[TWP] Seven times it snowed
[Not binding on any canon muses mentioned herein.]
i.
“SNOW!”
The newly three year-old Dean Winchester had barely been up five minutes before he looked out his window and saw the inches of white stuff covering the lawn in front of his house. It was everywhere, blanketing everything across the neighborhood, and Dean’s eyes went wide in amazement as his nose pressed up against the glass of the window, taking it all in and wondering how he got to be this lucky.
Then he asked himself what he was doing there, staring at the snow from inside the house, when it was clearly so much better to be outside.
With that, he bolted, taking off down the stairs from his room and heading right for the front door of the house. When he hit the bottom of the stairs he stepped on the pant leg of his pajama pants on accident, lost the traction between his feet and the hardwood floors and the leg slid out from under him, sending him flying onto his side with a loud BANG!
“Dean?”
Dean paid no mind to his mother’s voice, or how much that slam had hurt, and just scrambled up onto his feet, bounding for the door. He got it open as quickly as he could, before running out into the snow: bare feet, PJs and all.
It was cold. The chill ran right through his feet and up through his body but he didn’t care. He just giggled at the shivers that ran through him and headed full on head first into the drifts, soaking himself to the skin faster than Mary probably had anticipated, and he didn’t stop until he felt the jerk of his body being picked up and hauled into the air.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing, little man?”
“It’s snowed,” Dean grinned up at his mother as she pulled him in closer. He was finally starting to feel the cold, and his little body shivered violently against his mother’s hold, teeth chattering in the breeze. “On my birthday. It snowed for me.” He paused for a moment, before looking up at her. “How did they know what I wanted?”
“I’ve got an angel hotline,” Mary said with a teasing smirk. “I made sure they got you just what you wanted.”
Dean practically beamed at the woman holding him, reaching up to throw her arms around her neck tightly. “Best birthday ever!”
ii.
Five year-olds don’t forget their birthday.
It was two and a half months after Dean lost his mother in the fire, and things hadn’t gotten better. John always came home in a stupor, eyes so glazed he barely even noticed his children were there until the babysitter came, looking to be paid. The day of Dean’s birthday wasn’t any different, and while Dean knew better than to complain-he learned from day one that his father was hurting and that certain things from then on were going to be Dean’s responsibility. Things like taking care of his little brother. Sam was Dean’s job now, and Dean was doing the best he could. At five, it wasn’t much but it was something, and he was good at it. Or, at least, Sammy seemed to think so.
John hadn’t delegated, however, who’s job it was to take care of Dean’s birthday.
Dean knew better than to complain. He figured that John would take care of it, because it was someone else’s job to do his birthday. John couldn’t have expected Dean to handle that too. So he waited. He waited for some kind of acknowledgement, some kind of comment from his father that this was supposed to be his day, but there was nothing. John did the same thing he did every night.
He came home, barely acknowledged that his sons were there, and went straight to the fridge to grab himself a beer. No cake, no presents, not even so much as a happy birthday. Mary never forgot his birthday. Not that he’d had many of them before they’d lost her, but she never forgot. Ever. Now the fire hadn’t just taken away his mother, but it’d taken away his birthday too.
It just wasn’t fair.
He watched his father disappear into the kitchen, before huffing slightly, climbing down off the couch and running back into his room. He shut the door behind him, throwing himself down on his bed and just letting the tears come, for the first time since his mother died. Big boys weren’t supposed to cry, but Dean didn’t know what else to do. This was supposed to be his day.
It was about five minutes, before he sat up, brushing the tears back off his cheeks and sitting up to look out the window, resting his arms on the window sill and his chin on top of them. He pressed his nose to the glass and he watched for a moment, before he started to make out small light flakes fluttering down in the fading light. Small bits of snow coming down from the sky, just for him. Just for his birthday.
Grandma Winchester always said his mother was an angel now. That she’d gone up to heaven and was watching him there, but Dean wasn’t really sure he believed until now. There was a soft sniffle as he watched the flakes come down from the windows, just sitting there and watching for a moment, as he got the only thing he’d ever truly asked for.
Mary never forgot his birthday. Even now. And to his small little mind, that was more of a comfort than anything else.
iii.
His bed was bouncing.
It was Saturday. Dean didn’t have to be out of bed for school, so he was going to sleep for a while. Through the squint of his eyes, he could see that the sun was barely even up yet, and yet, his bed was bouncing. He figured that if he stayed still, he might be able to get out of this without actually waking up. And for a while he was right.
