Don't Look Back
By Estei
Summary: John knows he taught his boys to protect each other and Dean considers his father's other legacies.
Rating: T for mild language and violent images.
Disclaimed: I own nothing
John still remembers the smell of her lotion. It was a cheap brand that came in a yellow bottle and she kept it on the bedroom dresser. It smelled very faintly like roses, not the wild roses that she loved, but the kind that beckoned from the fridges at the grocery store. He saw the lotion at a drugstore, after, and he held the bottle in his hand for so long that the girl at the desk got nervous. Without really thinking about it John bought the lotion. It was still cheap, but not that cheap, and when he got in the car John realized that he hadn't gotten cough syrup for Sammy and now there wasn't enough money for any. He could have gone back in and returned the lotion, except he couldn't, without really knowing why.
It didn't smell the same when he lifted the cap and held the bottle beneath his nose. He'd known it wouldn't. He wanted to weep when he realized that the difference had more to do with hearing Sam cough than with the absence of Mary's warm, lotion slick skin. He put the bottle at the bottom of his suitcase, and even though he never opened it again, he never threw it out either.
John pushed his sons away, he knows that now. The difference is that Dean was too stubborn to move, and Sam was too vulnerable to be unhurt by the rejection. Still, Sam might never have left because he and Dean were so close they sometimes seemed like one entity, a DeanSam. There are things that can tear asunder even a DeanSam, and the Winchesters found such a thing in Montana when Sam was sixteen. John had always known that there were creatures that could cut deeper than skin, and sinew and bone, but he hadn't reckoned on the cost until the day something foreign looked at him with Sam's eyes. All demons are not created equal, and this one was like nothing John had ever encountered. By the end John had been sure Sam was lost, and his relief when Sam was found shattered into something insidious. Sam had needed him then, needed more than incantations and symbols drawn into the frozen ground, but John had been too broken to see. Dean had tried to pick up the slack, always Dean, but this time he couldn't do it alone. Cracks lengthened and widened until parts of Sam flew out from under Dean's hands like water sluicing between fingers. John doesn't wonder why Dean still trusted him after that, a trust still not shaken even when Sam walked out the door with a bag over his shoulder and recriminations on his lips. He knows then that Dean will always trust him. It doesn't occur to John until much later that Sam didn't leave because he stopped trusting his father, or even Dean. He left because he stopped trusting himself, and John knows that this is much, much worse.
John knows the end is coming, and it's not a distant reckoning, it's right now as the pool of blood spreads outward. It doesn't really upset him, and he doesn't bother thinking about why. He's seen the boys, and it sure turned into a bloody dust up. The claw marks from the daeva have faded into red lines. The marks on his boys will scar, and that pisses him off. When he closes his eyes he sees Sam's face, bloody and haunted. John never did right by Sam or Dean, but he taught them how to fight the dark and that's not nothing. Together, Sam and Dean are damned near unstoppable. John watched them, watched how they moved in and out of each others space, never straying far no matter how much physical distance was between them. Protecting his sons, Mary's sons, has been his lifework. Finding Mary's killer always took a backseat to that, so he's not disappointed or bitter when the killer finds him. He knows that Dean and Sam can protect each other, and no one ever gets closure anyway.
Dean knows that he's dreaming. He knows because it's nighttime and he's standing on the bridge in Jericho, and both his father and brother are with him. Sam and Dad are standing off to the side, together but apart. Dean recognizes the tension, and winces when he realizes that these are not present-Sam or Dad, but figures from five years past. Sam is unnaturally pale, a canvas of bruises beneath his clothes. Dean doesn't want to look too closely, so he doesn't. Sam calls it repression, but Dean knows its survival. There are things Dean won't, can't, dwell on and that damned thing from Montana is one of them. In the sliding scale of difficulty according to Dean Winchester, exorcisms are easy. Pretty damn easy as long as the thing you're exorcising isn't coming out of your kid brother. The aftermath of that never really settled and time went on and the edges got dull, but never went away.
"Sam, check out the drop." John says. Sam glances at him sideways, and Dean waits for an argument, but then Sam shrugs too-thin shoulders and moves to the guardrail. Dean shuffles a little closer, wary, and he frowns when Sam grips the closest beam and pulls himself up on the rail.
"Sammy," An admonition, a warning. Sam is looking down at the churning water below. Dean moves closer still, pissed. "Sam, what the hell?"
Sam whispers something that Dean doesn't catch and leans forward. He lets go of the beam and the only sound is Dean's cry.
Dean can't move and it takes him a second to realize why, his father is holding him from behind.
"Let him go, Dean. He has to work through this on his own." Dad says, his arms like a vice.
"What? Jesus, Dad, he just jumped! Dad!" Dean struggles, but Dad just keeps saying the same thing over and over.
Dean almost falls out of bed when he wakes, and he clutches the bedcovers as his head swims. He takes a moment to orient himself then looks to the next bed, eyes blinking in the darkness. Sam is sleeping, blankets twisted around his chest and one arm hanging off the edge of the bed. Dean could touch his hand if he reaches out, but he rolls over instead and tries to control his breathing. It's been a long time since he had this time, but he recognizes it all the same. The details are different, they usually are, but Sam still kills himself and Dad still tells Dean to let go. Dean doesn't need any Dr. Phil psychoanalysis to understand what his subconscious is saying; he just wishes his subconscious would shut the hell up on this particular issue.
Dean shuts Sam out sometimes, shuts him out and shuts him down. Sometimes the hurt is too close to Dean's vulnerable centre and on days like those he turns his back to Sam's sideways glances and open questions. Dean's never been able to talk about his feelings and fears, but Sam used to. The ease of sharing starting falling away from Sam after Montana, when John and Dean encouraged him a little too enthusiastically to just forget it. Now Sam is just as tightlipped about his own pain as his brother or father ever were, and Dean wonders how the hell he ever could have thought that would be a good thing.
"Want to talk about it?" Sam's sleep-hoarse voice startles Dean. He half turns and sees that Sam's eyes are open and watching him.
"What?" Dean asks.
"The nightmare." Sam says. Dean hesitates. The answer is obvious, no, but he's shaken enough to want to hear Sam's voice beside him.
"I do read, you know," He says. Sam blinks and feels the remaining drowsiness seep out of him. He'd woken up without knowing why, and then quickly become aware of Dean gasping and shivering in the next bed.
"I know," Sam replies. It suits his current purpose because it's both true and seems to be the safest answer. When Dean doesn't say anything Sam presses on. "Well, not so much anymore. When we were kids you read all the time."
When Dean thinks about books he always thinks about Animal Farm first. He read it when he was fifteen, and loved it immediately. He'd figured then that Orwell had the whole shitty human race pegged.
"Man, you would go on for hours about Animal Farm, trying to explain it to me." Sam finds himself smiling at the memory. Dean snorts and thumps his pillow.
"Yeah, but you were too dumb to get it." He says, impressed that Sam would remember such a mundane detail.
"Dude, I was eleven." Sam protests, but there's no heat to it. Silence stretches between them, familiar and soft. Sam wants to ask Dean again about the nightmare, but he knows Dean will just brush him off. "Where do you think Dad is?" He trades one unwelcome question for another, but Dean doesn't throw anything at him so Sam figures its okay.
"Wherever he is, he's safe and sleeping. Sleeping. You're familiar with this concept, right?" Dean rolls onto his stomach and lays his cheek against the pillow.
"Ha ha," Sam smiles into the darkness.