title. Tarnished Silver
rating. PG/Gen
summary. The nurse came in the room with a plastic bag filled with all that was left of his father.
If Sam had noticed, he hadn't said anything.
It started the night their father died, when his body wasn't even cold and already the hospital staff were acting like nothing had happened — nothing horribly catastrophic and life-changing right there in that room down the hall. Dean had been dragged back into bed by an emotional Sam, the wet spots on his embarrassedly revealing white and blue hospital gown belonging to both of them — they weren't Sam or Dean's, but the orphaned sons of John Winchester, a single, mourning entity. The day had sapped Sam of energy, and when the nurse came in the room with a plastic bag filled with all that was left of his father, Dean held back tears as he grasped it between weak hands and thanked the woman with a whisper.
The glad bag popped open and the smell of his father wafted out; he caught some and closed his eyes before the last of it dissipated into the air, gone forever. There wasn't much inside — an old leather wallet, edges cracked with age, filled with fake IDs and a picture of his sons several years old, the gold wedding band he never removed, even years after his wife's death, some spare change, and a silver flask, probably picked up on the fly from a liquor store in-between jobs.
Dean rubbed his fingers over the smooth silver surface, falling into the lines of rough tarnish where his father did the same and never bothered to polish the cheap surface. Worry marks, he learned to call them. An old girlfriend had even given him a worry stone to rub his thumb upon when he felt like wringing someone's neck just to relieve the tension. It was red with black threads, a polished stone he kept in his pocket until the reality his father had gone missing set in months ago and he chucked it as far as he could with an aggravated shout.
The damn thing was gone — he'd searched for hours to occupy his mind before it went over the edge of some kind of mental Niagara Falls. In his hands, the flask felt a worthy replacement, and he tucked the rest of the items back into the large bag with one of his dad's fake names written across it in sharp black marks. But the flask he kept between his hands, finding comfort in the cool metal under warm fingertips, and threw one of his blankets over it when Sam jolted awake, his face first blank, then crumbled like an avalanche, his heart a pile of jumbled rocks at his feet.
It was heartbreaking on his baby brother, the one he protected and pushed for a better life in his own, convoluted way, and he tossed the bag and what was left of their father to him before pretending to fall asleep.