Dean’s body felt heavy, his arms and legs so tired they ached. The beaten down old mattress seemed to engulf his form as he felt himself sink into it. God, he was so tired. This was the first he’d tried to sleep in the last three nights. Well, that’s if he didn’t count being unconscious. Dean rubbed his fingers gingerly over his left eye, wincing. He still had a headache from that cheap shot. Damn sissy sheriff.

Three nights of no sleep, that wasn’t the smartest way to go about a hunt. Especially when he was going solo. Dean frowned, glancing across at his brother, fast asleep in the next bed of their current motel room. Sam had been able to fall asleep pretty fast for once, evidence that his little brother had slept about as much as he had the last few days.

Dean took in a deep breath and sighed. That first night Dean had just driven straight through to Burkitsville, his anger at his little brother forcing him on. That first night, Sam had been walking the highway in the opposite direction.

The second night, Dean had waited until nightfall after he was run out of town by the sheriff. Then he had returned to the scarecrow’s field to wait for the young couple being made as a sacrifice to the raggedy old bastard. Who knew where Sam was the second night, and Dean tried not to think about it.

The third night, Dean was tied to a tree waiting to get skewered by that scarecrow’s scythe while racking his aching brain for a plan to get out of there. That third night Sam had hotwired a car and driven to Burkitsville to save his sorry ass.

Damn.

It was going to take some doing to live down his little brother coming to his rescue. That wasn’t the way it was supposed to work. Yet Sam had come back, because he hadn’t answered his stupid phone. Sam had come back even after all they had said to each other.

“You’re a selfish bastard. You know that?”

“That’s what you really think?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Well, this selfish bastard is going to California.”

Dean winced, turning on his side and borrowing his head further into his pillow in an effort to drown the echoing voice of his brother out. He didn’t want to remember the words they’d thrown at each other during that stupid fight. Sam had come back and that was all that should have mattered.

He knew that. He really did, but knowing it didn’t stop the words from coming right back, from playing over and over in his head. Sam had wanted him to leave. His little brother had his own mind and his own plan about how things should be in his life, and it evidently hadn’t needed Dean in it to satisfy him.

The sad fact was that Dean had known that ever since Sam left for college, yet… to hear the words out loud, right from his brother’s mouth, had felt like a kick to the gut. It was just… It had never been said out loud and straight to his face.

“I will leave your ass, you hear me?”

“That’s what I want you to do.”

Dean frowned. He had said those words as a hollow threat, to get Sam back in the car, but when Sam replied that he wanted him to leave… Well, it just threw him for a moment. He’d stood there, blinking in some sort of shock before snapping out of it and deciding to give Sam what he wanted. He drove away.

He had kept his eyes on the rearview mirror until he could no longer make out his brother in the foggy darkness. He’d hoped Sam would have changed his mind and flagged him to stop, but he hadn’t.

Lights suddenly flashed through the breaks in the curtains, bathing their motel room in a few seconds of rolling light before returning to the previous darkness. Dean rubbed a hand across his face, his eyes staring blankly across the room at the window. He could hear car doors opening and shutting, then people laughing. He listened until it faded away, ending with the sound of a motel door slamming shut.

Well, Dean thought, they sounded like they were having a dandy old time. He scowled and then adjusted his pillow, punching it a few times before settling back down. Dean hated it when others were happy when he was so miserable. It wasn’t fair, and it happened way too often.

Sam moved on the next bed, rolling onto his back and letting an arm sag off the edge of the mattress. Except for a deep sigh, Sam’s breathing didn’t change and he remained deeply asleep.

For a moment Dean frowned at his brother’s sleeping form, envious. Then he thought of the sleepless nights Sam had been having since Jessica and scowled. Sam deserved the sleep, and the fact that he was having a bit of trouble lately was nothing in comparison to what his brother had been going through since that night.

“Look, I know how you feel-“

“Do you? How old were you when mom died? Four? Jess died six months ago. How the hell would you know how I feel?”

Dean winced, catching his bottom lip in his teeth at the memory. He’d really thought he’d known what Sam was going through with Jess. After Mom…

Dean squinted, fighting the sudden sting he felt prickling his eyes. Damn it. Now that just pissed him off. Just the thought of his mom still caused his eyes to burn with tears, even after all the years since that night.

