The camera comes on to Dean sitting on a swing tied to a tree in an overgrown field.

“So this is all the time I am going to give to what went down between you and Dad. You went toe to toe with my father and you won. It was the second time you went out of your way to try and retire him. You broke bones and made a statement.”

Dean sighs.

“But you’ve grown since then. So has your distaste for Dad. Because Mommy and Daddy are back together-ish. And you hate that. You hate that more than anything. Which, whatever. You deal with that however you want.”

Dean leans forward.

“You have become world champion and gotten yourself a girlfriend, started talking for yourself. It will be interesting to see how this fight goes differently than last time. I hope to be impressed.”

---

“That son of a bitch!” Dean hit the steering wheel angrily as he took a sharp turn towards the hospital. He knew he was driving too aggressively because he could feel Warren gripping the armrest. The engagement of Max swung as Dean sped down the road. Warren was gripping the door tightly but without a word about Dean’s driving.

“Calm down, sweetness.” Warren said softly.

“Twitter! I had to find out she was in the goddamn hospital from Twitter!”

“I know. I know. It’s likely just poor judgment. He was worried and not thinking.” Warren offered.

“Dad didn’t even know! He didn’t know until I called him!” Dean had been trying. He had been trying hard to make things work. He had been trying to make this complicated family work. He loved his father. He loved Edward, his little half-brother. He loved his half-sister Hayleigh even if she seemed not to have any interest in seeing him. Angel had told him to let his anger toward Sabin go. He was told that despite the way Sabin had attacked his father, to let it go.

Dean was trying. Tara had told him that Sabin just needed time to get used to it. He’d come around.

Except it felt like Dean was the only one trying. Sabin had no interest in burying the problem. He had no interest in anything but annoying Dean and picking fights. Dean could easily and readily put his neck under his boot and send him to the hospital with the barest amount of effort but no, he was trying to be a ‘good’ big brother.

“Dean, baby, you can’t kill him.”

“I’m not going to kill him. I’m gonna maim him.”

“Not in public.” Warren cautioned.

“It’s been a while since I made a visit to the old Pack torture rooms,” Dean smirked at Warren.

“No.”

“Come on, nothing like torture to bring the family together.”

“No torturing your brother.”

“Spoilsport.”

Dean’s phone screen lit up with a South Dakota number on the screen. Dean angrily pressed the ignore button without comment.

“...That’s the third time they’ve called today, right?”

“I’m not counting.”

“...Who is it?”

“Fuck if I know.”

---

“You wanted to throw down again. We could guess why that would be but…I think we all know. I could be petty and say it was because I beat your ass to blood unconsciousness last time. And yeah, I didn’t have to bring it up.”

Dean smirks.

“But I did. I’m petty.”

Dean shrugs.

“But I know why we’re here. Because like so many other things going on it’s the little complex you’ve formed over the last few months.”

Dean leans back.

“See, it doesn’t matter what you accomplished elsewhere. Because you think there’s some shadow you have to step out of. You think because your mom accepted me and because Edward loved the hell out of me, that somehow you have to compete with me.”

Dean waits for a beat.

“Which… honestly? Is such a little brother thing to do.”

---

“This does not concern you!” Sabin said.

“She’s my mother, too!” Dean interjected.

“You had a funny way of showing that when you kept Edward away from her!” Sabin countered.

That stung. That was before he knew her. Before he’d really met her. His father had only told him that she wasn’t allowing him access to his son. Dean had done everything possible to make sure his father got custody. Had loved Edward, had been convinced by Edward to allow Tara back into his life. He had liked her, grown to love her like the mother he had been looking for most of his life. Sabin smirked at Dean.

This Up-Jumped cock.

“Sure, I kept Edward away from her.” Dean acknowledged. “But I let her in his life, in mine. I didn’t fucking shut her out because I wanted to be a fucking crybaby about who she was sleeping with.”

Sabin’s face changed. Dean knew the fist was coming and he wanted it. They weren’t blood-related but he knew which big red button to push to make the younger man throw the first punch. It was all the excuse he needed to beat the little shit’s head against the counter until he stopped moving. Someone moved in the way of the fist and pushed Sabin back a few feet.

“Enough! This is a hospital for crying out loud!” Seth Evan sighed, “You are both high profile IWF employees. You will not get into a brawl in a hospital. Warren, take Dean for a walk. Sabin, a word.”

“But he-”

“I’ll talk to him in a minute. Come on.” Seth guided Sabin away who glared at Dean who smirked at him.

“Dean.” Warren grabbed his arm. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Alphabetically or chronologically?” Dean heard his phone ring and quickly switched it to silent seeing the same number as before.

“What happened to trying to get along with Sabin for Tara?”

“Why don’t you pull the whole ‘be the bigger man’ to him?”

“Because I’m not fucking him. You want to be married to me, deal with me trying to be the voice of reason.”

Dean rolled his eyes.

“Can’t believe you baited him like that.”

“Not like it’s hard. He got arrested for a fight in a strip club daycare.”

“Strip club day–No, not the point.”

“He’s a ball of displaced rage striking out at anything that feels like a threat to the family unit. It’s not like it’s hard to push him over the edge.”

