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"Seriously," Sam says. "Did you mean what you said before? You never have nightmares? Even with all the things we face every day?"
"No, never," Dean says.
It's not exactly a lie.
The first time he had the dream, he was four years old. The only reason he even remembered, later, that that was when it all began, was because when he woke up screaming and didn't stop, the Guenthers took him to the hospital to see his parents.
Daddy hugged him, but Dean didn't really stop crying until the nurse let them into the room where Mommy was sitting up in bed. Mommy looked tired, but she smiled when Daddy lifted him up to sit next to her, and she helped him carefully position his arms to support the bundle she put in them.
"Dean, this is your baby brother," she said. "His name's Sam."
Dean stared into Sam's wide, fascinated eyes, and felt his nightmare of pain and blood and fire slip into insignificance.
"Hi, Sammy," he whispered.
It's not really Dad's disappearance or his weird voicemail that send Dean to Sam. Which is not to say he's not worried, because he is: damn close to panic, if he's honest. Dad's taken off on solo hunts plenty of times, but never like this. Never without agreeing on a meet-up point first. Never without getting in touch every few days.
But two and a half weeks after Dad vanishes, Dean dreams of being pinned to the ceiling again, and this time Sam is looking up at him, his eyes wide and horrified.
He has the same dream two nights in a row, and knows the only reason he doesn't have it again the third night is because he doesn't sleep, driving through the night to California.
The first year after the dream started, he had it a lot. He used to wake up screaming and terrified until Mommy came and hugged him.
"It's not real, baby," she said soothingly, one night after the dream was particularly bad. "See, there's no fire. You're fine, everything's okay. Feel the bed?"
Dean patted the mattress hesitantly, and scrunched his fingers up in the comforter.
"See? It's real," Mommy said. "So if you ever wake up and you're scared, just tap the bed like that and you'll know it's real and you're awake."
Dean looked up at her. "But you'll come, won't you, Mommy?"
Mommy coaxed him into lying back down and tucked the sheets back over him. "I'll always come if I hear you, baby. But if I don't, you can come and find me, okay?"
"Okay," Dean said, and closed his eyes.
"That's my brave boy," Mommy said, and kissed his forehead. "Go back to sleep, Dean. Angels are watching over you, and I'm not going anywhere."
There's not much time for sleep over the weekend, not with Sam insisting that he needs to be back in Palo Alto by Monday. Dean's still hoping that his brother will change his mind and come with him to keep looking for Dad, but he knows better than to expect it. Sam's changed a lot in the past few years, but he's not gotten any less stubborn.
The few hours of sleep Dean does manage to snatch are full of fire and blood and Sam's horrified eyes.
He really, really doesn't want to just drop his brother off and drive away like nothing's wrong, but Sam doesn't leave him much choice. It's not until he looks at the clock and notices, really notices the date and time that Dean figures it out.
By the time he reaches Sam's apartment, he's walking into his nightmare. He drags Sam out of there, and doesn't spare Jess more than a glance.
He's already lived this through her eyes, and he's pretty sure he'll be seeing her again in his dreams.
Dean was nearly five the first time his dream came true.
He'd woken up from it again, the same nightmare he always had. But it had been different this time - instead of him staring down into darkness, there had been yellow eyes looking up at him.
Dean shivered and pressed his hand against the mattress the way Mommy had taught him. Be brave, Dean. He guessed Mommy hadn't heard him - she always came when he had his dream. But she'd said he could go and find her if she didn't. And he knew he had to tell her about the yellow eyes.
He slipped out of bed and was almost at the door when the feeling of wrong wrong wrong hit him. Frantic, he pressed a hand against the wall, solid beneath his palm. He was awake. This was real. But somehow it felt like he was still in the middle of his dream.
He could smell the smoke of the fire from his nightmare.
Dean took a deep breath and made himself turn the door handle. He needed to find Mommy.
Out in the hallway, the stink of smoke was stronger, and the air was hot. Dean went towards the heat, because if this was his nightmare, he needed to see it.
Daddy found him first, though, thrusting Sammy into his arms. The look in Daddy's eyes made Dean feel even more scared, but he tightened his hold on Sammy.
"Take your brother outside as fast as you can - don't look back," Daddy told him.
Dean was still staring at the door to Sammy's nursery. That's where the fire is. That's where the thing with the yellow eyes is.
That's where Mommy is.
"Now, Dean, go!" Daddy shouted, and Dean turned and ran, clutching Sammy to him.
