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The moment it hits him, he’s brushing his teeth a four-day drive away in a motel Dean stuck him in to quell the shock of the return of his soul and half-baked memories. The sudden weight of personality, his part conscience, and the amount of despicable things he’s done in the past year come bearing down on his unsuspecting heart. Sam can’t take it.
His toothbrush clatters into the sink as he yanks himself away from the porcelain and over the toilet, hurling self-hatred and undigested pizza into the toilet. Every time he thinks it lightens, the unbreakable weight of a soul, of his being, his chest twists. He gags.
“Sam?” Dean calls, clocking the sound of Sam’s pitiful retching from the doorway, “You good in there?” He stands awkwardly in the door, unsure.
Sam swallows back a sob, white-knuckling the grimy porcelain that is his saving grace. “I need a minute…” he pauses to breathe, “wait outside, would you?” Sam grinds out against the vertigo of emotions and falsified kindness of Death. Fuck, does he even know what’s happening to himself? He feels as if he’s staring into a familiar bottomless abyss that knows the exact shape of his existence without him ever having met it.
“What? No, I–”
“Dean, please,” Sam begs, cutting Dean off to lay his forehead flat against the motel seat. He has the distant thought of the lack of sanitation, but it dies quickly at the relief of his pounding headache against its cold.
Sam hears the sound of the door clicking shut, and he crumbles, back hitting the wall and shoulder clipping the underside of the sink. Sam’s head lolls between his knees as he cries.
He sobs like he hasn’t done since he was ten, missing his dad while Dean escaped his presence in a motel diner. He cries with his entire chest, soul quaking.
Sam was split in two. His heart remembers coming out of the pit, clawing through monster after monster at no expense of those around him, lacking a sense of self. He feels Dean's look of disappointment and betrayal somewhere in his body, like deja vu.
Another half of Sam shivers in his ribcage. Hell, a nightmare too raw. He feels the imprint it left on him, or the genuine part of him, and it burns. He can’t recall any real memories, any real thought that would rebuild Hell in his damaged mind, but his soul has the gut-wrenching feeling of utter despair and terror of being trapped in that cage branded across it. Sam knows he went. He had jumped in after Adam to ensure a final victory, that memory he is sure of.
Sam feels Hell like a phantom limb he never knew was removed.
Sam’s two is becoming one, and he can’t tell which is the real him. It scares the fuck out of him, so he sits and cries like a little boy missing the mother he never got to love.
He cries until he dry heaves again, face sticky with tear tracks as the tide of grief pulls back. The remorse he feels (something that both elates and scares him) is tainted with relief he can’t quite understand or grasp. Dean waits outside, probably confused.
The part of Sam that had been out for a year, living and breathing freedom, is disgusted at this newfound weakness. There is a deep hatred-coated apathy that scoffs at his emotions and recklessness, things that are a liability in the field. Hunters are no good emotionally damaged, and letting the soul back in had taken a toll Sam’s empty flesh hadn’t quite expected.
Soul, however, was aching. Distraught in a way that seemed never-ending. There was too much all at once, and Sam craved the ability to crawl away into the recesses of his mind to find a memory where he was safe outside the reach of hunting, of the cruel world he was born into. A place before everything. Before Sam got out of hand. Before their dad left. Before Sam’s world was shattered and Dean was suspicious.
Dean stands out in the drizzle, counting the seconds. It is unbearably slow, but it is all too soon when he reaches three hundred seconds.
He knew Sam would be destroyed; he expected it. On their first day after Death had pushed Sam’s soul into his uninviting body, Dean was on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It didn’t.
One day turned into two, and suddenly, four days later, they were taking another case. Dean thought maybe Sam would be okay, that he had miraculously escaped all possible side effects.
He and Sam were never that lucky, so it was just a matter of time until Sam broke down.
Dean feels sick at his relief. There is nothing he should be relieved about. His little brother is complete again, no longer the detached corpse walking around before, but Dean is all too aware that Death’s wall stands no chance against Sam’s prodding curiosity to fill in the gaps.
Sam has broken down, so Deal will pick him back up.
It is a tale as old as time, and as Dean turns the doorknob, he finally understands that this is what destiny looks like.
Fate is the way his brother is curled against the toilet, eyes puffy and skin pale. She is the knowledge that Sam will eventually be reduced to… to something Dean can’t fix as he uncovers the truth. She waits and watches as Dean kneels down to scoop the brother he barely knows anymore into his arms, trying to piece Sam back together with sheer will.
She sees, and Dean knows she doesn’t give a rat’s ass.
“C’mon, get up,” Dean grunts after a few minutes, legs asleep.
“Just… just gimme a few. I’m tired, and I might actually barf,” Sam groans as his head thunks back against the bathroom tile.
“No, you’re not, ‘cause if you were, I’d already be sitting in it.” Dean rolls his eyes, lugging Sam up to his feet. He slowly guides them out of the bathroom and to a bed, mindful of Sam’s instability.
