\\And he was talking 'fore I knew it, and as he grew,
He'd say, "I'm gonna be like you, dad.
You know I'm gonna be like you."
And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon,
Little boy blue and the man in the moon.
"When you coming home, dad?" "I don't know when,
But we'll get together then.
You know we'll have a good time then."\\

Dean had always wanted to be like his father. When he was little, after the fire, he thought his dad was the coolest dad ever-- John killed the boogeyman, and the monsters under the bed and in his closet. He protected them.

Mommny's gone to heaven, Dad had told him, but he was always away, always looking for something, and Dean knew the monsters had taken his mommy and that Dad was going to get her back.

When he was older he realized the monsters weren't going to give his mommy back. He asked if he could go and help his father look--Mommy always came when I wanted her. His father would lean down so they were eye-to-eye, put his hands on Dean's shoulder, and say, carefully but firmly, I need you to stay here and protect Sammy. Protect your brother for me, all right? And then he'd go on another trip, and be gone for days at a time.

Dean grew up protecting his little brother. It wasn't easy--he realized after a while that he was doing his father's job for him.

The first time he was allowed on a hunting trip with his father was the second time he failed to protect Sammy. Stay close to him, John had told him as he'd handed Dean a sawed-off shotgun loaded with silver bullets.

Sammy came out of the fight against the hellhound with a broken arm, a bloody forehead and a concussion. Dean had a long gouge on his wrist like some suicide attempt gone gruesomely wrong, and dark bruises on his forearm where his father shook him for what felt like hours.

The second time--months later--he was allowed on a hunting trip, he was so careful he nearly tripped over himself to please his father. Nothing went wrong, none of them got hurt badly. Their father merely nodded at their work, and said "Let's go."

Years after, after Stanford, after the fallout, Sam gets seriously hurt during one of their gigs. Dean rails at his brother, you're so fucking stupid, Sam, be a little more careful, you could have died.

"Careful like you?" Sammy interrupts sarcastically, indicating the ugly long gash down Dean's chest, from when he'd jumped in the way of the charging banshee. Dean glares at him, says nothing.

"Look, I'm sorry, all right?" His brother concedes after a moment of strained silence, "But these things happen, and sometimes you can't stop them."

I sure as hell can, Dean thinks, and suddenly he wants nothing more that to put his arms around Sammy and hug him tight, because the look in his brother's eyes is lost, resigned to the fate he thinks is his. He wants to hug him, but absolutely can't bring himself to do it, just like always.

He's too much like his father after all.