Afterwards, shivering and pressed to Daddy's side, Dean wished that Mommy would come and make the nightmare go away again this time.
They're in Toledo, Ohio, when Dean's patience with Sam's self-loathing finally runs out.
"Now listen to me: it wasn't your fault. If you want to blame something, then blame the thing that killed her. Or hell, why don't you take a swing at me? I mean, I'm the one that dragged you away from her in the first place."
And I didn't figure out it was her I was dreaming about. I didn't insist on sticking around, even though I knew something was coming. If anyone should have been giving warnings, Sam, it was me, not you.
"I don't blame you," Sam says, soft but sincere. It doesn't make Dean feel any better.
When Bloody Mary makes his eyes bleed, later, he doesn't know who it's for: Jess, or Mom, or any of the others. But he does know that in his case it's deserved.
"- and then it turned into a flower and caught me," Lucy told the class, all in one breath.
"That sounds like a very nice dream," Mrs. Marshall said brightly. "Why don't you draw a picture of the flower, Lucy? Okay, who's next... Tim? Can you tell everyone about the last dream you remember?"
Dean sat very quietly, doodling on his piece of paper and listening to the other children talk about their dreams. It was like looking out a window onto a strange world. He'd never really realized that other people had lots of different dreams, not just the same one all the time. He'd never known dreams could be about things like flowers catching you when you fall, or driving a train that turns into a boat.
He sat and listened, and hoped that Mrs. Marshall wouldn't call on him.
"I have these nightmares," Sam says.
"I've noticed," Dean replies. 'Noticed' is putting it mildly. Sam's been waking up damn near every night, screaming as often as not. Dean's been trying to get him to open up about them for months, and if Sam's finally ready to talk, great. Though Dean still doesn't see the connection to the old house in Lawrence.
"And sometimes... they come true," Sam says.
Dean can't even take that in. Sam did not just say - "Come again?"
"Look, Dean - I dreamt about Jessica's death. For days before it happened."
Dean has never once considered that he might not be the only one to have the dream. It's never even crossed his mind before. Ever since he realized, back when he was a kid, that other people had more than one dream and their nightmares didn't come true, he's known that it's just him, that he's different. Sam talked about lots of dreams, growing up. Surely Dean would have known if Sam had been having the same dream as him?
His mind is whirling too much for him to do more than offer some B.S. about coincidences, but coincidence is one thing he's never been a big believer in.
The dream lost some of its terror, after a while. It became familiar. Dean stopped waking up screaming a month or two after Mom died; he just lay there and pressed his hand against the mattress and waited for his breathing to slow down. A few years later, he barely woke up at all, his eyes blinking open only for a moment, his hand tightening around the comforter or his pillow, just enough to reassure himself he was awake before he dozed off again.
Sometimes he wondered if the reason the dream no longer scared him as much was because it was the only link he still had to Mom. He couldn't exactly feel her presence, but he knew he had to be reliving what happened to her. Even that kind of indirect connection meant something.
The dream never exactly became comforting, but it did eventually become normal.
Mom looks exactly like how he remembers her from that night, but at the same time completely different. He guesses it's because he's not four years old any more. And because she's apparently a ghost.
He can't even think, as if his entire mind is shutting down in self-defense. He can only stare at her as she smiles at him. When she finally steps past him to speak to Sam, he turns to watch, even though he knows he should be keeping guard, watching for whatever has got Sam pinned. But there's no way he can take his eyes off her.
Watching her vanish into flames for the second and the millionth time makes him want to kill things, and at the same time makes him want to curl up somewhere like he's four again.
After that, the dream stops feeling like a connection to her. She's gone, truly gone. And he knows, somehow, that it's not really her death he's reliving. It hasn't been for a long time, if it ever was.
His dreams are about the future, not the past. It's his own death he's dreaming of, and somewhere deep down, he's always known that.
"I just..." Sammy huffed and fell down face forward onto his bed. "Don't you ever wish we could just be normal?"
Dean looked up from his magazine. "What are you talking about?"
Sam waved one arm vaguely, not bothering to raise his head. "Like a normal life! Where Dad's a... a mechanic or something, and we don't hunt, and all we've got to worry about is homework and tests and stuff. Don't you ever want something different?"
Dean thought of the dream he was having almost every night. "No point in wanting the impossible."
