Go ahead. Sue me. The most expensive thing I own is my 50th anniversary edition of „The Lord of the Rings" with the Alan Lee illustrations and I'll die before I hand that over.
So we'll go no more a-roving
At first, for days, you just can't think. For a long time, there's no room for thoughts in your overloaded mind. It's so full of images, memories, flooded with emotion. You're drowning in it all, and that's a good thing, in a way, because the more you feel the less you think about the last thing he ever said to you, the last words you ever heard from him. You can't even react to the world around you anymore, your body is working on automatic, saying the right words, asking the expected questions, Sam's voice coming from light years away and you let your auto-pilot answer him every time without knowing what it actually says.
The only voice you can hear with any clarity is the doctor's, his words a bass line to the melody of grief playing in your screwed-up head.
Time of death, 10:41 am
Over and over. Like the steady, heavy rhythm of an AC/DC song.
Dad's last words to you are buried deep in your mind, ruthlessly squashed, utterly silenced. There's times you can almost forget they are even there. Almost.
Not until Sam appears in the junkyard that day, Dad's phone in hand, do you turn the auto-pilot off. You're still numb, you have to be, or it will all come rushing out of you like a river bursting through a broken dam, and you're pretty sure you wouldn't survive that. No one can feel this much all at once, it's not possible, and it's all agony.
The familiar pattern of the job you take on for Ellen kick-starts your brain. It coughs and splutters like a stalling car, but it's up and running. Your temper is more frayed than you can ever remember, and when you do burst, decimating the boot of your beloved car, it brings relief, for a little while. It lets you pull yourself together long enough to resurrect the mask you've been hiding behind for twenty-three years. Your grip on it is tentative, though. It keeps slipping away from you. Nevertheless, you're thinking again.
The volume, the melody is turned down, but the bass still thumps. It sends shivers through your body with every beat.
By the time you meet Gordon, you've figured it out.
Dad's dead because of me.
The realization comes to you in the middle of another sleepless night at Bobby's. It hits you in the face like a punch, and your body rocks with the force of it. You spend the next quarter of an hour retching in the bathroom, and when you emerge, trembling, both bass and melody have changed.
Dad's dead because of me.
Grief becomes guilt.
Well, exploding worked for the grief, right? So you try it again with guilt. But hunting, the brutality of what you did to that vampire doesn't change the ache in your chest, doesn't lessen the weight on your shoulders. It surprises you when you realise that what does help, a little, is making fury out of guilt. Not fury at the creatures you hunt, but at Dad.
Damn him for making you live with this knowledge. How did he expect you to cope with this?
Of course, John Winchester was never one for "how, Dad". He told; you did. Even now, it seems.
When you reach Lawrence, and stumble on a hunt not twenty feet away from Mom's headstone (you can't call it a grave, not when you know she – know she's not there) all your anger at Dad explodes in the professor's face, and this time, it works, it feels damn good.
So now Sam's looking at you, and talking again, like he has been for weeks, but you hear him for the first time . Your mind is once again clear enough for you to understand what he's saying.
"… now I'm going to lose you too?"
You selfish bastard. Your little brother needs you, and you've been wallowing in your own self-pity. You push the "mute" button ruthlessly. Melody and bass fall blessedly silent, for a little while.
Not even your encounter with Andy can make you think of Dad's last words, no matter how worried you are about Sam. You're stubborn like that.
But that damn demon! Having it all flung in your face like that, every thought, every emotion, it's too much. With an almighty crash like the opening chords of "Smells like Teen Spirit", the bass starts up again, reverberating in your very bones. (It would take a lot more than that for you to admit to Sam that the thundering darkness of Nirvana fits your current mood better than anything in your precious tape box, mind. Stubborn.)
This time, though, you're thinking properly. No longer detached, and the melody of guilt is just quiet enough that you can concentrate on other things. Like Dad's last words to you. Because now your brother is immune to a demonic virus, for God's sake, and they just won't stay buried any longer.
Sam's desperate anger, the empty motel room, your despair as the grenade goes off and Gordon smiles.
Its three a.m. Sam's asleep, snoring drunkenly. The room stinks of alcohol and, oddly, death. Or perhaps that's just your imagination. You want to open a window but there's God-knows-what killing people in this hotel, and wouldn't Dad be furious if you gave it an opportunity to get into the room?
Your head is pounding. Again. Still. You're not sure it's ever stopped since Dad died. Maybe even since Mom. Who knows? You don't, not anymore.
If you can't save Sam, you'll have to kill him…
You have to promise me… you're the only one who can do it.
You want to scream, to lash out, to break something, but hey – tried that already, remember? So you force yourself to be calm, to think rationally. You look across at your pain-in-the-ass baby brother, and the bass line changes. The words that rise to the forefront of your mind are ones you spoke yourself, barely a year ago.
As long as I'm around, nothin' bad is gonna happen to you.
Over and over.
Guilt becomes determination.
You're standing in a warehouse, looking at Mom, her hand is warm against your jaw and her smile as lovely as you remember, and you want to stay so desperately it's a physical pain.
But you've been carrying that ache with you since you were four years old, it's an old, familiar friend by now, and it has no power to drown out the steady thud of the bass in your head.
As long as I'm around, nothin' bad is gonna happen to you.
Finally, after all this time, you understand Dad. It's ironic, really. While he was alive, you knew him, understood him. Sam never did – or at least not until the very end. But the minute he dropped dead, you were the one who didn't understand, who raged and cursed and fought, and Sam just accepted, grieved, and dealt as best he could. Now, in some twisted way, Sam's death has given you back Dad. Irony, eh.
The bass is still thumping, louder than ever, when you leave the house your brother's body lies in and make your way to the crossroads.
As long as I'm around, nothin' bad is gonna happen to you.
Bobby doesn't understand. He thinks that the "problem" lies with you, that you don't think you're worth it, that you want to die. He's wrong but he's right, in a way.
Is it really so wrong to love someone so much that nothing else matters, not even yourself?
Of course not. It's part of what makes us all human. Unconditional, altruistic, self-sacrificing love. It's the greatest gift we have to give.
You'd shoot yourself and take the early elevator down to Hell before you tell that to Bobby, mind. As for Sam, you're pretty sure he already knows. If he doesn't, well, he's a smart kid. He'll figure it out. You did.