Archive of Our Own

“Don’t wait up.”

They were the first words Dean had spoken to Sam since they’d checked into a cheap motel somewhere in Kentucky after their round-trip to Heaven courtesy of Walt and Roy. Dean had withdrawn into an extended sulk ever since, unable to shake off Zachariah’s mindfuck of selected memories, all too eager to hurl himself at the worst possible conclusion about Sam’s supposed highlights. Having had all of his attempts to reassure Dean rebuffed, Sam finally resigned himself to riding out the uncomfortable silence in his current role of persona-non-grata for the near future. The only human interaction Sam had had since they arrived was to thank the maintenance guy for replacing the broken TV in the room. ‘Johnny’, according to the guy’s nametag, had responded with nothing more than a grunt and a nod on his way out. So when Dean finally deigned to speak to him unprompted, Sam was caught off guard and couldn’t find his neglected voice until the door had already slammed shut.

“Be careful,” he said uselessly to the empty room.

It was their third day in this random generic town that Dean had decided to stop in, ostensibly following demon signs that could just as well have been natural phenomena. Sam suspected this was a deliberate wild goose chase on his brother’s part, a front for taking a desperately needed break because he was unwilling to admit to the weakness of not being made of stone. Not that Sam begrudged him a few days of respite from the emotional bludgeoning they’d taken recently; he dutifully played along with the pretense hoping Dean would work through his funk. Though after three days with no sign of any change in his brother, Sam was beginning to wonder just how temporary this side stop was.

He supposed that he should be thankful that at least Dean was willing to acknowledge his existence again, as opposed to the previous two nights when he’d just left without a word only to return hours later reeking of booze and sex and hopelessness. If the pattern held, tomorrow he’d be left to his own devices again while his brother rounded out his pursuit of empty pleasures with an afternoon breakfast consisting of a future coronary on a plate. Sam tried not to take the silent treatment and avoidance personally; he knew exactly what Dean was doing. It was the same thing he was doing by fixing up the Impala after Dad died: going through the motions of old habits in an attempt to try to find his way back to himself. Sam could only trust that Dean would get there eventually, but patience didn’t come easy while he also felt the end of the world looming over his shoulder. For now, all he could do was dig out some pain killers from the bottom of a duffel and put them and a bottle of water on the nightstand next to Dean’s bed in anticipation of his inevitable hangover.

Despite Dean’s admonishment, Sam had no intention of getting any sleep until he knew his older brother had returned safely. Just as he’d done the previous two nights, he pulled out his laptop in the hope that maybe if he stared at the lore long enough, it would close some circuit in his subconscious and generate a new lead. He knew it would likely be fruitless, but he did it anyway because someone had to be doing something, and out of Dean, Castiel, Bobby and himself, he was apparently the only one left who was still capable of carrying any hope at all.

It was a heavy fucking load.

The hours dragged on as Sam doggedly went down rabbit hole after rabbit hole searching for any sign of Pestilence, the one Horseman they hadn’t caught wind of yet. It was the only thing he could think of doing besides aimlessly chasing down demons to kill, which basically amounted to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic these days. Going after the big players was their only hope of make any significant difference in the outcome, and they’d already taken out two Horsemen. Sam refused to believe that there wasn’t any way to stop the remaining two as well.

Disappointingly, but not unexpectedly, Sam once again had little to show for his effort beyond digging up articles about small outbreaks of mild illnesses well within the realm of normal. When his eyes were too tired to focus on the text anymore, he reluctantly admitted defeat for the night, closed his laptop, and stood to stretch the kinks out of his back. Checking his watch, Sam noted that four hours had passed without any sign of Dean or any messages from him on his phone, which was pretty much par for the course lately. His stomach churned with worry anyway. Dean didn’t bother to hide his emptiness anymore, wearing a hollowed out, dull expression like a burial shroud ever since Zachariah’s selectively curated regurgitation of Sam’s memories. Though if Sam was being honest, it had really started the night he’d used the powers he’d sworn off to destroy Famine.

