It's poetic justice in his opinion. You know the old saying live by the sword, die by the sword? Well, in Gordon's case you live to kill vampires, you die being one. I really don't have a problem with that, Gordon had been a pain in our ass for far too long. I told Dean that I had taken care of it and Gordon had been arrested. I just didn't figure on Gordon having anyone give a damn enough to help break him out. Now Gordon isn't going to be an issue again.

Dean has toned down his tendencies at suicidal stunts, but he still takes unnecessary risks. The girl had got too damn close and while Dean turning vamp may have been a solution to the whole 'your soul is mine', it would have sucked on so many other levels (no pun intended). Gordon managed to bite Dean but there had been no transfer of blood, thank God or I'd be out looking for blood bank to rip off. Dean would take my head off if he knew what I was willing to do to keep him at my side. Dean said once that the things he was willing to do for Dad and me scared him sometimes, well the feeling is mutual.

I know it's going to take time and lots of it, which unless I finds an answer soon we won't have, to make Dean understand that he is more than a soldier in a war, more than an older brother, even more than a lover. Dean is everything to me, and while I know Dean feels the same about me it's like trying to drill concrete with a cordless screwdriver to make Dean understand the feeling went both ways.

There have been so many times over countless years that Dean has been shunted aside, his needs completely ignored in favor of mine or Dad's, our stiff necked pride to have our own way at the expense of Dean's desire to have his family together. It had taken me two years back with Dean to understand just how much damage had been done. The sad thing is it had taken four years away and two of those with no communication to even start to see my brother as something more than a means to get my way.

I am both ashamed and humbled by the depth of love that my brother has for me, not ashamed of his love but of my stubborn blindness of it for so long, especially in the face of my constant callous disregard for the one thing that he's ever wanted and asked for. I think I might still be in the dark if it weren't for several cases we had taken almost back to back, eroding Dean's defenses until there were holes big enough to peek through. That's the only way I think I was able to glimpse into the battered heart of someone that feels things so deeply, the only way to protect himself was to hide behind walls and flip sarcasm.

Dean has tried several times to make me accept his leaving over the last several months. Yeah, leaving is what he calls it, I have other words for it like taken, ripped away... Leaving is bullshit. Dean doesn't leave, that's my forte, one I don't ever plan to do again. I am so frustrated by Dean's refusal to fight, I want to scream and shake him until his teeth rattle. Dean is just going to walk to the crossroads with a chair and a beer and wait, never even lifting a finger to save himself, all because he's still protecting me. He won't take the chance that anything he does could be construed as trying to break the deal and get me killed. Or rather killed again but hell that was my stupidity. How many times had we been told never, ever turn your back on the enemy unless they are salted and burned.

So, while I spend the next several months trying to find a way to keep him here with me, he's doing what he's been doing for the last few weeks. I thought at first, he was just doing things and going places that, when we were young, we didn't get the chance to do. I hate it, it feels like giving up, but for Dean, I'm willing to do it, but while that's a part of it, he's got an ulterior motive. When I started to look back at where we have been and the places Dean wants to go, I realize that he is checking on people, some I knew from our cases but others must have been from the four years I was gone.

Dean continues to hide behind his devil may care, I don't give a damn, bring it on outlook, but I can tell he's scared. I can feel him holding on tighter with each passing day, and while he may be scared, I'm fucking terrified. Because I'm willing to commit the ultimate betrayal. I'm willing to throw the gift of his soul back because if I can't save him, I'm walking into hell with him. The old saying hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, well by God, hell hasn't seen anything until it sets Winchester brothers loose in it's bowels.

So, I'll continue to go along with the visits to past places, letting Dean tie up loose ends get his affairs in order. That's what it is really since we have no home, no family members to visit. It's Dean's way of making sure everybody is settled and doing the best they can be, before he can't continue to watch over them. I told him once, no more secrets, but this secret's not hurting him or anyone else not that I really give a damn about anyone but him. He's not aware that I know when he gets on the computer he's not surfing porn, but instead checking up on the people that survived the monsters. That's how he knew Haley was getting married and her younger brother started college, that Michael had stopped a robbery at the hotel, Dianna had quit the force and started her own PI business and the young girl saved from the Dijnn was doing as well as expected and recovering with her aunt.

