This takes place after "Houses of the Holy." Dean lies awake that night, contemplating what he saw earlier and how it affects his position on the issue of faith in God. Read and review!
Dean sighed as he continued staring at the ceiling of the motel room, frustrated with his inability to sleep. It wasn't often that a job got him so out of sorts. Sure, he wasn't the most relaxed person in the world- hell, he slept with a knife under his pillow- but he'd learned long ago to push things far enough from his mind in order to have some sort of semblance of peace.
Occasionally, though, Dean would work a job that really got to him, made him think or made him worry. Jobs that made him question his own convictions. And Christ, he hated those jobs.
Sam was different. Sam liked to question everything he knew. He liked to find out that things weren't like he'd known them to be. And now Dean knew why. Sam was just in search of some kind of hope. Dean couldn't afford that luxury.
Dean had to be sharp, had to be sure. He couldn't be like Sam, his mind wasted on wishy-washy bullshit like hope. What good was hope going to do Dean with all of the evil sons of bitches out there ready to kill any ounce of hope a person had in them?
No, Dean was smarter than that. It was the reason he wanted to have hard proof of everything. What he wanted was certainty. It just made things so much easier, seeing black and white, no shades of gray in between.
Those occasional jobs that were nothing but shades of gray just pissed him off. They screwed with the certainty that brought him what little peace of mind he could manage.
Like going home and seeing his mother, seeing her save Sammy.
Like the reaper job, when Layla had shocked him by still believing in God, knowing that she would die.
Like the most recent vampire gig, where the damn bloodsuckers weren't really doing much bloodsucking, at least not on humans anyway.
And now, it was this angel thing.
Angel… yea right. He'd been right about Father Gregory's spirit. It was unsettling though, because the 'will of God' that the 'angel' had been expressing had exacted itself before his very own eyes. Now, how was he supposed to sleep easy at night after that?
Dean didn't just believe things. He knew them from experience or hard proof. He either knew something or he didn't, and that was that. He knew that wendigos were a bitch to track and kill. He knew that tall, bulky men -the kind who dressed like truckers, and probably were truckers- with beer guts and a decent buzz were an easy pool hustle, because they were so proud that they underestimated him. He knew that skinny blondes in short skirts were always a good time. He knew that Sammy snored when he slept in a bed but was silent when he slept sitting up in the Impala. He knew that Zeppelin kicked serious ass, and that Sam's taste in music was questionable. Dean knew that his opinions were always right, although Sam liked to point out that they were just his opinions.
One of Dean's certainties, part of the core of what he'd always believed, had been that God was nonexistent, that religion was just bullshit to make people feel better about all of the crap that life had to offer. No, there was no God. There was a crapload of evil, fucked up things in the world, of both supernatural and ordinary kinds… chaos and violence and random, unpredictable evil that comes out of nowhere and rips you to shreds… and there were the people who had the courage to try to stop them. That was what Dean had always believed, and that kept him going on the hunt. He was one of the brave few. He was there to protect the more innocent and naïve, because he hadn't been protected well enough when he'd been one of them.
Really, why the hell should Dean believe in God? God had never helped him out of a tough spot in his life. Whatever trouble Dean was in, he knew that he could only rely on three things to help him out. John, Sam, and himself. And now, that John was gone, that list was down to two. No God anywhere on there.
Sweet dreams, Dean. The angels will be watching over you. The very last words he'd heard his mother say before she'd been killed by that yellow-eyed bastard of a demon. Where had God been the night of the house fire? Where had his angels been?
His mother had honestly believed, and it had always filled him with such love and warmth as a child. But that had been stripped from him the night she'd died.
At first, John had said to Dean, "Mommy's in heaven now. She's an angel, watching over us with the rest of them." He'd told Dean that every night after her death. That had been during the seven months when Dean had not spoken and had been taken to a pediatric psychologist three days a week. Every night of those seven months, John had picked Dean up out of Sam's crib, where the older brother had attempted to sleep every night to protect the baby, and had set him in his own bed with those words of 'reassurance.'
The first time Dean had spoken in those months, John had done just that and had been walking away when Dean had sat up in bed. "There aren't any angels watching over us Daddy," he'd said, almost vehemently. "There's no such thing. Please, don't ever say it again."
John had complied. It had been like the seven months had been Dean's silent contemplation on the subject and those first words had been his conclusion. And even at the age of five, Dean had been impossible to sway from his conclusions without good reason. Besides, it hadn't been like John had believed too much anyway. He'd only said it for the sake of Mary's memory and for the sake of his traumatized son.
Pastor Jim had tried, to no avail, to restore that lost faith in Dean for years. He'd always told Dean to pray for his father whenever he was on a hunt. He'd always told him that praying would help. But Dean had been unreachable in the faith department. How could you repair something like that when enough reason had been given for a four-year-old boy to believe that God and his angels didn't give a shit about him and his daddy and baby brother?
Dean had decided that if God existed, then he wouldn't let so many terrible things happen. And so many terrible things had happened. They'd happened to him. So he'd figured either God didn't exist or God just really hated Dean Winchester for some reason. No way did God really exist.
So why did this stupid hunt have to confuse him so much? And now, so many of his experiences were helping it to confuse him.
Not everything supernatural that they had encountered had been evil. The vamps hadn't been evil; they'd just been trying to coexist with humans. And not all of the ghosts they'd seen had come back with malicious intent. Like Claire Becker, who had just been trying to save some people. Like Dean's mother. She'd stayed around to protect her sons before moving on. She'd stuck around because of love, which was nowhere even close to evil. Love was supposed to be good.
He honestly didn't even know if he believed in good. Sure there was evil, and there were things that weren't evil. But good, like the kind with the capital G? It was too hard to grasp that there was something that was wholly good, in the purest sense.
But then, you come across a person like Layla, who believes so strongly that the Good does exist, that the Good does prevail. A person who has faith beyond all of the crap life dishes out, who wishes well for everyone. So pure and good that Dean almost couldn't believe she had even existed. So much like Dean's mother.
A person like that could make anyone pray, even if it's meant as a kind gesture more than a real, believable hope that praying will work.
Dean had just witnessed something he'd never have believed if he hadn't seen it. God's will. Could that really have been it? Was that the proof he'd been waiting for since that day he'd declared to his father that no angels existed? Was that enough to make Dean hope again? To believe again?
And what if it all was true, all of the things people believe about God? It still didn't explain why the Winchester family had suffered so much. Unless…
Dean closed his eyes as he felt a headache coming on. He took a deep breath through his nose and wished he could just sleep. It was already three in the morning, and, knowing Sammy, his ass would be dragged out of bed by 6:30. But the thoughts of God and angels just wouldn't go away.
What if… Maybe there was really a reason for all of the suffering. Maybe the greater Good was this powerful, real thing, but wasn't powerful enough on its own. Maybe this Demon, the one that held Sam's destiny in its hands, was too powerful for God alone to stop. Maybe every event in Dean's life was shaping him. The fire, raising Sammy, traveling from place to place, never keeping close companions, becoming a great hunter. Maybe it was all shaping him to be part of this war, opposite the side Sam was supposedly meant for.
Maybe Dean himself was part of the proof he needed that the greater Good and God existed, because he was never going to let Sam succumb to the pressures of whatever evil awaits him. And that was one hell of a good thing, wasn't it?