A/N: Many thanks to my big brother (not that he will ever read this) for not only answering all my stupid questions, but for feeding me DELICIOUS pot roast and letting me hold my baby neice while he did so. Anything I got right regarding the rebuild is totally due to his helpful conversation and suggested resources. Any mistakes are, of course, mine alone. And if you notice said mistakes, PLEASE point them out! I will love you forever

Chapter 4: One Working Part

Wherever I may roam,
Where I lay my head is home.
Carved upon my stone:
My body lie
But still I roam, yeah, yeah...
-Metallica

It took Sam over a month to rebuild the Impala.

He wasn't even sure why he did it, except that it made him feel closer to his brother than he'd been since Dean flatlined in a Missouri hospital.

It bothered him for some reason that Dean died in Missouri. Maybe because it would have bothered Dean. Pussy state to die in. Kansas or Texas or Colorado would have been better.

Not dying would have been better.

Well. At least it wasn't Florida.

At first he didn't know what he was doing. Dean was - had been - the car nut, not him. He fumbled away at the twisted heap of steel regardless, because it was the only thing keeping the half-strangled hope from killing him.

And maybe. Just maybe. If Dean's spirit had a home to come back to...

It had been such a vivid dream.

Parts of the interior were salvageable. He wasn't sure the blood would come out, but he wasn't sure he wanted it to. There was power in that blood. Dean's blood. Dad's blood. Sam's. Something about the mix, the connection, felt right to Sam - in a twisted sort of way.

But that was his family. All their moments of happiness were candles in the dark; all their humor was gallows humor.

Dean frowns sharply at him, eyes darting between him and the road. "Our family's not cursed. We just...had our dark spots."

Sam can't help scoffing, incredulous and oddly comforted by his older brother's casual, child-like denial of reality. "Our dark spots are...pretty dark."

"You're...dark."

He was trying to unbolt the front passenger seat when it happened. Movements that had been hesitant became practiced. Assemblies that had been baffling became intimately familiar. He knew every piece of hardware, every panel, every bit of trim. And it all came out, easy as breaking down his Beretta.

There were no more pauses to decide what to do, no more futile attempts to remember things that had never interested him in the first place. He went from one thing to the next, never stopping to think, just doing because he would have time to think after, when it would somehow be bearable.

He stripped the car down to its frame, worked out what kinks he could. Chopped off half the damn thing and replaced it with a piece he'd scavenged from Bobby's yard because sometimes things were just too broken and twisted to be bent back into shape.

It was a Frankenstein car, cobbled together from the original shattered carcass, with pieces from other corpses welded on to replace what couldn't be fixed. And all the while he felt another set of hands guiding his own, could almost make out the words of the voice that whispered in the back of his mind, nudging him in all the right directions, filling in the gaps in his knowledge.

He worked like a man possessed, and maybe he was. He wasn't sure if the force driving him was of his own making or not, didn't care enough to stop and figure it out. He lost himself in the methodical operation of the engine hoist, the rotisserie, the acetylene torch. The sweat, the sparks, the grease, it was all he was. He gave himself up to the labor, collapsing on Bobby's couch only when he was too exhausted to go on, waking as soon as his body would let him.

He machined whatever he could, replaced what he couldn't. Painstakingly cleaned and refinished and primed and painted. Took every precaution while he did the body work, reinstalled the interior with the softest of touches. He tore apart no less than six junked Impalas and maxed out three credit cards.

Then the doing was done, and Dean's baby was sitting there, chrome gleaming in the winter sun like she'd never been totaled, fresh paint and solid welds hiding the damage underneath.

Everything sort of came crashing down on Sam in that moment, the weeks of purposely not thinking about the only thing he could think about, of holding his insides together, blood seeping through the walls he'd built in his mind.

He couldn't stand it.

He needed to move, so he popped the truck, opened the freshly restored compartment underneath. Realized he had nothing to prop it open with. Let it fall with a thump. Collected the guns and cans of salt and EMF meters from the house, dumped them inside.

"It's never gonna be over," Dean says, his eyes on his gun, avoiding Sam's gaze. "There's gonna be others. There's always gonna be somethin' to hunt."

Sam knew then that he'd never go back to school, never marry his girl (she's dead) and have that apple pie.

The idea of returning to that world was obscene, not just because he hadn't killed the demon, but because evil had taken something from him (too much) that couldn't be replaced, not by revenge, not by anything. No amount of tweaking would make him fit in the places he might have before. His life had to scrapped, abandoned, replaced with something else.

Suddenly a lot of the things Dean had said to him in the past year were starting to make horrible sense. A deep, aching sadness rose in him, and he knew somehow that the feeling wasn't his own - not entirely.

The silence of the automotive graveyard was interrupted by the squealing wail of an EMF. Sam lifted the trunk and sorted through the scattered shotguns and pistols, knives and ammunition. He pushed aside a few bottles of holy water, overturned a box of buckshot, a canister of salt. He picked the EMF out of the pile, took a step back, and stared at it as it screeched. Slowly, hesitantly, he let his eyes drift to the Impala.

The tension, the expectation, the bare, unutterable hope was so great that he nearly jumped when the radio turned itself on with a click and "Back in Black" started screaming from the speakers. Sam scoffed incredulously, looking from the car to the still-screaming EMF and back.

The Impala growled to life as he put his fingers on the hood, idling with all the perfect precision that attention and determination could drive into its battered parts. He could feel Dean at once, just as he'd felt him that first time in the hospital, as if he was just out of sight somewhere.

His smile was a Winchester smile, hiding the aching despair beneath, taking the smallest solace, the briefest moment and expanding it until it filled all the empty places left by what the darkness had stolen away. Things could never be the same, but they weren't over either.

Sam got behind the wheel.