WinchesterHaunt: First of all, I want to thank all of you who read and reviewed my last little episode tie in. I’d have to say that you guys are the reason this one has come out so soon. But anyway, this one isn’t a missing scene, it a fic of “what-WinchesterHaunt-wanted-to-see” at the end of episode 2.07. So I hope you enjoy and maybe I’m not the only one that wanted this happen. Enjoy!

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Always and forever, never mine.

Summery: AU Ending to “The Usual Suspects”: Sam’s eyes were wide open now, but it still took a minute for him to realize what just happened.

Together We All Fall

AU Ending to “The Usual Suspects”

Sam’s knee bounced anxiously but the jerky motions of Detective Ballard’s car flying over uneven dirt hide it well. They were two—maybe three miles away from Pete Sheridan’s LoJacked vehicle. It was a fairly short distance and Diana was pushing the vehicle to its limits. They were doing everything within their power to catch up in time. But to Sam, they weren’t going fast enough.

The back roads seemed to stretch out in front of them, making their trip longer as they sped forward. Sam likened it to a treadmill, and had at one point wondered if they’d accidentally run over an active conveyer belt. It would explain the feeling of motion without the satisfaction of getting anywhere. But he dispelled that theory when he noticed the blur of greenery outside his window.

“How much farther?”

Sam stared solemnly at the detective behind the wheel. His tight lipped expression aroused a frown from the woman as she shifted her eyes back to the road.

“We’re going to make it—”

“How,” Sam began repeating himself with slow articulation. His voice was lower, but not threateningly so, “much farther?”

Diana’s frowned deepened as she allowed her eyes to linger on the troubled youth for a moment longer. She didn’t know how this boy kept up his calm exterior. No doubt years of practice, and if she herself hadn’t had years of experience interrogating criminals, then she would’ve thought Sam’s calm front extended all the way to his core. But she did have those years and she could hear it in his voice and see it in his eyes that he was strung tight and ready to pop under pressure.

She wasn’t about to be the extra weight that snapped him.

“Only a mile. We’ll pull over soon and walk from there,” she glanced back at her passenger and could see the subtle change in his stoic face, “I don’t want Pete to know we’re coming. He’ll do something rash if he does.”

Sam nodded his comprehension. They had to sneaky up so Sheridan’s wouldn’t try and make quick work of Dean. It was an extremely tight wire they were walking. One wrong move or even one that was too slow could be the difference between life and death. The thought of it made Sam’s knee start bobbling again.

“There’s the turn off.”

Sam followed Diana’s glaze to a little turn-out just ahead and to the left. The last mile was coming to a close and he found himself restraining from bailing out of the car and running the rest of the way.

His hand went to his unsettled knee and fisted the fabric beneath it. Too much crap was happening to them lately. And not just by the hands of the monster community. No, they could handle the supernatural; they’d been doing that their whole lives. But lately, it had been the human population pulling them down.

Dad’s death had really knocked them on their asses. It was a hurt they had yet to recover from or talk about for that matter, and if Dean had his way they’d pretend it never happened. So far that method wasn’t working for either of them, but Sam knew he could only press the issue so much before Dean snapped and pushed him away. It had happened twice already and Sam knew he couldn’t take it a third time. So he kept quiet and backed off.

Because if distancing himself from the issue was the only way to keep Dean near, then he’d step back and find some other way to deal with their pain; he’d find some other means beside companionship to deal with his own pain.

And then there was Gordon. The cold blooded hunter whose desire to kill the supernatural went beyond good and evil. The man who’d tried to take Dean and convince him that they were one and the same. Sam hated the violent hunter for that and only regretted that Dean had been the one awarded with delivering the final blow of the fight. If there was any luck still left in the world, Gordon would still be tied to that chair.

But that wasn’t their last deadly human encounter, not by a long shoot. There were still the children that the Demon was collecting to take into account. They had crossed paths with four so far and though only two of them could be considered dangerous (and dead), it was two too many.

Both had tried to mark Dean’s head for target practice; and lately, Sam had considered—on more than one occasion—to just ignore his visions and never cross paths with another one of his kind again. Somehow, he didn’t think Dean would go for that.

Sam released his grip on his pants leg as the car rounded to a stop in front of the trail. The anger that was building up inside of him refocused on the door handle as he jerked it open with more force than necessary. He was ready to face their newest human rival. He was ready to march in and save his brother from a man who was about to execute him for crimes of saving humanity. But most of all, Sam was just ready for everything to stop trying to take Dean away from him.

He rounded the front of the car and stepped toward the trail, but a sharp tug on his bicep stopped him.

“I go in first,” the detective eyed him sternly as she snapped her gun loose of its’ holster; “you’re still just a civilian. And an unarmed one at that.”

Sam wasn’t given the opportunity to reply, not that he had much to add. There was no need to start an argument with the detective now. Using loud anger voices was never the best way to achieve stealth. And there was no way he was going to correct and alert her to the deadly weapon hidden at the small of his back.

Apparently Detective Sheridan hadn’t made too big of a detour off the road. Sam and Diana were only a little ways into the forest when the sound of Dean’s voice came to their ears. Sam was more than relieved to hear his brother’s voice, but that comfort plunged to the pit of his stomach when he heard the accompanying cock of a .45.

The two picked up their pace and as soon as they entered a clearing Diana raised and cocked her own gun.

“Pete!”

