The ledgend that is Bobby Singer speaks for himself :)
I honestly don't know where this idea came from. But the episode; 'Dead Men Don't Wear Pallid' moved me to tears :') broke my heart for the grizzly old hunter, so i had to give him his moment in the limelight. Hopefully i've remained true to his character.
Set pre-season, up until around Season 1.
I still don't own anything.
5. Belt
She had once said it made him look dapper, but that might have just been an incentive to keep it; the belt he could design no use for.
It cost five dollars in a closing-down sale on the main-street, he had since spent more than that on salt in a single purchase. But yet Bobby Singer, minimalist, practical to a fault, had wrestled with the decision to purchase it something fierce, because of what it symbolised: his commitment to her. The renouncement of his introverted nature.
It was not flamboyant, was not even fancy. A simple brown leather, 32 inches, with an intricate design at the buckle; brass, and even then so delicately tarnished. Sturdy, unobtrusive and reserved; she knew him to well.
But what it represented was something beyond its physical identity and primal use. It represented social gatherings, the extension of formal invitations, of communal meals which by their very customs necessitated reciprocation. All of those things which he had shunned in her absence; preferring the pleasure of his own company and that of a yard full of auto-wrecks – less ear ache.
She was the beauty who tamed the beast, the summertime which civilized the recluse. He had never been engineered for the purposes of decorum, nor to stand on ceremony; churning out false graces - but he would have done it all for her. Just to see that beautiful, angelic smile, the humble blush which embellished the tincture of her cheeks, temporarily concealing the golden freckles he loved so much. To be the heart of her elation, the centre of her universe, even as she was his.
Love had never altered an individual so profoundly as this one man, who never sought it, but always won it.
So, knowing its implications, he had taken it willingly, casting asunder two decades worth of unsavoury tendencies. While he had too extensively dabbled in the interests of solitude to crave interaction, he knew the injustice of impaling her with the same restraints. She deserved better. So warily, he had proceeded into a confusion of social faux pars and undervalued integrity.
The accessory accumulated three, maybe four social débuts, and in such a brief spectrum of time became almost abhorrent to him, characterised by every aspect he despised of its affiliations.
And then … she was taken from him. His beautiful Karen, his summertime in the otherwise winter of life. Taken in the cruellest and most unholy fashion. Possessed. Liberation demanded the cost of her life. The hands which otherwise would have caressed her, soaked in blood. The guilt had almost killed him. Sometimes he wished it had.
Proceeding her death, that unassuming belt, which preserved nothing beyond a fleeting impression of her delicate soul, was worn religiously by its owner. It was uncomfortable, restrictive and chafing; not unlike grief itself.
Its unfavourable allegiance transitioned into something pure, and it became as a memento mori. Equally a symbol of her life as a echo of her death, ensuring the conviction of her once remarkable, now usurped existence. Realities anchor in a profession that was too often nightmarishly imaginative.
He wore it in testament to her, in effort to remain close to her, forsaking even the finality of that great and ultimate divide. Its hold reminiscent of the arms that would never again embrace. Each time he touched it, he felt her. Grief did strange things to a person.
And of her, it reminded him; little, unrelated things:
Her fondness for strawberry tarts. How she used to sing while she cooked; always the same song, over and over, sometimes she even hummed it for variance – in all those years he had never thought to ask her what it was called, and now he would never have the opportunity … he would never have tired of her singing, that much he knew, he could have listened to the sound forever.
How she always seemed to exude a floral scent, even in the absence of perfume, as if the delicate Lily and Freesia were natures only suitor to her virtue. The way she used to cry when she laughed. Shiver fretfully at the imposition of a storm. The way she used to say his name …
It was the little things which he missed most. Those quaint traits which defined her.
What was mortality if not an omnipresent echo of loss?
As time decayed, so did the potency of his grief, and the elasticity of the cured fibres, which began to betray their age. The wizened and ever practical hunter thereafter exercised reserve in place of compulsion. His devotion remained paramount, but he had long since realized that he need not cling religiously to trinkets in order to preserve her memory. That was something which would never fade, irrespective of initial infirmity.
