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“I mean, I just can’t help but think...what would Mom say?”
Dean wants to scoff because even though he knows that the corpse lying on the table is their grandfather (hell, he even met the man before he became a grandfather), the line connecting him to their mother is a thin, wispy thing, only narrowly substantiated by genetics. It doesn’t matter that in some ways Dean knows—knew—Samuel better than he did his own mother. The idea that their mom would be okay with what this douchebag did to him and Sam is patently absurd. She’d surely denounce him; and, what’s more, approve of Dean’s judgment. She wouldn’t blink at Sam doing what he had to do.
But, of course, Sam presents the question as if there’s a real possibility that Mom, were she here, might disapprove. It doesn’t matter that Sam had a real, justifiable reason for capping the S.O.B. whether he was a monster or not—the moral question of killing someone who shared their blood remains. Sam’s so confident right until he’s not. Dean finds the trait more endearing more often than not these days, if only because he’s witnessed the alternative—a Sam with no doubt who doesn’t understand there’s anything to fuss over in the first place when a human being hits the floor instead of a monster. Dean will take the crippling self-doubt over a malfunctioning Robocop any day of the week.
Still, Sam with that look on his face for too long kicks in that urge to soothe. “You know what I think Mom would say?” Dean says. “She’d say just ‘cause you’re blood doesn’t make you family. You got to earn that.”
This unfortunately doesn’t soothe the way he intends. Sam’s frown only deepens, his eyes darting briefly to Samuel and the hole in his head then back to Dean.
“And me?” Sam asks softly. “Have I earned it?”
“Have you earn—” Dean sputters. “Of course you have! Where is this coming from?”
Sam shrugs. “Well, we haven’t exactly sat down and talked through our issues, Dean,” he points out. “And we have a lot of issues.”
Dean rolls his eyes. “Come on, we’ve been over this. You weren’t you—”
“I’m not talking about me not having a soul,” Sam interrupts. “Even though it was still me doing all those things. I mean... before.”
“Before?” It takes a moment for it to click. “Wait, are you talking about Apocalypse stuff?”
Once again, Dean is struck with the urge to laugh. But Sam obviously doesn’t find it as absurd as he does because his face remains harrowed and drawn, attention wandering back to Samuel’s body (seemingly against his will) before snapping back to Dean each time. He stands up a little straighter when he realizes Dean’s noticed; with his hands still secured behind his back he looks all the world like a condemned prisoner.
“Sam, I mean... man, that was years ago,” Dean says uncomfortably. “Come on. We’ve gotten past that.” Haven’t we? goes unsaid.
“Hasn’t been as long for me,” Sam points out. “And, Dean... there are things we haven’t talked about.”
Irritatingly, Sam’s gaze again slides back over to Samuel on the table, as if it’s significant somehow; significant of what Dean has no idea. His confusion must show because Sam withdraws even further, head turned away in shame.
“I just get where you’re coming from, that’s all,” Sam murmurs.
What?
“What?” Dean blurts but there’s no time to discuss it further, because even though this conversation has jumped way, way off the rails, the power coming on in the room signals Bobby and Rufus’s return, and they’ve got bigger problems at the moment. It’s not until they’ve stepped outside and the cranial saw’s whirring to life that Dean realizes what Sam was saying with his eyes:
That could’ve been me.
And then, of course, everything goes to shit, and all revelations are put on the back burner.
*~*
In the end, they leave Bobby at Rufus’s grave though Dean’s uneasy doing so. The history Bobby hinted is a tangled mess of a knot, and even though Dean tried hacking his way through it with his words, he’s not entirely sure they achieved the desired effect. Dean just hopes Bobby can make it back to his truck in one piece after finishing off that Johnnie Walker Blue.
Worse, Sam’s looking glum as well despite his verbal acceptance of Dean’s blanket forgiveness. They settle in the Impala and Dean pulls away from the cemetery, though the mournful air follows them long after leaving the final headstone in the rear-view mirror.
Dean’s trying to figure out how to start yet another conversation he doesn’t want to have when Sam beats him to it. “You mean what you said back there? It wasn’t just for Bobby’s sake?”
When Dean glances at his brother out of the corner of his eye, Sam isn’t looking at him but at some far-off point on the horizon. Dean clears his throat. “‘Course,” he confirms. “Clean slate. Meant it.”
Sam’s distant stare doesn’t waver. “Yeah,” he says vaguely, clearly unconvinced.
Dean scowls. “What’s the deal?” he demands. Not for nothing, but he’s starting to get a little offended here. “What do I gotta do to convince you?”
Sam finally turns toward him, if only with the slightest incline of his head. “Just seems too easy, that’s all,” Sam replies as if that explains it.
Dean snorts and shakes his head. “I wouldn’t go that far, but yeah, it’s that easy.” He cracks a smile. “Look, I know we had our low points but it ain’t like you ever had to worry about being a volunteer cadaver for hunter amateur surgery, ya know?”
