Title: Carry You Home
Author: Sparkle Itamashii
Carry You Home
The first time she met Dean was a few years before he was born, and she loved him from the moment he smoothed a rough, scarred hand over her hood. She went home with the man who would be his father, and when she saw Dean again it was to take him home from the hospital, bundled in soft blue blankets and grasping his mother's pinky finger. To her very chassis, she knew that they were meant for one another, the tiny, bright-souled human and the dark, sleek Impala.
While Dean was very young, he lived with his father and his mother, and eventually his baby brother, Sam. Before Dean could even talk, John would sit Dean on the edge of the open hood and talk to him about the engine under his greasy hands. Dean would pat the metal beneath him and babble incessantly. His first word had been 'baby,' and he repeated it so meticulously around her that John began to call her Baby as well. She cherished the name she had been given.
When Dean was still young, fire licked at the innards of his home, took their mother someplace Baby never knew. John took to the road with Dean and Sam in tow, his fingers knuckled white on her wheel, his foot leaden on her pedals. She tried to tell him to slow down, to pay attention, that Dean and Sam both needed him. On the nights John fell asleep amongst his notes, the radio reporting local news, she cradled the children in her backseat, so proud of Dean for learning to care for his baby brother. She was very protective of them both, kept them safe wherever they went, and sometimes, when they were older and their father left them alone, Dean and Sam would sleep inside of her rather than the crummy motel room. It was safer there, more like home. She was their constant, and she took her duty seriously.
She watched Dean grow up alongside Sam, did what she could to help him, staying with him even when Sam left. When their father went missing, she rejoiced at seeing Sam again, could feel Dean's relief radiating from him as his brother sat next to him. Sometimes late at night she would sit with the brothers under the stars, the night sky reflecting like a map on her black hide. In those days she was their refuge, where they stayed when they had nothing else. She wouldn't have traded it; she had tasted civilian life alongside Dean in his Djinn delusions, and she knew that they were not meant for domesticity. They were meant for one another, for the open road beneath them and a wide blue sky above them.
When the boys found their father, she knew they were in trouble. John drove a rough-around-the-edges truck that confided to Baby that the oldest Winchester had nearly lost his mind chasing demons and shadows. He was going to drag the boys into it, and Baby was livid. She was vigilant, and when the semi-truck driven by a demon caught up with them in the dead of night, she bent herself around her family to lessen the impact. She saved them, or at least bought John enough time to save Dean where she couldn't. He owed it to Dean. Sometimes she missed John.
The night Sam died, she carried the heaviest weight she had ever born, taking his body and Dean's heart back to Bobby Singer's scrap yard. She had comforted Dean when he couldn't stand to look at his brother, his tears soaking into her wheel after he scrubbed them from his face, and she went with him when he traveled to the crossroads to make his deal. She asked him not to, but she couldn't stop him. When Dean left for Hell, she mourned with Sam. He started drinking and she started playing weird music from his iPod implant. They were neither of them quite the same by the time Dean returned.
The apocalypse began to stir, and Baby stayed as close to the boys as she could manage. When Dean was whisked away to TV land, she managed to follow him, though it became a little uncomfortable as Sam got a little too personal. She even followed Dean up to Heaven, so that she could take him down the last two-track of memory lane. At the end of the world, she bravely carried Dean to be with Sammy, and she was the one who grabbed hold of Sam's heart, begging him to fight the devil, begging him to save Dean. She braced Dean when Sam released him, and she drove him away from the field where he'd lost everything when it was over.
She started over with him, with Lisa and Ben, parked in a garage of her very own for the first time since Dean's mom had disappeared. A familiar curl of warmth settled within her every time Dean brought Ben to her open hood, hands so much like his father's as they smoothed over her engine, teaching Ben how to care for her. The worst moment of her life was the day he stopped, drew a cover over her, retired her because she reminded him too much of everything he'd been through, everything he'd lost. She tried to tell him that Castiel was still there with him, but Dean couldn't see the angel. Cas saw her, though, and he stroked long, cold fingers over her contours and thanked her for watching out for Dean. Distressed, she told Castiel that Dean was leaving her behind, too, but Castiel merely patted her hood like the flank of a good horse. No, he told her. No, Dean would never leave you. Never you.
Eve arrived at the same time as the civil war in Heaven came crashing down and everything was going to shit. Baby was the one to take Dean and Bobby along to try to stop Castiel and Crowley from opening the door to Purgatory. When Crowley's demons attacked them on the road, she curled herself protectively around the men she carried, extending the wards on her trunk to keep the demon smoke at bay. It cost her, it cost her a lot, but she didn't hesitate at all. She was confident that Dean would heal her, because Dean always healed her. They'd had to leave her there, on her back in the road, but that ended up being fortuitous. She'd told Sam where to find them in his delusional state, sent him to their rescue.
She spent long hours with Dean after Castiel gulped down Purgatory and began picking at the seams of the world. He talked softly to her as he ratcheted bits and stomped out the bent metal of her frame. Of course she listened to him as patiently as ever, but she wished that he would go to Castiel and tell Castiel those things. Love was never as simple for humans as it was for cars, however, so she just let him talk. When he finally emerged, she let Sam talk, too. They needed to talk to each other.
The Levis arrived and brought with them her evil twin, a doppleganger of herself the same as the dopplegangers of her boys, and she learned what hate really was. She'd have smashed into the imposter Impala if she could, but the boys needed her to lay low, to stay away from the prying eyes of the world, and so she went into hiding for them. She curled up in one of the sheds at Bobby's, and she watched him dismantle less fortunate cars in his spare time. She watched him bury bodies sometimes, and she wondered where cars went after the scrap yard. She wondered where she would go, when Dean was gone.
They came for her, at last, in a beat up old mustang, their heads held high. She knew that they were going to need every ounce of bravery she could supply, that she was going to get to shine. She blared Dean's favorite tracks as she barreled toward the Levis headquarters, toward Dick Roman himself, with Meg the slinky demon behind her wheel. Letting a demon do the driving was slimy and unclean, but Meg's help was necessary to save her boys, to save all of the humans, and so Baby tolerated it. She wasn't sorry Meg hit her head against the steering wheel when they crashed into the glass sign out front of the building.
After that, Dean was gone and Sam didn't know where this time. He was inconsolable for a while, no matter what station she chose, no matter what song she played or road she took him down. One night, she couldn't get his attention fast enough as the dog darted in front of her, and she hoped she never had to feel that sort of impact ever again. Dog the shepherd leaked crimson into the foot-well of her backseat, and Sam was so worried he didn't clean it for a week. She didn't complain, just took care of Sammy as he attempted to settle into he sort of life Dean had tested out with Lisa and Ben. It was an ill fit for any of them, with not enough road and too much repetition, but Sam wanted it so badly that she never tried to stop him. She didn't even complain when he let Dog into her backseat. She thought maybe the family needed a better naming scheme for the creatures they loved.
It was a long time before Dean finally returned, and with Castiel no less. She had missed them both, and now they were back, and Sam was on the road again with them, and for a while everything was just pavement and jobs. She brought them to the bunker for the first time, and she was happy then, spending her days outside in the sun. She still took them on their travels, but her days were peppered with rest and solace in between now. Sometimes, when he was alone, Sam would confide to her in mumbles that he could see the end of this all, a way out that didn't involve 6 feet of dirt or a pyre.
She couldn't tell him that they were already on their way, but she was content to know it was true, and to wait for them to catch on. Until then, she would take care of her boys, keep them safe, give them something solid and constant. She would be their home, and they would be her world.