That night…

God… He had never told Sam- Hell, he’d never even told Dad, but he had seen his Mom burning on that ceiling. It was only for a few seconds, but it was enough to permanently fix the horrible image in his brain.

He’d never forget that night. For a while, right after the fire, Dean had thought he’d dreamt what he’d seen in Sam’s nursery. He’d thought it was just a nightmare and he’d wake up the next morning and his mom would be there. He’d believed it so much that every night he’d go to sleep and relive that night of fire, then he’d jerk awake and run to his parents’ bedroom, looking for her, but he never found her.

The morning he’d finally accepted that his mother was gone, was the first time since the fire that he’d cried. He hadn’t even cried at the funeral; at the time he hadn’t known what a funeral was or what it meant. He’d never been to one before. There was no body to bury so he couldn’t see his mom, no physical image to show him that she had died. She had just… disappeared that night. He hadn’t understood how or why. She was just suddenly gone.

His dad had tried to explain it to him, but he’d never experienced anything dying before, so he didn’t quite understand. That one morning something seemed to click in his head, though. That one morning when he woke from the nightmare and couldn’t find her yet again, he just… He just realized that dead meant gone forever. The realization hurt, it hurt so badly that he’d cried and cried and cried. He had just sat on the floor of his father’s bedroom with his face buried in his hands, sobbing.

When his dad woke from the sound of his crying, he didn’t say anything at first; he just sat down next to him and pulled Dean into his lap. This caused Dean to only cry harder, vaguely hearing his dad softly repeating the words “It’s okay.” Dean had known it wasn’t okay, though. Nothing would ever be okay again, because his mother was dead and he’d never see her again. How could that ever be okay?

Dean’s breathing hitched and his eyes burned, the streetlights peeking from the cracks in the curtains dancing in his watery gaze.

“Damn it,” Dean growled softly, swiping the wetness from his eyes in anger and frustration. He didn’t want to remember anything right now, especially that. He just wanted to sleep. What was it going to take to get his mind out of this damn memory lane funk? And God, why the hell was he remembering that? He had cried himself to sleep in his father’s lap that morning. It was the first and last time it had happened, and it wasn’t for months after that he broke his silence and started talking again. He just hadn’t known what to say anymore.

Dean pressed his lips together and closed his eyes, trying to blank his mind so that the exhaustion that weighed him down would finally take hold and grant him the darkness of sleep. He slowed his breathing and concentrated on the stillness of the room. Slowly, he finally managed to fall asleep.

---

Her scream woke him up with a gasp, his heart hammering in his chest. He sat up in bed and looked to his closed bedroom door, hearing heavy footsteps on the stairs and his father calling her name.

“Mom?” he whispered out, scared.

Eyes wide in fear, he scrambled from his bed and to the door. He reached out his small hands and gripped the doorknob, but stopped. He froze, heart pounding, and listened.

Nothing.

He leaned into the door, pressing his ear to the cool wood. He heard nothing, but the sound of his own breathing and the thumping of his heart. He felt as if the dark room was closing in on him as he waited and listened.

His father’s loud yell came so suddenly it shocked him. He gasped and jerked away from the door, losing his hold of the doorknob and falling back to land hard on his rump. He put his hands out to catch himself and stared up at his door, eyes bright and wide with fear.

“Daddy?” he gasped out, becoming terrified. What was happening? What was wrong? His dad sounded scared, sad… Where was Mom?

He heard his dad call out again and another noise. Sammy. Sammy was crying, wailing. He heard crackling and thunder. Something bad was happening, and he was all alone.

His tearing eyes caught something. There, at the bottom of the door, he could see a dancing orange light, moving like waves beneath the wood. The light was coming from outside his door, outside with his mom and his dad and his baby brother.

And he was inside, all by himself. Pressing his lips together to fight their trembling, he scrambled to the door, climbing to his feet and grasping the doorknob once more. With fear of the unknown twisting his face, he turned the knob and pulled the door open, stumbling out into the hallway.

The heat slammed into him, the bright orange light blinding him as he fell to his knees. He rubbed at his eyes; the light and heat making them sting and water. When he looked up again, he saw fire. He knew fire was bad… very, very bad. And it was coming from Sammy’s room.

