Archive of Our Own

The dull banging of the front door being pushed open and slammed shut again sent Sam striding towards the stairs in the map room, more than a little pissed. The previous night Dean had fled from yet another tense discussion about the Darkness into the arms of Jack Daniel’s and a busty brunette. However, any words of lecture Sam had prepared got stuck at the back of his throat once he caught sight of his brother.

There were many things Sam had expected to see on Dean’s face: post-orgasmic ease, cocky smugness, fleeting signs of a hangover, a hint of guilt—but tears? He definitely hadn’t expected those.

“Are you—?” He didn’t know how to end the question. Okay? Crying?

“Just peachy.” Dean’s voice was gruff, but that was nothing unusual in the morning. “Minna, man, she smelt great and she was just—”

Dean’s reddened, still leaking eyes fuzzed over in what was undoubtedly a vivid memory of Minna’s various talents.

“Dude. TMI,” Sam hastened to interrupt him. He gesticulated awkwardly at Dean’s face. “So, you’re not—”

“What?” With an annoyed expression, Dean rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “Uh. Just the cold, man.”

Sam had never known Dean’s eyes to be particularly sensitive to the climate, but he let it pass. The last thing he wanted to do was tick Dean off unnecessarily about a potential physiological weakness when far more pressing, controversial topics waited on their agenda.

Unfortunately, Dean seemed to sense IMPORTANT CONVERSATION IMPENDING written in the lines on Sam’s forehead.

“’m gonna go clear that choked-up drainpipe,” he declared, before Sam could say anything else, and waltzed off in the direction of the shower room.

Sam rubbed his eyes and closed Pre-Aramaic History Vol. VII with a frustrated sigh. Again no mention of God’s sister. All the fucking lorebooks the fucking Men of Letters had collected were fucking useless right now!

Sam, something whispered at the back of his head. The book-laden table in front of him flickered like the screen of an old tube TV.

His fingers latched onto the edge of the table, nails biting into the polished would, holding on to it even as it blurred before his vision.

“Not now,” he begged quietly, “I can’t, I’m too tired, please.”

Sam, the voice inside his head insisted, accompanied by an ominous chain rattle.

He banged his fist forcibly against the table. “I said no, dammit! I didn’t pray for this!”

When the noise clouding his ears and eyes wouldn’t disappear, he jumped up from his chair on unsteady feet and stumbled into the kitchen. The delicious smell of stew and the sight of Dean’s wet eyes drove away all remnants of his latest vision.

“Fucking onions,” Dean grumbled, before Sam could ask, and Sam let it go.

He wondered if he should tell Dean what he’d seen, what God was asking him to do. But the oppressive weight that had settled on his chest ever since the heavy chains of the Cage dragged over the back of his retina, scouring, scorching, had finally lifted. He could breathe again, could believe again, could hope again, and it was all down to Dean.

Dean was his light in the darkness, and he couldn’t lose that.

Sniffling noises emanated from Dean’s bedroom as Sam passed it on his way to bed, each one a pinprick to the calm that had enveloped Sam ever since he’d entered the kitchen earlier that day.

Dean was crying, again. Already the third time that day. No cold air could be held accountable for it this time, nor the acid juice of onions; and Sam couldn’t persuade himself that Dean had developed an allergy to his sheets overnight.

God, couldn’t they ever have a day’s respite? Was that really too much to ask?

Dreading what he might find, he poked his head inside. “Dean?” he asked into the darkness of the room.

“Go ‘way,” came Dean’s muffled voice from the bed.

Part of Sam wanted nothing more than to obey his brother. But of course he didn’t, because he’d learned the hard way through Stanford and Jess and Kevin and Amelia that ignoring things didn’t make them go away. So Sam inched closer.

Once his eyes had adapted to the near-darkness of the room, he spotted the outlines of his brother, huddled under his covers. He reached out to pat his shoulder.

“What—?” Sam asked, squeezing his brother’s muscled flesh, unsure what it even was he was asking. “—Why?”

“I don’t know.” Dean looked up at him with a face that was desolate even in the shadows. “I don’t know.”

For a tormenting millisecond, Sam calculated the odds Dean was having a nervous breakdown. Everyone cracked eventually, or so his Psychology 101 prof at Stanford had claimed. Maybe even his invincible big brother.

Quickly, he dismissed that option. That wasn’t something he wanted to think about. Dean was his light, and that was that. Everything else was just…supernatural!

