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Sam can’t remember the last time he carried Dean. He’s propped him up, of course, after injuries on hunts or drunken stumbles out of bars. He’s supported Dean’s weight back to the car or motel room, gotten him situated, and set about making the situation right again. Making Dean whole.
Even Dean’s unconscious weight was easier to carry than his dead weight. Sam’s back spasms and his knees threaten to buckle as he hoists Dean from the floor and cradles him to his chest. Dean’s head lolls against his shoulder. Sam won’t let it fall and hang painfully. He can’t cause his brother any more pain, not when all this was done for Sam.
Sam locks his knees and, step by step, carries Dean to the Impala. He doesn’t look down as he does so, but he can feel what remains of his brother’s blood seeping into his clothes.
Watch your head, he thinks as he oh so gingerly places Dean in the backseat. He bundles up his jacket so Dean has something to support his head. If he focuses on Dean’s face, it isn’t so bad. Blood-splattered and pale, mouth slightly open, but not horrible. Dean’s looked worse after hunts before. This will be just like that.
Sam will just have to find the solution somewhere other than a med kit this time is all.
Bobby comes up behind him quietly and stands there for a few seconds before he speaks. “You be careful driving, you hear?”
Sam’s gaze doesn’t leave Dean. He’d never be anything but careful in Dean’s car, of course.
Bobby apparently isn’t phased by the lack of an answer. Either that, or he’s too distracted himself to expect one. “I’ll clean up here, then pick up some wood, and meet you wherever you land.”
Even in the darkness, Sam can see Dean’s amulet peeking out from under his jacket, settled amongst the torn flesh and fabric. “No,” he says decisively, voice calm and collected. He knows what needs to be done.
“Sam, I know it’s—“ Bobby cuts himself off and takes a breath. “Hunter’s funeral is the best thing for him.”
Sam shakes his head. The best thing for Dean is to be cruising down an open highway, wind billowing through the open windows, flat stretches of farmland as far as the eye can see. Sam would know. He knows Dean better than anyone. “He didn’t do it for me. I’m not doing it for him, not now.”
Sam can hear the “and you see how that turned out for him” response as clear as a bell even though Bobby never utters it.
“Sam.”
He shuts the back door and finally turns to face Bobby, the only family he has left, until he gets Dean back. Bobby’s eyes are bloodshot and wet under the streetlights. “A coffin,” Sam says.
Bobby starts to open his mouth to protest, but Sam is already moving to the driver’s side. “He’ll need a body when I get him back,” he adds quietly, mostly to himself, though he’s sure Bobby hears it.
The Impala roars to life, her black metal frame moving like a shadow through the still night, a funeral procession with Sam as the only witness.
Illinois is flat farmland, for the most part. Sam drives through the darkness and seldom spots any lights beyond a lone farmhouse sitting amongst an inky, starless night. Clouds cover the sky, so there isn’t even the moon to light their way. There’s an occasional car that passes coming the other direction. In the seconds between their arrival on the horizon until they pass the Impala, their light illuminates the interior.
In those moments, Sam finds his eyes drifting from the road to catch a glimpse of Dean in the back seat. He’s awash in warm yellow light for an instant and then he too disappears into darkness again. It’s just enough time for Sam to look at the lines of Dean’s face.
The eighth time a car passes them, his eyes skate too far down and he’s reminded of the mess that is Dean’s chest and torso. He pulls over and is sick on the side of the road. He thinks the air is warm, but given how numb everything feels, he’s not sure. His hands won’t stop shaking. Sam gives himself five minutes to get his composure—he can’t wreck the Impala when Dean hasn’t even been dead a full two hours, now can he?—and gets back on the road.
The Impala’s gas gauge hovers over empty around three in the morning. Sam digs himself out of the mindless state he’s been driving in and looks around. In the distance, some trees have cropped up instead of farmland.
It’s as good a place as any, he supposes.
He can’t bury Dean on flat farmland. He’d be too open, too exposed. He’ll need trees or some kind of cover for later, just in case he runs into trouble when Sam gets him back.
Sam pulls the Impala around the back of a gas station that doesn’t look like it has security cameras. The cold white lights will be enough for what he has to do. He grabs some rags from the trunk, wets them in the bathroom, and comes back to the car.
