In Memoriam

This was stupid. Dean knew it was stupid. It was just a slab of granite put up by some stranger, it didn't mean anything.

He had said as much to Sam all those years ago when he had suggested going out to visit Mom's headstone.

Yet here he was, kneeling in the grass in front of a rock with his Mom's name carved into it as though it held any significance. She was dead. Her body had been incinerated in the fire and her spirit was long gone from their old house. There was nothing left of her here.

She couldn't know that he was kneeling at her grave, and she wouldn't hear anything he said.

This was stupid.

But Dean was here anyway.

Speaking to a memory.

"Hey Mom," he rasped.

God, he felt like an idiot.

"I know you're not here and I'm just talking to a rock like a crazy person but it seemed to help Sam and I… I didn't know who else to turn to.

"Everything is… Mom, it is all so messed up. You're gone and Dad's gone and Sam and I, we tried to do what would make you guys proud but we screwed up. God, we screwed up so bad so many times. We made a mess. Not just of us, of our lives, but of the whole friggin' world. We started the apocalypse you know. The biblical one, that is. We stopped it eventually – well, Sam did – but not before a lot of good people died.

"And now the world is ending again. Have you ever heard of the Darkness? Probably not – it's this before creation big evil thing that was supposed to be locked up and we set it free. I had the lock. I was the lock, and I couldn't handle it and now the Darkness is going to swallow the world.

"I never meant for this to happen.

"All I wanted to do was look after Sammy like you told me to. You told me I'd be a great big brother and I tried to live up to that but Mom… Mom, I let him die. I left him alone. I let him get addicted to demon blood. I let him become Lucifer's meat suit. I let him throw himself into the Cage to be tortured for a hundred years. I let him lose his soul. I let him do the demon trials that could have killed him. I let his life turn to crap around him until he reached the point of wanting to die. And then I held him down and helped an angel date-rape him.

"Mom… I let you down. You gave me one job; Dad, too. I should have left Sam at Stanford, I should have kept the monsters away from him, I should have let him escape this life rather than dragging him back every time he tried to leave. This isn't what you wanted for him. He was your baby, your Sammy. You looked at him like he was the sun and the stars and everything wonderful and I destroyed him.

"I'm sorry. You must be so disappointed in me. I hurt your baby boy and that's – that's not even the worst of it.

"You were a hunter, Mom, and I became one of the very things you used to hunt. I became a demon. A monster. A killer. The things I did… I can't even bear to look at myself in the mirror. If you could see me now…

"Mom, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to make up for what I've done. I don't know how to be good again, if I ever was. You loved me once, I know you did. You called me your little angel and I am so far from that now… I don't know how to find my way back. I don't know if I can."

"Everything is going to be destroyed. I don't know how to stop it. This is the legacy your son is leaving behind as he drags Sammy and the rest of the world into the dark.

"I don't even know why I came here. But this is all that is left of you and I know it will be gone soon just like everything else and… the least you deserve is to have your son come to pay his respects, even if it is more than 30 years too late.

"So Mom, I just wanted to say… I miss you, and I love you."

A single tear slipped down his face. He bowed his head, shoulders shaking.

His final words were a whisper.

"I'm so, so sorry."