Sam woke up that night from a dream about demons.

That wasn't peculiar in itself; they always dreamt about the things they hunted—and the things that hunted them.

But this dream was different.

Meg had had him by the throat, her nails digging searing points of pain into his skin, and her henchmen had tossed Dean to the ground. Sam had watched helplessly as they pummeled his brother over and over, until suddenly the dream had changed.

"Traitor." Abruptly the mob of demons shifted, and Dean stood from their midst, completely unharmed. Looking right at Sam, still frozen against the wall in Meg's unrelenting grip, he spat, "you traitor", and turned his back. Even as Dream-Dean strode away, his next words, bitter, jagged, boomed inside Sam's head: "I'll never trust you again."

Then he woke up.

Screw the emotional blockage. He felt like yelling—or crying—or both. He didn't though, just sat up in his motel bed, head and eyes burning as if his blood were boiling. He ran a hand through his sweaty hair and clutched it unconsciously, needing to fist something in his anger at himself, needing to grip and squeeze and maybe cause some physical pain so as to forget what he knew was not just a dream.

Regret steamed in his gut like a simmering mass of snakes, melting his insides and churning them into froth. Dean would never trust him again. Dean. Trust. Two words that were as equally a part of him as Jess, Mom, Dad, Bobby, hunt and survive. He had made a mistake, a colossal one. He had ended the world as he knew it. There was no forgiving this time, not for him. He knew that. And he also knew that Dean had every right to despise him for what he had done. He knew Dean felt betrayed. He knew all of this, and yet…and yet some part of him had wanted Dean, his brother, the one person he would throw away every shred of his life and being over, to understand. That part had desperately needed Dean to realize how immense and genuine his regret was, how it was eating at him like hot acid, how all he wanted in the whole world was to make it right somehow. He had dared to hope that Dean's trust in and love for him would be able to overcome this, would be enough. Apparently not. And that was what hurt the most.

Yes, Dean had been betrayed. But so had Sam, just when he needed the sympathy and strength of his brother the most.