throwing anything away, Bobby,” he says evenly. “The Trickster’s not going to kill me. I’m going to kill him.”
An angry grunt reaches his ear, and he thinks he hears something smash in the background.
“Goddammit, boy!” Bobby’s voice trembles now, with anger and sorrow. “If Dean was here, he’d kick your stubborn ass! What you’re doing is-”
“...but he’s not here,” Sam interrupts him. “And that’s the whole point. Can I get back to work now? Or is there anything else you wanted to talk about?”
Again, silence. It hangs heavily in the air, saturated with hurt, until Bobby’s voice reappears, bitter. “No, nothin’ else. If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
Sam disconnects without saying goodbye. The wound in his side twinges, and he presses his hand against it, subduing the pain. Then he turns back to his laptop to continue his research. There are notes to write down and clusters of unusual crimes to track. He’s been working on programming an algorithm to assist with that. He’s getting closer. He can feel it in his bones.
xxx
Three months later, when it’s Wednesday and he has Dean back, he doesn’t want to let go. Hugging Dean tight, he feels again, feels too much to put into words. Surprised by his clinginess, Dean asks him, later, on the road, what’s going on with him, and Sam can’t talk.
He can’t tell his brother that he watched him die over a hundred times. About holding Dean while he choked on his own blood, on vomit, on food lodged in his throat, on shards of glass. How he saw the light leave his brothers’ eyes along with the shock and the pain - sometimes in a matter of seconds, sometimes in the back of an ambulance or in a hospital bed, over hours while Sam held Dean’s hand and that brave, green gaze until it was over.
He can’t talk about the many ways in which Dean died, his body either invisibly ravaged from the inside by a stroke, poison, anaphylactic shock, an organ failing, a blood vessel silently bursting - or about those graphic and gory deaths where death literally tore Dean apart and ended him with limbs missing, chunks torn out, in a pool of blood and brain matter. Those had been the hardest to shake.
Sam doesn’t want to tell Dean how he buried him and went down a road that had scared Bobby, even scared Sam himself. He can’t and won’t relive those six months cut in half and out of his mind. He just… can’t.
So, instead, he tells Dean about being stuck in a time loop for a couple of weeks until they’d found the Trickster and put an end to their own version of Groundhog Day. Even leaving out the dying part, it’s enough to explain why he looks so haggard and why he’s a little on edge.
“Why can’t I remember any of this?” Dean asks, not understanding.
Sam shrugs in the passenger seat and looks at his brother, afraid he’ll vanish if he only so much as blinks. “I don’t know. I was the only one who was aware of what was happening. Everyone else - including you - was oblivious.”
“But why? Why only you?”
“I don’t know.”
Of course he knows. The Trickster told him. Dean dying over and over hadn’t been a lesson for Dean, but for Sam. He was supposed to accept that his brother would die and go to Hell in a few months. He was supposed to let go, and he wouldn’t. It’s a lesson the Trickster can shove up his own dead ass, thank you very much. As if they’d ever taken advice from a monster.
“Dude, what aren’t you telling me?”
Damn Dean and his spidey senses. His brother’s become too good at looking right through him.
“Nothing.”
Sam tries not to squirm under the inquisitive green stare that’s pinning him to the passenger seat. At some point, Dean has to turn his eyes back on the road.
“Well, something’s going on,” he grouses. “Because you’ve got your panties in a twist ever since you woke up this morning.”
Sam looks at Dean’s profile, now tense with worry, but so alive, his eyes glinting in a lively jade while a muscle ticks in his jaw, his Adam's apple moving as he swallows. It’s an illusion, but Sam even thinks he can see Dean’s heartbeat pulsing in his carotid, under the stubbly, healthily flushed skin. Dean’s alive, and whatever the Trickster wanted to teach him, Sam’s going to keep his brother that way. At whatever cost.
“I’m fine, Dean,” he lies, using a Winchester phrase that traditionally signals the end of a conversation. “I’m just tired.”
Dean purses his lips, musing. “Too many Tuesdays?”
Sam grimaces. “You could say that.”
They leave it at that, because Dean, for all his poking and prodding, knows when the time to talk has come and passed. Sam’s sure that Dean will try again later, because he’s like one of those small, tenacious dogs that just won’t stop pulling on the hem of your pants leg until you fucking move. And he’s counting on the power of corrosion - that whatever Sam’s hiding from him will eat through the coating and leak out eventually.
But that’s not going to happen. Dean wasn’t there in those last six months. He didn’t see how hard Sam can become, how determined. And he’s determined to keep Dean’s dying spree a secret. Just as determined as he is to save his brother from ever dying again. He’s not going to let it happen.