Of course! Dean had been crying on and off the whole day, there’d been no build-up the previous days, and Dean himself said he didn’t understand why it was happening.

“Stay here,” he told Dean, and dashed off in the direction of the library. He returned shortly afterwards with a blue moonstone. According to the Men of Letters’ lore it lit up bright scarlet when faced with a cursed object or person. He’d never tried it before. But now he held it up to Dean’s face. The stone’s color morphed into a glaring red.

Relief washed through Sam’s veins as he took in the tear tracks on his brother’s face, glistening scarlet against Dean’s pale skin and dark, scared eyes.

“Dean,” Sam said, “I think you’ve been cursed.”

A mole. Another. And another. Makes three. And wrinkles, tiny wrinkles, one, two, three, four, five, six, se—

“Good boy,” she purred above him. Mrs. Bevis, he reminded himself. Kind-faced, dowdy Mrs. Bevis. “You take such good care of your little brother. Really, you should be proud of yourself, sweetheart…”

One, two, three, four, he began again. Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

She moaned softly.

Eleven, twelve, thirteen.

Her thighs quivered against his shoulders.

Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.

Then her hand settled on his hair, a gentle caress. Tears blurred his vision. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been touched like that, certainly not since his mother—

“Good boy,” she said again. “I’ll make you boys some nice hot soup later, what do you say to that?” She sounded nothing like his mother.

He’d forgotten which wrinkle he’d counted last, started back at her knee. One. Two. Three—

“You’re crying in your sleep.”

Dean spun around. Amara was standing two feet behind him, her face a bluish-white glow in the darkness of the room.

His bedroom.

He glanced back over his shoulder. Mrs. Bevis and the dreary motel furnishing had disappeared. But he could still smell the slick, tart odor of her pussy.

He gave Amara what he hoped was an intimidating glare. “What are you doing in my dream?”

“You call this a dream?” A furrow appeared between her brows, as if she were honestly puzzled by his words. All too often he’d seen a similar expression on Cas’s face, making her presence more familiar than he liked. “Isn’t it more of a nightmare?”

“Get the fuck out of my head!”

“I can’t do that.” The puzzled expression on her face intensified. “I told you, we’re bound, Dean. Anywhere you are, I am. Anything you feel, I feel.”

“Well, that’s bound to get real boring real fast, ‘cause trust me, lady—” he tapped a finger against his clammy forehead “—it’s a horror show up here.”

Her frown melted into something Dean could only call divine compassion. “I know.”

It made Dean feel sick, and then furious. “Wait—did you do this to me?” He gesticulated at the tears rolling down his face.

“The curse?” Slowly, she shook her head. “Of course not. I would never hurt you.”

It should have been impossible to believe her, not after dreaming of Mrs. Bevis and her promises to take care of them, but he did.

“That’s why I’m here, though. I felt your pain.” Amara closed the space between them and laid a hand on his cheek. Her fingers were cool to the touch and soothing. “I’ve come to bring you peace, Dean. You don’t have to suffer, not anymore. Not when you can be with me, forever.”

“But—” The feeble protest died at the back of Dean’s throat as he tilted his head into her touch.

The last olfactory remnants of Mrs. Bevis, and the time Dad had been gone for weeks and Sam had cried in his sleep because he was hungry, had fallen away. All that remained was a thoughtless, floating feeling, different only in its passivity from the high he’d experienced whenever he wielded the First Blade.

He wasn’t crying anymore.

“No more buts,” she said. “For you or anyone. I can take it all away.”

“Liar!” Dean protested with very shred of will he could still muster—

—With a gasp, he woke up. He could still taste the mindless bliss that had enfolded him on the back of his tongue. He rubbed his eyes and let them trail across the room. Of course Amara wasn’t there. He told himself he felt relieved at that.

Then he pressed his head into his knees and pretended he wasn’t crying.

As he entered the kitchen, Sam’s gaze wandered over his face. Dean blushed under his brother’s scrutiny. He wondered if Sam could sense where Amara had touched him. Dean at least could still feel it, hot and traitorous, as though Amara’s fingers had burned the word SHAME into his skin.

He’d invited women’s touches, always, but this was different somehow. It felt simultaneously more depraved and more chaste than anything else he’d ever done.

