Sam took a deep breath before he pulled the tarp off of the Impala and slid into the front seat.
He took hold of the steering wheel, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw the shadow of his brother sitting next to him, laughing happily.

He leaned his head back, letting his mind travel as it pleased down memory lane, casting up pictures and odds and ends of old memories. Memories he usually kept under lid, but sometimes, he needed to release them, so he'd come out here, where he felt the closest to his brother.

He smiled, remembering how the Legos would still rattle in the heating vents, if he turned the car on, but he didn't, not today.
He remembered a drive he'd taken with his son, Dean, when the kid was still a toddler, and how frustrated the boy had been because he couldn't get the army man out of the ashtray. Just like Dean, his brother, had been frustrated when Sam had first crammed it in there.

He remembered being able to go anywhere and do anything. He remembered driving 1,000 miles for an Ozzy show, two days for a Jayhawks game. And he remembered when it was a clear night and they'd park in the middle of nowhere, sit on the hood, and watch the stars... for hours... without saying a word. Those where good days.

There had been bad times too and he remembered those, but he had trained himself not to dwell too long on them.

One of the bad days slipped into his mind.
He heard himself say
"My entire life, you've protected me- from Dad, from Lucifer, from everything. I didn't always like it, you know, but... it's the one thing in the whole world that I could always count on. It's the only thing I've ever known that was true."

And he pulled away from that memory to find that it had led him into another one - back as a teen, 14 or 15 or so – he'd forgotten the where and why of it, but Dad had been royally Pissed.
He vaguely remembered a hunt gone wrong – had he used the wrong kind of bullets maybe…
Anyway, when Dad reached that stage of anger, it was like watching a storm coming and knowing you couldn't get out of the way in time.
He remembered trying to argue with Dad and how Dean had grabbed John's arm, saying "Come on, Dad please listen…"
John had turned towards Dean and his hand had ripped through the air.
Dean had seen the slap coming but hadn't moved. He'd just scrunched his face up a little bit, closing his eyes. The slap took him full across the cheek slamming his head to the side. He moved with the blow twisting his shoulders to soften the impact. A red handprint immediately bloomed vividly, making Sam's blood boil in anger at the sight.
He'd pushed in between them shouting: "Stop this bullshit. It's not fair. You can't just smack us down and expect us to obey when you won't even tell us what is going on. All that "on a need-to-know basis" is just bullsh-."
John had swung his arm again.
Sam had ducked neatly under the blow, almost making his dad lose his balance when his intended target wasn't where it was supposed to be. Sam had come back up, cocky challenge glinting in his teenage eyes, saying without words "Ha, old man, I'm faster than you."
What Sam hadn't seen was John's hand coming back the other way, the back of the hand hitting him across his other cheek staggering him on his feet, twisting with the blow, almost stumbling into Dean, who'd pushed his little brother behind him and shouted "Stop it Dad, don't hit Sammy, it was my fault!"
From the safety behind Dean's back, Sam saw Dad's eyes narrow and the vein in his temple begin to pulse.
Dean didn't seem much care that he had just literally put his ass on the line. If it would keep Sam safe, he'd gladly wear the punishment, and when Dad pushed him onto the bed he went willingly – sending his little brother a warning look – Sam shuddered as he remembered how he had fled to the bathroom, the thin door not enough to keep him from hearing his brothers grunts and yips or the sound of leather dancing over flesh.
He'd wanted so badly to interfere, but he knew from experience that it wouldn't save Dean, but rather make it all worse, so he'd crammed his fist into his mouth and cried silently.
Just yet another time when he'd let his brother down.
His mind skittered quickly through a memory of himself in a church, confessing his sins, most of them had been about letting his brother down, just before he and Dean had broken the world. Again.

He skipped away from that and forward in time to when they'd met Dad again. That whole Chinese pearl-curse debacle. Wow, that had been odd. But it had brought some peace too, in a weird round-about way. He'd finally realized that he'd forgiven Dad a long time ago, anyway.

