A/N: Dean angst owns me. This just-flowed for me. Hope you enjoy it!
Reviews make my day. Seriously. :)
Disclaimer: if I owned Supernatural, I wouldn't have to write fanfiction. I'd write myself into the show and marry Dean. Let's be real.
He's dead but not gone, because you won't let him be. You're more sentimental than you let on, and you keep his shirts and his guns and his journal, and you don't tell Sam because Sam will understand too much and so not at all. Because Sam thinks you're working towards some sort of peaceful, distant remembering that is really letting go. But you're not, because Winchesters don't let go of this. Don't let go of family. (You sure as hell didn't let go of Sam, those years, even if he thought you did).
So you hold on, and you think maybe, just maybe if you hold onto the clothes that were his, breathe the scents that were his in worn leather and battered paper, trace your fingers over the few faded pictures you have until his (and her) face is warm again that you won't lose him (them) because memory is lock and key and permanence, if nothing is—
But it's not. You can't hold him. He wasn't yours to hold on to, yours to keep. He was more of a hero than a father, and you both knew that…and you accepted it in a way that Sam wouldn't, accepted that he called the shots, that Dad laid down the only laws you follow.
Except this. Because Dad left, chose to—let go, died, for you, and he shouldn't, it wasn't supposed to end like this, and you won't let him go.
He isn't gone. He can't be. You don't ask for much, but you've always needed a hero.
But it doesn't work. Not like you thought it would, this staying. In a few days the smells fade and the pictures don't look like him anymore and you can't quite remember what his voice sounded like and you hate yourself more, even, than what he did.
You only have memories of memories now and it's stretching outwards and forever, because the only permanence is in fading.