“So…” Dean drawls, Sam rearranging himself to lay across the bed, “what was that?”
Sam grumbles, shaking his head against the pillow. “I dunno, I just… I’m one person with, like, two different parts. I don’t remember anything, but I can feel it.” Sam turns his head to look at his brother. “I… I can’t remember the Cage, but I… I just feel like I wasn’t there, but also was, y’know?”
Dean stares back blankly. “No, I don’t. That sounds confusing, though.” He thought the wall was supposed to be official. Damn you, Death.
Sam grunts, smushing his face into the pillow. “Never mind. It doesn’t make any sense anyway.”
“No! No, I… I wanna hear. Tell me, clue me in.” Dean amends quickly, sitting down beside Sam’s splayed form.
“I just, I dunno, I was in Hell, I can–” Sam swallows, heart constricting, “I can feel that– Hell– the Cage- it left something on me. But there’s something else. Like… like I was breathing but didn’t know it. Freedom, I guess.” Sam shrugs helplessly, flipping over onto his back.
“Oh,” Dean adds dumbly, feeling wildly out of place. He thought the wall would get rid of that, all of that. No memories, no feelings. But, Dean laments, the soul is a complicated piece of shit. The Winchester’s lives have never been easy.
Dean doesn’t know how to or if he should tell Sam that he has been walking around on the planet for a year. Soulless, but walking.
Dean clears his throat, shifting uncomfortably. “What, uh, what do you think it means?”
Sam shrugs again, turning his head away from Dean. “I mean… I guess I was dead. Maybe my body got stuck in the dirt or something.” There’s a whisper of a joke somewhere in there, but neither comment on it.
“Maybe,” Dean breathes, “who knows.”
Sam barks out a cruel laugh, “Probably way too many creatures,” and after a beat, “or demons.”
“Probably.” Dean smiles awkwardly.
Sam sighs, bringing his gaze back to his brother. “Do you still think about Hell?” The question is strange in the air around them, sudden and startling.
“What?”
“Hell,” Sam repeats, “do you remember it.”
Dean opens and closes his mouth, stunned. “Yes... and no? I, um, yeah, but I don’t think about it. At least, not… I try not to think about it.” The honesty of the statement surprises Dean.
Sam hums, eyes peeling away from Dean and up to the ceiling. “I’m sorry you had to go,” for me, is left unsaid, but it echoes through the room anyway. “Nothing’s fair, and I wish we could’ve had a better life.” Sam traces the shapes of the popcorn ceiling, desperately hoping the crushing weight in his chest would ease up.
They’re both quiet, uneasy in the unsaid revelations. There’s a lot Dean wants to tell Sam, but he can’t in fear of what Sam would do. He hasn’t been able to read Sam for a while now, and the thought of losing Sam to himself terrifies Dean. Again.
“Me too, Sammy,” Dean offers. It doesn’t solve anything and just leaves the room feeling pitiful. There is nothing to say that will relieve whatever it is Sam is feeling, not that Dean will be allowed to press the subject further.
This opening is most likely a fluke. Sam will go back to twisting the thoughts in his head around and around, chewing on them until there is nothing left but verbal self-flagellation. Dean doesn’t understand his brother anymore, and maybe it was only fantasy to assume he ever really did.
Who is he outside of protecting his brother?
He could have been a husband and a father. Lisa and Ben are a guilt he will never entirely heal from.
Dean glances back over to Sam, wondering what he could have been had Sam’s empty vessel not sought him out. Sam meets his eyes, seeming to catch the look of dying love for something out of reach.
“You were with Lisa,” not a question or a statement.
Dean’s eyes shift away; answer enough.
“Why?”
“You asked me to,” Dean moves off the bed, shuffling to the fridge. “Your dying wish,” he spits.
“I know.” Pause. “Why’d you come back?”
Dean opens the fridge, grabbing a beer. It’s the same brand as always. His life is a joke disguised as a nightmare.
“We could get you back.” The lie burns on his tongue, so he cracks open the bottle and takes a long gulp.
Sam hums, rolling over to face his brother’s back. Just how much of this had ruined everything? Dean doesn’t look at him. He continues to stare into the buzzing fridge. Sam recognizes the sacrifices Dean has made to keep him safe and alive. First, his childhood, then his soul, and now what could have been his family. Saying sorry doesn’t feel like enough.
“This is all kinda fucked, isn’t it.” If Sam could have cried any more, he’s sure tears would have filled his waterline by now. The cycle of surviving and retraumatization is tiring.
“Understatement of the year,” Dean says, closing the fridge and raking his hand down his face before making his way back to the beds. “But I’m… I’m glad you’re back.” Dean can’t say he missed Sam. It isn’t a lie, but it isn’t the entire truth. He missed his idealized version of Sam, the young kid with a gap tooth.
He missed Sam, but he’s been doing that since Meg. Since that first year back together, when they had only been searching for their father.
Sam offers a small smile, feeling no better than he had twenty minutes ago in the bathroom.