AN: Just a short drabble from the end of season 6. Yes, I know that we're in season 9, but I'm new to the fandom and it had to be written.
Forgiveness.
It was something Dean Winchester never gave and always gave. He never gave it to anyone who hurt his brother, but always gave it to Sam. No matter how bad the kid screwed up, no matter how far "off the rails" he went, Dean always forgave his Sammy sooner or later. And it was usually very, very soon.
This hard and fast rule that Dean had always stuck to was just part of "protect Sammy" modus operandi. Anything that hurt his brother paid, probably with their life. And Cas had.
Dean sat in the back seat of a stolen suburban Bobby had procured and fingered the bloody trench coat that his best friend had died in. He wanted to be angry. He wanted to that winged bastard, in truth he was just tired. Tired in a way that reminded him of the bone-deep weariness he'd felt dealing with Sam and his demon blood addiction.
He snorted. Seemed like everyone he let into his heart either died or betrayed him. Or both. Bobby glanced back at the sudden sound at their eyes met. Bobby was tired too, Dean realized. He was too old to be fighting power-crazed angels.
"How is he?" the old hunter asked quietly.
Dean looked down at his not so little brother whose head was lying in Dean's lap. Sam had curled his long legs up in a way that would have been comical if it weren't for the circumstances.
He'd collapsed shortly after Cas had done his disappearing act. Dean had Bobby had barely managed to keep him semi-conscious enough to wrangle him into the back seat. When Dean had tried to extricate himself from his brother's lap, Sam clung to him in a way he hadn't since his "monkey phase" as a toddler. So Dean had given up and crawled in beside him.
It was uncomfortable, for Dean at least. The backseat of a soccer mom vehicle was not meant to hold to well-built men, both over six feet, but unconscious Sam seemed to take comfort in his older brother's presence the same way he had as children and the only monsters he had to worry about were in the closet.
"Well?" Bobby asked again.
Dean just shrugged.
"How do you think?" Usually his answer would have sounded petulant and snappish, but tonight he just sounded like he was dangerously close to crying.
Sam whimpered in his sleep an twitched, dreaming or remembering things that Dean didn't even want to think about his baby brother going through.
Dean fingered the trench coat again before tossing it into the back with more force than was strictly necessary. The dead angel that was his friend, his family, would never be absolved of his crimes against Sam Winchester. Dean would hate him until the day he died. He would never forgive Castiel for his betrayal.
He repeated this mantra to himself a few months later as he drove towards the hospital Sam lay dying in, with an amnesiac angel in the front seat and a demon in the back.
I'll never forgive. I'll never forgive. I'll never forgive.
Except he did. The moment he handed Castiel back the trench coat, that cleaned and kept in the back of his car despite his proclamations of loathing, he knew that the angel had wormed his way into his heart right alongside Sam.
He would always forgive.
end