Sam flinches. A full-body flinch, head to toe, face pinching like he swallowed a lemon. It’s such a violent jerk, in fact, that for one terrifying moment Dean’s sure he’s going to start seizing like he did back in that craphole in Rhode Island; but Sam settles immediately, returning to a thousand-yard stare.
“If you say so,” he says stiffly.
Okay, now Dean is offended. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing my ass,” Dean snaps. He scrubs his jaw and a sharp laugh escaping despite himself. “You know, I expect the mad attack-dog accusations from other hunters but my own brother... yeah, that stings a bit.”
“It’s not like it wasn’t justified,” Sam says tightly, and if it’s an apology it’s not a very good one. “It’s not like you didn’t have a reason.”
“You shot Samuel, not me,” Dean barks. Though not for lack of trying, that’s for sure.
“I know,” Sam shoots back, pained. “I’m just saying, no one would have blamed you. You know that, right?”
Dean scoffs. “Yeah, I gathered that from the only person trying to stop me being you.”
Sam’s nostrils flare and Dean can’t tell if he’s getting mad at Dean or himself. “If I had known—”
“Well, you didn’t,” Dean interrupts. He’s not sure if Sam’s referring to knowing if Samuel had the Khan Worm in him or actually knowing everything he did without a soul—it doesn’t matter much either way. “Look, man, Samuel’s dead,” he lays out bluntly. “And maybe you feel bad because he happens to be related to us or you weren’t really sure if he was a Pod Person at the time, it doesn’t matter. But I sure as hell ain’t gonna apologize because I was gonna kill him no matter what. He stabbed us in the back and that ain’t something—”
“That ain’t something you forgive?” Sam finishes dryly and Dean’s righteousness falters. “Come on, Dean. Can’t you at least see why I’m a little confused?”
“Samuel—”
Samuel wasn’t family, is what he meant to say; Samuel wasn’t family like Bobby and he sure as hell wasn’t family like Sam—but a bitter laugh stops him before he can get the rest of the words out.
“I’m not talking about Samuel,” Sam says, voice sharp with scorn. “I’m talking about me.”
Dean’s mind comes to a screeching halt as he struggles to process his brother’s words. Even as he starts putting it together he still falls short, a puzzle missing pieces: the conversation at the cannery. Sam studying Samuel’s body. Before. “Some of us pulled a lot of crap, Dean.”
They haven’t even been driving an hour but Dean pulls over, coming to a stop in a parking garage next to an office building. There’s almost no one around, the weekend leaving them as close to isolated as they’ll ever get in a town this size. Sam tenses as he throws the car into to park but keeps his chin high—the return of the death-row prisoner. They sit in silence for a while as Dean thinks. Beside him, Sam breathes a little too loud and fast, betraying his nerves. When Dean finally chooses to speak he sounds calmer than he feels.
“I think we’re talking about different things,” he says carefully and in a way that would make his tenth-grade guidance counselor proud. “Respectfully, what the hell are you talking about?” (Ms. Morris would probably be less impressed with that addition.)
“You’re gonna make me say it?” Sam asks tightly.
“‘Fraid so.” Anything, so he could at least figure out what was going on.
Sam nods and somehow straightens up even more, lining up before the firing squad. “After we split up, two—three years ago,” he amends. “When I... left with Ruby.”
When Sam kicked the shit out of him in a motel room and took off with the demon bitch. Oh, Dean remembers, vividly... but he’s wise enough to keep that recollection to himself. Clean slate. He meant it. He means it. He does.
He can’t stop the grimace on his face though, which Sam notices before he can school his features back to neutrality. Sam swallows hard, then continues. “Then a few days later... you called me.”
Sam forces the last words out like he’s chewing glass. “Well... yeah,” Dean confirms slowly. He remembers that call, too. He wasn’t even sure Sam had even got the message. It makes him cringe a little bit, looking back on it—his words then and now seem woefully inadequate. He’s too chickenshit to ask when Sam checked his voicemail; knowing for sure that Sam had heard his pathetic attempt at an olive branch was bad enough, but hearing that it completely failed to move him at the eleventh hour was even worse. “That bad, huh?”
Sam laughs, and apparently, it wasn’t just bad, it was bad, way worse than Dean fathomed because the sound that comes from Sam’s chest erupts like a gunshot. “You called me a vampire and told me you were done trying to save me. Yeah, it was bad.”
It’s not like Dean keeps a tally of every awful thing he’s ever said or done. Even without a thirty-year stint in Hell, that’s enough to make anybody go crazy. But there’s a highlight reel that pops up in his mind every so often of every crappy thing involving Sam: the Shtriga attack as kids, not stopping Sam from going to Stanford (or, sometimes, not going with him; either way, he failed to act), the detox, not getting to the church on time to stop Lucifer—it’s not a short list is what he’s saying but it is a detailed one. And that phone call isn’t on it.
A thin, “What?” is all Dean can manage.