That night still gnawed at him from the inside, leaving behind a void where victory should have been. By all rights, killing the Horseman and acquiring the ring that was the source of his power should have counted as a win, but it sure as hell didn’t feel like one given the look on Dean’s face immediately afterward. Not relief that they’d stopped Famine’s destructive influence, not triumph over destroying one of the most dangerous Apocalyptic forces in play, not pride that Sam had overcome Famine’s thrall to destroy him. Just a mixture of fear and disgust and disappointment that Sam had given into his addiction once again, reminding Dean of the indelible corruption marring his little brother’s soul and withering what little hope Sam had of salvaging their strained relationship.

But replaying his own failures over again in his head was pointless, so Sam tried to push it down and force himself back to the here-and-now, to the things he could control. He shed his flannel and changed into sweatpants, then headed into the bathroom to prepare for another night of trying to forget about the pollution running through his veins that Dean could no longer pretend to overlook.

A sharp, slicing pain on the left side under his ribcage hit Sam without warning, making him suck his breath in through clenched teeth and curl over with a hand instinctively pressing to the area. Surprised at the wetness he felt there, he pulled his hand away to find red staining his fingers. The training that John drilled into him to retain reason in the face of life-threatening situations took over and calmly told him to assess the situation first, react second. He’d dealt with more than enough stab wounds to know by feeling that this wasn’t anywhere near as deep or serious. He pulled his undershirt away from where spots of blood made it cling to his body and lifted it clear to examine himself, finding a collection of short, straight cuts at various angles, somewhat obscured by smeared blood. He grabbed a wad of tissues and held it pressed there for a few minutes to try to stop the bleeding as the sting receded.

Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, he removed the tissue to get a better look. Fortunately, the cuts appeared to be shallow, the bleeding only a sluggish ooze. Then he leaned in closer when he realized the lines weren’t just random slashes. They formed discernable letters, much like the crude initials Sam and Dean had scratched into the Impala with a knife when they were kids. The etchings in his skin were more than just initials though; there was no mistaking the word the letters spelled out backwards in the mirror.

FREAK.

It hit him like a pulse of electric current, defibrillating Sam’s brain into a steady heightened state of alarm. One hemisphere tore through a list of possible supernatural sources of the wounds, witchcraft topping the list, while the other half recognized that the livid disparagement carved into his skin wasn’t random.

It was personal.

He automatically reached for his phone to call Dean and tell him about the presumed attack, but the impulse died stillborn when he remembered Dean’s haunted eyes as he locked Sam in the panic room to endure a second brutal detox alone.

Dean was already drowning in enough of his own problems. He had no room left for Sam’s.

The damage was only superficial, inconvenient but not debilitating, and it wasn’t all that bad in the grand scheme of things. Certainly not as bad as being impaled by the metal pipe wielded by an angel bent on killing him. Certainly not as bad as what he probably deserved after unwittingly breaking the final seal to Lucifer’s cage and unleashing the death and destruction that followed. All things considered, it was a minor distraction compared to the monumental task of stopping the Apocalypse. Unless and until Dean suffered a similar attack, there was no need to bother him with this. He’d leave Dean out of this until he either figured it out on his own or they left this place and whoever was responsible behind.

Sam cleaned up the cuts, taped a sterile pad over the area, and scoured the motel room for any signs of a hex bag. He opened every drawer, looked under and behind every piece of furniture, searched between the mattresses and the boxsprings, even checked down the shower drain and in the air vents after removing the covers. The search yielded nothing, and he finally gave up, turned off the lights, and climbed into bed to begin his recent nightly ritual of watching the garish wallpaper peel until Dean finally staggered back in at some obscene hour.

After waking to a sunbeam landing squarely in his eyes and Dean’s diesel snoring that rivaled the Impala idling, Sam gave up on getting back to sleep and rolled out of bed. A small twinge reminded him about the cuts scrawled into his left side from the night before, and he collected a fresh bandage along with a change of clothes before heading into the bathroom. If there was an upside to Dean’s all-night outings, it was that at least he got first crack at the hot water.

