Sam, Dean, Cas, and Juliet are finally going on vacation: visiting Eileen in Ireland for some well deserved R&R. But they have to get there first. By plane. (Well, not Juliet: they don’t make dog carriers for hellhounds and besides, she’s not a common dog. She’s got important things to do, like help Eileen on a hunt, and she can get there a lot faster than humans can in their flying metal beasts.)
A/N: Currently drowning in Saileen feels, so this is the result of that. Enjoy.
Words: 520
Characters: Sam Winchester, Eileen Leahy, Dean Winchester
Warnings: fluff, angst
Unbetaed. All mistakes are my own.
“Come on, Sam,” Eileen urged as she held her hand out to him, a blanket tucked under her other arm. Her brown hair was in a messy bun, her face split by a smile, a yellow sundress dancing around her knees.
Sam grabbed the basket and reached out for her outstretched hand, chuckling as she pulled him through the fields to a tree that provided just the right amount of both shade and sunlight.
God, to Dean: You’re the firewall between light and darkness
God, to Dean: The Earth will be fine. It’s got you, and Sam.
Darkness, to Dean: You gave me what I needed most, let me do the same for you. *resurrects Mary*
Death, to Dean: You’re important. You and your brother.
…
Will some cosmic entity please tell Sam personally that he’s goddamn fucking important so he can stop hearing it second-hand from Dean?
But I think that’s part of the cosmic joke? The irony? The journey? Because, to Dean, this is absolutely not good news. He doesn’t want to be the firewall and have all of that responsibility. He thinks Chuck is a shit for trying to leave it all in their hands like that. But Sam? Sam, I think, would love to hear this. It would make him feel so much better, like when he said the trials were purifying him. He feels unclean and to have God and sundry BIG IMPORTANT IMMORTAL beings telling him he’s important, that he matters, that he is not unclean, that he’s good?? That would mean so much to Sam. It would do him so much good. But I don’t think that’s where we are in Sam’s journey. Not yet.
Exactly. Dean hates being singled out at birthday parties let alone by God, Sam wishes he could be like the knights on the quest for the Holy Grail.
Sam, the man who was positively giddy at the prospect of actually shaking hands with a real live angel, while Dean was grumpy about being chosen by heaven from the get-go and was convinced that those angels were all dicks.
Sam, the man who’d sacrificed himself to save the world after being told personally that God just didn’t care enough to intervene to save it.
Sam, who’d been through everything he had, offered himself up over and over again to put right what God had let go wrong, when he finally MET God face to face instead of being ANGRY about all of this, he was practically giddy. Because through everything God had put him through, even by proxy, Sam still had faith.
Dean never did, and never even wanted faith in some cosmic power. It’s irrelevant and an unwanted burden to him.
Whatever Sam discussed with Chuck when he agreed to take on the Mark of Cain in 11.22, when he was willing to take on that burden knowing exactly what it would mean for him after spending most of s10 trying to save Dean from it… well… I think that at least gives us SOMETHING about what Chuck and Sam must have covered in that discussion for Sam to have agreed to take the mark on himself.
Yet another difference between Sam and Dean. Dean doesn’t want to be singled out. He just wants to keep his head down and do his job. And the universe has repaid him by repeatedly dragging him kicking and screaming into the limelight. Sam has repeatedly singled HIMSELF out, and the universe has repaid him by repeatedly failing to acknowledge how much he’s sacrificed personally to keep it from self-destructing.
So basically:
– Sam needs to know that he’s enough, that he’s good and worthy and that his suffering has purpose (or even that he doesn’t have to suffer to be good and worthy). – Dean needs to stop having cosmic responsibilities dropped on him every five minutes because that shit is exhausting, and all he wants to do is work, maybe get a decent burger now and then, and maybe bone down with the angel who keeps coming back to him.
The whole thing is made infinitely worse when you throw Dean/Cas into it, because just as Dean goes off to talk to God and the Darkness and gets told he’s important and comes back with his resurrected mother… he goes and talks to Death and gets told he’s important…
… and then immediately following that, Cas is resurrected.
It doesn’t matter what the reason actually is. From Sam’s perspective, Dean keeps getting rewarded, while Sam gets a dead Eileen.
AAAAHHHH!!!!! Yes, this….
“From Sam’s perspective, Dean keeps getting rewarded, while Sam gets a dead Eileen.“