Bobby calls him every day for the first few weeks. After that, the calls are more infrequent. Sam never answers. He doesn't know what he would say, even if he did happen to pick up his cell. Bobby never stops calling, though, no matter how spaced out the calls are, and the only decency Sam has is to check his voicemail.
"Sam? It's me again." A weary sigh follows. "Look, son. I know you're torn up about your brother, but it'd be nice to hear from ya, boy. Hell, it'd be nice to see ya, too." A long pause. "We're worried about ya, Sam. No one should have to deal with this alone." Sam can picture Bobby rubbing a calloused hand over his gruff beard. "Just gimme a call if ya get this."
And that was it.
Sam stares at the phone for a long time, flips the lid down, and throws it against the wall so hard it breaks into 3 pieces. He laughs. A hollow, bitter laugh that rings out through the hotel room until he can't hold it anymore.
He doesn't buy another phone after that. He doesn't need to. Dad isn't around to text him mysterious coordinates, and Dean isn't there to call him if he strays too far.
Truth was, nothing happened after Dean died. There was no apocalypse, there was no endless crying, but rather, silence. It was a silence that taunted him. Dean was nothing more than a phantom pain.
-OOOOO-
He gets a phone call no more than a year afterwards, telling him that Sarah Blake was killed in her home, with her heart ripped out. He's sure that it was planned, that some demon, somewhere in the world, had planned it. But he doesn't care. In fact, he almost laughs at the irony of it. Almost.
Dean probably would have placed a comforting hand on his shoulder and told him he would be okay, that the pain would lessen. But Sam is no stranger to pain these days.
-OOOOO-
He nearly breaks down in a grocery store in Duluth after a hunt. All he wanted was a bottle of Pepsi and a Snickers candy bar, but he manages to find himself staring miserably at a box of Lucky Charms in the middle of the cereal aisle. He ends up buying them, and doesn't think twice when he pours two bowls the next morning.
-OOOOO-
He buys a dog and names him George. It seems to fit him. He's old and fat and he drools alot. Sam forgets to feed him sometimes, but the miserable whimpering reminds him to fill his food dish. George may be a good-for-nothing dog, but he keeps Sam company, and that's good enough for him.
George dies a month later.
Sam buries him in the yard of a burned down building because it's on the way to his next hunt, and he'll be damned if he gives a dog a proper burial. He puts a chew toy and a beef-flavored bone atop the soft dirt as parting gifts.
Sometimes he wishes he could go back to the Tuesdays he relived, because at least Dean was alive if only for a little while. Most days, he doesn't even feel guilty for thinking it. The thought of chasing down the Trickster and begging him to take him back to Tuesday crosses his mind all the time, but he never has the energy or the willpower to do anything about it. So he sits and waits, and hopes for a miracle.
He's been hoping since the hounds took his brother away.
-OOOOO-
As time goes on, Sam starts to realize that there is nothing for him anymore. He's old, and his memory is slipping away as his body fails him.
When he was younger, and when Dean was still alive, Sam always thought that they were both going to die young; that they were going to go out with a bang. He never thought dying old would be harder than dying young, when you still have so much left to give.
He goes back to visit George. He marvels at the fact that he still remembers where he buried the damn mutt, but he reckons it has something to do with the fact that George was the only living thing he ever let himself be close to, even if it was only for a month or so.
The pain that Dean left behind never leaves. It always throbs and aches and pulls and tugs and burns. The demon war is long over, and Lillith is completely out of power. There is nothing anymore. It's just a barren wasteland of scars and blood, tears and pain. Yet somehow, it feels almost comforting. Maybe it's because this is all Sam knows anymore, all he's ever known, really.
Life just doesn't feel like what it should be when there's a hole in your chest, and your other half has been taken away from you. Dean was ripped away like a limb, and it's so hard to function sometimes that Sam's vision blurs. He brings his old and battered body down to the earth and lays his head against the dirt, his eyes shedding moisture he'd been holding inside for 47 years.
Dean is gone and it takes so much energy for him to even begin to comprehend that. He just wants to curl up and sleep forever. It hurts, but he hopes for it. He hopes for it like he hoped for Dean to live.
Today is one of those days where it really fucking hurts.