This fic gets pretty dark, guys.
Disclaimer: I don't own anyone or anything affiliated with Supernatural.
…
"Dean, did… did you see… well did you see Dad while you were in hell?"
Dean only looks up from cleaning his gun momentarily. His eyes taking on that hooded look that says that he's not here, he's somewhere far away in his memories.
He sets down the gun, and in the far distance, he can hear Sam's nervous tick of a bouncing knee to go along with his erratic breathing.
Sam had been working on this moment in his head ever since Dean came back. He's just not as good at pulling emotionless faces and voices as his older brother is. But part of him does want to be that transparent though. It causes Dean to get uncomfortable sure, to see anyone get emotional. However, he knows that he's just doing his part in balancing out the numb with at least something. That is just the Winchester brother's way though, to balance each other out. Wherever one is lacking in something, the other has too much of it, and so on. Whereas, Sam can be overly emotional, and Dean can at times have no feeling at all.
Sam has just about given up on getting any kind of answer from his brother until Dean begins to rub his chin. Something about the gesture makes Sam get up from his resting spot near the headboard to sit down on the edge of the bed, the one closest to the table chair where Dean's sitting.
Dean turns his head to the window with a look so disconnected from here that Sam is almost tempted to look out the window himself, but something tells him that if he did look, that what he would see is something completely different than what Dean is seeing in this very moment.
Finally Dean's mouth opens and the darkest corner of Dean reveals itself.
"When I got there, I just kept looking and looking for him to show up. I kept thinking that I was going to be strapped down to his rack."
"Dean," Sam interrupts sadly, feeling guilty for even bringing it up.
But Dean's already too deep into his own memories. He's back there. Coming undone. Unleashing a part of himself that doesn't sound like himself at all. And Sam is sad to think it, but this person in front of him now isn't completely Dean anymore. He had died once himself and he knows better than anyone that what's dead should stay dead. But yet here they are, alive to talk about it.
"You know… every time I got strapped to a newbie's rack, and I would look to see if it was Dad… I was a little disappointed each time when I would look up and see that it wasn't him," Dean says as a shaky breath caused his voice break.
"Dean, you don't have to do this," Sam tells him as he hunches his back and rests his elbows onto his knees so that he can give Dean that deep sorrowful look that his older brother hates so much. Dean hates empathy. But he's not looking at Sam, he just keeps staring out the window at only God knows what.
He can't even hear Sam trying to give him an out of this painful conversation. He just can't see past the smoky, deserted looking plains that lack the greens and browns of the earth. Blacks and grays all around, with red puddles of blood covering the ground around the areas, where racks stood into place.
"I guess when I figured out how lonely it was going to be without you there, I figured that I at least had Dad there with me. Isn't that screwed up? I was glad that Dad was there too. You know, I think that's why I lasted as long as I did, before I got off the rack and started torturing souls myself. Because I knew somewhere Dad was there too, and since he had not been one of the people slicing and dicing me, then I just knew that he had to be there taking the same amount of hell I was."
Sam's eyes are frozen on Dean's unraveled expression. The emotion on his face is so hard to look at, but at the same time, he can't tear his eyes away.
Ever since Dean had held confession with him on the side of a road about how hell works, Sam had begun to wonder about their father. So he chose to ask Dean about him while Dean cleaned his sawed-off today. He figured it would be best to get him while he did something that helped him relax, but now he knows it was a mistake.
Dean's face tightens and his chin begins to quiver in that agonized way and tears start to fall. "You know the worst part about it is… every time I had a new soul delivered to me, the human part of me that hadn't died yet, was just so scared it was going to be Dad. I lived with that fear lingering over my head until I was pulled out."
Sam's been edging closer and closer to his brother without even realizing it, just one more inch and he'll butt the carpet. He's doing everything in his power not reach out and embrace him to make it all better like Dean has always done for him. But this is Dean, and if he can keep himself from embarrassing his older brother, then that's at least something.
"Dean, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have made you talk about it," he says with his own set of unshed tears shining at Dean. But Dean's still not here enough to notice.