He hasn’t squeezed into the backseat with Dean since they were kids. It was tricky then and it’s even harder now, with Dean stiff and cold on the bench. Sam is gentle as he moves Dean’s legs off to the side, cuts away his tattered, bloody clothes, and gets to work wiping down Dean’s chest.
He has to make three trips to the bathroom to wring out and wet the rags before most of the blood is gone.
Then he pulls out the med kit and gets to work stitching his brother back together. It’s extremely strange. Dean takes stitches well, but there’s always some degree of hissed cursing or tensing or movement during the process. There’s none of that now, but Sam still whispers apologies after each stitch goes in. He loses track after he hits one hundred.
He cries as he works, silent tears that only he and Dean will know about. It’s probably not very sanitary to be crying over wounds, but Sam’s hoping it won’t matter in the long run. Infections are small fry compared to mortal lacerations. At least this way, if Dean comes back into his body in its current state, he won’t fall apart at the seams before Sam can get to him.
Once the stitches are in place, Dean is a patchwork of himself, a quilt that Sam was responsible for ripping apart and mending. God, what Sam wouldn’t give to hear Dean joke about Frankenstein and if chicks dig scars and that yes he’ll take it easy for a few days to actually allow them to heal for once. The black string stands out grotesquely from Dean’s too-pale skin. His bloodstained amulet sits off to the side.
Sam’s hands shake as he picks it up reverently. He cleans it with one of the rags and squeezes it in his palm until the horns dig into his skin. This is too important to leave underground should something go wrong. He loops it over his own head and tucks it under his shirt.
He puts Dean in new jeans and ties boots back on his feet. He always slept with them on to be ready to go at the drop of a hat. It would be silly to bury him without them. Sam manhandles—there’s no other way to describe it, forcing stiff limbs into new positions—his brother’s body into a black undershirt.
When he decides that Dean looks too vulnerable like that, he repeats the process with a green overshirt that Dean liked.
Sam’s back screams at him as he takes a step back from the Impala to survey his handiwork. Dean is still sprawled in the backseat, pale and waxy, but he looks much better. Not that Sam can look at him without fresh tears making their way down his cheeks, but it’s an improvement.
Flames of sunlight begin to lick their way between the clouds on the horizon. Sam tries not to think of fire.
He gets gas and texts Bobby the location of the patch of trees he had seen and takes his brother there. Sam carries him a good distance through the trees to ensure they won’t be disturbed and Dean can have some peace. He props Dean up in the shade of the largest pine as best he can.
Then he gets to work.
By the time Bobby reaches them, it’s afternoon. Sam is sitting under an adjacent tree, watching a squirrel so his eyes don’t stray to the hole or to his brother. There’s dirt under his fingernails and tracks of tears on his cheeks. Bobby says nothing, but Sam can see the displeasure in his eyes when they get to work turning sheets of pine wood into a box.
Sam doesn’t much care what Bobby thinks. Dean is his brother, his flesh and blood, and Sam will take care of him how he sees fit.
Getting Dean into the box in the ground takes some doing that Sam would rather not think about. He’s not even sure he’s present for it, really. His mind’s on autopilot the whole way through. He makes sure to leave a knife in one of Dean’s jeans pockets and a lighter in the other. If Dean comes to in the dark, defenseless and alone before Sam can get to him, these will at least give him some comfort.
Bobby is the one that nails on the coffin lid. Sam tries, but his hands shake so bad that he can’t line up the hammer and the nail. He takes a walk and finds two pieces of weathered wood. Those he manages to make into a cross, which he sets in place at Dean’s head.
It’s all he has to give his brother who gave him everything.
Sunset is fast approaching when Dean’s grave is finally filled in. A patch of dark earth and a lopsided cross are the only signs the site has been tampered with.
“You wanna say anything?” Bobby’s voice comes as a shock. They’ve been working in total silence all these hours.
Sam wants to say everything he should’ve said to Dean but never got the chance to. Too little, too late, just like with Dad. He shakes his head. It’s not like the words could’ve escaped from his swollen throat anyways.
He hurts. His back is stiff, his hands cramp, his arms are on fire. His head pounds and every breath is a stutter in and out.
The empty ache in his chest is soul-deep.