Sorry for the re-post guys, I found a few typos and wanted to fix them. I've been trying to find a beta reader for quite some time now – if you'd be interested please let me know

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Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or story elements of Supernatural; they were created by people far more talented than I. I'm not making any money from this story, and it is intended only to show my appreciation for this wonderful series.

Author's Note: After watching the destruction of the Impala in the season finale, I found myself compelled to write a sort of companion-piece to the short one-shot I wrote a few months back about Dean's relationship with the Impala. It's not necessary to read the first piece to understand this one, but I think they make a little more sense as a pair because the first one explains my take on Dean's attachment to the Impala. If you're interested, the earlier story is called "Breakdown," and is listed on my profile page. It's pretty short – only 1500 words or so.

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It took a few minutes of jostling, shoving, and creative swearing, but finally, with a shriek of rusty hinges and a flurry of copper flakes, the chain-link gate swung open. Dean favored the gate with a glare that by rights should have reduced it to a smoking heap of ruined metal, but the gate merely continued to swing slowly back and forth, hinges moaning in vain protest. Resigning himself to the fact that the gate seemed determined to continue standing, Dean wiped his rust-streaked hand on his jeans and took a careful step forward. When his vision didn't tunnel into blackness or explode into jagged sparks, he was encouraged enough to venture another step, and another.

He passed through the gate, and then began to make his slow way along the inner face of the fence. He'd have cut straight across the lot, but with the way his legs were shaking, if he lost the added support of his grip on the fence there was a very real possibility that he would end up face-down in the mud. And even though Sam had reluctantly agreed to let him do this alone, Dean knew that there was a good chance Sam would be coming after him pretty soon, agreement or no agreement, and Dean was NOT going to let his brother find him collapsed on the ground. He had his pride to consider, after all, and besides, Sam had had enough to deal with in the past month.

Sam had escaped the encounter with the demon and semi with relatively little damage: a black eye, some bruising, and a concussion from hitting his head against the steering wheel. But, even though he'd recovered from his injuries in fairly short order, the next few weeks spent waiting for Dean to wake up hadn't been easy on him.

Especially since he'd been waiting alone. The traitorous thought whispered through Dean's mind, and he had to pause for a moment as his fingers convulsively tightened on the corroded metal of the fence.

Dean took a deep breath and forced his hand to unclench. Firmly, he told himself that his father had done the right thing. The sensible thing. The demon that had killed their mother, killed Jess, nearly killed him, was still out there. Whoever, whatever, had broadsided them with a semi was still out there, and they still didn't know why it hadn't finished them off when they'd been unconscious and helpless. Of course John had gone. He'd stayed for five days after the accident, which was actually more than Dean had expected of him. Sam hadn't felt quite the same way. When Dean had finally woken up, Sam's initial relieved happiness had transmuted almost instantly into incandescent rage when Dean had asked if their dad was ok. Sam hadn't – didn't – understand how John could have left before he knew if Dean was going to be alright. Dean, on the other hand knew exactly how John could manage it, even without the demon's words still fresh in his ears.

Dean forced himself to resume his progress along the fence. As he walked, dull waves of pain pulsed through his chest, but the drugs they'd pumped into him at the hospital were still taking the edge off enough so he could walk without screaming. As he assessed his physical condition, one corner of Dean's lips quirked up. He supposed he owed that nurse back at the hospital a thank-you. He'd tried to get the doctors to stop giving him pain medication nearly a week ago. He'd gotten Sam out of the room by claiming that he could never be expected to recover his strength eating the congealed mush that passed for food in the hospital and begging him for a couple Quarter-Pounders with cheese. As soon as Sam had left, Dean had pressed the call button and informed the nurse who appeared that he wasn't going to be taking the pain medication anymore. She'd looked at him as though he'd gone insane and called a doctor, who had then tried to explain to Dean why trying to deal with the aftermath of his injuries without any painkillers would be an incredibly stupid thing to do.