There was a long pause where the bouncing stopped. Then he felt the weight on the bed shift, moving closer to him and then there was the distinct feeling of his brother’s morning breath on his face. He peered out from behind his eyes, not opening his eyes any more than he had to, and saw four year-old Sam looking at him, searching his face for some kind of sign of life.
“Dean?” he hissed, looking at his face carefully. “Are you sleeping?”
Dean closed his eyes completely again, going back to pretending that he was asleep. There was another pause, then the weight shifted again, and Sam was back to bouncing again. And he bounced. He bounced for a good five, ten minutes before he stopped again, pushing himself over Dean, leaning into his face again.
“Dean? Are you sleeping?”
Dean groaned slightly, knowing he was going to get this until Sam got an answer from him. He sighed slightly, before responding. “Yes.”
There was a pause. “No, you’re not.”
“Yes, Sam, I am.”
“How can you be sleeping if you’re talking?”
Dean rolled his eyes behind closed lids. “Maybe I’m a sleep talker, Mr. Know-it-All.”
Sam scoffed. “There’s no such thing.”
“What do you want, Sammy?” Dean sighed, looking up at his brother with a glare. Sam watched him for a minute, before grinning widely and wrapping his arms around Dean’s neck.
“Happy Birthday!”
Dean flailed slightly at the hug, before pushing his brother off him carefully. “Sammy-can’t breathe-”
Sam pushed back from him so that he was standing on the bed and bouncing slightly next to Dean. “Dad’s gonna make breakfast, and we got you presents, and we’re gonna go get ice cream, and it’s snowing and-”
“It’s what?” Dean was on his feet in two seconds, making his way to the window and peering out into the piles of white that were covering the parking lot of the motel they were staying, a small smile coming to his lips. “I miss you too, Mom,” he murmured softly, just letting himself have the moment, before Sam grabbed his legs again, rambling about going out to play in the snow and distracting Dean from the person who wasn’t there anymore.
It wasn’t necessarily the best birthday, but as far as Dean was concerned, it was a pretty good one.
iv.
He’d been waiting for this day since he first laid eyes on her.
Well, at least since he remembered first laying eyes on her. As far as sixteen year-old Dean was concerned, she was the only woman he was ever going to love. She was beautiful, and had been there for him for longer than he could possibly imagine, was more reliable than any woman he’d ever met, and didn’t make these insane demands on him. Like meeting her parents.
Dean didn’t do parents.
No, she was just-perfect. And she was finally his fully and completely. John had put the keys in his hand at lunch, right after he had gotten his official license, and this was probably the best present the man had ever given him. Not that Dean had gotten many, but he understood why he didn’t as well. They didn’t have the money, John didn’t have the time, whatever. John was doing important work, and besides-all he ever wanted was his family, together on his birthday. But today, he’d gotten something he was going to treasure. Forever. And as much as he wanted to-he wasn’t going to even think about driving her today.
The fat flakes came down in droves and Dean just sat in his car (his car), watching them, occasionally turning on the windshield wipers to clear the front window of the car. Eleven year-old Sam, however, was not amused by what Dean was deciding to do with his afternoon, and was letting his brother know as much.
“So-you’ve been asking for this car all year. And now that it’s actually yours-you’re just going to sit here.”
Dean looked over at his brother from the passenger’s seat, before rolling his eyes slightly. “Do you see the weather? I could crash her out there.”
Sam rolled his eyes in that obnoxious ‘I’m eleven but I still know more than you’ way he had-you know, the kind of eye roll where his whole head moved, and a heavy sigh accompanied it-before giving his brother a look. “Since when do you care about the weather when you drive?”
“Dude. This isn’t just some car Dad rented to teach me to drive, alright? This is the Impala. She’s my baby. I have to take care of her.”
“It’s just a car, Dean.”
Dean turned back to his brother with a ghastly look, before pointing out towards the side of the car. “Out, heathen.” He knew that his brother was teasing him, and Dean was playing along just for the sake of getting Sam to be less sulky. He knew that Sam knew she was more than a car. She was so much more than that.
Sam gave that massive eye roll again before pushing the door open and starting to get out. “Fine. It’s freezing out here anyway. But if I catch you making out with your car? Totally telling Dad that we need to have you committed.” The car door slammed, and Dean just watched his brother go with a shake of his head.
Yeah. Sammy was so getting snow down the back of his shirt later.
v.
“I got into Stanford.”