Sam peeled back the gauze carefully, noting that at least the cuts were scabbing over and healing cleanly, even if FREAK was still easily discernable. He washed that area gingerly during his shower and patted it dry with tissues to avoid further damage from the scratchy, bleached-white towel, then finished drying the rest of himself off. With the towel secured around his waist, he started to reach for the clean bandage when he heard heavy footsteps thumping rapidly towards the door.

“Coming through!” was the only warning he got before Dean came barreling into the bathroom, making a beeline for the toilet. Whatever Dean had for dinner made it to the bowl first—or at least most of it did. Sam hopped back into the tub to avoid the errant spray, grateful that he got any heads up at all, grateful for any words that Dean decided to grace him with since Zachariah had crushed whatever was left of his spirit.

After a thankfully short round of heaving, Dean leaned back against the wall with a groan, tipping his head back and closing his eyes, looking distinctly relieved. Avoiding the splatter on the floor, Sam moved to the sink, wet a washcloth and held it out. Dean’s bloodshot eyes opened and he started to reach for it with a slight nod of thanks, only to freeze with his hand an inch away from the cloth.

“What the hell is that?” Dean was staring at Sam’s left side, where the now crusted over letters still clearly spelled out their derogatory message. His face turned quickly from surprise to disgust as his eyes rose to meet Sam’s. “Why the fuck would you do that to yourself?”

With the clunk of the amulet Sam had gifted to his brother hitting the bottom of a trash can still echoing in his mind, Sam shouldn’t have been surprised that Dean would once again come to the worst possible conclusion about him.

“I didn’t do it—” Sam started to protest.

“So, what, you let a demon do it to you?” The sarcasm stung more than the cuts.

Dean snatched the washcloth out of Sam’s hand and shook his head as he wiped his face.

“What is it with you, Sam? Are you still so screwed up that now you have to resort to mutilating yourself as a substitute for Ruby? Are you that—”

Sam grunted in sudden, piercing pain as his hands flew to the right side of his abdomen. After a few seconds he recovered from the jolt of a fresh injury and slowly pulled his hands away to reveal another engraving.

WEAK.

Dean gawked open-mouthed at the bloody completion to his tirade, while Sam’s chest tightened as he realized who the source of the attacks was, if not the cause. Dean’s condescending expression evaporated and morphed into consternation as he apparently came to the same conclusion.

“Told you I didn’t do it,” Sam said tightly, grabbing a wad of tissues to absorb the seeping red.

At least Dean had the decency to look contrite as Sam strode out of the bathroom to go find another sterile bandage. It was little compensation though, knowing that had he not seen it happen with his own eyes, Dean would still be berating him as if he was some melodramatic, attention-seeking fifteen-year-old. Which might be the one thing for which he didn’t deserve Dean’s ire these days. Sam dug out the first aid kit once again and testily thumped it down on the table.

“When did it happen?” came Dean’s voice from behind him, tinged with concern instead of anger. So much for leaving Dean out of it.

“Late last night. Or early this morning.” Sam shrugged, irritated by the thought that part of Dean’s evening that apparently included him drunkenly bitching to some stranger about his ‘freak’ of a little brother. “I already looked for hex bags,” he said, forestalling Dean’s next question.

A pause. Then Dean’s voice came from behind him, accusation creeping in. “And you didn’t think to call me?”

“Would you have picked up?”

Sam took Dean’s silence as a ‘no’. He got what he needed out of the kit, turned towards the bathroom, then thought better of it remembering the mess on the floor.

“I’ll, um… get that.” Dean jerked his thumb back over his shoulder towards the bathroom door, then winced and brought a hand to his temple. “After…” he said, jutting his chin at the promise of solace Sam left for him on the nightstand. He downed three pills with a swallow of water, then sat slowly on the bed and leaned forward, propping his head in his hands.

“Sam…” Dean started in an apologetic tone.

“Forget it,” Sam said quickly, squelching his annoyance and letting Dean off the hook given his current sorry state. “It’s just another case, right?”

He dabbed the new, angry gashes with alcohol and taped clean gauze over both words.

“Just do me a favor…” Sam continued, eyeing their dwindling supplies. “Try not to think about me for the next few days.”

