Chapter Text
The cryptid cocked its head as the black metal beast pulled out of the parking lot. A strange clicking sound came from its mouth as it watched with confusion. In none of its varied plans for the hunter had it ever seen him leaving like that.
One hunter might have left, but it could still feel the flames of rage beckoning it back to the room. It could feed yet, and perhaps gain enough strength to hatch its young. The strange, small hunter it had discovered did not lack in sustenance for it. If it could give birth to its young, the larger hunter would be no threat.
With a flutter of wings, it landed outside of the motel room. A dark shadow fell over the doorway. No lock could keep it out, and a judicious push concentrating its strength on the lock snapped the door inwards.
There were no belongings inside. The hunter truly had left his companion behind.
The tiny human was trapped inside of the vase. Red eyes like pinpricks kept the hunter from spotting the creature as it slunk across the floor towards the table. It was drawn to his terror and fear, his rage and anger pulling it forward like a moth to flame. It needed the energy he was putting out, as much as a human needed water.
“You filthy son of a bitch, you better step away from that table, now.”
The voice caught it off guard. There should be no one else around, and the tiny human on the table didn’t have anywhere near so deep a voice.
It whirled in place, claws clacking inside of the deep folds of the cloak it wore.
The human hunter stood there, a lighter lit in one hand and a spray bottle in the other. Hard green eyes tightened as they saw the creature that had plotted his death.
“Don’t you ever go near my little brother again.”
A burst of flame lit up the room.
Dean’s shoulders sagged down as he watched the disgusting corpse curl in on itself. His plan had worked. The creature had thought he’d abandon Sam on his own after failing to bring him back from the edge it dragged him over.
“Sammy…”
He went over to the table, stepping over the smoldering corpse. They were lucky that his makeshift torch hadn’t lit the entire room on fire. His assumption that it would be weak to fire just like the moth it was named for had paid off for them, and it was dead. After over half a century of tormenting the little town, Dean had stopped Mothman's depredations.
Sam’s small form was slumped down at the bottom of the vase, making Dean’s stomach clench with fear. Bloody streaks from where Sam had beat his fists raw showed exactly how he’d fallen. Even the knees of his pants and parts of his jacket showed bloodstains.
As gentle as he’d ever been, Dean carefully reached in and gathered up the tiny body. Sam was so lightweight, it was almost like he wasn’t even there.
“Don’t worry,” Dean whispered down to him. With the pad of his thumb, he lightly brushed the bangs from Sam’s eyes. “Big bro’s gotcha.”
He surveyed the room one last time, then took his leave of the forsaken place. The memory of having to trap Sam would forever mar the memories of the case.
Dean watched as the city lights flew by the windows of the Impala. The darkness outside matched the stormcloud that hung over his thoughts, making his stomach roil with unease.
He’d trapped Sam.
More than that. He’d used his own brother as bait.
He’d done the unthinkable. After earning Sam’s trust and confidence over the past year, he’d twisted it around and used his size against the younger hunter. There was nothing Sam could do to stop him. He couldn’t even stop Dean from taking his knife away. The only remnant of the time when they’d been the same size, when a younger Dean had sat down and painstakingly crafted a weapon meant to help Sam protect himself.
The same weapon he’d pried out of Sam’s small, fragile, vulnerable hands. Ripped away from him like it was nothing.
Every day for more than a year, Dean had vowed that he’d never do such a thing. How could he ask for Sam’s trust if they both knew he’d take advantage of his size the moment he could?
Failure.
Fucking failure. He always deserved better than you and you know it.
The voice in his head was relentless. Even as the city lights fled behind the car, leaving the open road ahead, it shoved and pecked at the memories that Nixie had once forced him to confront. The knowledge that Sam trusted him was now a curse, one he’d taken advantage of. It stripped him of any confidence. He glanced down at the tiny figure collapsed across his fingers, almost driven to put him down.
To put him somewhere he’d be safe.
Away from Dean.
What held him back from that action was the fact that it was too dangerous. Sam was too small to strap into the backseat like he might want to do. A pocket couldn’t be risked if he was injured and as long as Sam was knocked out like that he had no way to tell.
