The Dream I Dreamed (A Dean Winchester Love Story)

Chapter 29: That We Will Live the Years Together

Chapter 29 That We Will Live the Years Together

Hope walked into the bunker. "Cas?" She called.

He was standing in the study, staring at the table blankly. "Is it true?" he asked looking up at Hope. "Dean. Is he...Is he dead?"

"Cas..." Hope began, trying to find a gentle way to tell him, but it was like trying to drop a piece of glass on the sidewalk without breaking it.

She took a step toward him and his knees buckled. He fell to the floor. Hope ran forward, but instead of trying to pull him up she just went down with him, wrapping her and sound her brother's shoulders and pulling him close.

Castiel sobbed into her shoulder, clinging to her jacket, and she cried, too. The absence of Dean was like a sledge hammer, pounding her to dust. She remembered when it first happened. When, staying at his body on the bed, it had hit her that Dean was gone.

Hope stormed out of the bunker, keys in hand. She had to get out of there, get away from the place where Dean no longer existed. Dean was dead and all she wanted to do was cry in his arms, but she couldn't. So she settled for the next best thing.

The Impala was still parked outside the bunker like they had left it. She climbed into the driver's seat for the first time in her life. For a moment she just sat there, feeling the leather of the steering wheel and inhaling the car's scent. She smelled like Dean. Or maybe Dean smelled like her. Hope wasn't sure which. Either way, it was comforting.

Hope started the engine, relishing the way the it rumbled to life. She wished it was that easy with people. If you could find the right key and turn it just the right way, there they would be, alive and kicking.

She reached for the pedals with her feet, intending to drive away in the hopes that the open road would soak up her grief, but her toes brushed empty air. She was too short. A short bark of laughter escaped her lungs. Too short to drive the Impala. She thought. Dean would laugh.

That sobered her quickly. The seat wasn't adjustable, so she opened the door and went around to the trunk, pulling out a duffel bag. When she came back she placed the bag in the seat and sat down with it at her back. It pushed her far enough forward that she could reach the pedals. She drove off.

Hope wasn't sure where she was going. She listened to music for a while, but it reminded her too much of Dean, so she turned it off. The trees were all orange and yellow, the leaves already beginning to fall off for the winter. She used to love fall, but the thought of the bright green leaves withering and dying sent a sharp pain through her chest. Like Dean's eyes.

Her vision blurred, but she kept driving because even though it hurt, being in the Impala really was helping. She shivered. It was cold outside and she had forgotten to put on a heavier jacket before she left, but she didn't mind; the cold was a good distraction.

Finally, the cold became too much. She reached out and turned the heat on. In the silence of the car, a low rattling was audible from the vents on the dashboard, like...

Legos. Hope realized. The Legos in the vents.

She broke down. It was too much. Dean was everywhere, filling every part of her, and now that he was gone she just felt so....empty. She pulled off the road as tears filled her eyes so thickly that she could no longer see.

She sat there sobbing, her head buried in the steering wheel. A tap on the passenger window made her jump. She looked up to see a young man, maybe about her age, with reddish-brown hair and a beard and cautious blue eyes standing beside the car, looking at her worriedly. She reached over and rolled the window down.