They were sitting on the hood of the Impala, drinking beer that Dean had legally bought from the store in honor of his twenty-first birthday, and Sam had decided to drop that particular bomb on him. Dean didn’t even know how Sam could know already, but apparently he did. Dean knew that his brother had applied, but-now. He picked today of all days to tell Dean this.
“You heard already?”
“I applied early acceptance,” Sam said with a solemn nod. “I got a full ride.”
“Good for you, Sammy,” Dean sighed, watching as his brother rolled his eyes at the nickname. They eye roll had gotten less dramatic from when he was eleven, but it was still there. “And you’re telling me this why?”
At that, the smartass look dropped and Sam’s eyes fell to his lap, twirling the beer bottle in his hand absent-mindedly. “I want to go, Dean.”
Dean looked at his brother for a moment. He didn’t have to ask Sam why, he knew all the reasons. Sam had been telling him for months about how excited he was to go away to school and do something with his life. Something normal. Something that wasn’t hunting or the life that John and Dean had come to call their own. But he never for a second thought that Sam would actually do it. He was quiet for a long time, before speaking up again, his voice quiet and more serious than it had been a minute ago.
“He’s never going to let you go, Sam.”
“I don’t need Dad to ‘let’ me do anything,” Sam said, stiffening slightly. “Face it, Dean-I’m gonna be eighteen in a few months. I can make my own choices.”
Dean wasn’t going to dispute that. Sam had a good head on his shoulders-he always had. But still-this was Dad he was talking about defying, and Dean wasn’t exactly okay with that plan. That was only going to lead to trouble. And the last thing Dean wanted was trouble on his birthday.
“Besides-since when has Dad been around long enough to have any say in our decisions, huh?”
Dean’s head snapped over at that, remembering a time when he was ten, that he’d disobeyed an order and almost gotten his brother killed, but he pushed the memory to the back of his mind and silenced the protest on his lips, just taking another swig of the beer and shifting so that he was sitting higher up on the hood of the car. It was finally starting to snow, as the weather had been threatening to do all day, but Dean just couldn’t find the energy right now to enjoy it.
“So why are you telling me all this anyway? If you don’t need Dad’s permission, you don’t need mine either.”
“I need you to back me up, Dean.” Sam shifted again, looking away from his brother and towards the road in front of them. “Maybe-maybe if you’re behind me on this, he won’t fight me.”
Which meant that this was going to turn into another fight. A fight on one of the few days their dad had actually been with them this month, and that was the last thing that Dean wanted. He just wanted a small, quiet birthday with his family. But apparently, with the way things between Sam and John had been going lately, that was a bit too much. “Not tonight.”
“What?”
Dean sighed slightly, before pushing himself off the hood of the car and heading to the driver’s side. “I’ll back you up, Sammy, but-don’t tell him tonight.” It was his friggin’ birthday, for Christ’s sake.
Sam paused for a moment, before nodding again. “Sure.” There was another pause, and Sam looked over his shoulder at Dean for a moment, before replying. “Hey, Dean? Thanks.”
Dean just snorted, before starting to slide back into the car again. “Don’t thank me yet.”
vi.
It was his last birthday.
After the disaster that was Christmas, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to bring up celebrating to Sammy, but-he felt like he should. It was the last one he was going to have, ever. It was his birthday. His day. Though-with all the crap going down around them, he was starting to think that he shouldn’t even bother bringing it up. It’d just be another thing for the universe to screw up.
He was up early on the twenty-fourth, mostly because he hadn’t bothered to go to bed, he and Sam having finished a job in the wee hours of the morning, and he wasn’t ready to sleep yet. He wasn’t sure when it had started snowing, probably sometime in the dark, but as the sun was coming up, he saw bits of white everywhere, and wondered how exactly he was going to be able to keep doing this for five more months. Five more months of last holidays and last chances, and Dean wasn’t sure if he would be able to handle that without wanting more.
He did what he had to when it came to saving his brother-that he didn’t regret. He never regretted doing what he had to do to keep Sam safe, because that was his job, his purpose. It gave him direction in a business that often times lacked direction. Hunters weren’t ever meant for the apple pie life. They didn’t have the same goals that everyone else did-they didn’t look to get married, have kids. It was just the job. Dean’s life had always been the job, and now he was starting to regret that. Not that he had done the job he did, just that that was all he was:
Dean Winchester, hunter.
