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“Hey, Dad.” Dean Winchester is leaning into the trunk of the Impala, sorting through torn up clothes and old weapons, artifacts from hunts long past. They’re holed up in an abandoned house on the outskirts of some god-forsaken town in Kansas, and for that reason Sammy’s insisted on watching “The Wizard of Oz ” tape he took from Bobby’s in every damn hotel with a VHS player as they traveled across the state. Luckily for Dean’s sanity (he’s not sure how many more times he can watch that acid trip) this house has no power, so Sammy’s sulking somewhere up in the attic, probably reading trashy mystery novels left by the previous tenants. They haven’t been to Kansas since… before. Dean’s pretty sure Sam doesn’t remember it at all. Dad’s drinking more often the longer they’re in this state and Dean wants them to just get on the road and go, far away from here, anywhere.
Dean is 12. Sammy is 8. They have seen more of the world than most people see in a lifetime and they’ve seen it from the windows of this car.
John has the hood open and he’s tinkering with something Dean’s desperately curious about, but John said clean out the trunk so that’s what he’s doing. John’s engrossed , so Dean calls for him again.
“Dad, what should I do with this?” Dean is holding a beat-up cardboard box , once taped shut but now it’s only closed by the flaps. It’s unlabeled, which sets it apart from the other boxes in the trunk, boxes of ammo and Dean’s old clothes for Sam and salt and silver and goofer dust. John’s still not answering so Dean pulls open the flaps and starts sorting through the stuff inside. At first he’s confused- there’s a baby blue onesie, and then there’s a water-damaged book of Whitman poems, and under that is mint and tan leather gardening glove, a woman’s judging by the size. Then Dean sees the photos and he understands.
At the top of the smile pile is a picture of Mary holding a tiny little Sammy , glowing in a white hospital bed. Next is a picture of Mary in a swimsuit in a lake Dean doesn’t recognize, her arms in the air like she’s beckoning the photographer to come join her. There’s pictures of Mary cooking, in front of the house, feeding Sam something orange and pureed. There’s a photo of Mary and Sam and Dean, but Dean’s half out of the picture and blurred, unable to sit still even then. Dean thinks it doesn’t count.
He sorts through the rest of the pictures. He hasn’t seen a picture of Mary since her obituary the week after the fire, and he had started to forget her face. The obituary, a now-yellowed newspaper clipping, is at the bottom of the box. A tear escapes from his eye and he wipes it away roughly with the sleeve of his too-big jacket.
Excepting the blurred one, there are no pictures of Dean.
There’s a small, black velvet square swimming in the detritus that lies in the bottom of the cardboard box. Picking it up, Dean sees it has a dent on one side and the hinges are rusting. It’s a ring case. When he opens it, it groans.
Inside is a silver ring. Dean remembers a hand wearing that ring on his forehead, checking his temperature, the cool of it feeling like all the good in the world. It’s mom’s wedding ring, he knows, and he slips it onto his finger almost by accident. It fits perfectly.
One second, it is glinting in the Kansas sun. The next, a shadow has fallen across Dean and when he looks up, John is looming like a giant, blocking out the light.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” John grabs the cardboard box from Dean’s hands, and some of the photos fall to the dry Kansas soil. John scoops them up, smearing them with his grease stained hands.
“I was cleaning the trunk like you said and it was unlabeled and I’m sorry I didn’t-”
John slaps Dean across the face and Dean stumbles backward into the side of the Impala, the hot metal digging into his spine.
“You don’t go fucking in a man’s private business. Get in the fucking house, I don’t want to see your face anymore. Go!”
Dean walks for the door because he thinks if he runs, John will change his mind and come after him. As he walks, the ring is cold on his finger.
When he opens the door, Sammy is standing at the window, looking out at the Impala. Dean puts a smile on his face and ruffles the kid’s hair. He may not be able to protect him from everything in the world, but he can protect him from this.
