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Everyone leaves him.
Dean remembers how everyone has left him.
~~*~~
Dean remembers the first time he lost his mother.
He remembers the heat and the screaming and the loneliness.
He remembers running out of the house, and “Take your brother outside, as fast as you can, Dean. Go now!”
And then he remembers the silence; that is, perhaps, what he remembers most of all. After his family took to the road and the backseat of the Impala became his new home, Dean remembers being lost in silence; mute in his grief even as baby Sammy babbled his first words.
Sam spoke before he did again.
~~*~~
He remembers not being tall enough to reach the stove to heat baby Sammy’s bottle the first time Dad left them alone in a motel room to go on a hunt, and he remembers falling down off the chair he had pulled up to the stove just so he could reach, because he couldn’t let Sammy go hungry.
Even if he did.
The chair had been squeaky, Sam had cried, and the TV wouldn’t play anything except static -- no way was it a fit environment for a baby. Sam was often fussy; he often refused to nap because the noise was loud and distracting, and Dean remembers thinking how strange the difference between him and his brother because, to Dean’s lonely ears, it had been so quiet with no one to talk to.
So he had remained silent.
~~*~~
He remembers how alone he felt when Sam went off to Stanford.
Dean could do nothing but stand and watch as his baby brother angrily climbed aboard a westbound bus. Sam hadn’t even known he was there to see him off -- neither did their father. The fight about Sam going to college had been so nasty that Dad had told Sam to leave and never come back, and he had forbidden Dean to take him to the bus station.
But Dean couldn’t have possibly let Sam head off entirely on his own without seeing him one last time, so he fed his Dad some bullshit line about heading out to let off some steam with a girl, and he had raced to the bus station at the last minute just to see Sam pull away in the dark.
He remembered how, all around him, there had been such noise, but all he felt was the giant, gaping hole.
And silence.
~~*~~
When Dad died Dean had felt guilty as hell for so many reasons -- Hell being only one of them. He missed his father, of course he did.
But the worst part was how much he really didn’t.
He missed being told what to do because that was all he had ever known, and having to think for himself was difficult and thrilling. And he had felt like such a disobedient soldier. His external world became so much quieter without his father and Dean couldn’t deny how much he actually liked that, and it had tore him asunder.
It was unfortunate that it had only been the external world that had become quiet. Peace was short-lived.
Dean had quickly found that, just because his father’s voice wasn’t in his ear anymore didn’t mean it wasn’t still shouting loudly inside his head.
“Look out for Sammy.”
“Look out for Sammy, Dean.”
“It’s always about Sam, Dean; it’s never about you.”
“You don’t mean anything to anyone.”
“Just be a good soldier.”
Even with the old man dead, it had still been so loud.
~~*~~
The year Sam was dead was both the loudest and most silent year of Dean’s entire life.
He had pretended to be fine, better than fine, even. For nearly a year, Dean had the apple-pie life with an almost-wife, an almost-kid, and an almost-regular job and house in the suburbs. He learned how to smile convincingly, talk politics in a polite fashion with the neighbors, even how to swing a golf club as something other than a weapon.
Dean had been, by all accounts, a regular nine-to-five, Joe.
And the entire time he didn’t once say anything of meaning or substance about how his kid brother was rotting in a cage in Hell, with Michael and Lucifer, after having saved the world. Dean never once told Lisa, or even Cas, how his heart was breaking or his mind was screaming. He never mentioned the way he would stay awake for days at a time, even though he knew Lisa knew -- how could she not when he shied away from their bed night after night?
They never discussed Dean’s lack of appetite and the resultant weight loss, or the way he couldn’t even say the name ‘Sam’ aloud.
Broken glass had stuffed Dean’s throat for an entire year, crunching and crushing, and bleeding out his mouth, rendering him mute. And all anyone ever saw was his silent smile.
~~*~~
Dean had wanted to scream when he saw Cas sink under the surface of the cold lake.
Cas was the one who gripped him tight and raised him from Perdition. He was family. He was mucked and mired and screwed up, and he was family. And then he was gone.
In the hunting life there are far too few opportunities to make real connections; the act is even frowned upon. It’s too much of a risk. And Dean understands that as much as anyone possibly could. If you live a hunter then you die like one. But it’s such a lonely life.
It had been strange to think of the progression Cas had made: Warrior Angel carrying out God’s orders to some kind of new God himself. And somewhere in between all of that, he was a Winchester -- stubborn, short-tempered, soft-hearted, self-sacrificing, and seriously flawed.
When he had fished that old tan trenchcoat out of the water, all Dean had been able to do was choke back a sob.
His nightmares screamed at him for months, and all he could hear was Cas pleading for help.
~~*~~
Dean could not bring himself to be silent when Bobby died. He ranted and raved and punched. He had scared Sam, and honestly, he had be ok with that.
It was so un-fucking-fair the way Bobby had died.
Losing Bobby had been like losing everything: a fellow hunter, a lore expert, an uncle, and most importantly a father. Bobby had been the one constant Dean had learned to depend on in his life, someone who was there to teach him about more than just hunting. Bobby had helped Dean perfect his shotgun stance when he was young, but he had also taught Dean how to throw a baseball. Bobby had helped Dean learn how to prepare meals in a kitchen, and how to angle his wrist just right to stick a throwing knife in an intended target.
And then he, too, was gone.
Dean remembered how he had tried to keep going, how he had tried to keep smiling, to keep working. He had tried to pretend like all the voices of the dead weren’t swirling around inside his head, taunting him...
All the lives he couldn’t save.
All the ways he should have died instead of them.
All the ways he wasn’t worthy.
Dean would have given anything to have silenced those voices, but there were so many of them. People had died over the years, and people had come back, new people had even come along.
But so many people had also just walked away. Even if they had come back, they walked away again. Dean had learned to spend his life just waiting for the next person to leave, one way or another.
~~*~~
Dean doesn’t react as the door closes. Once again, as in years before, Sam will speak before he does.
He remembers the first time he lost his mother. He remembers the heat and the screaming and the loneliness, and he is silent in his remembered grief.
Dean can’t carry his brother out of a burning building this time; there is no where to go for escape. And besides, Dean is used to this. The back of the Impala is still home, and now, the Bunker is too.
It’s not like anything has really changed just because Mom left. After all, Sam is still here (for now), and Cas will come back (or he won’t). And in the meantime they just gotta keep grinding.
He and Sam have been doing this for many years, without Mom, without Dad. And they can continue Saving people
Dad, Bobby, Sam, Cas...
Hunting things
“Take your brother outside, as fast as you can, Dean. Go now!”
The family business
he remembers the first time he lost his mother...