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“Take your brother out as fast as you can! Now Dean, go!”
It started with fire, and over twenty years later the most bittersweet realization is that they tried so, so hard, and for what? The game has come full circle, and it ends with fire.
Hell fire.
It started with a burning house, and it ended to the ultimate sacrifice; Dean being forced to let his little brother fall in to the pit, simply because there was no other choice.
Dean refuses to think about it. He refuses to remember the hordes of Hell, because he's been there, and he knows... And he refuses to think of it.
It doesn't help. Not one bit.
His dreams are consumed by torture and pain and Sam, and sometimes when he wakes up - morning or in the middle of the night - the only thing he can do is stare at the ceiling and wish to die.
He thought he had some sort of idea of what it would have been like for Sam during the four months when Dean was gone, but it's been almost a year now, and Dean... He just can't take it. Every second it breaks him down, piece by piece.
“Take care of Sam.”
Failure. That's all he is. He couldn't save Sam from Hell. And the pain is eating him alive.
Sam asked -pleaded- for Dean to stop it all; to find something more than the life they led before everything went wrong in so many levels, but the only thing Dean can feel is guilt. Shame.
Sam made him promise things, and in a situation like that, when your own little brother begs you to let him go and not try to bring him back... What was he supposed to do?
Say 'no'?
So, Dean knocked on Lisa's door, and only God knows why but she let him in. Took him in, no questions asked, let him be broken and torn to shreds inside.
It felt even worse.
Fire. Blood. Death.
Dean hates himself. He hates the fact that if he had even the slightest chance, he would leave Lisa and Ben behind not even thinking about it twice, if only he could get Sam back because deep down Dean knows that his so-called new family has been just a substitute for what he really craves for. But he made a promise to Sam. He made a promise, and it was basically Sam's dying wish.
He's glad that Sam can't know, because Dean would break that promise in a heartbeat.
There are nights when Dean wakes up screaming Sam's name, and Lisa says she understands. That only fuels Dean's anger, making him want to ask Lisa just how many loved ones she has lost, and not just lost, because dying and going to Hell voluntarily are so far from each other that they don't even fit in the same book. Not even in the same universe.
He's bitter. And tired. So close to giving up everything.
Dean tries to act normal. He gets a job, tries to live that sweet apple pie life he promised Sam he'll live, but all the time something is missing. Something so big it sometimes makes him feel like he cannot even breath.
Sam.
And then one night Sam comes back, and it's even more complicated than ever. The awe, the suspicion, the relief...
Things just don't work that way!
But there Sam is, his eyes bright, his smile barely there but still, and Dean feels like losing his mind because this can't be real. But it is. Sam is back, looking exactly like he was, his voice low and familiar, those brown bangs and dimples just like Dean remembers.
Something about Sam has changed though, but in his desperate want to believe that this really is Sam, his little brother who has escaped Hell leaves no room for questions, because shit, Sam is there, right there, right now.
“...how...?”
“I don't know.”
It doesn't matter. Nothing does. Sam is back, and come Hell or high water, Dean makes himself one promise. Just one, because all the other promises don't mean a thing.
“I'll never let you go again.”
Sam smiles a little. “I know.”
And really. In those few little words they have said everything that needs to be said.
Once again there is fire, but this time it won't destroy them, and when Dean looks Sam in the eye, he realizes that not all fire is bound to destroy.
The fire between them is something that will surely burn the ground down, but after that there's only emptiness, and maybe, just maybe, it's a new ground, and maybe it's the thing they both needed to start over and build something new to the emptiness that has haunted them both for way too long.