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Your steel is dusty with the red earth you gathered on the limping drive down the trail to the cemetery. You thought, then, that you were going to make your last stand: you and Dean and Sam, the way it should be. But you are back at Bobby's instead, and now leaves and mud are stuck between pipes and screws in the exposed underbelly of your chassis, and oil leaks where a jagged rock punctured one of your lungs.
If you were on the road, it would be a fatal wound, but you aren't so the slow drip only spreads a dark stain on the soil.
Your front bumper is pointed toward Bobby's house and you see through the spidery cracks of your broken windshield, the world in pieces in front of you. In the left corner a few splatters of Dean's blood dry and darken. You stay parked for days and the sun heats up your metal and the rain washes away the layers of dust and trickles through the breaks and falls onto the dashboard.
Sometimes, in the heart of those rainy nights you see Dean sitting on the steps. He's not bothered by the rain, head dangling loose between his shoulders. You stop each ticking noise of your mechanic heart until he goes back inside but he never looks your way.
The rain batters onto your back and blurs your vision and you too can shed your tears.
*
The other cars are an annoying buzz around you, but you tune them out, headlights fixed toward the front door. When another sunset comes, you look at the rust eating away at their carcasses and think of that time you were left sitting on cement blocks, legless and gutted open: a shelter for critters. Even then Dean would come, drunk and silent, and sit on your ripped leather and brush his knuckles on your wheel, tenderly so he didn't hurt you.
You try to remember when exactly it happened: after forty-three years it's hard to keep your facts straights. But then you realize that it had been only a nightmare.
When the last of the sunrays glint off your rearview mirror, you allow yourself to wonder if it's coming true, that nightmare, and how long it will pass before you wither and die.
*
You wake up to Bobby's hushed voice, but it's Dean presence that dispels the last vanishing images of a long, straight road and the lingering notes vibrating through your speakers. He smells strong of booze and sweat and despair. He smells of Dean. When he rests his palm on your back, you let loose a slow sigh of whining metal. Bobby is giving Dean directions, but you know that Dean's hesitation has nothing to do with Dean's ignorance. But maybe Bobby knows too and he keeps his steady talk for the same reason. You are voiceless now, or you'd have purred your approval with a sweet roar.
When Bobby is done he walks away, drooping under weariness and age, face hidden under the brim of his hat. You're ready to see Dean going too, but he surprises you by staying, unmoving, everything in him frozen and cold. When he finally goes, his palm leaves an imprint on your paintjob, and you are glad because you can imagine he's still there, leaning on you.
*
Don't be ashamed, you say when you see him coming with his tools and that faded t-shirt he always wears when he works on you.
He doesn't answer, but he only plays a few minutes with your keys before he climbs inside and that, you think, is more than you could hope for. He turns the key and the gasoline pumps inside your veins, sparks the light that fires your cylinders, then a powerful pump of your heart revs you up.
You make a soft sound of barely contained pleasure, clear and pure in the cold morning. Dean shivers, but he closes his hands around your wheel and drives you to the working area deeper into the junkyard.
He doesn't talk while he works. You remember that other time when you were barely scraps of crushed metal, soaked with the blood of your family, and out of it with fear and despair. You remember how he put you back together piece by piece, careful and competent. Sammy-Sam-Sammy used to look from afar and you had winked at him to let him know you had it covered.
There's no Sam, this time, just a gaping wound in Dean's soul so wide only the skin is keeping him from fading away completely. You'd offer yourself up to a beating with a crowbar if you had any hope of closing it.
Instead, it's Dean that mends your wounds: he plugs your pipes and changes your leaking tubes, filters the oil and cleans the carburetor, and finally, he gives you a new windshield to look through so that the world isn't a broken kaleidoscope anymore. Though you know that's just a deception.
He washes you when he's finished. Scented soapy water he works onto your body with a soft square of chamois, fresh water to wash the suds off, and wax to make you shine.
Then he sits on the ground, back pressed against your side, and he drinks until he passes out.
*
You were born on April, 24th, though the first number on your plate is long gone. Your certificate of ownership - from Rainbow Motors used cars to John Winchester – is inside John's journal, thrust between an old frayed receipt for the dinner John, Dean and Sam had on Dean's 18th birthday. John had put both there after handing you over to Dean, sitting on the same driver's seat Dean's sitting in now.
You are old, and sometimes you forget the small details, but certain things are clear as if they'd just happened. Like the smell of laughter on your boys' lips and the faint greasy layer on their hands, and John's quiet pride and Sam's soft admiration and Dean's sunny happiness. That had been a good day.
