Nothing Left To Fear

23

Dean's not up to the long drive, the brace only just removed but he's still on crutches, when Sarah calls. He does as he always does when she calls, he drops everything. Christian calls her Dean's Virgin Queen and Dean just rolls his eyes all the way through the drive in Christian's RV.

They take the RV rather than the car so Dean can stretch his leg out on the couch.

Castiel has found an old National Geographic and lies upon the floor holding the magazine up, Sarah doesn't care for Cas but he won't let Dean go anywhere without him. Christian is singing along with some country rock Dean can't bear, but he takes the opportunity, comfortably mouthing the words in the novel in his hands, one he did not expect to like, one Sarah sent him and he immediately loved. It had been one of Sam's favourites.

Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" is the last thing he expected a book to be.

It's not the book he thought it would be, and the copy he has still has Sam's name scrawled in it. He left some things with Sarah, the book was just one of them, lent to her because he thought she'd like it. She hadn't, when he drove all the way to New York State to tell her the words he couldn't enunciate- when she had screamed and fell to her knees- then her father had given him a box, the book was on top.

Most everything he learned of Sam he learned from that book.

Now he reads the words over and over, comfortably familiar and equally strange, the tale of a man going into the jungle and coming out changed. Sarah doesn't call often, sometimes she does it just to hear Dean speak, to talk to someone who understands, she had two years of correspondence and late night unending phone calls before it ended so abruptly.

She accepts Christian's flirting with a harmless grace but she sees Sam in him, the set of his head and the way he holds himself. He shares a hunter's usual poise.

She stands on the stoop when they pull up, a black shawl around her shoulders, she's cropped her hair tight about her head, and she is wrapped tight against the late spring chill. "Dean," she says when he climbs out of the RV, Castiel helping him and Christian offering him his crutches. "Thank you so much for coming."

There is a print on the vestibule wall, a woman in a sheer dress, flowers about her head and a sword in her hand, "the lady of the lake," Sarah had said and Dean had scoffed and said she didn't look like that.

Sarah might have been Sam's wife- she understood about hunting, she was patient and smart and witty and let him away with nothing. Dean had liked her, which surprised everyone, Dean included, and now he sat on her patterned couch, rubbing the stiffness from his thigh as she brought out a French Press of coffee and several jam tarts on an old chipped plate.

"I," she starts, she fusses with her cup, turning it over and over, "I sent the things to Bobby with the usual cheque, they were probably nothing, but," she's avoiding the topic. "I found his journal, I was to type it up" she blurts it out, "I put it away, I wasn't ready so I put it away, I," she turns the cup again, the coffee black and inky. "I thought you'd want it."

Castiel pops one of the tarts into his mouth whole and Sarah watches with a sort of sick fascination. Dean knows it's like a snake swallowing an egg. He doesn't even have to turn his head to look at the angel, who is now spooning sugar into his coffee, six spoons, seven, eight. He might even drink it when it's turned to syrup.

Sam is the only thing that Dean and Sarah have in common and their loss of him. "I'm usually fine," she says bluntly, putting down the cup finally, looking at Christian, "and then I'm going through provenances and I find a letter I missed or a postcard and I fall apart again. I thought it would end, but it doesn't, it just lies dormant, waiting." Dean nods, he understands that. "It wouldn't have lasted. I know that, we were," she stops, pressing her eyes shut and holding them, licking her lips over and over, "it didn't end, Dean, and that's why it sneaks up on me, and I don't know what to do. I don't know, Dean, and I hate that. I hate it! I hate it! I hate it!"

Christian doesn't know what they're talking about, he doesn't know about the bond that ties them together. Castiel knows because he always knows, he is part of Dean, almost an extension of him through the magic that Limits him, but Christian never needed to know- Christian's family, but Sam was Dean's world.

It's funny how small Sarah looks, sharp cheekbones made harsher by the strict short hair, curled around her coffee cup, but when he looks at her all he can see is the way that she made Sam laugh.

Christian thinks that perhaps Dean broke her heart, that they had some huge relationship that went south, he doesn't need to know anything else. She is Dean's Virgin Queen, and that's all she can ever be, but sometimes when he looks at her Dean sees Sam lying on her bed, sat up against the headboard in that way that used to drive Dean nuts, and read to her from some book Dean was never able to share with him.

Sarah might change one day, she might be able to understand the grief of a life cut short- too short- she might wake one day without the lost promise of it flaying her alive. She might marry and have children, but in Dean's mind she's always the girl who punched Sam on the arm and called him a liar and was ready with the shotguns just after they met.

She's the girl who Sam spent hours talking to on his cell in the car, with Dean pretending not to listen. She's the girl he collected postcards for, sending them from everywhere that they'd been. She's the girl he trusted with his favourite book, she's what could have been, the almost was after Jess, but Jess was dead before Dean got to know her. Sarah is the sister he might have had if not for Cold Oak.