Dean had spent the past three nights with three different women, any of whom may or may not have had anything to do with the current situation. Although they didn’t find any hex bags planted on Dean, one of them could have cast a spell in person while he was too drunk to notice. Or roofied him with some kind of cursed potion which, for that matter, could have been delivered by any number of patrons or staff members at the bar Dean had used to scout prospects.

Sam knew it was going to take more time than he’d like to track down whoever decided to turn his body into an etch-a-sketch using Dean’s less than flattering opinions of him, so he headed over to a drug store to replenish the first aid kit. The second stop was for a hangover breakfast to bring back to Dean so they could hash out a strategy while he recovered.

They both agreed the most obvious suspect was the woman Dean had hooked up with last night when it started.

“What was her name?”

“May?” Dean drew his brows together in thought. “June?”

“You don’t remember her name. Seriously?”

“It’s usually not important,” Dean shrugged. “It was definitely a month, though.”

“April?”

Dean snapped his fingers in hazy recollection. “That’s it.”

Sam asked, already knowing the answer, “I don’t supposed you got a last name?” Dean snorted predictably. “So I’m going to assume you don’t remember where you two… uh… y’know.”

“Shagged? Bumped uglies? Did the horizontal mambo?”

Sam scowled in disapproval at the casual crudeness and Dean rolled his eyes at him as if he was a pearl clutching church lady. Then Sam hissed and cursed and pushed back his sleeve to see PRISS slightly oozing on his forearm. Thankfully the scratches were light this time, barely more than paper cuts. Dean pursed his lips hard and ducked his head in less-than-subtle attempt to suppress a smirk, then speared a forkful of food and shoved it into his mouth as cover.

Sam tried but failed to summon any irritation at his brother’s amusement at his expense because, yeah, maybe he had to give Dean that one. And maybe getting a glimpse of the old Dean was worth it.

“Sorry,” Dean finally said around a mouthful of waffle as Sam pressed a napkin to his arm. “Hampton Inn, room 203.”

“You knew that, but not the name of…?” Sam decided he’d rather not risk adding another insult to the growing collection, shook his head at his brother’s baffling priorities, and started in on his own food instead of finishing the thought.

Sitting on the far side of the lobby of the Hampton Inn, Sam discretely watched the bored 20-something brunette behind the desk brighten as Dean approached. He wondered idly if his brother had just found his next conquest, or if he would deign to grace him with his presence that night for a change. He said something to her, and she cocked her head and smiled shyly in return, which pretty much answered that question. The attendant passed over the desk phone to Dean, and he held the receiver to his ear for a good 10 seconds, then shrugged and hung up. Which was Sam’s cue that April’s room was empty and he was clear to search it while Dean acted as lookout. He just hoped Dean wasn’t too busy flirting to notice April returning.

A credit card defeated the outdated lock on the room, and Sam searched as thoroughly as he could without leaving anything in disarray. The suitcase yielded two decks of Tarot cards, a pouch containing quartz crystals, and a vial of dried herbs labelled “wolfsbane” that smelled distinctly like weed. Which, while definitely on the witchy side, wasn’t exactly damning evidence; she seemed more like a harmless new-age hippy than a practitioner of dark magic. He made sure everything was back in its place before heading downstairs.

Another visit to a nearby hotel where another one of Dean’s previous companions was staying yielded similar results. Sam found a supposed spellbook, the contents of which turned out to be popular song lyrics poorly translated into Latin, but there were no small animal bones or other unsavory ingredients typically used in hex bags, nor were there any common potion ingredients. Clearly another innocent, if gullible, fake witch. Still, it was an odd coincidence that Dean had hit two different women with some very similar non-mainstream hobbies.

The third search turned up a suspicious-looking case labeled “potion ingredients” that turned out to be full of ordinary cooking spices. Confused by the connection these women shared that seemed too unlikely to be coincidence, Sam headed back to the lobby to find Dean staring at an easel half-hidden by a fake plant.

The sign on it read, “Welcome Esoterica Coven”.

It turned their hunt into essentially looking for a needle in a pile of needles. A real witch could be mixed in with any one of the dozens of attendees, most of whom were staying in the cluster of three-star hotels near the bar that had served as Dean’s hunting grounds. Most of whom probably frequented said bar during the past few days.

