Death was a curious thing.
For a Winchester, death wasn't a strange thing, and it sure as hell wasn't an unexpected thing. It wasn't something that either brother had ever really feared, they had never shied away from what they did every single day because of it. That wasn't the way they did things. They knew for a fact that their lives were almost guaranteed to be considerably shorter than everybody else's, and maybe that was why they had been so acceptant of it. They faced death every single day, they saw it every day, it was the norm for them. It wasn't shocking or something to be afraid of, it happened, it was a part of their daily existence. Yet, somehow, maybe foolishly, one brother had allowed himself to believe that his sibling was immune to it, that he was invincible, that, although death was such a certainty, it wasn't to them.
Deep down, he had known it not to be true, and he knew that eventually the life that they lived would catch up to them, probably sooner rather than later, but it had been easier to ignore those thoughts than to face them. Waking to that idea every day would have made their job unbearable. He had always known somewhere in the back of his head that one of them would end up dead eventually, but it was something that he had never liked to think about, and, had he been able to choose which one of them were to meet their fate first, he would have picked himself, without question and without hesitation.
But that was then. That was before he had lived on the other side of that choice. That was before he knew how much it hurt to lose his own brother. Had he been able to go back, had he been able to change things, he knew that he would be making a selfish decision, because he couldn't imagine a pain worse than what he had been left with at the loss of his sibling. It was unimaginable that anything could even come close to the feeling he had experienced in the moment he had watched his own brother die.
Losing a loved one, what could be a more awful experience than that?
Losing someone who had always been there with you, all day, every day, for years. Someone who had become so ingrained within your life that they were almost a part of the furniture, someone who you were so used to having there with you, just gone, in the blink of an eye, never to come back. Someone who had always been a best friend. Someone who had been there through the best and the worst of times. What could hurt more than that? Was there a harsher fate? What could be more tragic or devastating than such an event? A thousand suggestions could be made in a second, and none of them could even come close to the furious and unadulterated grief that he felt in that moment as he thought about his brother, and the pain that he had left behind after his death.
Grief was, without doubt, the harshest pain that he had ever experienced, and he had never known the true extent of it until the moment his brother had died. Grief could be more damaging than a gun to the head. He had learned that the hard way. He couldn't even begin to imagine a pain worse than what he felt at that point, there weren't words to describe such an agony.
The ache was always going to be there, it was never going to go away. There was always going to be something missing. There would always be an emptiness in his life, in the other motel bed that had no one sleeping in it, in the front of the Impala there was only going to be one brother, when he ordered food he was only ordering for one. It was hard to accept. Maybe he had taken things for granted at the time. Back then, he hadn't realised that watching a movie together, going out for a beer together, teasing each other and doing something as simple as singing a song as they drove from one hunt to another, they were the memories he would hold onto. It hadn't seemed anything out of the ordinary at the time, it hadn't seemed anything special, but he had never imagined that one day they would be the memories he cherished.
Everybody loses someone at some point in their life, and some deaths were always going to be easier to move on from than others. But when you lose someone that you physically cannot live without, where are you supposed to go? What are you supposed to do? How are you supposed to get over such a devastating change? He felt as though he was being held under water, like he was sinking, he couldn't breathe. He probably never would get over it, but he had to carry on. What was the alternative? What choice did he have but to keep going? They said that things became easier in time, and he prayed to god that they would, but he couldn't see that far ahead. He couldn't imagine a day where he woke up and didn't feel like it was going to take all of his effort and energy just to get out of bed and start the day.
That was how it had been for a long time after his death. But, in time, things had changed.
As time went on, it all seemed a little less unbearable. He became accustomed to the idea of it just being him and him alone. It was as though he was able to accept that he was really gone, even if it was just for a short time. And, sure, it sucked to miss his brother as much as he did, someone who had been such a huge part of his life, someone who had always seemed to be there, but sometimes there were days where it didn't hurt quite as much, where he felt as though he could carry on going without him. There were days where the world didn't seem so dark and so lonely, where everything didn't seem so evil and uncertain around him.
But then, out of nowhere, reality would come crashing back down around him. One little thing, whether it was a song on the radio or a movie on the awful motel television, it felt as though he was once again lost forever. And then it was all so real again, because he was. His brother wasn't coming back, ever, and he had to live with that. Forever. Until the day that he died himself, it was a feeling that would never completely go away.
When things got like that, and the only thing left was the pain, when all of his strength crumbled and left, it seemed like the only thing that was left in the world to do was cry—cry for the loss, the pain, the hurting, the missing hole in his existence that could have only been filled with the company of his brother—it was too much. Everything inside just screamed to see him one more time, to be able to change what happened the last time they were together, to be able to reword his goodbye and say something different, to make it right and apologise for all the hard memories that only surfaced back into his mind once it was too late to say anything. One more chance with him, that was all he wanted, to have back the last member of family he'd had. But there was no chance of that. Not this time. He wasn't coming back this time. He was well and truly gone.
The grief he felt was a strange thing to handle. Sometimes, he had seen it so many times, it left people helpless. Sometimes, when that window opened, and all the thoughts and feeling and memories of his brother came flooding through it, when the passing of him became all too real once again, it got harder. Once that window opened, life became colder, it became harder, sadder. And some days, it opened wider than others.
At some point he knew that he had to take a step back and think about what he was really doing to himself. His grief was destroying him from the inside out, and from the outside in, the way that he was living his life promised that it wouldn't go on for much longer. He had to take a moment and think about what his brother would say if he could see him the way he was. And he knew what his brother would say to him if he could, but, for the first time in his life, he refused to listen to him. Whatever he would say to him now, it didn't matter, because he wasn't there to say it. He could imagine it, he could almost hear it, but it wasn't real. It wasn't really there, and it wasn't really happening, so he wouldn't pay attention. And he would carry on the way he was. He wouldn't stop and think, he would just live.
What it all came down to in the end, his brother was dead. He was alone. And he couldn't deal with that. He didn't want to deal with it. He didn't know what to do, he didn't know where to go, and he didn't know where he could turn. Without his brother there with him, not a lot of things made sense. The world around him didn't make sense.
The pain became easier to live with, and the gap that was left by him maybe became narrower, but it never truly closed. And it never would. He would never truly move past what had happened, he didn't want to. He didn't want to imagine a day where he woke up and didn't miss his sibling like hell.
Death had ended his brother's life, but it didn't end the life that was still held onto by the living. It didn't end what he had left behind, and it would never extinguish the love that one brother had for the other. He would always live on in memory.
And maybe, just maybe, that was enough of a reason for the one left behind to keep going.