THURSDAY
T - 94 hours
Today, perhaps, there will be nothing.
Bobby's house provides distractions, but Dean can't escape the sad but tired look that Bobby gives him whenever he can. It's the old man's way of saying, Well, this is it. Have fun in Hell Dean, you've been dying to go there.
He uses the car as a way of getting out of the house. Hours upon hours, he tries to find as many things wrong as he can. The wheels need aligning. The exhaust sounds funny. The alternator is acting up. The radio isn't working not in the way he'd like.
He even uses his most pathetic excuse possible. The car smells.
But it all adds up to nothing when Sam mutters, "Dean, I can call a mechanic you know. I'm not an idiot."
Dean, for the first time in nearly two years, has to fight the insane impulse to punch Sam in the face. Not because of the car, because he's talking about what's happening on Monday and Dean doesn't want to know. He's had enough. It happens, in four days, and that's it. End of story.
He finds the iPod that Sam got him for his last birthday of his whole life, and joy of joys - all his music is there. It's just low on battery, battered and scratched because it's been sitting in the very bottom of his bag. Dean remembers that Sam has iTunes on his laptop, and he deletes all the song that have pissed him off so far. No Leaf Clover. Highway to Hell. The Unforgiven. The Unforgiven II. Dean deletes all the other that he thinks might annoy him. The Memory Remains. Fade to Black. Sad But True. Back in Black. He finds a band he's not yet listened to, in Sam's iTunes library...actually, he finds a few.
Covenant. Hmm.
It takes him all of ten seconds to give up on them.
Cold Chisel. Okay then.
Khe Sanh makes him a little happier. Cheap Wine really gets his mood up, and Sam looks at him strangely all day because he's humming Shipping Steel instead of his usual Some Kind of Monster. Cold Chisel are good. Any song that can cheer him up right now is good.
He finds a whole lot more, too. Deep Purple and Rob Zombie and the only stuff he skips over is the techno.
Techno. That's even worse than emo-pop.
"You listen to techno?"
Sam frowns a little. "What's wrong with techno? It's still music."
Dean shakes his head, and mutters 'at least it's not emo-pop', before speaking his mind. "Where'd you get that Cold Chisel stuff? It's good."
"Internet."
Sam follows up with some terminology that Dean hasn't heard - stuff about 'torrents' and 'Mininova', 'peers' and 'seeds' and 'uTorrent' - but it doesn't take long for him to pick it all up. You download a torrent from a website - making sure that it has a heap of seeds and peers so it downloads fast - then you add it on uTorrent and you wait.
Dean's happy with this, because Sam's got all of the Cold Chisel, and the Rob Zombie, and the Deep Purple. But the music manages to get him again. More than once.
Blacken the sun!
What have I done?
I feel so bad I feel so numb yeah!
Blacken the sun!
What have I done?
I feel so good I feel so numb yeah!
Where do I run?
What have I done?
I feel so bad I feel so numb yeah!
Where do I run?
What have I done?
I feel so good I feel so numb yeah!
Feel So Numb automatically loses its place on the iPod.
Cold Chisel manages to lose a song too, when he realizes that he's crying in the middle of When the War is Over.
You and I we used each other's shoulder
Still so young but somehow so much older
How can I go home and not get
Blown away
You and I had our sights set
On something
Hope this doesn't mean our days are numbered
I got plans for more than a wanted man
All around this chaos and madness
Can't help feeling nothing more than sadness
Only choice to face it the best I can
Flame Trees is going to go as well. Dean's down to about a hundred songs now.
Oh the flame trees will blind the weary driver
And there's nothing else could set fire to this town
There's no change, there's no pace
Everything within its place
Just makes it harder to believe that she won't be around
But who needs that sentimental bullshit, anyway
Takes more than just a memory to make me cry
I'm happy just to sit here round a table with old friends
And see which one of us can tell the biggest lies
He forgets about the 'stop' button, and keeps on listening to the song, until it's over.
Do you remember, nothing stopped us on the field
In our day
Oh the flame trees will blind the weary driver
And there's nothing else could set fire to this town
There's no change, there's no pace
Everything within its place
Just makes it harder to believe that she won't be around
Oh the flame trees will blind the weary driver
And there's nothing else could set fire to this town
There's no change, there's no pace
Everything within its place
Just makes it harder to believe that she won't be around
Sam can recognize the tune, even though Dean's got the volume on the headphones turned down. He smiles grimly. That song is a different memory for him; one of a girl named Jessica and a town called Palo Alto, where everything he'd tried to turn his back on had forced him to accept it again.
But you could never be normal again, not now.
He bites his lip, and goes back to reading. Maybe the next book. Or the next one. Or the tenth one, the thousandth one...