He never got the chance to be Dean Winchester, husband, or Dean Winchester, father. Just Dean Winchester, hunter. Probably to someone out there he was Dean Winchester, hero, but right now, he wasn’t really feeling all that heroic. He just wanted to be Dean Winchester for a while. Just wanted to be the guy who knew he was going to die, knew there was nothing he could do about it, and actually let that fact get to him. For his twenty-ninth birthday, he just wanted to be Dean Winchester, human being-just for a little while.
He hoped that wasn’t too much to ask.
vii.
He always used to think his mother was an angel.
It was a childish hope, one that he never confessed to anyone around him, but one that he held on to when he had nothing else. Mary was their guardian angel, the one who was looking out for them when no one else was. The more evil he saw in his life, the more jaded he got, but that was one truth about his life he hadn’t questioned-couldn’t question. Even though she was dead, Mary had been the rock for their family for too long for him to question her place in the cosmic balance, and he held onto that more than he ever thought he could. Even when Missouri told him that their mother’s spirit was gone, he knew that wasn’t true, not completely. Because Mary always watched over them. Always.
Now, though-now he knew the truth. He knew why things that had happened to his family had. Castiel had tried to show him the images of his past, his family’s history, to try and get him up-to-speed, so that he knew everything they knew, but Dean had come to an even more startling realization that the angel probably hadn’t anticipated.
Mary had made a deal.
He knew that the deal hadn’t been for her soul, and if she hadn’t made it, he wouldn’t exist, but he knew how deals worked. He knew it intimately, in fact, and while it hadn’t been made for time, and while Azazel, the old son of a bitch, said that if she left well enough alone, no one would get hurt, he knew that with the life his mother had lead, there was a good chance Mary had gone to Hell. How she held on long enough to become a spirit, haunting the inside of their childhood home was beyond him, but at the end of the day, that wasn’t what mattered.
He tried his best to hold on to the idea that his mother was still watching over him, that she hadn’t been through the things he had, that she hadn’t been broken the way he had, but he knew that somewhere in the back of his mind that that was the truth. He wanted to think his mother was made of stronger stuff than he was, but it had been years-twenty-five years, to be exact. 300 months. 3000 years in Hell. No one lasted that long-no one. It never bothered him to think of his father in that respect, but when it came to his mom, who’s only real crime was wanting to protect her family-the idea that she might be a demon out there somewhere destroyed him.
But he kept it to himself. He didn’t tell Sam because he knew that Sam wouldn’t understand, and he didn’t mention it to the angels, didn’t try to ask Castiel or Uriel, because they would most likely dismiss it as irrelevant, or they would tell him that it wasn’t important. They wouldn’t understand how it was important. To him, it was the most important thing in the world, because once that thought of Mary as his guardian angel was gone, Dean wasn’t going to have much left to hold on to. Sure, he had Sam, but if Sam knew everything-everything that Dean had done in Hell, everything that he was capable of-he would never look at Dean the same way again. These days, it felt like his faith in Mary was all he had.
He was up on the wee hours of the twenty-fourth again, this time not because he and Sam were up late, but because Sam wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the mood to sleep to begin with, but Sam had gone for a walk hours ago, and he still wasn’t back yet. He wanted to think he was over reacting. He wanted to think that he was just worrying too much, just like he always did, and that Sam was just holed up in a library somewhere, looking for their next job, Dean couldn’t help the feeling in his gut that there was something Sam wasn’t telling him.
Antsy, unable to sleep, he stepped outside, barely even registering that it was his birthday already. He was just planning on going for a drive to clear his head, maybe track down Sam, who shouldn’t be walking around, alone, in the dark to begin with. For a smart guy, his brother could be an idiot sometimes. He had his keys in his hands, and was shrugging his jacket onto his shoulders when he felt it. Soft drops of cold and wet against his face and the front of his shirt and he froze for a minute, eyes looking to catch the pieces of white floating down towards the ground in front of them. He watched for a minute, amazed, before closing his eyes and letting the flakes hit him.
They melted almost as soon as they hit his skin, the cold wet just rolling down his face, and starting to soak the collar of his shirt. He didn’t move, just stood there in the snow and let it swirl around him, and he breathed it in, letting that small flare of hope that maybe he was wrong, and she was still out there, looking out for him, and watching him.
I love you, Mom. I’m sorry. It was a silent thought, but it was there. He tried his best to save her, and she was another person on the list of things that he wasn’t there in time to fix, but then again, this wasn’t anything he could have changed. He just hoped that for once, the bad feeling in the pit of his stomach was wrong.
Someone Winchester deserved a happy afterlife. Even if it wasn’t going to be him.
