[cicero] In which Dean needs a little bit of hope.
“It’ll be better when you wake up. I promise.”
He spent his whole life trying to make things better for Sam.
Christmas, birthdays, every holiday that Dad managed to forget, Dean covered it all. He raised him, took care of him, did things for him that most people wouldn’t even think of all because Sam was his brother. It was what brothers did for each other. They took care of them, saved them, and made sure that they didn’t do things like toss themselves into Hell without some way to yank them back out again.
But he had made Sam a promise this time. And the promise didn’t come with keeping him safe, or making sure he was happy. It came with damning him to an eternity of being torn apart and keeping company with Lucifer. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right. Sam shouldn’t have asked that of him. Sam had no right to ask that of him.
But he did.
Dean did as he was told. He took the letter to Faith and let her beat the holy hell out of him, and then got piss drunk. It was the way he had been dealing with most things lately, but the minute he walked out of her motel the next morning, he promised himself that it was done. No more drunken binges, no more self pity. If Lisa said yes, he was going to be a dad. And he’d be damned if he made the same mistakes his father did.
He could be normal, at least for a little while. It was what Sam wanted, after all.
When he was actually knocking on the door and waiting for Lisa to answer, he briefly considered leaving. He was a mess and he knew it. She deserved better than him and he knew it, but he didn’t have anywhere else to go. All he has left was hope. And he wasn’t even sure he had that anymore. Maybe someday Sam would wake up and everything would be okay again. But until then, all he could do was wait.
He also knew that he’d never been very good at waiting.