A/N – Sorry to keep ya'll waiting but I've become really proud of this short little story and needed this chapter to be as close to perfect as possible. So, 6ish round of edits later and I think it's finally at the point I'm ready to post it. It's a little long but I think it has to be. Hope everybody enjoys the third and final installment!

The second those words left Seth's mouth, it was like a dark cloud had descended over the room. Neither man wanted to speak, neither wanted to move. And yet the physical distance on the already small bench seemed to be growing as Dean subconsciously shifted his body closer and closer toward the edge. Seth noticed the burgeoning gap but he wasn't sure what to do. He wasn't sure what, if anything, he could do.

But he knew that it fell on him on to figure that out. He had initiated this discussion after all, had been the one to broach the topic that he was sure Dean hadn't wanted to talk about it. Actually, he hadn't been sure of that at all, given before today, he had never even tried to bring up the subject.

Perhaps he was just projecting his own feelings onto Dean because for the longest time, the cinderblocks had become something Seth himself would have rather kept locked away, never to be spoken about ever. He was too afraid, too much of a coward and of course, he was once again being selfish.

He and Dean had gotten somewhat close ever since Roman practically took Seth's place as Triple H's new lap dog. They had managed to get along even and Seth had relished every second of their newfound, well, whatever it was. He would have been an idiot to think however that his big, colossal mistake from two years ago didn't stand between them. And he knew, he knew the second it ever came up, whether by accident or an intentional choice, that any progress he had made towards Dean's forgiveness would go straight out the window. He hadn't wanted to risk that given what the returning connection had meant to him.

But when Seth playfully attempted to make a joke about Dean's headache, completely not even thinking about how what he did two years ago could have been the cause of it, he came to realize he had been the one, not Dean, to open up the can of worms he had wanted for nothing more than to stay buried.

Seth instantly saw the way Dean froze when he dared to mention the c-word. He saw his body tense up. But to Dean's credit, the man had indulged him to this point. He hadn't been the one, like Seth, to shy away from the incident out of a need to quell his own guilt and selfishness. Rather, it having been on his mind ever since he woke up with the throbbing pain in his skull that morning, Dean seemed like he wanted to talk about it, wanted to address the elephant in the room.

And it made sense to Seth that after all these years that Dean would want to talk about that day, about the deplorable, reprehensible actions he committed against his own brother. He knew because he put himself in that same situation and in doing so, there was only one thing Seth knew for sure, one conclusion he came to every time he imagined the roles being reversed.

He would just want to know why.

Finding there was no more room to distance himself from Seth on the bench and realizing the pair had been sitting in silence for close to 15 minutes now, Dean stood up and began to walk back toward the door he came in from. He didn't leave though, but just paused a few inches away, his hand wrapped firmly around the knob.

"This was a bad idea," he said, staring down at the ground. "I should-"

Dean stopped mid-sentence as yet another jolt of pain was making its way through his head. This one was even worse than before and as his vision began to blur, Dean nearly fell to his knees. His hands were twitching, his whole body visibly shaking. He felt like someone was drilling holes into his brain and the pain was unbearable.

Seth was absolutely ill and could only watch in horror and disgust. This man who he had gone to war with so many times, who always came across as fearless, the guy who liked to think and act like he was the strongest one in the room, was literally crumbling before him and it was his fault.

And there was nothing he could do about it.

"Dean are you okay?" Seth asked nervously, immediately regretting his stupid question. Of course the man wasn't okay. That much was obvious.

Dean seemed to treat the question with as much disdain as it deserved but he didn't respond to Seth. He couldn't. In that moment he had one thing on his mind and it was the bag that he left in the locker room before he left. The bag that he drove close to two hours back for because he knew he might need it. The bag that quite possibly was the only thing that would give him even minimal relief from one of the worse migraines he had ever had in his life.