3974 words
i.
“SNOW!”
The newly three year-old Dean Winchester had barely been up five minutes before he looked out his window and saw the inches of white stuff covering the lawn in front of his house. It was everywhere, blanketing everything across the neighborhood, and Dean’s eyes went wide in amazement as his nose pressed up against the glass of the window, taking it all in and wondering how he got to be this lucky.
Then he asked himself what he was doing there, staring at the snow from inside the house, when it was clearly so much better to be outside.
With that, he bolted, taking off down the stairs from his room and heading right for the front door of the house. When he hit the bottom of the stairs he stepped on the pant leg of his pajama pants on accident, lost the traction between his feet and the hardwood floors and the leg slid out from under him, sending him flying onto his side with a loud BANG!
“Dean?”
Dean paid no mind to his mother’s voice, or how much that slam had hurt, and just scrambled up onto his feet, bounding for the door. He got it open as quickly as he could, before running out into the snow: bare feet, PJs and all.
It was cold. The chill ran right through his feet and up through his body but he didn’t care. He just giggled at the shivers that ran through him and headed full on head first into the drifts, soaking himself to the skin faster than Mary probably had anticipated, and he didn’t stop until he felt the jerk of his body being picked up and hauled into the air.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing, little man?”
“It’s snowed,” Dean grinned up at his mother as she pulled him in closer. He was finally starting to feel the cold, and his little body shivered violently against his mother’s hold, teeth chattering in the breeze. “On my birthday. It snowed for me.” He paused for a moment, before looking up at her. “How did they know what I wanted?”
“I’ve got an angel hotline,” Mary said with a teasing smirk. “I made sure they got you just what you wanted.”
Dean practically beamed at the woman holding him, reaching up to throw her arms around her neck tightly. “Best birthday ever!”
ii.
Five year-olds don’t forget their birthday.
It was two and a half months after Dean lost his mother in the fire, and things hadn’t gotten better. John always came home in a stupor, eyes so glazed he barely even noticed his children were there until the babysitter came, looking to be paid. The day of Dean’s birthday wasn’t any different, and while Dean knew better than to complain-he learned from day one that his father was hurting and that certain things from then on were going to be Dean’s responsibility. Things like taking care of his little brother. Sam was Dean’s job now, and Dean was doing the best he could. At five, it wasn’t much but it was something, and he was good at it. Or, at least, Sammy seemed to think so.
John hadn’t delegated, however, who’s job it was to take care of Dean’s birthday.
Dean knew better than to complain. He figured that John would take care of it, because it was someone else’s job to do his birthday. John couldn’t have expected Dean to handle that too. So he waited. He waited for some kind of acknowledgement, some kind of comment from his father that this was supposed to be his day, but there was nothing. John did the same thing he did every night.
He came home, barely acknowledged that his sons were there, and went straight to the fridge to grab himself a beer. No cake, no presents, not even so much as a happy birthday. Mary never forgot his birthday. Not that he’d had many of them before they’d lost her, but she never forgot. Ever. Now the fire hadn’t just taken away his mother, but it’d taken away his birthday too.
It just wasn’t fair.
He watched his father disappear into the kitchen, before huffing slightly, climbing down off the couch and running back into his room. He shut the door behind him, throwing himself down on his bed and just letting the tears come, for the first time since his mother died. Big boys weren’t supposed to cry, but Dean didn’t know what else to do. This was supposed to be his day.
It was about five minutes, before he sat up, brushing the tears back off his cheeks and sitting up to look out the window, resting his arms on the window sill and his chin on top of them. He pressed his nose to the glass and he watched for a moment, before he started to make out small light flakes fluttering down in the fading light. Small bits of snow coming down from the sky, just for him. Just for his birthday.
Grandma Winchester always said his mother was an angel now. That she’d gone up to heaven and was watching him there, but Dean wasn’t really sure he believed until now. There was a soft sniffle as he watched the flakes come down from the windows, just sitting there and watching for a moment, as he got the only thing he’d ever truly asked for.
Mary never forgot his birthday. Even now. And to his small little mind, that was more of a comfort than anything else.
iii.
His bed was bouncing.
It was Saturday. Dean didn’t have to be out of bed for school, so he was going to sleep for a while. Through the squint of his eyes, he could see that the sun was barely even up yet, and yet, his bed was bouncing. He figured that if he stayed still, he might be able to get out of this without actually waking up. And for a while he was right.
