Chapter 5

Dean doesn't turn his phone on until he's out of California. It blows up, of course, a million missed calls and text messages, but he tosses it into the glove box and ignores the notifications.

When he pulls into a truck stop diner as dusk is falling into night, he takes it out of the glove box, and puts it in his pocket.

It rings while he's got a mouthful of cheese and bacon and hamburger and bun, but he answers it anyway.

"Hurumph," he says, and then swallows. Bread sticks in his throat. "Just tell me where you are. I'll come to you."

Sam's in Montana. Dean caught something about Bigfoot, but Sam knows as well as Dean does that Bigfoot doesn't exist. It's not uncommon, however, for 'squatchers to catch the attention of the real monsters that frequent remote areas.

So Dean heads for Montana.

---

Dean pulls up outside the motel Sam texted him the address of. Dread has been building, slowly increasing with each mile that fell away beneath him, and now it's a maelstrom inside his head, fear like Dean's never felt before.

His heart is in his throat. Pounding like it's going to burst. His palms are sweaty and every instinct tells him to flee.

He spots Sam's stolen car immediately. It's an ancient Mazda with Kansas plates. White. Dinged and rusted. There's a faded pine tree air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror.

Dean knocks on the door it's parked in front of. 13. That doesn't fucking bode well.

Over the pounding of his pulse in his ears, he hears movement from inside. And then his brother appears as the door cracks open. Dean knows there's a handgun just out of sight, but Sam quickly slides it into the back of his jeans and opens the door wide.

"Dean," he says, and there's all kinds of wonder and anguish in his voice. "Dean."

Dean's skin starts to crawl as the smell of his brother washes over him. The smell that used to mean home and family and safety and love, and now just takes him back to that night beneath the bridge.

"You gonna get out of the fucking way and let me in? Or are you gonna tell me about this job while I stand out here?"

He could push past. Back in the old days, he would have shoved his little brother out of the way and barged into the room like he owned it.

But he can't. As it is, he stepped back when Sam answered the door. Any closer and his skin is going to start to twitch.

Sam steps back inside, but he still stands there, holding the door. Dean slips past as quickly as he can, and he looks around the inside of the room.

Plaid wallpaper and pine paneling. A faded painting of a herd of buffalo grazing on the wall. A starburst clock above the kitchenette. Dean takes it in, all in the blink of an eye, and then he trains his gaze back on Sam. Watching. Waiting.

"Dean," Sam says.

Dean shakes his head. He gets where Sam was coming from. He understands, because he can admit, at least to himself, that he would have done the same if their roles had been reversed that night.

But he doesn't know if he'll ever be able to forgive.

"I'm here to hunt, Sam," Dean says. "Just tell me about the job. I don't wanna talk about anything else."

Sam seems to get it. He keeps his distance. Remains in Dean's line of sight. He gives Dean dates and names and snippets of lore. It's a werewolf, Sam thinks. A group of Bigfoot hunters were found by a ranger ripped to shreds, hearts removed, a few days after the full moon. The month before it was a couple of hikers. The pattern goes back six months. Campers. Hikers. A newbie park ranger. All on or around the full moon.

"So it's a local," Dean says. "Whoever it is, they're not just passing through."

"There's a couple of cabins in the area." Sam's eyes are shifty, nervous. He'll meet Dean's eyes and then quickly look away. He pulls a few pages of notes out from beneath a pile of maps and lays them on the table and then steps back away. "I'm liking this guy for it. Loner. No family. Spent a few nights in the hospital six months ago. Some kind of animal attack. I'll put money on it being a werewolf that bit him."

"Then what the fuck have you been waiting for, Sam?" Unlike Sam, Dean doesn't have a problem meeting his brother's eyes. It's important. Like watching a monster he's hunting for the moment before he strikes. And there's a part of him that wants to unnerve his brother. To punish him. "Isn't that enough proof?"

"I was waiting for you, Dean." Sam's eyes are cast down on the floor. His hands are balled into nervous, twitchy fists at his sides. His voice is small, quiet, choked with emotion. "Dean, I'm so sorry."

Dean doesn't need this. Not right now. He needs to hunt, needs to come back to his brother without confronting what Sam did to him, without addressing the betrayal that should have—still might—destroy their entire relationship.

He's here because he doesn't blame Sam for what he did. But it broke something in Dean. It broke the trust he has in the one person in the world he could trust.

It broke Dean's existence, his entire world view.

Sam ruined Dean's life—what there is left of it—and Dean can't even blame him for doing it.

---

They confront the guy in his cabin. There's a basement beneath the house. It's not much more than a root cellar, but the guy had tried to lock himself up. Month after month, he'd gotten out and killed people.

And he just sits there, resigned and accepting, as Dean puts a silver bullet in his heart.

---

"We do that," Dean says, later than night when they're in the car on the way out of town, Sam's stolen junker abandoned in the motel lot. "We do shit like that, Sam. Did you see him? He knew what had to happen. He knew he was going to die, that there was no way out of it. And he accepted it." There's a lump in Dean's throat. It's choking him, fighting with him to stop the words that he's determined to get out.

"So why can't we do that, Sam? You could have let me die. You should have let me die. I told you to let me fucking die, Sam. I should have let you stay dead. But I couldn't. Why can't we just let each other go?"

They're both silent for a long time. Miles go by beneath them. They cross the state line into Wyoming. Dean thinks Sam's gone to sleep, with his head pillowed on a rolled up hoodie against the window.

"He was alone," Sam says. Dean has to look at him to make sure he's not hearing things, to make sure Sam's eyes are open. "He didn't have anybody."

Sam's right. All Sam and Dean have is each other, but that counts for a lot. Or it did.

No. It still does count. Dean wouldn't have come back if it didn't. Sam wouldn't have texted and called him every single day since Dean left if it didn't count.

"I don't—" Dean says. His voice is a croak. He clears his throat and tries again. "I get why you did it." That night beneath the bridge appears in his mind. He's driving in the dark, down long roads bracketed by ancient trees. Every side road makes his heart leap into his throat, but they're hundreds of miles away from that bridge, from the rain and mud and the rivulets of water streaming down from the road that Dean wished would wash him away to drown in the river. "And I know, now, that I would do the same thing if I found myself in your situation that night. Because, Sam. I don't wanna be here without you."

Dean keeps his eyes on the road, but he can still hear the rough intake of breath as Sam gasps, can still see in his periphery Sam sit up straight in the passenger seat.

"But," Dean continues. This is important. He has to make Sam understand. "You know I don't got a lot of time left. I'm going to hell, Sam. Nothing either of us can do will stop it." Dean takes his eyes off the road and looks at his brother. "You've got to accept it. I'm gonna tell you now, and you have to promise me. After what you did I'm going out on a hell of a limb to trust you again. To forgive you for what you did to me. You have to accept that I'm going to die."

"Dean—" Sam's voice is so broken, so anguished.

Dean shakes his head. "No, Sammy." It's the first time Dean's called him that since it happened. "You promise me. You owe me that."

After what you did to me. Dean doesn't say it out loud. He doesn't have to. It hangs between them, thick, heavy, dark. An almost physical barrier between them.

"I promise," Sam says. His voice breaks on a sob. "I promise, Dean."