InsaneJournal

SPN Fic: Family Tradition
TITLE: Family Tradition
RATING: PG-13
PAIRING: None (shades of Sam/Dean)
WORD COUNT: 533
SUMMARY: A father and his two boys and the open road. That's the way it's always been.
NOTES: Short and ouch-y sweet. Dedicated to yourlibrarian, who sparked this whole idea. And to my shower, where this story assaulted me and wouldn't let go till I wrote it.

Family Tradition

The Impala kicks up desert dust, summer sun catching in the driver’s side mirror. He rests his hand on it, tilts it outward down the side of the car, to where he can see its long smooth, black side, sailing down the highway.

If only he’d known when he was young that it would become more home to him than any building he’s ever stayed in... If only he’d known when he’d set foot on this road, just how long it would turn out to be... He might have done a lot of things differently, if he’d only known. He feels the wind ruffle his hair, growing grayer, now, he knows. The years pass by and world goes on and it’s still him and the car.

It’s more than an antique, now. It’s become an institution.

He tilts his rear view mirror down, looks at the two boys playing in the backseat. His boys. His bright, beautiful boys. They’re the ones that keep him going, now that they’re getting older. Soon, the oldest will ride in the front seat. He’s already taught the boy how to handle and load a handgun and the shotgun. And taught him the most important thing, the number one rule; always take care of his little brother.

He loves them, bright and fierce emotion in his chest. Pride unlike anything he’d ever imagined swelling inside him till he feels like he might burst.

Since Dean died, he hasn’t cared about anything else.

*

He’d met her two years later. A nameless roadhouse in the middle of nowhere, down a dirt road that wasn’t much more than a cowpath. He hadn’t been hunting, then. He hadn’t been doing anything, then. Drowning in beer, drowning in women, and everything around him was Dean, Dean, Dean.

They’d had a few years together. She’d ridden shotgun while her belly swelled, and wielded the other set of guns when it’d gone flat again. Then one day, a blood vessel had burst in her brain and she’d gone to sleep and never woken up again.

Sometimes, in the night, when he’s desperate for something to hold onto, his mind serves up that memory of her, lying peaceful in the hospital bed. He’d warned her about the fate of women in his family, she knew the risks. But at least she’d died quiet, in bed, not burning on the ceiling with her womb ripped out.

Some nights, he can’t remember her face and he panics, Jess and Mom and Madison all blurring together in his head until he can’t tell one from another.

It doesn’t matter anyway. He never loved anyone else the way he always loved Dean.

*

He named them Dean and John, but sometimes he gets confused, calls the youngest one Sammy.

Daddy, that’s your name, John says, smiling up at him from under the blinding sun.

Soon he’ll teach the youngest how to shoot. He’s already taught the boy to be afraid of the dark, to always listen to his gut. He’ll raise them smart and strong and proud.

He’ll remember to love them, with the love his father never gave him.

But first, he’ll teach them how to go to war.