Doctor Dean.

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"Dean please," Sammy begged, his big eyes brimming with unshed tears.

"Sammy..." Dean answered, heart-broken that he couldn't fix things for his little brother. "It can't be mended. The cloth is just worn out," Dean continued sadly as he turned the dilapidated soft toy one way and another, looking for some method of patching it up for the umpteenth time; but it was just so tattered that not even an expert seamstress could have mended it now, let alone an eight-year old!

Originally the dog had been his. It had been left forgotten in the Impala and so had survived the fire that had taken his mom and most of their other possessions.

Little Sammy had adopted it as his own but Dean still felt affection for the worn thing.

x

"C'mere, Sammy," he said as he pulled the four-year old onto his lap. "Sometimes we just have to let things go when they can't be fixed. We can get a new one. They still sell them in the stores. "

The tears that Sam had been sniffing back finally spilled over as he shook his head; rebellious curls emphasizing his displeasure at the very idea.

He looked up at his brother and in a curiously adult way, he said. "If I get old and worn will you throw me away too, like you want to do with Spot?"

Dean felt his heart clench at the very idea of anything separating him from his little brother and he wound his arms more tightly around him

"That's different, Sammy," he tried to explain, but Sam was having none of it!

"No, it isn't Dean; if you love something, you don't throw it away." Sam argued though the tears.

x

Suddenly Dean was hit by an idea. If he pitched it right, Sammy might go for it.

"Poor Spot is in such a bad way that he needs patching up, right?" Dean declared.

Sam nodded.

"So we gotta bandage him up, like doctors do."

"But then he won't be Spot anymore," Sam said dubious."I won't be able to see him."

"Yeah, but the bandages will help him to get better and then one day we can take them off and he'll be well again. You want him to get better don't you?"

The curls bounced up and down as Sam nodded vigorously.

That night, Sam snuggled up in bed with a white mummy-like toy dog, and Dean congratulated himself on another problem solved for his beloved little brother.

X

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