A/N1: set during the Bunker era, but before Episode 300.

That dream. Always that dream.

After a night of too little sleep and too many memories, Sam pushed himself out of bed and scuffed down the hallway to the kitchen. Dean was already there, up and dressed and at the stove. He said, "Hey," and Sam mumbled some reply and pulled a bowl from the rack and a box of cereal from the counter.

"Bad night?" Dean asked.

"Didn't sleep much."

Dean didn't tell him he should go back to bed, there was no point in that. He said, "How 'bout I make you some pancakes?" and gestured to the pan on the stove and Sam said, "Yeah, thanks," because it was easier than getting himself a bowl of cereal. He set the bowl and the cereal on the counter and set himself at the table and closed his eyes.

That dream. Always that dream. Always that nightmare that only got worse the more years that passed. The pain of it faded now at least, with Dean, only with Dean. The dream, the memory, the loss, the unfairness of it. It faded with Dean, just Dean.

"Sammy?" and it was how quiet Dean said it as much him just saying it that pulled Sam from his near-sleep and he opened his eyes to his breakfast, pancakes and eggs and bacon and coffee, and Dean sitting down with his own breakfast right across from him.

He cleared his throat, said "Thanks," with less energy than he wanted, and ate his breakfast. Dean said, "Sure" and nothing else and Sam felt his focus on him even as Dean ate his own breakfast.

Dean asked, "What was it?" An alternative to asking 'do you want to talk about it?' He asked it when Sam's breakfast was half-finished. He asked it as though he was hardly interested in the answer. He asked it because he wanted to know and Sam was going to tell and they were going to sort it out. He asked it because he was Dean.

"A dream. About Dad. When he died. I didn't say goodbye." It was a recuring dream, a painful dream. It was a stupid dream. Who really ever got to say goodbye? Dean hadn't gotten to say goodbye to Dad, either, really. The only people lucky enough to say goodbye were the ones lucky enough to live for however long knowing how unlucky they were. Which was better? "You know, I dream hell and I wake up and I'm safe and I'm here. I dream monsters and I wake up and I'm safe and I'm here. I dream I didn't get to say goodbye to Dad and I wake up and I didn't get to say goodbye to Dad."

Dean put his fork down and picked his coffee up and he was going to explain to Sam, comfort Sam, try to protect Sam from one more agony in a long list of agonies. But was it an agony? Or was it the agony? Was it the agony that compounded every other agony on an ever growing list?

"Sammy..." That was the be-all, catch-all, bandage-all response when Dean had no fast and sure remedy. When he had no remedy at all except that he was there, would be there as long as Sam needed him to be. "You know, Dad knew, he knew it was – he knew."

Dad knew it was goodbye.

It was small, it was true, but it was so small.

"I just wish – " He wished, he wanted, he dreamed it so many times. "I just wish I could."

"I wish you could, too, Sammy. If I could change that, if there was some way of changing that, I would."

There wouldn't be any way of changing it. Even in their lives, Sam had no hope there'd ever be a way of changing it. "Thanks for making breakfast," he said and Dean answered, "Yeah," and set down his coffee and picked up his fork and they finished eating.

The End.

At root, a pearl is a 'disturbance', a beauty caused by something that isn't supposed to be there, about which something needs to be done. It is the interruption of equilibrium that creates beauty.

Julia Cameron

A/N2: I would greatly appreciate prayers and good thoughts, please, for a young Polish priest who is a friend of the Pastor of my church and has served at Mass a few times when Father was out of town. He's a good man, a good priest, he was sick and developed sepsis which has gone to his brain and the doctors say he's dying from it.