Sam feels like the worst brother ever for what he's about to do. But there was just one more question that he had.
"Dean… what about Bela? Was she there?"
And just like that, Dean's tears have disappeared. He casts his eyes up at nothing, cold and unreachable. He grabs his gun and starts oiling it again.
"Yeah… Bela was there."
The little brother in Sam is starting to come out, and he's having a hard time between feeling the need to protect Dean from having to relive any of this, and finding another missing piece of the puzzle that made Dean who he is today. Sam didn't realize before but he's shaking all over; the intensity of the moment is causing his body to react in an unattainable way.
"Dean… was Bela ever on your rack?"
Dean's shoulders are visibly trembling and Sam thinks he's hit his breaking point, but Dean has never failed him.
"No… they wouldn't allow us contact after…" and he shuts off, still cleaning the same gun that's already good as new.
Sam stretches his neck out further if at all possible. "After what, Dean?"
"Well you see Sam, sometimes the undead can get really creative. Sometimes they like to have more than one person on the rack at a time."
Sam's eyes widen and his breath hitches at the mere thought. He can't even fathom what Dean had just revealed to him.
"Yeah, when they had us strapped next to each other, they didn't like the fact that Bela and I tried to console one another and so they separated us," he admits with shoulders that have stopped trembling and that have just dropped fully obviously body language of someone who feels defeated.
Suddenly Dean stops cleaning his gun and rubs a hand over his mouth for a second before twisting up and leaking out more tears.
"I shouldn't have tried to help her Sammy. I should have realized it would be bad… and oh it was… it was so bad Sammy," he says shaking his head at him like he used to, when he was trying to emphasize how scary a certain movie was that he just wouldn't let him watch when they were little.
Dean all of a sudden stills and says, "They… they put her on her father's rack Sammy… they dragged her away and I tried, I tried so hard to get loose… Oh God…I can still hear her screaming," Dean sobs out and letting his unloaded gun fall to the floor.
Sam can't contain himself any longer. He rushes over and wraps his long limbs around his brother, not taking the time to worry about Dean's absolute hatred of chick-flick moments.
Dean's lost, still back there in his thoughts and anguish just crying Sammy's name into his neck over and over again as Sammy rocks him, shushing him and trying to comfort as best as he can for someone that doesn't really know how on account of Dean never being the one to allow someone else to do the comforting for a change.
But Dean isn't calming down; he's getting more and more worked up; his hands twisting into Sam's shirt as his sobs rattle the both of him.
Sam knows if he doesn't calm down soon then it's going to get really hard to get his mind back into this room. The last time Dean spoke of this while they were on the side of the road, Dean had a hard time coming out of that state of mind; so hard that it actually scared Sam and there isn't much that can actually scare Sam.
He unwraps his arms from around Dean and squats down in front of him taking his brother's jaw and neck in his hands.
"Dean?" he asks trying to get his attention, to make him at least look back at him instead of darting his eyes around frantically.
Slowly but surely, Dean's eyes find Sam's.
"Dean, listen to me… you've got to get out of there, man."
Suddenly, Dean nods his head and his body relaxes. Once his eyes finally soften a bit, and looks at Sam coherently, Sam lets out a deep breath of relief, because he knows that he has indeed broke through to him.
"Dean?" he asks to be sure.
"Yeah Sammy, I'm here."
Sam smiles at that. He is here. He thought that when the hell hounds came and killed him that his brother was gone forever. He still can't get used to seeing him, hearing his voice, and touching him in person and not in distanced memories. Sleeping in a bed next to his again just isn't something Sam would allow him to think about, not until he got it back, got it all back. So yeah, Dean shouldn't be here, but he is.
"Why're ya cryin, Sammy?" Dean asks with so much concern that it's as if Sam's the one with all of the issues. Just like that, his older brother forgets about himself and puts him first; just like always. It has Sam shaking his head incredulously at him.
"I'm just glad that you're back is all… just glad your back."