"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear." ~C.S. Lewis

Let me start off by saying I'm so sorry for this.

I just watched Swan Song for the second time last night and this tag is just a painful, angst-ridden, tear-stained, emotional purge.

I'd forgotten about a few things in that episode, namely the face Bobby made when he said goodbye to Sam in Detroit, and then the scene at the end when Dean goes back to Lisa and just kind of falls apart on her.

That right there guys...it was just too much.

Damn Jensen and his acting talent making me sob at 2 am.

So I had to go and make it worse and this is the tag to that episode. It's mostly about Dean's thoughts and feelings after he lost Sam. I know it's been done to death but I had to write this for my own sake anyways.

Rated T for language and mentions of suicidal thoughts.

Dean never meant to keep that promise.

He'd looked straight into Sammy's eyes as his little brother begged him to keep on going after he was gone and Dean didn't say a word in reply, because he couldn't really promise that.

Now every fiber of him wants to run as far away as from everything as he can, to run until his lungs burst and his legs give out, to never look at another person, never again hear those woefully inadequate words 'I'm sorry' tumbling from someone's lips as the they did from Bobby's. Dripping out in an uncontrollable wave like his tears as he hung on to Dean and apologized for everything and nothing. While he clung to Dean and then stepped back after a moment because his pseudo-son was so cold and unresponsive in his arms that hugging him felt just like hugging a dead body.

Dean wants to run before he has to hear it again from Cas. Hear his best friend telling him that he got what he asked for, that this is all part of some divine plan and that he should have faith in god, when all god ever gave Dean were responsibilities too heavy for his human shoulders to bear. And Sam, god gave him Sam, his little brother that was like an unquenchable light in his life, a blue flame that burned into him and gave him the passion to keep standing when all he wanted to do was lie down. And now god took him away. It was candy from a baby easy for god to rip away the only sweet thing Dean had ever known in his life. And eventually Cas is sorry, trying to comfort his friend in the only human way he understands, with an awkward hug and overused words of sympathy.

Everyone is so goddamn sorry but no one can do anything about this, all the remorse and compassion in the world isn't gonna fix Dean, and he doesn't want to reason with the shattered parts of his mind that tell him to end it all.

Dean never meant to listen to Sam. God knows he could never keep a promise that stupid in his life and he should have punched Sam as hard as he could when he condemned him to this pointless existence. Apple pie and suburbia? An ordinary life without the threat of death? Living on in a world without Sam? No way. Soldiers like him, who've waded that deeply in blood and tears, who've seen the backside of humanity over and over again, watched the evil and the darkness spreading like cancer over the earth and then tried to clean up that shitstorm with nothing but their bare hands, who've taken so many lives and made so many mistakes, and gotten beat down and thrown away and overlooked. Who've watched the people they love die, held them in their last moments, and seen them fade away, taking the last shred of hope and sanity from the ones they leave behind. Soldiers like him? They don't ever come home. They have no home to come to. They have war and they have not war but there is no peace for them at the end of that fight.

But maybe it's the unspoken pact he made with his brother, the flicker of hope he'd seen in Sam's eyes at the idea that he could finally do something for his big brother. *Oh, Sammy* Dean thinks *how could you not see all that you did for me?* Maybe it's that idea, or maybe it's that he's in a haze of grief and the only thing he can think of is that the only way he has of taking care of Sam now is by looking out for himself.

What a terrible, awful, genius trick for his little brother to pull on him. To plant that seed of a thought that said he had to try to be happy for him. Because after all his plans to throw in the towel, to end himself once and for all, Dean finds himself driving for hours and hours towards Lisa and Ben and a normal life. Part of him not even knowing what he's doing, and the other part pleading with anyone that will listen that he might have the strength to go against the dying wish of his clever bastard of a brother, wishing that he could find it in him to pull the steering wheel and crash into a ditch or off a bridge and just bleed out.

Because he feels death is every corner of himself, he can taste it coming, like the metallic bite of blood before a blink into nothingness.

After growing up around so much death there's a look that something has right before it kicks the bucket and Dean knows he has the look. He's had it for years, every time he glances in the mirror he can see it staring at him like a corpse that rots inside his weary eyes. And now that corpse is crawling out of him, it's reaped him, every last bit of hope that he'd had, now eaten away by this lovely, numbing, consuming cancer that is his own suicidal mind.

But he keeps going. Goddammit he's so mad at Sam. That blip of anger breaks through the fog. How could he even suggest this? He was so ignorant if he thought that Dean could just be ok, that he'd even want to be ok.

Sam didn't know how much he mattered to Dean and he sees that now. Now that it's too late to tell him.

