Rectitude

I

CHAPTER 1,
"HYACINTHS."

❝We sat and made a list of all the things that we had down the backs of table tops, ticket stubs. And your diaries, I read them all one day.❞

— Bastille,
"Things We Lost in the Fire."

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        Dean didn't know how to talk to the teenager sitting next to him. He also didn't know how to stop looking at her; it was uncanny how much she looked like his brother.

        "What?" she grabbed an auxiliary cord from the center consul and hooked her phone up to the Jeep.

        Nothing about her appeared hostile, aside from the scar through her left eyebrow and the funny things her bracelets were clinking against beneath her hoodie sleeves. She didn't seem to posses his brother's constant kicked-puppy expression. It was more deadpan, as if she's trained herself to be calm and collected in uncomfortable situations and didn't know how to turn it off. Her voice contained more tenderness than her countenance.

        "You look like him."

        Briana smiled as she buckled her seatbelt. "Well, I should hope so." Her hands deftly turned the key in the ignition, and the white Jeep rumbled to life. She started playing a song Dean didn't recognize and, surprisingly, didn't loath.

        That had been the last of the conversation for the brunette had shifted into reverse and started home, turning up the radio each time a good song came on and forgetting to turn it back down when it ended. This hadn't been unexpected by this other-universe version of her uncle, because if this girl was anything like her father, which he could tell she was just by looking at her, she'd need a bit to warm up to them.

He surveyed the car. Her keys clinked as they swung back and forth, no keychain in sight; her gear shift held two colorful scrunchies; and the coin tray next to it held a tube of chapstick — Burt's Bees, which Dean recalled to be expensive — an orange pack of Trident; and one of those pink, round things of Hubba Bubba Bubble Tape. A necklace with a bullet shell hung from the rearview as well as a graduation tassel with a charm dictating a few years before attached to it.

        Unprompted, and without looking away from the road, Briana queried, "Is it weird that I'm still afraid to put my fingers together? Even though Amara removed the bomb from my chest?"

        "You had a bomb in your chest?" Dean looked over at her in surprise.

        Her eyes met his and revealed the doleful expression he knew so well, "Yeah? Why, how did you plan on saving the sun? Or — Or did you have a different problem?" Okay, so she was capable of the kicked-puppy look.

        "No, it was the same... Do you, uh, have a Roweana where you're from?" She nodded, looking over at him again. Same pinched brow, same lips pressed together, same green eyes — Or were they gray? Ah, central heterochromia; Sam had it too. "Well, you're definitely Sam's. Being a father — that oughta shock the shit outta him."

        Briana's back straightened, surprise morphing her brow as her hand, the thumb nail of which she'd been chewing on, dropped into her lap, "Dad's alive?"

        Dean glanced between her face and the road twice, "Wha — What do you mean he's 'alive?' Is he not in your world?"

       "Of course not! He died when I was, like, five!"

        "Hold on; how old are you?"

        "Physically? Fifteen."

        "'Physically?'" His voice rose and octive, "What about not-physically?!"