Chapter Text
Sam took one final glance at the English lit paper he had been working on for the last four hours before saving it and closing the computer, then standing up to stretch. It was time to head to the cafeteria for dinner. His mind quickly went through his mental to-do list for the remainder of the evening and the next day as he looked around for his wallet. He had just spotted it laying on his nightstand when the phone on his desk vibrated. He automatically reached for it and glanced at the caller id, his knuckles turning white as he read the name: “Dean Winchester”. He stared at the phone for another long moment before tossing it back on his desk. Falling into the nearest chair, he ran his hands through his hair, all thoughts of the next day’s activities now completely pushed out of his head in lieu of the obvious question.
What the hell did Dean want?
It had been over a year since Sam had announced his intention to attend Stanford. Over a year since the screaming match with his father, the ultimatum, the slammed door. Over a year since Dean had stood by, watching the fight silently. Not defending him. Not saying a word. Not even coming after him after the fight was over to tell him that no matter what their father said, Sam was still his little brother and he didn’t want him out of his life.
Sam sighed again and stood up, beginning to pace.
He had been so excited when the letter informing him of his full-ride scholarship had arrived; so hopeful that at long last his father would finally see how important college was to Sam, how much it meant to be able to get away, experience a “normal” life and attempt to carve his own path in the world. The disappointment when the exact opposite had occurred was crushing, but Sam hadn't been surprised. It was a scene that had played out too many times to count throughout his childhood: the time Sam wanted to play soccer instead of take archery lessons, the time Sam asked to stay with Bobby so he could finish out the term at the nearby school and compete at the state debate tournament, every time he wanted to do anything other than hunt. So in spite of his optimism, Sam had been ready for his father’s reaction—the confrontation, the yelling, the anger, the ultimatum.
Yet nothing, literally nothing, could have prepared him for Dean’s reaction to the news. In spite of the fact that Dean teased him constantly about his academic pursuits, his desire to do something other than join the family business when he grew up, Sam had always known Dean was proud of him; had always known that no matter what, he had his older brother's support. So after the fight with his father ended, Sam had walked to the nearest phone booth, flipped through the yellow pages and took a taxi to the first hotel listed. He checked in under the pseudonym he and Dean had agreed on and waited for the phone to ring or the knock on the door.
It never came. Sam waited the entire night and the next day, thinking maybe it had taken Dean that long to get away from their father. Or maybe that Dean was waiting to get in touch with him until after he'd calmed their father down. The day after that, he finally realized the phone call wouldn’t be coming, and neither would Dean. There would be no pep talk. No “lay low while I smooth things over, Sammy…it’ll be okay. I’ll take care of it.” Dean’s complete silence could only mean he was taking their father’s side and he wanted Sam out of his life, too.
The next week was freshman orientation, so Sam had hitchhiked to Stanford. He’d been the only kid checking in to the dorms with just a duffle bag full of knives and rock salt, and the clothes on his back.
The phone on his desk vibrated again, snapping Sam out of his reverie. He brushed at the tears that had formed in the corner of his eyes then strode over to the desk and snatched the phone up, glancing again at the caller ID: “Dean Winchester”. He switched the phone off and walked out of the room, the door slamming shut behind him. Whatever it was that Dean wanted to say to him, he didn’t want to hear it. It was about a year too late.
* * *
Sam wasn’t sure how long he had been sleeping when the sound of loud voices and a thump or two that sounded suspiciously like someone being thrown against the wall outside of his dorm room woke him up. He rubbed his eyes and glanced at the clock, then swung his legs over the side of his bed and stood up. Quickly pulling on a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie, he walked over to the door and flicked open the lock. His hand froze on the doorknob as a voice he hadn’t heard in over a year—but which was more familiar to him than any other in his life—rose above the crowd. “SAMMY???” Another loud thud, and then “I TOLD YOU I’M HERE TO SEE MY BROTHER NOW LET ME GO! SAMMY!”
Sam sighed and yanked open the doorknob, certain he had to be hearing things. There was no way his brother had come all the way to California. Not after this long. And yet, when the door opened, it revealed Dean struggling against two security guards who, despite having Dean’s hands pinned behind his back, were just barely holding on to the elder Winchester brother. “LET ME SEE MY BRO…Sammy?” Dean stopped struggling and the guards almost lost their balance at the sudden slackening of resistance. Something that almost looked like relief flickered in his eyes before his face relaxed into a grin. “Hey l’il brother.”
