Title: Code of Silence
Author: SomeoneElsesDream
Rating: PG-13 just to be safe
Author's Note: The hidden heart of Dean Winchester. Spoilers for all of season 2 just to be safe.
Disclaimer: All I own is debt…you can take that anytime you like. The song is Code of Silence by Billy Joel.
Summary: Is it possible to suffocate on silence? To choke to death on what is never said?
Everybody's got a million questions;
Everybody wants to know the score.
What you went through, it's something you should be over now.
Everybody wants to hear the secrets
That you never told a soul before;
And it's not that strange, because it wouldn't change what happens anyhow.
It never occurred to any of them that he might remember. People have near death experiences all the time and they don't remember talking to sweet-faced reapers named Tessa. From the moment he opened his eyes and saw his baby brother, Dean knew he was going to do what he had always done. Protect Sam. Tessa was right, there's always a choice, and he had made his, until his father took the choice from him. No one needed to know what he was going to do, what he was so close to doing. It's what's done that matters. It's done, he's alive, and the rest is between him and God.
But you swore to yourself a long time ago
There were some things that people never needed to know;
This is one that you keep, that you bury so deep
No one can tear it out.
He's afraid. What if Gordon's right? What if he really is just a trained killer? What if this life is the only thing he's good for? What if, underneath it all, he's just one more monster? Somewhere, buried deep and dark inside, he enjoys the killing. Enjoys the rush of a job well done, the heat of the fire from burning bones against his skin, the feeling of his gun in hand, the thrill of the chase. It makes him sick. He wished to God he knew how to do something else, anything else. All the innocent lives he has saved, all the thank-you's, so few and far between, none of it's enough to keep the darkness at bay.
And you can't talk about it
'cause you're following a code of silence.
You're never gonna lose the anger,
You just deal with it in a different way.
And you can't talk about it;
And isn't that a kind of madness
To be living by a code of silence
When you've really got a lot to say.
What's dead should stay dead. It didn't matter how much he drank, or how many beautiful women he took to his bed, nothing made him feel alive anymore. There was this cold ache in his chest, eating at everything else, eating into his heart. Some days he had to concentrate just to breathe, in and out, focus on breathing and maybe he wouldn't feel the oppressive need to cry. How do you pick up your old life? How do you go on once you begin to understand...there is no going back. There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts go too deep; they grab your soul and take hold. Lately it hurt when Sam touched him, but when a guy says he's okay, you take him at his word, even if you don't believe him. Even when he doesn't believe himself.
You don't want to lose a friendship;
There's nothing that you have to hide,
And a little dirt couldn't hurt no one anyway.
And you still have a rage inside you
That you carry with a certain pride
In the only part of a broken heart that you could ever save.
You do what you have to do and you try and forget. And when you can't forget, there are ways to make you stop caring. Pulling the trigger gets easier every time. With each death it gets easier to rationalize, easier to make it all about the greater good. But why does he always have to be the one who pulls the trigger? Why is he always the one who decides who lives and who dies? No one asked if he wanted to play God, they just put a gun in his hand and taught him how. It's not like there's another choice though, because he'll be damned if he lets Sam do the shooting. Now, after all he's done for God, country, and his baby brother, Sam gets infected with some demon spawn virus. Try as hard as he can to protect Sam, and in the end, all he can do, is wait. Wait to live, wait to die, just wait. Suddenly the weight of silence is more than he can bear.
But you've been through it once, you know how it ends;
You don't see the point of going through it again.
And this ain't the place, and this ain't the time,
And neither's any other day.
There is one cardinal rule when dealing with Dean Winchester: Do Not Fuck With Sam. The only person allowed to do that is Dean himself. When Gordon crossed the line, made him wait, with cold terror burning in his chest, to hear his brother come to save him only to die, Dean knew what had to be done. He let Gordon live once, afraid of what killing him would mean, but now he didn't care. As long as Gordon Walker was in the world he was a threat to Sam. Period. End of discussion. Then Sam went and pulled his knight in shining…whatever. It always made Dean feel so terribly old when Sam got all shiny and moral. Didn't he understand what Gordon Walker was? What is it that they say? "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby becomes a monster, and if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." Well take a good look because this boy is sick of playing nice, if the monsters want to come, bring it on. And if the monsters think for one minute that he's going to let them get their hands on Sam…they've got another thing coming.
