Broken Bottles, As Hearts

Sam, in his Spartan bedroom, lay again beneath the revolving fan. He stared up at it as he had but a week before, the evening he had hugged his mother and said in a shaking voice, with tears in his eyes, that the largest of all blanks in his life was filled, even as she filled his arms.

He had felt he might crush her, if he hugged as hard as he wished to, to hang onto something that was of the now, not the then. Because in the then, he'd been but an infant, the "Baby Sammy" he couldn't recall, that she clearly did.

That she preferred.

He knew she'd been having trouble adjusting. His gut sensed it, his heart, even his mind. But he'd said nothing to her, because beyond his heartfelt admission, he just didn't know what to say to her that would help. Or if anything could, or would.

It was difficult to swallow. Painful. Intellectually, he understood her need to go, to think, to be apart from young men who were strangers despite the names she had given them years before. But emotionally, he could not comprehend it.

She had made a deal with a demon to save her husband's life, and had died trying to save her youngest son's future. Had sacrificed for her Baby Sammy, despite knowing it was payment come due.

And now she walked away.

The door had slammed shut on a terrible note of finality, like a nail hammered into the coffin of his hopes.

Why couldn't you stay? Why couldn't you be my mother?

And Dean, her boy, whom she had known. And who had known her.

Abruptly Sam's sense of loss, his sorrow, dissipated, replaced by an impulse far more instinctive than thoughts of himself.

Because he knew.

He thrust himself up from the bed, departed his room in a matter of four long strides and half-walked, half-jogged down the hallway.

Dean was not in his room.

He had retreated there, saying nothing when their mother left, but with a world in his eyes. Sam, lost in his own shock, could not begin to describe the myriad of emotions in his brother beyond tremendous hurt and gut-wrenching grief.

Dean had been left before. His mother, murdered; their father, murdered; Bobby, murdered. Hunters did not go gently into that good night. Nor had Mary Winchester, leaving the bunker, leaving behind her grown sons, whom she could not accept as the children of her womb because they were not what her memory could reconcile.

If Dean was not in his room, where was he? In the Impala, once again whole?

And then he heard the crash of glass against the kitchen floor.

Sam went there, and found his brother.

A pool of scotch and scattered glass, as broken as Sam knew his brother's heart to be, spread in a widening puddle upon the floor. The fumes filled his nostrils, burned. He rounded the counter and found his brother on the floor, slumped against the cabinetry. An empty but intact bottle sat beside him. That he had dropped and broken another did not seem to matter. Ordinarily Dean would have cursed the loss of liquor, would have been pissed, would have taken whisk broom and pan to sweep up the broken glass, then sopped up scotch with towels.

He did none of those things.

In his hand were photographs. Baby Sam, a young Dean, a youthful Mary, full of hopes and pride.

Sam lingered there, irresolute. There were times when he knew it best not to intrude upon his brother's thoughts, upon Dean's emotions. Sometimes he pushed through, because he felt it necessary, like lancing an abscess. Dean had never grasped that the infection in his soul needed release; instead, he held it close to his heart, as if he deserved the pain. Sam could be the needle, or the scalpel, when he felt it was necessary.

But now?

Sam located the whisk broom and swept glass into the pan, then emptied it in a chiming cascade of glittering, liquor-pungent shards into the waste basket. He used hand towels to soak up the puddle of scotch, dumped them, soaked, into the sink.

Then he went to his brother and sat down beside him.

After a moment, he said, "I know."

Dean did not respond. He merely stared at the photographs in his hand.

"I know," Sam repeated.

Dean drew in a breath that trembled, hollow in tone, in the great and unnamed pain in his heart and soul, and released it on a shaking stream of air. Sam, sitting close beside him, did not turn to look upon his brother. He knew very well what he would see in Dean's eyes.

Withdrawal. Denial. A close-held grief that only Sam would recognize, or Bobby; but Bobby was gone.

Probably even their mother would not recognize it. She didn't know them in the now. She knew them in the then.

Dean's voice was a shadow of its familiar depth and rasp. He was drunk, and it showed. "You're lucky."

Sam frowned. "I'm lucky?"

"You only knew her for a handful of days. Not enough to know her."

Sam swallowed hard. "I've always known her. Long before now."

It wasn't laughter, but a punch of expelled air conveying something akin to disbelief, and denial. "No, Sam. You never knew her. Not then, not now."

"But I did," Sam said. "I've always known her." And before his brother could respond, he said, "Through you."

Dean pressed a palm against his brow, over his eyes.

"I didn't know what it was to lose her, when she died in the nursery. When she died to save my future." Sam tread carefully, but also needed to state his own feelings; he was her son, too. "I met her when Cas sent us back in time, and I knew her—know her—because of Amara."

Dean lowered his hand, stared hard into the dim light of the kitchen. "You knew the idea of her."

"For most of my life, yes. But also a week. This week."

Dean shook his head. "It's not enough, Sammy."

"It is."

"It's not enough—"

"It is."

"Dammit, Sam—"

Sam cut him off. "It is enough," he declared. "She's a hunter, through and through. She wanted a different life for herself, and God knows she wanted a different life for us, but she is a hunter—and hunters I know."

His brother said nothing.

"I left once," Sam said. "I meant it to be for good. I didn't want this life; I never wanted this life. I regret that Dad couldn't see it, and I regret more than I can say that he told me to stay gone, but I had to do it."

"Yeah," Dean said roughly. "You made that clear."

"But you know what else?" Sam did not actually not expect an answer. And when one did not come, he said, "I came back. So will she."

Dean rolled his head against the cabinetry. "You don't know that."

"I do."

Dean's voice was ravaged. "How? How can you know that?"

"Because it's what Winchesters do," Sam told him. "And because we're her sons. She gave us up through no fault of her own, all those years ago. She won't give us up now."

Dean said nothing.

"She loves us," Sam said. "It's why she left. She just needs to figure out how to do it again."

"Christ," Dean said. "Sammy . . . "

"You came back from hell. I came back from hell. Mom will come back from this."

Dean was silent. Sam shifted, leaned his shoulder into his brother's.

For now, this instant—and just this instant before the pain renewed itself—it was enough.

Brother and brother.

~ end ~