I wish I hadn't been so caught up in my own dramas although one was avoiding Dean's ire about finding a solution to the soul selling. The other is Ruby hitting me with the mystery of what the hell was up with mom. I never told Dean what the demon had shown me. The one perfect memory that had sustained him through this life was that mom was the innocent in everything. Hell, maybe she was, but since I never really knew her, I had the advantage of being just a little more impartial. Plus, lets face it demon's lie. He could have been yanking my chain. But now, with the added information from Ruby and my own research, things are not looking so cut and dried.

I would have been jealous of Lisa if I didn't know how much Dean loved me, how much he was willing to sacrifice or me. However, it's hard to work up righteous indignation or green eyed jealousy when someone is willing to go to hell for you to live. By the time I realized that Ben was Dean's son, we were on our way out of town.

Dean finally broke down and told me how nice it would have been to have left a legacy other than one filled with credit card scams and murder raps but any chance of that was no longer possible. I argued that every person, we had saved was a legacy, and that he would have plenty of time to have kids if that's what he wanted. He just smirked at me and in his typical sarcastic voice proceeded to ask me when I had developed a uterus and vagina. Smart ass that he is he did have a point.

I don't give a shit what Lisa said, Ben is Dean's son. She could deny it until her dying breath but that boy is a Winchester. We are a unique breed, and we recognize our own without the need for DNA tests and conclusive evidence. I know Dean let go without a fight. He would never bring a child into the world of monsters even though Ben has already seen way too much as it is. Dean would no more form a bond with Ben knowing he would be facing eternity in hell than he would willingly tell him that monsters exist if he hadn't already seen them. Dean would never damage a child that way. I've caught him writing a few times, letters I'm bettiing. One is probably to Ben and the other to his lawyer, the one that handles his patents and off shore account. He will never leave his responsibilities on someone else's shoulders.

I'd like to tell him I'll keep an eye on Ben for him just to put his mind at ease, but I'm not going to lie and that's probably why he hasn't asked. Not that he thinks I wouldn't really, but he knows I'm not going to be okay with him being dragged to hell and will be more than otherwise occupied for awhile after. Little does he know that I plan to be beside him if I can't save him. I'm still wondering how so many things can escape my notice when it has to do with Dean. Is it because he's my brother, I wonder? Do I still have the little brother tendency to ignore certain things or is it just some defect in my coding? If so, it must be inherited since Dad obviously had it too.

I can't believe I didn't catch on earlier. Ben is Dean's son, my nephew, and doesn't that just sound odd when you say it out loud. The boy has the same selfless drive to put others well being before his own, the same vulnerable need for approval that, fortunately, he receives. Makes me wonder how much different Dean would be if he'd gotten the same. The physical attributes Ben shares with us is actually quite startling. He has the same dark hair and dimples just like mine and Dad's, but he has Dean's body build, more compact and muscled. Even at an early age he was starting to fill out, a heartbreaker in the making.

Maybe I should go ahead and write an open letter to the female population to be opened in six or seven years with the following warning. Caution - contents may cause serious emotional and or mental damage if not handled with extreme care. Cause damn if the kid doesn't already have that glint in his eye that I've lived with all my life. On second thought, maybe I need to revise that and add the male population, better to be safe than sorry. I'm sure the world is not ready for another Dean Winchester even if it's only the mini-me version at the moment and Dean has been off the market for some time now.

But the dead give away is the eyes. It's like looking into Dean's fifteen years ago. You can read that boy from cover to cover just by looking in his eyes, that trait is all his fathers. Ben is already half in love with Dean and one hundred percent in hero worship and, while Dean has his faults, there is no better man to call your hero, I know because he's been mine for twenty three years.

The only thing I know for sure is I'm not giving him up. Sometimes I feel like a five year old unwilling to share my toy but, hell, I never had to because Dean always gave me his, so I don't know why I should start now. The crossroads bitch can find another soul to play with because she's not going to have Dean's.

I need him, his son needs him and whether the world knows it, it needs him.