He's survived the goddamned ghost sickness, but that flash of yellow just about gives Dean a heart attack anyway
Title: Wake Up the Dead
Summary: Coda to episode 4 x 06. For spn_flashfic challenge "Promises".
A/N: Title from Ozzy's "Facing Hell".
He's survived the goddamned ghost sickness, but that flash of yellow just about gives Dean a heart attack anyway. He feeds Sam some bullshit—howler monkeys, for fuck's sake—and Sam knows it's bullshit; he just doesn't know quite how high the stink of it rises. Dean thinks his sense of humor must be as dark and twisted as the rest of him, because it's almost funny to him now. It's all been about one promise.
Dean Winchester doesn't promise women forever, or even tomorrow. He doesn't give any guarantees to the people they try to help, except when he does—we're not gonna let anything happen to you, I promise—and even then it's all tangled up with the first vow he ever made. He's still paying for his original sin.
Watch out for Sammy.
Sometimes it seems like hunting's the least of it, something he does in his spare time, a secondary consideration to the main event. It's like he's spent his whole life watching and waiting for something, something's that's coming at them, at Sam. Everything he's ever done, every promise he's ever made has been for Sam, even when he's said it to someone else.
You know I will, Dad.
And he meant those words, with everything he had in him, was so sure he knew what he was offering. He lied, stole and killed to keep his word, until it came right down to it. Sam was laying cold and still and the price of the promise was more than Dean was willing to give. He went and did the one thing most likely to drive Sam over the edge. Went straight to Hell.
But now Dean knows. He knows what Hell means. Because that bitch Lilith was right about one thing—Dean does remember what it was like down there. When Hell wants to teach you a lesson, you will fucking well learn it. He may be thick sometimes, but Dean's got this one down, balls to bone.
If it's the last thing I do, I'm gonna save you.
Dean's done a lot of "last things". He's died three times already, and maybe there really is a God, because now that he thinks about it, kicking his useless ass back into play time after time—making him try it over and over again until he finally gets it right—really does sound more like the act of a cynical God than anything Hell could devise.
Dean's made one promise in his sorry life. Only one. He's seen Hell, and Sam's not going there.
I promise.