Notes: Thanks to balder12 for betaing this for me.
Spoilers through 10.09. Title from Victor Hernández Cruz's "Latin & Soul."
This work contains: some mention of torture, and allusions to PTSD.
A soaring note draws Sam to the closed door of Kevin's old room. One hand on his gun, he pushes the door open to see a bow gliding over the strings of an ancient and player-less cello, while a sheet of music hovers beforeKevin's still-cluttered desk. The cello continues playing despite its audience. Sam can't find the name to the soft melancholic song, but then, classic rock is more his area of expertise. Or near enough. "Kevin?" Sam whispers.
The cello goes dead still, and the lights flicker before Kevin appears, sitting cross-legged on his desk, papers and books sticking out of his image at odd angles. "Hey. Sorry." The cello is laid flat. "Didn't mean to spook you," Kevinsays with a wry twist of his mouth.
There's a joke somewhere in there, but Sam can't make it.
"No. It's fine. I justdidn't know you played." Sam lets go of the gun, stepping into the dusty room. It's still covered in books and papers and dirty clothes that not even Linda, could bring herself to straighten. Sam grimaces—if he'd known Kevin were coming back to the bunker, he'd have at least dusted.
"Yeah." Kevin smiles, that faraway untouchable smile. "I played in middle school and high school. Part of being well-rounded, you know?" He pauses, a too-intense look through Sam. "I didn't appreciate it enough. But hindsight is 20/20, right? Anyway, it's harder without a body. Takes a lot more focus, sort of like you're the cello, not the player. I think I'm getting the hang of it, though."
Sam nods, gaze drawn to the cello. "It's amazing it works. Does it need anything?"
"Resin, mostly. The stuff I found with the cello is really crappy, so… A new bow, maybe. It's not that important." But Kevin says it distractedly, already turned for the door.
After discovering his brother's corpse vanished leaving only a nonsense-note, Sam had searched the whole bunker for anything that might explain something even-for-the-Winchesters weird. Sam had swung open the door to Kevin's room only when he couldn't put it off anymore. Sam crept into Kevin's room as if he might wake the kid, only to find a thick coating of old clothes and sheets of music and books and dust. In the corner, as Sam was sifting through books for some last inspiring grain of information from Kevin, he saw the old cello propped up, with its bow leaning against it. Finding nothing of actual use, Sam'd fled the scene of the crime.
The cello is gently laid out on the bed, beside the now-still bow. Kevin stands in the doorway, waiting for Sam to leave too, and papers crinkle obscenely in the silence as Sam steps on them with his clumsy tangible feet. "Could you teach me?" he asks, before Kevin can evaporate. Before Kevin is gone.
Kevin's fingers flicker as he flexes them. "To play the cello?" he asks, before considering Sam with that dark gaze of his. "I could, I guess. Why? Pretty sure you don't have to play an instrument to impersonate a fed. Or kill a ghost."
"Music was one of those things I wished I could do that I never got a chance to. Moving around all the time, and everything. Dad wouldn't let me play the trumpet when I asked." He tries to shrug it off, but Kevin's brows draw together, like Sam is the translucent one rather than Kevin. Sometimes, it's too easy to fool Kevin—despite everything, Kevin trusted—and sometimes, kid's more skeptical than anybody his age should be. Sam rubs at the bridge of his nose.
A pause as the lights falter again. Then Kevin shrugs. "Sure. Just… later. I'm tired right now." As if to underscore how exhausting being dead is, Kevin disappears with truly impeccable timing.
Kevin doesn't show up for dinner, not that he needs to eat, so it's just Dean, Linda, and Sam gathered around thetable. Dinner's quiet except for the dip of spoons into the beef stew Dean made.
When Sam had picked up the call from her last week, he'd expected her to say that she'd sent Kevin on. Or he'd hoped, anyway, that there were people involved in this mess that didn't repeat and repeat the same mistakes heand Dean keep making. (They still haven't fixed the door Dean hacked through, and they might not. It's hard to fix something nobody can look at.)
"Mrs. Tran?" he'd answered.
"Sam? Hi," she said briskly, and the line crackled, and he wanted to reach through the phone and shake her till she broke and understood. "I need to come stay at the bunker. Not for very long, but neighbors are starting to ask questions about Kevin. It would be better for us to relocate for right now."
