It took a while for John to regain his composure enough for them all to sit down around the tiny kitchen table and all explain some things. Once his dad's breath wasn't hitching anymore, and he had his hands wrapped around a cup of coffee Sam had made, Dean told them all that had happened since he'd died: how he'd decided to cling to the moral plane despite Tessa's warnings, how he'd found his way into the Impala when they burned his body, and how he'd spent the next month watching helplessly as they fought and struggled to keep things together in his absence.
When Dean was done, Sam spoke about how he'd felt Dean's presence but doubted himself, then left out of frustration and fear for Dean.
"I wanted to tell you, son," John said to Sam, when his turn had come. He shifted his hands on the coffee mug, as if he were still finding the words hard to say. "What I did."
Sam swallowed, his jaw twitching a moment. "You should have."
John's breath hitched again. "I know." There was a long pause where Dean wondered if maybe he should butt in and say something too. But something told him—a voice in his head that he'd managed to ignore until now—that maybe this wasn't his role anymore. He'd managed to pull Sam and John together one more time, but sitting beside them, incorporeal and silent, he couldn't shake the feeling that maybe it was the last time. That maybe it should've been.
"Why didn't you?" Sam said finally.
"I couldn't," John said plainly. His next words were hesitant, though, as if he were trying each one out in his mind before he said it. "Sam, I thought the demon could help me. I was wrong, and that made it my fault. I could take you hating me 'cause you thought I hadn't tried—but I couldn't take you hating me knowing I had."
Sam's jaw twitched again, and Dean watched him carefully, unsure how this was going to play out, and wondering if maybe he did still have a role here after all.
"Obviously you couldn't take it either way," Sam said, his voice tight. "Dad. Why didn't you say something. Before I left. I mean. I was pissed, but I never wanted…" he broke off, pressing his lips together, a mix of frustration and sympathy etched into his face.
John's stony expression flickered, and Dean could see another hint of the anguish he'd been privy to not an hour before push its way to the surface. "It wasn't about what you wanted, Sam," he said after a moment. "It was about what I wanted."
Sam gave him a shuttered look of confusion. "What?"
"The best for you," John said simply. Dean looked back and forth between Sam and John, realizing that he'd never seem them talk to each other like this before. No orders, no sniping, no yelling, no passively aggressive statements that would have the other fuming for hours later. They were just…talking. "I wanted you to be free. To have the life you always tried to have."
"Dad," Sam said in a shaky tone. "I couldn't have ever... not like that. Even if it was what I still wanted." Sam glanced at Dean. "Honestly, this past year…I finally got it. All that stuff about family, about sticking together, when I was with Dean I got it. And I thought I could be like him and stay with you but it just kept going wrong. I didn't think you wanted me around anymore."
For a moment John was silent, and Dean thought about the last few weeks. How many times John had picked a fight or told Sam to screw off or thrown something at him when he wouldn't.
"You're my son, Sam," John said. He'd been staring at the table but he met Sam's gaze. "Of course I want you here. Of course I do."
Sam blinked a couple times, but didn't say anything.
The silence stretched out.
"So," Dean said, when it had gone on about thirty seconds longer than he'd ever been comfortable with. "What now?"
John gave Dean a searching stare. "How long are you going to be with us?"
Sam answered before Dean could. "He's not going anywhere, Dad. We just got him back."
John addressed Dean, his voice low and rough, but not enough so to hide the tremor in it. He also sounded, to Dean's practiced ears, utterly exhausted. "You know what I mean. Spirits clinging to this plane…they turn. Every single time."
"Yeah, but it might take a while," Sam argued. "It could take months. Longer. You're not saying we should…"
Dean glanced between them, eyebrows rising, and tried to force a little joviality into his tone. "Uh, guys. Don't you think I should get a say?"
Both John and Sam turned to stare at him, but neither said yes.
"Look," Dean said, finding it hard to put the feeling into words. He'd barely acknowledged it himself, barely even allowed himself to consider it until he'd and watched the two of them have an honest to god civil conversation. "I know this isn't forever. I know that. Turns out the reaper's offer did come with a warning label." He shot a warning look at Sam, who had opened his mouth to argue. "When I told Tessa I'd stay, I only did it 'cause I couldn't leave the two of you alone. You said it yourself, Sam, in the hospital—without me you two would kill each other. I didn't think you two could handle it, being on your own. And I tried damn hard to show up before you got to the point you did."
Both Sam and John had the grace to wince and look slightly ashamed.
"What are you saying, Dean?" Sam asked hesitantly.
Dean let out a breath he didn't need, and scrubbed a hand down his face. "I'm saying that if you two can stow your crap, then maybe there is no place for me here. I don't want to turn evil, Sammy. I don't want to put either of you through that."
