right after 13×22 “Exodus”

idontneedasymbol:

The party’s winding down, so they’re digging dusty cots out of a
back corner of the bunker where Sam had vaguely remembered seeing them stashed
when Sam stops. Takes a breath and wraps his arms tighter around the bedrolls he’s
carrying, and says, “Dean.”

If his tone didn’t give away that he’s
serious, the way he glances at the closed storeroom door does.
“Yeah?” Dean asks, straightening up, trying to sound like he’s not
too tired for whatever’s coming.

“You need to talk to him,”
Sam says. “To Jack. About his—about Lucifer. Jack needs to know, to understand
what he’s really like.”

“We were trying,” Dean points
out. “Kid didn’t seem like he wanted to listen.”

“No.” Sam shakes his head.
“He’d listen, he just—he needs the truth. Everything. What Lucifer’s tried
to do—what he’s done. To—to everyone.”

Jack would care, Dean thought. The kid
had been angry enough about Michael, what the archangel had done to his own
world; he probably wouldn’t be thrilled to hear Lucifer had tried for his personal Armageddon here, on Jack’s own world.

But a world’s abstract. What’d really
gotten Jack fired up was getting to know the people Michael had hurt, the
people he wanted to protect. And if Jack knew that truth, about what Lucifer had really done—to everyone, yeah. But
also… “What he did to you,” Dean says.

Sam flinches, barely—a twitch of the
shoulders, a shadow across his eyes—confirmation Dean would’ve rather done
without. “Thought that was yours to tell,” Dean says, pitching his
voice light.

Sam’s spine stiffens anyway; he
swallows, throat tightened. “Yeah, well. I meant to—I tried. And I—couldn’t.
I don’t know how to—there aren’t—” He squares his shoulders, faces Dean
like he would a firing squad. “But you—you could tell him. You know.”

Know what, Dean could ask.
Because Sam doesn’t know how to talk about this, not even to Dean.

But Dean’s been to Hell himself, not the Cage, but enough to know that maybe there aren’t words for this. Words for
whatever Sam’s remembering, when occasionally light glances across a metal
blade and he jerks back, whole body twisting away. When there’s a rattling
sound and his eyes dart up, scanning the ceiling for something unseen over him.

Years later and there are still foods
Sam won’t order anymore, that he looks away when Dean digs in, until Dean
figures out what he shouldn’t order. There are injuries he won’t let Dean tend
to—bandaging up his hand is fine, his calf, his back; but if his face gets cut
he’ll clean it up in front of a mirror; if his thigh’s gashed he’ll let Dean
thread the needle but sews it up himself.

Dean could tell Jack about that year after the wall came down, hunting
Leviathans and watching Sam coming apart stitch by stitch and Dean wasn’t
strong enough to keep him together—trying to hold on with all he had and it
wasn’t enough, not then, not in the years after, no match for what was
tearing Sam apart. Lucifer, bursting through the seams of Sam’s existence, and
the only reason there was anything left afterwards was because Sam’s made of
stronger stuff than any mortal man possibly should be, fireproof, imperishable.

Yesterday, give or take, he got to hug Sam again, jacket crusted with blood but breathing, and no,

Dean will never understand that strength, where it comes from; but he’s
grateful for it, every fucking day.

“Please,” Sam says, looking Dean
straight in the eye, for all his shoulders are hunched like he’d rather be
looking anywhere but. Making himself beg because it’s what he has to do; strong
enough for that, too. “Jack needs to—”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Okay.
I’ll talk to him. If he’ll listen,” because the kid likes Dean, for some
damn reason, but Jack never looks at him like he looks at Sam.

But Sam’s back relaxes, shoulders
unclenching. “Thanks.” He gets a better grip on the bedrolls in his
arms, pulls another one into the pile.

“Maybe we don’t need to
anyway,” Dean remarks, as he picks up the pair of cots. “With Lucifer
back there—maybe Michael will off him.”

“No,” Sam says, barely even
resigned; he might as well have been talking about the date of the next full
moon. “He’ll be back. Jack will have to deal with him again.”

And you, Dean doesn’t
say. Maybe this time he’ll be there, able to watch. Sam facing Lucifer, with
Jack at his side—Jack knowing the truth, and knowing that, he’ll be able to see
it, see how much hurt Lucifer inflicts just by existing in the same dimension
as Sam. Jack with his human heart and his growing protective instincts, and all
his power.

Dean isn’t going to tell Sam this,
either, but he’s looking forward to it.