A canister of salt and some kerosene would be better. He sighed. "Are you sure—?"
"Absolutely. I wouldn't ask otherwise." That he could believe. She'd disconnected before he could warn her against coming. Before he could warn her about him and Dean.
When she arrived, black ring hanging heavy on a gold chain, Dean let her in with a twitch of a smile, because who could actually turn her away? Not with Crowley's shadow looming behind her. Not with Kevin curled tight into the ring, like a genie in a lamp. Linda took a room three doors away from where Kevin's room still stood empty, and Dean outlined all the reasons why poking around the bunker was dangerous while Linda didn't listen, opting instead to unpack her suitcase.
There was a weight to her movements that hadn't been there before, heavy like Lucifer's-whisper-in-his-head, heavy like three-and-a-half days without sleep.
Kevin materialized not long after, arms folded over his chest. "Hey," he said, nodding at Sam, then Dean. "I told her this was a horrible idea."
"Kevin, that's enough."
He flickered, expression flattened-out as he watched his mother; then he shrugged. Not arguing. That was a good sign, Sam figured. Linda drew herself up tall beneath the press of her son's silence, but her grip on her bag tightened. "I appreciate it," she told Sam curtly.
Did she blame them, for not keeping her son safe? For not coming for her earlier? Sam avoided her gaze. "No problem," said Dean, without that pretend, easy smile.
Sam breaks into the layers of dinner-silence with, "So Kevin played the cello?"
She pauses with her spoon midway to her mouth. A moment of deliberation, and then she lets her spoon clink into the bowl. "Yes." She nods, gaze piercing as she looks at Sam, and he struggles not to shift under her scrutiny, "He played for seven years, before all this." Linda waves her hand as she says all this.
The table rattles, and Linda turns her headexpectantly. But Kevin doesn't appear. Just reminds them that he can hear everything they say. It's hard to talk about a ghost like they're there, but rude to talk about them like they're not. Sam wipes his mouth, then pushes his bowl away. For a second, Dean looks like he's going to say somethingabout it, pick a fight like when they were kids, then he just turns back to his own food. "Was he any good?" asks Dean through his mouthful of stew.
Linda scoffs, reminding Dean that Kevin was good at everything; Sam contains his smile. But Dean can't leave it at that. "No, I mean, was he really good? Not good like Sam was in Our Town, but actually good?"
"Hey!" Sam protests at the unexpected jab from the not-quite-playful curl of his brother's mouth.
But Linda says, "Kevin played excellently." She pointedly lifts her spoon again. "That isn't bias talking."
Dean seems to accept it. Or decides he doesn't care, it's difficult to tell.
On their way home from the hunt, Sam tells Dean to stop. His brother blinks owlishly at the mid-sized town in that surprised way he takes in the world now that he's human again. "Gotta piss?" he asks, voice gravel-rough with extended silence.
Sam has always measured Dean's wellness in his noise. The worry paces like a tiger in the pit of Sam's stomach.
"I need to get something for Kevin." He points out the music shop, and Dean sighs, but he pulls off to the side, then cuts the engine. "Have at it." A pause. "I'll be here."
It's too much to pick apart, so Sam heads into the shop on a mission for resin and a bow for Kevin, and hands over this month's card. Will the cello help Kevin? Can anything but fire help Kevin? Not that it's Sam's choice. It can't be, after everything.
Sam doesn't fool himself, but is glad when Dean doesn't ask about the bag. It's not often Sam has answers anymore, and this rings of too-little-too-late.
But, somehow, Dean still seems to have answers. Or he acts like he does. "We're gonna have to send him on." Dean drums his fingertips on the steering wheel, tongue darting over his chapped lips. "She's gotta know that."
Sam blows out a long breath, turns his gaze to the familiar wastes outside, flat and grey-yellow with sparse green. Rural Midwestern America. Maybe making an event of sending Kevin to Heaven will do them all some good, given the lone witness to Kevin's ash was Dean. Sam can see it—the fire, the encroaching darkness, the drawn lines on Dean's face shifting with the shadows of the eating flames.
