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Their plan had worked.
Amara was weakened, and by the force of the witches, angels, and demons, God - aided by his son, who was once more willing to be a family - locked his sister, the yin to his yang, away forevermore. The beat of life would continue to pulse in time with the world's turn, and the Darkness would never know the sensation of light again.
But as always, even with the almighty on their side, this victory came at a cost.
Because the very thing the Winchester brothers had damned the world to destroy...that curse, the First Curse was once more seared into the ashes scattered amid their lives.
And so when God called upon the Mark, the burn in Sam's forearm began, and it hadn't stopped, even now that the light had faded and the bomb-shadowed cement had begun to settle around them. The scarred flesh's thrum was alive, an itch stretching forth its roots and exploring its new bearer, and Sam could feel it in his veins, its essence spreading, crawling up his body towards where Dean's hand clutched his shoulder.
"You okay, Sammy?" his brother asked, the deep voice hushed, but green eyes already searching with worry.
"Yeah," Sam told him, releasing the clench of his fist, and trying not to grit his teeth any further than he already had.
"You sure?"
The younger hunter rolled down the sleeve of his jacket, exhaling and glancing over at where Chuck was speaking to Lucifer before biting his lip, and bringing himself to respond. "Yeah. It's- I can feel it. Like a hot chain around my arm."
Dean's lips pursed, but he nodded; trying to beat back the cycle of his thoughts, of the instincts telling him to grab his brother by the shoulders and demand he give up this burden. "It'll fade," he said instead, forcing his tone away from the concerned tremble it so dearly longed to cling to. "By the time you wake up in the morning...the burn'll dull."
Sam inclined his head in acknowledgement, and then his shoulders squared, as Chuck and the archangel walked over to where they stood.
"How do you feel, Sam?" Chuck asked, motioning with his chin and crossing his arms over his body's frame.
"I'm fine," the hunter, now an artifact of the supernatural answered, pushing his mouth into the ghost of a smile. "So long as Amara stays away...this I can live with."
"What can you do for him?" Dean all but demanded, the memories of his own struggle strong even after all the time that had passed. The echoes of his time as a demon- the life that didn't appear to have an end ruled by a void and a thirst for death, had never truly left him, and some piece of him knew they never fully would. So he couldn't watch his baby brother go down that road. Not when he was helpless, to take the burden himself or ease the pain at all.
He refused to look into the eyes of all he had left in his life, and see the same thing he saw in the mirror.
Chuck bit his lip, gaze brushing the archangel at his right, before he gave his head a slight shake. "I'm sorry," he said. "I can't do much. If the First Blade stays out of the picture, he shouldn't go down the same road you did, but there's no guarantees." He looked at his son once again. "Given time, some of the Mark's effects are inevitable."
Dean stiffened, but refused to let it show. "No First Blade. Right, okay, we can avoid that," he said, nodding, rendered grateful and frightened in equal measure by how the story checked out with what he remembered. The Mark had only truly shown itself to him for the curse it was after paired with its complimentary half. The day Magnus had forced the blade into his hands had sealed his fate, and fused the slowly accelerating train unto its tracks. "After Cain, Cas took it away. It should be gone."
Lucifer squinted slightly, and then nodded as if in confirmation, the way he drove his vessel's expressions still making something in Dean want to clutch his chest. But now wasn't the time for that.
The Darkness was gone.
Even if some shadows would seemingly always be behind them.
One day turned to a week.
Dean didn't know what to do, and Sam could tell. They didn't talk about it.
For now, they took some time.
Their lives weren't over, and so the next job would be along soon enough.
One week turned to two.
Sam killed for the first time with the Mark on his arm. A vampire.
He felt something, but it didn't overtake him. It coexisted. He ignored the gentle whisper that if he wanted the rush, it was his.
That night he slept so deeply he nearly forgot anything was wrong when he woke up.
Two weeks turned to three.
Sam found Dean in the library late one night, reviewing their notes on the Mark. Dean swore he wasn’t trying to get rid of it again, but let slip that he wanted to take it back.
They fought.
As if this hadn’t been hard enough already.
Three weeks turned into months.
Sam had the Mark in his dreams now. Every now and again he'd feel something in him start to simmer, and he'd hole himself up in their training room, putting on his sweats and fighting the air, fighting what he knew wasn't himself until it was gone. He rarely remained idle, but didn't seem afraid.
He didn't know whether or not to be.
Months became a year.
The Mark stayed, its thrum receding to the background, but it never left.
Because it never would, and Sam would never die along with it.