So he carefully cradled his brother’s bloodied, prostrate form against his chest, curling his fingers inward to prevent Sam from falling or rolling off.
To drive the guilt-ridden silence away, Dean began to talk.
His hands were sore.
That was the first thought that came to Sam upon waking. He groaned, shifting slightly to curl his hands closer to his chest.
It was then that he realized he had no idea where he was.
He shifted around a little more. The darkness closed in, but it wasn’t absolute. There were shards of light streaking overhead, occasionally lighting up Sam’s world with brief flashes of vibrant clarity. Not that it helped much in the strange, almost completely enclosed environment.
Sam held up his hands in front of his face, focusing on what he knew was wrong. Out of place. What had happened? Blood caked them completely, enough to make it to his sleeves. His blood. Raw, aching muscles. Ragged skin peeling off of them in places.
Pain in other parts of his body slowly became apparent as his mind continued to focus. His knees, in just as much pain as his fists. He shifted just enough to see that his jeans were ripped, and his kneecaps bloodied. Shredded strips of fabric hung down his leg, his clothing ruined. He’d have to patch them if he could.
His elbows. They weren’t in as much pain as the rest, but a soreness remained. His shoulder, like he’d rammed into a doorway to break it down. Over, and over, and over again.
Sam groaned again. He let his head flop down.
That was when the rest of the world around him started to clear up.
A rough, rigid surface was under him. It was warm, with a steady beat that pulsed underneath the hunter’s body. His head rested on a cushion of the strange material.
The strange, living material.
For a second, Sam idly traced the whorls and lines of the surface with a finger. It was fascinating to see that his finger could fit into the imprints. There was a voice rumbling overhead, and that voice let him know he was safe, in gentle hands that wouldn’t hurt him.
Flashes of memory hit. Fingers arched around him. His knife torn from his grasp and his satchel forced from his shoulders. Trapped in a vase. Trapped where he could never escape on his own, and his satchel taken from him.
That wasn’t his fault. He never wanted to do that, I know he never wanted to do that.
He was once again in a hand. Dean’s hand.
Only this time it wasn’t trying to trap him. This time, the voice above was speaking to the air, trying to fill the silence that stretched between them. Fingers arched overhead, blocking out the sight of the car around him. Sam was in the Impala, and they were driving. The flashes of light were distant streetlights passing by overhead, offering brief glimpses of illumination. The purr of the engine was a constant background thrum that Sam had taken for granted at first, but now he could pick out the familiar sound.
It was the sound of his home.
There was no reaction from Dean to the precise movements of a four inch tall man down on his hand. His voice continued on, uninterrupted. A rumble overhead continued on with the stories.
Stories from a life without Sam.
Sam almost sat up before he caught himself. A motion like that would give away that he was awake, and there was nothing that would make Dean close up faster than knowing someone else was listening to the cathartic stories that overpowered the soft rock in the background. It was for him, just as much as it was for the brother he thought was knocked out in his hand.
Dean had never shared his past with Sam. The most he’d ever gotten out of his brother was either information on past cases…
Or that time in the forest, when Dean had forgotten who Sam was even as he held him in a hand.
Sammy died. We lost him and Dad… Dad says I have to be a better hunter. He says if I don’t stay sharp I’m asking to die.
Just like Sammy.
That was it. His only insight into how Dean had become the man he was. An edgy, dangerous hunter with an intensity that followed him in everything he did. A man with a burdened past and a desperate fear of abandonment.
Because he’d been abandoned and left all alone in the end.
His mother, dead when he was a kid.
Sam, lost when he was barely ten. Not dead, but for all intents and purposes he might as well have been. Thirteen long years they’d spent apart, learning to survive without a brother to lean on for help.
And of course, John. Vanishing into thin air to leave his only remaining son to fend for himself. Dean had no backup on cases for months before he’d rediscovered Sam.
Clenched in his own unforgiving fist.
Even Bobby, the one constant in his life, had been pushed away. As though, somewhere in his mind, Dean was trying to sever all connections to others after he’d lost John.
Letting people in had only ever got him hurt. Opening up just gave them ammo to use against him.
