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He doesn’t know his own name, but there are things his body remembers.
It feels familiar, the witch’s hair slipping through his fingers, her hands gently smoothing over his chest, her hand held in his own. He keeps leaning into it without meaning to, finding it hard to pull away. He thinks maybe he’s a person who likes touching and being touched. He wonders if he can learn other things this way, too.
He asks his brother -- Shane? Sean? Samuel? Sammy. Sam. He asks Sam to tell him about the people he knows. He can’t remember their names, but he’s sure he has friends and family, has people he loves. “Can you tell me about our mom?” he asks.
Sam clears his throat. “Sure, Dean,” he says. Right, Dean, Dean, that’s his name, he just keeps forgetting. If only Sam would put both their names on sticky notes, maybe he could remember them for more than a few seconds at a time. Sam describes their mom for him patiently, tells him about the way she looks and smells and what it feels like to hold her in your arms.
He swears he can remember her for a second, swears he remembers the feel of being held, of warm arms encircling him, tucking him into bed, ruffling his hair. He swears he can smell warm apple pie, but then it shifts to the smell of smoke and ash. He clears his throat, and by the time he’s done, it’s already slipped away.
“What about my-- my best friend?” he asks.
His brother gives him a strange look. He says, “I gotta go.”
--
“Hey, uh,” he says. He snaps his fingers a couple times, presses his fist to his forehead.
“Rowena,” she says.
“Right,” he says, clapping his hands together. “Rowena. My brother--”
“Sam,” Rowena says.
“Sam. He said I have a best friend,” he says. “Can you tell me about him?”
She saunters over him, leaning in with a sly grin. “Well,” she says, “he’s an angel, for starters.”
“How fucking cool is that?” he says, unable to stop himself from smiling. “My best friend is an angel.”
“Lucky you,” she says.
“What else?” he asks.
She shrugs. “He’s tall,” she says. “Doesn’t look it next to you boys, though. Dark hair, blue eyes. These lines under his eyes--” She reaches out and traces one finger diagonally across his face from the corner of his eye. “He frowns a lot. He’s always wearing the same suit and ugly tan coat.”
For a second, he thinks he remembers. He thinks he can feel that coat under his hands, can remember scooping it up and folding it and holding it close to him. He swears he can feel his best friend’s fingers pressing against his forehead, his hand cupping the side of his face, and--
That doesn’t seem right.
“My best friend?” he asks.
“So you’ve said.”
“Huh,” he says.
--
“What’s his name?” he asks.
“Who?”
“My best friend,” he says.
“Castiel,” she says.
“Castiel,” he repeats, sounding out the syllables carefully. It feels unfamiliar in his mouth. “Castiel?” he repeats. Still wrong. “Cas.” There. That feels right. “Cas,” he repeats. He doesn’t know why he keeps saying it. “Who’s Cas?” he asks.
She sighs. “The angel who’s in love with you,” she says.
“What?” he says.
“Forget it,” she says.
“Forget what?” he asks.
“Nothing, dear,” she says, smiling at him. “How about we watch some cartoons?”
--
His brother is in trouble, and just like that, a name pops into his head: Sam. Sammy.
He wonders what it means, that this fear feels so familiar.
--
The gun makes him nervous, but not as nervous as the vast emptiness that greets him when he tries to figure out where he is, who he is, what he’s supposed to be doing.
He’s never shot a gun before, but he thinks he needs to take it anyway, because he’s sure someone is in danger. He isn’t sure who, exactly, or why, or what they need protecting from. But his legs are restless, his hands twitchy. He knows he needs to get up and go.
He winds up shooting the witches no problem, one bullet each, blam blam. He thinks maybe he’s used a gun before after all.
He wonders, as the witch starts working her magic, if his life is really one worth remembering.
--
Dean examines his memories on the drive home, pulls them up one by one to make sure everything is in its place. He starts with Sam, with his dad, his mom. It’s all there, everything from the vague, barely-there memories of his childhood to the dark, gritty details of the life he leads now, the one that got them into this whole mess in the first place.
He remembers Cas, too, everything from the night the shadow of his wings spread across the walls of that barn to the drinks they shared just a couple days ago. He remembers how Cas had sat at their table, how he had run a hand across his shoulder, clenched his fingers into a fist to keep himself from doing anything more. He has eight years’ worth of memories, eight years’ worth of intense stares and infringements upon his personal space and offers to kill for him and die for him. He has eight years’ worth of feelings still sitting, unexamined, in the corner of his mind.
Everything is right where he left it.