He's not a suicidal, or a masochist, or depressed.
It's not like he wanted to die… He was just tired.
There's something weirdly familiar in the way Sam is screaming, in panic, and how your younger brother is slapping your face, crying. Dean thinks that Sam is making a funny face, sobbing in that exhaustive manner.
Sam is no longer crying now, or maybe the tears have dried away, it doesn't matter. He drags Dean to the dirty, tiny bathroom and shoves his finger into his brother's mouth, forcing him to throw up. Dean fights under his touch, however he has no strength and everything is so damn funny…!
Sam watches without mercy while Dean chokes with his stomach contents, his gigantic hand always there, forcing more to come up. Dean thinks that when it's over, he'll kick his brother's ass.
The bathroom floor swims and everything goes dark.
He's in a bed when conscience comes back. Sam is talking on the phone, his face pale and hands shaking. He looks like a boy, Dean thinks, as if some day he had stopped looking like one.
The older brother blinks heavily against sleep and sees his brother hang up the phone, shaking so much that device falls on the greasy rug, and then Sam rests his back against a thin wall, falling down sit.
Sam hides his face between his hands and cries and Dean knows that it's his fault. Again. Dean has always hated see Sammy cry, always hated to hear the baby sob through the chilly nights of their childhoods. However, he would give anything to have the crying baby back and not have to watch Sammy, gigantic and strong, cry like a child because of him.
The Winchester asks himself if his brother ever got the change to cry Jess' death. He had seen crying some times, obviously, but never like that, and always with a fury behind the tears. Sam wanted vengeance at that time, he had mourned like he needed to. It was no wonder that the wound was still open.
Sam cried for John too, again, not nearly enough. He had been worried about Dean… Once again his grief was shortened by a sea of guilt and problems not solved; Grief simply forgotten in favor of an older brother.
Sam cried Dean's death, of that Dean is sure… And then he didn't anymore. He was drinking blood and drowning in yet another fugue. Sam was an addicted, the look of pure hatred that he threw Dean, already proved that.
And then Sam was back, more eaten up by the guilt than ever. And there was Lucifer this time…
It was around that time, that everything had become a little too much. Dean had no faith, never reasons to, but suddenly he was in the eye of a divine battle, with an archangel trying to take his body and another one, guarantying that he would take his baby brother's.
Dean never thought the divine problems were any of his business.
And Sam was losing himself again, without grief, without tears, just pain… And Dean knew that he had to make it stop, to make Sam stop blaming himself for everything.
Famine had came… and He saw the emptiness inside of Dean Winchester. Dean had no ambition, no desires. He was a walking disaster… All he ever wanted was that Sam could be happy, that everything would just happening… Famine couldn't drive him crazy with such an unreal wish.
And then Sam was saying yes. Dean wanted to scream, to strangle his brother – even if it had been their plan. Lucifer was smiling and Dean wanted to die, because that smile? That smile was familiar…
Lucifer had a plan since his baby brother had been born and Dean could remember a presence, now he knew it had been Lilith, encircling his life like a lioness… He could remember Lucifer, lurking on every happiness moment of them. The Devil' smile was as familiar as Sam's dimples.
Sammy… Sam was under that skin, prisoner on his own body and drowned on his own faults. Dean watched his younger brother smile for him one last time, one more time for one last time, and then Lucifer smiled like he had won (and he had, right?) and the hole close and Dean was alone.
Alone, once again.
John had abandoned him when Sam left to Stanford and it was like going back to those days. Except that John was not drinking in some bar or disappeared, he was dead, after burning in hell to save Dean. And Sam was not in Stanford, he was stuck in his own flesh with the Devil as only company.
Dean was alone.
He took his problems to Lisa and let her love him, let her show him what a normal life was. And that was frustrating, because he no longer wanted that life (had he ever?). He wanted to be out there, to feel the adrenalin, to face death… However, Dean had promised Sam. And without Sam, facing death lost meaning. Sam was not coming back.
Sam came back.
Sam didn't come back.
Sam came back without coming back. Dean no longer knew what was wrong Sammy and there was this tiny possibility that took his sleep away: There could be nothing wrong, except that Sam no longer belonged with Dean.
And Dean Winchester couldn't convince himself of letting his brother go.
He was going crazy over this.
Dean brought his soul back. And Sammy begged, he supplicated, that he didn't do it. Dean knew he had been selfish to force the broken, damaged, soul down Sam's throat only so he could have his baby brother back. Sammy, now with his soul, kept chanting "No, you saved me".
The Winchester was not so sure. Sam couldn't be hurt, Sam didn't need to cry over the dead or suffer to live… Sammy, on the hand, was suffering all over again, and smiling and saying that was the right thing to do. That made Dean sick.
Leviathans.
Castiel was god, Castiel was no longer god. Cas was not his friend anymore and Dean put him on the long list of people who died for him, even if Cas wasn't really dead. Castiel begged forgiveness; Dean hummed Metallica "How can I blame you, when it's me I can't forgive?"
Castiel was gone.
