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Chapter Text

Dean Winchester lived a black and white life. Good or Bad. Up or Down. Human or Monster.

Save or Kill.

His whole life was a series of fractured snapshots, of Before and Afters.

Before Azazel, and after his Mother's death.

Before Sam left for Stanford, and after he came back.

Dean didn't deal well with shades of gray, with maybes and uncertainties, with monstrous human beings and all too humane monsters.

So when Dean once told Sam he measured his time in hell by before and after he got off the rack, Sam believed him.

But really, Dean measured time by the Amulet.

Dean said “no”. That's what you have to remember. For thirty years, Dean said “no” .

They cut him. They burned him. They wore the faces of everyone he had ever loved. His mother, his father, Lisa, Cassie.

Sam .

But he said no. He said it over and over. Some days he said it so much that by the time they cut him down, bleeding and broken, it was the only thing left he could say.

He would curl up in a ball in the corner of his cell, rocking back and forth, mindlessly still chanting- "no-no-no-no-no' with his hand fisted over his amulet.

And wasn't that a curious thing. Dean had been tortured in every way imaginable. He'd lost limbs, and eyes. He'd been skinned .

And he could name dozens of times that some stolen-faced demon or another had ripped the thing from his neck.

But every morning he would awaken, just as whole and shining as the amulet back around his neck. He wondered about that often.

Was it real? Was it a memory?

Once, when Alistair seemed to be in a particularly chatty mood, he'd asked him about it. Dean was strung up on the rack, wearing nothing but his torn pants and his amulet.

"That thing?" Alistair had asked wryly, one eyebrow lifted in sardonic amusement.

"Humor me?" Dean gasped as blood trickled down his throat.

Indulgently, Alistair stroked Dean's blood and sweat soaked hair. "It's a part of you." He said simply.

"I don't understand." Dean managed, trying to focus, to block out the pain.

"Hell strips away your humanity. That's the point. Once you've been here a while, only the strongest parts of you are left. The parts of you that are so intrinsically true to your nature that they stick around once you've forgotten your name, your mother’s face, and all the other things you thought were important while you were alive. And then you subtract love, add hate, and BOOM!" Alistair grinned as snapped his fingers. "You have a demon where once you had a human soul."

"This-" He toyed with the amulet almost lovingly, sliding it back and forth around Dean's bloody neck, "Stubborn little piece of brass represents you, and all the things you're still holding onto. Saving people. Being a Hunter. Being a good soldier, a good son. Little Sammy . All the things you went to hell in the first place for. I do love irony."

And then he made Dean scream some more.

But he still said no.

Years passed like life times and Dean felt old . He felt insane. He felt broken down and worn thin. And he couldn't remember the color of his mother's hair, or the timbre of his father's voice. He couldn't remember if he'd ever fallen in love, or why he was even in hell in the first place.

But at night, he'd grasp the amulet around his throat, the strangely shaped charm that had hung there for as long as he could remember and sometimes he'd get flashes of memories, of voices-

"Are monsters real? "

"Thanks Sam, I love it! "

"We're just starting to be brothers again ."

"If you hurt my brother, I will KILL you- "

"We're all that's left."

And he'd hunch down in the corner of his cell, whispering to himself.

"Sam. I have a brother. His name is Sam."

And then one day he said yes.

The word slipped out almost unconsciously, with a life and volition of its own, and he didn't know who was more surprised, himself or his captors.

And then things were moving, moving quickly. In what seemed like just bare seconds he was standing on his own two feet and it felt fucking great, and suddenly, the knife was in his hands and that felt fucking great too.

And the rack was before him, not under him, and some other poor soul was strapped to it, and the fear in their eyes was directed at him-

And he wanted it.

God he wanted it.

"Go on." His torturers urged, all giggles and gleefully bated breaths.

But when he extended his arm, his hand shook, and his chest was burning, he was burning, and-

It was his damn necklace. Burning hot and cold and heavier than it had ever been, and it seemed to scream his long lost brother's name at him and he couldn't take it anymore.

The amulet was the last piece of the man he was.

But he wasn't that man anymore. And it was heavy .