There was a long pause where the bouncing stopped. Then he felt the weight on the bed shift, moving closer to him and then there was the distinct feeling of his brother’s morning breath on his face. He peered out from behind his eyes, not opening his eyes any more than he had to, and saw four year-old Sam looking at him, searching his face for some kind of sign of life.
“Dean?” he hissed, looking at his face carefully. “Are you sleeping?”
Dean closed his eyes completely again, going back to pretending that he was asleep. There was another pause, then the weight shifted again, and Sam was back to bouncing again. And he bounced. He bounced for a good five, ten minutes before he stopped again, pushing himself over Dean, leaning into his face again.
“Dean? Are you sleeping?”
Dean groaned slightly, knowing he was going to get this until Sam got an answer from him. He sighed slightly, before responding. “Yes.”
There was a pause. “No, you’re not.”
“Yes, Sam, I am.”
“How can you be sleeping if you’re talking?”
Dean rolled his eyes behind closed lids. “Maybe I’m a sleep talker, Mr. Know-it-All.”
Sam scoffed. “There’s no such thing.”
“What do you want, Sammy?” Dean sighed, looking up at his brother with a glare. Sam watched him for a minute, before grinning widely and wrapping his arms around Dean’s neck.
“Happy Birthday!”
Dean flailed slightly at the hug, before pushing his brother off him carefully. “Sammy-can’t breathe-”
Sam pushed back from him so that he was standing on the bed and bouncing slightly next to Dean. “Dad’s gonna make breakfast, and we got you presents, and we’re gonna go get ice cream, and it’s snowing and-”
“It’s what?” Dean was on his feet in two seconds, making his way to the window and peering out into the piles of white that were covering the parking lot of the motel they were staying, a small smile coming to his lips. “I miss you too, Mom,” he murmured softly, just letting himself have the moment, before Sam grabbed his legs again, rambling about going out to play in the snow and distracting Dean from the person who wasn’t there anymore.
It wasn’t necessarily the best birthday, but as far as Dean was concerned, it was a pretty good one.
iv.
He’d been waiting for this day since he first laid eyes on her.
Well, at least since he remembered first laying eyes on her. As far as sixteen year-old Dean was concerned, she was the only woman he was ever going to love. She was beautiful, and had been there for him for longer than he could possibly imagine, was more reliable than any woman he’d ever met, and didn’t make these insane demands on him. Like meeting her parents.
Dean didn’t do parents.
No, she was just-perfect. And she was finally his fully and completely. John had put the keys in his hand at lunch, right after he had gotten his official license, and this was probably the best present the man had ever given him. Not that Dean had gotten many, but he understood why he didn’t as well. They didn’t have the money, John didn’t have the time, whatever. John was doing important work, and besides-all he ever wanted was his family, together on his birthday. But today, he’d gotten something he was going to treasure. Forever. And as much as he wanted to-he wasn’t going to even think about driving her today.
The fat flakes came down in droves and Dean just sat in his car (his car), watching them, occasionally turning on the windshield wipers to clear the front window of the car. Eleven year-old Sam, however, was not amused by what Dean was deciding to do with his afternoon, and was letting his brother know as much.
“So-you’ve been asking for this car all year. And now that it’s actually yours-you’re just going to sit here.”
Dean looked over at his brother from the passenger’s seat, before rolling his eyes slightly. “Do you see the weather? I could crash her out there.”
Sam rolled his eyes in that obnoxious ‘I’m eleven but I still know more than you’ way he had-you know, the kind of eye roll where his whole head moved, and a heavy sigh accompanied it-before giving his brother a look. “Since when do you care about the weather when you drive?”
“Dude. This isn’t just some car Dad rented to teach me to drive, alright? This is the Impala. She’s my baby. I have to take care of her.”
“It’s just a car, Dean.”
Dean turned back to his brother with a ghastly look, before pointing out towards the side of the car. “Out, heathen.” He knew that his brother was teasing him, and Dean was playing along just for the sake of getting Sam to be less sulky. He knew that Sam knew she was more than a car. She was so much more than that.
Sam gave that massive eye roll again before pushing the door open and starting to get out. “Fine. It’s freezing out here anyway. But if I catch you making out with your car? Totally telling Dad that we need to have you committed.” The car door slammed, and Dean just watched his brother go with a shake of his head.
Yeah. Sammy was so getting snow down the back of his shirt later.
v.
“I got into Stanford.”