And there it was. That damned gun pointed at his brother’s head again. Why was it that everyone wanted to do that? Dean never did anything to deserve it… Sam didn’t do anything to deserve it.

He could hear Diana and Pete conversing, but he was only vaguely aware of it. The gun hiding at the back of his waistband was luring most of his attention. He gritted his teeth and felt his fingers twitch. He wanted to pull his gun; he wanted to feel the cold steal sink into his palm and take some form of control over the situation into his own hands.

Pete gestured the gun toward Dean again and Sam felt the uncertainty of drawing his weapon resolve.

Sam was about to reach for the gun when he suddenly got the feeling someone was watching him. His eyes shifted to the right of Pete and settled into Dean’s awaiting glaze. It was the first time during this whole ordeal that their eyes had met and suddenly Sam found his breathing labored and slightly painful.

His brother’s eyes were wide and alert and staring at him with noticeable concern. At first, Sam thought it was fear for their predicament, but when the emotion behind Dean’s eyes abruptly turned to pleading, he realized that his brother’s concern was directed solely at him.

Dean shook his head slightly with the same desperate look on his face and Sam gritted his teeth and looked away. Somehow his brother had figured out what he was planning and didn’t want him to go through with it.

Sam felt conflicted. His every instinct was telling him to retrieve his weapon and save his brother, but it was that same brother who he was trying to save telling him not too. It felt like he was fighting a war inside himself. Each side appeared evenly matched. One side would only need the smallest addition of weight to win.

And that addition came when Detective Diana lowered her gun.

She had only lowered it for a second before raising it again and firing at Sheridan’s leg, but it was enough to send Sam fumbling for his gun.

A loud thump caused him to stop and looked up. He wasn’t sure how Ballard had managed to lose the upper hand after wounding her partner but now Sheridan was standing over her with a gun in his hands. Sam made a dash for the vulnerable detective, but the other detective cut him out with the business end of his gun. He raised his hands in surrender and so did Dean when the gun was quickly swung in his direction.

Things had just gone from bad to worse, and now Pete was likely to waste them all, starting with his former partner.

Sam tried to reach for his gun again, but he couldn’t be as quick as he was normally, not with the deranged detective keeping them in check. At this rate he feared he’d be too late to save Diana, but at least he could stop Pete from killing anyone else.

Sam had just managed to wrap his fingers around the hilt of his weapon when a raspy wheeze suddenly broke through the tense atmosphere. His eyes caught sight of Claire’s grim and vengeful spirit standing just behind Pete. She was pale and grimy, and blood soaked her clothes from the large gash across her throat.

Soon, they were all staring at the eerie entity and Sam suddenly realized—with more enthusiasm than he should—that Pete’s back was turned and wide open for a shot. His gun finally made it to his left hand and shifted oddly before settling into a manageable position. He was beginning to get tired of the hindrance his cast was causing him.

He raised the weapon to point at the left upper area of Pete’s back before quietly cocking the gun. Neither Diana nor Sheridan seemed to notice the soft click, but unfortunately Dean had heard it.

“Sam!”

The younger Winchester squeezed his eyes closed at the sound of his brother’s voice. Dean’s yell was deafening and under the harsh cry Sam could hear the same pleading tone that had earlier been in his brother’s eyes. He could almost hear the unspoken words behind his name; the words that Dean would never speak out loud for fear of confirming his little brother’s fate.

“Don’t Sam… please. Don’t be like Max. Don’t be like Anson. Hell! Don’t even be like Andy.”

Sam felt his finger tighten against the trigger. He kept his eyes closed in order to hold back the burning liquid as his father’s voice joined Dean’s invisible words.

“You never shoot people, do the both of you understand? If the time comes that a person threatens us, you let me handle it. You both got that?”

Yeah, Sam understood. He understood that there was no John Winchester here to handle it anymore; he understood that his big brother was chained and handcuffed and awaiting his death sentence.

He understood perfectly well what he needed to do.

An ear splitting bang filled the air. The only other accompanying sounds were a surprised gasp and an earth shattering thump.

Sam’s eyes were wide open now, but it still took a minute for him to realize what just happened. He felt a chill spread throughout his body, making him numb in every place expect his trigger finger, which was laid back as far as the finger loop would allow. He quickly moved his index finger and as he feared, the trigger popped back into place and another bullet shifted up to fill the empty space in the chamber.

The next thing Sam knew, his gun had slipped from his grasp and clattered to the ground; he wasn’t too far behind it.

And that was it. The fate he’d avoiding ever since he’d met Max and the fate he’d resigned himself to ever since he’d met Andy had now caught up with him. He’d pulled the trigger, and whether it was out of hate or necessity that he had done so didn’t mater. The point was, he had fired willing and now somebody was dead. And Sam couldn’t deny that part of him was glad, because that somebody wasn’t Dean.

“Sammy.”

Dean was sitting next to him now. Sam realized that his brother must have been doing some fast rolling to get it to him so quickly. Maybe he’d started before his brother had become a murderer.

“Sam,” Dean tried again, but Sam didn’t move his eyes from the corpse.

He wouldn’t look at Dean, not now. Not after he’d just become a member of the group of kids they fought against. Sam knew he’d just lost a piece of himself he’d never get back, and from the way Dean’s shaky hand clapped down on the nape of his neck and pulled him over until their heads touched, he knew his brother knew it too.

END

WinchesterHaunt: Now that’s the ending I wanted to see. But what can I say? I’m a fan of any action that causes Sam angst.