He wore it then, only in the field, a self-certified charm to the otherwise sceptic.
In trying to define the world, people often infuse and imbue into inanimate relics, a significance of meaning, or else lavish upon them the bestowal of properties which they were never crafted to possess: luck, ill-fortune, fate. In ignorance we call it superstition, when all it really is, is people searching for security, strength and hope to face adversity, and in finding none, manufacturing their own.
By that time, his life had derived a new definitive purpose in the form of one John Winchester and his two young sons. A man who, like himself, had lost almost everything to the equated blessing and curse of ignorance. Of normality.
John Winchester bore the weight of the world upon his shoulders, and then some.
That which had been bought in begrudge and subsequently graduated in value far exceeding simple functionality, later found use in the field.
They had fashioned it as a tourniquet in Sioux Falls, when Sam had fallen prey to the viscous attack of a Black Dog. It had been the kid's fifth hunt; dark, wet and dismal, a real gritty affair, moderately dangerous even, if not for the watch of two seasoned hunters and the eternal presence of a certain overprotective older brother, or so they thought. But Sam had outdone himself thus far, which corresponded the only reason why John had permitted him along for the ride, and even then, the boys role was strictly vigilance.
Dean had gotten to handle the gun, and even then, his hands had still appeared too young to wield it in Bobby's opinion. He reserved judgement upon John's decision to raise his boys as hunters.
None of them had even seen it coming, only heard the agony. Dean was closest, persistently hovering around his brothers locality, as if caught in Sam's own gravitational pull. Instantaneously, he converged upon his brother. Shots were fired. All of them found their mark.
Sam had been chalk white and shivering when they reached him; chest heaving with the labour of breathing through pain. He responded to Dean's comfort alone, and even then, only barely. His right leg angled and twisted, leaking a steady stream of blood into the already saturated earth. The sight was perverse – innocence afflicted.
Without thinking, Bobby had torn off the belt and lashed it tightly around Sam's thigh, staunching the bleeding just long enough to rush the kid to the nearest emergency room.
The object never alters, just the demands of use we place upon it, or the significant affiliations we wrought from it. That which had been bought in a era of bliss, was subsequently abhorred, became a symbol of grief and memory, and found its allegiance in luck, now possessed violent connotations also, and in all likelihood, had probably saved Sam's life to boot. A vibrant history, its subject incapable of animation.
But despite such notoriety, its baser uses were not wholly discounted.
When John bought Dean his first suit; second hand, a size too big and about three decades out of style, in lieu of their maiden joint enterprise fraud and false representation, Bobby had punched a few extra holes into the worn and fraying material, in an attempt to prevent the boys trousers from heading south in the middle of an interview. Though he would have paid a pretty penny to watch John try to defend their credulity in that particular instance.
For the most part, Dean was indignant. Even the lure of his first official fake I.D could not tempt him into suitable good humour, nor Sam's reserve – a kindness that would not have been extended were the situation reversed – reinstate his usual jocular temperament. Bobby didn't blame him; the suit truly was awful. He had resolved to extend an offer to unceremoniously burn it as soon as the job was completed.
Dean had returned the belt three days later, preserving ignorance as to its sentiment. By that time, it was thread-bare, ragged and more than a little worse for wear. Not much to look at: a testament to the old hunter himself. But with each subsequent degenerative year, it only surplussed in value, engorged with a life times memories. In a state of terminal disrepair, it was worth a million times more to the wizened hunter than he had ever paid for it.
It survived thirteen years in total. Until, one day, returning home, he found its unmistakable remains torn and strewn mercilessly through the length of the house, and an extremely unhappy puppy, who had so evidently and recently learned the incompatibility of leather and the canine digestive system. Rumsfeld always did have a knack for trouble.
The burnished buckle was the only portion which had survived the Rottweiler's curiosity.
And so, the brutally practical hunter was once more won over by sentiment. He kept the buckle. Locked it away in a secret compartment, concealed in the mantel.
As a possession it was rendered useless, but to a lonely man whose golden years were spent, it was the world.
The legacy often far outlasts the object.
Thank you very much for reading.
- One Wish Magic.