Deep in the Dark Are the Diamonds
K Hanna Korossy
Dean didn't do depressed.
There were…really bad times. Sam dead in Cold Oak. Sam in the Pit. Hell coming and Bobby leaving and moments where it was all Dean could do to keep breathing and not scream. But he didn't wallow.
Okay, so there were a couple of times when he got into Baby and just…drove. With or without Sam; his brother seemed to know better than to say anything. Didn't matter where he went, and Dean didn't really notice the road. He just drove, and didn't think, until finally the world was something he could deal with again.
And, yeah, there were a few days when he drank until he couldn't remember anymore how screwed things were, like when he first got to Lisa's after Sam took the big dive. Blackouts he wasn't proud of but that were the only way he could stay sane.
And maybe some hunts he got kinda reckless on. Not suicidal, not deliberately, but where he didn't really care one way or another. Dean figured it was good enough that he was hunting at all.
But he wasn't depressed. He was tired. Just a guy dealing the best he could with Hell memories and the fate of the world on his shoulders and about a thousand people's worth of loss. If Sam weren't there to go through it with him, Dean probably would've driven the Impala into a cliff, or turned suicide bomber on his next hunt. But he was, so Dean kept going.
And going.
00000
Twice in the months following Jessica's death, Sam had gone to bed and not gotten up again.
The first time, Dean had been at a complete loss. Even that initial week at Stanford, Sam had kept moving. The kid's stubbornness was occasionally useful. So Dean had somehow thought they were past the worst, when one morning Sam had simply refused to get up, just lay curled up in bed, unresponsive.
He tried empathizing. Talking to Sam about feelings. Coaxing. Finally snapped at Sam, the patented John Winchester method. But Sam wasn't giving him the silent treatment. His dull eyes told Dean he just didn't have it in him to do more than lie there.
Dean had finally crawled into bed with him and held him through the day and night, through silent tears and restless sleep, until Sam had gotten up the next morning, sad and tired but victorious once more.
So when it happened again a few weeks later, Dean didn't panic. He just swallowed his pain and settled next to Sam on the bed, hand flung across his brother's back, and turned the TV and provided running commentary on one movie after another. Sometime late evening, Sam had gotten up, turned off the TV, and dug leftover pizza out of the fridge, and that was that.
There'd been a lot of times since then that he'd half expected Sam to turn off again. During the year they counted down to Dean's death. In the weeks after Sam released Lucifer, and Dean couldn't quite forgive him. When insanity threatened. After Bobby, after Charlie, after Gadreel. And Dean didn't want to think about the times he was gone, when Sam had no one, if his little brother had ever gone down and not gotten up again. But it didn't happen when Dean was there. Even recently, after the Bad Place and Kaia, Dean had talked to him and Sam had seemed to eventually find his way back. He fought, or cried in the shower, or moved like someone had turned gravity up, but he kept going.
And going. And going.
00000
Dean wasn't gonna lie: losing Mom and Cas like that? He didn't even know how to take that in, let alone push through it.
Jack was a convenient scapegoat at first, but even Dean's sense of fair play had to admit the kid was just a kid. Jody had given him a long hug that almost felt like Mom for a minute. Then there was Asmodeus' arrival to process and the bunker to put back together, and that freakin' grief counselor who, okay, maybe knew her stuff.
And Sam trying to be a rock and look after him, if Dean would have let him.
None of it made a dent, though, until Cas returned and Dean could exhale. It lifted him enough that he could ignore the sorrow in Sam's eyes.
00000
Then he made pancakes, and Sam wouldn't get out of bed to come eat.
His brother responded to him, at least, when Dean looked in on him. He wasn't catatonic or crying. But he was staying in bed long past Dean's comfort level, and when he emerged, it was with heavy steps and no appetite or spark in his eyes.
There wasn't time to deal with it. They had to go help Donna find her niece, and then find Sam when that butcher grabbed him and almost cut him up on live TV, and then Donna's boyfriend turned tail and ran.
"Let him go," Sam, the original Empathy Boy, had told her. "When you choose this life, anyone who gets too close, eventually, they get hurt, or worse."
And he was the optimist in their partnership.
Dean tried to talk about it on the way home, but Sam cut him off. "You keep saying I'm in a dark place, but I'm not, Dean. Everything I'm saying is the truth. It's our lives…This ends one way for us, Dean. It ends bloody. It ends bad."
That had kinda killed the conversation for the rest of the way home. Dean was unsurprised that as soon as they pulled into the bunker garage, Sam headed for bed.
He sat up with a beer, thinking. Not the bottle of whiskey he would've preferred, because this wasn't about forgetting the sight of Sam on that butcher's table, or the fact Jack and Mom were still a universe away. This was about trying to find a plus for his brother, the same way Sam had tried for Dean…
Dean swore, chucking the empty bottle in the recycling bin before marching off to Sam's room.
His brother hadn't even bothered to change, just lay on his stomach on top of the messy covers—and Sam not making his bed was a sign of the Apocalypse right there—with his arms around his pillow. He wasn't asleep, but he didn't react when Dean walked in.
Dean didn't ask. He just shoved Sam over and sat against the headboard next to him.
His brother looked up, long hair throwing his face into shadow. "Dude, what're you—?"
"How's this work?" Sam had a remote but it had about a zillion buttons, a far cry from the five-button dinosaurs in the motels they stayed in.
Sam sighed; he wasn't an idiot. "I don't need company, all right? I'm not depressed."
"'Course you're not." Dean was still examining the remote. "I'm here."
Sam dropped his face back into his pillow with a huff.
Dean chewed on his lip and set the remote down. "Here's the thing. When Mom disappeared through the rift and Cas died…I couldn't see a foot in front of me, man. It just went dark. It felt like…I don't know, like I was trying to swim through mud. Couldn't even see the hand reachin' down to me."
Sam turned his head toward Dean. His hair still obscured his face, but he was listening.
Dean rubbed his mouth. "But all the time I was looking for a light, I ignored the one sitting right next to me." He huffed a laugh. "Guess I take it for granted most of the time. But then somebody like Clegg, or good old Doug, reminds me how epically worse all this crap could be if I didn't have you to wade through it with. Whether we get Jack and Mom back or not, we still got each other." He shook his head. "And if that's not a win, I don't know what is."
Silence. Then Sam reached a blind arm out, grasping Dean's forearm. Dean grabbed back.
After a minute, his little brother let go and shoved his hair back, clearing his throat. "You really wanna watch some TV?"
Dean shrugged. "You got a better idea?"
"Pancakes?" Sam lifted an eyebrow.
Dean smiled, already climbing to his feet. "You got it. Meet you in the kitchen in ten."
Sam sat up, too. "Thanks," he said quietly.
It wasn't necessary. But neither were the blueberries Dean threw into the pancake mix, so he figured they were even.
The End