A/N: Title from the song "What is and What Should Never Be"
Sam's got a fever and chills. That's no surprise—the British bitch doused him in gallons of ice water and then seared half the flesh off his foot. Cas took care of that, but his mojo isn't what it should be. Sam's still shivering.
For the first time in forever, Dean holds off doing he's always done best—getting the extra blankets and the hot soup, growling at Sam to take Tylenol, taking the chair by the bed. There's someone else to do that now, and Dean just stands in the doorway, taking it in.
When Sam gets better (and he will), he'll be the might-have-been law professor…all serious eyes and charming smile, spinning tales of their successes to bring light to their mom's eyes. He'll go all soft and sentimental, wrapping her in one of those giant bear hugs that Dean gets rather rarely, but remembers perfectly well.
He'll bask in that too, watching Mary Winchester get the full Sam treatment.
But for now, when he's running a hundred-and-two temperature, he looks about five, hair sticking to his forehead and eyes a little glazed and uncertain. He just murmurs, "Mom?" from time to time, grabs her hand—swallows it up in his big one—and it's enough for Dean to hear her keep saying, "I'm here, Sammy. I'm here."
Dean is no longer the only one who gets to call him that, and it feels more like heaven than the Heaven he saw.
.
"He's asleep," Mary says, in a hushed tone.
Dean nods, smiles. He smiles almost every time she speaks to him, because she deserves it. Doesn't always feel natural, though, because he's still halfway to panic, blink and you'll miss this, miss her, and he doesn't know where to start.
Even Dad never hoped for this.
His mom sits down at the kitchen table. "He's so tall," she says.
Dean huffs out a laugh. "Yeah. Yeah he is. Freakin' giant. I was—" he runs his hand over the back of his neck, remembering. "I was so pissed off when he shot past me. He was fifteen."
His mom closes her eyes. Is she afraid, too, that she can blink this away? He doesn't dare ask. There's so much he doesn't dare ask. Not yet. Not yet.
Dean Winchester has only ever known being a son as being a good little soldier. He doesn't know what she sees in him, or what he even wants her to.
"Can you tell me about—anything, really?" she says, and then smirks almost mischievously. If he didn't have his (big) little brother in the next room as living proof, Dean would think it wasn't humanly possible to love someone that much. "Don't spoil anything too good," she adds. "Or I think Sam will be mad."
"Yeah." He says. She knows Sam already. Dean scrounges for a memory, and somehow settles on a hard one.
2006, a warehouse, a strange blue light.
A life that really was too good to be true.
Dean feels like he's falling, that feeling you get on cliff-faces even when you haven't jumped, don't want to jump. He doesn't know why he's starting here. Maybe because it's the longest of the handful of times he's seen her since he was four.
Even if it wasn't real.
Real, like this is.
"Have you ever heard of djinn?"
.
"It wasn't real." Dean clears his throat. It's all flooding back, aches and pains of memory, and it's all he can do to keep from grabbing her hand. He'd barely been able to tell Sam. "But that's not why I left."
"Was it Sam?"
"Yeah. It was—Sam out here, and then, Sam in the dream…we weren't together. Not really. I couldn't live with that. Or not live with it, I guess. But it just—giving you up hurt more than almost anything else I've ever done. You should know." He's talking too much now, even these few words. The truth of it is, but even in a dream, I was a screw-up. I didn't deserve any of the good things that came with it. He's been better with the whole self-esteem crap in the last couple years, give or take, but there's still a lot of nasty stuff down inside him, years and years of it, and it's not like Winchesters forget.
"I don't know if I have any right to be proud of you," Mary says slowly. He's frozen, surprised at this sudden turn. Her eyes are burning with something that it takes him half a second to realize is love, the same love he's missed and dreamed about his whole life. "But I am. You boys are so brave. So strong."
"Uh," says Dean, ever ineloquent, ever wishing Sam was there. He doesn't know what to do next, how you're supposed to fill in those words about strong and brave with actions, how you hold yourself in the face of that kind of affirmation. He's never really known.
But his mom doesn't wait for answers, for explanations, for the Next Big Thing. She just reaches across the kitchen table and takes his hand.
It's real.