“...Jesus Dean.”

“Remember what I was like when we first met?”

“The rapid attack dog… yeah, I recall. He’s not you though.”

“Basically the same place.”

---

“I know. I know. You don’t want me to be your brother. I know back in the day my dad was a terrible stepdad and a terrible husband. I know you had to put your mom back together after that marriage fell apart. I know you had to be the man of the house. Take care of a parent, maybe even take on some adult duties while she gets her feet back under her.”

Dean raises an eyebrow.


“How off am I? Not by much. I’d bet she used to say you saved her life. You were the light in the dark place. The reason you got up in the morning. You helped raise Edward while she was in the dark part where she could barely get out of bed. ‘Having children saved my life’ had to be a mantra. Her saying that phrase used to fill you with a special kind of pride, didn’t it? The kind of pride that nothing else was ever as good. You were the superhero. The knight that slew the dragon and saved the princess.”

Dean glances off-camera.

“Then when Edward got taken out of her custody… you had to put her back together again. Because she broke apart like glass. Shattered on the floor all over again. And you got to be the hero again. The one who made sure she ate. Made sure she did everything the courts wanted. You did all that. She got back on top, you made her feel well enough to get back in the ring. You got to wrestle. You got to take the way she bounced back, the way she got to win big matches as a reflection of how good a son you were.”

Dean nods.

“Because her success was how well you took care of her. Her walking out of big matches against women who were considered the elite was a good reflection on how well you took care of her. Right?”

Dean Looks back at the camera.

“How far off am I?”

---

“Are you going to answer that?” Warren asked.

Dean glanced at the cellphone with the South Dakota area code. “No.”

“Dean.”

South Dakota. He’d been there only to visit the grave of his mother a few times. There was nothing there for him, never had been. Nothing but pain and memories.

He could picture a house on a street that isn’t really a street with an old paint-chipped mailbox tilted to the left. The street is labeled Graveyard Trail. The sign was clearly newer than anything else in the stretch of road, government and green, but the street itself is neither a graveyard nor really a trail. It's dirt up kicked by years of a big old barely-more-than-an-antique red truck whose wheels have ground empty spaces in the overgrown grass. The whole yard is covered in that same overgrown grass that hasn’t been cut in years at this point. The grass is flat in the space from the door to where the truck would be parked, but it isn’t parked there now.

There are trees all around the house. When he was young he was told the trees protected them. Keep things safe. There were wind chimes and random knick-knacks tied to the branches of the trees. Some of the old, some of them newer since he’d left home at seventeen.

The trailer he had grown up in, not grown or raised, more like survived. Next to the left end would be the propane tank painted purple he had spent a whole weekend on when he was in first grade. The stairs to the door warn with a broom handle for a railing. Inside he was sure it would still smell of paperback books and stale cigarettes. He was certain the place would be just as it had been when he left.

Inside he could trace the hallway to the room he had slept in. The mattress would be on the floor. The closet with the saint photos that he would be locked in after a beating until the old woman considered he had paid for his sins. A small town where no one thought twice about the orphan who was being raised by his grandmother.

“Dean, you have to answer it. They keep calling.”

“There’s no one in South Dakota I want to talk to. I’m pretty sure it’s my stalker.”

---

“And I’m not saying any of this to you because I’m trying to undersell ya, little brother. I get it. I understand it.”

Dean gets off the swing.

“But I know what it’s like to be the shining example in a mother figure’s eye.”

Dean puts his hands in his pockets.

“And I know what it feels like when you think you are going to be replaced.”

Dean steps onto a teeter-totter.

“I think we can both at least agree on one thing. What is the most important thing in the world?”

Dean takes a step forward, keeping his balance.

“Family.”

Dean takes a deep breath.

“Family is the beginning and the end of all things. Blood doesn’t make you family but it doesn’t hurt. Course it doesn’t have to be your blood specifically.”

Dean licks his teeth.

“It’s not like I don’t know I will never be accepted as part of your family. I mean, after all, what have I done to be accepted? People have been saying all kinds of things about me and the kind of people I have called family. There was The Pack. I promised them all that I was and all that I could be. I committed all kinds of terrible acts in Rowan’s name. I was the honey pot of the island of misfit toys. They aren’t wrong. We were.”

Dean sighs.

“Can you trust me? I’ve broken oaths before. So does anything I say about supporting my father matter? If something happened between your mother and my father breaks down again, can you trust me not to come in sideways and destroy your family again?”

Dean stops on the bar, perfectly in the middle.

“I could promise, but you wouldn’t believe it.”

Dean laughs hollowly.

“Not that I blame you. You hate me. You don’t trust me.”

Dean grins.

“So we are fighting so you can prove that you can beat me. So you can prove that I am nothing to fear. So you can prove that if things fall apart you can protect your mother from me. Do I take it personally? No. That’s how family works. You give and take. You might not get along with all of your family but you love them because that’s what family does.”

Dean tilts his head.

“So understand when I leave you in your own blood again, it’s not because I don’t love you, little brother, it’s because I do. And you need to get over yourself.”