Title: Of Yesterday

Author: dragonfly

Genre: Gen

Summary: Fifty years from now, Dean waits for his little brother.

A/N: Something a little different. Yet, in the end…not at all.

~*~SPN~*~

I found him where I always find him; sitting in his chair, staring out the large bay windows in the television room. Only working here two weeks, I knew it wasn't the lush gardens or water fountain that held his interest. No. He was waiting for someone.

Always waiting for someone.

Walking over, I made it a point to make an obvious approach. Sneaking up behind him would only get me a broken nose. Derek's face was still bruised. Derek should have known better. Never underestimate the residents. No matter how old. Especially if his name is Dean Winchester.

"Are you ready, Mr. Winchester?"

The searching green eyes met mine. "Sammy here yet? He was right behind me."

"No," I answered smoothly. "He's not here yet."

Frowning, his worried eyes returned to the garden. When his hand started to rub nervously up and down his leg, I began to worry that it would be a bad day.

Before I could try and redirect him—usually a pointless feat when it came to his brother, he stopped and shook his head with a fond grin. "Kid probably just got his head in a book somewhere. Lost track of time."

Relieved, I bent over and released the brakes on his wheelchair. "Probably."

I wheeled him into the garden and parked him in front of the large circular stone fountain. He'd never go any further, afraid his brother would worry if he couldn't find him.

"I ever tell you about the time I slayed a dragon?" He looked up at me, his head slightly unsteady from old weary muscles, but with a spark in his eyes that belied his age.

A bubble of excitement flittered through my stomach and I sat on the fountain's stone. I loved his stories. The way he told them… The detail alone would make anyone, even of sane stature, tease the idea that they were real. But the look in his eyes…the excitement and relief when he had killed yellow-eyes, the grief when he had lost Sam to Lucifer and Gadreel was so palpable, some days it was even harder to believe the stories weren't real.

"Sammy had just gotten his soul back," he started as his thick salt and pepper hair was lightly tussled by the wind, voice gravelly and slow from nearly ninety years of use. "He was happy…for a little while anyway, and he was…" he grinned softly, the corner of his eyes wrinkling as the clouds in them lifted some, "Sammy."

Soulless Sam had been hard for Dean to take. His baby brother—the man he had raised, the boy that had looked up to him, the one that wore his heart on his sleeve was nothing more than a "soulless bag of dicks" then. Dean's words, not mine.

As the story goes, anyway.

"We tracked some virgin nappin' dragons down in the sewers and ganked the bastards."

Sometimes Mr. Winchester's vernacular still amused me. "How'd you kill it?"

"Sam was actually the one that killed it, but he couldn't have done it if not for me getting the Excalibur."

"The sword in the stone?" I was a huge fan of the King Arthur tales. "You pulled it out?"

His head canted thoughtfully to the side. "You could say that."

"You blew up the stone, didn't you." It wasn't a question. If I have learned anything from his stories….

"Yup," he admitted without pause.

I laughed, but he fidgeted and sat up straighter in his chair. "Damnit, Sammy." He looked around us. "Where the hell are you?"

Sam. Everything always leads back to Sam.

"He probably hasn't eaten," he worried aloud.

I did what I always did to keep the man together. I lied. "You can share your pie when he gets here."

He scoffed. "He can get his own damn pie."

I looked on sadly as he looked on anxiously. "He was right behind me."

"I know," I said with a lump in my throat. Some days, some days this job was just too hard. Because I did know. I knew the truth that Mr. Winchester either couldn't, or refused to remember most days.

Sam Winchester was dead.

He had died over forty years ago.

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