Title: Melancholia
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: T, to be safe
Genre: Angst
Wordcount: 440
Characters/Pairings: Dean, mentions of Sam, John and Azazel
Warning: Suggestions of suicidal thoughts, but nothing graphic. Blink and you'll miss it.
Summary: The depression of Dean Winchester. Set in season 2 after John dies, but before Sam's death.
To say it's confusing is an understatement. Sometimes he doesn't get it, and it's all about him. Part of him knows he doesn't have a choice. He's been chosen for this life, although he doesn't know who picked him. Their Dad? Old Yellow-Eyes? Sam, or maybe Dean himself? He isn't sure, and he isn't sure that it matters.
Sam matters. He knows that, even if he's having trouble remembering the rest of the song and dance. Sam deserves more than Dean can give him with the gaping hole in his chest, and more than he could give him when he was whole. So even while Dean rips apart at the seams, he's doing it with a smile. Because that's all he is now, just pieces of the whole that was, at one point, Dean Winchester.
There is the part that wonders what's wrong, and one that thinks he should man up, sounding an awful lot like John in the process. But they aren't all. There's the part that screams, the part that cries, the part that feels somewhat normal, and the part that is scared to look in the mirror, is scared of what he may have become since the last quick glimpse. There are the bigger parts too, like the part that is angry at everything, like Sam for being the younger son, or the rebel, or strong enough to follow his own path and not be another John Winchester, or angry at John for training his boys to be soldiers, not children, and, of course, angry at himself for not being like Sam, or exactly like John, and mostly just angry with himself for feeling this way. There's also the part that is just numb, empty, and it takes up most of him right now.
But there's also the good bits, like the piece that pulls him back together, for now, and tells him to be strong and to keep fighting for just one more day, because Sam needs him and that's all he has left. But there's also a piece, attached to the one that fights by tiny strings of Dean's soul, that is tinier than all the others, although Dean hears it more and more, has started to look for it when things go from bad to worse. It's one word, whispering over and over in Sam's voice in little spaces in the emptiness in Dean that he didn't know he had.
"Depression."
Maybe, Dean thinks to himself, someday he'll be strong enough to do something about it. Maybe one day he'll be able to do something about it for himself, not for Sam, and that is what's important.