Watch out for Sammy
When you were four years old,
Your father drilled these words into your skull,
Etched to last forever.
Of course, there was no actual drill,
No actual words carved into the side of your cranium.
But he bent down to your height,
And held your arms a little too tight,
And looked you in the eyes,
Your mother's eyes,
Your mother,
Who died too young, and so, so beautiful,
Who died to save you,
Or did she?
No you think, years later when everything is over,
She did not die to save you,
She made a deal,
Selfish.
But so is the rest of your family.
You think about how it was the last time your father ever looked you in the eyes.
And as you grew those words stayed carved in your mind, pushed deeper only by you,
Scars began to mar your skin, and it did not even matter where they came from,
But the worst scars were on the inside.
Made not with knives or fingernails or scraps of metal,
But with words.
Unwanted, unneeded, wrong
Worthless, worthless, worthless.
Cracks so thin, so delicate that no one ever noticed, because no one ever really looked,
No one ever does.
And those words they stay with you,
Long after your father is gone.
And when your brother falls you do whatever it takes to get him back, because of those words
The price you pay is forty years,
You'd be lying if you said you wouldn't do it again.
And still those words, etched in your mind, scratched deeper and deeper only by you,
Only by you.
Those words drive you; force you to save your brother again and again,
Until one day he doesn't want to be saved,
But those words are still there, so you save him anyway.
And when he turns his back to you,
You want to scream you want to shout that these words from a father so long past now are still there, screaming in your mind but you can't.
So you watch him walk away.
You look down at the amber liquid in your glass and think of the amber eyes that used to comfort you, to soothe your worst nightmares and chase away your greatest fears.
And he comes back, like always and needs no explanations,
And you fight and you hunt and you save the world,
And still those words ringing in your head.
Haunting, still haunting, after all these years.
And I want to say that it is not true,
It is not true,
That these words do not define you.
But I come from a different world,
Where the monsters are not real, and when they are, look very much like ourselves.
I want to reach out,
And smooth your hair, and hold you tight.
But I cannot.
And there is irony in the fact, that I cannot give you comfort as much as I want to,
And you give me comfort, without even trying.
And they will say you do not exist.
And they will not understand.
And they will never know the story of how you saved my life, by just being.
And you will sit in the dark with a glass of amber liquid and screaming in your head that never ceases.
And your brother will look at you with love and pain, and like always, you will only see the pain.
Only see the failure,
But you have not failed, Dean Winchester.
And you have saved more lives than you can possibly imagine,
And you have saved them in a world where the monsters you fight so not even exist.
And I hope one day someone will come along, and smooth you hair, and in doing so, smooth out the words engrained into your skull, until they are nothing more than a scratch,
Even if you never truly forget them.