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As a child, Sam Winchester found the story of Humpty Dumpty disquieting and he often wondered what happened to the pieces of Humpty Dumpty after all the king’s horses and men had tried and failed to put him back together.
He asked Dean one morning as they walked to to school together, with all the earnestness of youthful ingenuousness, what would happen to the pieces of him if, like Humpty Dumpty, he fell and broke and Dean and dad couldn’t fix him.
Dean gave him a perplexed yet fond look and replied in equal earnestness that firstly, he would never let that happen to Sam and secondly, if it did, he and dad would find a way to fix it.
“But-” Sam started to say but was interrupted when Dean continued.
“Third, if you do fall and break in some bizarro world and we can’t fix you, I will carry the pieces of you with me everywhere I go, Sammy.”
Sam furrowed his eyebrows and appeared to consider this seriously for a few seconds and then said “How?”
“In my duffel,” Dean answered, deadpan. “Riding shotgun next to me.”
Sam wrinkled his nose is exaggerated disgust as he exclaimed “Gross, Dean! You’re so weird.”
“Me, weird? I’m not the one asking morbid questions,” Dean huffed lightly and ruffled Sam’s hair. “Dork!”
Sam ducked and punched Dean half-heartedly in the shoulder, but he was smiling.
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Fifteen odd years later, that question wasn’t so much a hypothetical as it was a guarantee and as it turned out, they had neglected to account for a situation in which Sam had fallen and broken so many times, that they had both just about given up.
He was the Devil’s own vessel. He was the means by which humanity would be obliterated. And the ultimate kicker was that he couldn’t do a damn thing about it, like remove himself from the equation entirely.
Sam was driving endlessly, sans destination, after a heart-achingly disappointing phone conversation with Dean who seemed to have washed his hands of Sam and all the accompanying baggage. Sam couldn’t really blame him even if he disagreed with Dean’s insistence that they were better off apart.
Sam mused over the irony, that this time, their success was rooted in the failure to put him back together as he aimed the car towards the ‘Danger! Cliff’ warning sign looming ahead.
What was left to do but try, he thought as the car plummeted into the beckoning abyss. Pity he wasn’t in it.
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Zachariah was a smug, sanctimonious bastard. Ok, angel, and sanctimonious kind of came with the job description. He was preaching on about self-murder being a sin and that even tainted ones like Sam, the ‘abomination’, weren’t to engage in such an act.
“Yeah, like that’s the reason you pulled me out of the car” Sam scoffed wearily, resting against a large boulder near the precipice. His shoulders were hunched forward, his hair a tangled windswept mess across his forehead.
God, he was so tired.
He yearned for the oblivion of a death that stuck for once and brought an end to the misery for himself, his brother, and with any luck, the rest of the world. He knew the first was unrealistic as there would be no oblivion in the circle of Hell reserved especially for him, but still, two out of three he would count as a victory.
When he zoned back in Zachariah was gone, leaving behind only an echo of his last words.
“Lucifer will not let you die, but we will not let you even try. Cease this folly and accept your destiny!”
Sam took in a long measured breath, levered himself upright, and started walking. He had to keep trying.
After all, what could the angels do? Kill him?
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After Dean returned from his epiphanic sojourn to a future in which Lucifer had killed his future self using Sam’s body, the first call he made was to his brother.
Zachariah’s manipulative attempts to divide and conquer had instead illustrated just how important it was that they stick together as brothers and partners. Their relationship with each other, what they would do for one another, wouldn’t be the cause of their ultimate downfall, but the thing, the only thing, that could save them.
Somehow, he had lost sight of that, somewhere between Heaven and Hell.
In the interminable, desperate months of searching that followed, he refused to concede that he might have lost his brother as well.
The End