Dean lived in particular moments.
Each call to the fire station was Mom and Sammy, each person he pulled out from a flaming house was Mom and Sammy, each plea, each cry.
It was as if Dean was trying to save them in a thousand ways they could never be saved.
At the very least, however, he had the chance to save people, and on a late winter night, when Stanford called about a fire, Dean set out to do just that.
Sleepy students shocked awake were gathered outside a burning dormitory by the time rosy lights and wailing sirens arrived at the university in a fanfare of commotion and practiced precision.
Dean's team scattered gracefully, robotically, as the fire truck came to a halt; Dean found himself grabbed not so ceremoniously as he hit the ground.
His assailant was tall—taller than Dean, and his hazel eyes were frantic as he stumbled over his words in his hurry to tell Dean that he's sure his girlfriend was still stuck in the building and please, Dean needed to get her out.
Minutes later, Dean was geared up, picking his way through a heaving and on the verge of collapsing dormitory, searching for anyone still caught in the fire but with one particular name in mind: Jessica Moore.
It had been the stranger's good fortune that Dean had been part of the rescue team anyways.
Dean had gotten out two students trapped in the stairwell before another plea for help reached him.
He navigated his way through most of a hallway before breaking through the door he'd heard cries spilling from.
Dean was met by a pair of flashing yellow eyes the smiled at him, chilling to the bone despite the hellish heat before vanishing, as the door splintered under the weight of his ax.
Dean would have paused and thought about this on any given day, however on any given day, there weren't mysterious eyes that slipped in and out of existence like the Cheshire Cat, or a girl pinned to a miraculously un-charred ceiling for that matter.
Dean couldn't begin to comprehend the physics of this situation—there was a girl on the ceiling like fucking Spiderman or some shit—but what he could understand was the danger at present.
"Jessica?" Dean called out.
She nodded, the tears stuck to her skin glinting in the light of the fire, and tried to reach for him.
It took a table that wasn't on fire to get close enough to Jessica; the second Dean's hand met hers, Dean was thrown back, quite literally, as if an explosion had gone off in the space between them.
Dean grunted as he hit the floor face first, but an intense heat brushing over the back of his neck had him flipping over to see Jessica in flames.
The smell of cooking flesh filled the air alongside the darker, bitter scent of smoke wafting about.
If Dean didn't know any better, he would have thought there was a barbeque somewhere close by.
But as it was, Dean did know better and the incomprehensible yet horrific fact that there was a person being burnt made nausea swim through his veins.
Dean didn't feel sick for very long before his friend Charlie from the search and assist team found him, and said something about everyone having to leave now.
"B-but Jessica-" he began.
"Crap, there's someone still here?" Charlie cut in. She began to search the room, and when Dean glanced up at where Jessica had been previously, there was nothing but fire.
"There's no one, Dean. You sure you saw somebody?"
Dean was saved from answering as another member from search and assist appeared, reporting that the building has been cleared.
Too numb to speak, Dean followed Charlie as she pulled him out of the room.
They had just made it out the doors before the dormitory blew up.
Dean woke up to the oh-so-familiar setting of a hospital.
He had been reckless enough (much to his dad's displeasure) after his mother's death to know the antiseptic smell of the hospital, the tense murmuring of doctors, the sound of his heart on a machine, and the silence from lack of visitors.
Dean used this silence to think about Jessica.
Between the time the dormitory's explosion had sent Dean flying and the first time he woke to find out that he had a broken ankle and a litter of bruises, Dean had wondered if his entire encounter with Jessica had been nothing more than a figment of his imagination, a product of lingering memories of Mom and Sammy as he arrived at Stanford, and the hospital drugs administered to him thereafter.
Nevertheless, the uneasiness that crept along his skin as he thought about what had supposedly happened to Jessica whispered to Dean that the probability that Jessica had been real was great, and it was on him that she wasn't alive anymore.
Another name to add to his list.
Mom, Sammy, and now, Jessica.
Dean felt that pit of guilt that had never quite left him after Mom and Sammy had died returning to him as a chasm that enveloped his entire being, trying to claw away at his conscience until it screamed.
The guilt, imaginary or not, hurt as much as his physical wounds.
The week Dean was let out of the hospital, he found his time constantly split between visiting Charlie, who was still in the hospital, and trying to make her laugh with flowers and cheesy Hallmark cards, and swinging by Stanford, again and again.
It was as if Dean was a ghost, haunting the place ever since the fire.
On a particular visit, Dean passed by a note, stapled to various places over the university, bearing the date of Jessica's funeral, which had passed a few days since.
For a while, he stared at the photo of Jessica, crowded by notes from those who knew her.
He took in blue eyes that radiated happiness, and a smile made of sunshine. It was difficult to imagine that she could be dead when she seemed so full of life.
Dean's eyes brushed over the address given on the note once, and with that, promptly left.
It was a cloudy day when Dean finally visited Jessica's grave.
Candles crowded the freshly planted tombstone and flowers fluttered in the wind.
Dean added his own bouquet of purple hyacinths to the collection, a silent plea for forgiveness that he knew could never be answered.
"You."
Dean started at the sound of a voice beside him. He hadn't heard anybody approach.
It was the stranger from the night of the fire.
A/N: Fear not. I, Ecra's unnamable friend, am not dead. Hence this chapter. Hooray.