Hello, my dear, dear readers. This is my first fiction in the Supernatural fandom, soooooo, I hope you enjoy. This is essentially a Dean-centric, season 4 centric (with spoilers through the end of six or seven) fiction. It's not very long, and is more or less, a monologue.
Now presenting,
"Worth Living For" (alternately titled "Carry On [My Wayward Son]" or "A Lesson Learned")
When he went to Hell, he had been ready to die for his family. If Sam wasn't worth dying for, then what was? But, honestly? If it weren't for the whole saving Sam bit, he would say going to Hell was the worst mistake he had ever made- and he had made a lot of mistakes.
Truth was, he'd been there before, and saving Sam had been as much an excuse as a reason. It really wasn't all that surprising.
He had been there after Sam left. On every hunt he and Dad did after that, the thought crossed his mind- it would be so easy to not dodge, to just go down and stay down. It would look like an accident- a poltergeist that would be a bit too fast, or a werewolf (and wouldn't that be cool?)that would be a bit too close when the moon rose.
They would make ashes of his corpse and make speeches about the Great Dean Winchester- the one who kept going when the going got tough, not the one who seemed to kill everything he touched, which was good for monsters, but not good for his school career, that pet fish when he was ten, or his family (so it was no wonder that Sammy left, that he had to jump off the sinking ship while he could, because the only thing Dean really cared about, he failed at).
But Sam was still there, just further away, and his Dad needed him to be here.
So he kept going until he was tired and past his expiration date and carrying so much shit that he just wanted it all to be over. But it didn't work like that (of course it didn't, he was a Winchester and it was Hell, so why the fuck had he thought differently?).
Hell wasn't a peaceful eternal therapy of shoveling coal and burning. No, sir, it was a new, anguished existence as one of the evil sons of bitches that he'd spent a lifetime hunting.
He did see what his death did to Sam and Bobby (and he sometimes thought they had to have taken a day pass down in a hand basket to see him)… He told himself that at least Sam was alive, and that somehow made it worth it.
After Hell, he was so empty that Famine couldn't make him feel. After Sam jumped into the Pit, there was only Bobby (which wasn't much because, mostly, he relied on Bobby and didn't think that Bobby might depend on him, too) and a promise. After trying to cling so hard to the last vestiges of faith he had in any being, he still lost Cas to himself.
These were events that pushed a man more than should be humanly possible, and through it all, that thought, how it would just be easier to check out of life's motel early, maybe leave the bill to be paid by management, never left.
Then he would remember that management was on an extended vacation, so someone else would have to pay, and Sam couldn't, because Dean ran the credit card scams, and Bobby couldn't, because it had been at least ten years since the salvage yard had been anything but a front, and Cas couldn't, because if he had a nickel, it was because Jimmy left it in the trench coat's pocket.
So, in the end, he wouldn't not dodge and he wouldn't be the one they burned on the pyre that day. He kept living, because life was shit, but family was worth living for.
So, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you found it worth your time and effort, because it certainly wasn't worth two very long A/Ns. I'm afraid I'm more than a little tired, and, resultantly, out of it.
Still, I hope you enjoyed this enough to review below. :)