The first time Dean set eyes on his baby brother, he was four years and three months old.
He didn't quite know what to make of the rather solemn newborn gazing up at him from the cradle of his mom's arms.
Dean wasn't yet aware of how much that baby would mean to him growing up. Sam would become more than a brother, more than a father or a mother, a wife or a lover. Theirs was a relationship without a name, unique to them alone.
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The last time Dean set eyes on his baby brother, all this had come to pass, the bond between him and Sam more potent than the power of Heaven itself.
On that day, in that ramshackle barn, with the realization of how severe Dean's wound was, both brothers were frantic with grief but Dean understood that here he was destined to abandon his mortal existence, and with it his life-long calling as Sam's big brother.
As he'd always tried to do, Dean endeavored to take care of Sam, even as the last words he'd ever utter were exhaled through sheer willpower.
"I love you so much, my baby brother." Words until then unsaid, though cherished with devotion in Dean's heart and soul but now it was essential they be voiced. Sam needed to hear them and Dean needed to say them.
They had given Dean strength in life and now they gave him courage in death. Those same words would accompany Sam on his lonely journey until he joined his big brother forever in Heaven.