2 - Needed

"Tell me about the man at the truck."

Dean groaned, throwing his head back and letting his arms go limp at his sides. "Come on!" he whined. "Why are we even talking about this again? It's been six years! I finished my time in the military and I moved on. It's ancient history."

Dr. Mia Vallens sat back in her chair. "Dean," she began, "you're here because you were arrested for assault. Again."

"Yeah, I know, I was there," Dean grumbled. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see her look at him. He was sure she was giving him another of those over-the-glasses looks he hated so much. Dean wasn't even sure why she kept the damned things on. She only seemed to use them for two things - reading, and to indicate displeasure with him.

"Dean, look at me, please?"

He sighed and looked up. He'd been right. "Yes, ma'am."

"As I was saying, you're here for court-mandated therapy after you were arrested for assault, and not your first," Dr. Vallens repeated. "You spent some time in jail and then came to me, but to date, you have been completely uncooperative."

"What are you talking about?" Dean protested. "Come on, doc, I'm here, right on time, every time, and I'm participating." He gave the upholstery of the couch a light slap. "Here I am, back on your couch. How am I not cooperative?"

"Because you have not even come close to approaching the actual point of this therapy," she insisted. "You attacked four men in a bar, seriously injuring three of them. Today is your last session, and to date, you have not taken responsibility for your own actions."

"Oh, I take all the responsibility for my own actions," Dean said. "I absolutely beat the everloving shit out of those misogynistic assholes in that bar."

"Dean, you threw the first punch," Dr. Vallens reminded him with an exasperated expression. "You admitted that yourself in court. You punched the first victim in the throat…"

"Victim? Try douche bag!"

That earned him another over-the-glasses look. "You punched the first man in the throat," she corrected. "Then you turned and punched a second in the diaphragm. The other two men at the table attempted to intervene, and you attacked them, as well. It took two police officers, three bystanders, and the bar tender to get you subdued to the point you could be cuffed and arrested. And you did all of this because the first man made some inappropriate remarks to the waitress after she scorned his advances?"

"Damn right," Dean growled. "Those assholes had been hitting on her all night long. When she finally told them to fuck off, that douche bag called her a stupid whore." He shrugged. "So I shut him up."

"And the other three?"

Dean shrugged again. "They laughed."

Dr. Vallens pinched the bridge of her nose. "You have quite a bit of unfocused anger in you, Dean."

"It's part of my charm."

Dean had to give it to Dr. Vallens, she had a great deal of patience. Despite there being a wide variety of potential projectiles in her office, she had yet to throw anything at him, even when Dean himself would have given her a free pass. Instead, she looked down at her papers. "You have a friend, someone you admit is more of a father figure to you than your biological father, who has a stable home. But you don't stay with him. Instead, you come only to visit before heading off again. You don't have any permanent home."

"I have an apartment here in town," Dean pointed out.

"That you barely stay in," she countered. "You move constantly, never putting down roots and rarely staying in the same place twice. You bounce from job to job, from relationship to relationship, traveling all over the country doing, what do you call them, operations? Operations," she repeated when Dean nodded. "Even your choice of career, or lack thereof, indicates this restless anger you keep bottled up until you finally erupt and end up in trouble again. Since your brother Sam went to college, it's been even worse."

Dean smiled and spread his hands. "Nobody's perfect, right?"

"I feel it's all stemming from the attack at the base," she stressed. "That's where you had your original psychotic break." She glanced back at her notes. "You were discharged on a Section 8 Psychological Discharge due to PTSD and delusions following the attack at your base. You were released from a psychiatric hospital after your behavior was controlled through medication, but once discharged, you refused to continue to take that medication. As a result, you quickly lapsed back. You suffered an extreme case of survivor's guilt, to the point where you attempted suicide…"

"It wasn't a suicide attempt!" Dean yelled, throwing up his hands. "How many times do I have to say it?"

"Dean, you were discovered in an abandoned building with a bloody knife in your hand, barely conscious," she reminded. "You'd made a gash in your arm and had smeared blood all over the wall. By the time you were brought into the hospital, you needed two units of blood." She glanced at her notes. "Are you still insisting it was an accident?"

Dean fidgeted. "My hand slipped and I panicked at the sight of blood. I'm the one who called 911, remember? Why would I do that if I was trying to kill myself?" He paused. "I do feel bad about wigging out on the ER staff, though. I was kind of out of my head at that point, you know, from blood loss."

"You threw a table across the nurses' station, Dean," the doctor pointed out. "You were literally climbing the curtains, screaming that angels were after you. And when you were ordered psychiatric medications, refused and had to be injected, you punched the doctor, dislocating his jaw."

"You'd punch him too if he'd just given you a shot in the ass!"

"That caused you to again be involuntarily committed to a behavioral health center for seventy-two hours. Afterwards, you managed to convince a judge that you'd only suffered a minor psychotic break, would seek treatment and were not a threat to yourself or others. However, you never sought out treatment and continued to refuse to take your medications…"

"Hey, they were affecting my sex life," Dean announced. He gestured towards his groin. "Little Dean and I came to an understanding."

She actually took the glasses off to glower at him this time. "Might I remind you that if you do not cooperate with these court-ordered sessions, you could be remanded back to jail?"

Dean winced. "Right. What was the question?"

"The man at the truck?"

"Yeah, him." Dean folded his hands and stared at them. "He wasn't real. Just something my brain created out of survivor's guilt."

"And why was that?" she pressed.

"Because I needed a reason," Dean explained quietly. "I needed something to explain the inexplicable, why I was the only one who survived. So I created him. An angel, standing between me and the truck, wrapping me up in his wings to protect me."