If Sam realized anything was off—well, anything apart from the stupid tears rolling down his face—he didn’t comment on it. Instead, he handed Dean a cup of coffee and said, “Not the twenty-four hour kind then.” Something like disappointment flitted over his face.

At the sight Dean wanted to crawl back into his bed and never emerge again. Theoretically, he knew that it wasn’t directed at him, the same way he knew that Sam’s teenage anger hadn’t really been aimed at him, but at their lifestyle. Yet Dean had never been particularly good at compartmentalizing, especially when it came to Sam.

An almost gleeful expression spread over Sam’s face, then, dispelling Dean’s gloomy hesitancies. “Let’s hit the books.”

Dean would never understand how his brother could be so thrilled at the prospect of several long and tedious hours spent with research. Geek.

He was ready to protest and poke fun at Sam, when a fresh wave of sadness hit him.

Something is wrong with you, Dean. A hollow rumble in his stomach—rain on the pavement, damp knees—the weight of $3.57 in his pocket, too light, too fucking light—a book cover, red special offer sticker—Sam’s shining eyes turning stormy as he looked at Dean. It’s not me, it’s you.

A memory? Maybe, he wasn’t sure. Could have been no more than a dream. Or a feeling. Not that it mattered.

The very touch of you corrupts. I’m sick of mac’n’cheese. Don’t you get it? Are you that screwed in the head? I’m gonna be braindead long before I can starve to death. Screw Dad! Screw ‘the life’! Do you even have an original thought?

Dean shook himself out of it the best he could and followed Sam into the library. There he kept up a biting commentary about the Men of Letters’ ridiculous inventory—a study in werewolf transgenderism but nothing on simple spells like stopping a nosebleed, really?—even when the pages began to blur in front of his eyes and the remaining letters all spelled out Sad, clingy, needy, pathetic bottom-feeder.

In his dreams, he waited for Amara, but she never came.

Her absence weighed heavy on his chest, similar to the empty hole inside him Tessa had left behind after their first encounter back at the hospital.

It’s just the curse, he told himself, defiant. It won’t matter once we find a cure.

Nothing in the lore suggested that the crying curse Dean had been subjected to wouldn’t wear off again after a day or two, but it didn’t. Meaning that it was something more complex than your run-of-the-mill curse. But of course the lorebooks didn’t offer any suggestions on exactly what it was, or how to remove it.

The only thing that kept Sam from hurling every damn lorebook across the library and trampling around on it until its spine cracked was the thought that Dean wouldn’t appreciate the mess.

Sam didn’t know why the curse affected him so strongly, as if he too had been subjected to a witch’s sinister spellwork. He’d seen Dean as a demon. He’d seen him as a vampire. He’d watched him die in more ways than he cared to remember. A simple crying spell shouldn’t get to him like this—but it did.

Generally, Sam preferred the days where all the world was a stage for Dean’s clowneries to those where Dean was quiet and brooding, his harlequin costume hanging forgotten in a nook of his mind; even if he spent most of the time in his front row seat to The Dean Show rolling his eyes.

After two frustrating days of research and zero eyebrow-waggling, happy-go-lucky grins from his brother, Sam decided to call Rowena. He hoped she would answer despite what had happened during the last of their face-to-fiend encounters. Needless to say, she didn’t.

He’d already tried to reach Cas several times, to no avail. Who knew, maybe Cas was currently hopping across a different galaxy, trying to find answers about the Darkness and the demon tablet?

There was only one other person he could call for help. Swallowing his pride, he dialed 666.

“Moose.”

It said something about the state of his life that the only one still taking his calls was the King of Hell.

Not that it did Sam any good. Crowley didn’t know anything about Rowena’s whereabouts either, claiming she must have cast a spell to protect herself from persecution. Nor did he deign to help them himself, because petty heartless bastard that he was, he hadn’t forgiven Dean for whatever had happened with Amara.

“Tell him to ask his girlfriend for help!” Crowley growled into the receiver, sounding like a snotty first-grader with a grudge because someone had spilled his Fanta.

It made Sam want to pull his hair out. He still didn’t know what had happened in Crowley’s medieval lair; he hadn’t had a chance to talk to Dean about it, first because of Dean’s stubborn denial, then because of the goddamn curse.

As he returned to his research in the library, Sam found Dean slumped over whichever book he was supposed to skim for information, tears trickling down onto the page in front of him, clearly making no progress whatsoever.

