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When mom died, pinned to the ceiling and erupting into fire, a part of Dean withered and died. He didn’t have to ever witness it to know that something inside him was always going to be irreparably broken. For a while, Dean mourned that lost part of himself, gone along with the woman whom he never should have lost so soon from his life. It took him a while to be able to replace the broken part of him with something else, the edges jagged and not fitting right, but he was able to ignore it, overlooking it in favor of starting to immerse himself into this new person. Surely, as a baby, Sammy wouldn’t leave him, right? No, not when Dean took on the role of the mother for him, so if anyone was at the danger of leaving, it was Dean himself. But he would be damned if he ever parted from his brother.
oOo
When Sam left for Flagstaff, a bigger part of Dean started to fracture. It had only barely started healing when a few years later, Sam left again. This time, permanently, and he took the finally broken off part of Dean with him to Stanford.
It was the first time Dean looked down at the barrel of his own gun. He didn’t expect it to be the last, but he didn’t expect to be looked at it again so soon, when his father left him as well.
Alone and on the road, with no one for company but his car… Dean eyed Baby, wondering when she’d leave him as well.
oOo
Baby didn’t leave. And as much as Dean tried to start relying on her instead, there was this part inside him that refused to bond completely, feeling unsettled and incomplete. Dean figured that after the amount of people he’d been subjected to watching them walk out of his life without even a glance back, there was no way he was ever going to be able to settle again. That didn’t mean he didn’t try though, and for all that it felt fake, Dean forced himself to believe that he could at least do it. Fake it till you make it after all, right?
oOo
Sam came back. Or more like Dean dragged him back, and every year, Dean wondered why he’d even bothered. Not that Sam was being a problem, not at all. But it was now at the point that Dean wondered if maybe there was just something wrong with him? With every passing year, either trouble overtook the brothers to the point that someone ended up being hurt, badly. Or to the point that Sam was reminded that he had walked away from this life once already… and that he apparently always could again.
When Sam jumped into the pit, Dean fell to his knees, staring where his brother had left him.
Completely and utterly shattered. Not a part of him remained intact.
oOo
He was running on automatic, and even his brother’s return – and he’d never been gone, not really – wasn’t enough to revive even the slightest bit of Dean. He was too skeptical to even attempt, and finding out Sam was soulless? Was only like an affirmative punch in the gut, confirming all his doubts. There never was a reason for Dean to be able to patch himself up again, so why even bother?
He’d long since learned after all to go with the flow, stop fighting at least one aspect of his life. It wasn’t going to hurt anyone else but him, unlike what Destiny or Fate or some other bullcrap had wanted for him.
Getting Sam’s soul back made Dean feel exactly what Bobby was expressing as he dodged Sam for the next few days.
oOo
Sam was trying to leave again, and now, Dean had had enough. He knew, he understood already goddammit that people were never meant to stay with him for long. He’d seen it his entire life starting from his family, to people he once called family, to people who weren’t even related, before circling back to Sammy all over again. But this time, Dean had gotten enough of the cycle, and he was ready to put a halt to it. However, first, he needed to put a right to things. And that involved patching Sammy up before he left this time.
The one thing he promised he’d never do… and now he was disappointing himself by reaching an all new low that Dean never would have expected to reach himself, after all the years of everything he’d done.
He wished he could say he was surprised.
Unfortunately, the bone-weary part of him said otherwise.
oOo
For thirty-one years and going, Dean had struggled. Starting from his mother’s death, he struggled to keep on moving, keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep breathing, in and out. And with every person leaving Dean, it only got harder. So why was it, that when Sam – the person Dean had forced himself to keep moving forward for… to keep living for – essentially disowned him, why was that the moment Dean could feel like he could actually breathe?
oOo
He didn’t get his answer until weeks later, when he was staring down first at Abaddon’s dead body…
And then Metatron’s wounded one as the angels led him away to heaven.
Dripping from head to toe, gore and blood… Dean refused to look at where Sam was. Where he knew Sam wasn’t going to be looking at him anyway.
He didn’t look at Sam once, not until they were back in the bunker, and Sam had stopped with a hopeless look on his face as he stared at all the books piled at where he had essentially set camp.
Dean didn’t look at him as he passed his brother, heading to the kitchen, and proceeded to get drunk. Uncaring of the messy state he was in. When his brother passed the kitchen as well, pausing at the entrance but not looking at Dean?
Dean finally looked, taking in his fill of the sight of his brother. When Sam finally dared to raise his eyes, Dean easily looked away, for all intents and purposes seeming as if he’d never glanced at his brother in the first place.
Without a word, Sam left.
Silent, Dean rose, and walked out of the bunker.
oOo
Hundreds of miles away, as the sun started to rise, Dean stared out the expanse of land in front of him. Jumping up onto the hood of his trunk, he stroked the metal underneath him, a wry smirk passing his face. Dried blood caked on his cheek, flaking away as his face stretched for the first time in hours. Dean did what he had been doing the entire time, and continued to ignore it. Fetching the last of his beer bottles and trust blades, he settled down in place, keeping his eyes on the sun as he relished in the feeling of the broken parts of him finally quieting, the pained screams that had accompanied him since was four dying away. The screams pouring out of him alongside the blood running free from his veins.
The blade dropped to the grass, the beer bottle following not long after.
oOo
Baby had never left him after all.