Title: Slammed Shut
Author: Indigo Night
Feedback: Yes please
Summary: Because he couldn't remember, and he couldn't forget.
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural or the characters
Spoilers: …For the pilot I guess.
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Author's Note: So, I actually have no idea where this came from. I was merely sitting and absently thinking about Sam leaving for college, and it popped into my head, so I went with it. I've been suffering from painfully severe writer's block, so honestly I'm just glad I got something out. Please forgive the egh… special-ness. And please, please do feed the author some pretty, pretty reviews :)
He hated it. It burned and galvanized him. The memory, or rather, lack of it. Eight months, it had been a mere eight months since that night. Admittedly, eight months of little but drinking and fighting, hiding from the emotions he didn't want to acknowledge, but eight months all the same. How could so short a time all but wipe clean twenty-one years?
It was as though he was stuck, unmovable, in that one awful moment. The words, the angry words of that night swirling around in his head, muted, blurred and distorted. The image, engraved into his mind, the one that he drank so much just to forget. The image of Sam's back disappearing out of the door, followed by the final echoing slam with no turning back.
Sometimes, in his moments of lucidity, when he couldn't push it all away any more, he gave in and actually tried to remember. He thought back of his life and tried to see the four-year-old child who'd flung his arms around his big brother's waist before cheerfully bouncing off to draw another picture with old broken crayon. He tried to hear ten-year-old Sammy laughing grudgingly, giving in to Dean's teasing. He tried to remember the depth of Sam's blush, the exact way he'd shuffled uncomfortably, when Dean had demanded to know all the details of his sixteen-year-old baby brother's first date.
But he couldn't. It wasn't that the memories were gone. No, they were still there, he still had them, he just couldn't see them, hear them, feel them the way he had before. They were blurred, smudged, fuzzy and obscured.
All that was left, truly, all that resounded around and around in his head was Sam's back walking out the door, his dad's angry voice yelling, "If you walk out that door boy, don't you dare come back" and Sam's just as angry, "Fine!"
That was it, all that was left to him of his baby brother, angry words and a slamming door. Sometime he hated himself for it, but sometimes he was glad, because sometimes it just hurt too much to remember. Sometimes it was easier just to pretend it had never happened, that Sammy had never existed.
But before long that thought would leave again, and he would just feel worse. Then it would hurt so much that he would try to fill himself with, righteous he felt, anger, he tried to pretend that he was glad Sammy was gone. He'd abandoned them, they needed him and he'd left without a second glance. Dean wanted to be angry, because anything was better than the crippling, lonely loss he truly felt.
He wanted to be angry, he wanted to be glad, he wanted to forget, he wanted to pretend, he wanted to scream, to cry, to beg. But he didn't, he couldn't.
So instead, he sat, quietly and calmly in the impala, watching the young man find his way around Stanford, meet new people; make new friends, and enemies. Watching it all, silently and removed, drinking his beer and letting his existence slide by unnoticed. Because he couldn't remember, and he couldn't let himself forget. Because he couldn't live without seeing his baby brother's smiling face, and hearing his laughter. Because he needed to know that there was still something on the other side of that slammed door, even if he couldn't touch it, couldn't talk to it, didn't exist to it all. As long as it was there, that was OK.