July 16, 2007

Tears ran unashamedly down Dean's cheeks. This was wrong. This so wrong it was a metaphor for what wrong meant. Sam, his brother, his little brother, was in that box. They were going to lower it into that hole in the ground, and then it was all going to be over, forever. Was he just supposed to walk away? Just go on with his life without the shared laughter over inside jokes and arguments over the boundaries of the pecking order? Was he just supposed to go without Sam?

"You should have been there. You should have been there. You should have been there." played on a loop in his mind. Anger boiled up inside of him, at himself, at Sam, at the stupid freakin' universe that would let a kid like Sam, so young, so much potential, so much life left to live and so much to live it for, die in the first place.

He wanted to explode. He wanted to scream, and yell, and hit things. He wanted to jump in his car and drive 95 miles an hour to nowhere and never stop. He wanted to take the hurt inside of him, tear it out and spread it around.

But he couldn't. Mary was standing stiffly beside him, bookended bewteen himself and John, her own silent tears making long, ladylike paths down her own cheeks in contrast to his own face drenching deluge. Dean had to hold it together for her, so he let all the rage at his loss come out with the tears.

Yeah world, tough guy Dean Winchester was standing there blubbering like a baby while some man in black recited a bunch of church words over his baby brother's grave, and he didn't care who saw it.

Well, that wasn't quite true. He was glad that Little John wasn't there. He and Brenda had discussed their son attending the funeral and had decided it would be too much at his age. They would bring him to visit Sam's grave another day, when he could say his own quiet good-byes without the spectacle.

That was Dean's one small comfort. With Little John there he would have felt the need to "man up", stay strong in front of his son. With the boy safely at home with his mother Dean was free to let himself mourn however he needed. He took full advantage of the opportunity.

XXXXX

Mary's tears were not light, but they were gentle, silent. Neat twin rivers left mascara darkened trails on her cheeks, painting her face into that of a tragic harlequin.

This was her fault, she knew. Her deal, her stupid mistake made because she had been too weak to do the right thing, too overwhelmed in her fresh grief to think the consequences through before agreeing to deal with a demon.

The guilt gnawed at her and she had found herself unable to meet the eyes of her husband and surviving son. She reached over to give dean's hand a reassuring squeeze which he gratefully returned.

Dean, she thought, he should have been Sam. Her first son logically should have been named for her father, but the first time she had seen those eyes she knew that she saw her mother in the newborn boy. Seeing the tough shell covering a sensitive caring soul that he had grown into she knew she had made the right choice.

Sam had been meant to be Sam, impatient, moody, so like the grandfather he had never been able to know.

The memories of her parents brought forth fresh tears. She'd been so eager to leave them, to run off away from everything she ever knew, everything her family was, to pretend that she could be normal. Looking back now, it was clear that in her youthful folly she had made the mistakes of thinking that normal had meant perfect and that a past left behind would stay left behind.

Now, cut open and bleeding out from the fresh loss, she longed for her parents, especially Samual. She wanted his guidance, his wisdom. She wanted him by her side for what came next, what had to be. She knew, it had taken standing here, looking down at the grave of her own deceased son to do it, but she knew, she couldn't run anymore. She had to clean up the mess she'd made once and for all. She had to do whatever it took to protect what little was left of her family.

XXXXX

John's expression probably would have betrayed his feelings to anyone who looked closely enough, but everyone present was enmeshed enough in their own grief and mourning that the stoic mask he forced on his features served well enough. The loss of his son cut deep into him, but he forced himself to contain it. His family needed him to be strong for them, to be the man.

He was worried about Mary. Her reaction to the news that Sam's body had been found in South Dakota along with several others had not been the hysterical breakdown he would have expected. Instead, she was quiet, seemingly numb. She had retreated into herself and into the bedroom. Occasionally he could hear emotional conversation, with he didn't know who, through the door. She refused to talk to him about it. She barely looked at him, or at Dean.

Dean, John had noticed, was at least letting himself feel. He'd watched as his son had balanced precariously on the razor's edge of impending explosion since the news had come, constantly ready to charge off in some random direction and let the pain gush out of him in the form of damage done to whatever happened to be in his way. He knew his grandson and defacto daughter-in-law had been on eggshells around him.

He understood the feeling because in burned just as hot in his own gut. This hadn't just happened. It wasn't like an illness or accident. That could at least have been understood as something that, while tragic, did happen sometimes. This was different. Sam was gone because some sick, serial killer bastard had taken him from them. His fist clenched at his side thinking about what he wanted to do about that.

With a deep breath he forced himself to calm down. Thinking about it was pointless. He couldn't do anything more than what the police were already doing. His family needed him to stay strong, to hold it together so that they could heal, not for him to give in to some rage fueled revenge obsession that would only help destroy them.

Sam was gone. Nothing was ever going to change that. He would find a way to accept it and to help Mary and Dean accept it. Tears threatened to spill from his reddened eyes, but he blinked them back. He would cry them later, when Dean and Mary weren't around to see.