Sam was crazy.
Dean had killed a friend of his and, for the first time, he felt bad for killing a monster and his answers sounded like lies to his own ears. His mouth tasted like betrayal.
Sam thought he had never left the cage and honestly? Sometimes Dean thought that too, but god forbid he ever said it out loud. Therefore, Sam was a mad men, only that he could say.
Bobby was dead. Another one.
Bobby wasn't dead and he pretended he had not received Dean's suicide message. Dean would pretend as long as the old man would.
And that all was for nothing, because soon Bobby would be really dead (a shot through his head, he would think the man's death would be more dramatic). And Castiel was back. It was insanity. Things that are dead are supposed to stay dead! People that he loved, weren't supposed to come back only to die again!
But Castiel was back and Sam had lost his small piece of mind. Cas wanted to help, Dean wanted his help and was selfish enough to sacrifice him. Sam was sane again and Cas was in a hospital bad, for them. Dead swallowed down the guilt and didn't look back.
Bobby came back. Dean started to go to sleep waiting for the day John would be back, and if he did, maybe his father could say when had his eldest child missed the turn and made his own life vicious circle of fucking up.
Bobby Singer was now a monster, his second father was becoming a mean spirit, like a Reaper once warned Dean would become. This time, when Bobby left, Dean hoped he wouldn't ever come back.
He hoped, that at least now, the old man could find peace.
Castiel came back, got better from the insanity (Sam's insanity) that had been shoved in his head. Dean waited that his friend (friend?) beat him up for leaving him behind in a hospital. However, Cas smiled like a little child or a high hippie and Dean couldn't understand why everyone kept forgiving him, when he couldn't.
Then, Dick exploded.
He exploded.
Dean woke up in a gray world, where monsters lurked behind every single shadow and Cas wasn't his friend. Or was, and didn't want to be.
The Winchester befriended a vampire and Dean asked himself when did he ate his morals and started to do everything he once crucified. The enemy was more of a brother, than Sammy had been in the last years. The enemy was being more of a friend, that his friend – the angel running from him on the purgatory – was being. The enemy, cared more than Dean did.
Purgatory was war.
The purgatory was a holy war, where he fought for surviving and lived with his most basic and violent instincts. In purgatory there was no right or wrong, only killing or be killed.
Dean said to himself that he hated that place, but his body vibrated there. He felt deserving of it… Finally, he could pay for all those years telling himself lies and killing and becoming everything he once swore to not become. He was clean there.
Purgatory was no Hell.
Benny would prick on Cas and Dean didn't have to pretend being normal, or not broken, or somewhat civil…
Cas stayed. Cas wanted to stay back and Dean couldn't save him. Just like he couldn't before. It was the first sign that he back on the human world: Everything was fucking up again.
Benny left.
Dean found Sammy and discovered the harsh truth: Sammy didn't search for him. And selfishness and hypocrisy was burning Dean' stomach.
He hadn't searched for Sam during that year with Lisa, but somehow, this felt like a betrayal. Dean wanted his brother to search for him, to want him just like he had always wanted the younger one. He couldn't understand why Sam had left him rooting on purgatory for a year without caring!
Kevin Tran was left by Sam too.
For a moment, in his entire life, Dean wished Sammy was not his brother.
And then he knew that everything was done. Dean was tired.
He sighs, lost in those memories, and still watching his gigantic baby brother cry for him. Crying in the cheap motel room, because Sam finally realized that his older brother was beyond any salvation.
Dean doesn't know how long he stays there, watching that pathetic and scary scene.
"The next time you try to kill yourself, do it right" is everything that Sam says, once he notices that Dean is awake and watching him. The Winchester tried not to cringe at his brother's harsh words.
"I was not trying to kill myself" he says, the voice almost gone and his throat aching. Sam raises an eyebrow and throws a plastic cylinder at him.
"Nobody takes a whole bottle of valium with vodka, if they are not trying suicide" Sam's eyes are cold, stoned.
Dean knows that he is furious. And sad. And blaming himself. And a whole lot of shit that only that kid can feel at the same time.
"I was not trying to kill myself…" he whispers and Dean's voice is so low that he can barely understand himself. But Sam does. Immediately he's by his brother' side, his mouth thinner than normal, and his big hand clutching Dean's dirty shirt.
"I didn't… We didn't go through all of this, only for you to drug yourself to death, Dean. You're listening to me? You're not backing down now, you're not giving up" Sam's growling, bigger and dangerous than normal… The rage of a caged animal.
"I'm not stopping fighting, Sam"
"It would be selfish of you to come back only to leave me again" There's something underneath that voice that makes painfully clear why Satan wanted Sam.
Dean closes his eyes and rely in his brother's touch, his brother's yearn, just for a moment "I'm not leaving, Sammy" he whispers.
And Dean hopes he's lying. Because for the first time, he is not being left behind, Dean's leaving and it feels closer to freedom than anything has ever felt. It's not happiness, but Dean Winchester has given up on happiness a long time ago.
He has never told a bigger lie.