Dean doesn't know why he's surprised when Sam takes off for California instead of coming with him to investigate the case Dad's given them. Sam's always been this way - never follows orders, never just accepts what fate seems to be dishing out for him. Sam's always been convinced he can control his own life and do whatever he wants. It's something Dean doesn't really get, never has. He dreams about his own death most nights. He already knows what fate's got in store for him, and he's already seen it come true once, for his mother.
He's always known there are some fates you can't escape. Particularly when you're a Winchester. But somehow Sam's never gotten that memo.
He calls Sam, tells him he's proud of him for standing up to Dad and doing whatever he wants to do with his life, making his own choices. It's the truth; it's not like Dean's never wished things were different. He's just a realist: his fate's already written, and it's not one he's got a choice in.
The dream varied slightly on occasion: once or twice he could feel someone else's presence with him on the ceiling, and what he saw below him wasn't always the same. But the dream only once changed so much that he was the one looking up at the ceiling.
"Go to sleep, Dean," Cassie murmured, pressing kisses to his eyelids. "Dream of me."
He did.
By the time Dad called the next morning to say they had a job and needed to leave town, Dean's bags were already packed.
The phone call from Cassie asking for his help almost makes Dean panic. He's not stupid enough to think that just because he's never had that variant of the dream again, it'll definitely never come true. So it comes almost as a relief to discover she's calling because she's got a psycho ghost truck on her hands, of all things.
It's intense, seeing her again. After that version of the dream he made damn sure not to get that close to anyone else. Now, after what happened to Jess, he's even more certain that he's putting her in more danger just by being there. Maybe it's the fate that anyone who gets involved with a Winchester will suffer. Though that alone doesn't explain most of his dreams, because though some have been premonitions of someone else's death, most of them are about his.
He's only human, though, and Cassie is special. They fall into bed together, and Dean doesn't regret it.
He just makes sure he stays awake all night, keeping watch while she sleeps, his gun within reach.
The dreams stopped coming for almost three years after Sam left for Stanford. Dean had never slept worse in his life.
Dad dying is a worse nightmare than his dream, and this one Dean can't wake up from.
He knows what Dad did, why he did it, and it messes with his head, but the truth is he's so fucked up by what Dad told him that he can barely focus on the rest of it.
Killing Sam is just - it's not an option. Never. Dean doesn't know how Dad could even suggest it.
His dream changes again, though, or rather, develops more variations. Sometimes Sam is still staring up at him in horror. Sometimes, though, his eyes are black, and he smiles. Sometimes he licks Dean's blood off his lips. Once or twice his eyes are yellow, and those nights Dean wakes up in a cold sweat and can't go back to sleep.
He doesn't know which is worse: seeing his brother's horror, or seeing the lack of it.
Dean thought about telling Dad, once or twice. Mostly when the dream got really bad, or there was a variation that worried him. He never got up the courage, though.
Partly it was simple fear of Dad's reaction to the fact that Dean had kept something like this from him. Partly it was the fear - irrational, he knew - that Dad would blame him for Mom's death, feel he should have been able to warn her or Dad, somehow prevent it.
Partly it was the fear that Dad would look at him like he did the supernatural things he hunted.
Sam's angry when he finds out what Dad told Dean before he died - angry at Dad, and angry at Dean for not telling him sooner. Dean begs for time to fix things. He's scared, because now Sam's the one talking like he believes in inevitable and immutable fate, and that's always been Dean's territory. Suddenly Dean's the one who needs to believe that there's such a thing as free choice, that fate, if it exists, can be changed. His own death is one thing - he's been dreaming about it for long enough to be a realist about that - but the thought of losing Sam, of Sam going dark side, of Sam needing to be killed... that's not something Dean can accept.
When Sam begs him - begs him - to promise to kill him if Sam turns into something they hunt, Dean makes the promise, and holds on to the versions of his dream where Sam's eyes are horrified when he looks up.
His dream has variations for a reason, he has to believe that. They're all possible, and Dean's already made his choice.
Sam's changed since Dad died, and Dean thinks there's more to it than just that loss, but he doesn't know what it is. Sam's more focused on him; he's stopped talking about leaving. He touches Dean more when he thinks he can get away with it. But Dean doesn't put the pieces together, not for a long while.
Not until Sam sits down beside him one morning and reaches out to touch his face, turning his head until their eyes meet.
There's a moment of stillness when Dean finally gets it, all of it: gets why Sam has been acting the way he has. Gets why he's always had the dream.
Right now, it doesn't feel like fate. It feels like a choice.
When Sam's lips brush his, Dean sees flames and blood in his mind's eye.
He kisses Sam back.