Soft, sleeping breaths transitioned into a waking gasp. For a moment he stared sightlessly into the gloom above him, breath trembling past his lips. The images of that dream lingered behind his eyes, pleasant and haunting. He found his hands fisting against the familiar ache that closed up his throat as he struggled to breath.
He'd faced nightmares much of this past year, nightmares which woke him with cries and withheld tears, nightmares which left Lisa looking at him with concern and pity. He'd never told her exactly what those nightmares consisted of nor had she ever asked. They both knew he had plenty to fuel his sleeping consciousness. He supposed she even knew that those nightmares were for the most part full of Sam. Yeah, they had a familiar theme to them.
Sam too still in his arms, the scent of Sam's blood on his skin, the mud squelching beneath his knees as he shifted his brother's lifeless form against his chest. The echoes of Cold Oak, South Dakota and all which had been wrought in that spilled blood.
Fear and sorrow in his brother's eyes as they looked at each other that last time in Stull Cemetery, a silent farewell that'd never be long enough for Dean, despite the physical pain he had been suffering. Yeah, he'd have lived forever in that throbbing, consuming pain had it meant he could forstall that parting. How he had watched his brother (his brothers) fall as the violent wind tugged resolutely at his own body, teased him with the nearness of that gaping hole which refused to take him too, despite his silent prayers.
The more nebulous images of an imagined hell, how Sam might be suffering at the mercy of Lucifer and his self righteous brother. And surely, surely those powerful, angry, ancient beings could inflict suffering which surpassed even Dean's understanding of pain. In his mind's eye he saw flesh part, blood spill, bone shatter and knew with every fiber of his being that he could not comprehend just how his little brother was being punished.
It seemed that since Stull all dreams, be they nightmare or no, led to Sam. Perhaps it was the result of the firm exclusion of Sam from Dean's waking thoughts, necessary to get by, to breathe without shattering. Perhaps it was just that his dreams answered the need to have Sam in his life again. Or perhaps Sam had simply found a way to haunt his brother from Hell. So it was with a strange mixture of gratitude and agony that he accept his subconscious. It was, after all, the only chance he had to see his brother these days.
Ironically though, it was a dream with no trace of nightmare which left him gasping to the night for relief now. And, oh, how those beautiful dreams which featured a brother who smiled, who laughed, taunted his older brother with that wry twist of a smile, burned so hard, so deep. For a moment, Dean was happy. Dean was comforted by the closeness of a Sam who was not tortured, was not still, but full of life and laughter. Sure, he had always been tempered by a solemnity which spoke of his intellect...but he had such a penchant for hope. And it had always been Sam who gave Dean his hope. So when he awoke with this memory, full of dimples and scattering laughter, the knowledge of (Lucifer, hell, gone, dead) crippled Dean as grief became new! He wanted to cry.
Instead, he closed his eyes against the darkness and knowledge and pushed his brother from his waking thoughts. Once again forcing aside that which he wanted the most, to simply continue to exist. It was the most he could ask for.