dean remembers the day that changed his life like it was yesterday.
when he was eight and sam four, their parents drove them cross-country to move into a fixer-upper out on the edge of some town too small for its name to matter in the scheme of things. that was mom’s dream—a house to make memories in, on lots of land where dean and sam could grow up surrounded by fresh air; a house that was a home. the place had come cheap, and dad was going to make it beautiful.
but then, of course, everything happened, and what family could be the same after something like that? looking back on it, dean still thinks, irrationally—vindictively—maybe it was the house’s fault. even at eight, he hadn’t been able to see it as the kind of house that would ever be happy.
the house was set back from the road a ways; a messy gravel drive led up to the carport. dean remembers how the impala would lurch over the bumps. there were no trees at all out front (”yet,” dad said, and dean grinned in the backseat, imagining a big sprawling treehouse).
it was only later that they found out nothing would grow in that soil but grass. as often as dad mowed it, the scrubby grass always seemed to grow back twice as high, already dry, already mostly dead. it stymied dad, offended his winchester determination, but mom would put her arm around him as they looked out the kitchen window together at that stubborn grass and say, “honey, it gives the place charm.” mom always had that kind of optimism, before.
they’d been living in the house for maybe half a year when it happened.
he remembers the heat. and the light, this light that filled up his and sam’s shared bedroom like it was late morning instead of midnight. he remembers not being able to move, not being able to talk, and there was wet on his cheeks, but he couldn’t hear himself sobbing.
sammy was screaming, soundless and awful, his face scrunched up with fear, and dean remembers feeling sick; sammy was never supposed to look like that. it was impossible to hear anything over the terrible noise-feeling that spread through the room, intensifying with the light.
it vibrated through dean’s body—grinding warble, nails on chalkboard, inside him, outside him. and then sam was gone. swallowed up by the light, leaving only an ashy silhouette charred into the bedspread.
dean didn’t speak for a year after that. when he finally did, the first thing he said was, “the light took him.”
those were the only words he would say, in spite of patient teacher after patient teacher, mom’s worried face, dad’s questions, therapist after therapist.
the light took him. it took dean years to understand—really understand—that he’d witnessed his brother abducted. and then he began to believe, because he had to. was he a little desperate? maybe.
was he too fervent? no such thing.
“hey, wesson.” he nudges his new partner. “what do you think about aliens?”