You’re smothered in tragedy/You’re out to save the world. – Metallica, “My Friend of Misery”

The knife under his pillow isn’t fear, he insists. It’s precaution.

Bullshit.

The truth is, he can’t fall asleep unless his fingers are wrapped around the heavy handle. Unless he can hear Sam breathing in the bed next to him. Unless he knows that all is as right as he can make it in his tiny little world.

The last time Dean went to sleep without fear was the night his mother died, when she kissed his forehead and told him angels were watching over him. Since then it’s been lock-the-doors-clean-the-guns-salt-the-windows-sleep-with-one-eye-open every single night.

Protect-your-brother had been part of his nightly routine, too, until Sam decided he wanted his piece of normal, his piece of safe. Then it was one less thing Dean had to worry about. Except he had never stopped worrying, not really, because the bad things lurking in the dark didn’t give two shits about the fact that all his brother wanted was to live a normal life.

There had been rare moments when he could almost forget who he was, what he did, why he couldn’t let himself get close to anyone. Cassie, for instance. He’d loved her – well, as much as he was capable of loving someone who wasn’t his family, at least. He’d slept without a knife under his pillow for the first time since he was eight years old, mostly because he didn’t want to scare her off, and he’d allowed himself to believe that maybe, just maybe, he could have a tiny piece of safe, too.

But the look in her eyes when he’d told her the truth had shown him how stupid he’d been and the night he left, he’d slipped the hunting knife back beneath his motel pillow before closing his eyes.

He’d dragged Sammy back into the life he’d run away from by playing the family card and had instantly re-added protect-your-brother to his list of daily chores.

And he sees things, too, behind his eyelids. Not before, the way Sammy does, but after. Always after. When it’s too late to change them or stop them. When it’s too late to make them right.

He sees the ones he couldn’t save. “You can’t save everyone,” Sam told him, and he knows that, he does, it’s just…well, there’s a part of him that still believes that maybe if he can save enough people, he’ll go to heaven, if there is one. He’ll see his mom again. He’ll be rewarded for all the tragedy he’s had to endure.

He sees the ones who had to die before he even realized the situation called for someone with his particular skill set. And he knows those aren’t his fault, either, knows there was absolutely nothing he could have done for them, but there they are anyway, swimming through his dreams, their faces forever frozen in the expressions he’d seen in the newspaper.

He sees the ones he did save but who were now forever scarred. The wide-eyed looks they wear no longer hint at innocence, but at a fear they can’t quite shake, of a knowledge of things they wish they’d never learned.

He knows that look well, sees it staring back at him every day in the mirror, sees it reflected in his brother’s eyes. He saw it for the first time in the eyes of his father.

So Dean Winchester sleeps, but he doesn’t rest. He tries to forget, but he remembers anyway. He jokes, but he doesn’t laugh. He fights, but he doesn’t always win.

And he keeps going because it’s all he’s got.