Nearly pushing Seth out of the way in his haste to grab the means of his salvation, Dean stumbled over to his locker, all the while grasping his head with his left hand, trying to put more external pressure on the wound so that the internal throbbing wouldn't seem as bad. That had long become his strategy when the pain got like this. It was why he often had bruises covering his temple, why on more than one occasion, Roman found him violently slamming his head into the hardest object he could find be it a wall, a door, a metal locker. It was probably making things worse in the long run but it provided him the temporary relief he so desperately needed.

Besides, he was almost impervious to that kind of physical torture these days. Almost…

As Seth looked on with a watchful, broken gaze, Dean pulled out the old, beat-up blue medicine bag and began to root through its contents frantically. Bottle after bottle he scanned but his head was in so much pain, he couldn't read the labels. Everything was jumbled and it was hurting even more trying to decipher what was in front of him.

Fighting off another almost debilitating shot of pain, this one feeling like he was being run over by a truck on a continuous loop, Dean began throwing the bottles across the room in anguish. He hadn't realized what he was doing until he saw Seth picking them up off of the ground, the man's jaw almost dropping to the floor as he read label after label.

Duloxetene, a drug used to combat a state of chronic neuropathic pain.

Wellbutrin, an antidepressant prescribed to combat anxiety and depression.

OxyContin, another pain medication, and one that just happened to have addictive properties.

Perkoset, oh look, yet another high intensity pain pill.

Seth wasn't exactly a medical expert but he had always made it a point to know exactly what was going into his body, medication included. Not to mention he had just spent the last seven months recovering from three separate joint/ligament injuries so he was quite familiar with the prescribed pain pills and their varying strengths. In fact, he had even been known to take one or two on those really, really bad days.

But this wasn't Dean taking one or two pills every now and again Seth realized, as most of the bottles were empty or close to it. This was him taking at least four different prescriptions, which permitting he wasn't improperly self-medicating meant at least four high strength pills, a number which was way too high.

And Seth had seen Dean's medicine cabinet at his place in Vegas. He knew how he was when it came to taking pills. It wasn't that Dean was addicted to anything but he was always the guy to take one extra Advil, or mix aspirin with something a little stronger. Unlike Seth who read every ingredient and was familiar with every side effect on every label, Dean just popped the drugs and waited for the eventual relief. He never really thought twice about taking another pill if it meant a quicker recovery time.

That's when it hit Seth. Dean somehow managed to return from the devastating, possibly life-threatening neck and head injury caused by the curbstomp in just 34 days. It took just a little over a month for him to come back from having his head driven through cinderblocks. Under normal circumstances, that was nowhere near enough time for a full recovery. This made Seth start to feel increasingly nervous and scared at what Dean had been putting in his body in that time to enable him to come back so quick.

"Oh Dean," Seth said just barely above a whisper, his heart shattering at the thought of Dean's pain and how bad it really was.

The man had masked it so well for two years. Seth never knew even though he should have. He should have been smart enough to realize one doesn't just walk away from that kind of impact without any sort of lasting damage, but he wasn't or at the very least he didn't want to be. Dean looked no worse for the wear and admittedly, that was how Seth chose to see it given it was a hell of a lot easier on his conscience that way.

He chose to ignore the voice in his head that said something had to be wrong. Dean was a tough SOB after all, so if anyone could bounce back from that, it was him. At least, that was what Seth told himself, what he made himself believe on those nights when his head just replayed the incident over and over again rendering him unable to get any sleep.

But now he knew why he had those nightmares, he knew why that voice inside of his head kept persisting, kept telling him to reach out, to check on Dean even under the guise of being an enemy. He knew that nagging feeling was right and that the man hadn't really been okay. After all, how could he possibly have been?

Dean and Seth locked eyes for a brief moment before the older man really squinted hard, finally identifying the bottle he wanted and snatched it from Seth's hands. He popped open the cap and threw its contents into his mouth, not caring what Seth's opinion of him was and not caring if it was one or two or even three pills that he swallowed. In that moment, he needed all of them and probably some more, but he doubted Seth would allow him the other bottle that he now held almost protectively behind his back and out of Dean's reach.