The two of them stared at the sign in disbelief, and Dean eloquently summed up their mood.

“Son of a bitch.”

Back in the motel room once again after a complete waste of an entire day, Dean cracked open a beer and unpacked their takeout while Sam perused the Esoterica Coven’s website, which boasted about a growing membership in several branches across the region.

“Anything ominous?” Dean prompted.

“Only if you count their outrageous membership fee and a dozen books full of fake spells for $60 a crack.”

“So basically a new-age scam preying on wanna-be Wiccans.” Dean shook his head and scowled. “Why do so many people fall for that crap?”

“I don’t know.” Sam closed the laptop, leaned back, and gave it some honest thought. “Maybe with all the end-of the-world shit that’s going on—earthquakes, fires, floods—maybe they just need to feel like they have some sort of control, even if they know it’s all fake.”

“Huh, kind of ironic, isn’t it?” Dean said before taking a pull from his bottle. “Coming from you.”

There was no mistaking the sarcasm in Dean’s voice, and Sam felt a disorienting lurch like he was hopping from rock to rock to traverse a stream and had a stone suddenly shift under his foot.

“What are you saying? You think all we’ve been doing for the past few months is for nothing? That we’re just fooling ourselves into thinking we can win this?”

“Aren’t you?” It was hard to miss the singular pronoun.

Sam knew Dean was struggling, but maybe he’d underestimated just how bad off he really was.

“Look, I get that it seems impossible with Heaven and Hell throwing everything they’ve got at us. But did it occur to you that they wouldn’t be doing it if they didn’t think we were a threat, that there wasn’t some way we could stop all this?”

Dean scoffed. “You seriously believe that?”

“Yeah, I do.” It came out sharper than he’d intended, and Sam clamped down on his growing consternation, forced himself to soften his voice. “Or… at least I’m trying to. But it’s hard enough to keep the faith without having to do it for everyone else, too. I need to know… are you still in this with me?”

“Hey, I’m here, aren’t I?”

Dean said it in a flippant tone that belied resentment churning under the surface.

“Are you?” Sam asked tersely. “‘Cause lately it seems like you’re just going through the motions. Like you’ve already given up.” Sam took a breath and said, almost pleading, “I can’t finish this by myself.”

Dean’s reply was half under his breath but loud enough that Sam knew he was meant to hear it. “It was easy enough for you to start it by yourself.”

Yesterday he might have made excuses on Dean’s behalf, blown it off as Dean lashing out to cope with the overwhelming stress of the non-stop hits that kept coming. But yesterday he didn’t have Dean’s true opinions of him being carved into his skin. Sam’s imagined stone gave way, left him flailing to keep his head above water.

His voice was strained through a tightened throat. “So all that talk about forgiving me for thinking killing Lilith would stop it was, what… just lip service?”

Dean looked down, but the slashing pain running across Sam’s right bicep answered on his behalf. He gasped and just about ripped his flannel and T-shirt off to see SCREW UP gouged there, the cuts deep enough to drip freely.

Dean’s face twisted into regret. “Sam, I didn’t mean—”

“Of course you did,” Sam countered heatedly, glaring. “And let me guess, the reason for pulling me back in after you told me to pick a hemisphere, that was bullshit too. ‘We keep each other human.’ Really?” Sam pointed to the still-visible FREAK on his abdomen. “‘Cause how the hell could you ‘keep’ me human when I haven’t been since I was six months old?”

“Sam, wait—”

Pain erupted in Sam’s leg, forcing a strangled cry out of him and sending him to the floor while clutching his left thigh. He kicked off his boots and shed his jeans to see MONSTER there, deeper and bloodier than the rest.

Somewhere inside, a fragile dam made up of half stubborn will and half denial gave way, unleashing a wave of bitter disillusionment.

“Anything else you want to tell me, Dean?” Sam spit out as he wrapped both hands around his freshly damaged leg in an effort to stem the bleeding. “Might as well just say it all out loud and get it over with, it’ll show up sooner or later anyway!”