But now Sam was back. He might be small enough to conceal in a fist, cupped against Dean’s chest, but he wasn’t going anywhere. He would neverabandon his brother.
Not again.
He could remember being angry at Dean earlier that day. Not even just angry-- absolutely infuriated. Beating his fists against the tall glass wall that arched over his head, trapping him inside the vase. Long, bloody streaks marred the clear surface, his own determination the reason his hands were shredded. Slamming his body against it again and again.
Looking back at that time, it was like a cloud had lifted from his mind. He could see what he’d been doing, he could see what Dean had prevented. He could remember attacking Dean.
Over and over again. His knife slicing into flesh and blood pouring out of the wound. Dean’s blood. The only reason Sam had been able to attack him so easily was because of the trust Dean gave him, letting him sit in a pocket so close to his heart. They were lucky Sam’s knife was too small to plunge that deep.
Dean, who’d just been trying to help.
Now that the veil was lifted from Sam’s eyes, he could never be mad at that.
Dean’s voice drew him away from his thoughts once more. Sam flexed a hand, taking brief note of the blood stains that had spread on the skin he was collapsed on. Pushing that out of his mind, he let himself relax on the cushioned surface below.
And let himself be drawn into the past. A past without Sam.
The voice was gruff as Dean talked, the tall chest behind where he was collapsed vibrating in time with the flow of words. Dean must have been going for some time before he woke up.
"Y’know, those thirteen years you were gone don’t sound like much sometimes, but to me it felt like a lifetime. Day in, day out. Just me an’ dad, hopping the road from town to town. Doin’ what we could for others to keep them safe. Getting by just to get by.
“Losing mom… losing you… I think that mighta been what sent him over that edge he was on for so long. Instead of hearing ‘Watch out for Sammy! Look out for your little brother, boy!’ it became ‘Are you askin’ to die?’ ”
Sam’s breath caught at that. There it was. The affirmation that John had tossed his supposed ‘death’ in Dean’s face. Forcing Dean to confront a terrible loss, over and over just to make a point. In all the years Sam had lived apart, he’d never thought that Dean would be put through so much pain without him. He never even expected it.
Dean continued on. He had no way of knowing that Sam was listening, so the flow of words was uninterrupted.
“And it wasn’t just one time. No.” There was a laugh that shook straight through the hand Sam lay on, and his body rolled slightly from the force. Dean didn’t notice, probably assuming the shift meant Sam slept on. “That would have been easier to take. I heard it all the damn time.. I never got to really mourn you because I never went more than a few days without your death being thrown in my face. It was like there was always someone there to rub shards of broken glass in the wound. He might have started out blamin’ himself for your death, but I think he shifted the blame to me, a little more each month you were gone.”
There was a heartfelt sigh, and Sam blinked back tears of his own. He couldn’t find the words to interrupt and take some of that blame away from Dean. No child or teenager deserved to have that weight on his shoulders.
No adult should have to shoulder that blame, for that matter. It was no one’s fault but that damn witch.
“Hell, when dad first vanished, I thought that was my fault too. That I’d driven him away. Dean, the failure. The unwanted son. The man that couldn’t even protect his own damn brother from three feet away.”
Sam heard Dean swallow thickly above, and forced himself to remain in place as the hand started to shift around him. Fingers flexed and curled, and the light touch of eyes on him brushed against his neck.
A thumb the size of Sam's body curled inwards and smoothed down his arm. The muscles in the hand underneath Sam’s body flexed and shifted at the motion. Dean, trying to find something to anchor too.
Sam was proud to be his anchor.
“Who wants to hunt with a man who has that hanging over his head?”
The thumb against his side twitched nervously, and the hand shifted again so Sam was once again enclosed in darkness.
“I even started to believe it myself.”
“No.” Sam shocked himself with a whisper. His mind rebelled against the thought of Dean losing faith in himself. His older brother was a good man, one of the best.
