Standard disclaimer applies: I don't own them, I'm just borrowing them and will put them back when I'm done.
Warning: I wrote this in about fifteen minutes and it hasn't been beta'd. All Mistakes are mine and gladly accepted.
Feedback: Dearly loved and fawned over. Flames will be fed to Dogzilla so he has a taste for you.
*****
Sam Winchester regarded the pistol with unseeing eyes.
Dean was gone, dead and buried, and the thought kept ambushing him at the worst times. The realization was like a knife in his heart every time it hit him, working its way deeper with every time he spoke Dean's name or thought of his beloved brother for any reason. A knife in his heart that he hadn't been able to save Dean from the pit when the time had come. That he hadn't been strong enough, smart enough, or even just stubborn enough to save Dean from the hellhounds.
Bobby hadn't let Sam out of his sight for weeks afterward. It was like he knew what was going through Sam's head, and didn't like what he saw there. He'd mounted what Sam had realized was a suicide watch, and while it helped, a little, to know that the older hunter cared so deeply for him, it wasn't enough.
"Family don't end with blood," Bobby had snarled at Dean that last night, and it was true. Bobby was so close to family that the blood didn't matter. And they'd all shed so much of it over the others that if it had been an issue before, it wasn't any longer.
It had taken him a long time, though, to get clear of Bobby's well-meaning crusade to keep him alive. He didn't know how he'd finally convinced the man that he was sane, if still soul-sore. He'd worked with those abilities, the ones Ruby had wanted him to use, but nothing. He'd managed to keep Lilith from killing him as well as Dean, but he was no closer to understanding how. And Dean had still lost his life.
It all came down to that simple realization. Dean was dead, and Sam hadn't been enough to stop it.
It had been that way all along. Since their mother had died when he was six months old, Sam thought, Dean had been the responsible one. He had been the one to protect them, to keep them together, to do everything that had kept them both alive for so long.
Sam couldn't even keep himself out of trouble. And it was no longer worth the effort.
This was the first hunt he'd gone solo on since Dean died, and it had gone to hell fast. He was now locked in the last room in the tiny building that had held against the demon. It seemed that Lilith hadn't called off the hunt... she was still sending demons after him, even after he'd lost Dean. It didn't matter.
Every culture, every civilization on the planet had a myth about a soul-eater. About the thing that came after you and denied you the afterlife by eating your soul. And he wasn't going to go out that way.
No, Dean was in Hell, and that was where Sam was going. Suicide was a mortal sin; but there was no other way out of here. He had no more defenses; his equipment was lost, damaged, or just plain gone; and if nothing else, he was going to rejoin Dean in death. He wouldn't just be lost in translation.
But he couldn't do it. He had the gun in his mouth, he had the trigger depressed nearly enough to fire, and he couldn't do it. He couldn't reward the sacrifice Dean had made, the sacrifice of his own life, of his SOUL, with suicide. He couldn't. And as he made the realization, the first rays of dawn came up over the windowsill and he could hear a voice below. Not the demon.
Bobby.
Sam shivered and put the gun down, moving toward the doorway. The demon was gone, apparently, and Bobby was on the way up. He was yelling at the top of his lungs, demanding that Sam answer him, and Sam finally found his voice. No, he couldn't let go, he couldn't join Dean, not yet.
He still had work to do.
Fin
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bored
creative
aggravated
curious
sleepy
indescribable
apathetic