“For God’s sake,” Sam exploded, flinging his phone onto the book-laden table, “can’t you pull yourself together for one goddamn minute?”

Dean’s eyes widened, pure and green, like the shocked gaze of a little boy.

Sam didn’t know whether the sight should make him hope or despair. Normally, the more grief people experienced, the more it dulled and deadened their sensations until nothing was left but cynicism or apathy. Dean, however, reacted as keenly to every blow destiny threw their way as if it was the first. He’d maintained his innocence—innocence in pain.

Dean could no longer trust, and sometimes Sam even thought he could no longer love, choosing killing over saving people because he’d lost all faith he might be saved himself; but he could still be hurt, maybe the only thing keeping him human.

How fucked up was that? And how the hell were they supposed to beat the Darkness like that?

He squeezed Dean’s shoulder in a silent apology and pried the book out of his unresisting hands.

“It’s okay,” he mumbled. “I got this.”

“You hungry?” Dean asked after a beat.

Sam was ready to decline, but thought the better of it. “You gonna fix us some sandwiches?” At least it would give Dean something to do.

Dean stared at him hard as if trying to decide whether Sam was babying him or not. Satisfied with whatever he saw in Sam’s face, he nodded and padded into the kitchen.

Left alone, Sam turned his attention towards the book he’d taken from Dean. Celtic Spells and Counterspells. The chapter Dean had perused dealt with blood magic. On the tear-soaked page in front of him there was a section titled The potencies of demon blood.

His stomach lurched at the sight. He wasn’t hungry anymore.

Later, as he lay in the darkness, waiting for sleep to come, Sam almost welcomed the images of Lucifer’s hand creeping through the fissures of the Cage to greet him. Like a second imaginary friend they clung to the back of his eyelids, offering him the company and guidance Dean couldn’t give him anymore.

When he’d thrown himself into the Cage to stop the apocalypse, Sam hadn’t only done it because it was the best plan he had. He’d wanted to redeem himself. Put Lucifer back in the box after he’d been the one to spring him from it. Alleviate the burn of Dean’s fists on his face. Efface the loathing in Dean’s eyes as he’d said, You’re a monster. Drown out the screams of a hapless woman as he drained her of every ounce of blood.

Now God wanted him to go back to the Cage. What if this was God telling him that he needed to redeem himself yet again?

After all, he’d released the Darkness and—unlike trusting Ruby and killing Lilith—he’d do it again in a heartbeat to save Dean. Even if it meant Dean’s fists on his face, again. Dean telling him they were evil. And another human sacrifice, a man named Oskar, someone he’d never even met.

It’s your second chance, Sam, something whispered at the back of his mind. Everyone wants a second chance, right?

It took Sam a long time to fall asleep.

“You of all people should understand how I feel, Dean,” Amara told him that night.

Dean couldn’t deny the surge of relief that washed over him to have her visit his dreams again, though he hastily reassured himself it was just a reprieve from crying his eyes out, no more, who could honestly begrudge him that?

She spoke slowly, solemnly, as if speaking for the very first time. Never before had Dean met someone whose speech was so untainted by sarcasm. Despite himself, it put him in awe. There was a level of purity to it which he himself had never possessed…and which in her presence no longer seemed entirely impossible to obtain, even for him.

He fought the trance of bliss her appearance had caused. Retorted, “Revengeful?”

“No, hurt.”

“Semantics.”

Distantly, he noted that he was starting to sound like Sam. Weighing his words, emulating the gravity of her speech. He hated himself for how much he wanted to show her the best he was capable of.

She raised an eyebrow. Maybe she’d noticed it too. “Not really. Do you honestly think I bear a petty grudge against my brother because he locked me away and vilified me?”

“That’s sure what it looks like. You’ve been eating souls, killing people!”

“My brother’s creation. His rules.”

Dean snorted. “Ha, because you would have done things so differently!”

“I would have.” She sighed. “For what it’s worth, I stopped. I’m all grown up now. And the people I consumed—they’re not gone. Their souls now live inside me, forever.”

“Wow, you’re a real philanthropist.”

“More than my brother, at least.”

“Is this some good cop, bad cop game—because if so, sweetheart, it’s not working.”

