Chapter Two

For a handful of hours, he had felt himself buoyed by hope. An answer at last. More than a year of hell living on his arm, a literal parasite sucking away his life, stealing free will, driving him relentlessly to do do bad, to do evil, to kill without thought. The demon was cured—though even that was a tiny niggling doubt, after the flash in the mirror that showed him onyx-eyed once again—and the First Blade was in Cas's keeping, but the Mark remained. He was human, but wasn't normal.

He'd meant what he'd said to Charlie, to Sam. He would keep fighting. He wouldn't give up that battle. But he knew he was losing ground.

With the Stynes newly dead, he didn't feel the sick craving that came on when the Mark was unsated. But it burned bone-deep, was never quiescent. And it was strengthening.

So hope had come bounding out of the dark as he drove toward the cabin, toward a Book that contained the answer. He'd felt wholly himself with the radio on and great classic rock playing—yeah, the boys were back in town!—and it was good that he wanted to sing along, head-bang, drum hands against the wheel. It was good that the idea of an actual vacation didn't make him scoff that vacays were what other people did, not Winchesters.

Sand between his toes. Not grave-dirt, not sulfur, not ick or goo or guts or blood. Just plain old beach sand; and bare, unbooted feet. And maybe . . . Christ, a bathing suit? An actual bathing suit instead of the cut-off jeans he'd worn as a kid when he and Sam splashed in a creek or swam in shallow rivers.

He was thirty-six years old, and for those few moments in the car, as he mouthed lyrics and thought about a beach and sand and getting away from the life, he'd shed thirty-two of those years to be, briefly, a four-year-old again, a boy whose concerns were those of a little kid with a mom and a dad and a new baby brother. Apple pie life.

And then the Book of Damned, as Charlie opened it, stripped away hope, because what lay within its pages—its terrible, unholy pages—was not the end of a curse, not the lifting of the Mark, but a promise of worse to come.

Exactly as Jacob Styne explained in that store.

Sleep was extinguished. He rose from his bed and, in tee and scrub bottoms, went down the hallway to the kitchen, where instead of grabbing a beer, as he'd originally intended, he poured instead two fingers' of whiskey. Hunter's Helper. Cheap, raw, temporary immunity.

He found himself, with a refilled glass in his hand after knocking back the first shot, returning to the room in which he'd found his brother mere hours before.

He entered the dungeon, paused, gazed upon the embedded devil's trap even as Sam had done. Then, because he had to, he stepped within it.

'Well then you'll just have to lock me up . . . bind me to the bunker like you did last time.'

He didn't know if Sam could do it.

And then he thought—hell, no, he knew—that yes, Sam could . . . because his little brother wasn't that kid anymore, that innocent-eyed boy who, despite his training, his competence, still wanted to believe that there was good in the world and that his big brother could do no wrong.

Dean mourned the loss of that kid, that Sammy. He mourned a little, too, because he thought that just possibly, now, Sam could do anything, anything at all, that Sam, independently of his brother, felt needed doing.

'Until I watch you become a demon again? Until then? I can't do that. I won't do that.'

He'd become a demon, and in his absence his brother had become a man.

Dean knocked back the whiskey, then stepped out of the devil's trap because he was human, and could.

~ end ~

A/N: I know some fans have felt Sam's role has been reduced this season, but I don't feel it's less, just *different.* He's a completely grown up Sam, a mature man who lost his brother, got him back, and has taken the lead while Dean fights the MoC. He has stepped out of the very large shadow cast by his big brother, and is showing the same kind of drive and determination that fueled Dean all of his life. I celebrate Sam for finding his comfort zone, for playing the "big brother" as Dean's light is diminished by the Mark.