Fear caused his heart to skip and he jumped to his feet, running to his little brother’s room. Suddenly, his father rushed out of the burning bedroom with Sammy in his arms.

“Daddy?!” he cried out, saying so much in that one word. Then he saw it. Over his father’s shoulder, pinned to the ceiling… His mom was burning. No, no, no, no, NO! Mom! His mind screamed for her.

Then the image was blocked as his dad thrust the baby into his young arms. “Take your brother outside as fast as you can!” he cried, “Don’t look back! Now, Dean! Go!”

Not knowing what else to do, he turned and ran, his brother held tightly in his arms. He burst outside and then stopped. He stared up at the fire, seeming so far away now, yet… all he could see as he watched the flames now was his mother burning. Then strong arms suddenly scooped him off his feet and the world seemed to explode.

---

Dean gasped, sitting up in bed. He rubbed a trembling hand across his face, wiping the sweat away. He could feel the tears burning at his eyes, but he forced them back.

Goddamn it! He mentally cursed, pressing the palms of his hands to his forehead, eyes shut tight.

Taking in a deep, shaky breath, Dean sighed. He raked hands through his hair and then flipped the blankets back, swinging his legs around until his feet touched the floor. He hunched over and held his head in his hands, massaging his temples to try and soothe the headache he could feel coming on. He clenched his teeth. Sometimes he didn’t want to remember his mom, not when that was the first memory to come back. It was the memory that never seemed to fade away, the only memory he wanted to fade away.

Fucking hell. He just didn’t want to deal with this shit. Not now… And damn it all, it friggin’ hurt like a bitch. It felt like someone was twisting a knife in his chest and he just wanted it to stop.

But then… at the same time, in a strange way, he found he didn’t want the feeling to go away. He lifted his head, his hands gripping the back of his neck. He looked at his brother, stared at him.

“How old were you when mom died? Four? Jess died six months ago. How the hell would you know how I feel?”

Maybe… Dean didn’t know how Sam felt right now. His loss was old and far away. He was a different person than what he’d been when his mother was alive, but… Damn it, he knew what he felt when his mom had died. It didn’t matter that it had happened years ago and he was a kid that didn’t understand. Losing someone you love was a pain that was timeless and that knew no age. The pain faded to the background as time passed, but there were still moments that it felt like she had died yesterday, like
tonight…

Dean both hated and treasured those moments. He hated the reminder of what he lost, hated the pain it made him feel… and he also treasured the feeling that reminded him of what he lost, because it caused him to remember her. These were the moments when little memories he’d forgotten about would make a return. He’d remember the way she tucked him in and told him she loved him, or when she let him help her make cookies. Just… little things he had forgotten. All the parts of her that had faded away along with that pain… her laugh, her smile, the way her arms felt when they had wrapped around him…

Dean winced and relaxed his hands, letting them fall from his neck to hang limply in his lap. In some way it was probably true. He really didn’t know what Sam was feeling right now, but he did know what his little brother would be feeling as time went on. He knew how Sam would feel when he could no longer remember the sound of Jessica’s voice or what she looked like when she laughed. He knew how Sam would feel when the sharp image of her would begin to blur in his memory, until the time he would need his few photographs of her to truly recall what she looked like. Photographs that would be the only reminders for Sam to remember what that ache in his heart was for; what that strange sense of feeling and memory was really for.

Dean would be there for his brother when he struggled with the loss of Jess, just as he was now. Only the loss Sam would be dealing with in the future would not be of the girl herself, but of the loss of her memory.

That loss Dean was all too familiar with, but no matter how the memory of his mother faded there was always the ache, the feeling that was just his mother. The feeling that would never leave his heart, the feeling that held pain and love and need…

That ache was and always would be his mother. It reminded him of what really mattered in his life, and that was Sam.

As long as Dean was around, nothing was going to get to his brother. Sam might leave him to go back to college and the life he left behind after Jess, but Dean could get through that. As long as Sam had the chance to make the choice…

He’d make damn sure his little brother kept on living. He wouldn’t let Sam become a memory.

He’d die before he’d let Sammy fade away.

The End.