“I’m not sure what you mean—there is no good or bad.” She tilted her head with a frown, shadows covering half of her face. It suited her. Dean couldn’t imagine ever speaking to her in the light of day; but at night, in the shadows, it was difficult to resist the pull of her presence. “Good, bad, light, darkness, man, woman…semantics, like you said, no more. My brother and I, we’ve had our differences; but ultimately, we’re family, blood, like you and Sam.”

“You and…God, you’re nothing like me and Sam.”

“Are you sure about that? Because I loved him. Still love him. With everything I have.”

It was as though Amara was pulling the sentiments right out of Dean’s chest. Despite himself, he listened.

“I love him enough to give everything for him—my life, my freedom, my reputation. You understand all about that, don’t you? That love that makes you want to sacrifice everything?”

A crossroads appeared before Dean’s mental eye. A church. The torrid, hard lips of a demon. Sam’s pale, bleeding hand. He couldn’t keep from nodding.

“See? We’re alike, you and I. Because so did I. My brother, he was bored. Dissatisfied. Lonely, even though he was with me. I knew sacrificing myself would give him a chance to create, a purpose. I wanted him to have that. And then—” Suddenly her voice grew cold and bitter. “After just seven days, he was bored again. And walked away from the world he’d created with my lifeblood. He did not honor my sacrifice. He spat in my face.”

Unbidden, the memory of Ruby rose up at the back of Dean’s mind, accompanied by a sense of betrayal so violent he almost choked on it.

Amara put a comforting hand on his elbow. Her expression softened again. “Now that you’ve released me, I can make it mean something. I can be there for his creation like he never was. I can perfect it.”

Dean wrenched himself out of her grasp. “By wiping out all life on the planet?”

“No, of course not.” She gave him a mild smile. “No more suffering, no more pointless theodicy debates, no more meaningless rules; just bliss. That’s what I’m here for.”

“You really expect me to believe that?”

“No.” She closed the space between them and laid a hand on his chest. Dean could not bring himself to move away again. “But I know you already do, deep, deep down.” She peered up at him, expression impervious. “Let me give you a reason to listen to that voice inside you. While you are here, talking to me, your brother is talking to Lucifer.”

“Sam? Lucifer?”

It was like a slap in the face, worse than all the nightmares Amara had helped him escape from. Still he couldn’t tear himself away, her hand on his chest the one thing keeping him upright.

“The visions he mentioned—they’re not coming from God. Trust me, my brother never gets involved. Never gets his hands dirty. All he ever does is leave—you, me, his angels, everyone. Sam’s visions—they’re coming from the one who locked me away in the first place.”

“That was Lucifer?”

“Why do you think they call him the Morning Star?”

Dean swallowed. He was gonna be sick. “What does he want?”

“To offer Sam a trade. My new imprisonment for his freedom.” She moved her hand up to his face with a smile he couldn’t read. “Remember how much it hurt you the first time he was set free? Remember how much it hurt Sam?”

A last meaningful look, then she drew back and vanished.

With an anguished cry Dean woke up, his chest burning in pain and emptiness as if Amara had torn out a pound of flesh. His pillow was damp with tears.

He wanted to throw himself into Lisa’s arms like he had five years ago. But this time, she wouldn’t stroke his hair and murmur, Shhh, it’s okay, until he was too exhausted to cry. For her he’d ceased to exist.

“You’ve been having visions of Lucifer’s Cage and you didn’t think to tell me?” Dean confronted Sam in the kitchen over coffee.

Sam looked no different than he had on any other morning—ruffled hair, stubbly chin, soft greyish sweats; a giant washed-out teddy bear. And yet… For the blink of an eye, Dean imagined seeing a gracious smile lurking behind the lined mask of his brother’s face, promising eternal destruction in the most gentle tone imaginable.

I like you, Dean. Whatever choices you make, whatever details you alter, we will always end up—here.

He shuddered.

I win. So, I win.

With a clunk, Sam set down his cup, breaking the illusion. He bit his lip, his expression a mixture of guilty and petulant. “Dean, I tried…it’s not like you were all that eager to hear about my visions in the first place.”

Dean swallowed back the sob waiting at the back of his throat. True, he hadn’t wanted to hear anything about any visions from Sam, ever again. Not after Yellow Eyes, not after Hallucifer.

“Dreaming about roadtripping with Dad, that’s one thing. But this, the friggin’ Cage—this is different,” he grumbled. “You should have told me.”

A frown appeared on Sam’s face. “How do you know about that anyway?”

“Amara told me.”