Sam just stared at Dean, unaware of the doors popping open all along the hall, unaware of his RA peeking out to find out what was going on, unaware of everyone and everything but the sight of his brother somehow, unbelievably, standing in front of him. “Dean?” Sam gasped. The two men stared at each other for a moment longer before Sam finally broke the silence. “What in the hell are you doing here?”
One of the security guards looked at Sam, then back to Dean, then back to Sam again. “This your brother?” he asked. Sam nodded.
Dean glowered smugly at the guards and jerked his arms away. “See?” he grumbled. “If you’d have just listened to me in the first place, there wouldn’t be a hole in the wall the shape of your partner there.” He took an uneven step toward Sam, arms held out as though he were expecting a hug. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”
For the first time, Sam became aware of the curious stares of the crowd which had gathered around them. He gritted his teeth, then opened the door to his dorm. “Come on in,” he said, grabbing Dean’s arm and yanking him inside. Sam slammed the door against the prying gazes of the onlookers and locked it. He waited for a moment until he heard the guards dispersing the crowd before he turned to face his brother.
“Sammy,” Dean said, once again stretching out his arms as though he wanted Sam to hug him. “I’ve missed you, you know.”
Sam ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “You’re drunk, aren’t you.” It was a statement, not a question.
Dean looked for a moment as though he were going to object, but couldn’t quite hide the smile. “Only a little,” he said, holding up his thumb and forefinger. “But that’s not why I’m here.”
“That’s an excellent point,” Sam said, the shock starting to wear off as the anger began to creep in. “Why are you here? I’m pretty sure it’s not for a job. I might be a little rusty, but I think I’d know if there were a haunting on campus…”
Dean cocked his head and shrugged. “I tried calling,” he said. “You didn’t answer. What other choice did I have?”
“That’s not the…what other…?” Sam balled his hand into a fist and turned to face the door, then took a deep breath before once again turning to face Dean. “An entire year I don’t hear from you, and suddenly you call, out of the blue. What am I supposed to do?”
Dean plopped down into Sam’s recliner and ran his hands along the arms. “What are you supposed to do? I dunno…maybe try picking up the phone?” he said, bouncing up and down a little and then kicking the footrest up before returning his gaze to his brother. “This is comfy.”
“NOT THE POINT DEAN!” Sam snapped, his patience finally wearing off. “You know damn well—” He paused and took a deep breath, then crossed his arms. “You can’t stay here.”
Dean spread his arms apart. “Where else am I gonna stay, huh? I’m in town. Of course I’m going to come visit my little brother.” Sam opened his mouth to once again speak but before he could formulate a response, Dean stood up and walked over to Sam, setting both hands on his brother’s shoulders. “Sam…Sammy…I’m tired,” he giggled. “And drunk. S’been a long day for me. There will be plenty of time in the morning for us to yell at each other, huh?”
Sam snapped his mouth shut and glared at Dean. Dean grinned. “Good. Now we have that settled, do you have a blanket or something? It’s cold in here…” He looked around, grabbed a blanket off of Sam’s bed and returned to the recliner. “Good night, little brother,” he said with a grin. “S’good to see you again.”
Before Sam could protest, Dean was snoring softly. Sam stared at his brother’s sleeping form for a few more minutes and then grabbed his laptop and began packing it into his computer bag so he could head to the library. It was obvious that he would not be getting any more sleep that night. He might as well finish the damn English lit paper.
* * *
Dean awoke with a start, his hand automatically reaching under his pillow for the gun he kept there. Only there was no pillow. In fact, it slowly dawned on his hungover mind that he was sitting upright. He tried to move and felt his neck and back scream in protest.
Okay. Where the hell was he? And what had happened last night? He opened his eyes, shutting them again as the light caused the dull throb in his head to turn into a sharp stabbing pain.
He groaned and shifted his weight, doing his best to ignore the threat his stomach was making to evict last night's dinner. Rubbing his fingers across his eyes, he once again opened them, the pain in his head not so severe now that he was prepared for the onslaught of light.
All right, so he had established that he'd had too much to drink last night. Now, where had he ended up? He remembered the end of the hunt. Remembered calling Sam, panicked, terrified.