This is what you think as Dean drives you out of Bobby's yard. You've lost them, too, and all you have now is Dean. You splutter some black smoke from your muffler to mask the unexpected hiccup of your heart, but then you gain speed under Dean's foot and for a few hours you can believe you're going somewhere, you and Dean, and that he hasn't fixed you up all clean and pretty so you two can jump from that cliff.
You tell Dean, It's all right, because it's true. Whatever he decides you're going to follow. Dean nods and eases his foot off the accelerator and you eat miles at a slower pace, while he makes up his mind.
*
It goes on for a few days. You wait to see which side Dean will bow, parked on the pressed gravel in front of a truckers bar, listening to the noises of the night, so quiet and solitary around you. You hear him arguing with the sky and fucking in the backseat, skin slick with the sweat of faceless women. You see him punching strangers and bleeding from his lips, you see him choke back sobs and hiccups when he throws up liquid courage in the pre-dawn gray.
You've been through this before: for Dean once, for Sam twice, though they'd never been as hopeless as Dean is now, and you as well.
Something changes abruptly after those wild days and it shows in the quiet that rattles the empty bottles on your floor and the fine shaking in Dean's hands. On a long stretch of highway you've driven through before countless times, you let all your horsepower loose with a mournful howl, wondering if perhaps this is the last time you'll be allowed to do it.
When Dean stops in front of the house with the nice lawn and the white walls, your engine hums idly and you nod and tell him he can do this.
*
Dean leaves you in a garage, hidden under a soft tarp, and sheltered from the elements.
Many times, in the heart of night, you wake up to the feel of his back against your side, his body jammed between you and the wall, a fist in his mouth to silence his pain. Other times, he takes you for a ride, and his brain is a jumble of alcohol and pain and a longing so hard it makes your metal rattle with speed. You're very careful, those times, turning the wheel gently from obstacles you're not sure he meant to avoid.
You always end up back in the nice house and it's the only time you regret not being made of flesh and bones and soft skin, and you regret being just unyielding metal and leather that warms only with human contact, and you regret being only a car.
Those times get fewer and further with each passing months. You catch sight of him, through the window: the sound of his voice, the hesitance of his steps as he half-lives his new life. He still visits, tunes you up and washes away the dust and you know you're the tangible sign of all he's lost, a monument to his old life; the safe keeper of his memories. It hurts you that you hurt him.
You rest, you sleep, you age in the dark of that pristine garage while the seasons leave rain on the windowpane and snow on the windowsill and finally there's the sun, warm and golden, shining over you.
You wait and dream of the road.
*
The change that comes the morning Dean stumbles through the door is evident even to your unused sensors. It's the old familiar fear written in old stains all over your parched leather and in the hidden nooks and crevices under the bench.
It's the first time you've seen him in weeks, and you take your time observing the muted nature of his breathing, like he's half-here, part of his brain caught somewhere far away. When he opens your trunk his hands shake, but you voice your worried welcome with a ready click of the lock.
Something is coming, he says, and you nod, run a check-up of your mechanical parts, in case he needs you. And then things become confusing, because he covers you again, and there are voices – Lisa's, who you've expected to hear – and Dean's, talking aloud as if to someone, though nobody is answering. A shot, a thump on your rear, the familiar weight of Dean's body thrust forcefully against your metal and you're allowed a glance when the tarp slides onto the pavement.
You see Sam and you wish your engine would be turned on, so you could blare and roar and howl your happiness. Sam pats your back like he hears you and there's honest affection in his eyes, even if Sam's never been as enthusiastic as Dean about showing it to you.
Sam gently pulls Dean up on his shoulder and carries him away.
They're gone then, your boys, and you're left alone again, trembling with the ticking noises of metal settling. You follow the sound of an unfamiliar engine until it fades, and eager with anticipation, you entertain yourself imaging their reunion, thinking of the day you'll carry again their familiar weight.
*
You are a car and you're used to the wait: on the shoulder of the road, in a paid parking-lot, once in judicial lock-down. You've waited in front of countless motel rooms and run-down shacks, in front of emergency rooms and at the edges of the woods. You've waited months and years, and for a long time in that used-car sale yard for your rightful owner.
You've always felt when it was time to go, though, when the waiting was close to an end.
You laugh a loud roar when Dean finally turns your engine on. You may be old, but you still have a few miles in you. Many miracles have happened under the unblinking sight of your headlights since you traipsed through the weekends, naïve and young, your trunk loaded with bibles.
Out in the open, the road welcomes you and you welcome it back.
But then, that's what you do and what you'll forever do. After all, you're nothing but a car.
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