Title: War Plans
By: candacehilligoss
Pairings: pre-slash Sam/Dean
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Don't own them. Not making any money off this. Yadda. Yadda.
Summary: Companion piece to Long Year. Sam makes notes in his journal after the death of the YED.

***

We're in another shitty hotel room and it feels like a piece of heaven, considering. I managed to convince Dean that, with his concussion, maybe getting flat-out wasted to celebrate the death of the Yellow-Eyed Demon could wait for another night.

So he's having exactly one beer and he's got snacks and he's happy right now, I think. In as much as he ever is. Some cable channel is showing Duel and he loves that movie, for whatever reason. I think maybe it's the car. It looks a little like the Impala. Looks like it handles the same way, too.

Or maybe he likes it because there's no reason for anything. The guy in the car is thrown into a battle and that's it. Do or die. Dean likes thinking that people can step up when they have to.

He's on the other bed and I haven't once caught him looking at me while I type, but he's doing it anyway. He has mixed feelings, at best, about my keeping a journal in the first place. And he's got to be wondering what I'm writing tonight.

It's over. I must not believe it because I have to think it would feel different if I did. I'd feel different. I don't.

It's not really over anyway, because I have a year to get Dean out of his deal. And an army of demons to go after, but what no one seems to remember is that I was, apparently, born to be their leader. It's not about catching them. I could probably do that in a day if I really set my mind to it, just by calling them in.

It's about leverage.

I have powers, and I have command of that army. They have a deal for his soul. I'm going to have to get the details on that. The details matter.

College boy needs to figure out how to work this.

I'm never going to ask him because I won't like the answer, but I have to wonder what exactly he figured would go down after he killed that thing. What I said was that I was going to go my own way. After.

I wasn't planning on doing that anymore, but I never gave Dean an update and he probably thought I'd still, I don't know, clap him on the shoulder and wish him luck and head back to California.

He wasn't going to tell me. He obviously convinced Bobby not to tell me, either, though there's no way Bobby does not know. So, Dean's-eye view of the world, I head back to California and he does what he does and, a year later, he's dead.

I'd like to say that can't have been his plan, but I know the dumb son of a bitch fairly well and I'm thinking it was.

If I were feeling pissy, I'd say maybe he's relieved that I know, because now I'm not going to leave him for another year. Not that he thinks I can actually get him out of his deal, but he's getting a year out of me and he likes that. Also, he gets to be dead when it's over, even if it is Hell.

Yeah. I'm not feeling that pissy. He said not to be mad at him and something in my head went, "okay, I won't" and that was the end of it. He has a point when he says he had to. He didn't have to, but he thought he did and, from his perspective, it adds up to the same thing.

He's waving his beer at the screen and lecturing. Because the protagonist is confronting the mysterious villain of the piece. Asking to just be left alone.

"What do you expect to get out of that conversation?" Dean wants to know.

Now, there's a Dean question. He almost never has a conversation without expecting to get something out of it. Except sometimes, I think, with me.

I love that guy. Not just because he's always looked out for me and sacrificed for me and all the other things I said tonight, but also because I just... do. If I just met him and saw him doing what he does, the big hero thing, and all the lame Dean stuff that's stupidly human, I'd love him.

I know enough psychology to know it makes things easier for me if I focus on him, and that he's gotten by for a long time by focusing on me. It makes decisions easier. Makes it easier to know the things we know. Makes it easier to excuse ourselves when we do dumb things for each other.

But I also think, if anyone in the world genuinely deserves to have Hell fucked over for them, it's him.

He'll be pretty busy for the next year, hunting down that army. That's good, because I'm not sure he's going to like whatever I come up with to save him. Might be better if he's too preoccupied to notice.

He's preoccupied now. I can probably sit down next to him and steal some popcorn and yell at the screen. I'm going to put my shoulder against his. I don't think he'll go anywhere.

***