"Yep, that's a keeper," Dean murmured, looking into the battered cigar box in his hands.
Cat-footed, Sam slipped into the Bunker's garage without alerting his brother or giving him a chance to put the mystery box away. "What's that?"
Dean twitched and spun in surprise, ready to take on whatever threat was there before his brain caught up with his reflexes. The contents of the box cascaded out, bouncing their way across the floor. "Dammit, Sammy, don't do that!" he swore.
Sam smirked. He loved annoying his big brother. Then he net down to scoop up the whatever that had come to rest against his boot. "Is this a spent slug?" he asked, holding up the shiny bit of metal.
"That's the silver bullet I dug out of your gut," Dean answered as he took it back and dropped it in the box. "I told you it was a keeper."
Sam blinked as he processed. He vaguely remembered Dean saying something about the bullet at the time, but he had been far more focused on the pain. "You actually kept that? Then what's the rest of this stuff?" He knelt down on the ground along side his brother, helping to gather up up the bits and bobs.
Dean held another spent bullet in his open palm, this one made of iron and beginning to rust. "This is the bullet Jo dug out on my shoulder, back when Meg took your meatsuit for a test drive."
Sam spotted yet another slug, "And that one?"
"Remember Cox, in New York City? That's the one I dug out of Dad's hip after the douchbag left him for dead." Dean explained as he dropped the hunk of lead back in the box.
Sam looked around him, at all the scattered mementos of Winchester history. "Wait, is everything in that box...?"
"Something that someone dug out of you, me or Dad," Dean finished. Next he held out a small pile of iron filings in a twist of plastic wrap. "Remember back... I was fourteen I think, that salt-and-burn in the convent? The transvestite dude who disguised himself as a woman to become a nun? Right in the middle of the digging, the sonnuva bitch tossed me at dad as he was pulling the trigger."
"I remember dad spending an hour pulling crap out of your back with a pair of tweezers," Sam recalled. "I'd never heard you swear so long and loud and creatively before. And Dad just let you."
"As long as I held still, yeah. It was also the first time he poured hard whiskey down my throat." Dean dropped the filings in the box. "I think he felt bad for shooting his own kid on accident. I gotta tell you, Sammy, getting a chest full of rock salt burned like a mother when ghost-whammied you shot me, but at least there was no marathon of tweezer poking after. A good long shower flushed the salt right out."
"Did I ever apologize for shooting you?" Sam couldn't remember.
"I blame the asylum doctor ghost, and we already torched his ass. No need." Dean waved off any apology Sam wanted to make after that.
Next, Sam picked up a sharp sliver of glass that somehow survived the fall. "What's this from?"
"Your hand. When you were hallucinating."
Sam looked down at the faint scar that still marred his palm. Once, that scar, that cut, that little piece of glass had been a lifeline to his sanity. And Dean kept it all this time.
Dean suddenly chuckled, breaking Sam out of his contemplation. "Remember him?" He held up a stone chess piece; a rook to be specific.
"Oh, god," Sam groaned.
Dean grinned. "Yep. The thought-form. I pulled this little guy outta your ass."
"The back of my upper thigh," Sam corrected frostily.
Dean laughed. "The bottom of your butt cheek. Do you still have a scar? 'Cuz if you do, its your own fault for not letting us stitch it up."
"No one needed to sew up my ass," Sam gritted out. Then he spotted his revenge and a Cheshire cat grin spread across his face. He snatched up a bean bag and threatened, "Watch it, or I will put you down. We both know what happens when you get hit with this thing."
Dean scowled at the offensive bean bag from a riot suppression round. "Hey. That hurt. And for the record, it takes two shots to keep me down."
"I still can't believe you and Caleb let that guy get the drop on you. I mean, you knew he was a mobster." Sam tossed the beanbag into the box.
"Yeah, well. It was supposed to be a friendly gun for cash transaction," Dean defended. Ready to drop the subject, he pointed out the next bit of history behind Sam's left foot. "The Old Shuck claw that cut through Dad's arm so deep it got stuck in the bone and broke off. I offered to hang it on a cord so he could wear it as a necklace. Wasn't really his style, I guess, and he tore me a new one about how hunting isn't a joke or a sport and I shouldn't make light of it of make trophies from it."
And on the list went.
The nail Dean stepped on in the haunted construction site.
The porcupine quills out of Sam's leg from the worst camping trip ever.
Thorns from the thorn-goblin John picked up off of Dean's back and threw across the room.
Slowly but surely, the brothers found every bit and bob that belonged in Dean's box and recounted every hunt and misadventure connected to each piece. Laughter and tears. Teasing and commiserating. Tangible memories of good times and bad, triumphs and trials. All stored in an old, battered box and tucked away in Dean's personal storage space in the Impala's trunk. The Hunter didn't keep a journal like his father had; he had never been the book type. Dean preferred things hands on.
Author's Notes:
If you're curious at all about the bean bag round, its a reference to "Summer Job" by jmr27, my fabulous beta. I highly recommend reading her Stanford era fics.
John getting shot by Cox is referencing the graphic novels.
Anything else you don't recognize from the show, just assume I made it up.