1 – Survive

Castiel had seen enough murdered angels – and had killed so many himself – that he had a hard time feeling anything when he saw their bodies. But since it was one of the few surviving members of his garrison, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of regret.

Eli had been a good soldier, but now he was laid out on the roof of a skyscraper in Tokyo, the shadow of his wings burned beneath him, a neat hole from an angel blade in his chest. The full moon overhead and the glaring city lights made it a surprisingly well lit scene. His vessel had been a young Japanese man who liked white shirts and dark suits, but now that white shirt was soaked red.

Hannah, who had called him here, held out a piece of paper towards him. She had never stopped looking somber. "He had this in his hand."

Castiel took it, curious. Written on it, in familiar script, were the words: I have not forgotten, Castiel. I will take away what you treasure most, and then I'll take your life.

"Do you know who did this?" she wondered.

It took him a moment, but yes, he recognized the writing and the sentiment. "Simeon," he said. "I thought he was dead." Or maybe he just hoped he was.

Simeon had been one of his lieutenants when he fought against Raphael. He had been a loyal, good soldier, until he discovered Castiel had actually killed Rachel, and then he rebelled and went missing. Castiel hadn't realized Simeon and Rachel had been close, but he subsequently learned they had been, perhaps blasphemously so. Castiel assumed he'd died in the subsequent heavenly upheaval, as he had never encountered him since. But it was equally possible he simply hid in another dimension. If he'd hidden on Earth, he'd managed to do so better than any other angel he knew of. Castiel was sure he'd have found him if he had. Sins of the past. It was a shame Eli had to pay. He'd had nothing to do with Castiel's faithlessness or insanity.

Hannah folded up the note, and it disappeared. "Do you know what he's after?"

A very good question. "I don't know." What did he treasure exactly? The Earth, humanity. These targets seemed too large for Simeon. It was still possible. Claire? How would Simeon know about her? Or anything Castiel valued? He must have had allies among the angels still.

"I'll get the word out he's wanted," Hannah said.

He nodded a thanks, and knew he didn't deserve that kind of help. Eli deserved justice, though. He was an innocent. Unlike Castiel. "Let me know if you find him."

Where to go now? He wasn't actually sure where Claire was right now. Sam and Dean might know, or might be able to help him.

So he sent himself to where they were, walking from a Tokyo rooftop to a roadside motel somewhere in America … Michigan, if he was correct. But Castiel knew instantly something was wrong.

The room was empty. One of the beds looked rumpled, but otherwise it looked unoccupied. Looking around, he found one of Sam's travel bags hidden beside the made bed, but that was it. Were they just settling in?

As he was puzzling over this, he heard the scrape of a key in the lock, and turned to find Sam coming in the door. Sam jumped slightly upon seeing him. "Cass, what are you doing here?"

"I came to ask for your help."

Castiel assumed Dean would follow him in, but he didn't. In fact, Sam looked towards the rumpled bed, and asked, "Where's Dean?"

"I don't know. He wasn't here when I arrived."

Sam sighed and rolled his eyes, instantly reaching for his phone. "If he found that vampire nest and went after it on his own, I'm gonna kill him."

"How is he?"

Sam grimaced as he pressed a button on his phone. Dean claimed the Mark of Cain wasn't influencing him, but it clearly was, and it was a battle he was losing in slow increments. Dean being Dean, he was refusing to admit this, and refusing to ask for help, leaving both Sam and Castiel in the position of trying to find a way to help him that wouldn't make him angrier. This was, to quote Sam, a no win scenario. Something was going to have to be done, but what and when was still to be determined. "Hanging on by his fingernails and pretending he isn't." Sam's brow furrowed in confusion to something he heard on the phone. "What the hell?" Sam quickly punched up another number.

"What is it?"

"I'm getting a recording saying the number is out of service. That –" he cut off suddenly, and looked at his phone as though it was genuinely vexing him. "Now it says his other phone is also out of service."

Castiel suddenly had an awful thought. No. "When did you leave Dean?"