They were sitting on the hood of the Impala, drinking beer that Dean had legally bought from the store in honor of his twenty-first birthday, and Sam had decided to drop that particular bomb on him. Dean didn’t even know how Sam could know already, but apparently he did. Dean knew that his brother had applied, but-now. He picked today of all days to tell Dean this.
“You heard already?”
“I applied early acceptance,” Sam said with a solemn nod. “I got a full ride.”
“Good for you, Sammy,” Dean sighed, watching as his brother rolled his eyes at the nickname. They eye roll had gotten less dramatic from when he was eleven, but it was still there. “And you’re telling me this why?”
At that, the smartass look dropped and Sam’s eyes fell to his lap, twirling the beer bottle in his hand absent-mindedly. “I want to go, Dean.”
Dean looked at his brother for a moment. He didn’t have to ask Sam why, he knew all the reasons. Sam had been telling him for months about how excited he was to go away to school and do something with his life. Something normal. Something that wasn’t hunting or the life that John and Dean had come to call their own. But he never for a second thought that Sam would actually do it. He was quiet for a long time, before speaking up again, his voice quiet and more serious than it had been a minute ago.
“He’s never going to let you go, Sam.”
“I don’t need Dad to ‘let’ me do anything,” Sam said, stiffening slightly. “Face it, Dean-I’m gonna be eighteen in a few months. I can make my own choices.”
Dean wasn’t going to dispute that. Sam had a good head on his shoulders-he always had. But still-this was Dad he was talking about defying, and Dean wasn’t exactly okay with that plan. That was only going to lead to trouble. And the last thing Dean wanted was trouble on his birthday.
“Besides-since when has Dad been around long enough to have any say in our decisions, huh?”
Dean’s head snapped over at that, remembering a time when he was ten, that he’d disobeyed an order and almost gotten his brother killed, but he pushed the memory to the back of his mind and silenced the protest on his lips, just taking another swig of the beer and shifting so that he was sitting higher up on the hood of the car. It was finally starting to snow, as the weather had been threatening to do all day, but Dean just couldn’t find the energy right now to enjoy it.
“So why are you telling me all this anyway? If you don’t need Dad’s permission, you don’t need mine either.”
“I need you to back me up, Dean.” Sam shifted again, looking away from his brother and towards the road in front of them. “Maybe-maybe if you’re behind me on this, he won’t fight me.”
Which meant that this was going to turn into another fight. A fight on one of the few days their dad had actually been with them this month, and that was the last thing that Dean wanted. He just wanted a small, quiet birthday with his family. But apparently, with the way things between Sam and John had been going lately, that was a bit too much. “Not tonight.”
“What?”
Dean sighed slightly, before pushing himself off the hood of the car and heading to the driver’s side. “I’ll back you up, Sammy, but-don’t tell him tonight.” It was his friggin’ birthday, for Christ’s sake.
Sam paused for a moment, before nodding again. “Sure.” There was another pause, and Sam looked over his shoulder at Dean for a moment, before replying. “Hey, Dean? Thanks.”
Dean just snorted, before starting to slide back into the car again. “Don’t thank me yet.”
vi.
It was his last birthday.
After the disaster that was Christmas, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to bring up celebrating to Sammy, but-he felt like he should. It was the last one he was going to have, ever. It was his birthday. His day. Though-with all the crap going down around them, he was starting to think that he shouldn’t even bother bringing it up. It’d just be another thing for the universe to screw up.
He was up early on the twenty-fourth, mostly because he hadn’t bothered to go to bed, he and Sam having finished a job in the wee hours of the morning, and he wasn’t ready to sleep yet. He wasn’t sure when it had started snowing, probably sometime in the dark, but as the sun was coming up, he saw bits of white everywhere, and wondered how exactly he was going to be able to keep doing this for five more months. Five more months of last holidays and last chances, and Dean wasn’t sure if he would be able to handle that without wanting more.
He did what he had to when it came to saving his brother-that he didn’t regret. He never regretted doing what he had to do to keep Sam safe, because that was his job, his purpose. It gave him direction in a business that often times lacked direction. Hunters weren’t ever meant for the apple pie life. They didn’t have the same goals that everyone else did-they didn’t look to get married, have kids. It was just the job. Dean’s life had always been the job, and now he was starting to regret that. Not that he had done the job he did, just that that was all he was:
Dean Winchester, hunter.