“Am—the Darkness? When?”

“Last night. She’s been…uh visiting my dreams recently.”

Sam’s face morphed from faintly alarmed curiosity to violently alarmed and pissed-off. “And you never thought of mentioning that?”

Pot, kettle. Yeah, he got it. Dean shrugged. “It wasn’t important. She just talked and…stuff.”

“Stuff? What does she want from you?”

“Nothing. Just wants to convince me, I guess.”

“Convince you?”

“That she’s not all evil. And Sammy, I think she might have a point. All she wants is quiet. Peace.”

Sam snorted. “Except for the soul-eating binge she’s on?”

Fresh tears leaked from his eyes. It made Dean want to smash something. Possibly himself. “She stopped that.” He hated how pleading he sounded. “She told me.”

“And you believed her? Jesus, Dean, can’t you see? She’s just manipulating you.”

“Like Lucifer isn’t manipulating you? Because surprise, that’s who’s been sending you those visions, not God!”

“Because the Darkness says so?”

“Look, I’m not saying I’m Team Pro Darkness now, but maybe we should try to see the bigger picture here. Lucifer, that’s bad news. Really, really bad news. Amara is just—”

Sam laughed into his face. It was an ugly sound. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing!” He gripped Dean’s shoulders and glared down into his face with a grim expression. “She’s messing with your head, Dean, and just because you’re all messed up right now you can’t see it. I bet she’s the one who cursed you!”

“No, she didn’t.” He squirmed under Sam’s hands, their grip close to painful. “She said she’d never hurt me.” The disbelief in Sam’s eyes was joined by pity. It sickened Dean to his core. “She offered to cure me. But I turned her down.”

“Thank God,” Sam said, and finally let go of his shoulders. His mouth twitched in what was probably supposed to be a comforting smile. “You don’t need her, Dean. We’ll find a cure. We’ll fix this, just like we always do, and then we’re gonna kick her ass.”

Dean nodded, feeling too emotionally wrung-out from the conversation to protest.

“Good.” Sam stood to pour himself a fresh cup of coffee.

Dean stared at his brother’s retreating back and wondered why it felt like Sam was slipping away from him with every step he made.

You don’t have to be afraid of me, Dean, the back of Sam’s head promised him. I like you.

While he wasn’t inclined to believe a word the Darkness had said regarding his visions, his argument with Dean about them fueled a fresh thought in his brain regarding Dean’s crying curse: Instead of focusing on the question of what had happened to his brother, he began considering the who.

“Guess what,” he announced to Dean not twelve hours later, “turns out your hot date from the bar, Minna—she’s a witch.”

Dean wiped his eyes and stared at him. “But Minna…she would have no reason to curse me. We had a great time.”

Sam barely refrained from rolling his eyes. He knew that Dean tended to think of himself as God’s gift to women, but that didn’t mean all women agreed on that.

“It’s a lead. We should check it out,” was all he said.

On the drive to Minna’s apartment, Dean’s upset reached new heights, so Sam handcuffed him to the steering wheel before he went inside. It wasn’t like Dean couldn’t find his way out of a simple pair of cuffs and follow him, but it would maybe give him a moment to recompose himself.

Sam had no doubt whatsoever that Minna was the one who’d cursed his brother, so he opted for a direct and threatening approach—breaking into the apartment and backing Minna against a wall with a knife to her throat.

“What did you to my brother?” he growled.

“What? Who?” she squeaked, her eyes wide with fear.

She didn’t have Rowena’s fiery spark and scheming. The most striking thing about her was her impressive cleavage—even more impressive now than when he’d first glimpsed it from a distance back at the bar that night. But Sam had learnt not to trust his first impressions, especially where witches were concerned; not after Rowena had managed to play him repeatedly even though she was the one in chains.

“My brother Dean. What did you do to him?”

“Dean? Fuck me that ass Dean?”

Sam pressed the knife more firmly against her throat and she whimpered. “He’s my brother,” he told her, “and I don’t care if he was a chauvinist dick to you or what—”

“A chauvinist dick? You sure we’re talking about the same person? He was so sweet.”

That was the last description Sam would ever have used for his just rolling through town no strings attached brother. “Sweet?”

“It’s been years since a guy went home with me and made it all about me and my pleasure.” Her face lit up in remembrance. “He was—like the perfect fantasy.”

“Then why did you curse him?”