Sam scrubs his face. “I know, I know, we’re past all that. But I screwed up major league and I’m still not sure why you didn’t... Look, I’m sorry I even brought it up. Clean slate, right?”
Sam smiles weakly at him but all Dean can think about is Samuel on that table with a bullet in his head, envious that he wasn’t the one to put it there but satisfied with a job well done. How, apparently, Sam thinks Dean’s considered putting Sam down the same way, like a rabid dog. That he thinks Dean didn’t just give up on him but was willing to...
“No,” Dean says. Sam’s face twists like he’s been stabbed (Dean hates that he knows that face) but then settles into grim acceptance. Dammit. “No, not that, I mean, no, I never said that. I never said that, Sam.”
His brother goes very still. “What?”
“Sam, Jesus. You really think...?” But he did. He does. “Listen, I did call you. Said something about us still being brothers, you needing an ass-kicking—” Sam snorts, “—but I... shit, I apologized. I said I was sorry, Sam. For... for what I said.”
You walk out that door, don’t you ever come back. Dean can’t believe his own damn mouth sometimes. He might have been the one laid out on the floor during that motel fight but he sure as hell got the last word.
“Dean...” Sam says uncertainly. “That’s not... I mean, the message I got was... are you sure you’re remembering right?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Sam thinks he drunk-dialed him. Not the improvement Dean was aiming for.
“Listen to me, I was stuck in that weird green room by the douchebag Zachariah—”
The light bulb goes off. Dean can almost feel the synapses going off as he makes the connection. He slams the palm of his hand on the steering wheel and swears loud enough to make Sam jump.
“That sonnova bitch Zachariah!” he snarls. “He must have changed the message! Or that bitch Ruby, one of the two.” He turns to his brother, frantically trying to meet his eyes. “Sammy, you gotta believe me, I never, never said that. Those bastards were messing with us, right up to the end.”
Sam blinks, looking as bewildered as Dean felt moments ago. “Messing with us.”
“Right,” Dean urges. “I was trying to get to you, man. I swear.”
Sam nods. Then, without another word, he flings open the passenger door and scrambles out of the car.
Sam’s halfway across the parking garage before Dean gathers his wits together enough to follow him. “Sam!”
But Sam’s not running. He’s leaning against a pillar, forehead pressed against the concrete. Loud smacks echo in the empty structure as he hits an open hand against the pillar. He starts chuckling; then, full-on guffawing, sounding more than a little manic.
Dean edges closer, cautious as approaching a nervous deer. “Sammy...? You okay...?”
Sam whips around abruptly. “Two minutes.”
“Okay...?”
“Two minutes,” Sam repeats urgently. “I need you to wait two minutes before your clean slate rule starts, okay? Just two minutes.”
“Uh, sure, I guess?” Dean agrees, confused. “But Sam—”
He thinks he means to ask again if Sam’s okay again, or maybe just demand to know what the hell that reaction was because it was goddamn strange. But before he can form the words, Sam gathers him up (his hands are so big and cold against his face) and kisses him.
It doesn’t register what’s happened until it’s already over, but even then Dean doesn’t know what to do with himself. Sam holds him steady, whispering frantically against his lips.
“I thought you were there to kill me,” he murmurs. “I thought when you showed up at the church you were there to kill me. And I deserved it, I know I deserved it, but you didn’t. And I never could figure out why. ‘I’m done trying to save you,’ you said. But you weren’t done and I never could figure out why.”
Sam’s eyes shut and Dean’s heart jumps in anticipation—but the next touch is merely a brief brush against the corner of his mouth.
“All this time... I’m so stupid,” Sam says, and normally it’d be funny how annoyed he sounds with himself, but Dean’s too taken aback to feel anything but flustered. “And when you told me what Samuel did, why you wanted him dead, I got it, but I didn’t get why I was the exception.”
You’re always the exception, Dean thinks, the truth of that made embarrassingly clear.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m sorry. For doubting you. For making you doubt me. For... well, everything.”
Sam finally releases him and it takes Dean a beat too long to realize he’s the one that has to back up and put space between them. He almost touches his mouth like he’s in a cheesy romance flick but stops himself just in time. Sam waits patiently for him to pull himself together; Dean clears his throat and runs a hand through his hand, neither of which helps him feel any more put together.
Dean coughs. “Uh, I’m sorry too,” he says. Sam’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “For, uh, making you think I could do that to you.”
Sam nods. Then he looks away. “Two minutes.”
“Huh?” Dean’s not entirely sure what planet he’s on, let alone what the hell Sam’s talking about.
“It’s, uh, been two minutes,” Sam clarifies. He tosses out a quick, anxious grin. “Clean slate?”
Oh, hell no.
Dean crowds Sam against the pillar and Sam’s eyes grow large in panic. But if Sam’s not going to give an inch then neither will he.
“Maybe in another five minutes,” Dean growls. “But Sam, I don’t think we’ll be doing anything that needs forgiving.”