"No," Sam said immediately.
"Sam," John said.
"Can you do it?" Dean cut in, before the conversation could turn in the direction it usually did—shouting. In any case, an odd sort of resolve had hardened in him. As if the way was suddenly clear, and he could say what in life he'd never had the balls to say. "I mean, really, really do it. Dad, you'd have to stop pushing him away, and start treating him like the grown man he is. This last year, he had my back like nobody else ever did, you can trust him. And Sam. Dad's doing the best he can. That's all he's ever done. Blaming him for every damn thing is not gonna help anyone. You know whose fault it is I died? The damn demon's."
Sam and John glanced at each other, then at Dean. Their expressions—ashamed, sad, and just on the verge of trying to fight him—were identical.
"I don't even really care if you stay together," Dean added after a second. "Just… be family. Pick up the friggin' phone every once in a while."
John nodded.
Sam addressed Dean instead. "If I say yes? You're gonna go?"
It hadn't been what he'd planned when he'd turned the Impala around. Hell, it hadn't even fully occurred to him that this was what he had to do until he'd started saying it. But slowly, Dean nodded too. "Yeah, Sam." Somehow, the way seemed clearer than it had ever been. If Sam and Dad didn't need him here, then there was nothing to keep him.
"What if I say no?" Sam went on, frustration building in his tone again. "You can't leave, Dean. Not after—not after we just got you back."
"I told you, Sam," Dean said. "I've been here all along."
"That's not what I mean," Sam said, his eyes shining.
"I'm sorry," Dean told him. "It's gotta happen. And it's gotta happen while I'm still me. So can you promise me that, or not?"
Wordlessly, Sam nodded. Then he sniffed loudly, and Dean realized with a pang of guilt that he'd made his little brother cry again. Hardly the way he wanted to go out.
"Well…good," Dean said awkwardly, not quite sure where to go from there. He wasn't even a hundred percent sure how to go about leaving the mortal coil for good—he sure as hell wasn't about to let anyone put a torch to his car. (Sam's car now. Sam had rebuilt her after all.) He'd never liked goodbyes, but if this was the real one…
He watched a single tear roll down Sam's face.
"Wait," John said.
Sam's head snapped to face him. Dean raised his eyebrows.
"You can't stay," John said. "I know that. But Dean... you can give us one more day."
"Yeah," Dean decided after a moment, glancing between them again. The urgency that had come over him settled for a moment. "Yeah. Sure. One more day."
Sam had never believed that twenty-four hours could go by so fast. They all stayed up late into the night, just talking. Reminiscing, mostly, about days gone by. The little moments they'd all shared over the years. Some Sam remembered, some he didn't.
Like how one night, in the months after Mary's death before he'd even heard of a demon, when Dean wouldn't talk and Sam cried all the time, John had loaded them both into the backseat of the Impala and just driven away from the motel they'd been staying at in Lawrence because their house was a wreck. No direction, no destination, just an urge to get out and go. The smooth motion of the car and put Sam to sleep, and when John had stopped at a diner and ordered him a piece of pie, Dean had smiled for the first time since the fire. It had been, John told them, the first time he'd truly believed he could do it. That he could raise his two boys without Mary by his side.
Then there was the time that John had been laid up after a hunt and missed Sam's fifth birthday. Seeing five as big milestone, Dean had wanted him to have a cake, so he'd gone out and spent their emergency money on all the ingredients for cake—except for sugar. He'd made it anyway, and it had tasted so bad it'd made Sam cry. When John came home on crutches, though, he'd been so proud of Dean's attempt he'd eaten a whole piece and asked for seconds.
And then there were the times Sam did remember. Convincing John to take them to New York City and the whirlwind of sights and shops and museums before Dean's ill-fated attempt to join the punk scene. The wrestling matches John had taken them to, sitting back and watching Dean and Sam go wild with excitement, all of them feeling like a normal family for once. Three different world's largest balls of twine. Classic rock concerts that Dean and John loved, and which Sam tolerated (until he'd come to more or less appreciate his father and brother's taste in music) because they made Dean so damn happy.
And of course there were the hunts—the hunts they were proud of, the hunts they'd realized in retrospect had been less than a great idea, and the hunts that had gone so comically wrong they still made each of them double up with laughter.
Once the sun came up, they went outside. John set up a pyramid of cans and Dean, who had finally gathered enough strength to pick things up, bulls-eyed each of them with his favorite guns, grinning the whole time. ("I missed that," he'd said after the first few shots. "Too bad ghosts can't eat bacon burgers.") Then they went for a drive in the Impala.