Slicing agony simultaneously blossomed all over Sam’s body as what he could only assume must be Dean’s litany of his faults was carved into him one after another in excruciating succession. Sam curled into a ball in an instinctive, ineffective attempt to protect himself against spectral blades, failing to suppress the anguished noises escaping through clenched teeth as his brother pointlessly shouted his name somewhere in the distance. He screwed his eyes shut hard enough to force tears out as the onslaught continued, and at some point Sam started to wonder if Dean’s list of grievances was so long that he’d eventually bleed out, a literal demonstration of death by a thousand cuts.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d lain there before he realized that the torment had finally relented. Sam drew in a shuddering breath, slowly uncurled and staggered to a stand while fending off Dean’s attempt to help. When he looked down at himself to assess the damage, he saw blood welling up and dripping from a bright red laundry list of his sins written all over his torso, arms, and legs.

LIAR on his left bicep, TRAITOR on his forearm.

JUNKIE and SELFISH on his right thigh.

FAILURE and ARROGANT down his left calf, DISAPPOINTMENT down the right.

BURDEN across his stomach. WORTHLESS across his heart.

He felt more on his back that he couldn’t see. But he could imagine.

Maybe he didn’t have the right to feel that crushing sensation coming from deep within his chest, the one he became familiar with the first time Dean had communicated each of these things to him, whether said directly or through his silent agreement with the condemnation from the demon inhabiting Bobby. Maybe he deserved every word. But after months of being strung along thinking his brother had absolved him from at least some of the blame for freeing Lucifer, the ache returned as fresh as the newly weeping, open wounds.

Dean hadn’t taken Sam back for some ‘brotherhood’ bullshit. He’d taken him back because of everything that was currently spelled out on his skin. He’d taken him back because, not for one minute, did Dean ever believe he was capable of resisting Lucifer. He’d taken him back to keep him on a leash, to prevent him from breaking bad again. Just like Dad knew he would.

Sam stood still for a time, watching droplets of blood crawl down his arms to fall from his fingertips and soak into the carpet, forming red blotches that spread outward like a field of poppies unfurling their petals. It took him long enough, but he finally understood that it didn’t matter what he did. It never had. He could single handedly defeat every Horseman, destroy Lucifer himself, and it still wouldn’t change how Dean saw him now. There was no coming back from any of the mistakes he’d made, or from what he’d become. The epiphany punctured the comfortable membrane of his self-deluded hope and bled his anger dry, leaving hollow defeat in its wake.

He lifted dull eyes to meet Dean’s horrified ones.

“You sure that’s everything?” he said numbly. “I think there’s still some space left.”

Silence hung thick and suffocating.

Then Dean’s face contorted, and Sam was backing against the wall as his brother turned into a snarling, cursing whirlwind of rage, upending furniture, tearing into the mattresses and upholstery with a knife, kicking random holes in the drywall while Sam shielded himself from the maelstrom. The alarm clock exploded against one wall, the bedside lamps collided with another, the sound of shattering glass marked the violent demise of the bathroom mirror. With a bellow of rage, Dean lifted the old cathode ray tube TV set over his head, ripping the cord free of the outlet, and slammed it into the floor with a crunch of broken plastic and glass. He planted a vicious kick for good measure which rolled it a couple of feet across the floor. His fury apparently depleted, Dean hunched over and sucked in deep lungsful of air from his exertion.

Then he stilled suddenly and reached down amidst the broken pieces of the screen. He stood and turned around slowly.

“Sam…”

In his palm was a hex bag. The implication body slammed Sam and sent him reeling. He was alone when it started, which meant—

“None of that came from me.”

It meant that maybe Dean wasn’t lost to him after all.

“It didn’t need to, though, did it Dean?” said a voice from the now open doorway. “Even if the spell drew the thoughts from Sam’s mind, how do you suppose they got there in the first place?”

Johnny the maintenance guy held out a hand and Dean flew back against the far wall, pinned there like an insect. The man blinked and oily black replaced light blue.

Sam snarled, “Let him go!” and the demon slowly twisted its head around to face him.