Sam shrugged. "Just ten minutes ago. He was taking a nap, and I needed some fresh air." Castiel understood that this was euphemistic. Sam was under strain as well. Living with Dean as of late had been trying. It was difficult to be with a person who was falling apart, and yet refusing to admit they were falling apart. The Mark was gaining a greater hold on Dean every day, in spite of his refusal to admit it. "What did you need help with, Cass?"

"We may have the same problem. Simeon, an angel who's decided he wants revenge, threatened to go after someone close to me. I thought he meant Claire. What if he meant Dean?"

Sam's eyes widened in alarm. "What would he do with him?"

Good question. Even with the Mark, if Simeon wanted to kill Dean as he had killed Eli, he could have easily accomplished it. So what else could he have done with him?

Castiel almost shuddered to think. If Simeon wanted him to suffer, he might make Dean suffer too.


Somewhere Else

It took Dean a moment to remember where he was, and what was going on.

He sat up in the driver's seat, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and trying to work out a crick in his neck. The air in the truck was stuffy and stale, and altogether too warm. Then again, hell on Earth. Gonna be kind of warm.

For a single second, Dean thought everything was wrong, and then realized yes, of course everything was wrong. Everything had been wrong since that day in the cemetery, when they tried to cage Lucifer and Michael. The day he lost Cass and Bobby and Sam; all his remaining family.

It really would have been better if Lucifer beat him to death. He almost did, before Sam regained himself for one second and stopped. Then Michael showed back up, wearing Adam, and attacked him immediately. Sam was gone, and Lucifer was back. Dean was still not sure how he didn't die, except both Lucifer and Michael didn't want him to. They couldn't torment him as much if he were dead.

So Dean did the only thing he could do as the slow Apocalypse occurred: he ran, trying to put as much distance between him and Michael and Lucifer as possible. He intended to save as many people as he could, but there was that old saying about good intentions and hell that was sadly true.

He kind of wished Zachariah was still alive, so he would know how fucking wrong he was. He thought Heaven could win the battle, but from what Dean could tell, Hell was winning/had won. The roiling red sky was a nice spooky touch, but the real giveaway was the sheer number of demons, and the fact that Croatoan virus was running rampant through the few humans left. There were days when Dean didn't encounter anyone, demon possessed, infected, or somehow unharmed. In fact, when was the last time he encountered a regular human? He tried to remember, and couldn't. The days had started blurring together, to the point that he wasn't sure when that doomed attempt to stop the Apocalypse happened. Two months ago? A year ago? Two years? Could have been decades for all he knew. It felt like an eon.

Dean was really tired of all of this. There were a couple of times when he tried to stop, when he tried to let the demons kill him (he couldn't go the Croatoan route; he knew how dangerous he'd be if he turned into some mindless weapon), but some kind of reflex, muscle memory, kicked in and wouldn't let him die. His body wasn't ready to let go just yet. He was close, though. He was sure one more week and his reflexes wouldn't even work right anymore.

Dean grabbed the bottle of whiskey from the floor and took a couple of swallows, just to get the dust out of his throat. He was parked on the side of the road, what could have been a part of I-5, but he was no longer sure what direction he was going in anymore. He hadn't seen another running car in weeks. He longed for the Impala, but that too had been lost during the fruitless Apocalypse fight. Just another member of his family gone.

The air in the stolen truck's cab now stunk of the hex bags he had on the dashboard and passenger seat. Despite the smell, they were probably the only thing that kept him from getting snatched up by Lucifer – and Michael, if he was still alive. And he was working on faith that these super charged hex bags Sam taught him to put together even worked on angels as powerful as them. He didn't know. Maybe the fact that he wasn't in their clutches yet was proof.

Before he got out of the truck, he made sure he had one in his pocket, and double checked to make sure his gun was fully loaded. Dean picked up his favorite machete from the passenger seat and got out, to try and figure out where he was, and where he could go. He'd have used a GPS, if any of that shit even worked anymore. But it didn't, because that was too damn easy.

