-Any Other Way-

Dean's thoughts as he thinks about the world the Djinn created. And why he's glad he left. Obviously plays off of 'What Is What Should Never Be'. Characters not mine. Written in about 10 minutes while dead tired and freezing... so excuse any spelling errors. I'll fix them in the morning. Hope ya like!

Dean's been overanalyzing every detail of his Djinn encounter. Has been for the last few days. He's let Sam drive, let him handle checking into rooms and getting food and researching. He even lets Sam watch over him like a mother hen. He's let him handle everything. Because he's still thinking about that damn dream and whether he made the right decision in walking away from it or not.

Sam tries to get him to talk about it, tries to tell him that no matter what it was -just a dream- and not reality.

And when he finally does tell Sam, it scares both brothers because they can both see that Dean would give up his own happiness for someone else. Even in a dream world, a world created by Dean's subconscious, as Sam theorizes. Even there, he was willing to stay so everyone else could be happy.

He knows Dean would have been miserable there. There's no hunting. Which most people would consider a good thing, but they've been doing it for too long, too many years of knowing what is really out there, in the darkness, and no amount of magic can make them forget that.

There's no Dad. There isn't any Dad here anymore, ether, but Dean hasn't really seen his mother since he was four (not counting that brief meeting when they save that family from the same fate they went through), and Sam thinks conversation might get awkward after a while. And that's the third thing.

Sammy isn't there either.

Oh, there's a Sam. But not Dean's Sam. Not the baby brother who he's protected all his life. The Sam that he would trade his own life for, knowing that that younger would do the same in a heartbeat. Not the Sam that has his back no matter what, the one who knows all the weird code words, escape plans, and the details about the hunts.

In the Djinn's world, Sam can barely stand to make conversation with him. In the real world, they don't need conversation because they've lived with each other so long that they can read each other better than they can read themselves.

They aren't together in the other world, either. Sam has Jess. And Dean has some strange woman named Carmen from some beer ad he saw in a magazine once. And, yeah, they had Mom, but Dean didn't want that world if he couldn't have Sammy.

And that was another thing. He was the only one who could get away with that name. It was solely his. Sam had told him that he didn't even like Jessica calling him that. But, fake-Sam didn't let him use it at all.

So, in the end, the decision was easier than he thought it would be.

And it all came down to his brother.

A Sam who barely spoke to him. A Sam who didn't get the inside jokes he'd known all of his life. A Sam who Dean could pin to the ground in a matter of milli-seconds, as pathetic as that was. A Sam… well… who wasn't Sam. But, a Sam who had a normal life. Which is what the real Sam had always wanted.

Or.

He could have -his- Sam. The one who would always be by his side. The Sam that had sworn to never ever leave him again. The Sam who's saved his life, the Sam whose life he's saved. The one that knows the only reply to 'bitch,' is 'jerk,' and who knows that he always picks scissors. The Sam that he gets to hold when he sleeps.

When he's finally finished scrutinizing every little detail, he knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that he made the right choice. He knows he's known that all along. He knows that the doubts were because it has to be imprinted in his damn DNA somewhere that he tries to sacrifice himself for his family far too often to be healthy.

And Sam is more than overjoyed to have him back to normal again. Or… whatever is normal for them, anyway.

He really wouldn't have it any other way.