"Fuck you," Dean spat out angrily as he saw the look of pity mixed with desperation and guilt plastered on Seth's face. "You don't get to judge me. You don't get to feel sorry for me. No. Not when you did this. Not when all of this is your damn fault! So how about you just give me my pills and leave, because the more I think about it the more I realize, you and I don't have anything we need to talk about."

Again Seth's heart broke because he knew that Dean was absolutely, 100 percent right.

Before, it had been the guilt that ate him alive, this idea that he was the horrible person others accused him of being. After those cinderblocks, there was no denying that. But now he hurt for Dean. His heart broke for Dean. He saw the pain in his fallen brother's eyes, the meaning behind the words.

Seth knew he had to do something and as he looked at the bottle in his hand, it became obvious.

"I'm not going anywhere," he said firmly as he emptied the contents of the Duloxetene onto the floor and then proceeded to crush the pills beneath his feet much to Dean's shock and anger.

The man seethed as he shot daggers at Seth's direction. "You're gonna regret that," he said matter-of-factly, his gaze now focused on the remaining bottles strewn across the locker room floor, all of which were well within his former best friend's reach.

"I'll just get another prescription," Dean added as he noticed Seth reaching for another discarded container. "I'm due for half a dozen or so refills anyway."

Seth was starting to get frustrated. He had always been the one to preach to Dean and Roman that their bodies should be treated like temples. That as strong as they seemed, you always had to pay attention to what you were putting into them. Even then Dean never really listened and it bothered Seth but he was never really concerned for the man's wellbeing. After all, it wasn't like he was putting all kinds of heavy narcotics in his body. Well, at least he hadn't in the past.

"Dean, you can't just keep getting prescriptions for this stuff," Seth argued. "You realize you're currently on four, or I should say at least four, serious grade pills all at once. That's not healthy. Hell, it's practically suicidal, like you've got a death wish or something."

Again the room fell silent as Dean averted his gaze to the floor, essentially telling Seth all he needed to know.

"Shit, you, you do," the younger man barely managed to get out, even the thought almost too much to bear.

"So what if I did?" Dean finally snapped. "Can you blame me? Would anybody fuckin' blame me? I could wake up tomorrow and finally get up the courage to pull the trigger on the gun that I hold to my head every night and no one would be able to fault me for it. You know better than anyone the shit I went through as a kid. You knew how hard it was for me to trust people, how apprehensive I was about letting anybody in. God, you knew all of that and then you threw it in my damn face. You and Roman. Were you happy with yourselves? Were you happy that both of you took the last bit of trust I had left and just stomped on it, figuratively AND literally? I was always the weak link right? Always the whipping boy. You said it yourself before our title match. You only kept me around to take the beatings. Looks like you got your wish Sethie boy because all my life I ain't been taking nothing but beatings. I just never thought they'd be coming from two people I considered to be brothers. Fool me once shame on you but fool me twice and the joke's on Dean fuckin' Ambrose. So yeah, you stabbed me in the back and Roman saw fit to the do the same and I was too damn blind to see it coming. The two people I trusted more than anything in this world and both of you turned out to just be pieces of shit. So tell me why I should give a damn about my own life given I have nothing left to live for?"

Seth was quiet. He didn't know what to say. It really had been so much worse than he thought. As much as the physical implications had become all too obvious to him, so too did Dean's mental and emotional anguish. This may as well have been killing the man, literally killing him.

And as much as Seth didn't want to even consider Dean's words about pulling the trigger being true, he could see it in the man's eyes. Seth could see the pain eating him alive. He could understand how the sensation to end it all could be tempting given what he had done and what Roman had done. But he didn't want it. He didn't even want to think about it. His mind had already been forced to go there once thanks to his own actions. He refused to do it again thanks to Dean's mentality or anything else for that matter.

