Disclaimer: I used to own supernatural, the boys, the Impala and everything else on the show. But then, the men in white gave me my meds and I had to take them.

Summary: Dean thinks about his relationship with his brother.

A/N: I have been feeling very dissatisfied with the season 6 premiere. And I finally figured out why.

SamandDean. That's how he had always thought of them. Two brothers joined together with an unbreakable bond that was stronger than anything he'd ever known. Stronger than fate, stronger than destiny, stronger than family, stronger even than death. Whatever a shrink may say about their dysfunctional, co-dependent, unhealthy relationship, Dean knew without a doubt that his brother loved him and he loved his brother more than anything else in the world.

Dean knew about love. He loved too easily and much too deeply. It didn't take much for anyone to get accepted in Dean Winchester's family and depend upon Dean to lay down his life for your sake. Be that person be a long-lost brother whose existence was unknown to him or two women at random bar he met shortly after his father's death. No, Dean would accept one and all in his life and still have room for another. But his brother was different. His brother was, and always had been, more than just his family. You see, there were two kinds of family members, ones that saw infrequently, only at holydays or reunions, but loved nevertheless. Those whom you could go without seeing or talking to for weeks and never feel that anything was missing and never love them less for it. Then there were those you had to see every day. Those that would always be the first ones privy to your thoughts, your secrets, your life. Sam was of the second kind, taken to the extreme end of the curve. He was more than a life companion. It was as if he was an extension of his own body, as if they were Siamese… conjoined twins. And when Sam was missing, Dean felt his absence at a physical level, like phantom pains of a limb lost in a battle. Which was why whatever Dean did after Sam's death, whatever doll-house he built, it wouldn't have been enough. Sure he may be able to ignore the pain, forget it for a while, find brief flashes of happiness and peace in his new life or even come to terms with his loss, but the pain was always there. Always there to keep him away from his real chance at happiness. He understood that. So, why didn't Sam?

Why could he never get that? Why did Sam always insist on projecting his own issues on Dean? Sam was the one with a problem with hunting, not Dean. Never Dean. Sam was the one who want the normal apple-pie life. Dean, even when he was at the most content in his new life, always felt out of place, a little uncomfortable with the sheer normalcy of it all. Sure it might get easier, but it wasn't what he truly wanted, not without Sam. If he was gonna rock the white picket fence, he wanted Sam to be rocking the other side. Sure he was laying down roots here, with his new family, but what about the roots that ran much deeper. Those that he grew up cultivating. Sam's dying wish, he felt, had exiled him from his family and forced him to create a new one.

That's why it hurt so much to see Sam alive. After all the confusion and tepid joy had cleared away, all he felt was rage and hurt. Sam had been alive the whole time, the whole time while he was having nightmares and drinking and grieving so hard that it still hurt to remember those nights. All that had been for nothing. Sam and Bobby, the two out of three people he considered to be his closest family, his most trusted friends had conspired to exile him from his own life. They had kept him wallowing in his misery because they decided they knew what was best for him. Well, how about a guy having a say in his own life? Did they truly believe he'd be truly free of hunting? That sooner or later he would see some signs that he wouldn't be able to ignore? He knew now that that claw marks he saw everywhere were the Djinn's poison, but the decision to go after that had been all him. He may not go back to the hunt full-time, but it wasn't in him to ignore people in danger. Didn't his brother and Bobby realize that?

The funny thing was, the life he had led growing up had never been an issue with Dean. Whatever his brother might say about him actually building a life, whatever Bobby might think about Dean being out of hunting will get him closest to happiness a hunter can ever get, Dean knows that the happiest time of his life was on the road with his family. He really doubted that his heaven would have a memory of Sid's barbeque, but the first time he shot a black-dog, that one would definitely make the list. Sure, he had been getting tired of hunting lately and he had mentioned it to Sam how he would like to take a break for a while, but it wasn't the hunting per-se that he minded. It was the whole destiny, circle of revenge thing that his family was caught up in even before his parents had met. The biggest mission of their lives, the hunt for yellow-eyes and the stopping of the apocalypse, threatened what he valued most. His family, his brother. He knew that the path his family was on didn't only put their lives at risk, it put their humanity, their bonds which made them a family. He wanted to get out so that he could salvage that. Guess it was too little too late for that. All the crap Sam peddled about them having grown up in the hunt and Dean always wanting and never having a family, didn't he realize that he was wrong? That Dean never 'a' family, he always wanted his family. Did his brother know him at all?

Did he really? Was their brotherly bond, in which he had put so much faith really that unbreakable? He knew that Sam was the centre of his universe, had been for a long time, but was he the same to Sam? Or did Sam just love him because he was his brother and a sense of indebtedness to the man who raised and went to hell for you? It was never possible to tell with Sam. He would be trying to squeeze the life out of you one minute, the next he'd be forcing back Lucifer to save you from certain death and the next he would keep to in dark and in misery supplanting his own judgment for yours. Dean had never really thought of their bond as being breakable, but he could see now that it had been broken many, many times. Like a vase that has been shattered and stuck together with glue over and over again, the cracks multiplying, until it finally collapses under its own weight. Dean had always thought of them as SamandDean but how long had it been since that original bond had broken and he had been holding on to a poorly duct-taped copy of it? When Sam had been a teenager and realized his family was full of freaks and decided he didn't want to be a hunter, even if meant running away or adopting another family? Or was it when Sam had left for Stanford after a fight that forced Dean to pick a side and he had chosen Dad's, leading to two years of radio silence from Sam? Or maybe when their father had died and Dean in his grief and a newly laid burden had lashed out at Sam? Or when Sam had died and Dean had brought him back, and laid upon him the responsibility and guilt of his brother's life? Or was it Ruby, the bitch who manipulated and poisoned Sam, who was the undoing of their relationship? Or was it Sam himself, drunk with power and believing in his own destiny, who left their brotherhood shattered among the glass in the honeymoon suite? Or was it his yearlong silence where he met up with long lost relatives while Dean struggled to get through each and every day? Or was it Dean, so broken from hell and so betrayed and let-down by everyone in his life that he was finally able to face what his time in heaven had told him. They weren't SamandDean anymore. They had something great, so great that it was able to free Sam from Lucifer's hold and help him save the world, but whatever that was, it was gone now. Sam was more comfortable at the hunt with his new family than he had been with Dean for the last few years. Dean had been living in a doll-house for years, making himself believe that his relationship with Sam was as good as ever and nothing would ever change that. He was not going to attempt to tape over the broken remnants of their brotherhood anymore. He was not going to cultivate new relationship with his new-found family or even rebuild his old ones. So when Sam asks him to rejoin the hunt, he refuses. He refuses because he is done being the one mending it over and over again only to have it broken in a new and painful ways. If Sam wants to rebuild what they had, he'd have to start anew. So when Sam tells it is better with him around, Dean feels no remorse (though it's difficult to even turn down that sliver of hope) in turning away despite the fact that a year ago it would have had him running to Sam's side. It's because Dean realizes now that they aren't SamandDean anymore. They haven't been for a long time.

That's all for now. I'm thinking of writing one from Sam's point of view. Tell me what you think.