Don't Say That Later Will Be Better
Story and Chapter Titles taken from U2: Stuck In A Moment
Disclaimer: I don't claim ownership of Supernatural or the characters. No profit being made. Just playing in the sandbox.
AU from the end of Holy Terror 9X9
++++++++++++++++++++SPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPN+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dean twisted the iron key in its well oiled lock. Sammy had kept it oiled, even when he was grey and gaunt from the trials, like a drawing of a ghoulish medieval haunting from a dusty tome, the type of which that it sometimes felt they had spent their whole lives researching.
The click of the mechanism sounded with bitter finality. Dean pressed his palm flat against the bunker door. Not to test it for movement. It wasn't going to budge. It was like a sensory farewell or committing to memory what the Men of Letters' bunker had meant to him. His first home since he was four years old. Dean closed his eyes. His brain replayed his grieving rage, throwing his carefully displayed weapons to the floor, tearing the sheets from his memory foam mattress, tossing his clothes, until finally he had slept amid the chaos. That was after...
After... There is no more Sam
After... he had found different sheets, other ones carefully pressed and folded by hands over sixty years ago, of such quality that they had not yellowed with age. He had wrapped Kevin Tran's body with the reverence and care due to him, a departed family member, friend and prophet. There had been no eyelids to close in a gesture of respect. All Dean could do, and it was all he was capable of doing numbed by events, was give Kevin the hunters' funeral he had earned. A fifth of Jack raised in toast, Dean had stayed outside until the pyre burnt down. He wondered if Not-Zeke would come back, if Crowley could hear his throat scraping vitriol against the universe, if he might tip forward and be consumed by the fire like Daenerys Stormborn only to emerge whole and re-forged anew by the hand of God.
He'd called, prayed, to Castiel. Lying on the floor by Kevin's body with its smoldering eyes and unbeating heart, he had prayed that he needed Cas, needed help, but nothing happened. Cas had said he was an angel again but didn't have full mojo, maybe he couldn't hear those desperate prayers, maybe he could but Dean had forced him to leave and now it was time to taste his own rancid medicine. It was a hard pill to swallow, sticking in his throat and pushing against his trachea and gullet until he couldn't breathe or speak or weep anymore. Dean thought he might have passed out but didn't remember the details of the panic attack, if that is what it had been. Sam is gone
When he opened his eyes, azure blue ones did not stare into his. No sound of landing wings met his ears. The bunker was empty and cold... Foreign. He knew now why John departed Lawrence for a life on the road. There was no rulebook that said that they couldn't have used Lawrence as a base. Those times they had spent a school semester in Missouri or Minnesota, could have been Lawrence. But without Mary, Lawrence could never be home again. Dean understood that now. The bunker was tainted by death, befouled by an angel that Dean had allowed in. The enemy within who Dean had coaxed into his brother, against his will, without his consent... and now that motherfucker said that Sam...
Dean had dared to hope that he had found his home. Dared to believe he could nest and enjoy there in as much safety and comfort as their lives permitted. He had dropped his guard, began to think of Zeke as an ally, or at least a trustable frienemy. Hell, Crowley was more trustable. The deposed King was fuming that Abaddon was reneging on deals he would have honored. Crowley was in the dungeon. Dean was leaving but he couldn't think of the demon now. Perhaps Not-Zeke would return and smite him if he was bothered.
Dean picked his duffle off the dirt and slung it over his shoulder. He dried his damp eyes with his free hand, then scrubbed over his mouth and chin. Slipping into Baby's drivers' seat was a new stab of pain. No-one to ride shotgun. Castiel wasn't answering, or couldn't hear. Garth was MIA. Charlie was in a whole other dimension. Too many good people were dead and gone. Sam is gone.
If highway patrol pulled him over... he'd be a sure fire DUI... but if they asked him where he was headed, he wouldn't know. He needed this, to drive, to watch miles fall under Baby's wheels, to put distance between then and now.
It got colder and darker as Dean headed north. He was numb to the temperature. The Impala's lights lit enough of the world. The decision to go north had been random. He'd turned left when he met the two lane road outside Lebanon. Hours after dark just shy of Jamestown, North Dakota Dean spotted a barn and lightning struck tree that pinged a memory. The next turn off led to a shambled old shack that they had used when Leviathan meant they had to stay under the radar. There was no electricity. It had been lit by blue battery powered lights and Sam had charged his laptop at diners. However it was dry and had a working wood burning stove. It was an option if Dean Winchester wanted to fade into obscurity, to step back until he could see and think of anything else expect a loop of Kevin's misplaced trust in him and that there might be No more Sam
With his socks against the door of the stove and a long necked bottle in his hand, Dean tried again...
"Cas? Cas Man if you can hear me?" He paused to lick his lips and think of the futility of this plea, "Cas? I've fucked everything up. I've... I need you. I don't know what I said yesterday. Maybe my prayer sounded like I wanted a favor or for you to use your new angel powers... I don't know if there is anything you can do but come... come here to me..." Dean gulped, guilt rising like waves of yellow bile, "I'm the one who told you to stay away, but I was wrong, so very wrong Cas. Please. This is me, saying please..."
Dean waited, breath held, but there was no rush of wings, no deep graveled hello, just silence and falling snow against the cracked window panes.