Over time, the Winchesters had found a balance, not talking about it and not feeling completely suffocated by the knowledge that it was there. But things had changed, in a way neither of them were capable of denying.
Sam could be a time bomb, waiting to go off, but he refused to see himself that way. He meditated, counted to ten in his mind every time he felt something hot bursting in his chest and gave up alcohol to file the sharpened edge off his temper. With every life he took, he swallowed the force pulsing in his veins, and grew to only feel solitary pangs of guilt in order to compartmentalize the way his brother's worry became permanently etched into his skin. He knew Dean would never be able to move on. They'd fought this battle for so long the first time, but now, his brother was even more powerless than he'd been before.
It wasn't easy.
It was never going to be.
One year turned to two.
Sam Winchester would never admit it, but moments when weeks went by without a job, he grew restless. The fingers on his right hand tensed as if longing for a weapon to hold, and his skin tingled, as though missing the way it felt when an adversary's blood trickled down his wrist. Chuck came by to see them once.
The younger hunter didn't leave his room.
Two years turned to four.
Dean was nearly forty, and wouldn't admit it, but he'd aged. Aged by time, and worry, and the wear of his eyes darting to their worn space like a second home over his brother's forearm.
And by now, he could see the signs.
The ghost-knuckled grip over the handhold of the guns and the blades, the way it took the man not quite unpossessed too long to release and an extra thought not to empty the clip every time his finger found the trigger.
Sam hadn't changed enough to matter, enough to let the cold slip of fear in those who knew him spill and grow, but in subtle ways, there were things Dean noticed. The air about him was...different. There was less warmth in his eyes, less evidence of his heart where for so long it'd rested at least halfway to his sleeve. Sam did what he did, meditating, waking up and hunting and researching and going to bed and doing it all again the next day, the routine something they were both long used to. But it was like there was a hardening edge to every sweep of his gaze, every breath he inhaled, every step forward or otherwise he took.
He'd long since stopped bothering to wear sleeves that covered the eternal reminder of what he could one day grow to be.
Dean didn't know whether that meant his brother was being brave, or if he simply no longer cared.
Four years turned to four and a half.
Sam had been dreaming about the First Blade, and awoke in a cold sweat with unbearable heat flaring in his veins. It wasn't the first time his subconscious had shown him holding it, killing with it, reveling in the sensation of life lost and adrenaline gained, but now he could feel something charring in his chest, a jagged cry like that of a fossilized jaw plunging into flesh that burned and threatened to blacken the edges of his soul.
He didn't tell his brother.
This continued, at first once a month, then twice.
Then again and again and again.
Four and a half years slowly crawled into five.
Sam's birthday rolled around, but this time, nothing happened.
He figured that eventually, he'd see thousands of them, so there was no reason to celebrate now. Just another year in an existence that would never end, and a life he knew would eventually bleed from his fingertips.
He hadn't voiced it aloud, but then again, he hadn't been voicing much, as of late. His eyes were almost perpetually sharp, his tongue having become the same. The eye of the needle that was his focus, the list of things he cared about only began to thin.
Dean had wanted to bake a cake.
Instead, he drank himself to sleep.
So Sam sat up alone and stared at his ceiling, and wondered what he'd see the next time he met his gaze in the mirror.
Five years didn't turn into anything.
Sam could feel himself changing, and after all this time, the fear that had dulled finally caught up with him. But it was too late.
He rose one morning and knew that by the time his body would lower once more, it would be to lay against the ashes of a broken earth.
He walked out the door, and no one stopped him.
At last, the Mark was free of its anchors.
Sam Winchester's name was destined to be lost beneath the weight of a universe that he could protect no more, and the echoes of the snap of bone. He wandered yet never moved, listened but couldn't hear. Felt, but couldn't feel.
Was, but couldn't be.
Because the only thing stronger than the weight of the mark against his mind was the crushing depths of his guilt.
Clutching whatever was left inside him, he prayed. And he made a phone call.
As soon as the line fell, the Impala was roaring against the road, and at the end of the drive his brother stood and watched as God made the crumbling, twisting bearer of his gift an offer that rang familiar, only now intended for different ears. An offer to sleep. To serve his purpose and in doing so ensure the peace for which he has given up everything.
Reddened eyes met green, color against color and life against death; one heart broken, and the other one was too burned to keep beating any longer.
The man whose only remaining wish was never to become his nightmares, said yes.
And so, his eyes closed;
The last thing he felt the whispers along his arm, at long last...allowed to quiet.