Disclaimer: Supernatural is the property of WB and Eric Kripke. None of this belongs to me and I'm certainly not making any money off of it. (I would, however, take JA in trade!)
A/N: Just a short post-"Shadow" tag, from Dean's perspective. Hope you like it!
In ShadowRed. Yellow. Red. Yellow.
The blinking colors of the garish neon sign in front of the diner across the way filtered through the broken Venetian blind and reflected on the far wall of the motel room. The rest of the room, except for the crack of light beneath the bathroom door, was cloaked in darkness.
Dean Winchester sat on one of the twin beds that virtually filled the small room and stared, unseeing, at the shifting colors on the wall. The savage slashes left on his face and torso by the daevas burned fiercely, though the bleeding had finally stopped. He had welcomed the pain, but his hope that it would distract him from unwelcome thoughts had proved in vain.
He and Sam had driven swiftly away from Chicago for several hours, trying to put as much distance as possible between them and their father. The drive had been made in silence, with Sam staring angrily out the passenger window despite the darkness. Dean, having already given his reasons for insisting that Dad should go on without them and hurting himself both physically and emotionally, had for once blown off his brother's bad mood and had refused to try to coax him out of it. Damn it, no one wanted Dad around more than he did. For one moment, he had had everything he wanted—the three of them together again, on the hunt—and he had sent Dad away because he had believed it safest for their father.
What about that didn't Sammy understand?
Everything, apparently, judging from way Sam had stormed out of the Impala when they had finally stopped for the night at yet another cheap motel and had grabbed the bathroom first, still trailing the Cone of Silence along with him. Well, fine. Tonight, Dean had no sympathy to spare for his younger brother.
He was too busy licking his own wounds. Some of which had been inflicted by said younger brother.
Sam had insisted on a different answer to the question of what Dean would want to do if it had all been over this night, because Sam could never understand or accept that anyone—read, Dean—could actually want to hunt the things that went bump in the night. Could never understand that Dean could truly chose hunting as a lifestyle simply because, for him, it was the right thing to do. In his entire fucked-up life, only saving innocents and taking out the dark things brought him peace and gave purpose to his existence.
To Sam, though, being a hunter was not being a person. Gee, thanks, little brother. So...what does that make me in your eyes, exactly?
And so, because his initial answer could never be enough for Sam, Dean had breached walls that had taken twenty-two years to build and had revealed the only other thing he wanted. His family to be a family once more, traveling together, fighting the dark, saving lives. He had laid his heart out, open and unguarded, for his brother to see.
And Sammy had promptly driven a stiletto through it. Couldn't he even have pretended to think about it for a minute, before rejecting it? Or acted as if he had the teensiest bit of conflict about trading his brother for his "normal" life? Instead of speaking to Dean in the same calm, soothing, gentle tones an undertaker would use to a group of total strangers?
Dean bowed his head, eyes closed against a sharp spike of pain. Sam had casually shredded Dean's sole remaining dream. You're going to have to let me go. Well, hell, Sammy, I've already done that and, yes, damn it, I will again if you want it because you've always come first, but did it have to be so easy for you to just walk away?
Some unworthy part of him admitted to feeling a certain satisfaction when Dad had practically thrown the same words back at Sam. How did it feel, Sam, to be the one who needed and to have your need dismissed?
Only a small part of him, though, because he truly loved his brother and hated to see him unhappy.
And he was sure that, by morning, he would be back to working at bucking Sam up again. Now, though, now he was hurting too much even try.
Wearily, he scrubbed a hand across his face. It came away sticky with blood and he realized he had stupidly opened one of the slashes up again. He hoped Sam would be finished taking care of his wounds soon—the younger man had rejected Dean's offer of help with a single fulminating glance—so that he could start on the painful task of cleaning out and closing up his own gashes.
One line kept circling round and round in his mind. Something Sam had said. I would do anything for you.
Yeah, right.
I would do anything for you. Except, it seems, the one thing Dean wanted him to do, and the only Dean had ever asked of him. He wondered how Sam could have said it with a straight face. Maybe if he had gone to college, it would make sense.
No doubt in his mind, though, that Sammy would make a great lawyer. He already had the Empty-Words-With-A-Sincere-Smile bit down pat.
The hunt mattered to him. But if you pulled his fingernails and toenails out one at a time, he might also admit that he didn't want to do it alone. He wanted the two people he loved beside him. He wanted it to be the way it was, before his Dad had become distant and Sam had become a kindly stranger.
He knew now, though, that what he wanted did not matter to anyone else. In the end, he would be alone. And there were times when he was all right with that.
But not tonight. Tonight he was cold and in pain and lonely and he wondered why, when he had tried all his life to be what his father and his brother needed and wanted, he was left with nothing.
Dean Winchester sat on one of the twin beds and stared, unseeing, at the shifting colors on the wall.