Apparently, he'd finally said the right thing. Dr. Vallens immediately relaxed, even giving him a small smile. "Dean, do you understand, in some way, that's what you have continued to do your entire life since then?" she stressed. "You needed an angel that day to protect you. And ever since then, you have tried to be that angel for your brother, for random strangers you've met along the way, and now for this waitress. You're still looking for a reason you were spared that day."

Dean stared hard at his hands. "I guess that makes sense," he admitted.

"And when you don't have that reason? When there's no one to protect? Then you search for someone who needs you," she concluded. "Your behavior becomes increasingly self-destructive. Your brother leaving for school again most likely triggered this latest episode. But you need to be aware of this." She smiled at him. "You're a good man, Dean Winchester. Maybe there is some divine reason that you were spared that day when no one else was. But these reasons aren't for us to know. It's not your fault that so many people died. You didn't plant those bombs. In fact, you were trying to save the people inside when the second explosion happened."

"Yeah," Dean whispered, "I was. But I couldn't help them. I didn't get the chance."

That brought a genuine smile to the therapist's face. "I think we've made some real progress today," she declared. "You've got a lot to think about. Recognizing the cause of your behavior is the first step in modifying it."

Fortunately, she ended the session shortly afterwards. She encouraged him to seek out further therapy, even if it wasn't with her, and to give real consideration to taking his meds. Dean's brain was injured, she insisted, and taking the meds to help wasn't any worse than taking Tylenol for pain. Yeah, right, as if drugs that fucked up Dean's thinking and made him slow could compare to Tylenol.

Still, Dean felt somewhat violated as he left her office thankfully behind him to climb into the familiar comfort of his Baby. His thoughts were a whirl. Shaking his head, he fumbled through his box of cassette tapes and popped one in. The knob on the stereo needed replaced. It kept slipping, but soon, the familiar notes of a rock guitar rang through Baby's speakers. Bopping his head in time to the music, Dean belted out the opening lines, shifted Baby into gear, and started towards the rat trap apartment that was home sweet home for as long as he happened to be in town.

The stairs leading up to his apartment on the third floor creaked warningly under his feet. Normally, Dean didn't mind the trek, but today, every step seemed heavy. The words of his therapist weighted heavily on him. As much as he hated to admit it, they made some measure of sense. It certainly explained what he'd been doing with his life, and why he'd felt so horribly empty and listless once Sammy was safely settled in at Stanford. Trying to be an angel, saving others he met along the way? It fit. There'd always been someone to save, after all, always someone who needed his help. And if there wasn't someone, well, that's when it was time to move on. Sure, he'd always come back to Bobby and Sammy. He'd never let more than a month go by without stopping in to check on his brother and the surly mechanic he loved like a father, but as Sam grew older, those visits had grown shorter and shorter. The fact was, Sam didn't need Dean anymore. After a time, that restlessness would grow in Dean again. Then he was off, moving on to his next adventure, and the next person who did need him.

After all, who was Dean Winchester, if no one needed him?

The answer didn't come then, nor did it appear at the bottom of his glass. When he finally got ready for bed, he sat down in his familiar position at the end of it and clasped his hands. Dean would never consider himself a religious man. The one time Sammy had caught him doing this, Dean had laughed and said he was meditating. It hadn't exactly been a lie. After all, clearing your mind and focusing your thoughts on one thing pretty much was meditating, wasn't it?

Hey, angel, it's me again, he prayed. So my therapist agrees with the shrinks at the nut houses they sent me to. About you, I mean, that you're something I came up with to handle my survivor's guilt. Thing is, she went a step further. She thinks I'm actually trying to be you, an angel, that is. Apparently, the reason I keep doing what I do, traveling around doing these jobs for people? It's because my fucked-up brain is trying to come up with a reason you'd save a nobody like me in the first place. Normally, I'd say fuck Freud and the candle he rode in on, but it makes sense, huh? God knows I haven't been able to figure it out myself, and you sure as hell haven't popped back in to do any sort of explaining.

Dean sighed. Ok, I know I tried to banish you that one time with that crazy blood sigil I found in that old book, back when I really went off the deep end and was convinced that angels were after me. But even then, you saved me, because no one else was there to make that call and I sure as hell didn't do it! Through it all, I have always known you're there. You were as real that day as you were back at the base. You were there, angel. And I believe you're still out there somewhere now, still watching over me. It's the only reason a fuck-up like me could still be alive, considering all the shit I've gotten myself into over the years.

Anyway, I'm finally finished with this therapist. Now I can go back to the courthouse, make Sam's puppy eyes at the judge again, talk about what a sorry and wiser man I've become and hopefully be done with this shit. I just don't know what I'm doing after that. So, you know, the usual request. Before Mom died, she always said that angels were watching over me. I get you're probably busy, doing whatever it is angels do, but if you get a chance? I'd appreciate it if you could keep watching over me. And some day, if I could maybe see you again? I'd really like that, too.

Finished with his nightly ritual, Dean climbed into bed. With the light off and his eyes closed, some nights, he could really imagine the angel, standing in his room, watching over him while he slept. It was comforting. After all these years, he could still perfectly picture the blue eyes, deep and beautiful and looking right at him. Most of all, he could remember the massive black wings that wrapped around him in that split second when the truck bomb went off.

Fuck the cops, the doctors, and everyone else who told him it was a crow's feather. Dean knew that the jet black feather he'd found clutched in his hand after the explosion had come from the wing of his angel.