Title -- Price
Character -- Dean Winchester
Category -- Horror/Angst
Pairing(s) -- None
Spoilers -- Bloody Mary
Summary -- That's just the price you pay.
Dean reflects, as they leave Toledo, after Sam refuses to answer his question, that sometimes, there are good things about Sam. Even though Dean pushes, even though he wants to know everything, wants to know all of Sam's secrets, Sam never asks about his own.
Sam would never think to turn it around and ask his own questions, like, Hey, I wasn't the only one bleeding from the eyeballs, wanna explain that?
Sam's not the only one who has nightmares, although Dean never mentions his own -- he figures it's the price you pay for this job. Every hunter has nightmares.
Every hunter has secrets. Every hunter has failed someone, at least once. Every hunter has failed to save a life.
Most of these don't nag at him -- hey, you can't save everyone.
There's one, though, one that plagues his conscience, the secret Mary found in his heart.
Sometimes your ghosts weren't the helpless people you had failed -- sometimes you ghost was another hunter, someone who's back you were supposed to be watching, someone who died on your watch.
Dean would always remember that day, breaking into the creature's lair, finding it completely and utterly empty, apparently abandoned, starting to look through the stuff left behind -- and hearing Derek scream as it burst back in and tore him apart. He still remembers killing it, rushing to Derek's side to see if there was anything he could do.
He remembers Derek sliding his wedding band off his finger and pressing it into Dean's hand, telling him to take it to his wife.
He remember's the crushed look in her eyes when he brings her the ring and curses himself for not washing the damn blood off.
But, sometimes, that's just the price you pay for the job.
At least, that's what he tells himself.
End