"Dean I," Seth began, stopping when he realized he had nothing. In that moment, words wouldn't fix anything, neither would an apology as overdue as it was. But maybe something else would.

"Hit me," Seth changed his course, causing Dean to look up from his own weakness and face him. "Punch me, kick me, leave me on the floor in a bloody pulp, put my head through cinderblocks, I don't care. Just do it. Hit me."

Dean just shook his head as he calmly began to clean up the mess of pill bottles that surrounded him.

"If I thought making sure you never walked again or putting you in the hospital would have fixed anything, I would have done it two years ago," he said dryly as he returned to his seat opposite Seth on the locker room bench. "What's done is done."

Seth turned to face Dean. This time it was his eyes doing the pleading like Dean's had two years ago.

"No," Seth said as he fought back tears of his own, his tone broken and barely above a whisper. "You don't get to basically tell me you're suicidal and just expect me to not do anything about it. Tell me how I can fix this. Whatever it is, whatever I need to do, I'll do it."

"You can't," Dean responded sadly, his entire soul encapsulated in those words. This had broken him beyond repair, worse than he ever imagined. Worse than he ever knew until he was standing face to face with Seth, the man begging for another chance. But Dean was all out of chances. He was all out of sympathy.

He had been betrayed twice, this most recent time cutting deeper than the first. He had nothing left to give either of them. He had nothing left to give himself. He was constantly in pain and sure the medicine helped, it helped a lot, but nothing would heal the hole in his heart. And as much as he wanted to take Seth at his word, to believe the man's sincerity, there was too much damage for him to bring himself back to that place. There were too many voices, too many images in his head. And those were on his good days. On the bad days, when he saw nothing but black, he just wanted it to be over.

"Please," Seth's voice trembled, barely managing to cut through Dean's thoughts. "Please, there has to be something, anything."

Dean thought about it for a moment.

"Can you build a time machine?" he asked bitterly, already knowing the answer. "Can you build a time machine and go back to August 18, 2014, go back to when I looked you in the eyes and I begged you not to do it? Can you go back to before you and Kane decided to reveal cinderblocks, before you decided to bash my head through them? Better yet Seth, can you go back to June 2nd of the same year, the day you decided I didn't mean anything to you anymore? The day you threw away more than two years of friendship? The day you shattered my heart into a million pieces only to later shatter my head into a million pieces too? Can you do that Seth? Can you go back to a time where I didn't need so many damn pills just to function, just to be able to do my job without passing out from pain? Can you go back to a time before I had to see a neurologist once a month just to make sure the swelling that never went away, isn't getting any bigger? Because if you can't, if you can't undo all of the shitty things you did, then I think we're done here. I think its best that you and I part ways and I deal with this on my own, without you, without Roman, like I always have for the majority of my life."

Seth watched as Dean began to once again make his way for the door, this time, bag in hand and no reason to turn back. He could tell that Dean was slipping away, could tell that this might be the last chance he had to make things right, or at least as much as was humanly possible. Nothing would ever erase his actions from that day, no amount of apologies would ever suffice.

That was the day Seth killed a part of Dean, a quite substantial part he now realized, and there was nothing he could do to take that back. Seth hated that but at the end of the day, he had absolutely no one to blame but himself and his own stupid, misguided sense of loyalty.

That word felt like a prick against his tongue because as time went by he knew he had chosen the wrong person, remained loyal to the wrong person. Had he just seen that sooner, none of what Dean was going through would have happened. Even if Dean never spoke to Seth again because of the first stupid, misguided act of aligning with the Authority, Seth knew he would have been able to breathe easy knowing his brother would be okay, knowing he would be alive.

"I'm worried about you," Seth said quietly, his eyes trained on the floor. He just barely caught Dean as he walked out of the door.

Dean just took a deep breath.

