Disclaimer: Don't own the boys.
A/N: I love Dean. I love Family!Dean. Indulge me. Dean's PoV, Post-Bad Day At Black Rock (no real spoilers except for that). Read, enjoy, let me know what you think.
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"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards."
Lewis Carroll
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It's not till the fourth time they're rummaging through the storage locker that Dean even notices it. It's less a case of it being any more prominent now, more a case of finally having time to actually look, really look, at all the things their father kept.
Their fourth time there, no cursed artifact to destroy, no key object necessary for something or another. Just passing through the area in between jobs when Sam asked if they could drop by the place. To see how things were. And there it is, next to a dusty thing Dean can't identify and the cement wall. The key guard is up, like it's waiting to be played, as though it were still sitting in the sunlit corner of the house in Kansas and not this pit.
Somewhere behind him, he can hear Sam rifling through a box of papers—old essays with gold stars and honor roll certificates, mostly Sam's, he's sure, but who knows, there might be a math test with Dean's name at the top—and Dean doesn't know whether to call out or just step closer. He steps back, rest all his weight on the balls of his feet and prepares to get his brother's attention. But his voice catches in his throat and he realizes, Sam won't remember this. He barely remembers this.
The beam of his flashlight breaks against the watermarked wood, it catches the dust particles that dance and settle. The glean of ivory keys his mother used to wipe down every other day with something that smelled like lemons is lost beneath the ash of time. He wonders if the bench is still somewhere in here, wonders if their father kept the flimsy music sheets. Heart and Soul, he thinks now, the only name that still there under the tissue paper of memory, crinkled and too damaged to examine with more than a quick once over of the eye. He tries to remember the sound of his mother's voice as she showed him the keys, but there's nothing, just the warped warble of illusion trying to make itself something real. And he knows there's a memory, somewhere, of him sitting next to her while her hands moved back and forth, slow and steady, each key pressed down by a pale finger while she explained the rhythm. It itches, like a scab, but he can't conjure the moment, only the vaguest impression of his own hands, still slow with baby fat, punctuated by dimples, riddling the air with noise.
He thinks she was good at this though, thinks she did it often, before Sam, and he tries to envision her, sitting on the bench leaning over him, guiding his fumbling hands along the keys (but all he manages is the sight of her leaning over him, her hand on his face, telling him to get some rest. He remembers believing her).
He let's his fingers wander, reaches out and taps at the air over the keys. He has no clear idea of where to let his fingers fall, the tune an overexcited parody of what his mother would have played. He can't remember how she must have held her hands or where each note came from, and his hands—scarred and calloused now, easy with hunting knifes and punches and fire—don't have the smallest idea of where to begin constructing a melody.
"Huh," he hears Sam grunt somewhere behind him and he lets his hands fall away, back to his side. "I was an idiot."
There's an open door in that statement, something about misusing past tense, but Dean's mouth is stuck, somewhere on the struggling chords of a song, and he lets it go, because this is weird. How easily he forgot of everything they left in Kansas. And maybe it's a sign, finding this artifact of a different life stored among the relics of this one. But Dean has never been good with signs, so he settles for pulling the curved oak out over the keys.
He doesn't trail his fingers over the smooth surface, just steps back, to the table where Sam is still going through papers, watches how his brother has moved from old school assignments to pictures, reminiscent of those that reside in the trunk, arranged now in three leather binders that Sam went out and purchased from one of those flowers and hearts shops in the middle of nowhere America.
"Find that picture of you dressed as a girl yet?" The joke slides home easy and Sam's mouth tugs at the corner, but it's not in Sam to give into Dean's humor without a fight so he tries to pull off irriation.
"I was four, and its nothing compared to the one I just found of you in your grunge phase back in Rhode Island."
Sam hands over the pictures as he works his way through them, lingering now and again to remember ("Oh, this was that time Dad hunted the Kelpie" "I knew there was a picture of your broken nose—now you'll never be a supermodel" "God, I can't believe you let Dad give us bowl cuts"). He listens to his brother ramble, smiles at the fact that an overexcited Sam still sounds pretty much the same at twenty-four as he did at six. He laughs at the picture of Sam's sheared head (Dean had done it to even it out after Dad had cut out a landing patch in order to put in twelve stitches and Sam hadn't talked to either of them for a week and wore a beanie to school for the next month).
Dean retells stories that don't need retelling, about the Christmas tree that would have made Charlie Brown's original look lush, about the time Dad broke his leg and Bobby let them name his new dog (a toss up between the purple ninja turtle and Lars Ulrich—Lars won). And Sam laughs at their shared past, denies what's convenient, remembers things Dean will never admit to.
And later when they tote another box full of pictures out to the trunk—the piano unmentioned and dormant in its final resting place—Dean doesn't complain.
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End
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