This is a small one shot to go with A Life Changed. It is about Sam finding the yellow dog.
Warning angst.
Disclaimer, not mine now or ever.
It was now one month since Sam lost his big brother. His best friend and only family had been sent to hell by a deal he made to get Sam back. His guilt over the fact that his brother was being tortured in hell because of him had been the main reason he was holed up in an abandoned house with too much alcohol and crippling pain after he and Bobby buried Dean in a pine box near a small Illinois town.
After pulling himself together enough to get up, eat something decent and face the new reality he found himself in, he began to sort through Dean's stuff in the back of the impala. He found a box hidden under Dean's duffels and weapons. He frowned at it, as he had never seen it before after three years on the road with Dean. He put it aside for now grabbing fresh clothes, deciding that Dean's clothes could wait. He went back into the house and cleaned off the month's worth of filth and alcohol.
Sitting on the old sofa in the house, he opened the mysterious box. On the top of the objects, he found a small collection of photographs. He looked at all of them. They were the photos taken when Dean had been age regressed by a witch when he was at Stanford. Sam grinned at them, his dad and Dean had been so funny that Christmas and Dean was infectious with happiness. He found the one of him and Dean playing with small trucks. He wondered who had taken it. Caleb was sitting near them in the picture grinning at the camera.
Sam put the photos aside and the pulled out a knife. This knife he knew. It was his brothers 13th birthday present from their father. It had engraved sigils on the hilt and Dean treasured it. Had treasured it. He swallowed the lump and the tears away and continued going through the box.
There was a few mementos' from their childhood, other things that had meant something to Dean but Sam could not figure out why but he didn't throw them away as Dean would want them when he got Dean out of hell. He felt something soft in the bottom of the box. He pulled it out. It was Dean's yellow and black spotted dog that he had been so protective of when he was a baby. It was clearly well loved. Holding it to his chest and trying not to cry again. He could smell residual baby smells on the dog's fur, old milk and powder and there was whiskey and the very faint smell of Dean's aftershave on it. He sat the dog near him, running his hand through his hair. Sam laughed softly, "You were awesome man, I never knew it did I?" he said to the ghosts in the room. He could not believe Dean kept the dog. It was a rule that Dean's year as a baby was not spoken of except unless it was absolutely necessary. Yet Dean had kept the most important thing from that year apart from John with him this whole time and he clearly had been holding after he was an adult again but Sam had never seen this. When had Dean held the dog though he thought? When Sam was not thinking about how hurtful he could be to Dean.
Packing it up gently along with the rest of Dean's things, he gathered the box and his stuff lying around to put back in the trunk. Lying around in his own misery drunk was not going to help him get Dean back from hell. He got on the road to Bobby's determined to find a way. I am coming dude he thought grimly as he drove.
End.
Well read and review. I know that Sam doesn't get Dean out of hell but this had been in my head for a while now.