(All SPN characters borrowed for entertainment purposes only. No profit. Ownership and all rights remain with Kripke, CW and anyone else with official ownership.)
~o0o~
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'Leaves'
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Dean keeps his foot on the gas, a steady pressure, not too much, not too little. The Impala is alive around him, vibrations from the grumble of her engine thrumming beneath the backs of his thighs, trembling through the bones of his fingers. He's glad he can feel her there, reminding him that he's alive too.
She sweeps him along the slowly unfurling stripe of blacktop. There's nothing else on the road, nothing mechanical. It's as though he's alone in a grey and windswept world.
He is alone.
Sam…not Sammy now, not ever…Sam is back at the motel, soulless, uncaring of the whereabouts of his brother. Sammy is a soul, a glint of light in the darkness that is Hell and Dean can't find a way to save him.
The wind slams into the landscape in uneven gusts, made visible by the restless movement of the branches against the dark clouds. Bright leaves, gold and red and orange, are torn free by its tugging fingers and scatter across the sky, fluttering down to the dark green of the verges, dancing and twisting their way across the road. Dean thinks it's as though all the color is falling out of the world, leaving it bare and forlorn.
He stares unblinking at the road, a thousand yard stare full of past anguish and present torment. His stomach twists; soon the hastily swallowed coffee and burger will have to be released to lie with the darkening bodies of the leaves.
The heavy pressure of exhaustion sits at the back of his eyes because he can't sleep any more, couldn't sleep last night when he left the motel. Sam probably thinks he went to a bar, picked up some willing girl, assuming Sam bothered to think about him at all. But there's no bar bright enough, no bar busy enough to fill up the empty in Dean right now; there's just the endless numbing road, as permanent as anything has ever been in his life.
The other constant in his life is missing, leaving a Sam-shaped shell to remind him every second of every day that Sammy is gone. Hazel eyes meet his without compassion or interest. The mouth smiles with Sam muscles and the voice sounds just like Sam's, but the smile is empty and the words are all wrong, because Sammy is gone.
Not even music can fill this void and the speakers are silent. Music is dangerous now, because all it would take is one sad, discordant note and the pressure at the back of his eyes will manifest in the streak of a hot, slow tear down his cold cheek and Dean can't afford one tear, not right now, because that one just might shatter the restraining wall of an ocean. There's no time for crying, no time for self, because his little brother needs saving.
The road twists and turns and the day grows older and Dean will head back soon to the husk that is the earthly form of his brother.
It's not Sammy, but it's better than nothing.
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Thanks for reading.