Sam pulled out of that memory and found another, older one.
They were in a forest.
He recalled sort of enjoying the pine-scent and fresh air, but at the same time being aware that Dean wasn't happy about it.
Dean had called the forest a creepy place.
Roads and towns he understood. Roads, asphalt, pavement, those were his home soil. And people. He could deal with people, mostly. Monsters, tsk. Monsters were easy. You did the research (or watched Sammy do it), then you got the gear, and you fought the monster, hopefully killing it before it killed you.
It was easy. Black and white. Kill or get killed. But Forests. They were just creepy.
As Dean had put it: "All those trees standing around watching you. Judging you. You can't run from them because you'd just run into more of the buggers. You can't kill them. Well, you could. It just wouldn't really do any good and it'd take a lot more effort than to kill most monsters. And there's just so many of them."

Sam smiled. They had found the rugaru and dispatched it easily enough. And Dean had gotten a little revenge on the forest by burning some of its branches as they toasted sausages for dinner, before they crashed in the impala for the night, curled up uncomfortably, but home-like in the leather seats.

He rubbed a hand over the seat next to him. Dean and the Impala, those two were completely entwined. Dean's baby. He remembered how Dean had rebuilt the car from a ruin, and had kept it, her, in tip top shape.
He tried to do the same.
Not that he was doing much driving in her these days, but as a homage to his brother, he kept her in top condition.
His mind went to the memory of Dean washing the car back in the bunker, wearing cutoff jeans and doing a lot of splashing. There'd been soapy water everywhere.

He remembered walking into the bunker that first time. He remembered Dean's joy in having a room of his room, and in the water pressure. And the kitchen.

He remembered pulling Dean away from Metatron in the dungeon. Pulling him out of the room and pushing him against the bookcases, holding him there with one hand, simultaneously protecting the others from Dean and Dean from the others.
He remembered how he'd held Dean by the shoulder and Dean's head hanging, then slowly turning towards him, his brother's face gradually coming into focus. Dean studying his brother, eyes slightly narrowed.
Sam hadn't moved, hadn't spoken, just waited. In the end Dean had looked away, shoulders relaxing as he accepted the leash. A volatile, violent, man, who carried the weight of the world, and was feeling it, finally let someone else take some of the burden. Sam had felt the weight of responsibility settle on his shoulders like a lead blanket.

He remembered movie nights, pizza, research, burgers, beers in the library and Dean's "Fortress of Dean-a-tude". And he remembered walking out of the bunker that final time.

Dean had been right there, in his heart and in his mind, when he met a dark-haired woman, who'd seen too much. He'd been too late to save her friends, but just in time to save her, the last survivor of an ill-fated hiking group, from a pack of werewolves. She had made it quite clear that she had no interest in him and that she distinctly disliked being rescued.
Which was fine.
You weren't hunting monsters to get gratitude or thanks, you just did it.
Some people thanked you and that was nice, but some people seemed to take it as a personal affront that you had had to rescue them from the fugly, as Dean would put it, and some acted as if was your fault that they now had to live with the knowledge that the world was a lot scarier than they had known so far.
That was OK too.
You still went on and did the job, then you got out of town and went to do the job elsewhere.
The problem was that he'd really liked this girl. Her fire and pride, not to mention the way she had filled out that Scooby Do t-shirt.
He'd turned his back and hurried away, speeding out of town, out on the lonely country lanes, just him, the Impala, Miracle, and the shadow of his brother.

But as it turned out, the problem wasn't over.
Donna had pulled him back in, just as he was leaving town. They needed to find the last surviving wolf of the pack, and the dark-haired woman was not keen to talk to anyone about her experience.
She was shouting at Donna when he walked into the motel-room. She threw a vase at Sam's head, then slammed into the bedroom and he heard something hit the door. Hard.
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, then moved towards the bedroom door.
Donna had grabbed his arm.

"What are you going to do? "
"Give her a target, I guess."