The air felt dense with humidity, and he'd noticed nowadays there was almost always a hint of sulfur in the air. It was a smell that refused to go away. He got a beer out of the cooler in the back, and a map he'd taken from the last gas station he'd hit.

Dean had made marks on the map of where he was sure he had been, so he had some general idea of where he was and where he was headed. The problem was, he'd skipped a couple of days. His stomach rumbled, and he wondered if that was when he last ate too. Maybe. He didn't have much of an appetite anymore.

His worst fear was becoming the last surviving Winchester, the only one left standing. He'd hoped to die before that came to pass. He had a terrible feeling Lucifer had figured that out too.

Had he ever felt so alone or so useless in his life? He tried not to think about it anymore, because that had led to too many blackout drunks, when he was lucky not to have been killed. Although once Dean came to surrounded by bodies, and the terrible realization that he had somehow killed them all. He hoped they were all demons or Croatoan victims. Honestly, considering the states they were in, he had no way of telling for sure.

The road was desolate. He'd parked on a soft shoulder, which led down to a shallow valley full of scrub, mostly grass and Scotch broom. There was an overturned car down there too, scorched and already graffitied with CRO. The signs that some people were trying to warn others was a heartening touch, but Dean wondered how old that warning was. Somewhere outside of Portland he'd come across signs that some survivors had formed a camp and were trying to hold out, but when he got there, all he found was bodies. It wasn't clear if demons had overrun the camp or someone got exposed to Croatoan and that was it. In the end, it didn't matter.

For some reason, he looked at his arm, and expected to see a mark there. What kind of mark? It was a weird idea, and out of his head now. His arm looked fine, except for a bruise where he'd blocked a punch.

Dean looked around for mile markers, something, but could only see an overturned minivan up ahead, and the crushed remains of some compact that got accordioned by the larger, heavier vehicle. The only problem with driving nowadays was you'd come across these huge pile ups, sometimes cutting off all access unless you were on foot. How there could be traffic after the apocalypse was astounding, especially since there seemed to be no one driving but him.

He had just decided he was a particularly stark part of Northern California, since it wasn't hot enough to be Nevada, when he heard a sound like a dead leaf scraping against asphalt. Only there was no wind to speak of.

Dean had his gun out and turned towards the noise, which came from the direction of the wreck. "I know you're there," he said. "If you don't wanna die, come out slowly with your hands up."

"Dean, Dean, Dean," a familiar female voice said. It was drawling, mocking, and his heart sunk as soon as he placed it. Meg. She walked around the SUV with three big, muscular guys with black eyes. "I'll hand it to you, Forrest, you made a real game out of it. I figured after you lost your brother you'd collapse in a sobbing heap, but you managed to put one foot in front of the other like a good little rodent. But you had to know the cover wasn't gonna last forever, right?"

"Are you here to gloat?" She was on Lucifer's side. She bet on the right horse, and now she was even more insufferably smug.

She grinned, and it never hit her dead black eyes. "Oh please. When you win everything, there's no need to gloat. Besides, there's almost no one left to brag to. Did you know that? Have you put that together yet? You're almost the last man on Earth. How does that feel?"

"Eat me, bitch." She was just saying that to be an asshole, right? There's no way he could be the last human on Earth. There had to be more somewhere.

She smirked, and two other very big demons joined her. Her entourage. Where the hell had they come from? "Maybe later, once the boss is finished with you. I bet all that beer means you're well marinated."

He still had Ruby's knife, tucked in his jeans. He could drop the machete and go for it, but he felt the machete might have some uses too. Couldn't kill demons with it, but you could maim the fuck out of them. And these days, maiming demons was pretty much his only source of joy. "Six on one. Think you have enough guys, Meg? Maybe you wanna call in a few more."

She chuckled, which was a surprisingly mirthless sound. "Look at you, still hanging on to your arrogance. Good for you. When you've lost everything else, why not, right?"