From what Sam's heard from other hunters, the number of ghost-sightings has soared in the past year. And maybe every person that died when Heaven was shut, except for people going to Hell, is still trapped between worlds. Like Kevin is. The Veil gorged fat on the souls of everyone who happened to die at the wrong time.
He closes his hands into fists. It's too much to think about. Dean doesn't offer any other answers. Maybe he sees the fire, too.
The cello is at once too big and too small for Sam's hold of it. And, as it turns out, it's a great thing Kevin wasn't intending on becoming a teacher—because he's a terrible one. Not that Sam is a good student. The cello was never high in Sam's lists of interests and he's clumsy with it. Sam adjusts his grip on the bow for the fifth time, before Kevin heaves a gargantuan sigh for someone that doesn't actually breathe. "Okay… Just work with that." He plucks one of the strings critically from across the room. "So we'll start with a scale. That should be easy enough."
Sam bites back a theatrical sigh of his own as Kevin reappears behind Sam. "Remember, this is A string," And his voice is soft now, retracted its claws, and Sam wonders who taught Kevin, even as he puts bow to string, fingers pressing tightly where Kevin arranged them.
The instrument screeches harsh, and the lights whine in sympathy. Kevin says nothing, simply readjusts Sam's fingers on the fingerboard with a careless thought. "Maybe I should have taped it up. You know, so you'd know where to put your fingers." It rings of an apology, and Sam smiles, even as the pressure on his fingers increases enough his bones creak beneath the weight of Kevin's attention.
"What kind of tape?"
"Thin and colored." Kevin frowns, gaze on a bygone time that Sam has no part of. "Mom'll know."
Kevin shifts his focus back onto Sam, sharp and cutting, and Sam—Sam can't believe the tablets didn't vomit out all their secrets, quaking, at the intensity of that look. Another feeble, useless, awful, self-serving, vile apology bubbles like bile in his throat, and he swallows it down with all the others so it sits hot and aching in his gut. "Sam?" Kevin's voice penetrates Sam's skull. "Ready?"
"Yeah—" he tightens the rearranged grip.
(Kevin isn't the first or the last ghost to play this cello. Sam wonders who the last Man of Letters was to play this, before Kevin found and pressed life into it.)
Sam's second attempt isn't better than the first, his fingers huge on the slim neck, and he's strangling it, choking desperate whining sounds from it. Sam shuts his eyes, and he raises the bow off the strings.
"Everybody sucks at first," Kevin says kindly.
But not everyone has a teacher that's past their expiration date and on a timer. Sam twitches his face into an approximation of a smile, before Kevin is gone, the chill of the room lifting with his absence. Sam wants the cold back.
Youtube proves to be a better, if less personal, teacher than Kevin. For hours, Sam watches videos, then applies bow to instrument, wringing the life from the thing. Somewhere in the Veil, Kevin is scowling at Sam's violence, till Sam's eyes prickle with the disapproval, and his shoulder yowls, an unappeased wildcat. He sets the bow aside, then finds the cleaning cloth.
The strings scream grating as he wipes away the white dust; the hairs at Sam's nape raise up.
He's more on edge from a cello than a ghost.
Sam rubs his eyes. He settles in his chair, pulling his computer into his lap. Music reading—so exciting. Months ago, when Sam had opened the door to bear witness to the dust of Kevin's room, everything about the cluttered mess had seemed so familiar after the state of the houseboat, but the random sheets of music had been an unwelcome surprise—he hadn't know what to do with that, that tiny personal touch in a space otherwise devoted to work and research and Sam had rifled through it all—searching for that grain of knowledge before he'd finally left. Shaking.
Now the music stands out stark on his screen, but the silence is the same.
When Sam enters the main room, Linda stashes the worn leather book away like he can't read the twist of grief at the sharp edges of her mouth, like he doesn't know the blood-red, hot desperation in the tremor of her worn hands. Gone ragged under Crowley's care, and Sam wonders if she can read the guilt in the sag of his shoulders.
As she hides it away, he sees—glinting in handprinted gold letters, The Veil—and his stomach drops heavy and fast. He knows this, knows the clutching, the screaming takemeplease, but he pretends not to see the raw sorrow settled into every crevice of Linda Tran—and maybe he doesn't know. Never lost his child. Lost both parents, sure, but Sam thinks children are supposed to outlive their parents.
