A/N: Lyrics are from Avicii, they're not mine! I'm just borrowing, because this week's episode completely wrecked me! XD
A drabble on what our boys might be thinking at the end of 10x22.
On a personal note, if the writers don't FIX THIS, I'm never speaking to them again! Or... you know... if I ever spoke to them to begin with, I'd certainly stop...
Hey, brother… there's an endless road to rediscover…
Hey, sister… know that water's sweet but blood is thicker….
Oh, if the sky comes falling down for you…
There's nothing in this world I wouldn't do…
Sam tore down the road, pushing the truck far beyond its capacity, but this road had no end. His throat was tight, tighter than his grip on the steering wheel before him, and he cursed the physical distance between his brother and him. At the other end of this road was Dean, and Dean needed him.
Cas had said Dean had killed the Stynes, all of them, brutally. Sam was losing his big brother. After everything… after all they had survived… they'd gone against Heaven and Hell and the devil himself, and he could not lose Dean like this.
He'd lost Dean too many times, and Sam could not do it again.
"Dean, just hold on," he whispered out loud, but the roar of the road under the tires carried no answer from his brother. "We'll fix this."
Futile words, perhaps, for Sam didn't even know that it could be fixed, he only knew that Dean was all he had. From the very beginning, Dean had been his everything.
Unbidden, memories splashed through Sam's mind like raindrops on a mirror, or tears on the dashboard.
Crappy hotel rooms, alone for fatherless days, but they had the time of their lives playing hide-and-seek or army men.
Parking the Impala in the middle of a field, beers in hand and peaceful silence between them as they watched the sun set into an unknown horizon.
Taking on the monsters, when the monsters had been nothing more than a boogeyman in the closet or a ghost on the highway; before the demons, before the angels, before an evil so ancient that once burned into his brother's skin, it could never come off. Back when they had each other's backs, no matter what.
The fights, the hugs, the return from death and disasters, the darkness and the highlights, he remembered them all. This road they'd walked had already been long and insane, but they'd walked it together.
He remembered sparklers on the fourth of July. Scintillating shoots of light bursting into the night, running through the field and laughing at the joy of the freedom.
Racing down the two lane asphalt with nothing but the wind through the window, Dean's obnoxiously loud music through the speakers. Sam had tried to tell him he was going the wrong way, but had Dean listened? Of course not. Had they gotten lost? Of course they had. And when Dean had turned down the dead end road, had they not ended up in the middle of nowhere?
Sam's world was a maze of dead end roads, and Dean was the only map he had. Now he would do anything it took to save his brother.
"Don't leave me now, Dean… you can't… please, I still need you! Don't you leave me now…"
Hey, brother… do you still believe in one another…
Hey, sister… do you still believe in love, I wonder…
Oh, if the sky comes falling down for you…
There's nothing in this world I wouldn't do…
Castiel hesitated at the threshold of the bunker, closing his eyes. With some of his grace returned, he had enough angelic senses to know that behind these doors was blood. Either it was Dean's, and he had lost his best friend… or it was not Dean's, and Cas had lost him all the more surely.
Dean was strong, the strongest man Cas had ever known.
But he would not win this fight.
Not even Cain, who had held out for years upon years, had won in the end. His fate would be Dean's, but Castiel was not prepared to watch that happen. The worst of it was, Dean knew it, too, deep in his heart. Cas knew that he did, because Dean had been the one who'd asked the angel to kill him, if he turned.
But Castiel was not prepared for that, either.
"Dean," he murmured, raising a clenched fist to his brow, head bowed. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't stop you. I'm sorry for whatever happens next."
If Dean had indeed gone down this road, he wouldn't be likely to willingly turn aside. Castiel had never been known for his optimism; he expected the worst, and that was usually just what he got. Dean was going to fight him, but Castiel would not fight back.
He would try to force himself to fight, he would struggle to make himself raise a hand to Dean, and in the end he would fail. And yet, he was about to walk through that door, to face the man who was by now too far gone to remember that family was all that held them together in this world.
Castiel had already seen what the Mark could do; he'd watched it in Cain. Everything that Dean had been was gone, everything that Dean stood for. He didn't believe in family, he didn't believe in love, he didn't even believe in Sam. Sam, whom he had carried out of the fire, the brother he'd gone to Hell for, in order to save. Sam, who had sometimes been Dean's sole reason to stand back up and keep fighting.
Sure, this was in the name of vengeance for Charlie's murder, but Cas knew what Dean might not realize yet: this wasn't about Charlie at all. The Mark had needed just one chink in Dean's armor, one single good excuse, and it had found what it needed.
"Maybe I'm not much of an angel," Castiel whispered, opening his eyes and settling his hand on the cold metal of the bunker's exterior wall. "But I am an angel nonetheless, and I still consider myself to be your guardian." Dean and Sam were his humans, his charges, his family, his friends.
So if a sacrifice was required to put their lives back together, Cas had already accepted as much, and he wouldn't raise a finger for himself in protest. There was nothing he wouldn't give, not even his own life.
But he couldn't stand there forever thinking about what he would be willing to do or what might happen; he merely needed to walk inside. Fate was a never-ending road and it would steer him along its course whether he knew the way or not.
What if I'm far from home?
Oh brother I will hear you call…
What if I lose it all?
Oh, sister, I will help you hang on…
Dean was so far gone, but deep inside the quietest recesses of his mind, he was still fully and utterly himself. He was lost, alone in a terrifying cacophony of blood and madness, and Dean was afraid.