One of her goons started across the road, and Dean shot him in the eye. Nope, wouldn't kill him, but taking out an eye pissed demons off no end, and he was not disappointed by the roar of rage that came from the goon as he bent over and put a hand to the bloody hole where his right eye used to be. "You fucking son of a whore!" he snapped. "I'll make you eat your own entrails for that!"

He shot at the demon behind him, who ducked, and was about to try for Meg, who was just looking amused, when he realized someone was sneaking up behind him. He turned, swinging the machete, and was gratified to chop the arm off the demon trying to get the drop on him. He howled in pain, but still managed to charge Dean, ramming his shoulder into his midsection and slamming him against the truck.

His breath left his lungs in a rush, but Dean still had a point blank opportunity and wasn't about to lose it. He brought the machete down and sliced through the demon's spine, but the blade got wedged in his thick neck muscles, so he only cut half way through. Still, the demon staggered back, trying to pull the machete out, his head flopping forward uselessly. The demon jumped out of the body in a gush of black smoke, because while not dead, the vessel wasn't of much use now. Dean shot the demon behind him at point blank range, taking out his left eye, before the body of the first had hit the ground.

A punch like granite in the back of the head made Dean drop the gun and fall to one knee, as the demon who had come up behind him grabbed his right arm and hauled him back to his feet. Dean reached under his shirt, pulled out Ruby's knife, and stabbed the demon in the stomach. He wasn't a great southpaw, but the beauty of Ruby's knife was you didn't need to be super accurate with it.

They were trying to dogpile him, use their superior numbers against him. He was taking blind shots in the body and the face, and with the crush of bodies fighting back was near impossible. He still tried, though. He stabbed blindly when he could, kicked whatever, and it felt like he kneed someone in the head. He made one demon die courtesy of Ruby's knife, but he was simply overwhelmed. There were too many demons, and he couldn't find enough space to move. His consciousness was dissolving into black stars that exploded across the field of his vision, and he wondered if now would be the time his body would stop fighting for a life so empty.

He was thrown face down on the asphalt, struggling for breath as the pressure on his back was insane, and he was currently drowning a little in his own blood. Maybe they were supposed to take him alive, but no one said undamaged. They put plastic tie handcuffs on him, and Meg hauled him up to a sitting position against the truck. She grinned and straddled his legs, caressing his bruised cheek. "See? We wouldn't have had to damaged your face, Ken doll, if you just went along quietly. Do you feel all manly for having resisted the inevitable?"

He spit in her face. It was mostly blood. All it did was make her snicker. "Oh, Dean. Couldn't you make a stab at dignity for once in your pathetic life?" She wiped the blood off her face, and then backhanded him. He was pretty sure she loosened a tooth. "Now be a good little meat puppet. Lucifer didn't say you had to have all your limbs when we brought you in. Would you say you're more of a left leg guy or a right leg guy?"

The funny thing? He didn't care anymore. He really didn't. Dean hadn't wanted to face the agony of Lucifer wearing Sam's body again, but that was about it. His survival instinct had all but given up, and wasn't it about goddamn time? The world was in its death throes, and he really didn't want to be standing on the sidelines watching when it breathed its last. He had failed, in a way too big to honestly grasp. His brother was dead, his family was dead, the world was dead. Why was he still here?

Suddenly a voice said something in Latin, and a waft of dust came over the hood of the truck. It smelled vaguely medicinal to Dean. Meg's eyes widened, and she suddenly began choking, grabbing her throat and falling off him. She wasn't alone; all her remaining hench demons were reacting the same way, clawing at their own throats and gasping for air. After a few seconds of writhing, all the demons escaped their vessels in clouds of black spectral smoke, and he watched them swirl off into the reddish sky, leaving empty and dead meat suits behind.

Dean wasn't sure how to feel about this last minute save. He was ready to go. Maybe they were going to kill him instead. He looked up, and a familiar and baffling figure was there, crouching down beside him. He had a smug smirk on his face. "You're welcome," Crowley said.