She gasped. “Curse? It wasn’t a curse, it was a gift!”

“A gift?”

“He gave me something, even though I never asked for it, so I wanted to give him something in return.”

He snorted incredulously. “Making him cry at random intervals and unable to function? Seems like the perfect thank you present to me.”

“Random? There was nothing random about it.”

Sam’s hand tightened around the handle of his knife. “No?” Every time he’d asked, Dean had said, I don’t know.

“No, of course not. I’m one of the finest witches of the last millennia; I know what I’m doing.”

“Explain.”

“It’s a spell I designed back when I was working with traumatized World War I soldiers in Perth. By means of simple association it brings traumatic experiences back to the forefront of the mind and grants relief in form of tears.” Smugly, she added, “What Doctor Freud took five years to achieve, I did in a day.”

Sam stared at her. He thought of Dean crying over the chapter about demon blood. That certainly supported Minna’s story. In other cases, he wasn’t sure what had prompted Dean’s tears. Why stew? Why Sam’s running shoes? Why a cracked tile in the shower room? He wondered if Dean had known all along, but had been too ashamed to admit it. Or maybe he hadn’t always been able to spot the connection either.

After all, thoughts, feelings, memories—these things didn’t always make sense, and not only when the devil was lurking at the back of your noggin. When it came to the abysses of the mind, 1 + 1 didn’t necessarily add up to 2, and A might as well be B or D.

Once upon a time, Sam had thought it was simple, like the SAT questions. A demon kills your mother and girlfriend? Kill the demon. Now he knew that there was no answer to grief, least of all revenge.

Sam gulped and redoubled the pressure against Minna’s throat. He didn’t want to think about Jess now. “Why use it on Dean?”

“He seemed so…burdened,” she choked, “as if the fate of the whole world were resting on his shoulders alone. I…I just wanted to help him, give him a way to let go of it all.”

“Yeah, well, you weren’t helping!” Sam snapped. “You just made it worse!”

“I’m sorry, I never want that to happen.” She looked so sincerely upset that Sam dropped the knife and took a step backwards. Her hands shot up to her throat and rubbed the raw skin there.

“Then lift it, now,” Sam commanded.

She snapped her fingers. “There,” she said, “it’s gone.”

“Just like that? How do I know you’re not lying?”

“I have no reason to lie. I’m not your brother’s enemy.”

Sam pointed the knife at her chest. “Well, make sure it stays that way. Because I hear the King of Hell is gunning for anyone who’s helped a certain witch named Rowena, and I might just drop him a hint she’s been staying with you.”

“That’s preposterous! I haven’t been in contact with the rest of the witching community for centuries!”

“Do you think he’ll care?”

“That’s insane!”

“Not at all. It’s insurance,” Sam told her and left, ignoring her further cries of protest.

Outside he found Dean waiting in the car just as he’d left him. He hadn’t even tried to slip out of the handcuff.

Sam uncuffed him and peered closely into his face. Dean wasn’t crying anymore. Good. Seemed like Minna hadn’t been lying.

“She lifted the curse,” he said as he settled more comfortably behind the wheel.

“Okay.” Dean turned his face towards the window.

Sam had thought lifting the crying curse would be the end of their troubles. A week after his visit to Minna, he had to admit that he couldn’t have been more wrong. Dean wasn’t crying anymore, but he was slowly fading away. He went through the motions, and nothing Sam did could rouse him from his stupor.

When he made fun of Dean’s porn collection, Dean only shrugged him off.

When he accidentally spilled soup in Dean’s precious kitchen, Dean didn’t even flinch.

When they checked out a minor haunting, Sam wasn’t sure anymore at the end of the night who the real ghost was—the bones they were salting and burning, or the quiet shell of a brother next to him.

He’d thought Dean would go back to dealing with every blow fate dealt them the way he always had—booze, violence, denial and the occasional cleaning orgy. He hadn’t considered that it might be difficult to push back down all the emotions the curse had brought to the forefront of Dean’s mind, because the human mind wasn’t like a car where you could simply shift to reverse. And now he’d taken away the only outlet Dean had for them.

Dean still cut off vampires’ heads with furious precision and was the best shot Sam had ever seen, but the—sometimes disturbing, sometimes embarrassing, always endearing—childlike glee at the end of a hunt was gone. Instead, he killed with mechanical perfection, and then waited for the next kill; scarily close to the killing machine the Mark had threatened to turn him into.