Remembered arriving at Stanford, making it all the way up the front steps of Sam's dorm before the doubt kicked in and he found he couldn't go any further.
Sam had walked away. Left him to go to college without so much as a good bye or a phone call to let him know he was okay. And he'd been doing just fine, too, the two times their father had stopped by campus to check.
Better than fine, actually. He was making friends. Even had a girlfriend. And he was doing well in classes, too, as John had discovered when he'd broken into the records office and checked Sam's grades. Sam was doing better without him than he'd ever done under Dean's care, making it very hard for Dean to escape the fact that his little brother did not need him. Not in the way Dean needed him. Not at all, really.
And so, Dean had turned and walked back down those steps, unable to bring himself to walk the last 20 feet inside and ask someone which room was Sam's.
Dean sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. After that, he remembered going to a bar near campus, intent on having a drink, finding a willing woman and forgetting about the end of the hunt. And Sam. As Sam had so obviously forgotten him. He drew another deep breath. That was more or less where his memory of the events of the previous night ended.
He looked around the room and grinned. Well, obviously he had found the girl, anyway, as he was very definitely in a dorm room. Frowning, he glanced down and realized he was fully clothed and sitting in a recliner. On the other hand, maybe he hadn't been as successful as he'd originally thought. He had woken up hungover in unknown locations in the past, but he was always naked in someone's bed. Never still wearing the previous day’s clothing and sleeping chastely on the chair. Feeling disconcerted by the unfamiliar circumstances, he braced himself against the wave of nausea that was threatening and attempted to stand up.
The room started to spin and his head screamed in protest so he sat back down. He squeezed his eyes shut again and slowly stood up, this time bracing one hand against the nearby desk to steady himself. He waited a few moments, letting his stomach settle into a manageable level of protest and the pain in his head return to a dull throb before beginning to explore the room.
His gaze landed first on the bed to his right. A pillow, dark blue sheets and a gray bedcover were the only decoration on the bed.
"Least girly bed I've ever seen," he mumbled, turning back to the desk to examine the contents there. No pictures. He had never known a woman without pictures hanging all over the place. He'd asked one of them once why women liked photos so much. She had smiled. "Memories," was her answer. "All of them remind me of somewhere or someone that made me smile."
Clearly this girl did not agree. He frowned. Or had no memories she wanted reminding of. He shifted through the papers on the desk. A flyer advertising a floor movie and pizza night, a syllabus for English lit and a paper with some scribbled writing on it.
"Dean--At library. Sam"
Dean stared at the note, trying to convince himself that he had gone home with a woman named Sam last night.
But there was simply no escaping it. That was Sam's writing. He had gone to Sam's room after the bar.
Which would, after all, explain why he hadn't woken up naked next to a hot chick. Goddamn it.
Cursing himself and his stupidity, Dean’s mind quickly contemplated the two alternatives he had before him: stay and face Sam, or run. On the one hand, he had clearly slept in Sam’s dorm last night, which meant Sam hadn’t thrown him out. So maybe there was a chance his brother wanted to reconcile. As soon as the thought occurred to him, Dean dismissed it. Sam didn’t want him. Or need him. Still, he could stay. Try to persuade Sam that family was important. That they needed each other, even if he couldn’t see it right now. Or leave. Take off for the next hunt, wherever that would lead him, and pretend that he hadn’t ever been dumb enough to get drunk and come knocking at his little brother’s door in the first place.
Before he had made a decision on which course of action to pursue, the doorknob began to turn, announcing Sam’s return. He cursed again and rearranged his face into what he intended to be a careless grin, as though he hadn’t just been contemplating running away. “Sammy,” he said as Sam stepped into the room. Maybe he'd get lucky and they had hashed this all out last night already. “Where you been all morning?”
Sam stared at Dean a moment, an expression Dean didn’t recognize on his face, and opened the closet door. “At the library, working on a paper for class,” he said. “You know, school. That’s sorta what I’m here for. Can’t put it on hold just because my brother decided to show up drunk in the middle of the night.”
Dean tensed. Judging from the careful lack of emotion in his brother’s voice, all had not been forgiven last night. He wished he could remember any of what had happened so he had some idea of Sam’s frame of mind. “Oh yeah? What class?” he asked, not sure what else to say. Somehow “I’ve missed you, Sammy. You’re my little brother. I love you and I can’t stand the thought of losing you” seemed inappropriate.
