"Take care of your sister."
That had been his mantra since he had been four years old. Since the fire that had stripped their comfortable lives away and had thrust them into this scary new world.
"Take care of your sister."
And he had. He had kept her clean. He had fed her. He had taught her how to walk. How to run. How to read.
He had beamed when her first word had been "Dean".
"Take care of your sister."
But as they grew older things started to change. Dean became very aware that he was a boy and Sam was a girl.
He became very aware that there would be things she would experience that he wouldn't.
So, starting when he was twelve, he began to teach himself what she would need to know to be a woman. Long hours at the library turned into bad grades at school for awhile.
But he learned.
"Take care of your sister."
He taught her how to fight. How to drive. How to shoot. How to identify and kill at least ten types of monsters.
He taught her about her body, about how it was going to change. He taught her about the facts of life and about how to protect herself when the inevitable day came.
He taught her how to use her gender and its perceived weaknesses as a weapon in its own right.
And it was Dean who held her hand and taught her how to deal with the pains and the rage and took her to the store so she wouldn't be alone trying to figure out what supplies she'd need.
"Take care of your sister."
It was Dean who drove Sam to Stanford and helped her get set up in her room. It was Dean who Sam texted periodically with information on hunts -- without their father's knowledge.
It was Dean who held Sam for hours on end as she quaked herself apart with grief for the fiery loss of Jesse and the comfortable life they had built.
It was Dean who nursed Sam -- body and soul -- through the devastating loss of the sixteen-week-old child that had been growing in her womb. Her last link to the only man she had ever loved.
It was Dean who buried the tiny body with his own hands.
It was Dean who stood beside Sam weeks later, holding her hand as tightly as he could, watching the fire that she had set consume the child's salted bones. Just in case.
He would always take care of his little sister.
No matter what.
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