Dean isn't sure how long it is before he finally gets Sam's duffel from the back of the Impala and starts going through it. Weeks, at least. Months, maybe. The truth is, Dean likes seeing it waiting there so faithfully for its owner to come and claim it; it's comforting somehow, as if the fact that the duffel is waiting for Sam means that Dean can, too. But Lisa has been saying lately that going through Sam's stuff would help Dean lay him to rest. Which is what needs to be done, Dean has to agree, because Sam's been haunting him ever since that afternoon at Stull Cemetery, and when something's haunting you, you don't let it hang around. You salt it and burn it and leave it a smoking pile of ash behind you.

There's not much in the duffel, he knows before he even opens it. A few creased paperbacks, a notepad filled with Sam's careful, cramped printing, details of his research. But most of it's just toiletries and clothes—the bare necessities of survival, all that they could afford to take with them on the road. Dean used to think that was all they needed—that and each other—but now that he's spent a few weeks (or maybe months) in a house with a kitchen and master suite and a yard, the old gray duffel and its contents just look pitiful. He swallows, suddenly guilty, glancing back towards the house out of the garage door. It was Sam who deserved to have all that, not Dean.

Dean takes the paperbacks and the notepad out first, fingers trembling, sets them carefully aside, and then begins pulling the clothing out piece by piece. They're to be donated to charity—at least, that's what Lisa thinks he should do. She says it's what Sam would have wanted, and Dean knows she's right, but it hurts. It's silly, really, Dean tells himself; these clothes are nothing special, bought cheap from department stores or thrift shops—but they're Sam. Dean can smell him on them, can see his brother in each and every one of them, even as they hang limp and formless in his hands. Touching this fabric is as close as he'll ever come, now, to touching his brother's skin.

He finds something else shoved into a corner at the very bottom of the bag. Cool bronze wrapped tenderly in a pair of clean white socks, as if to bandage up the hurt it must have suffered clunking into the bottom of that wastepaper basket where Dean dropped it the last time he'd held it. And if the t-shirts and denim and flannel caused Dean a pang, if the books and the notepad were a punch to the gut, then this is a direct shot to the heart. Dean let this amulet fall when he should have clutched it to him with all his might. Just as he did to Sam.

The little bronze face stares up at him, accusing.

Dean lights everything up in the belly of Lisa's charcoal grill, with the kitchen lighter and the fancy starter fluid and the entire canister of kosher salt from the spice cabinet. The books and the notepad flare up immediately, and the clothes blacken almost as quickly, giving off a thick, foul smoke. It stings Dean's eyes (he tells himself this is the reason for the tears running down his cheeks), but he stays close, watching the amulet on top of the pile begin to glow red and melt out of shape.

By the time the fire has died down, though, he knows the salt and burn didn't work, because the memories are still haunting him.

A/N: I have literally no idea where this came from. Maybe my brain is rebelling against all the fluff I've been writing lately.