All I Have Left To Give

At the End of 5.02

(A/N: this is an old one that I didn't realize was missing until I went looking for it specifically.)

Parenting is the only relationship where, if you do it right, they leave you.

SPN+SPN+SPN

I knew this was coming, didn't I? How many years have I known it, expected it, feared it? As soon as he said, "Listen to me, this is important…" I knew what he was going to say.

I knew what I was about to lose.

Sam never wanted part of this life. He left to be safe, he came back for revenge. He stayed for -

I was gonna say 'me', but that's not it. That can't be it. It can't have been for me.

So now, now that the end has started, now when we need every fighter in the field, now when I need -

Has it ever been about what I need?

My whole life has been about what Dad needed, what Sam needed, what the hunt needed. And what I needed always had to be tucked in around the edges wherever it would fit and if it didn't fit, well then…

Then I didn't need it.

Even if what I needed was my brother.

So, I guess I must not need him anymore.

Because he's leaving me.

We're a rare combination in the hunting world, me and Sam, for a lot of reasons. Foremost because we hunt together. Most hunters work alone, for a lot of reasons. Sam and I always – used to always – know each other's moves backwards and forwards, which is why we survived a lot that a lot of hunters didn't.

I guess I still know some of Sam's moves because I know what he's going to say before he says it.

He's leaving me.

Again.

Yeah, the need is still in him. Maybe not the physical need for the blood and thank God for that. But the psychological need is sure running strong and that can be even harder to shake than the physical.

And Sam, needing to think and process and examine and catalogue every single thing, he'd be forever pulling up that need and looking at it, and never putting it a safe enough distance away from himself. And he knows it.

So now that the end has started, he doesn't trust himself to be part of the hunt.

Sam's not a coward, that's not what this is about. He's not running from what he helped unleash. For as much as he never liked this life, that never stopped him from running straight into the teeth of whatever we were up against, if he saw that as the only way to defeat it.

This is just a different battle. He's fighting the monster of need inside himself.

And he wants to fight it away from me.

As he talks, as he tells me what he's facing, what he's fighting, how scared he is, some part of the back of my mind is trying to pull my standard response out of some rusty file cabinet from our past.

Don't worry, I'm supposed to tell Sam. I'm here and you'll be okay. I won't let anything happen to you.

But I can't say those words to Sam. We'd both recognize them for the lie they've become. I can't protect him. Not the way I want to. Not the way I always tried to protect him. Until I went to hell and left him as prey for the very things I always tried hardest to protect him from.

Who am I kidding? With me to protect him, Sam lost his mother, his father, his fiancée, his childhood, his innocence, his safety, and very nearly his soul.

Like the Mother's Day card I saw once, You were there every time I got hurt…what are you, a jinx?

Maybe all along I've been the curse Sam's been fighting against.

When he finally gets to the words I've dreaded hearing for all my life it feels like, 'we're better off apart', as much as I'm expecting them, it feels like a knife between my eyes when I hear them.

I can't protect him like I used to and he knows I can't and that hurts worse than anything.

So I protect him the only way it seems I can anymore – I let him go.

His surprise surprises me, and for as much as I know it hurts him that it seems I can let him go so easily, it's nice to know he expected me to fight to keep him with me. Nice to know he still has that much faith in me.

But I have to protect him and if that means driving him away from me, then I will. If saving his soul means ripping it open, then I will. If taking care of him means telling him I don't want to take care of him anymore, then I will.

I will and I do and it hurts.

Both of us.

I'm actually surprised that my voice doesn't give out, but then I've always been able to lie to Sam. All his life, everything is OK, there's nothing to be scared of, I'll protect you, lies each and every one of them.

What's one more?

I offer him the Impala. It's all I have left to give him, and if he takes it, it'll be almost like we aren't so far apart.

But he doesn't take it. He only takes his leather bag and his backpack out of the back seat and they look ridiculously not big enough on a kid his size.

A man his size.

For realizing that Sam's been a man since he was eight, I guess it's been a long time coming for me to realize how grown up he is.

"Take care of yourself," he tells me before he leaves me, like it's all he has left to give me.

And I realize maybe I have one more thing left to give him -

"You too, Sammy…"

- maybe I can give him hope.

The End.