Title: The Limits of Memory
Rating: PG13 (language)
Summary: 'Dark Side of the Moon' coda! It was about PB&J and he doesn't think Dean got it.
Sam doesn't remember their mother, not when she was their mother anyway. He's met Young Mary, Dead Mary, Memory Marry, Not-Really-Mary… All these Mary's but never Mom. He doesn't remember getting tucked into bed or a kiss goodnight. He doesn't remember a house, a toy road, or stupid t-shirts. Those memories are just beyond his reach, behind a yellow-eyed-demon and Mary sliding slowly up his nursery wall.
'I never had the crusts cut off my PB&J,' he told Dean but he didn't think Dean got it and he didn't know how else to say it.
Sam remembers wondering why Dad always left them, why nobody talked about mom, and why dad always came home bleeding or drunk or drunk and bleeding. He remembers a .45 in his shaking seven-year-old hands. He remembers being fourteen with a werewolf on his ass and, fuck it, he was scared!
He remembers carting a box of fireworks to a field and wondering why they had to sneak around to be happy.
He remembers. He remembers stitching up their dad's leg when he came home from an unsuccessful hunt, the blood making grotesque images on his hands while Dean and dad's voices reached him through a veil of numbness.
Dad was leaving again, standing up on his injured leg like the stubborn son of a bitch he was. Dean wanted to go, watch his back. Sam wanted out. He wanted out so badly his chest ached with it. The too-bright light on the ceiling reflected off the blood on his hands. Dad left. Dean went on. Sam scrubbed his hands until they were raw and, two days later, he was on his way to Flagstaff with a second-hand backpack and twenty bucks.
Dad found him but it didn't matter. He tasted freedom.
He walked outside of the house years later to go to Stanford, looked at the too-bright moon, and realized there was nothing on his hands…and he was happy.
He walked away but it wasn't about Dean. It was about bloody hands and big guns, a black hole in his life that Lucky Charms and fireworks couldn't fix even though he knew Dean tried.
It was about PB&J and stupid fucking crusts and he doesn't know how else to say it.
What do you think? Review.