It felt just like his nightmares of late, but no matter how hard he tried, Dean couldn't wake up, nor was he certain that he wasn't already awake.
Dean didn't even know how he had gotten here, how things had gone so wrong. If he hadn't accepted the Mark from Cain, to defeat Abaddon… if he hadn't lost the fight with Metatron, to have gotten killed and turned into a demon… if he hadn't sent Cas away from the Bunker because some stupid angel had told him to… if he hadn't tricked Sam into accepting an angel in the first place, against his wishes…
No. That last one, Dean still held to. Yes, it'd been a terrible thing to do, but sometimes life was nothing but the choice between something terrible and something even worse. He did not regret crossing that line to save Sam's life, and even though he could still hear Sam telling him he'd never make the same choice, Dean knew better.
Sammy would do anything. Sammy could still fix this. No matter how much Dean told him to let this go, Sammy wouldn't listen to him, and maybe they'd all still walk away from this. Dean didn't know how, and perhaps it was only a fool's hope, but fools hope was the only kind he had left. The piece of him that was locked inside his own mind, watching his own hands coat themselves in hot blood, was screaming for Sam.
This, Dean realized, was nothing but Hell, all over again. This was not the first time he'd washed his hands in blood, the blood he'd never wanted to spill. This was not the first time he'd shouted Sam's name, over and over, silently screaming for his brother who was too far away to hear him, but would hear nonetheless. Dean didn't know how long this piece of his mind would survive, how long before the monster he was becoming devoured him irreversibly.
"Sammy!" his mind cried, wanting nothing but to go home again; not to the four walls of the bunker, but home to wherever his family was, to whatever sanity he'd originally had. "Cas!" They would hear. They would come. He just had to hold on.
What had he said to his little brother? It should be him on that pyre, instead of Charlie? Had he said that to Sam, his Sammy? The one he'd fed and protected and watched over? The kid who'd irritated him to no end, the man he would have given his life for? Had he said that?
Dean's mind was going numb and the sole remaining piece that was truly him was beginning to fade. Terror like ice and wind froze his heart, a chilling darkness seeping into his senses. If he lost this remaining piece to the oblivion, he would fully become the monster.
"Please…"
The voice belonged to Cas.
So did the blood.
Dean's conscious mind didn't remember when he'd dragged the angel blade from Cas's sleeve, couldn't recall how long he'd been standing over his best friend, his brother, with the deadly weapon clenched in his fist. He knew Cas's bloody and beaten appearance was due to him, but it was all one huge blank. Cas was only here, he knew, because the angel would hang on until his life force was utterly obliterated, because Cas would never give up on him.
Please, Cas had said. Not to beg for his own life, oh no. Dean knew exactly what the angel was pleading for, to see just one spark of Dean still alive, to know that the real Dean was still there, a prisoner to the Mark but still fighting. Try as he might, though, the hunter couldn't keep the nightmare realm at bay.
"CAS! Cas, no! Fly away, save yourself! Don't let me do this to you!" Dean was screaming, but not a word crossed his lips. This had been his nightmare, ever since the last time he'd seen Cain. If he killed Cas… this was how it began. This was how it ended.
Those blue eyes stared up at Dean, as the tortured human fought for control, just enough control, just one more time… long enough to save Cas, who wasn't fighting him. This. Dean had strength enough for this, this last thing.
The angel blade sliced down, a silver flash that blazed then dulled as the blade struck home.
For a long moment, Dean didn't move, couldn't move, as all began to fade to black. His vision was starting to tunnel, and in the center of that tunnel were the blue eyes of his best friend. The blade quivered in the book Dean had pierced, but Cas was alive and that was all that mattered. Now Dean's energy was spent and he couldn't fight anymore. The sky itself was falling down and he was only a human, he couldn't fit those pieces back together.
The last sliver of Dean's conscious mind flared, a sparkler on a summer night, and then - like a sparkler - he burned out and was gone.
The Mark remained.
Hey, brother, there's an endless road to rediscover…
"You hold on," Sam snapped, eyes glaring down the barren road, intense and fierce. "I don't care what it takes, Dean. We aren't done yet. Not by a long shot."
Tears burned, but went unshed. There was no time for tears, no room for heartbreak. They'd been raised like warriors, and Sam hadn't come this far down the line to give up now.
No, he'd bring Dean back. If it meant the entire story began all over again, then so be it. The circle had no end, and fixing one problem would mean creating another, but that was their life: rediscovering the exact same endless road, the constant turn of agony and relief.
The circle would not be broken here, now.
Sam wasn't done yet.
Hey, sister, do you still believe in love, I wonder…
Through a hazy red of his own blood, Cas watched Dean disappear. Cas had failed to keep him there, to keep him safe as he'd promised Sam, and it was all he could do not to drown in despair.
But one glimmer of hope kept his light alive: Dean had not killed him. No matter how near a miss it might have been, he hadn't done it. The Mark didn't give a damn about one fallen angel; it could have made Dean bat him aside like he was an ordinary human. In fact, the Mark would have happily forced Dean's hand, for if the Mark liked the blood of demons, it loved the blood of angels.
Dean was lost to them, and Castiel had no idea how much of his human friend was still in there fighting.
But he was worth the fight, and even Castiel – who, after all, only expected the worst – had hope.
He and Sam would find a way, no matter the cost. They were going to save Dean.
That, he thought as his mind swam towards unconsciousness, was what brothers do.
Oh, if the sky comes falling down for you
There's nothing in this world I wouldn't do…