Dean had appreciated the doctor's concerns, but the doctor hadn't understand that in the Winchester family business having your mind clouded with drugs was a surefire way to get yourself - or someone else - killed. So, Dean had reiterated his determination to stop taking the drugs, and the conversation escalated into a heated debate which concluded with the doctor throwing his hands in the air and saying, "Fine! We'll see how long your resolution lasts. When you change your mind, let us know. I'm guessing you'll have a change of heart in," he paused to consult his watch, "about an hour when your current dose starts to wear off." He'd slammed the door behind him when he'd left.

Sam had eventually returned, presenting Dean with a turkey sandwich, chicken soup, and some cock-and-bull story about there being no McDonald's in town. Dean hadn't believed this for a second and, when called on it, Sam had admitted that he hadn't felt that Quarter-Pounders were appropriate convalescence cuisine. Dean had been about to point out that he'd been living off of fast food for 22 years now and it hadn't hurt him yet, but Sam had slumped into the uncomfortable hospital-chair where he'd spent the better part of the past month, and Dean had accepted the sandwich and soup without further comment.

Sam had fallen asleep a few minutes later, neck crooked back at an awkward angle. Dean had dozed off himself, but had come wide awake less than 45 minutes later with his chest feeling as though someone had poured acid in his wounds. He'd bitten his lip to keep from crying out, but as the minutes had ticked by, the fire in his chest had become more and more intense, until he'd become dimly aware that he'd bitten all the way through his lip and his fingernails had gouged angry red semicircles into the flesh of his palms. After a time, he hadn't been conscious of much of anything except the pain and the need to keep quiet so Sam wouldn't wake up and worry. He'd only been dimly aware of the door opening, but a few minutes later the burning pain in his chest had faded to a throbbing ache. He'd looked for the source of this unexpected relief, and had found it in the empty syringe plugged into his IV tube and a tiny, grandmotherly, nurse.

As Dean had watched, incredulous, the woman had calmly detached the syringe and fixed him with a stern glare. He'd opened his mouth, ready to protest, but she'd cut him off before he could get a single world out. She'd told him in no uncertain terms that he was going to take the pain medication whether he wanted to or not, and if he complained that she was treating him without consent, then she would "accidentally" tell his brother that he was refusing medication, patient confidentiality be-damned. She'd also suspected that he didn't like the drugs for the same reason a number of military men she'd treated hadn't liked them – because they clouded awareness, and she'd asked him if he really thought he was any more "aware" when he was completely incapacitated by pain than he was with the drugs. She then pointed out that he hadn't even reacted when she'd come into the room.

She'd never raised her voice above a whisper, but she'd left Dean sufficiently chastened that when she'd come into the room the next morning, syringe in had, he'd allowed her to use it without comment. She'd continued dosing him until he'd checked out of the hospital this morning.

Now, as he heaved himself a few feet further along the fence, he was very glad that the nurse had talked some sense into him. He was practical enough to know that without the drugs, he wouldn't have made it through the gate. He was doubly glad of the drugs a moment later when he realized that he'd reached the point where he would have to leave the fence behind. The balding man in the tiny, cigarette stained, room that served this place for an office had told him that new acquisitions were generally towed in behind the green VW bus until they could be scrapped, and Dean had come far enough along the fence that he could just barely see a patch of faded lime green towards the middle of the lot. His view of the vehicle was mostly obscured by row upon row of gutted carcasses of trucks, vans, and cars, slowly rusting into twisted metal skeletons, but Dean thought chances were good that he'd found the bus. Most auto makers had had the sense to avoid painting their cars such a horrible color.

