Kill or Be Killed
By: chocolate rules
Chapter 16:
Always
Dean was way too young to feel this old. He walked back to the living room and dropped down into a slum on the couch. All his life he was watching over Sammy. Okay all his life minus four years, but like that really counted. His first four years had been spent literally pampered and fed and bathed. Everything had been done for him. Dean recalled one small incident where he had been extremely rude to someone in his family. Everyone had just laughed it off. He had been so cute then.
Nowadays, Dean couldn't laugh anything off. He had to be aware of everything. He couldn't be off guard and he had to take care of everything himself. It wasn't that his father wasn't there with them; John wasn't a bad father at all. John had other compromises to take care of. Dean had to take care of Sammy and help his father out. That was what he was there for.
He hadn't been a child for a long, long time. God, he couldn't even remember the last time he could say he was truly innocent. Sammy was innocent. Dean had protected him from everything evil and crazy in the normal and supernatural world. The boy hadn't seen a real corpse until tonight. He had always been told to stay away and not to look.
One time Sammy peeked. No one saw him but he had stared at his father and brother as they had churned apart a woman's body. He had had nightmares the same night. Dean had wakened him up and had asked Sammy what had triggered that nightmare. He hadn't seen anything too bad that night. And then Sammy confessed to peeking, he had only seen their shadows and a few movements were carried on in front of him, but it wasn't all that bad. Dean had been angry at him and hadn't allowed him on the next few hunts. John hadn't asked but had allowed Dean to reign over Sam's punishment, hadn't even asked what he had done.
No, Sammy wasn't John's responsibility. Sammy was Dean's responsibility. John hadn't been there to take care of the kid since Dean was nine. Heck, John disappeared once Sammy had started teething. It wasn't his fault. Dean would never throw that in his father's face, but the man had chosen long ago where his priorities lied. They would forever and always lie with Mary.
And Dean with Sammy. Always.