“Hey, Sammy, whaddaya say I go look for some left-behinds in the cellar? We might be able to have a real dinner tonight.”
“My name’s Sam, not Sammy.”
“Sure it is, squirt.”
As Dean barrels down the rickety stairs to the cellar, he can feel his cheek burning. In the darkness, no one can say if he cries or not.
That night, Sam and Dean have creamed corn and something like chili out of cans from the cellar. It’s the best meal they’ve had in weeks. John drinks whiskey and stares at the wall.
Dean puts Sam to bed on a water-stained mattress upstairs, covering him with a blanket from the Impala that has stains on it Dean would rather not think too hard about, but at least it’s warm. Before Dean rolls off the single to sleep on a similar blanket on the floor, Sam grasps the amulet that rests against Dean’s chest and whispers something.
“What was that, Sammy?”
“I said you don’t have to let Dad treat you like that.” Dean tries to summon a smile but it wavers on his face.
“Dad treats me fine, don’t worry about it. He’s a good man.”
“You don’t have to keep that stuff from me. I’m not dumb.” Dean pulls Sam against his chest and holds him tight for a moment, longer than he’d ever admit to anyone.
“You know I can’t hide anything from you, Sammy, I’m not near smart enough.” Sam is silent after that, and in the next few minutes his eyes flutter closed and his breathing evens out. Dean slips off the bed and is about to lay down when he feels the need to pee. Dean creeps down the stairs, or tries to, in this creaky old house it sounds like an orchestra as he slips out to the front yard and relieves himself in a bush. When he comes back inside, he sees John staring at him from the couch, a bottle in hand.
“Dean, c’mere,” he says, and Dean doesn’t dare disobey. When he’s standing in front of the couch he sees the grease stained photo of Mary in a floppy summer hat, all white teeth and beaming, and Dean’s stomach drops. “Gimme your hand.” Dean sticks out his left hand and John waves it away. “The other one.”
Dean holds out his right hand where the ring still sits, gleaming in the low glow of a candle stuck in an empty bottle. John reaches out and pulls Dean’s hand closer, and for one horrifying second Dean thinks John is going to twist it and break a finger or worse his wrist, and wouldn’t that be a hard one to explain away to Sammy. Instead, John squeezes his hand hard.
“She woulda wanted you, to have it…” John is staring at something behind Dean on the wall, almost like he sees a ghost. “You look like her so much, you know. So much that it hurts to look at you sometimes.” Dean hangs his head and doesn’t move, his hand is still in John’s and he’s scared shitless.
“We were gonna wear those damn things til we were old and gray, I thought, until we had grandkids and then we were gonna get buried next to each other in that Kansas plot.” Suddenly the hand that gripped Dean’s own is gripping his arm, hard, and John is pulling him closer. “When I die, you burn me up, you burn me up like they burned up your mother. You hear me? You hear me, kid?”
“Yes sir,” Dean responds, and there are tears at his eyes as John grips his arm harder. He’s cried more today than he has all year and he feels like shit for it.
“You let me go all the way to ash so there’s nothing left, don’t you let me rot somewhere for someone else to salt and burn. That’s your duty, kid. You got me?”
“Yes, sir,” Dean says again. He’s going to have a bruise in the morning.
“You may look like your mother but Sammy’s got her heart. You protect that boy, you protect that boy with all you got. Your mother died for that kid, she did.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your mother… she woulda been proud of you.” Dean is caught off guard by the admission, and maybe so is John, because his grip relaxes, and he leans back on the couch, suddenly quiet.
Dean stands there for a minute, waiting for John to lash out, and when he doesn’t Dean walks out of the room, up the stairs and he puts his fist in his mouth as he sobs so he doesn’t wake Sammy, and he thanks whatever higher power kept John from beating him senseless tonight, and he presses the silver ring against his forehead, where it’s cold and soothing, and for a second-
For a second, he can remember her voice.