Sam drank it all in, trying as hard as he could not to think about the ticking clock, and how they'd never be a family, together, again. He wanted to ask Dean to stay longer, but Dean was adamant. He couldn't stay, and the longer he tried, the harder it would be to let him go.
Sam was sure that it would never be possible to let him go.
The afternoon crept up on them far quicker than Sam liked, and then passed. They came back to the cabin and gathered around the table again.
"So," Dean said, after a while. "It's about that time."
Sam felt tears in his eyes again. John froze. For a moment, it was as if time—which had been slipping by so quickly for hours—just stopped. The iridescent lights in the cabin bathed everything in a yellow glow, and Sam knew he'd never forget this moment.
Then John nodded.
Sam watching with clenched jaw and took several short breaths before his feelings all bubbled out of him. "Dean, don't go. Don't do this. Please. We don't know when you're gonna turn, it could be months. Please."
Dean turned his gaze on Sam, and there was something in it that Sam had never quite seem before. Dean was calm. Dean was at peace.
"I'm sorry, Sammy."
"Another day," Sam said, fully aware he was begging but not caring in the slightest. "One more."
Dean shook his head.
"Take care of my car, Sam," he said, but Sam could barely hear him over the roaring in his ears. "And…take care of Dad. But don't forget to have a little fun sometimes, okay?"
There were tears filling Sam's throat and Sam's vision. He couldn't talk. So, as sure as he was that he could never do what Dean was asking, he just nodded.
Dean smiled at John. "Dad. Take care of yourself."
John's nod looked a lot like Sam's. Then he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Dean, closing his eyes. Though Dean looked surprised at first, and a flash of concentration passed over his face, John's arms found a solid body.
"Thanks," John said, pulling away.
Sam hugged him too, trying to memorize the feeling.
Then Dean stepped back, smiled at them both. And then he was gone.
For a few seconds, Sam stared in shock at the spot where Dean had been. Then the tears that had been choking him started coming in earnest, and he bowed his head, not wanting his dad to see him breaking down. Take care of Dad, Dean had said.
But before long he felt long arms enveloping him. And it was Sam's turn to sob into his dad's arms.
Two hours later, they were sitting on the couch together. Neither had said much—after all that had happened, there simply wasn't much to say. For once, though, Sam was sure he knew exactly how his dad felt.
Their vigil was interrupted suddenly by the door slamming open, rattling on its hinges. Sam and John both started and jumped to their feet, feeling reflexively for weapons that for once weren't nearby.
But it wasn't a monster standing in the doorway—it was Bobby, who stood there gaping at the two of them. And it was Bobby who broke their silence.
"What in all hell are you playing at?" he demanded loudly, waving his arms in a violent gesture at both of them. "Hell, John, you can't leave a message like that then turn off your damn phone! And Sam! Ever heard of picking up when I call? I just drove fourteen hours to get here to pick up your daddy's corpse. What gives, you two?"
John and Sam exchanged glances, John's mildly chagrined, Sam's confused.
"Forgot about my phone," John said.
"Left it in the car," Sam said.
Bobby stared at both of them, mouth hanging open. "Well I'd kill both of you if I wasn't so damn glad to see both of you here."
They told him, over another pot of coffee, what had happened. Bobby listened with rapt attention, and a sad, "Sorry I missed the kid." When they had exhausted the tale, Bobby looked seriously between them. "So, what's the future hold for you now?"
John didn't answer. Sam studied the warped, grainy tabletop for a moment, because he honestly hadn't thought about it. And yet somehow, he knew the answer. For all it had seemed a nightmare of a choice two days before, it was the only possible answer now.
"I didn't really want to go back to school anyway," Sam told John, with half a smile. "So, I'll stay with you. If you'll have me."
John snorted softly. "Yeah, Sam. Of course."
Sam didn't answer, because he was finding it hard to speak again.
Bobby let out a breath of relief. "Well, you're both welcome to stay with me again, if you'd like." His tone was hopeful and Sam realized he was looking at John. "Seems like y'all've had enough isolation up here for a lifetime or three."
Sam met his dad's eyes, and after a moment, they both dipped their heads in agreement.
"Great," Bobby says. "I'll help you get packed up."
"Thanks," John said.
"Thanks," Sam echoed.
And for a second time that day, Sam understood exactly how John felt. He had no idea, of course, how it was going to go—how long it would take until they started arguing again, or whether they'd be able reconcile as Dean had asked. But, as he watched his dad's tired face, Sam resolved that, no matter what happened, no matter whether they stayed together or not… they'd be a family.
And that's the end. Like it? Hate it? Leave a review!