“English Lit,” Sam said, shutting the closet door and turning to face Dean.
Dean took a step backward and noticed for the first time that he had to look up to see Sam’s face. “When did you get taller than me?” he demanded. There was nothing about this entire confrontation that felt comfortable, right down to the fact that Sam was now, literally, looking down on him.
“At some point during the last year, I would imagine,” Sam said, gritting his teeth and glowering at Dean.
From his eyes to the set of his jaw to the hunched up shoulders and hands slammed in his pockets, Sam’s body was screaming anger. Not such a great start to their first sober conversation in a year. Dean searched his mind for a way to diffuse the situation but unable to come up with anything, he sighed. “Do we have to do this?” he asked, still hopeful that there would be a way to skip the entire awkward conversation and just pretend the last year hadn’t happened; go back to the way things had been before with no questions asked.
Sam blinked. “Do we…Do we HAVE to do this? Excuse me—who was it that showed up at my door drunk at 2 am? No, we didn’t HAVE to do this. We could have gone on not speaking and then you wouldn’t have had to deal with it. I was just fine with that. But you had to push the issue. And, by the way, what did you think was going to happen? Did you think that I was going to be overjoyed to see you, give you a huge hug and take you out for a beer?”
Dean glowered at Sam, the anger and pain that had been building as the days stretched into weeks then months, then an entire year while he waited for some word from Sam, some manner of apology for walking out on him, SOMETHING to indicate that his brother was even still alive, threatening to erupt and boil over. He took a deep breath and unclenched his hands. “I was just hoping we could put all this behind us, Sammy,” he said. “The whole ridiculous fight, you walking out on us…I don’t even want an apology—”
“WHY WOULD I OWE YOU AN APOLOGY?” Sam bellowed, turning and stalking over to the door, shoulders heaving with suppressed rage. He turned again and faced Dean, his eyes flashing. “YOU stood there and let Dad kick me out. YOU didn’t come find me after I left. YOU KNEW WHERE I WAS FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR and did nothing. What, exactly, do I have to apologize for here?”
Dean’s grasp on his temper, already tenuous, snapped at Sam’s outburst. “You’re joking right? Sam, YOU walked out on us!”
“No, Dean. I walked out on Dad. Not you. And, point of fact, I didn’t walk out. He threw me out and you didn’t stop him, remember?”
Dean opened his mouth to retort but snapped it shut again as he balled his fist up and tried to resist the overwhelming urge to punch his brother for being so damn stupid. He turned and walked over to the window, staring outside for a moment at the people walking across the campus spread out below them. “What was I supposed to do?” he said at last, turning. “You know what Dad’s like. I had to just let it play out.”
Sam shook his head. “No. NO. You did not have to let it play out. You could have said something to him. To me. Let me know that you thought he was out of line. That you didn’t want me gone. You could have done anything besides stand there and watch me walk out.”
Dean strode across the room to where Sam was standing, his temper flaring again. “You didn’t have to leave. That was YOUR choice to make,” he retorted, jabbing his finger into Sam’s chest.
Sam pushed Dean’s hand away and slammed his fist down on the desk. “I didn’t leave, Dean,” he shouted, his voice shaking.
Dean shook his head and paced back across the room before turning again to face his brother. “I watched you walk out that door without so much as a single word to me on your way gone.”
Sam heaved a sigh and Dean saw the anger leave his brother as resignation took over. When he spoke again, Dean had to strain to hear him. “I went to the first motel in the phone book—just like always. You never came.”
Dean gaped at him, disbelief etched in every inch of his frame. The thought of his brother alone in that hotel room waiting for him, confident he would come; the knowledge that he had let Sam down, betrayed his faith in their relationship tearing at his heart. He had been so sure that when Sam left he was leaving them both behind and not looking back. He dropped into the recliner, rubbing his fists against his hair, trying to find some excuse, but failing. He looked back up at Sam, his expression pleading. “You never called.”
The two brothers stared at each other for another long moment. In the next instant, Dean was on his feet as Sam closed the gap between the two of them and his brother’s arms were wrapped around him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Dean, I…”
“Shh,” Dean whispered, fighting back the lump he felt swelling at the back of his throat. “I know, Sammy. Me too.”
