To Dew-san who has returned to us in the beginnings of her splendour and who inspired the search into Sam's dark side. May she write a full SPN fic that will rock the foundations of the very fandom so hard that it will echo in the series
Dad
Dad.
It had become a dirty word that Sam mentioned in extreme agitation mingled with shameful glee. Dean would get caught in between snapping fury and helpless grief. It was a filthy, forbidden word that the brothers tried to ignore fully aware that they couldn't.
The thing is it wasn't about Dad.
Sam had thought it would be so easy. If he just remembered Dad enough, if he had just loved Dad enough now that he was gone, he could just about forget how the very last few thoughts he had of his father dripped with venomous suspicion. And the minute Dean had woken him up from his perfect little daydream of a plan he found himself gripped with an unbearable guilt with no where to run and only a single truth to cling to. So he held on to it to never let go.
Things weren't so easy.
Dean wasn't so easy to hold on to. Dad's death was more than a loss, it tore an accusatory gap in their lives with the glaring loss of The Colt hinting of a demonic deal that cast a treacherous doubt on his right to breathe and live a life he had once enjoyed so freely for all its shortcomings (they were never his). Sam couldn't figure it out at first but Dean was no where as mad with anyone than he was with Dad for handing him a life that came with a receipt of a loved one's soul condemned to the unimaginable torments of hell.
It's worse than dying.
Those words haunt Sam. That tortured look in Bill Carlton, a defeated old father's eyes. It shamed him to think it but he didn't want to see them on Dean. The fear and self- disgust was as strong as the bile in his throat but he didn't want Dean to look back at him with that gaze that had broken from caring. He wanted Dean to cry and rant and rage and cling on to him just as he clung to Dean.
"It's alright, Dad wanted it this way," Sam wanted to assure.
But then Dean would never look at him the same way again. Because it wasn't about what Dad wanted, it was about what Dean wanted and damning his family members wasn't part of that. It took Sam some time to figure it out, but he never felt he let down anyone more than Dean. Dean could always be relied on to give up his freedom for his family; first for Dad and his wild demon hunts across the country and now for Sam himself to live out this heavy, bartered life.
". . .and now I'm going to lose you too," he had pleaded.
Crueller words were never spoken, except perhaps whenever he brought Dad in.
"We gotta keep going . . . for him," Sam could just manage without punching himself in sheer self- loathing.
What made it all the more painful was that if Dean ever learned the truth he wouldn't bruise his brother senseless as Sam often fantasized. Sam knows that if he ever confessed Dean would smile languidly and wave it all away.
"Sammy, come on . . . it isn't always about you," he would say.
And Dean would never frown over Dad in his presence ever again, making it harder than it already was to hold on to Dean like at the end of a hunt when Dean just sat in his bed, stripped of the adrenalin- charged chase in solitary contemplation. It would be harder to watch him force a smile or a leer, much more painful to hold on to him then, but not impossible considering the alternative.
After all, Dean had been uncannily accurate in his observation of how alike his father and brother were. They weren't just selfish in their thirst for revenge, they were also incredibly selfish when it came to their loved ones. Discarding them without as much as a whim and latching on to them when they had nothing else. Jessica and Mom were parallels he could see that now, and would it be much later, he wondered that he would see how Dad and him would be parallels for Dean as he shuffled through the thumb- worn sheaf of papers on possible psychics. Perhaps his demonic godfather would see it fit that he, like Dad, burn in hell for eternity.
Perhaps then only would Dean would find release and live as he was meant to. But until then, Sam wanted him.