So he took it off. With an echoing finality he dropped it, cord seeming to trickle through his fingers in obscene slow motion.

He spent the next ten years saying “yes”. Yes to Alistair. Yes to power and pain and vengeance. 

Yes to blood and screams and survival.

And he didn't awaken to the burning weight of the amulet anymore.

Chapter Text

Sam bided his time. He waited almost too long. They were out of options and the words were beginning to echo in his head (Detroit-Detroit-Detroit-Detroit).

So while he sat in Bobby's living room, staring awkwardly at Cas, desperately casting his mind around for anything to block out the words (Detroit-Detroit-Detroit) it just sorta….slipped out.

"It wasn't a God Charm...", Sam mumbled into his clasped hands.

Cas quirked his head to one side.

"I don't…understand?" Cas ventured, blue eyes squinting at him, head still cocked quizzically to one side.

Sam swallowed. (Detroit-Detroit). He pushed through, his words starting to tumble faster and faster through half-numb lips.

"Dean's amulet. It wasn't some rare, all powerful god charm. That's why Bobby had no idea what you were talking about. I'm the one who gave it to Dean, but it was Bobby who gave it to me in the first place. I was just a kid, so when Bobby told me it was special, I believed him. But when I got older, I got curious. The thing was old, but it wasn't ancient, and it sure as hell wasn't all powerful. Hell, it wasn't even Christian. It was Mayan, or Peruvian or..something. It was a charm to protect against the effects of alcohol poisoning. Bobby probably got a kick out of it at the time, thinking I was gonna give it to Dad." He paused, slightly breathless, and stared at Cas expectantly.

"I'm aware." Cas said solemnly.

"Then why the hell'd you lie? You told Dean it was rare, and powerful and that it was going to help you find GOD, Cas and then, then you told him…." Sam couldn't finish, clasping his now shaking hands (Detroit).

"That it was worthless?" Cas finished for him. Sam flinched and Cas's shoulders slumped.

"I should not have said that. I allowed my crisis of faith to affect Dean. It…should not have happened." Cas looked at Sam apologetically.

"It's not…I'm not…" Sam sighed. "I just want to know why that amulet. That's all."

Cas paused a moment, seeming to search for words.

"You are correct." He began haltingly. "The charm itself was relatively useless. It was what it represented that was rare and powerful. I found a spell, a spell to locate God. But to use it, the spell had to be cast on an object of great faith. The amulet was the strongest I could locate."

"But-Dean has never been a man of faith. Not in God, or angels, or anything. He's never believed in anything he couldn't kill with salt or silver." Sam stared at the angel incredulously.

Cas frowned. "You misunderstand. It did not have to be faith in God. It could be an object of any kind of faith, as long as it was truly strong. In this case it was the faith of one brother in another."

Sam laughed. He laughed so hard he thought he might choke. He laughed until bitter tears were running down his cheeks. 

Cas watched him warily, looking more than a little alarmed.

"Sam?" He questioned tentatively.

Choking down the last of his bitter laughter, Sam said "Did it ever occur to you that your failure to find God had a lot less to do with him not wanting to be found than it did with you choosing the wrong freaking amulet to work your mojo on? Because, in case you didn't notice, Dean hasn't had faith in me in a long, long time." He started to leave the room when Cas spoke again.

"You misunderstand." Cas repeated. "Dean was the one who wore the amulet. But it was never about Dean's faith, or lack thereof. It was about yours- all the things that had happened, your mother, your girlfriend, even your father. You still believed. In God, in angels, but mostly…" He paused, looking unsure of his next words.

"What?" Sam's voice echoed in the now silent room.

"In Dean. You never lost your faith in your brother." The angel stared at Sam, then pushed through determinedly. "Your faith wasn't blind, but it was absolute. Perfect faith, in fact. You've never doubted in the inherent goodness of your brother, in his ability to save you, to protect you. That was the faith I believed was strong enough to find God. And I still believe it would have worked, had my father chose to be found. The fault was never yours, Sam."

A moment passed.

Another.

Another.

"Okay then." Sam said finally. "Let's go to Detroit."

Chapter Text

Dean was being haunted. The irony wasn't lost on him.