* * *
Upon reaching the end of his explanation for his 2am arrival at Stanford, Dean declared it dinner time and left on a quest for food. Sam sat alone in the hotel room his brother had rented for the duration of his stay in Palo Alto, his mind still reeling from the shock of Dean’s admission that his most recent hunt had almost turned deadly. That his father and brother were in danger every time they left the particular hotel room they were calling home for the moment had been a fact of life for Sam since his brother had told him the truth about his father’s job the Christmas when he was 9-years-old. A superhero, Dean had called him then. Though even at that tender age, Sam had thought it would be more heroic for his father to stay home and take care of the two of them than to go out playing some sort of supernatural cop.
The job, as far as Sam was concerned, had never been about saving people. It had always, from the day they left Kansas behind for a life on the road, been about revenge. His father had the single-minded focus of avenging their mother’s death. Anything else, including the raising of his children, was secondary. Dean, of course, didn’t see it that way. Their father was, and probably always would be, a hero in his brother’s eyes.
Sam’s feelings about his father were half the reason that he had wanted to go to Stanford in the first place. To get away. From his father. From the toxic search for revenge that colored every last aspect of their lives. And from the constant, never-ending fear that one day, his brother would come home without their father. Or worse, almost unbearable to even think about, that his father would come home alone. Without Dean.
It was the last that he had spent almost every moment of his early days at Stanford trying to forget. And he had been reasonably successful at it, too, managing to control it until it was just a fleeting moment of panic in the morning before he was completely awake; gone before his eyes fully opened. But now it was back, almost overwhelming in its intensity as the reality he had been denying in his quest for a normal life struck him. Whether he was with them or not, whether he was aware of their activities or not, his father and brother were still hunting. Still putting themselves in the path of danger every single day, in the name—if not the spirit—of helping people.
And with the final wall of denial torn down, Sam had no choice but to allow himself the awful realization that while he had been trying to forget his family’s very existence for the last year, his father or his brother or both could have been killed; the realization that yesterday, as he had been focusing on finding the perfect thesis statement for his paper—a task that had seemed to be of such primary importance at the time—his brother had been trying to escape from a creature that would have killed him and probably not left behind enough remains to identify the body.
The trouble was in figuring out what to do with that realization. He couldn’t go back to hunting, of that much he was certain. To be a hunter, you either had to be motivated by revenge, like his father, or by a genuine belief that you were helping people, like Dean. Sam had neither of those motivations. All that he wanted was a simple, uncomplicated life with a wife, 2.3 kids, a house and maybe a couple of dogs. It was all that he had ever dreamed about and he couldn’t let it go out of fear.
He refused to live like that. He refused to accept that he had to live like that.
But where did that leave him, aside from laying awake every night worrying about his family? He felt a bit like Spock, a child of two worlds: the normal, safe, white-picket fence life that his mother had tried to provide him with and the supernatural, dangerous, vagabond life in which he’d been raised by his father and which his brother still lived. How did he reconcile the two vastly different worlds?
Sam was no closer to a solution for his dilemma when Dean returned with dinner than he had been when Dean had left. And come to that, he still had no idea what had spooked his brother enough to cause him to show up at his door after more than a year of silence, thereby turning Sam’s carefully cultivated feeling of safety and normalcy completely on its ear, either.
Dean smiled at Sam. “Brought sandwiches,” he said, holding up the bag. “Thought you might like some pie, too.” His grin disappeared as his eyes met Sam’s and he saw the turmoil there. “Sammy? Something wrong? I thought we already had our chick-flick moment earlier…I’ve met my quota for the year…Sammy?” Dean repeated, snapping his fingers in front of Sam's face. “You there?”
Sam shook his head. He needed to know why Dean had come. Maybe it would help him make sense of the internal battle his mind was waging with itself, give him some idea of what he was supposed to do, how he was supposed to live his life. Drawing in a deep breath, he leveled a stare at his brother. “Dean, tell me why you’re really here. I need to know exactly what happened on that hunt. I know you. You didn’t come back here after a year of thinking I’d turned my back on you just because of one close call.”
Dean set down the sandwiches and held out his arms. His expression was a little too careless. Sam saw right through it. “Of course I did, Sam. What else do you want me to say? I missed you, okay? Is that what you need to hear? Your big brother missed having you around. I practically raised you for God’s sake. Isn’t that reason enough?" Dean picked up a sandwich and held it out to Sam. "Can we eat now?”
