bloodwrites

Title: Ash to Ashes
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 840 words
Content notes: post canon, mourning, hunting, return from the dead
Summary: Dean Jr takes Sam and Dean (and Baby) on their final journey.

It's not the first time Dean's driven the Impala. It's weird, though, because no one drives these things anymore. The internal combustion engine went the way of horse and cart, save only for enthusiasts, and Dean isn't that, but once he's on the road, he gets it.

The rumble of the engine. The power in his hands, under his control. The sound she makes as she accelerates, and Dean is transported back to a time before he was born.

Dad used to take the car out once or twice a year. On Uncle Dean's birthday, or on the anniversary of his death, and when Dean was a kid he'd sit in the passenger seat and listen to Dad's stories. About his brother, about the car, about hunting.

It wasn't until Dean was old enough to drive the Impala himself that Dad talked about that final hunt. About the night Uncle Dean died.

Dean had never seen his father cry before that day, when he looked at Dean in the drivers seat for the first time as they sped down a long, lonely road.

Dean knew that his father wasn't seeing him. He was seeing Uncle Dean.

After Dad passed, Dean waited. The urns sat side by side on the mantel, surrounded by family photos, for months.

When the next anniversary rolled around, Dean pulled the tarp off the Impala, and he secured the urns side by side in the passenger seat for their last journey.

For their last hunt.

There's a haunting between here and his destination. Dean could work it with his eyes closed, but he's not taking risks on this one.

He hasn't packed any of his own tools or weapons. The trunk of the Impala is still as it was when his uncle died—Dad kept it, like a shrine to his lost brother.

Dean's going to use those tools. Those weapons. It's his tribute, both to his father, and to his namesake.

Dean squats in the haunted house. Lays a salt circle around his bedroll from the jar he finds in the trunk and holds the Impala's tire iron in his hand as he drifts off to sleep there, feeling close to the two men who shaped him, the one who raised him, and the one he never met but was connected to by blood and name and by being loved by the same man.

Dean wakes in the deep dark of night. There's a figure standing by the window, silhouetted by the moonlight.

"Hey, kiddo," says the figure.

Dean grips the tire iron and slowly sits up.

The figure laughs. "I'm not a ghost," it says, in a voice that sounds entirely corporeal, gravely and rich.

Dean's heard that voice before. Dad had videos, and he had phone messages he kept for years, until the phones and the networks were obsolete.

"Dean?" he asks, awed and in shock. Almost says 'but you're dead', even though he knows death doesn't mean the end in their world. Still, if he's not a ghost— "If you're back, where's my dad?"

"Sammy's fine," Uncle Dean says, and he sits on the floor, back against the wall near Dean's bedroll, careful not to disturb the salt lines. "And I'm not back. This is just a visit."

The moonlight falls on his face, and it's a face Dean is as familiar with as his own, but it's never been entirely real before, never something Dean could reach out and touch.

So he does. He puts his hand on his uncle's shoulder, and he's solid. Corporeal.

"Fuck," Dean says. "You're real."

Uncle Dean lifts an eyebrow. "You kiss your mother with that mouth?"

Dean laughs out loud, an expression of pure joy, because this is his dream, the best thing that has ever happened to him. His uncle is as Dad described, bright and beautiful and with an essence of sunshine about him that casts light on everything around him.

"So, your ghost," Uncle Dean says. "He's buried out back. Want a hand?"

He doesn't need it, but this is all Dean's ever wanted. "Hunt? With you?" He can barely contain his excitement. "Hell, yes."

Dean hunted a hundred times with Dad. He's heard all the stories, and Dean always wished his uncle could be there with them.

They stand at the edge of the grave, warming their hands over salted, burning bones. "I wish Dad was here," Dean says.

"It's too soon for Sam," Uncle Dean says. "It'd be too hard to see you. It was hard for him to leave, you know?"

Dean nods. "He hung on too long."

"He's good now," Uncle Dean says. "He's at peace."

"And he's got you."

"Yep." There's truth in Uncle Dean's voice, and Dean believes him, unconditionally. "He does."

Uncle Dean is gone in the morning.

Dean packs up the car and he heads for Lebanon, Kansas. He found the key in his father's things after he died.

This is Sam and Dean's—and Baby's—final journey. To the home they shared together. To the bunker.