If Dean hadn't finally realized the nature of this particular spirit, he might have been hard pressed to give an explanation of how it had all come about. But however subtle the signs, Dean now knew that exact place and time, the very moment this monster had come into existence.

It all started after they returned from Heaven.

Sam never said a word. Perhaps if he had, the weighted silence between them would not have given birth to this poltergeist, this phantom limb hanging around Dean's neck.

It wasn't the first time he'd taken the amulet off, after all. He'd let it go in hell, felt it slip through his fingers as blood dripped from his victims. He'd also taken it off, at Cas's request, to aid in a fruitless search for a God that couldn't care less for any of his so-called children. But this was the first time it had haunted him.

The next morning, two hundred miles and a hundred shattered pieces of his broken heart lay between him and the damn thing. Yet the panic that had over taken him when he'd looked into the mirror, to see the empty space where the amulet should lay, had been quietly devastating.

Things had only worsened. He would reach up to grasp the amulet, whenever he was nervous, or worried, or simply lost in thought. His hand would flail for a moment in the empty space above his heart before his gaze would lift guiltily to a brother who could no longer meet his eyes.

He went to take it off before every shower. He would check his pockets for it absentmindedly whenever he was on the phone with Bobby. It felt like having a limb amputated, like going on a hunt without a weapon.

How the absence of the weight around his neck could feel so heavy, Dean couldn't understand.

Dean began hearing things. One morning at some nameless diner, as he was paying their tab, he heard a small clink, as if a coin had dropped to the ground. He'd bent down to search for it only to come up empty handed.

He'd looked up to meet Sam's confused eyes and shrugged. "Must be hearing things", he'd said, lifting one shoulder defensively before pushing out the door.

The second time it had happened, he'd had his head under the hood of the Impala, changing out a spark plug when he'd heard the soft clink of metal hitting metal. He'd cursed, before getting down underneath his baby to find whatever tool had fallen prey to gravity, only to come up empty handed once again.

It began to happen more and more often. As he was walking down a sidewalk, or putting on his jacket. Falling asleep in his bed at night, the sound would jerk him awake just as he was drifting to sleep. The echoing reverberation of something falling.

The sound of something being lost.

He had never heard of being haunted by a noise before. He could find no mention of such a phenomena in Dad's journal or any of Bobby's books. He considered asking Sam to perform an exorcism on him just in case, but every time he looked at Sam, the words stuck in his throat.

It was a nightmare that finally clued him in. Dreaming of hell wasn't unusual for Dean, especially now, with Lucifer out and about causing merry havoc. What was unusual about this dream, however, was that it didn't take place in Hell

It took place in Heaven.

Dean and Sam were once again wondering through that one dimensional memory loop the Bible claimed was paradise, trying door after door in their desperate flight back to earth. Finally they burst through the final door, and with relief Dean had realized that they had made it back. They were once again in the hotel room the other hunters had cornered them in, and he turned with a smile to let Sam know.

But where Sam had stood only a moment before there was now only a black wall. He turned back around only to be greeted by the sight of his brother, spread eagle on his bed, chest a gaping, crimson hole. The coppery scent of blood was cloying in the air, and it was all wrong. This had happened before, after all, and Dean knew it hadn't ended like this. He had started towards Sam, meaning to wake him, he had to wake him up, Dean couldn't come back from heaven and leave Sam behind...

A movement at the door had caught his attention, and he'd turned on instinct.

The sight that had greeted him was nearly worse than the sight of his brother's motionless body. It was Dean, or more precisely, the version of himself that he had battled while under the influence of the dreamroot. Demon-black eyes had smiled back at him in cruel glee. He was standing next to the open door, hand outstretched over the waste basket...

And in his hand was Dean's amulet.

"Just one more thing we lost in the fire, right Dean-o?" His demonic-self had smiled maliciously at him as he had stood frozen in place.

"Did you forget, Dean?" His doppelganger taunted him. "Everything ends bloody."

The amulet landed in the trash with an echoing clink in his mind even as Dean had shot straight up in his bed, finally awake. He had panicked for a moment at the sight of Sam's empty bed, until he'd found Sam outside, laying on the hood of the Impala, staring at the stars.