“No,” Sam refused. “No. I’m not hungry.”
Dean shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said, unwrapping the sandwich. “I'm starving.”
Sam debated whether to let the subject go for the moment and come back to it later, or push the issue now. He watched his brother for a moment before making up his mind. He stood, straightening up to his full height and leveling a stare at Dean. He was not going to let him brush the discussion aside so easily. Not this time. “Dean,” he stated in what he hoped was an unequivocal tone of voice, “I need to know the truth. Now. Or this time I really will walk out and not look back.”
* * *
Dean contemplated his sandwich, refusing to make eye contact with Sam. There were very few things he would rather do less than what his brother was asking him to do. But even as he thought of ways to deflect the question without further raising his brother’s ire, he knew he couldn’t refuse. This was Sam. He had always been willing to do anything for him, and while a year of time and distance had changed a lot of things, it hadn’t changed that.
“All right,” he said at last, setting down the sandwich. “You’re right. There’s more to it than just the close call.”
Sam exhaled—Dean wasn’t sure if it was in relief or surprise—and nodded, then sat down on the bed across from him. “Yeah, okay. I didn’t think so.” He looked down at his hands and then back up at Dean, his expression unreadable. “So then…why?”
Dean drew a deep breath. There was nothing quite like being forced to relive one of the worst moments of your life only a day removed from the event. He thought back on all the people that they had interviewed after their loved ones had been lost or severely injured and felt a twinge of guilt. He now knew what he had been asking them to do.
He was entirely too sober for this.
“We were working down in Phoenix when Dad got a call from someone he had done a job for a few years back, a deputy sheriff in a small town just outside of Reno. Place called Verdi. In the last few months, they’d had 4 suicides.”
“Notes?” Sam queried.
“All four,” Dean replied.
“What did the notes say?”
“They all had something to do with not being able to live after the death of a loved one.”
Sam nodded. “Sounds tragic,” he agreed, “but why did they think this might be a job for Dad?”
“Because none of the supposedly dead loved ones had actually died,” Dean explained. “These people were offing themselves in grief over deaths that hadn’t occurred.”
Sam pulled a face. “Well that’s not normal.”
For a brief moment, Dean forgot the ending of the story he was telling and allowed himself to revel in being back in a hotel room with Sam, rehashing a hunt. Just like they had their entire lives. Then the memories of his last afternoon in Nevada hit again, hard, fast, vivid, reminding Dean that this was not just another hotel room, not just another war story. “That’s what Dad and I figured, too. So he sent me up to check it out while he finished the job in Phoenix. You know, have a look around, see if it was our kind of problem.”
Sam’s face registered surprise. “Dad sent you by yourself?”
Dean couldn’t control the rush of anger that accompanied Sam’s question. He jerked his head up. “What choice did he have? Not like he could send you with me.”
Hurt, then regret flashed across Sam’s eyes. He again looked down at his hands. “I’m sorry” he said, his voice almost inaudible. “Dean…”
The anger was already gone, the guilt hitting before Sam even spoke. He hadn’t meant to lash out; hadn’t meant to hurt his brother with the residual anger he still felt, no doubt would continue to feel for some time before it dissipated completely. Even if what he had said was true, what good did it do to keep rehashing it over and over again? At some point, he and Sam both had to find a way to make peace with the fact that Sam was done hunting and Dean never would be. The partnership they had forged growing up in the trenches with their father was over. It really was that simple.
And besides, what did Sam have to feel sorry for, anyway? He had every right to make the choice he had made. Dean would be selfish to resent him his chance of living the life he dreamed of having. He wasn’t angry about that at all. He was proud of Sam. Proud of him for being strong enough to stand up to their father, for making his own choices, for doing what he felt was right for him. Proud, and maybe even a little envious. Dean did not consider himself a weak man, but he doubted he would ever have the strength to turn his back on hunting. He needed it too much: the excitement of the hunt, the thrill of the kill, the knowledge that he was saving lives. It made him feel alive.
Hell, he’d been doing it almost his whole life, hadn’t he? Sam was the very first, when at age four, he had carried him out of their burning home. He couldn’t remember ever doing anything else. And the knowledge that at the end of the day maybe he was sparing someone the pain that his family had known was the only thing—aside from taking care of Sam, keeping him safe—that had ever given him any sense of purpose in his life.
