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“It wasn’t four months, you know,” is how Dean starts the conversation that will rip him to shreds. Sam says nothing, confused until Dean starts to pour his guts out about the pit. At first, he has Sam’s sympathy, and as much as he craves it, it also makes him sick. Because he knows what he has to say next.
It feels like a part of him is being ripped out, as if speaking the words aloud makes them real. As if the horrors, the torture he’s inflicted haven’t counted until now because they haven’t been acknowledged in the light of day.
And he can’t turn around, can’t look at Sam and the look of disgust he knows must be on his face. But ever since Alistair appeared, Dean knew he couldn’t hide it any longer. If he didn’t tell Sam, Alistair would, and Sam deserved to hear it from him just how much of a monster he’d become. He can hear Sam’s breathing, steady at first then then hitching when Dean confesses what he’s done.
Ever since he’s made it back from the pit, all Dean’s heard is John’s voice rattling around in his skull, this incessant buzzing that even whiskey won’t touch. Screaming at him, mostly. But the times when it isn’t screaming are worse. His father telling him that he never thought Dean would be the one to give in to the darkness. That he was supposed to be the strong one, the steady one, the honorable one never giving a second glance to the oblivion calling to Sam. That John is disappointed in him.
And as many times as Dean tells himself – hell, as many times as Sam tells him – that John is a bastard and what he wanted for them didn’t matter, it still does. Because this time, he’s undeniably right. Dean has given his brother so much grief over his freaky psychic shit, and for what? For Dean to turn around and do something so much more unspeakably inhuman the second he gets the chance? He’s spent so much of his life trying to be good. For his father, for Sam. Trying to be someone, be something that John would be proud of, that Sam could look up to. Something that might one day be worthy.
But every principle he’d ever held, every time he told Alistair to shove it, for thirty years straight, every goddamn thing he’d ever stood for went out the window the second he took the deal.
Despite Dean’s best efforts, the tears start and won’t stop. And that makes it worse, somehow, because the last thing Dean deserves is to pity himself after what he’s done. Sam speaks up now, says his name. Dean knows it’ll be some empty comfort he doesn’t believe and doesn’t deserve, but he can’t make himself stop his brother from giving it anyways. He knows Sam will say that thirty years is more than most could take.
But it wasn’t enough.
“I wish I couldn’t feel anything, Sammy. I wish I couldn’t feel a damn thing.” His voice breaks then, because he’s spent so much of his life pretending. Pretending that he’s unbothered by the things he’s seen, the things he’s done. Trying to put on a brave face for his brother. And all of it has led up to this. It’s meant nothing. He’d dared to insinuate that Sam wasn’t human without bothering to look himself in the mirror and consider what he was capable of.
Sam is silent then, and Dean deserves it. He doesn’t reach out and touch him, because Dean doesn’t deserve it. So the pair sit in silence until the tears have stopped and Dean can face his brother, if not look him in the eyes. Not another word is said, and the brothers drive off once again to face whatever horror comes next. And Dean will deal with it the way he always does, by running himself into the ground.
Because he deserves it.