He thought Sam might be praying.

Dean was sorry.

That was all he could think as he hung from Lucifer's fist in Stull Cemetery. He stared into eyes that were his brother and yet something else entirely, and he was so sorry.

"It's okay, Sammy. I'm here. You're not alone. I'm right here." Dean's jaw was broken, making it difficult to shape the words, but he did it anyway. Sam deserved that much.

The conversation he had overheard yesterday (was it only yesterday that he'd still had his brother? That his brother had still been Sam?) was stuck on replay in Dean's mind. Looping endlessly on repeat; Cas and Sam and amulets and perfect faith.

Sam's perfect faith.

Sam's perfect faith in Dean, which was apparently so strong that an Angel of the Lord had tried to use it to find God. Sam's faith in Dean, made up of years and years of memories and fights and conversations and battles fought side by side, all tied up in an amulet that Dean had thrown away.

He'd let it go, made a show of letting it go, in fact, because he'd felt hurt, betrayed and discouraged. He'd thrown it all away, because Dean hadn't been able to reciprocate Sam's faith. He'd wanted to, so badly. Sam had deserved that much, and now Dean was too late. He'd told Sam he would respect his play in Detroit, and the memory of the look of surprise on his brother's face broke whatever was left of his heart. He had told Sam he'd go along, but really, a part of him had always expected to end up here. Talking to Sam while Lucifer snarled with the face of his brother.

He had come anyway. It might be too late to tell Sam he had faith in him. To tell Sam that he was good, a good person, kind and smart and strong. It was too late to tell Sam that if anyone in the god forsaken universe was stubborn enough, determined enough to kick Lucifer's ass, it would be Sam.

It was too late in the game for Dean to start having faith in anything at all, be it God or destiny or little brothers.

But still, he came. He was damned if he was going to let Sam die alone.

Sammy, Dean's little brother Sammy, scared and trapped, locked away in his own mind. Dean wasn't going to let his brother die alone thinking that Dean had thrown Sam away the way he had thrown away the amulet.

So Dean waited for the fatal final blow to come from his own brother's hand, and he wasn't sorry. Lucifer was staring down at him, hatred clouding Sam's expressive eyes, fist raised to deliver a death blow to Dean's battered body.

Then suddenly everything changed. The hatred turned to horror. Understanding filled the hazel eyes. Dean was no longer staring at Lucifer.

He was staring at Sam.

Dean's eardrums were both broken, his eyes nearly swollen shut. His legs wouldn't work and every part of his body sung with pain. All he could do was lean against the Impala as his brother reached into his pocket and pulled out the rings. The keys to the cage. The wind howled and screamed around Dean. He could feel it on his skin, could see the grass waving wildly under the onslaught, but in his head was nothing but static and silence and horror.

Long years of practice hunting monsters with keen hearing let him read Sam's lips effortlessly as Sam backed away towards the pit.

"It's okay Dean. I have him. It's gonna to be okay."

Then Sam was grabbing Michael, and both of them were falling into the pit. Dean watched his little brother die saving the entire world and inside he was screaming, felt like the entire goddamn world should be screaming. Lightning should be rending the sky, the earth should be shaking and cracking.

Dean's brother Sam was dead and the universe should stop and take notice. Should mourn for the boy with the demon blood who had saved the world anyway.

None of that happened though. The windstorm ceased. The sky returned to blue. The sun shown down warmly and gently as Dean knelt on the ground that had become Sam's grave.

The silence of his broken eardrums was perfect, total and complete, destroyed only by the haunting echo in Dean's mind.

Clink.

Everything ends bloody.

Chapter Text

The haunting stopped, after Sam fell. Not the memories of Sam. Those were everywhere, anyplace he went, anything he did. The memory of his brother danced across his every waking moment, like rain sinking the ground, through any open crack, regardless of how small.

But that phantom weight around his neck, the small chiming clink that had shadowed him for weeks finally disappeared.

Dean missed it.

He still reached for it. Went to tuck it into his shirt if he was bending down, reached to take it off to shower. Still paused whatever he was doing, waiting for that tiny, inconsequential sound that never came. The silence felt too big, now that it had stopped. He wanted it back, that last piece of his brother, but it eluded him.