Setting his teeth, Dean pushed away from the fence and began picking his way through the field of cannibalized vehicles. He passed the remains of what had once been a '56 Crown Vic, and suppressed a small shudder when he saw sickly green weed tendrils protruding from underneath the hood like spilling entrails. Next to the Crown Vic, a nearly unrecognizable station wagon seemed to be slowly sinking into the muddy earth, its exposed support pillars jutting up like a bare rib cage half-buried in desert sands. Dean suppressed another shudder. He understood that many people were unnerved by graveyards. He wasn't one of them – he'd spent far too much time in graveyards, too much time in actual graves, to be bothered by them. This chop-shop lot though – this was giving him the major creeps. The thought of his girl here made him ignore his increasing shortness of breath and pick up his pace.

When he'd woken up in the hospital a week ago, he hadn't immediately asked Sam about his car. He'd thought he remembered everything that had happened that night, even though events after Sam shot John in the leg had a quality of unreality about them, as though there had been a thick wool blanket between him and the rest of the world. He hadn't minded that because the blanket had also seemed to be between him and the searing pain in his chest, but Sam had put one hand on his chin and another on the side of his head and called to him, and then cursed when Dean's eyes had remained glassy and unfocused. Sam and his father had half-carried him to the Impala's back seat, and he'd been just aware enough to mumble something about not getting blood on the leather, which the other two men had ignored. Then they'd been driving, and Dean had caught a few snatches of conversation: Sam telling him to hang on, John saying something about the Colt. And then he'd woken up three weeks later in a hospital bed, IV's trailing from both arms and Sam sprawled like a discarded marionette in that too-small hospital chair. He'd assumed that he'd passed out blood loss during the drive to the hospital, and that Sam had driven him and his father the rest of the way.

Sam hadn't immediately corrected that assumption. Instead, he'd had spent the next day and a half giving Dean worried looks when he thought Dean wasn't paying attention. Dean had been paying attention, and had eventually decided that he was in imminent danger of strangling his brother with a piece of surgical tubing if Sam didn't stop staring at him. So he'd asked Sam if he'd cleaned out the Impala's backseat, thinking that if Sam hadn't it would at least get him out of the room and out of staring distance for a little while. The question hadn't met with the expected response. Sam had gone very pale and very still, and after a few moments when Dean only looked at him, puzzled, he'd said, "Dean, don't you remember? You were awake, I looked back to check on you. I thought you just didn't want to talk about it." Sam had trailed off, the worry in his eyes intensified.

"Remember what, Sammy?" Dean had snapped, renewed worry making him sharp.

"Dean – the Impala – we were in an accident. A semi broadsided us. It hit the passenger side. I thought you remembered."

Dean had panicked for a moment. John had been sitting on the passenger side. Sam had said he was fine, but –

Sam must have read the fear in Dean's eye's correctly because he'd said quickly, "don't worry, Dad really is fine. He needed some stitches, and he was pretty banged up, but he's fine. The doctor's said it was a miracle." Dean had heard the bitterness in Sam's voice when he spoke about their father, but at that moment he hadn't been able to think of anything to say that would repair this new rift between father and son.

"And you?" he'd asked instead. Sam had looked alright, but car crashes could cause all kinds of problems that weren't obvious.

"I'm fine, but the Impala –" Sam had trailed off without completing the thought, but Dean had understood.

"How bad?" he'd asked quietly.

"Bad. Bobby drove out here last week to take a look at it, to see if he could fix it. But the frame was cracked in three places."

Dean had tried to steel himself, but even so he'd been unprepared for the wave of desolation that swept through him at Sam's words. Bobby was a genius with cars; Dean had seen him get cars that most other mechanics would have consigned to the junkyard purring like kittens, but a cracked frame – even Bobby couldn't fix that.

"I'm sorry Dean. He tried, he really did. But there wasn't anything he could do."

Dean had nodded bleak acknowledgement, but hadn't been able to bring himself to speak.

They hadn't spoken about the Impala again for almost a week. Dean had avoided the subject, and, for once, Sam hadn't tried to get him to talk about his feelings.

