"Family Business."
Mystic25
Rating: PG for some language.
Summary: Chuck writes about Season 8.
A/N: Just a ditty I wrote. Narrated by Chuck.
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"Just because you're blood doesn't make you family, you gotta earn that."
~Dean Winchester
Supernatural: Episode: "And Then There Were None."
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Dean's brother Sam was – everything.
Especially when he was gone and Dean could feel that everything like a wound that pulsated, and ached and made him feel so completely empty it threatened to destroy him.
So when he was betrayed by his brother after Purgatory Dean felt nothing but hurt, and angry, and alone. And as much as Benny was "like a brother" to him, he would never be Dean's brother.
Because of this betrayal, Dean wanted to hate Sam, hate him for abandoning him, and leaving him like a cheap date in favor of some girl he met.
But he never could.
Because no matter how much it hurt when Sam was gone, it hurt more when he was with him; the kind of pain that comes from this mixed up crazy life thing, from loving something so much it squeezed the breath out of you. The kind of hurt that Dean wanted to hold onto with both hands, and remember because it was a Life kind of hurt.
And that still counted for something.
Especially on nights when Sam screamed from nightmares about hell and Lucifer burning off his skin and eating it, and about other memories that Castiel could never really erase.
Dean never slept on those nights. He sat up with Wild Turkey, and with Sam, and could do nothing but keep of a litany of "I'm here." to his brother, and feel his insides being torn away until it was morning and the screaming stopped.
And when that happened, when Sam was lucid again, and saw his older brother bleary eyed in a rickety chair with an empty liquor bottle clutched tightly, they never spoke a word.
Sam knew about Dean's nightmares too of course. He heard them every night. Purgatory wasn't the Cage, but it still was the stuff that made a grown man scream. Dean came home with more scars, more age lines, more of a heavier gait and heavier drinking binge than when he left. Sam never called him out on his nightmares, he knew Dean wouldn't want him to know, to see his weakness. It was the Big Brother Code. And they were supposed to be equal partners, but there were a few rights that Sam was willing to let Dean keep.
Sam hated that Benny was considered more of a brother by Dean. But deep down, he hated why more. He never meant to abandon his brother. He never meant to do anything in that year, other than die in such a gruesome way that he would join Dean in Purgatory and somehow get him out, or at least go down with him.
But of course, mixed up crazy life got in the way, a dog, pretty girl, an a angry brother. And if Sam were completely honest with himself, he cared more about the last than the second or the first. Amelia was wonderful, but she could never be Dean.
So, where does it go from here?
I wish I could tell you it all ends with happy memories and marriage proposals and grandchildren. But, honestly, I don't think Sam or Dean would want that. For all their wanting to get out of the Life, they never stopped to think that they are each other's life, and when it all hit the fan – they would go down, guns blazing, in a pit full of monsters, together, the same way they started.
It may not seem like a fitting end for a post apocalyptic story about two brothers who fight evil. One would think there would need to be more guns and phasers, and bad ass ninja skills. but it was never like that to Sam and Dean.
It was always just about family.
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End.
R/R please.
Mystic