Perhaps even the memory of it had given up on him.

Lisa waited weeks to broach the topic. It was driving her crazy, wondering, the not-knowing. Dean had been too wounded, however, too raw, to ask what had happened.

The question circled her mind like a cat-burglar; searching for a weakness, a way to slip past her guarded lips.

Where had Dean's amulet gone?

Strangely enough, the night Dean had shown up at her door, its absence had been the first thing her sleep-addled brain had noted.

Dean's amulet was missing.

The timing had never seemed right, however. Dean spent the first few weeks with her and Ben oscillating between nearly comatose silences and furious midnight drinking binges. When he started to get better, he locked it all away. The Impala, his hunting supplies, even his old clothes. Dean hid away every part of himself that Sam had ever touched, guarding it as ferociously as a dragon guarded his treasure.

She might not have asked at all, ever, except that no matter how tightly Dean locked it all away during the day, it all leaked out at night, in his dreams.

He never spoke about them, but she could guess. Dean had told her the cliff notes version when he first appeared at her door. Sam, Lucifer, and an endless eternity of torture in the pit. The entire world saved for the bargain price of Dean Winchester's little brother.

But after that first night, they hadn't spoken of it. Dean couldn't speak about it, not if he was going to be able to at least pretend to function. She knew he was still looking, still searching for a way to get Sam out. The books, the late night trips and phone calls, all evidence of his painful quest.

All his searching had been in vain though, at least so far, and sometimes she thought that would be the death of Dean. She had long ago acknowledged that Dean might simply not be able to exist in a world that didn't have Sam in it somewhere.

She might not get to keep him.

She was determined to do whatever she could to heal him though.

One night, the nightmares were particularly bad. After the third one, Dean had simply pulled up a chair to their bedroom window and sat watching the night.

She sat on their bed, arms wrapped around her knees and the sheets puddled around her hips as she faced him. The distance felt lonely to her, yet she knew Dean needed it at that moment. There was a Sam-shaped space between her and Dean, and the day she stopped respecting it might very well be the day he left for good.

He looked so broken, so tormented, that she finally asked what she had been wondering about for weeks. Getting him to talk about it, about anything was becoming more and more crucial. He wouldn't survive this if he didn't learn to confide in someone else. Sam had saved the world, but he couldn't save Dean.

"What happened to it?” Her voice fractured the silence, soft words cutting across the darkness like knives, and Dean flinched, actually flinched under the weight of them.

He took a lifetime to answer, surprised her by answering at all, in fact.

"It was heavy." He said finally. "I took it off, and I threw it away, and now my brother is dead." Like a dam breaking, the words finally came then, torrents of them, like a poisonous river, and all she could do was listen and hope he didn't drown in them.

That was the first and last time Lisa ever saw Dean cry.

He had poured out the whole story to her that night, of Christmases, little brothers, Heaven and faith.

The next morning they didn't speak of it. They didn't speak of it the day after that day, or even in any of the days following that. Dean simply wasn't ready, and even if he had been, Lisa was still searching for the words to soothe the wound on Dean's soul. The song to soothe the savage beast.

Because how did you explain the nature of faith to someone who didn't have it? It was like trying to explain the sky to a blind man, like explaining flight to a fish.

And wasn't that the most crucial of the differences between the brothers anyway? Dean had operated in black and white, good and bad. What he could see, touch, taste. What he could kill.

Sam had been a different creature. Dean might have been a righteous man, but Sam had been a man of faith. Perhaps that was why Sam had been able to leave for college. Sam understood that just because a person wasn't there with you at that moment didn't mean they were gone forever. Sam had understood that even when he was apart from Dean, that Dean was still out there, still loved him.

Faith.

To Dean, loving a person meant being with them, preferably within arm's reach. Dean had needed to touch, to hear, to see. Dean needed proof. As far as Dean was concerned, he only got to keep what he could hold onto.

In Dean's mind, he had let go of his amulet, let go of his brother.

And he was never going to get either of them back.

