fic: All You're Left With Has Come and Gone (sam and dean, theme 01 - elemental)
Title: All Your Left With Has Come And Gone
Author: thatauthor_chic
Claim: Sam and Dean Winchester
Theme: 01 - Elemental
Prompt: 14 - Memory
Rating: M
Disclaimer: I don’t own the car, the boys, or anything remotely to do with the Supernatural show. Just taking them for a little joyride through my imagination.
Summary: It's hard to hang on to the good times when all you're left with has come and gone.
He tries to hold on to the good stuff. Lord knows he does. The few moments he’s somehow managed to hang to with their mother back before Sam was born. Warm baked cookies and learning how to play baseball with their Dad in the backyard. Getting ready for little league practice while Mom put Sammy down to nap. That look Sammy used to give him the few times he managed to get the big brother thing right. Stolen moments of quasi-normalcy at Bobby’s when Dad went off on particularly long or dangerous hunts. Sometimes it works. Sometimes he actually feels good about what they do, the people they help. Other times it’s not so easy.
Dean’s learned the hard way that there’s no erasing the feel of countless hungry hell hounds tearing you to pieces before dragging your soul off to hell. No forgetting the feel of being on the rack as you’re torn and cut to a bazillion pieces until there’s nothing left before being made whole again as if it never happened and being forced to do it all over again. Over and over for years on end; you can’t just turn that sort of thing off. It gets stuck in your head, lies dormant and hides until that one time you let your guard down. Then it pounces and all you can think about is the ugly until it overwhelms everything else.
He often wakes in the middle of the night with muscles clenched, as if gripping his brother tight as he goes limp, falling to his knees in the dust of that godforsaken ghost town so many years ago. He can still see the light go out of his brother’s eyes and is haunted by the knowledge there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to stop it. Nor will he ever forget the sight of him jumping into that pit that lead directly into the deepest depths of hell. The knowledge that he’d gone to the worst part of the place Dean had sacrificed himself to in order to keep his brother from it in the first place.
He’s got so many ghosts there isn’t a moment left unhaunted anymore. The smell of coffee brings back the sight of the brown stuff spreading out across institutional white linoleum floor staining his father’s clothes as he died. In the rearview mirror there is always the echo of Ben’s shape, in his spot on the backseat. A dip on the side of the bed and Lisa is there, crawling under the covers after a shift at work. Any old trenchcoat brings Castiel immediately to mind. Any time the phone rings Bobby is there at his shoulder, affectionately muttering to himself about the ‘idjits’ he has to deal with.
He wants to hold on to the good stuff but it’s getting really hard to tell what exactly that is. The longer they push on the less of it shows up and then all Dean is left with is memories. The good ones feeling more and more like crap consolation prizes in the face of the terrible hand they’d been dealt with in this life.
Author: thatauthor_chic
Claim: Sam and Dean Winchester
Theme: 01 - Elemental
Prompt: 14 - Memory
Rating: M
Disclaimer: I don’t own the car, the boys, or anything remotely to do with the Supernatural show. Just taking them for a little joyride through my imagination.
Summary: It's hard to hang on to the good times when all you're left with has come and gone.
He tries to hold on to the good stuff. Lord knows he does. The few moments he’s somehow managed to hang to with their mother back before Sam was born. Warm baked cookies and learning how to play baseball with their Dad in the backyard. Getting ready for little league practice while Mom put Sammy down to nap. That look Sammy used to give him the few times he managed to get the big brother thing right. Stolen moments of quasi-normalcy at Bobby’s when Dad went off on particularly long or dangerous hunts. Sometimes it works. Sometimes he actually feels good about what they do, the people they help. Other times it’s not so easy.
Dean’s learned the hard way that there’s no erasing the feel of countless hungry hell hounds tearing you to pieces before dragging your soul off to hell. No forgetting the feel of being on the rack as you’re torn and cut to a bazillion pieces until there’s nothing left before being made whole again as if it never happened and being forced to do it all over again. Over and over for years on end; you can’t just turn that sort of thing off. It gets stuck in your head, lies dormant and hides until that one time you let your guard down. Then it pounces and all you can think about is the ugly until it overwhelms everything else.
He often wakes in the middle of the night with muscles clenched, as if gripping his brother tight as he goes limp, falling to his knees in the dust of that godforsaken ghost town so many years ago. He can still see the light go out of his brother’s eyes and is haunted by the knowledge there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to stop it. Nor will he ever forget the sight of him jumping into that pit that lead directly into the deepest depths of hell. The knowledge that he’d gone to the worst part of the place Dean had sacrificed himself to in order to keep his brother from it in the first place.
He’s got so many ghosts there isn’t a moment left unhaunted anymore. The smell of coffee brings back the sight of the brown stuff spreading out across institutional white linoleum floor staining his father’s clothes as he died. In the rearview mirror there is always the echo of Ben’s shape, in his spot on the backseat. A dip on the side of the bed and Lisa is there, crawling under the covers after a shift at work. Any old trenchcoat brings Castiel immediately to mind. Any time the phone rings Bobby is there at his shoulder, affectionately muttering to himself about the ‘idjits’ he has to deal with.
He wants to hold on to the good stuff but it’s getting really hard to tell what exactly that is. The longer they push on the less of it shows up and then all Dean is left with is memories. The good ones feeling more and more like crap consolation prizes in the face of the terrible hand they’d been dealt with in this life.