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Sam shrugged into his jacket and made for the stairwell.
“Hey. Where are you going?” Dean asked as Sam clomped his way up the steps towards the front door.
“Out.”
“Sam.... Talk to me.”
“I'm tired of talking, Dean. I'm tired of it all. I need to get away. Surround myself with people who know nothing about the supernatural, who don't have to spend their lives fighting demons and angels every fucking day. I...just... need some time to myself.”
“Sam?”
The younger man turned an angry gaze on his brother. “What do you want from me, Dean? You think you're the only one who's got the right to mope around looking like the cat got your tongue. What about me, huh? Why have I got to suffer in silence?”
Sam passed a hand across his face before continuing, averting his eyes from the astonished expression on Dean's face.
“I'll take one of the other cars in the garage, leave you the Impala,” he sighed heavily.
He just had time to place a foot on the next step up when Dean's grip on his arm stopped him in mid-stride.
“Don't go, Sammy.”
Dean's voice held a fragile tone of fear. “Please. Whatever's wrong, we can fix it.”
Sam hesitated, then searched out his brother's eyes.
“No, Dean. Something's broken between us. I can feel it. Our brotherhood, our bond, whatever you want to call it, it's become weaker, like the tail-end of an echo, still audible but slipping gradually away.
You don't need me anymore. Sometimes I get the feeling of being a burden to you, that you'd be better off without me. That way you'd be free to double up with others, people better than me.”
Dean's mouth hung open in astonishment, but he made a quick recovery. “How can you think any of this? That I'd be happy on my own, with someone else that's not you.”
“Dean. Don't make this harder than it is. I know what I feel and...I... You're my big brother, and I'll always love you, but we need time apart. Do some soul-searching about what's really important.”
With a wry smile, Sam tugged out of Dean's grip and made for the door, leaving his brother to stare uncomprehendingly after him.
Dean was in two minds about whether to rush after Sam. But he decided not to.
Instead, he went back down into the library, collapsed onto a chair, and called up his memories to try and understand why Sam felt so strongly about this. To the point that he'd abandoned the bunker, and most of all, Dean himself.
He cast his mind back to Amara. To when she'd brought Mary back.
That's when things began to change, he mused, now beginning to understand.
His mother had complicated the relationship between him and Sam. Looking at it from an outside point of view, he could see how Sam had been kept at arm's length, his mom interacting more with Dean than with her youngest.
At the time, Dean had thought nothing of it. His mom and he had forged a relationship, even if only when he was a toddler and for four short years, but she'd never lived long enough to have the same interaction with baby Sammy.
Sam had felt left out, Dean realized now.
Mary should have spent more time with her youngest, tried to recapture that relationship.
She should have talked with Sam. Explain why she'd made a deal with Azazel. Bare her soul to her youngest, an orphan child full of love for a mother he'd never known.
But it turned out Mary had been too interested in hunting to spend quality time with her sons, and Sam had felt that rejection the most.
As he continued sifting through more recent happenings, Dean realised how little Sam had been considered, how his feelings had been glossed over and ignored, not on purpose, but because shit was always going down, every single moment of their lives.
However, Dean was honest enough to admit that he HAD found time to act depressed and bitchy, and that towards the one person who didn't deserve it, his baby brother.
A wave of guilt washed over him.
Sam had no one, only his big brother. He'd been tortured, hurt, ignored. His feelings pushed to the side for the greater good.
But, Dean realized now, there was NO greater good, not Jack, not Mary, not Castiel, not the myriad of humans and supernatural beings who surrounded them.
Sam was the important one. Sam was his brother. Sam was Dean's all.
Galvanized, Dean ran for his jacket and scooted out of the bunker. Maybe he'd be in time to follow Sam wherever he'd gone. He couldn't be too far ahead.
And when he caught him, Dean would tell him what he'd always known, that Sam was the most important object in the universe for Dean Winchester, always had been, and always would be.
The End.