"Really nothing I can do about that Rollins," he said, his momentum still toward the hallway. "And honestly, I can't bring myself to care. I wish I could but I can't. All I see are those blocks and your smiling face as you put me through them. So as far as I see it, you don't get to be sad. You don't get to be in agony. I'm in agony. I'm in agony every single day. You didn't just physically mess me up, it was emotional too. You hurt me worse than anybody ever has, than anybody ever could. So excuse me for not wanting to entertain your feelings or remorse or regret or whatever. And let's be honest Seth, where the hell is all of this coming from? Maybe had you tried to apologize back then, had you acted like you made a mistake and wanted to make up for it then, maybe, I would have considered forgiving you. But this is two years too late. In fact, it's insulting. Because we both know that if Roman hadn't turned out to be as big a scumbag as you that none of this would be happening. Be indignant about it all you want, but this is your own conscious waking up and realizing the shit you pulled was so beyond reproach. You're here with your head in your hands, begging me to be okay, but it's not for me, it's for you. It's so you can sleep at night. You need to know that what you did to ol Deano that day, 'wasn't that bad.' Well, I hate to break it to ya Rollins but it was that bad. Hell, it was so much worse."

Dean turned around and again their eyes met. The man would have been lying if he said he didn't know in that moment just how much Seth meant all of the words he had been saying, all of the apology he had been trying to give. It just didn't matter. As sincere as it was, it was well past the point for Dean where any of it could matter.

"Before you saw fit to abandon me, abandon what we had," he said, his breath momentarily catching in his throat, "you hosted that stupid summit. Remember? Guess that was before Hunter put the offer on the table or hell maybe it wasn't. Maybe you already knew that you were gonna stab me and Roman in the back. It doesn't matter. But that day, you got the three of us in the ring and you laid it out there. You said we'd be stronger together, that we would forever run this company together. But you also said that you understood if it was time we go our separate ways. You put your fist in the center of the ring and you asked us, 'Are we done here or are we done?'"

Dean took another short pause as he came to grips with what he needed to do. For his own sanity, the little bit that was left, this had to end. It had to end in this very room. It was fitting because this very arena was where it all began four years prior when three unknowns from FCW became the greatest thing to happen to professional wrestling in well over a decade.

Back then he believed in the Shield and what they stood for. He believed in their brotherhood being stronger than anything. But now, after everything, he couldn't even conceive of how he ever did.

"I can't do this anymore Seth," he said softly. "As crazy as it sounds, I don't hate you. I hate what you did. I hate what I've become, but I don't hate you and I don't think I ever could. So take that as the best I can give you, the best I'll ever be able to give you. You and I, we're not friends, we're not ever gonna be friends again. And I know I can't stop you from coming out and saving my ass in that ring, but if I ever meant anything to you, please don't anymore. I can handle myself and seeing you, it's just been confusing. I honestly thought I could put this crap in the past, but I was kidding myself. I was kidding myself in believing I could get past you trying to end my life. That's how much I wanted what we had back Seth. I wanted it so badly I kept trying to convince myself I could put your actions in the past. But every time I thought I could, the headaches came back. My brain was reminding me that I can never trust you again, not fully, not in the way I did. That I could never feel safe around you again. That I could never place my life in your hands given how callously you treated it. I'm two years late, but when you build that time machine, I want to go back to that summit, before you fucked everything up. I want to go back to a time when we all could have walked away and pursued our singles careers but would have still been brothers. Before you and Roman decided I wasn't worth anything to you. But I can't. All I can do is move on. We're done Seth, we're just done."

That was it. That was exactly what Seth had been dreading, the reason why he wanted to never have to talk about the cinderblocks. He knew it wasn't fair to Dean but acting like it never happened was the only thing keeping what they had alive. But now, it was over. It was definitively over and Seth had no one to blame but himself.

Again, Dean made his way to the door but this time, it wasn't Seth's voice that stopped him, rather a slight touch of his arm.

"Here," Seth said as he opened Dean's balled up fist and placed the bottle he had refused to give up earlier in his hand.

"Thanks," Dean mumbled as he placed the bottle back in the bag with the others.