“It’s not your brother I’m interested in.”

“What the hell do you want with me? What kind of sick game are you playing?”

“Oh, Sammy,” Johnny said, sighing in mock sadness. “It’s not a game; it’s a wakeup call. I’m just trying to get you to admit the truth—that your so-called brother sees you as more of a liability than family these days.”

“That’s a load of shit!” Dean yelled, straining to free himself from the demon’s invisible grip.

“Is it? You know we can read minds, Dean.” A wide grin split Johnny’s face. “What was it you said to that angel of yours that one time?” The demon switched to a gravelly voice, obviously mimicking Dean. “’Honestly, I'm good. I'm really good… especially without my brother.’”

“Yeah, right,” Sam spit out dismissively. The whole thing was obviously yet another ploy to wear them down, to drive a wedge between Dean and him just like in Heaven, and Sam wasn’t about to fall for more of that crap. He huffed a derisive laugh and looked to Dean for confirmation of the lie.

But Dean wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Burden and Worthless throbbed in time with Sam’s pulse.

“Seriously, why do you keep giving him the benefit of the doubt? How many excuses are you going to make for him?” The demon blinked again and the grey-blue irises returned, regarding Sam with something resembling sympathy. “Real family would accept you for who and what you are. They should admire your talent, your strength, but Dean…” It glanced at Dean, then looked pointedly at Sam’s left thigh. “Well. I think it’s been pretty much spelled out for you.”

The demon raised its eyes back to Sam’s face, the pity replaced with what he could swear was… reverence. It made Sam’s stomach churn.

“Your power makes you special, Sam. Not a freak or a monster like your brother’s got you believing. You could use it right now to send me back to Hell if you wanted to.”

“I really don’t,” Sam denied, wondering which of the three of them he was trying to convince.

Johnny heaved a disappointed sigh. “Maybe you just need a little incentive.”

It curled the hand it was holding out towards Dean into a fist. Dean made a choking sound and the sinews in his neck stood out. “Oh, sure, I know Michael will just bring him back after I pop his head off, but I don’t imagine it’ll be a fun experience for your brother.”

It squeezed tighter. Deans strangled breathing was silenced and his eyes bulged as his air was cut off completely.

“It’s time you stop suppressing who you are and embrace it, Sam. You can make me stop this any time you want.”

Sam knew the demon was right. He could sense it, deep inside. The power was still there, had always been there, waiting for him to tap into it just like Ruby taught him. And he didn’t need the crutch of the demon blood he’d resorted to as a short cut after his hiatus from her training. There was no way he could get to the demon blade in time; using his ability to control the demon was their best shot. If he reached for it with the same deliberate, disciplined focus he’d used to defeat Samhain, if he just used his own innate power without imbibing any of the noxious substance to which he’d become addicted, surely Dean would be able to forgive him for using it to protect him.

Or maybe Dean would think of it as the final act that severed the last frayed thread connecting him to his humanity. Maybe he would be right to think so. But if Dean wasn’t in the game anymore, his powers might be the only tool Sam had left to keep fighting on his own.

As he raised his hand to focus his energy, Dean followed it with wide eyes. Sam felt pain flash across his palm, and he turned his hand around to find his deepest fear.

EVIL.

Demons lie. Except when the truth hurts more.

Maybe the demon had it right, that it was time to just accept himself for what he really was and stop his naïve, pointless pursuit of redemption. What did it matter if he used his powers this once? What did it matter if he used them a thousand more times? Or if he never used them again? It wouldn’t change what he knew he was, either for better or worse.

Sam lifted his eyes slowly to Dean’s, dreading what he’d find there. But it wasn’t the expected fear or disgust that Sam saw; instead there was fierce defiance. With his eyes locked on Sam, Dean used what must have been every ounce of strength he had to overcome the demon’s grip and give him a minute shake of his head.

No.

It could have been a warning, could have meant that Sam should take that last engraving to heart, that giving in to his power again would cement the verdict on his palm not just in his own mind, but in Dean’s. But in that case he was already beyond redemption. His power would always be a part of him, whether he used it or not.

