The Last Goodbye

8

Dean crept into the spare room as silently as possible. He never came in here and wasn't sure if the door squeaked like so many of the others in the bunker. He looked around the sparse room and immediately spotted the canvas pack that hung on a chair in the far right corner. He walked over to it, unlatched the hook on the front and folded it open.

Initially it just looked like a massive wad of plaid fabric, but as he pulled it out he realized it was several separate pieces. He pulled half a dozen flannel shirts out of the bag. He unfolded a mostly red one and held it up. It was probably the same size as the one Elle was wearing. It was way too big for her, and far from new. Two buttons were missing and the breast pocket hung open and torn. He grabbed the green and black plaid from the pile and examined it. There was an obvious dark stained slash on the right arm of this one. Whoever had worn it had been injured. An ember burned in the back of Dean's mind. A glint of a memory. Wait...He browsed through the remaining shirts. He grabbed the gray and maroon one from the bottom of the pile. What the fuck? He looked down hesitantly at the shirt he was currently wearing, to the one in his hands. The shirt from the strange angel's back pack was identical, every thread, to the shirt on Dean's back. It was a little more worn, but this was his shirt...

He frantically tossed the shirts aside and reached further in the bag. There was a gun in a holster next to a box of bullets. He pulled them out and sat them carefully on the night stand. Beneath the gun, a large manila envelope, fairly full. He pried it open and looked inside. It was stuffed with random scraps of paper and a stack of pictures. He pulled out the pictures for a quick look. He knew he didn't have much time before Sam lost her attention.

"What?" he breathed. Most of the photos, were his. Some of them he had in the drawer of his nightstand across the hall. He remembered taking some of them. Dean was in almost every single shot. Mostly they were of him and Sam. A couple were from the old days...Bobby, Ellen, Jo. Then images he hadn't seen. Elle and Dean. Sitting very close to each other. Smiling at each other. One of Dean asleep on the couch in the bunker, Elle laying in his lap and staring up at him with a small crooked smile on her face. The last picture, was another one he recognized. On the bottom of the stack was a Polaroid of Castiel. Dean remembered taking this one just a few weeks ago. He found the old camera in a box in one of John Winchester's Lost Storage Units. He brought it back to the bunker and wanted to test whether it worked. He had walked into the library to Cas pacing and reading and mumbling to himself. He remember laughing to himself at the way Cas' nose scrunched in confusion as he focused on the page he was reading. He snapped the picture of the angel. For such an old camera, it captured his expression surprisingly well. Dean stared at the image absentmindedly.

He forced the pictures back into the envelope and tossed it aside. He pulled out several small items- holy water, a small silver blade, a box of rock salt- and lobbed them onto the bed. It was at the very bottom of the bag. His answer.

He couldn't touch the thing. He towered over the chair and studying the article in the bottom of the bag. His mind swirled white hot. He squeezed his eyes tight and tried to put the pieces together in some other way. Tried to force himself to another, any other conclusion. He swayed, eyes shut, clenched fists at his sides. What is this? What's happening? But Dean knew it was true. He felt it from the moment he met her.

The air in the room shifted and a there was a pulse of feathers behind him. Her tiny hand grasped Dean's wrist and jerked him hard enough to make him turn to her. He slowly opened his eyes to see hers reading the room. Examining the remains of her bag scattered around them. He searched her face, unable to speak, his mouth dry and slightly agape.