Tears brimmed in the little boy's eyes as he fingered the torn fabric of a ragged teddy bear's t-shirt. Brimmed with the loss of a treasured present from his lost mommy. With clumsy hands, he threaded the needle and proceeded to carefully stitch the tear back together again. But try as he might, he couldn't. The needle kept slipping out of his hands and pricking him. But the little boy never cried from physical pain anymore. His old self had been consumed by the fire that raged in his little brother's nursery. His bright and happy future burned to ashes. All the pain that existed in his world was now slowly leaking out of him, leaving him hollow and empty.
"What're you doin', boy?" a gruff male voice queried. The little boy showed no reaction, whatsoever as his tears fell inwards. The man sighed. "C'mere, Dean, and tell your Uncle Bobby what's wrong."
The little boy didn't move. Dean didn't exist anymore. That character was alien to him, unknown, like a lost teddy bear in a sea of identical teddy bears.
Bobby grunted in exasperation. Of course the boy wouldn't talk. He hadn't talked since a year ago when John literally dropped his two boys on his doorstep, got into the Impala and drove off. The boy seemed to have lost the ability to comprehend or say anything in any language. It wasn't as though Bobby hadn't tried. He had. English, Latin, French, German, Japanese - he'd tried it all but try as he might, Dean never said a word.
Bobby moved on to try and pry an answer out of little Sammy but what difference did it make? Sammy was a quiet year and a half old kid. Not a single sound escaped from him. He only stared eerily with his huge puppy-dog eyes that followed Dean wherever he went. Bobby was pretty freaked out with the boys' behaviour. What the hell was wrong with the bleeding Winchester family? Frustrated, Bobby almost kicked a chair but he held himself in time. He couldn't show the boy he was annoyed with him. The boy was broken enough. Broken by what? Bobby had no idea.
Bobby was lost in his thoughts but snapped to alertness when Dean suddenly stood up. With a look older than his five and half years, he picked up the badly burned and torn teddy bear. He crossed the threshold into the house and placed the teddy bear in his brother's cot. Without even looking back, he walked away. When John Winchester finally returned the next day, the teddy bear was packed into a crate and left at the back of the Impala and forgotten for 20 years.
26-year-old Dean Winchester stared at the lifeless body of his brother that lay on the rotting and mouldy matteress. Bobby felt his heart wrench when he realised how similar Dean looked years ago when he first met the boys. True, he had known John from some distant relation a while back but then, he had never met his boys. It was only when John finally decided to haul his ass back to the Singer's Salvage Yard a full year later that Bobby found out what happened in the nursery when Sam was six months old.
Beer bottle in hand, Dean's brilliant green eyes shone with unshed tears. He had trained himself from the tender age of four to let the tears fall inwards. His brother needed him. Or, used to need him. Sammy didn't need him anymore. Sammy was dead. Dean, well, he was something akin to the walking dead. For days he neither ate nor drank, neither moved nor slept. All he did was lean on the doorframe and stare. Stare with hollow, empty eyes that suggested that he was far off in some fantasy where he wished he could lose himself.
Slowly, however, he returned. The tears that fell inwards for so long now fell like rain. But his expression always stayed the same. Blank. It was scary for Bobby to watch such emotionless behaviour from him. Stifled and choking on his own tears, Bobby slipped out the door, got into his truck, and drove to the nearest diner and got a bucketful of chicken just for something to escape to.
When he returned, he was about to call out for Dean when he caught sight of something that made him want to just disappear. Dean had gone to the Impala that was parked in the lot and taken the teddy bear that he had tried to mend when he was five. Tucking the bear under his dead brother's arm, he picked up the Impala's keys and walked right past Bobby and out the door.
Bobby was too overcome by the touching scene to stop him.
Three days later, Dean arrived on Bobby's doorstep with a very much alive Sam Winchester in tow. Bobby almost suffered a heart attack when he heard the breathing young man thank him. Bobby dragged Dean outside on the pretext of getting some books and almost - almost throttled him. When Bobby asked him why Dean did it, his simple reply caused a ripple of understanding to course through him.
"I couldn't let him die, Bobby. He's my brother," Dean said pleadingly as five-year-old Dean suddenly re-surfaced. Bobby understood why Dean wanted so desperately to fix the teddy bear when he was just a kid and still unable to sew. He understood why Dean gave the stitched up teddy bear to Sammy.
Dean didn't want the youngest Winchester's life to be as screwed up as both his father's and his. Five-year-old Dean wanted to give Sammy something to remember his mother by. 26-year-old Dean wanted to apologize to Sam for being unable to give him the "normal" life Sam desperately craaved. The teddy bear was torn and flecked with dried blood from years ago when Dean injured himself trying to save something of Mary's to give to his brother. Dean was willing to sacrifice even his blood, his life for his little brother.
The tears in his soul from when his mother burned to ashes years and years ago have now translated to the tears that fell when he thought about a lifeless Sam. Dean could fix him. Fix it all. He was willing to sacrifice. And he did.
One year later, Bobby would explain this to Sam. And one year later, Sam would curl up at night with the battered and blood-stained teddy bear and think about his brother and the sacrifice he made for him. And with that, tears would brim in his eyes for he knew the tears in his life from the loss of his brother would never truly be mended.