Or it could have meant that it wasn’t Sam that Dean was rejecting, it was the self-deprecating words etched into his skin that Sam had attributed to Dean. It could have meant that no matter what Dean had said in the past, it wasn’t what he thought now. It could have meant that whatever Sam thought of himself, to Dean he would always be his brother.

A final condemnation or an offer of salvation.

Sam slowly turned his palm outward again, and the demon’s face lit up in exultation.

“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus…” Sam began whispering quietly, as quickly as he could without tripping over the words, praying he could get through enough of the exorcism before the demon caught on.

The demon’s smile faltered for a moment, and it canted its head slightly in his direction, its eyes flicking between him and Dean. “What did you say?”

“Omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica…” Sam plowed through the words, voice building in volume and confidence, and the self-assured triumph fled from the demon’s eyes.

“No!” The demon lurched towards Sam and, as he’d fervently hoped, the distraction cost it its grip on Dean. Sam introduced Johnny repeatedly to his fist as an added diversion, and after a few deep, gasping breaths, Dean picked up where he’d left off.

“Ergo, omnis legio diabolica, adiuramus te...”

Too late to stop the inevitable, the demon howled in impotent rage as the brothers continued the exorcism in unison. Black smoke was violently ejected from the motel employee’s body, and it thrashed back and forth in the air trying fruitlessly to escape the divine incantation.

Sam and Dean completed the final passage together with a shouted “Ut Ecclesiam tuam secura tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus, audi nos!” and watched it plummet through the floor on its way back to Hell.

They started the post-hunt evacuation protocol without needing to speak a word. Dean used a blanket to drag the unconscious and thankfully still living motel employee to a vacant room to sleep off his possession, while Sam started tending to the open gashes and smeared blood all over his body. The ‘MONSTER’ carved into Sam’s leg needed a few stitches, which Sam could handle on his own, but his sliced left palm made it difficult to take care of the ‘SCREW UP’ on his right arm. Dean would have to fix that one up, and Sam couldn’t help but huff a bitter laugh at the irony.

Once he’d taken care of his legs, Sam got back into his jeans and boots and headed into the bathroom, glass shards crunching under his hard soles. He turned his back to the mostly spiderwebbed mirror in an attempt to assess the damage there when Dean appeared in the doorway.

“Let me get that.”

Sam obediently turned back around to give Dean access to the wounds and caught his brother’s expression in a small intact portion of the unfortunate mirror. Dean’s mouth went slack and his eyes widened in dismay as he took in whatever was written there. Then he blinked rapidly and briefly looked away.

“What does it—”

“You don’t want to know,” Dean interrupted.

“Maybe not… but I think I need to.”

Sam straightened and sucked in a hissing breath as Dean started disinfecting the cuts with an alcohol-soaked pad.

“No, you don’t,” Dean said forcefully. “It doesn’t matter what it says. ’Cause none of it’s true.” Dean tossed the bloody gauze pad into the waste basket and grabbed a fresh one, then paused and tilted his head thoughtfully.

“Well. Except for ‘prissy’.”

Cleaned and bandaged and clothed again, Sam surveyed the destruction with a sigh. He dug out as much cash as they had to leave in compensation, not that it would cover anywhere near the damage.

He turned to Dean tentatively. “You ready to get out of here?”

“Just one more thing to take care of,” Dean replied, holding up the hex bag, now defunct with the banishment of its creator.

They walked around to the back of the motel and Dean dropped the small sachet along with its sinister contents onto the pavement near the dumpster, then gave the bundle an overly generous squirt of lighter fluid. They were both more than ready to see the damned thing gone.

“You want to do the honors?” Dean asked, holding out a matchbook.

Sam took it gladly, lit several matches simultaneously and dropped them onto the cursed bag. It caught with a small fireball and burned an unholy greenish color for far longer than a normal scrap of cloth should. Sam stood still, watching the reflection of the flame dancing in Dean’s eyes.

It had been far too long since he’d seen anything there.

The flame guttered out at last, and Dean looked up to meet Sam’s eyes. “Let’s roll,” he said. “The Apocalypse ain’t gonna stop itself.”