Dean knows there's no way that his little brother would do the same in his position; if the tables were turned Sam would make any harebrained deal with any backwoods demon on any bloody crossroads in the world in one second to bring Dean back again. Either that or he'd throw himself into a hopeless fight or off himself with a bullet to the brain in a dingy motel room.

That damn, little hypocrite.* Dean seethes, how could he do this to him?

But he did it, and Dean kind of promised, even if it was just a silent acknowledgment, and he can't let his brother down again. So white-knuckled he drives towards his doom.

Dean doesn't mean to break down.

But when he knocks on that door and sees Lisa standing there, she just looks so young and beautiful and alive. She's so clean and pure and remarkably innocent to the river of blood and sorrow that Dean has just waded out of. Sure, she knows what he does for a living, but knowing it and *knowing* it firsthand and front-row like he does, are two different things, and it's nice to look into innocent eyes for a change. Those eyes are looking into him deeply and carefully and they're the kind of eyes that he's always needed, the kind of eyes that a man can crawl into and build a home. A stronger man than Dean that is, one who hasn't given away too much of himself to be loved. That's what Lisa deserves.

She smiles and the smile is not entirely unknowing, it's small and sad and gentle and it's a look that his mom might have given him when he was about 3 years old when he fell down and was trying to be brave about it. Right before she bandaged him and hugged him.

He clings desperately to the scraps of composure he's got left, but his words still come out tight and breathless and high-pitched.

Then, she asks if he's alright and *oh god*...the numb place inside him trembles a bit and he barely manages the 'yeah' that sneaks through his swollen throat. His painful heart thunders in his chest like he's a frightened rabbit and she's standing there with that same look of quiet understanding, and when he asks if he can come in and she says of course...it's finally too much.

Dean doesn't mean to break. But he does.

She moves aside to let him in and he just realizes he can't take another step. He stumbles into her and she's saying 'it's ok, you're gonna be ok' over and over again like that's supposed to be comforting. But he's not ok, he's broken, and right now his biggest fear is the thought that he ever could be ok again. He doesn't deserve to be ok, he doesn't want to be. Without Sam he wants to be in pain forever.

Dean's so weak. So weak his knees cave and he's falling through the air and she's going down with him, guiding him, kneeling with him, cradling him while he mourns for everything he's lost and it's a lot of ground to cover, an entire lifetime of grief that nothing as simple as tears can wash away.

In that position he looks like he's praying, but he hasn't prayed since that hopeless night all those months ago when he locked his brother up in Bobby's cage to dry out from drinking demon blood and begged god to help him and god didn't lift a cosmic finger. And as far as Dean can tell god's doing nothing now.

So Dean lets himself hurt, lets himself cry and cry in Lisa's arms. He can't help it and he can't seem to stop. He just smells her perfume and burrows into her shoulder and feels her holding him so tightly, like he's a bleeding wound, apply enough pressure and he will clot. Dean sobs like a little boy in her arms while she helplessly mutters platitudes and hushes him and tries to soothe him the way she soothes Ben after a nightmare.

The tears don't dry up for what feels like hours, and when they do, he's a shriveled husk, an emotionless shell, and he hopes that he stays that way forever. There should be no break from this agony, this hell of loss, not if there is any justice in the world. And Dean decides he will make his own justice. He decides to throw himself into his own personal hell as willingly as Sam jumped into literal hell the day before.

And for that year, Dean goes to hell and locks himself in. Long after he's gotten up shakily, still leaning on Lisa, and dried his sore, swollen eyes and cleared his raw throat. Long after he's drank his beer and told Lisa the unbelievable story of Sam's sacrifice in broken sentences and after he's hugged Ben who keeps looking at his friend's swollen face with worried eyes and asking 'what's wrong, Dean?'. After he's slept fitfully beside Lisa, clinging to her so tightly it's like he's trying absorb her into himself. Long after he's spiraled completely into that life of days and weeks and months. That life of so much time and so much strangled, awful peace that hurts him more than anything he's lived through. Long after he's covered up the Impala beneath a tarp in the garage, buried her like a faithful dog so that he won't have to look at the empty seat that's still adjusted as far back as it will go to accommodate the overgrown legs of it's former occupant. Long after he's supposed to have recovered from the death of his little brother, Dean hurts. And every time he starts to scab over, he rips that scab off again.

No. He will not be ok. Because being ok? That's the worst thing he can imagine.

~end

Sorry for any bad grammar. I wish it could be perfect but I can't see my own mistakes after looking at it for too long-usually I don't see them all until after I click 'publish'. It's like some kind of cosmic joke.

Hope I didn't ruin your day with all this pain.

Review if you liked it! :)