"Oh and Dean?" Seth barely choked out. "For what it's worth, I am so sorry, I am so so sorry. For that day, for the cinderblocks, for breaking up the Shield. I won't make excuses. The Authority didn't force me to do it. I did it. I did it and you can believe this or not, but the second I did, I regretted it. I know it didn't seem like it. I know I did that stupid eulogy and spewed those hateful words. But as I watched them cart you off on that stretcher, I knew what I was. I knew what I had become. I'll never be worthy of your forgiveness. I'll never be worthy of my own. But I just, if this is the last time I see you, the last time I talk to you, I needed you to know. I'm sorry Dean. You meant the world to me. You were my best friend. And I know, I wouldn't believe that either after all the shit I pulled, but it's true. I'm an awful person and I've done some awful things, mostly to the one person who I never thought I'd ever hurt. You trusting me, you opening up to me, that meant something to me too. And I wish I had valued that more. I wish I hadn't thrown it away in a stupid attempt to get a title. You mean more to me than that belt around Roman's waist ever could and if I had it all to do again, I would change everything. If it was between our friendship and me never becoming champion, I'd choose you every single time. I don't expect you to believe that. I don't even expect you to care. I don't expect you to suddenly decide I'm worth talking to again. And if that's what you want, distance, whatever, I'll do it. But I can't promise I won't have your back because I will, always. I don't care if its Roman, I don't care if its Triple H, I don't even care if its Sami Zayn. I'm never going to let anyone do to you what I did. Never. I know you won't accept anything else from me but accept that. Accept that as my promise to you. I, I can't take back what I've done. I can't make the headaches or the suicidal thoughts go away as much as I wish I could. God, you have no idea how much I wish I could. And I know, I know I can't fix us. I wouldn't even expect you to let me try. But I can't honor your wishes to stay away if someone is trying to screw you. I didn't let the Shield fall apart that day at the summit and I damn sure won't let you fall apart now."

Dean let the words sit for a few moments before doing something that completely caught both men off guard. Wiping a tear from Seth's cheek, Dean wrapped him in an embrace. The hug lasted for almost two full minutes before Dean finally pulled away. And it was in that moment that both of them knew that was the last hug they would likely ever share.

"I can't," Dean whispered as the two stood face to face.

Seth would have no idea. He would have no idea how much Dean wanted to tell him he would be okay, that they would be okay. But he couldn't. As much as Seth's words, as much as the literal revealing of the man's own broken heart touched Dean in a way he didn't think possible after what had happened on the night of August 18, 2014, the damage had already been done.

Those damn cinderblocks had already left an impression on both of their souls, on both of their bodies, that there was no going back and for the two of them as friends, there could be no moving forward. Not when interactions were nothing more than painful reminders, not when the other's eyes betrayed, if only to the other man, the deep level of ache and hurting that one solitary action caused. There was too much that remained between them.

It didn't matter how sorry Seth was. It didn't matter how tempted Dean was to let that be enough. He'd never forget. The headaches that he would have for the rest of his life, the headaches that Seth caused, they would never go away. And even if they did, two hearts would never heal from the emotional toll.

"Goodbye Seth," Dean said, his face laced with tears equal to the ones flowing from the younger man.

Seth didn't say another word. He just waited until Dean left the room. It was then that he locked the door and fell on the ground against it and just cried. Cried for what he had done, cried for the friendship he had lost, cried for the way Dean was suffering.

At this point, he had nothing left to give his brother, nothing but the tears of a thousand apologies, of a thousand regrets, of a thousand moments wishing he could build that time machine and that he could go back.

Because they both knew after today, that he would if he could.

A/N – So uhm yeah…

If you don't hear from me for a while it's because I'm decompressing. Seriously though, emotionally this one kind of kicked my ass. I honestly think character-wise though it's definitely some of the best work I've done. But I'll let the readers be the judges of that. Would love to get feedback on this little series as a whole. And as always, thanks for reading. Means the world to me

#Believeinthe … Maybe…