“I tried, Sam. I really did.” Dean never heard Sam’s light voice down in his hand. He was too caught up in the memories of the past and lost to the world around him. His other hand clenched tighter on the steering wheel, but the hand Sam was on didn't budge an inch. “I never wanted to let you down. I did everything the way you’d want me to do. That way…”
Dean’s voice dropped off, and Sam found himself waiting with bated breath for what he was going to say. When it came, even the tiny, four-inch hunter on his hand had to listen intently. Dean was almost whispering to himself with shame. “...That way you could be proud of the man I’d become, no matter where you were watchin’ from.”
The next part wasn’t so quiet. “And then I found you. You weren’t dead, you were cursed and we left you there to fend for yourself and the first thing I did when I found you again was almost crush you… I don’t know why you ever wanted to come with me in the first place. You deserve better, kid. And after what I did back there in that motel… You should get yourself far away from me. As far as you can. I’ll never be the brother you deser--”
The word cut out, and Sam realized that the world had opened up over his head while he was lost in the words flowing out of Dean’s mouth. His eye met Dean’s, and he found himself sitting up with a hand placed on Dean’s thumb for support.
There was panic in the green eyes above, and Sam knew that Dean had never truly meant those words to be heard by anyone else.
Dean licked his lips. “Sam… I… I didn’t m--”
Sam cut him off, finding his voice in his determination. “Dean… is that really how you feel?” His eyes shone in the lights that passed by the car in the night, and then Dean pulled the car into the breakdown lane.
He was lifted up so he was held in front of the green eyes on an equal level. “Sammy…” Dean’s eyes shone as well, the streetlights outside the car reflecting back at Sam in the wide pools. “I don’t deserve a brother like you. I-- I d-don’t--”
It was painful to watch him stutter. Sam made a jerking motion with his hand, cutting Dean off. The hand was still coated with blood, and Dean’s eyes locked right on that.
Sam knew what he’d say, and he didn’t want to hear it. “Dean,” he started firmly. “You’re wrong. You’ve always been here for me, and it was never your fault that were were separated. That bitch of a witch is the only person we should ever blame. Not you, not dad, not me. We did what we had to.”
Shifting in place, he sat in the cupped hand with his legs crossed. “Dean, I am proud of you. Prouder than I’ve ever been.” His tone was gentle, knowing from the wide-eyed look in Dean’s face that it would be far too easy to startle Dean back behind his shields. They’d crumbled with Sam injured and trapped, and they would snap right back up in seconds if he made a mistake in how he handled this.
“I know you’d never hurt me, and this?” Sam held up his hands, showing off his bloodied arms. He’d rammed into the glass, again and again, pounded his fists against the wall of the vase, until his fists blistered and his blood ran. “This wasn’t you. This was that creep.”
Dean blinked. “You-- you remember what happened?”
Sam bobbed his head in reply. “Like I was watching myself through a fog. I could see it, but I couldn’t stop it. Like a spectator to my own life. And you did what you had to.” He laughed. “I’m just glad your half-assed plan worked.”
Some of the emotion came back to Dean, and he shot an offended glare at Sam. “Hey! My plan was flawless.”
Sam grinned in reply, glad to see his words helping Dean get back to himself. “It saved my ass.”
Dean scoffed and rolled his eyes, knowing Sam was messing with him. “Whatever pint-size.” Some of the tension drained from his shoulders and hope grew in the green eyes. “You really didn’t mind hearing that?”
Sam patted the hand he was on reassuringly. He could hear the lingering fear that lurked behind those words and knew how terrified Dean really was of being rejected by the last of his family. Sam would never do that, and Dean needed to know. “Not a bit. I’d love to hear more… if you want to share. I missed a lot back then. I don’t want to miss it again.”
They shared a tentative smile, and the car pulled back onto the highway.
Sam found himself leaning back against Dean’s chest as the hand cupped him high enough to watch the road. It was better than riding shotgun, any day. This was Sam's life, and he wouldn't trade it for the world.
The steady rumble of Dean’s voice filled the air, talking about the trouble he’d gotten into time and time again without Sam around to keep his nose clean, and afterwards, Sam’s soft and gentle voice piped up to share his adventures from when he was first learning his way around the Trails West.
For the first time since reuniting, they shared the memories of their childhoods and let each other in.
FIN