Title: Happily Ever After
Author: Shades of Hades
Date: December, 2007
Rating: PG
Pairing: Wincest if you squint or are inclined that way.
Spoilers: Pilot
Words: 383
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: My first fic ever for this series.

Dean Winchester knows that there is no such thing as 'Happily Ever After'.

That was made abysmally clear to him the day he carried his baby brother down the stairs, far away from his burning nursery and dead mother. Far away from what should have been his (their) happy childhood. Instead, he stood with his father and his brother watching it burn to ashes along with those carefree childish hopes he had held just hours before.

Despite the fact that he knew better, it never stopped him from wishing (even if he would never admit to it out loud, because he knew how stupid it would sound even to his own ears) that such a thing DID exist. If only for Sammy's sake. Because even if Dean's own dreams were gone, he knew that Sammy's were not.

Somewhere in the back of Dean's mind, he knew that's why he had always spoiled him rotten and did anything for him, anything to protect his childhood, his innocence, so that Sammy would not have to feel them crumble like he had.

Maybe that's why it hurt so badly to breathe when Sammy said he was leaving.

Sam was leaving to find his happily ever after somewhere else, as someone else, in another life where Dean didn't exist, where Dean couldn't protect him anymore.

He knew that Sam would never find what he was looking for, simply because, despite how much Sam wanted it, it just did NOT exist. He knew that letting him hold on to those immature notions would just end up hurting him in the end when they all came crashing down around his ears, but Dean still clung to the thought that maybe, Sammy would achieve the impossible, because Sammy had always been special.

Dean thought that maybe, even if it wasn't happily ever after, leaving him could at least yield more happiness then Sam could ever have known with him and this life they had fallen into.

However, as Dean Winchester watched the bus swallow his younger brother whole, he couldn't help but wonder if maybe that pain in his chest was because he realized that maybe happily ever after was possible after all and he had just let his slip through his fingers with the rev of a bus engine.