There wasn't a single word that came close to describing what it was like to see Dean die that one, final time. He thought he would wake up, and it would be Tuesday. Again. Regular, repetitive, endless Tuesday. Closing his eyes and expecting Dean to be there, tying his shoes on the floral print of the cheap motel bed sheets, listening to the same song, saying the same things, being the same Dean, the same, breathing Dean, was the worst possible thing to expect when holding the very last dead Dean.
For a long time he sat there with the body, looking at all the blood. He'd seen a lot blood in his experiences, but it was different. It was wrong. The crimson pooling around him was soaking into his jeans and his boots and his socks and he felt it at his very core, taking a piece of him with it when he decided to wash it off in the motel bathroom. He stole some towels from the laundry room and laid them all across the impala's backseat. Then he got Dean and laid him on top. He knew his late brother would kill him for getting any blood on his most prized possession.
Then he drove.
He wanted to drive to the end of the earth and just fall off but any hope of that was dashed a long time ago by Ferdinand Magellan who circumnavigated the globe and wow sometimes Sam wished he could just turn the uninteresting and unhelpful fact generator in his head off. But then his head started generating uncomforting thoughts, thoughts like Mom was gone, and Jess was gone, and Dad was gone, and now that Dean's turn to die had come to pass, he just felt… lost. Impossibly lost. And his head just kept on generating, coming up with facts he didn't want to be reminded of, numbers he didn't want to acknowledge. Like 102.
102.
That was how many times Dean had died. Once, smashed in by his own impala, one hundred times by the Trickster, and now, the finale, being shot at gunpoint for his wallet. That was it. That was the end of Dean Winchester, savior of humanity, destroyer of evil, dear, older brother. He was gone. He was gone, gone, gone. And for what? For nothing. He didn't go down swinging, his death didn't count. There was no purpose, no reason, no cosmic fulfillment in it. He sacrificed himself for four dollars and a free sub punch card with only two holes in it.
Sam threw it out the window in a fit of rage.
He was angry, so angry he felt he could drown in it, and maybe there was some part of him that wanted to, that just wanted some sort of escape, but he knew that wouldn't solve anything. If Dean couldn't make his death mean something, then Sam would make his mean enough for the both of them.
But first he had to do something with the body. He wouldn't salt it and burn it. Just in case, which was a very naïve thought but one he still acted on. He buried him on the outskirts of Lawrence, Kansas. It only seemed fitting his final resting place would be the place where everything started, maybe it would offer him some closure.
Who was he kidding? Some meaningless, homeless person shot Dean. There was no closure in that. There was no closure in digging his grave. There was no closure in burying him. Just like Jess and Dad and Mom didn't get any closure, neither would Dean. And Neither would Sam.
But as he laid the last shovel-full of dirt over Dean's grave, he finally found a word to describe seeing Dean die his final death.
Hell.