And Sam, well…he had a different purpose. That was hardly anything to apologize for.
Not that he could say any of this to Sam, even if he wanted to. He never had been good at the whole talking about emotions thing that Sam thrived on. So instead, he gave an exaggerated sigh and dealt with the situation as he always had, with a little bit of humor.
“I’d forgotten that talking to you was like talking to a chick,” he said, slapping Sam on the leg. “There’s nothing to be sorry for, all right? I don’t want to hear it again. You’re ruining a perfectly good hunting story with all this emo crap.”
Sam’s eyes met Dean’s and a brief grin flashed across his face. “Yeah, fine. No more apologies, then. So, uh…what did you find when you got to Verdi?”
Dean shrugged. “At first, not much,” he answered. “The notes were apparently real, at least according to the forensic analysis. The victims hadn’t been exhibiting any erratic behavior prior to their deaths. The town itself had no local legends about ghosts or things that go bump in the night. I mean…I couldn’t find anything whatsoever that could explain why four people up and decided to pick up a gun and shoot themselves over the imaginary loss of a loved one.”
“So did you talk to the families?”
Dean looked at Sam as though he’d lost his mind. “Come on, Sam! I do know how to do a job without you.”
Sam laughed. “Yeah, well, apparently not. I mean, I leave you alone for a year and the next thing I hear, you’ve let yourself get trapped.”
Dean balled up a sandwich wrapper and chucked it at Sam’s head. Sam ducked and the paper went soaring past, landing on the bed. “Watch yourself,” Dean said. “You may be taller than me now, but I can still kick your ass.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Please. You couldn’t even take me when you had 2 inches and 10 pounds on me.”
“You’re forgetting that the whole time you’ve been away at college getting fat on cafeteria food and letting your reflexes dull, I’ve been hunting. I’m sharper than you, Sam. I could take you down without even trying.”
For a moment, the brothers locked eyes and in the next second Sam was coming at him. Having anticipated the opening move, Dean caught his arm and spun him around, pinning it behind his back, his other arm wrapped around Sam’s neck. Using his leg, he tried to sweep under his brother’s foot and knock him to the ground. What Dean hadn’t been anticipating, however, was that the height difference had changed their centers of gravity and instead of falling, Sam only stumbled before recovering his balance. Using his free arm and the advantage of Dean’s momentary surprise that his usual move hadn’t gone as, well, usual, Sam twisted his arm free, then grabbed Dean and shoved him facedown on the bed, knee pressing into Dean’s back.
“This is what you call sharp?” Sam asked with what was, Dean was sure even though he couldn’t see it, a smug smile. What Sam had forgotten to do, however, was to pin Dean’s arms when he had pinned him on the bed. With one smooth motion, Dean reached out, grabbed Sam, and flipped him onto the bed.
“As a knife,” Dean said with a smirk before releasing Sam and returning to the chair in which he had been sitting before his brother had decided to launch himself across the room. “Do you want to hear the rest of the hunt or don’t you?”
Sam growled and then picked himself up off the bed. “Yeah, fine,” he said looking for all the world as dejected as he had every single time he thought he could finally best his brother in a fight, only to find himself face down in the dirt. During Sam’s senior year of high school, however, he’d had a growth spurt and Dean no longer had the size advantage he’d enjoyed for most of Sam’s life. The playing field had been leveled and it was anyone’s guess who was going to come out on top in a particular match. It had been awhile since Dean had so easily bested Sam but instead of enjoying it, he found it only heightened the fears that had fueled his flight across the mountains in the first place.
Dean pushed the thought out of his head and forced his mind back to the hunt itself. “I talked to the families. They didn’t know anything. EMF meter readings were high, though so I gave Dad a call and told him this was definitely our type of job. He said he had a few loose ends to tie up in Phoenix and then he’d head up. I spent the next few days poking around while I waited for Dad to show up. Then a 911 call came across the scanner, a woman had walked in on her fiancé with a gun in his hand. Before she could stop him, he pulled the trigger. I figured another suicide—might be connected to the case. So, I headed over to her place to check it out.”
“And what’d you find?” Sam asked.
“Her fiancé,” Dean said. “A friend of his who worked at the hospital had called him to tell him an ambulance had been called out to his house. He headed home to find out what was going on.”
