"Not Gone"
Author: Kate
Rating: G
Summary: Dean doesn't think of Dad as dead.
Spoilers: Up to 2.01
I
Dean doesn't think of Dad as dead.
He doesn't think of him as gone; he doesn't think of him at all. He thinks of the man he used to be, the man that existed before the demon, the man that existed before Mom didn't anymore. He remembers a time when Dad didn't yell, or scream, or throw punches until he couldn't feel his knuckles. Sam can't.
Sam can only remember the Dad that hated them, hated everything. The Dad who was so devoured by the hunt that nothing else mattered to him, not his sons, nothing. He remembers how the bruises looked after a day of 'training', all purple and red and swollen, and he can still see the scars if he looks hard enough. He can't remember Mom, or how she would tuck him in every night, and tell him about the angels that would always look after them, him and Dean.
Dean thinks sometimes that Sam reminds him of Mom, he can see the softness in his face when he's asleep, the emotion in his eyes when he isn't. Can see that the hunt means so much more to Sam than saving lives—knows that somehow, his brother thinks that by saving people, he will save himself. And Dean hopes that it will, prays to the Angels his mother so readily believed in for forgiveness for the things he has done, to Sam and to Dad. For the times he has slipped up on a hunt, missed something that caused another life to be taken.
He prays that Mom and Dad are together, that John finally found a way to live the life that was taken from them so violently, that he's at peace, but mostly, he prays that Dad has forgiven him for letting things get like this.
Because he doesn't think of Dad as dead.