When he walked in, the dark-haired woman had screamed at him, then progressed to slapping his shoulders, chest, and face.

He didn't even try to defend himself, he just stood there, head bowed and took the blows, verbal as well as physical. When she fell against his chest, crying, he wrapped his arms around her and held her until she leaned back and looked up at him.

Her stomach twisted with guilt when she saw the blood on his cheek, where one of her rings had ripped his skin.

"I'm sorry," she wiped ineffectively at the blood and he finally moved his head away from her hand. "It's OK, I'm used to bleeding. It's sort of my job," he sent her a crooked smile.

"Talking about jobs, I do need to ask you a few questions, if you are ready?"

He'd stood there in the sort of rigid way that speaks of bone-deep exhaustion. She'd winced. Time never runs backwards when you need it to.

She softened as she realized that he had that haunted look in his eyes. That look, the one she had only ever seen in the eyes of veterans come back from the war and she put her hand on his arm.
He tensed slightly, was he going to get manhandled again? But no, her hand was gentle and felt like comfort which was unexpected.
"I'll help", she'd said. "I'm sorry."

And she had. Helped. With information, and in the end even with the hunt, although that had been almost more hindrance than help, inexperienced as she was. She had heart, brains, and shitload of courage. Sam smiled at the memory.

He'd fallen head over heels for that woman over the corpse of a werewolf, and he had shamelessly utilized every trick and twinkle he'd learned by watching his brother and combined those with his own brand of charming.

The end result had been… pleasant and had become more that just a pretty woman sliding into his bed.
He remembered the first night, they'd spent together. They hadn't done anything but sleep.
She'd offered to flip a coin for the bed.
He had given her a withering look.
"I know that I am not much of a knight, but chivalry is not that dead," he'd replied.

And much, much later, after sharing a bed several times in a much more energetic way, when they had tied the knot, all officially, she had cried a little bit from remembering how they'd met and how her knowledge of the world had changed irreparably. He'd held her as she cried and told her,
"It's OK. There is the two of us now."

He'd smiled when he said it.
Because it hurt and sometimes you have to smile so no one will see how much it hurt. Because he had been a part of two before and for a long time, and she would never know the other part of that. And it felt like he'd lost a part of himself.
And he knew that he was letting a bit more of Dean go, because he remembered what had happened when Dean had tried to balance a life with a woman and a kid with life as a hunter. It hadn't gone well. And Sam was not about to make the same choice. The day he put the wedding band on his finger, was the day he hung up his hunter's hat. For good. He'd still help other hunters out, from time to time – but only with knowledge, research, advice. He had a family, and he was going to be there for them and with them, for as long as he was able.
But she was a great woman. A loving, brave, kindhearted woman and they would be happy together but there would always be a Dean-shaped hole in his heart, a hole that nothing could fill. They had seen too much, done too much, made too many heavy choices.

Up against good, evil, angels, devils, destiny, and God himself, they had made their choices. They'd chosen family. And when Dean lost that final battle – against a damn rusty rebar of all things - Dean had put the weight, and the freedom, on Sam's shoulders with his dying wish that Sam would go out into the world and make his own beginning – and his own end. And Sam had chosen to do just that. He'd chosen family. A new family, but a happy one. A peaceful one.

"I did it, Dean" Sam whispered. "I'm doing it. Living. Carrying on. I wish you were here. I wish you could meet young Dean. He's a good kid. He'll be a good man. I'm telling him all about you, and maybe someday, I can tell you all about him. I miss you, brother, but life… it's good. Yeah. It's all I ever wanted, except for you not being here."

As always happened, whenever Sam sat here, in his brother's beloved car and let his mind wander aimlessly through memories, an old rock song started playing in his mind, as clear as if it came from the Impala's radio:

"Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry no more, no

Carry on, you will always remember
Carry on, nothing equals the splendor
Now your life's no longer empty
Surely heaven waits for you…"

Endings are hard. But then again... nothing ever really ends, does it?