Song Remains the Same

Chapter 2: The Walking Dead

"It's not the grave dates on the tomb.
It's the short and sweet dash between the two."
- Pianos Become the Teeth

Four and a Half Months Later
Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Canned baked beans. Again. Alex shoveled room temperature globs of them into her mouth and then guzzled some tap water, getting breakfast over with as fast as possible. Food didn't really taste like anything anymore and she didn't want to eat it, no matter what it was. She made herself do it—because if she didn't, he would pester her about it. Across from the kitchen table where she sat, Bobby Singer pored over books in his study, a bottle of Jack close by. It was nine in the morning. Alex eyed the whiskey longingly. Maybe later. The daily hangovers were getting old and she was trying—trying—to drink less. So she started on her third cup of coffee instead.

The weariness went down to her bones. When she did manage to fall asleep after lying awake grieving and drinking for endless hours, there were the usual assortment of nightmares that sent her screaming awake. She never felt rested anymore, ever. All-consuming sorrow, confusion, denial, and anger stalked her every moment like shadows, rendering her into a walking ghost of who she'd been before. Every day she wept. Sometimes tears of anger and bitterness. Other times, tears of a defeated, broken, empty heart. There were periods of numbness too. Like right now.

Alex took a sip of her coffee, tasting very little. Her thoughts turned increasingly morbid. She didn't know how to go on living with this all-consuming loss. Nothing could ever fix the damage done and the void remaining. Nothing. Thinking about it—thinking about him—Alex felt the familiar lump rising in her throat. She pushed it down, but it took enormous strength.

Sitting there at the familiar old kitchen table, she couldn't help but remember so many things that had happened throughout her life in this home. Things that now hurt.

...Dean, age twelve or so, parading around in one of Bobby's puffy vests while calling everyone 'idjits' then dissolving into raucous laughter as the old hunter folded his arms and almost scowled hard enough to mask the twitching smile behind his beard.

...Alex sneaking to read some of their uncle's top shelf, forbidden-for-kids books secretly in the dead of the night and Dean jumping out and scaring her so much she'd farted. He'd laughed so hard he'd cried.

...Trying her first-ever taste of whiskey at twelve—and finding it repulsive. Dean had laughed and called her a pansy when her face puckered and she spat with gusto, but the way he'd teased her like that was loving.

...Learning car engines with him in the junkyard, target practice contests with tin cans on the fence, makeshift campouts in the yard at Sam's request, movie marathons until all three of them draped over the couch snoring and drooling.

Alex could easily remember sitting at this very kitchen table just last year as Sam went on and on about the 'very clear, distinct, fundamental differences' between Star Trek and Star Wars. Dean had mimicked Sam with the most hilarious faces, then argued absurd points, trolling his brother just to get a rise. When Sam had realized, he'd gotten adorably angry.

Things had been so simple back then. Alex had never realized how much so. The kind of moments she had taken for granted were now gone forever and the house felt unbearably empty. She had thought she understood how much she loved Dean when he was alive. Now that he was gone... it felt like she hadn't even begun to grasp his importance until now. When it felt too late.

Every day, all day, Alex was left incomplete and halfway gone, forever asking: What am I supposed to do without my best friend?

The thoughts were becoming too much, and so Alex got up quickly, imagining that she could physically walk away from her suffering. In her hand, she gripped her now empty mug like a vice. She went into the study and the old hardwood floor creaked under her steps. "Anything?"