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There is always a girl to save. Or a girl who dies. Or a girl who died. Every town Sam passes through, they all say the same thing, with their eyes full of tears, or their eyes that'll never open again, or their eyes rotted away by time and maggots – help me.
Help me.
Dean's eyes, they never say anything.
--
He travels alone now, fixing the Impala by himself, hunting by himself. He had promised Dean he'd go to Ellen or Bobby, but afterwards, promises seemed very inconsequential. There was a car, a trunk full of weapons, an open road. He closed his eyes, let his finger land on a random point on the map, and went there, because there was better than here, because there is always better than here.
There was a girl to save. She thanked him, kissed him, whispered savior, savior as he stroked her, fucked her. And maybe he was, maybe that's all it takes – a few simple words, a few incantations in Latin – to keep someone from immolation. To keep someone.
She was too young. From the way her breath hitched, from the way she held back tears, he could tell this was her first time. He didn't care, or stop. He wanted from her everything that had been taken from him; he wanted the gratitude wiped clean from her round wide eyes.
Dean watched from the foot of the bed, silenced, unblinking, faded.
--
It's very clear to Sam now – how the events had unfolded, how he ended up here, now, like this. It's chaos out there. There is no plan. The yellow-eyed demon, the other children, the death of everyone he's ever loved – they were all desperate grabs at him, the boy king. They thought if they could finally move him into place, like a pawn – or more accurately, like a king, who just sits there – then everything else would come to order around him. Demons, for all their love of destruction, are just like any other being in this world and the next – terrified of the unknown.
Which is why, when Ruby comes to find him but sees Dean standing there, an echo, a flicker, she recoils. What have you done?
Sam shoots her through the left eye with the Colt before she can say anything else. Her body crumples to the floor and he watches as the blood blooms around her head.
She had made promises that she couldn't keep. There has to be a price for that.
--
It continues. Every demon he comes across, before he sends them back to hell, tells him that the war is coming. He wishes that it would already. He imagines himself bathed in blood, standing on a ravaged battlefield, wielding a flaming sword. The Left Hand of God. A war would justify this anger, this bloodlust. He wonders if this is the monster they meant to create out of him.
He remembers the look on Dean's face when he shot Jake, when he decapitated Gordon. Dean said he was proud of him – You did good, Sammy – but lying to Sam was the one thing Dean never could get right. More and more, saving people has become about killing demons, something else Dean would have said he was proud of but wouldn't have meant.
But, Dean isn't saying much of anything these days.
--
There is always a girl to save. Or a girl who dies. Or a girl who died.
This story is about one who died, and how she was kept here, in her husband's bed, at her kitchen table, for years and years, so that when her neighbors saw her pale face at the upstairs window, her mouth opened in a silent scream, her eyes rotted away by time and maggots, they recoiled in terror.
Enter our heroes, who are here to free her from this existence. They find her body buried in the backyard, under a blighted tree, facedown, the head pointing north.
I buried her on the night of a full moon, the husband says, coming up behind them. I just wanted her with me. I just wanted her to stay.
The heroes feel pity for the man, and disgust. It's not our place to decide that, the taller one says.
How he will come to regret those words.
--
Here is the real story, the one that never gets passed down because there is no girl, no cautionary tale, just two men who make the same mistakes over and over. Here is the real story:
Dean dies drunkenly, messily, with regrets. He gets into two bar fights that night, neither of which Sam tries to stop until Dean is on the ground and not bothering to get up. It's taken Sam this long to realize that these are the choices his brother has made; there is very little he can do anymore to stop him.
He drags Dean back to the motel, his nose still bleeding onto his shirt. His laugh is manic. After dumping him onto the bed, Sam turns back to the door to barricade it and the windows, and that's when Dean's laughter stops.
Don't bother. There aren't going to be any hellhounds, Dean says with a certainty that only the dying have. Sam finishes hammering the last nail anyway before facing his brother. His eyes are suddenly very clear, very lucid. I'm sorry for being so selfish. I'm sorry for not knowing how to be alone, and for leaving you like this.
Sam looks away.
Promise me, Sam, he says forcefully. Promise me you won't bring me back.
There's a pause, the span between this breath and the next, but that's all it takes for your heart to betray you. That, and words.
I promise.
This is Sam at his cruelest.