A/N: Slight spoilers for 2x01, 4x03, and 5x10. Future speculation, angsty as all get out. Framed around the final stanza of T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men.
This is the way the world ends.
It started with a fight between two brothers. Two angels, always together, until somehow they found themselves on opposite sides. Hate overshadowed love as Michael let Hell swallow Lucifer whole.
Without forgiveness, Hate festers, until the poison overflows onto others.
It continues with two brothers, so very alike.
A family shattered, with just a touch of that poison. Mother burnt to a crisp, trying to save the child she'd endangered. Father voluntarily consigned to Hell, to save the child he'd failed. Leaving them alone with only themselves. A mother's worst nightmare and a father's disappointment.
One brother dies, then the other. Bonds of love and blood and sacrifice, at great cost. Both come back, not quite right.
One breaks the First Seal. The other breaks the Last. Both fight to fix their mess, themselves, and their broken world.
This is the way the world ends.
By the time Hell rises on Earth, they'd already lost so much. Now the blood-dimmed tide rises ever faster. They continue to count the sacrifices. Watch friends die, family die.
Ellen and Jo at least go out together, in a literal blaze of glory. Bobby dies alone. The boys find him, still in the blood-soaked wheelchair, the next day.
They fight and fight, others falling around them, struggle to hold back the tide while refusing to play games with the would-be puppet masters. Destiny is for losers – they make their own fate.
The weight of the world comes down to two brothers. Until there is one.
One holds his broken brother in his arms, shared blood leaking away, holding them together just a little longer. A promise extracted with labored breath, sealed with tears. Permission and forgiveness granted, one last-ditch effort of a broken heart.
Never said yes. Only goodbye.
He watches his brother burn, leaves nothing for them to take. Then he goes hunting.
Too long, too alone, too much blood spills before he stands, Lucifer at his feet, light exploding bright then dying away.
He succeeds, despite everything.
Too late.
This is the way the world ends.
Some survive, but so many did not. The angels scatter, just up and leave once the job is done, uncaring of what is left behind. The demons are all locked back up in Hell, the earth scoured clean by Lucifer's violent end. All that is left is natural, flotsam after a hurricane.
The world is broken, for now. It still turns, now quiet in the soundless night.
He is alone, orphaned, a brother no longer. He is lost, no job for him to focus on, no purpose. He has nothing left. Mired in sorrow and loss and despair, he has nowhere to go.
Only then does the Father come back, not dead at all, to see what destruction His children have wrecked. To see what they've done to His creation in His absence.
Maybe He feels regret. Or maybe this is how it was always supposed to be.
And when He sees the desolation of the one who stopped it, without his other half, He decides to finish it off with a single word.
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Fin.