He never got the chance to be Dean Winchester, husband, or Dean Winchester, father. Just Dean Winchester, hunter. Probably to someone out there he was Dean Winchester, hero, but right now, he wasn’t really feeling all that heroic. He just wanted to be Dean Winchester for a while. Just wanted to be the guy who knew he was going to die, knew there was nothing he could do about it, and actually let that fact get to him. For his twenty-ninth birthday, he just wanted to be Dean Winchester, human being-just for a little while.
He hoped that wasn’t too much to ask.
vii.
He always used to think his mother was an angel.
It was a childish hope, one that he never confessed to anyone around him, but one that he held on to when he had nothing else. Mary was their guardian angel, the one who was looking out for them when no one else was. The more evil he saw in his life, the more jaded he got, but that was one truth about his life he hadn’t questioned-couldn’t question. Even though she was dead, Mary had been the rock for their family for too long for him to question her place in the cosmic balance, and he held onto that more than he ever thought he could. Even when Missouri told him that their mother’s spirit was gone, he knew that wasn’t true, not completely. Because Mary always watched over them. Always.
Now, though-now he knew the truth. He knew why things that had happened to his family had. Castiel had tried to show him the images of his past, his family’s history, to try and get him up-to-speed, so that he knew everything they knew, but Dean had come to an even more startling realization that the angel probably hadn’t anticipated.
Mary had made a deal.
He knew that the deal hadn’t been for her soul, and if she hadn’t made it, he wouldn’t exist, but he knew how deals worked. He knew it intimately, in fact, and while it hadn’t been made for time, and while Azazel, the old son of a bitch, said that if she left well enough alone, no one would get hurt, he knew that with the life his mother had lead, there was a good chance Mary had gone to Hell. How she held on long enough to become a spirit, haunting the inside of their childhood home was beyond him, but at the end of the day, that wasn’t what mattered.
He tried his best to hold on to the idea that his mother was still watching over him, that she hadn’t been through the things he had, that she hadn’t been broken the way he had, but he knew that somewhere in the back of his mind that that was the truth. He wanted to think his mother was made of stronger stuff than he was, but it had been years-twenty-five years, to be exact. 300 months. 3000 years in Hell. No one lasted that long-no one. It never bothered him to think of his father in that respect, but when it came to his mom, who’s only real crime was wanting to protect her family-the idea that she might be a demon out there somewhere destroyed him.
But he kept it to himself. He didn’t tell Sam because he knew that Sam wouldn’t understand, and he didn’t mention it to the angels, didn’t try to ask Castiel or Uriel, because they would most likely dismiss it as irrelevant, or they would tell him that it wasn’t important. They wouldn’t understand how it was important. To him, it was the most important thing in the world, because once that thought of Mary as his guardian angel was gone, Dean wasn’t going to have much left to hold on to. Sure, he had Sam, but if Sam knew everything-everything that Dean had done in Hell, everything that he was capable of-he would never look at Dean the same way again. These days, it felt like his faith in Mary was all he had.
He was up on the wee hours of the twenty-fourth again, this time not because he and Sam were up late, but because Sam wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the mood to sleep to begin with, but Sam had gone for a walk hours ago, and he still wasn’t back yet. He wanted to think he was over reacting. He wanted to think that he was just worrying too much, just like he always did, and that Sam was just holed up in a library somewhere, looking for their next job, Dean couldn’t help the feeling in his gut that there was something Sam wasn’t telling him.
Antsy, unable to sleep, he stepped outside, barely even registering that it was his birthday already. He was just planning on going for a drive to clear his head, maybe track down Sam, who shouldn’t be walking around, alone, in the dark to begin with. For a smart guy, his brother could be an idiot sometimes. He had his keys in his hands, and was shrugging his jacket onto his shoulders when he felt it. Soft drops of cold and wet against his face and the front of his shirt and he froze for a minute, eyes looking to catch the pieces of white floating down towards the ground in front of them. He watched for a minute, amazed, before closing his eyes and letting the flakes hit him.
They melted almost as soon as they hit his skin, the cold wet just rolling down his face, and starting to soak the collar of his shirt. He didn’t move, just stood there in the snow and let it swirl around him, and he breathed it in, letting that small flare of hope that maybe he was wrong, and she was still out there, looking out for him, and watching him.
I love you, Mom. I’m sorry. It was a silent thought, but it was there. He tried his best to save her, and she was another person on the list of things that he wasn’t there in time to fix, but then again, this wasn’t anything he could have changed. He just hoped that for once, the bad feeling in the pit of his stomach was wrong.
Someone Winchester deserved a happy afterlife. Even if it wasn’t going to be him.
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