Finally, after a week of complaining about bad daytime TV, bad hospital food, and unflattering hospital gowns, Dean had been well enough to leave the hospital. Well, he'd thought he was well enough. Sam and his doctor had disagreed rather strongly with his assessment of his physical condition, but Dean had insisted so forcefully that finally the doctor had admitted that what Dean needed most of all was rest, and it looked as though the only way he was going to get any rest was if they let him have his way. Sam had agreed to take Dean to a hotel, but only after programming the doctor's direct line into his speed dial. Per hospital regulations and to Dean's disgust, he'd been forced to exit the hospital via orderly-operated wheelchair while Sam fetched the car. The orderly had wheeled him out to the curb, and Dean had instinctively scanned the line of waiting cars for the sleek black shape of the Impala. Then Sam had stepped out of a dark green Ford Taurus, and Dean's stomach had knotted at the wrongness of it.

Sam had seen Dean's stricken expression, and had glanced quickly back at the Taurus before going to Dean's side. He'd dismissed the orderly with a murmured word of thanks, and bent to help Dean out of the wheelchair. As he'd helped Dean to his feet, he'd murmured softly, "it's just a rental, Dean. Just for now, until we can work something out."

At that, Dean had jerked to a halt, perforce stopping Sam, who was supporting him on one side, along with him. "I want to see her," he'd said quietly.

"Dean," Sam had begun, but Dean had cut him off. "Sam, I need to see her. Please."

The "please" had done it. Sam had bowed his head and blinked hard for a moment and then nodded once, quickly, and Dean had realized too late that Sam was probably remembering the last time Dean had said "please."

Sam had tried once more to change his mind, on the drive over to the yard, explaining haltingly that Bobby would have towed the Impala back to his pack behind his truck, but the Impala's chassis had been too warped by the crash to make the trip. They'd needed to get the car off the street, and there was only one establishment in the area that would tow and store totaled cars. And, Sam had warned Dean, Rick's Auto Parts and Towing wasn't exactly a five star establishment.

Sammy was right about that, Dean reflected grimly as he stepped over a corroded fender and came up beside the listing bulk of the green VW bus. Despite his former urgency, now that he was actually here his feet slowed of their own accord, and he leaned against the side of the bus, ignoring the flaking paint. He closed his eyes, and told himself that the Impala was just a car, just a way of getting from point A to point B, and that there was no reason he shouldn't be able to walk around the bus, see the car, and then move on. He imagined what John Winchester would think if he could see he oldest son cowering behind an old bus, afraid to actually see the wreckage of his car, because then he would have to admit it was really gone. John would be disgusted, would say, "Dean, I raised you to be stronger than this." And Dean knew that he should be stronger, hated that he wasn't. Angry with himself, with his weakness, he slammed his fist downward and back into the side of the bus, set his jaw, and pushed himself erect. Then, holding his arms crossed over his chest like a man slowly bleeding to death, he made his way around the bus.

The Impala, or what was left of it, was there, and Dean went very still at the sight. When Sam had described the accident, he'd tried to steel himself for the worst, but what he saw now was worse than anything he'd been able to imagine. The passenger side of the Impala looked as though it had gone through a trash compacter, the front and back windshields and all four windows were shattered, the tires were blown, the hood was warped out of shape, and the front bumper was dragging on the ground. But the physical damage Dean had expected. What he hadn't expected was the lifelessness of the car.

The impala had always looked alive to Dean. Even when it hadn't been running it had seemed to crouch, ready to spring into motion at a moment's notice. When its engine did roar to life he'd known every rumble, cough, and purr so well that the car seemed to speak to him. When he drove he'd been able to feel the vibrations of the engine down into his bones, feel it in his gut when he asked the car for more speed and it responded with a surge of power that sent them hurtling down the highway. He'd stood more times than he could count with his hands splayed across the hood after a drive, feeling the cooling engine ticking beneath the warm metal like a slow but steady heartbeat.

