Chapter 35.
Dean and Sam were soon driving to Ionia, Dean in the Impala, of course and Sam in the Jeep. The ghost-proof jacket lay across the seat beside him and reminded him of the sorry reason for their trip. He had hoped this separation would be brief and easily fixed, a matter of jangled angelic nerves, soon eased by Jules and her gentle understanding. It was turning out to be a lot more complicated than that and no obvious solution was presenting itself.
He was hoping that he could persuade Sarah to come back to the bunker with them and talk to Cas. He hadn't mentioned the idea to Cas, because he would have fled if he thought he might have to explain himself to Sarah. Telling Dean seemed equally unwise. He might love the idea, but they had to balance their need for Sarah to reason with Cas with Jules's need to be cared for at a time when she was suffering a cruel rejection, she who had already suffered so much.
They were all so fragile and all in need of Sarah's support and guidance. Cas was the most obviously unhinged and the one they were all afraid might harm himself in some way, intentionally or otherwise. Jules hid her inner turmoil much better, as a rule, but that didn't mean that she didn't feel any. Dean was ...
Sam smiled to himself. Dean was talking. Not much and not easily, but he was talking. He was admitting to fears he had never mentioned before and that was good. That was great. That was what Sam had been waiting for all his life. Except that Dean would only have revealed those fears if they were so overpowering that they could no longer be concealed. He would only ask for help, or even hint that help could be needed, if he were drowning.
He felt bad for misjudging Dean. He had kept his promise. He never broke them if it were possible not to. He felt he should have had a lot more faith in his brother. Asking Sam to take care of Cas the next night was something to be respected too. He didn't want Cas out of his sight, but he believed Sam might be the better choice, better for Cas. Sam hoped he was right. He felt unequal to the task. One mistake and Cas might leave, or fall further into silence and avoid all interaction and he had no more faith in himself than in Dean when it came to resisting the overwhelming urge to demand answers.
They needed Sarah, all three of them. Sarah would find a way to make them all feel safe again. She would help Dean to understand and overcome his oldest and deepest fears. She would make Cas see that whatever he was dealing with, leaving Jules only meant he would deal with it alone when he didn't need to. She would persuade Jules to give Cas another chance.
He needed her too, though he was the one least in difficulty. He needed to hear her say he had not failed them all and would not. He needed her advice for how to take care of them, suffering as they all were in their confusion and fear. He needed a hug from the one person to whom he could confess his own feelings of doubt and sorrow. He needed to know that he was saying and doing the right things for all the wounded warriors in his charge.
He couldn't stop thinking about what Dean had said. He had always known, of course, that Dean's greatest fear was of abandonment. Family was everything to Dean and always had been. Dean had expressed the same fear many times, although, always reluctantly. It was his least favourite subject, the loss of the people he loved and he was especially reluctant to discuss it with Sam, because he didn't want to sound as if he were begging Sam to stay, even when he was.
More significant had been his revelation that the fear predated their mother's death. That was the other thing he never wanted to discuss, that night when everything had changed forever. It had always felt to Sam as if that night was why Dean protected himself with so many layers of denial and repression.
He could barely allude to that night and never wanted to discuss the details. It had been when he needed to comfort another traumatised child that he had revealed that he had seen his mother die. Had he known that Sam could hear him, he probably would have kept it to himself, even then.
As a small child, Sam had asked about his mother, but both Dean and their father had always reacted with anger, until mentioning her existence seemed like a crime. As he grew older. he had come to understand that neither of them could tell him anything without reliving her loss. They spoke of her in an abstract hagiography, but not specifics and never the specifics of her death if they could avoid the subject.
But Dean had feared the loss of his family before that night, which only made her death seem worse. His gentle, little kid heart had held only one fear, that his parents would split and he would lose his secure family life. John Winchester had always had a tendency to walk out and slam doors, but Sam didn't believe he would ever have left them by choice. For Dean, though, an unhappy witness to their occasional quarrels, it had seemed possible and the possibility had made him feel vulnerable and afraid, the two things he had never allowed himself to be. He was the firstborn son. His job was to be strong, for everyone, even for the father he idolised.
Sam had seen it himself, in Heaven, how Dean had reacted to his father leaving for a few days by becoming his mother's strength. It would not have occurred to him even in those days to seek comfort. He had to give it. He had been giving it ever since, promising his mother, Sam, John, Cas and anyone else in need of the reassurance that it would all be okay. When had anyone ever done that for him? Sam had tried, sometimes, but Dean usually retreated from his attempts, loudly declaring that he didn't need anything, terrified of needing more than others could give or wanted to.
Dean thought he was weak, because those childhood terrors still had power over him. Sam considered him superhumanly strong, because he had those feelings deep within, influencing everything he thought and did, but he overcame them. Cas's disastrous split with Jules was sparking off all his old fears of those he loved disappearing and driving him to want to intervene and insist and control, but he had controlled those urges and put his fears aside, the better to help Cas.
Sam didn't know where the strength came from. He never had. A scant four years older than him, his brother seemed to have been adult all his life. Cas was an angel and he was also in awe of Dean and it broke Sam's heart that Dean could not see the strength and courage in himself that they saw and did not understand that neither could imagine choosing to live without him. His greatest fear would never come to pass, because he was so loved that nobody who truly knew him could ever choose to walk away.
Sam's own greatest fear was that he would let Dean down, in any way, ever. The thought tormented him. He had nightmares about it.
He watched the Impala on the road ahead. He chose to stay behind Dean, to let his brother lead. It was right and fitting and it mattered to Dean and neither of them would ever discuss why. Maybe they didn't talk enough or maybe, after so many years together on the road, discussion was not needed. They understood each other and when Dean would shut down the conversation in words, to be able to say, "I love you." by giving him precedence on the road was a useful gift.