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Sam reached up to change another light bulb, his hand paused midway to the socket, new bulb suspended in his fingertips. He had been grumbling to himself about how this was the second bulb today that needed changing. The thought pushed its way through his grief and finally reached the rational part of his brain. Had he ever changed a bulb in the bunker before a month ago? He’d had to change the bulb in that single lamp in the library almost every day for the last 2 weeks. He had needed to go out after light bulbs twice already, but somehow hadn’t stopped to consider that there were no spare bulbs in the bunker because they’d never needed them before.
And then there was the plunger Sam bought last week. How had they lived in the bunker for years and never so much as clogged a toilet before? The kitchen sink was dripping. For the first time ever Sam had noticed that the books in the library were getting dusty. The refrigerator was developing a smell. There was a leak in a pipe in the ceiling over Dean’s room.
At the thought of Dean’s empty room with the bed made and undisturbed, a wet spot spreading in the ceiling untended, Sam’s heart seized up. He pushed his thoughts from the hole in his soul where his brother had been and back onto the disrepair of the bunker.
The bunker was falling apart, Sam realized. And why shouldn’t it? It was probably hundreds of years old, and who had ever done the maintenance? Some long dead Man of Letters? It’s remarkable it had held together as long as it had! “I guess” Sam thought to himself “every foundation crumbles eventually.”
It was time for him to move on. Sam needed to stop walking in the shadows of the ghost of his former life and begin to live again. He would pack his few possessions, take from the library what he would find useful, and start a new life away from the traumas of hunting. He would find a little corner of the world to settle into and rest a while. Maybe he could still find some happiness waiting for him.
The Bunker was crying. It was trying not to, but water kept leaking out around the corners anyway. Deep in the basement the furnace had developed a thumping noise that was happening in deep racking bangs and gurgles. A fluorescent light blew in the hallway.
The Bunker remembered the empty times. It remembered the slow churning loneliness between the moment Abaddon walked out of a bunker full of corpses for the last time, and the moment the Winchesters walked in. At the time the hollowness didn’t really bother The Bunker. Or at least it hadn’t thought it was bothered. It had the swirl of magic from the books and objects stored within itself. It had the maintenance and care tasks of keeping itself prepared and functional. It had itself.
It wasn’t until the Winchesters had begun to explore it’s corridors and cabinets that it had found itself joyfully expanding to accommodate a new use. A family. Growing, changing, and ever weird, but a family home nonetheless. The Bunker had grown in more than size. It had experienced and absorbed something it never had as a dorm and workshop for the MOL. Familial love.
The Bunker had absorbed familial love, and had done what it did best, accommodate it. Whenever the Winchesters needed a spare room for one of their lost or abused The Bunker always made space. Whenever the Winchesters needed to feed an army The Bunker always had the resources. The Bunker created blankets and pillows and holding cells whenever the need was present. It gleamed, and it grew, and it realized a sort of contentment that it had never known could exist.
The loss of its Angel had been a terrible blow. The Bunker had felt the intruding Empty and had been unable to block it. Its Angel had been stolen right from inside of its own self. That beautiful being that could expand itself to fill a skyscraper had contained itself within The Bunker’s care, and been cozy there. And The Bunker had felt it torn away. The violation and the taking had been terrible. The waves of pain and loss from its family, especially from Dean, had been almost unbearable.
The lostlings and found family had dwindled to none. Even the boy who was young, and old, and good, and wrong, had failed to come home one day. The Bunker understood that the boy had become something more, but he left a hole in the family once more. The addition of the dog seemed to soothe, but Angel, Mother, Son, Friends, were all taken away. The agony of those spaces left hollow felt like the persistent hammering on a cracked bell. Flat, and discordant, and unbeautiful. The Bunker felt a shelf in the library shift slightly downward as it thought of them.
And then Dean. Dean’s big presence, emptied. Dean’s bootfalls silent. Dean’s echoing laugh silent. All that remained was Sam and his terrible terrible grief. The silence filled the rooms, and halls. Sam didn’t sing. He didn’t talk to himself. He cared for the dog, and he cared for himself, and he was very deeply sad.
The Bunker had done what it could to help, but every day it struggled more and more to meet its own care standards. It struggled to blow away the dust. It struggled to wipe away the grease and crumbs. Everything became harder and harder. Soon even the necessary upkeep was too much. Things fell, things leaked. The Bunker’s body was falling apart, but The Bunker could not make itself overcome the sadness enough to care. The pipes shuddered and banged.
And now Sam was packing his meager belongings, taking the dog, and leaving. The Bunker had grown. It could reduce its rooms again. It could shrink its size. But it could no longer reduce itself in any way that mattered. Two more bulbs blew and a cabinet hinge rusted through in the kitchen.
The Bunker must now learn to be the one thing it was no longer capable of being.
Alone.
Unnoticed and unimportant, a crack formed in its foundation.