lt_indigo

lt_indigo

It wasn’t a word that Bobby liked to use in this context, because of the other, more literal definition, but his boys were haunted by their past. Sam was falling apart right in front of him and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. They were reaching a point where there wasn’t even anything Dean could do to keep Sam’s sanity intact – Lucifer was winning that fight even from his prison cell, and Sam had stopped trying to sleep days ago.

As for Dean, he was still hiding the effects of his trip to the basement, sure, but that kid had seen a horror that Sam would never know about: he had seen their mother on the ceiling. That had taken years for Bobby to get out of the kid, and even then only with the promise he would never tell John or Sam. He had taken that secret to the grave, and had no intention of giving it up now.

But neither of those things were what was bothering Dean the most now. For now, even with Sam locked up, there was something else – someone else – on Dean’s mind. Castiel had wormed his way so innocently and efficiently under Dean’s skin that Bobby knew he still had nightmares about the day Cas had died; nightmares that Dean would deny brought him to tears, but Bobby knew otherwise.

And so he helped the only way he could, gave Dean the clue he needed to find the faith healer Emmanuel. It cost him days of awareness, but he figured it was worth it. Until he popped back into being and saw the damn angel being shut in Sam’s room. Cas, plagued by his poor decisions (admittedly, Cas had made some really crappy choices recently), had decided that he deserved this. And there was another image to haunt Dean’s nightmares: Castiel, sitting placidly and completely unaware in a padded cell, a target for angels, demons and Leviathan alike. Helpless, just like Bobby; so helpless he couldn’t even see the ghost in their midst, watching over his three boys.