But there was no sense of life about the Impala now. It had the defeated, collapsed, look of a marathon runner who has pushed himself too hard for too long, and who finally falls in a jumble of tangled limbs ten yards from the finish line. Dean took the last few steps towards the Impala and laid a trembling hand on the black painted hood. The metal was cold beneath his fingers, and he used his other hand to dash away the moisture that welled, despite his best efforts, at his eyes.

As he stood beside the ruined body of his car, the words the demon had said to him three weeks ago snaked, unbidden, through his mind. "They don't need you. Not like you need them." The sentiment hadn't been news to Dean; he'd always known well enough that the other Winchester men could get along fine without him. John had his revenge, and Sam had his hope of normal life, one that didn't include his ghost-hunting big brother. But Dean had never had anything but his family and this car. And with his mother's death, Sam's leaving for Stanford, and his father's leaving to hunt for the demon on his own, Dean had been increasingly relying on the car as the one constant in his life, the one thing he could count on to be there for him. But now that was gone too. Dean blinked, and two drops of liquid fell onto the Impala's dark paint. A moment later, the silence of the lot was broken by a dull clang of a boot hitting metal and a muffled curse. Dean muttered a curse of his own, and scrubbed hastily at his eyes. Sam had come to find him.

Sam walked up beside Dean and, when Dean didn't say anything, sighed and kicked at a rusted hubcap lying on the ground. "I'm sorry. I know I said I'd let you do this alone, but you've been gone awhile and you really shouldn't even be out of bed. The doctor said you shouldn't be moving around –"

"It's all right. I was just about done here anyway." Dean tried to sound nonchalant, but he knew he hadn't succeeded when Sam gave him another one of the concerned looks he'd been casting Dean's way all week. When Dean ignored him, Sam shifted his worried gaze to the Impala. "I told Rick – the owner – not to do anything with it until I said it was alright, but he won't hold it forever" he said quietly. "What do you want to do?"

Dean wanted to drive away in his newly-repaired Impala, but that wasn't going to happen. "You got the gear out?" he asked instead.

"Yeah. It's in the rental."

"I guess that's it then," Dean said softly, more to himself than to Sam. "Tell him – tell him to go ahead and do what he needs to do." His voice broke once, but he managed to get the sentence out.

"Dean, we don't have to do this. We can make some phone calls; find someplace that can store it for awhile."

"Yeah, and how are we going to pay for that? I don't exactly have a bank account they can draw from each month."

"We could work something out. Try to get enough cash to pay them upfront or something."

"Nah." Dean tried once more to sound casual, but he turned away from Sam as he spoke, hiding his expression from Sam's too-concerned eyes. "Let's just get out of here. We've got work to do."

Dean heard Sam sigh, probably frustrated for about the thousandth time by his big brother's refusal to admit to his feelings. But Sam didn't understand that if Dean did allow himself to give in to the wave of anguished loneliness that had been building since his first look at his ruined car, there was a chance that he would sit down on the muddy ground of this lot and never get up again. And that was unacceptable, because maybe Sam and John didn't need him, but he sure as hell needed them, and the only way he could reassure himself that they'd stay alive and well was if he was looking out for them. He couldn't do that if he was sitting despondent in the middle of a junkyard. Although John's recent absences were making it increasingly difficult for Dean to look out for him, Sam was here, at least for now, and Dean was going to do everything he could to make sure that nothing happened to him. If his feelings for the Impala had to be sacrificed in aid of that goal, well, he figured it was a relatively small price to pay.

Sam turned away, ready to walk back to the Taurus, but Dean paused for a moment and laid his hand against the Impala's hood once more. "Later, girl," he whispered, too softly for Sam to hear. Then he walked away from the Impala for the last time, and tried to ignore the deep, raw, pain that throbbed through him, far eclipsing the pain of his injuries.

Fin.

AN: I hope you enjoyed the story, and if you have a second I'd really appreciate your feedback, positive or negative, in a review! I'm debating writing a continuation to this – maybe a multi-part post Devil's Trap sort of thing, so if anyone's interested, please let me know. Thanks for reading.