Sam gave a half-hearted laugh. “Imagine his surprise when he found out it was for him.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. That’d be just about as weird as getting an invitation for your own funeral. Anyway, she swore up, down and sideways that she had not been imagining what she saw and that her fiancé had been standing in front of her as surely as I was standing there talking to her right then.”
“What kind of creature can do something like that?” Sam asked, scratching his head. “What did Dad say?”
“Dad said he maybe had an idea, but he’d be up later that afternoon to check it out for certain. And to be careful. He didn’t much like the sound of it and didn’t want me doing anything by myself.”
“So you, of course, went back to the house to check it out,” Sam guessed. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you should have listened to Dad, Dean.”
Dean tensed. For reasons he couldn’t quite comprehend, he was growing angry with both the way Sam was looking at him and the words his brother was saying. Listen to Dad. Sam was one to talk about that. How many times had Dean had to chase after Sam because he’d gone out and done the opposite of the order his father had issued? How many tight spots had he pulled Sam out of for exactly this reason? How many times had Sam nearly gotten himself killed trying to prove that their father didn’t know best?
He took a deep breath and leveled a glare at his brother. “No. Dad tells me to lie low until he gets somewhere, I expect he has a good reason for it and I listen to him. I headed to the library to work on ruling out the usual suspects. Not a vengeful spirit or cursed object. Not a demon. Not a shapeshifter.”
“Shapeshifter?” Sam asked, his eyes lighting up in interest at the word. “Didn’t Dad face one of those—”
“No. It was a thought-form, a…a psychic projection. Not too shabby, Sammy,” he added with an appreciative grin. “I made the same connection. The woman who had called 911—I found out when I talked to her that her fiancé had struggled with depression for years—before they had started dating, he had actually attempted suicide twice before. She told me it was like seeing her biggest fear play out before her eyes. This thing…it was feeding off of people’s worst fears, Sam, playing them out in 3D for the victim to watch. It made sense. The other suicides were in response to the same type of stressor. Finding a loved one dead, I mean…that’s pretty much anyone’s worst fear, isn’t it?”
Dean looked down at his hands and fiddled with the ring on his finger, waiting for Sam to say something, but Sam was silent. Dean coughed and drew a deep breath. “Anyway, I headed back to the hotel room, figuring I’d keep the scanner going in case it showed up again, and wait for Dad to get into town. The thing was waiting for me when I got there but I didn’t realize what it was. Rookie mistake,” he growled. “I knew there was something in town feeding off of people’s fears and I left myself unguarded so it could play right into mine.”
“So you saw Dad…” Sam swallowed, his expression unreadable. “You saw Dad dead?”
Dean jerked his head up, his eyes connecting with Sam’s as his mind rushed back to the previous day.
“Sammy?” he gasped in surprise as the hotel door swung open to reveal his brother standing on the other side.
Sam glanced around the room. “Still living in style, I see,” he said with a grin, pushing past Dean and throwing his bag down on the bed.
“What the hell are you doing here? I’m working…”
“I know,” Sam said, falling down onto the nearest bed. “Damn, these things haven’t gotten anymore comfortable in the last year, have they? You’d think just once Dad would let you stay at a Hilton.”
Dean stared at Sam, trying to get his mind around the fact that after a long year of silence and rejection, his brother was standing in front of him acting like no time at all had passed. “Yeah,” he agreed. “That would be nice, I’m sure. But that doesn’t explain why you’re here.”
Sam sat up and grinned at Dean. “On break from class,” he said. “Dad called. Said he was worried about you, but wouldn’t be able to get up here for a few more days. Asked me to come help you out if I could make it.”
Dean fell into the nearest chair, running his hands through his hair as his mind attempted to wrap around what his brother was saying. “Dad…called…asked…wait. Sam. You and Dad, you aren’t—”
Sam waved his hand dismissively. “Dad was on campus last summer and came to see me. We’re uh…we’re working on it. I doubt he’ll ever understand why I want to give up hunting for college, but he’s not angry about it anymore like—”
“Dean!” Sam’s voice snapped Dean’s mind back to the present. “Is that what you saw?”
Dean shook his head. “You honestly think Dad dying is my biggest fear?” he asked at long last.
Sam shifted. “Isn’t it?” he asked.
“No, Sam,” he whispered.