So instead of searching the lore for methods to lock up Amara, Sam found himself browsing depression help forums.

The most frequent suggestion was seeking out therapy. Sam snorted at the idea of Dean lying on a couch, describing his childhood trauma of a demon burning his mom on the ceiling, confessing to torturing souls in Hell. Yeah, that was exactly the sort of stuff therapists were trained to deal with.

Other advice included a change of diet, location or profession. Frustrated, Sam closed his laptop. Eating healthy back when the Leviathans had poisoned all of his favorite foods certainly hadn’t done wonders for Dean’s mental health. And if there was one thing he’d learnt since Stanford, it was that no matter where they went and what they did, the monsters would always come to find them.

He tried to get Dean to talk, with little success. He was good enough at the whole verbal sensitive massage thing, as Dean had dubbed it, to reach out to strangers marked by loneliness and fear who were secretly waiting for someone to open up to. But with Dean he was hopeless. No matter what approach he tried, he always seemed to make things worse, leaving Dean with the feeling that Sam was pitying, mocking or panning him, and Sam with a bad taste at the back of his mouth.

Cas might have been more successful on that front, but there was still no word from him.

At the end of his rope, Sam went back to Minna’s apartment, ready to beg her to recast the spell, only to find it deserted. Probably he shouldn’t have threatened her quite so heavily.

When he returned to the bunker, Dean’s distant eyes no longer even acknowledged his presence. To all appearances, he was lost in his own head. And Sam dreaded that he wasn’t alone in there.

An echo of Dean’s brooding silence settled low in Sam’s gut. He missed Dean messing with his toothbrush or making him the laughing stock of the local Gas’n’Sip by changing his ringtone to Hopelessly Devoted to You. Ironically, the only thing that could still lift the sick weight inside him were visions of being tortured in Hell.

You know how to end this, it whispered inside his head, and this time he listened.

She stood outside in a field, bare feet planted on the frost-covered earth, black gown and hair billowing in the wind. She spread her arms wide, like an open embrace.

Slowly, Dean walked towards her, each step lighter than the last, soaking up the serenity of her presence.

Her smile grew as he approached, soft and wide enough to encompass the entire universe. Then, suddenly, it froze.

As if waking up from a happy dream, Dean realized that her eyes were no longer fixed on his face, but on a spot behind his shoulder. Only then did he become aware of the noises behind him.

The purring of an engine.

Shouting.

“Dean. DEAN!”

He turned around, blinked.

Not two feet away from him, the Impala skidded to a halt. Sam jumped out, gun in one hand, crowbar in the other. “Don’t!” he called. “Don’t go with her, Dean.”

Numbly, Dean stared at him. He didn’t recognize the expression on his brother’s face. Didn’t recognize his face, period.

“Sam,” Amara spoke behind him, her voice like honey underwater. “Stand back. I’ve come to bring your brother peace.”

“The peace of a graveyard!” the stranger who was Sam spat at her.

Then he lifted the crowbar. For a moment, Dean thought dispassionately that Sam would attack him, thought that the blow would be just as welcome as the soothing touch of Amara’s hands on his forehead. But instead the crowbar struck down on the Impala’s windshield.

Glass splintered everywhere. Like fireworks, in another field, at another time.

“We don’t want your peace!” Sam yelled, and smashed in the driver’s window.

Behind him, Dean faintly heard Amara’s puzzled question, “But why would you want to suffer?” It was drowned out by the sound of bursting glass, the shrill horn of the car.

The memory of Sam’s fists and shattering glass, ravaging his Baby, ravaging him, in what felt like another life, ripped Dean out of the numbness that had enveloped him. Each falling glass shard sliced through him, carving hymns of painful history into his heart.

You think you’re my savior, my brother, the hero. But you’re not.

When Sam raised him arm again, Dean couldn’t take it anymore.

“Sam, no.”

The words came out hoarse, barely audible, but Sam immediately let his arm drop. The crowbar and gun fell to the ground, and then Sam’s hands were on his face and he held up his thumb between them, the tip shining wetly. A tear.

“You’re crying. This is good. It’s good,” Sam whispered, like an incantation. He was smiling, a reddish glow to his eyes.

Weakly, Dean twisted himself out of his brother’s arms and turned around. Amara was gone.

He sat down on the frosty ground and wept.