So you can't talk about it
'cause you're following a code of silence.
You're never gonna lose the anger,
You just deal with it in a different way.
And you can't talk about it;
And isn't that a kind of madness
To be living by a code of silence
When you've really got a lot to say.
If God wants us to have faith, why does he make it so difficult to believe? Some people lose faith because heaven shows them too little, but how many people lose faith because heaven shows them too much? There is a fine line between coincidence and fate, and Dean likes to think he is enough of a realist to see the difference, but what if there isn't one? What if, at the end of the day, it's all just out of control? Hunters live in a world of worst-case scenarios. Dean had cut himself off from hoping for the best because too many times, the best doesn't happen. But every now and then, something amazing happens and against his better judgment Dean starts to have hope. He'll never tell Sam, but sometimes he prays too. Sometimes, when it all just gets to be too much for him, he prays for an answer, and sometimes, he gets one.
After the moment passes
And the impulse disappears,
You can still hold back because you don't crack very easily.
It's a time-honored resolution
Because the danger is always near;
It's with you now, but that ain't how it was supposed to be.
It didn't matter that demons lied as well as they breathed, all that mattered was that this one knew the one lie he wouldn't be able to tell from the truth. Sam. Dean knew something was wrong; something about Sam's reactions just seemed a little…off. Truth be told, Dean didn't put too much thought into it, he had his baby brother back and nothing else mattered. Bloody knives, dead bodies, ugly cars. Dean tried to rationalize it, tried to understand. Just because you break the law, doesn't mean you have intentionally crossed the line into evil. Sometimes the line creeps up on you, and before you know it, you're standing on the other side. Yeah, that worked right up until he took a pistol to the temple. Seeing the truth, accepting it, was one of the hardest things Dean has ever had to do. Demon thinks it can talk to him about a prison made of flesh and bone, of blood and fear, like he doesn't have 24 years of personal experience with it. Honey Dean Winchester wrote the book on suffering, but at least he has the decency to do it in silence. Mostly.
And it's hard to believe after all these years
That it still gives you pain and it still brings tears,
And you feel like a fool, because in spite of your rules,
You've got a memory.
If wishes were horses this beggar would ride that damn beast into the ground. Sam didn't understand how Dean could have believed a world where they were so different was a place worth living, and Dean didn't have the heart to explain, not when he knew his brother wouldn't have understood anyway. Dean never took his own happiness into consideration, not where his family was concerned. If having his mother alive and his brother happily engaged meant that he was going to be relegated to the peripheral of their lives, then that was a price worth paying. The one price Dean couldn't bear was the thought of all the innocent lives they had saved becoming just another unsolved mystery. Tearing his own fantasy apart, killing himself to do it, was one of the hardest things Dean has ever had to do. And he'd do it again in an instant if he had to.
But you can't talk about it
'cause you're following a code of silence.
You're never gonna lose the anger,
You just deal with it in a different way.
And you can't talk about it;
And isn't that a kind of madness
To be living by a code of silence
When you've really got a lot to say.
So this is how it ends. Dean can't honestly say he's surprised, Sam preferring death to becoming a monster, not when Dean would have done the same. It doesn't make it fair, it doesn't even make it easier, it just makes it true. Dean was Sam's first word, he used it for everything, and that one word still has the power to drive his big brother to his knees. No one has ever said his name like Sam does, no one has ever cared enough to try. Will he still be Dean without his brother to name him? Or will he simply fade away like the ghost of a man who's sinned too much for heaven and is too afraid of hell? Suddenly it's too much, too hard, and Dean knows what has to be done. Bobby can be as pissed as he wants; he's not the one who had to hold the body of his dead baby brother. Okay, a single year is a bit of a shitty bargain, but he would have taken less. Is he sure that what he brought back is 100 Sam, no. The important question remains: does he really care? Well…does he have to?
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Author's Note: In case you couldn't figure it out, the episodes used, in order, were: In My Time of Dying, Bloodlust, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, Croatoan, Hunted, Houses of the Holy, Born Under A Bad Sign, What Is And What Should Never Be, and All Hell Breaks Loose II.
P.S. – I really wasn't going to do another song fic, and I especially wasn't going to do anything like this, but when I found the lyrics for this song I was inspired. Season 2 rocked my socks…let's hear it for season 3!!