"Have you seen him today?" Linda asks him, clipped.
"Yeah. He uh—" Sam reads one of the notes she's written before she covers it with a hand. Phoenix tailfeather? "He wore himself out teaching me the cello."
Linda folds her notebook closed, and whatever she thinks of Kevin's teaching, nothing shows on her face. The research they all pretend she's not doing gets put away—and his gut tightens into a hard ball. She isn't the first Tran to do research in the bunker; she's just the wrong Tran.
Guiltily, he turns his gaze aside. (But he's not the only one that thinks she's the wrong Tran, is he? Somehow, it doesn't make him feel better.)
He sits down on Linda's left, so they don't have to stare at each other. Instead, he asks her, "Kevin said something about tape? For the cello?"
Linda hums thoughtfully, before she tells him, "I'll order it to one of your drop boxes. Just write the address out for me." The tape is for Kevin, but Sam puffs nearly to bursting with gratitude.
Tape is something like forgiveness, maybe, if he squints and tilts his head just right.
He looks to her just in time to watch her thin, brittle, breakable, formerly-broken fingers clasp the heavy dark ring on the glinting chain. The One Ring. He wishes, sharply, knife-to-the-lungs sharp, that Charlie were here. Sam isn't sure exactly what would be easier, but it would be easier. Maybe Charlie could get through to Linda, since Sam can't, because he's the one that murdered Kevin with a press of his palm. Linda clenches her hand tight and protective over the precious ring, Kevin's ring and his father's ring, a ghost ring.
"My husband," she tells him, sighting the object of his scrutiny, "died young, too. Hit by a car. Drunk college kids, when Kevin was a baby." Easy. Matter-of-fact.
A crash from the kitchen makes them both jump. Sam pulls out his gun, and Linda trembles, rabbit-scared, and whispers, "Well?"
And Sam creeps to the kitchen with Linda ghosting his footsteps.
Sam gently peeks around the doorway, finger comfortable on the trigger—to see Dean panting over a shattered casserole dish. The coffeepot beeps and screams when Kevin appears, barely visible, like looking at him through wax paper. His gaze is locked on Dean, and Kevin's face is twisted-ugly, before he sights his motherand the expressions sloughs off, to reveal the feverish smile he always forces her way. Like a pang of reassurance. He's fine, fine, okay, great (dead dead dead). Linda rushes to her son. "What happened?" she asks him.
In answer, the coffeepot shrills. Then, Kevin's gone and the appliances are once again silent. A relief. Sam's temples throb, and he doesn't stow his gun. Dean doesn't look up. Instead, he sits heavy in the broken glass and steaming food, trembling like an addict, and the Mark is puffy red. Sam swallows. Cain and Abel: he knows how this story plays out. "Dean?" Sam's voice comes out steadier than is possible.
"Sammy?" Dean slurs, finally, finally looking at Sam with watery red eyes. "I… it burned." He gestures with a bloody, torn-up hand at the steaming casserole splattered over the floor and inset with glass.
Linda's voice is almost calm when she commands, "Take your brother, Sam. I'll clean up."
Obeying is a relief that Sam doesn't think on. Dean comes docilely, treading so heavily that Sam keeps hands out to catch his brother. But Dean doesn't fall any further than he already has. They stop in the bathroom, to wash away the dripping blood and glass. Sam cleans out the wounds. The Mark doesn't scrub away, but Dean doesn'tstop Sam from trying, mouth open and eyes distantly tender. Eventually, Sam wraps the cuts and the Mark.
Dean grunts something like a thanks as Sam escorts his brother to his room, rather than the dungeon.
"I need to work, Sam," Dean says, finally, rubbing a white, bandaged hand over his mouth. "I just need to." And his eyes scrunch tightly shut, before opening—green-not-black.
Sam breathes out a long breath. "Yeah. We'll find something, Dean."
So so easy to say yes. Like always. But it's not a solution. Sam's gaze draws to the crisp white bandage where Brotherly Anger burns. Sam leaves Dean there, fleeing.