Title: Polaris
Author: James Parker Lombard
Rating M: Language, Wincest-ish? (Dean/Sam)
Spoilers/Set: Season 3 Ep.16 "No Rest for the Wicked" to Season 4 Ep. 1 "Lazarus Rising"
Characters: Dean and Sam Winchester (Chapter Eight; Sam POV)
Word Count: 1,523
Summary: It was a Tuesday, or a Wednesday, who cares when there's no reason to keep track of time?

For TwinchesterAngel and Paperstorm…DONE! (I'm sorry it took so long.)

Polaris

"The Wrong we have Done, Thought, or Intended Will wreak its Vengeance on
Our SOULS."― C.G. Jung, from "West and East."

Dean lay beneath the earth with finality. Sam refused to burn him. Dean would need his body, after all.

The research doesn't stop. Sam buries himself in books, reads until his eyes cross, and the words swim off the page. Bobby wakes him, tries to get him to go to bed. The answer is always no. "I will get him back, Bobby." There's a spell. There's a path in. There's a way out.

By the end of the first week Sam is delirious. No rest for the wicked. His hands shake from the caffine. Bobby pleading with him, "You have to sleep. You'll kill yourself like this."

Sam wants to say, "good."

Every time Sam closes his eyes, he dreams of blood on his hands: dark and sticky, drying in the fine lines of his knuckles. When he dreams, he dreams of setting fire to the field, to the hotel, to the whole fucking world. And some nights, there in the flames he sees his brother with a look of pity and want, but he can never reach him.

It is a Tuesday or a Wednesday, when Sam awakes stretched on Dean's grave, his hands torn to shreds from digging in the gravely dirt, blood drying in the fine lines of his knuckles. He remembered none of it: not the Impala, parked at the edge of the gravel road, not the road itself, or when he had arrived, not his sad failed attempt to reach what remained of Dean. His body carried him to his brother as he slept.

It is a Tuesday or a Wednesday when he leaves Bobby's house in the pre-dawn light. He doesn't say goodbye. He is tired of goodbyes. He finds a hotel, drinks himself blind and dreams of blood drying in the fine lines of his knuckles. Every end has been a dead end.

Ruby walks in on one of his many low points in the body of a blonde secretary, trying to prove that she's on his side. She admits she can't bring Dean back, but though she can't bring Dean back she offers him revenge. He chokes back tears, unwilling to let her see the effect Dean's name has on him, and refuses.

Four days later she shows up in the body of a petite brunette, with a death certificate to "prove" she's not hijacked someone else's life, and starts to chip away at his resolve.

It is a Tuesday or a Wednesday, four weeks after Dean dies, when Sam finds an SD card taped to a page in the journal. He can't even bring himself to touch it. He walks to a bar, and drinks himself courageous.

Five hours later Sam is looking at Dean staring into the camera, jittery, unsure, even his ears are blushing.

"This is my confession…"

And Sam can't breathe. Dean is in their room, sitting on their bed in Bobby's house. The camera is on the dresser that has always been there, the dresser where they secretly carved their names as children. Sam can almost feel the letters of Dean's name beneath the lip of the right-hand drawer.

"If there were moments in my life that I could change, saving you would never be one of them. I need you to know that. I will always, always, choose you. There is no price I would not pay for your life. So, you have to survive this. You have to. You think I don't know, or understand, that I don't watch everything you do, you're wrong. I love you beyond words, beyond sense, beyond myself, and I know you can survive what I couldn't. You can live without me. My life began and ended loving you, only you, always you. And I know you think I'm cruel and selfish, and I am, but I'm not that cruel, not that selfish. It would be crueler to leave you…"

Sam cannot stop crying. He fans his fingers across the screen of his laptop, covering his brother's tears for him. Dean is crying. His voice is breaking, softening. He sounds so young. He died so young.

"… more selfish to take what I wanted from you, and walk away. You make things so difficult, you push so hard, and if you think I don't want the same things you want, well you're wrong. Right now you are downstairs, right now you are trying everything to save me. I can still smell you on my skin and it hurts. When you come in this door tonight, I'll try to resist everything you are, everything you are to me, but why? We'll fit ourselves in this stupid tiny bed and I'll hold on until I can't hold on. I try so hard to keep you at arm's length because I'm afraid I might destroy you. But I'm weak. If you asked now, I'd give you all of me, Sam. Every bit. You know I'd pour my blood out on the ground for you, I'd die a thousand times, suffer a thousand torments, and I'm sorry."

Dean is looking away now. Dean is crumpling in on himself. Dean is sobbing like a child. Sam watches him fall apart and feels the heart ripped out of him. No. Dean is dead.

"The truth is I love you too much. You are my north star, my Polaris. The only light that guides me. I won't let you burn out. And if there is some way back to you from where I'm going, I will find it, and my love for you will guide me back. Hell can't keep you from me."

"So?

Dean is wiping his eyes with the cuff of his shirt. Dean is smiling a little half smile. Dean is wringing his left hand in the covers. No. Dean is dead.

"…This is my confession. I, Dean Winchester, have had impure thoughts…a lot of them, but that's not what this is about…I love you Sammy. I love you. Forgive me? I could not live without my world."

Dean is standing. Dean is walking towards the camera. Click. No. Dean is dead.

Sam throws up what little he's eaten into the trashcan by the bed, and starts the file again.

"…. I can still smell you on my skin and it hurts…

"...If you asked now, I'd give you all of me, Sam…

"…I love you too much."

Sam watches again and again: cataloging all the subtle emotions, zeroing in, memorizing him.

It was a Tuesday or a Wednesday, who cares when there's no reason to keep track of time? Sam was halfway through a bottle of Old Grand-dad, and had made his decision when Ruby walked in and took his gun away.

"Sam, you don't want this." The look of pity on her face was enraging.

"It's like a rule, right? I kill myself I go to hell."

"Sam, not this way."

"But I can have Dean. I can go. Just, I'm tired. I just want to go. I need him, Ruby. I love him."

"Well, duh. Everybody can kinda see that." She puts her hand on his shoulder. "Now, I'm no fan of Dean, but I do respect him. Fucker does what he sets his mind to. This is not what he would want for you."

"I can't do what he wants."

"You can. You love him? Avenge him."

There is hate in Sam's heart, bright as a fire, when he says, "Ruby, make me strong."

He loses track of the days after that. They bleed into one another. There is blood in his mouth. Every drop makes him stronger. There is demon blood drying in the fine lines of his knuckles, and he licks them clean.

Every demon he kills is one less demon to torment his brother. Every dead, evil, son of a bitch, is another thorn in Lilith's side, another obstacle he has overcome. The road to Dean is paved with their fizzling flesh.

It is a Tuesday or a Wednesday night; he is so tired and defeated that he succumbs to more than just blood. Ruby's skin is something far shy of comfort. It leaves him dirty, soiled, filthy. Between the blood, and the sex he's so dirty he knows he'll never be clean, or worthy of Dean's love again. But Dean is gone. So he succumbs. And when she leaves he drinks himself leagues beyond maudlin, he drinks himself suicidal again.

Five weeks later there is a knock at the door.

Jung, C. G. The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, volume 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2014. 179.

Thanks to everyone for bearing with me. This was a tough story to write.