She finally approached Dean nearly a month afterward. Dean had grilled steaks for dinner, and now he was leaning against the picnic table with Ben, pointing out the constellations. Lisa wondered if he had learned them to navigate with, or maybe to entertain a younger brother on countless nights spent in a car.

Or perhaps Dean had learned them from Sam himself. Sam sounded like someone who would have loved the stars, would have loved learning all the stories behind them.

"Bath time, honey," she said, and Ben obediently, albeit grudgingly ambled into the house.

She handed Dean a fresh beer before leaning beside him, staring into the darkening sky. Fireflies danced around them and it was beautiful and romantic and so close to perfect she wanted to cry.

Because between them was still that Sam-shaped space, and tonight she had to cross it. For Dean's sake, she had to try, had to believe that Sam would have wanted her to try. If Sam was brave enough to save the whole world, well, she could be brave enough to save his brother.

"I'm only going to talk about this once." She began quietly, feeling Dean tense beside her. "And then I am going to go into the house. If you can't follow, I understand. I want you to, but...I will understand. But I think you need to hear this, and I am the only one here to say it." She swallowed nervously, then continued.

"I think they were right. The demons, the angels. All of them. They were right. It had to be you, and it had to be Sam. It had to be the two of you." She watched his silhouette in the dark.

"Why?" Dean finally asked, voice low and anguished.

She took a moment to answer, marshaling her thoughts. "John raised you, Dean. He raised you to be a soldier, to do what's right, to do the hard thing even when all you wanted to do was run away."

"He raised me to protect Sam." Dean interjected angrily.

She reached for the words, desperate to make him understand. "And you did. You DID Dean, far better than John ever protected either of you. You were Sam's real father, YOU raised him, not John, and you did it right. That's why Sam was strong enough to fight against your father, strong enough to leave for college. Because when you do a good job raising your kid, they are supposed to leave, supposed to be strong enough to leave." She paused a moment for breath. Her heart was pounding, but she had committed to saying all this, committed to seeing it through.

"You did that Dean, for Sam. It wasn't your Dad, it was you. It had to be you. You were the only person determined enough, the only person genuinely good enough to raise Sam to be the person he ended up being despite the horrible childhoods you had. And Sam saved everyone, Dean. Everyone. Me, you , Ben, the people down the block. Sam saved everyone, but he was only able to do it because of you! Every time you taught him what loyalty was, what family meant, every time you came through for him, you were teaching him faith. And every time he fought back against your father, he was learning to stand up for what he thought was right, to be strong. It wasn't because of his bloodline or his destiny. It was just Sam, and what you spent your whole life doing for him. John gave him strength, and you gave him faith."

She paused, wiped at her own tears before continuing. "So, yes. It probably had to be Sam. Who else had enough strength to beat the devil, and enough faith to try? It had to be Sam, because Sam was the only one who could have ever won. Any of those other special kids could have let Lucifer out, but only Sam could have stopped him. Sam wrote his own story. That's the legacy you gave him. It's hard, and it's horrible, but it's beautiful, too. Every terrible thing that happened to you and your brother, and you two used it to save the world." She finally stopped, the words ran out of her like sand through an hourglass. She had no other words to give him, and could only pray it was enough.

She started to walk away, back to the house.

"He thought I gave up on him, Lisa." Dean's voice stopped her, and she turned to look back at him.

"I threw that amulet away, told him it was worthless. It was a sign of his faith in me, and I wore it, right where he could see it, every day, nearly our whole damn lives. And then I threw it away. And the last thing he ever did was save me anyway." The pain in his voice made her want to weep.

"He forgave you Dean. I know he did." Lisa replied, heart breaking for him.

"How?" Dean insisted, surging to his full height, an intimidating black silhouette in the shadows of the back yard.

"Because that's what faith is, Dean. Like your angel friend said. Sam had faith in you . He didn't need proof. Yes, your amulet was a symbol, but that's all it was. Sam was strong enough to defeat Satan, don't short-change him now. He didn't need to see you wearing that amulet to believe in you. That's Sam's legacy. A faith in you so strong it could save the world."

She started back to the house, turning to add just one last thing.

"If you can see it, you don't have faith in it. You simply know it. You can only have faith in something you can't see."