Written for the Supernatural Quote Prompt Commentfic Meme at LJ. Sam: "I mean, what are you gonna do when it's all over?" Dean: "It's never gonna be over. There's gonna be others. There's always gonna be somethin' to hunt." Sam: "But there's gotta be somethin' that you want for yourself..."

AU ending to "Swan Song."

A Life without a Hereafter

Dean kneels on the grass in front of his brothers' shared grave. There's no sign of the giant maw that had opened up in the ground and swallowed his brothers whole like something out of a Greek myth. It was there; he'd seen it. He was there.

He was there when Lucifer and Michael had prepared for their "clash of the titans" death match. He was there when Lucifer, in Sam's body, had pounded and broken his face in. He was there when Sam had gotten the fallen angel under control and jumped into that hole, pulling Michael (in Adam) with them.

His face throbs. He doesn't care.

The sun beats at his back. He doesn't care.

He'll die here if he doesn't get himself to a hospital soon. He doesn't care.

He doesn't care.

His whole reason for caring about anything is gone. Sam's gone. And he ain't comin' back.

If he was missing, Dean could have found him. If he was dead, Dean could have bullied someone into bringing him back. (Not Cas—poor dude got blown to smithereens, again, and Bobby's dead too, neck snapped like you pop the head off of a dandelion.)

Sam's gone, body and soul. In Hell. In a lockbox in Hell. There's no way of getting him out.

Before they'd met up with Lucifer, Sam had forced Dean to make a promise.

Dean has no intention of keeping that promise. How could he?

Sam, of all people, Sam should know. Sam hadn't kept Dean's deathbed promise either.

Dean's not going to keep his promise. Apple-pie life, indeed. The notion's laughable.

He could kill himself, and that would take him straight to Hell. But once he got there, there's no way he'd be able to get to Sam, locked up in the very deepest hole in the very center of Hell. So that would be a Hell within Hell, being so close to his brother, yet not being able to reach him. He'd be Tantalus reaching for that unreachable fruit for all eternity.

Dean's not going to Hell.

He could die by natural causes and take the Starlight Express straight to Heaven. That is to say, get himself killed by a supernatural fugly as soon as possible on the first suicide mission he can find. Or maybe just sit here and let the injuries he's sustained kill him, and if they don't, he could just starve to death. But Dean's been to Heaven, and it's not pretty. It would be a Hell in Heaven, with no puppy-eyed, floppy-haired little brother there beside him to share it.

Dean's not going to Heaven either.

So what's a guy to do when he doesn't want to go to either Heaven or Hell, and he's mostly positive that neither wants him anyway?

He could shoot himself with the Colt, but he doesn't have it anymore. He'd lost track of it after the last disaster with Lucifer when Jo and Ellen had sacrificed themselves for nothing. So that option was gone.

Ruby's knife? It would kill him, certainly (or maybe not so definitely), but who knows if it obliterates human souls as well as demons'?

What Dean wants is to be gone. Kaput. He wants nothing—a vast sea of nothingness, that is. He wants to cease to exist, where he doesn't have to worry about Sam being tortured, or mourn his friends' and family's deaths. He doesn't want to feel. What Dean wants is no afterlife. His life here sucked; his previous forays into the afterlife had sucked. He wants his next trip to be to Nowherenothingness, and he wants it to be permanent.

So he prays. What? He knows that it's no use looking for God, and Joshua had said that their prayers were at least heard by the big guy.

And waddaya know? God answers. Finally.

Bastard.