It was not supposed to happen this way.
Dean supposes in his dirty, broken heart of hearts that it had to happen eventually. Just not like this.
Everybody dies, of course.
But Sam isn't "everybody."
The devil rode the kid to Hell, for Chrissake, then rented headspace with him. He survived months of sipping A-positive demon juice, a year of running around with no soul in his body, three trials that sucker-punched him down to the very molecule, and the possession of a seriously screwy angel. All that and he came out in one piece. Kid was damn-near invincible.
Dean drops to the corner of his bed, face in his hands. "How, Sammy?"
Maybe it was age. Maybe his little brother was getting rusty after all this time. Sam just had his birthday; 47 probably hit his joints like a motherfucking train, being 20 feet tall and everything. Sure, that was it. Just age.
"No… Damn it, no." He pushes a hand through his hair once, twice, again. His nails bite into his scalp.
That can't be it. Sam knew the game, knew the moves. If it had been a demon hunt, or vermin from the bowels of purgatory, or even a damn vampire, Dean could have understood. But it was only a salt-and-burn, my-dad-beat-me, vengeful-murdering-motherfuckin' ghost. After all these years, through rain and sleet and snow and hellfire, he'd thought Sam could handle one damn spirit. So how could it be that simple, some poor bastard's postmortem grudge putting an end to all that good luck, all that stubbornness, all that strength?
The ratty blankets catch against his jacket as he slides off the bed, and the floor meets him with a jolt through his lower back. His head falls back against the bedspread, neck unwilling to go on any longer. Dull aches settle everywhere, communing at the bend of his knees, the kinks in his spine. He's becoming reacquainted with wounds he hasn't thought about in ages: that fracture in his left thigh, that twinging place in his right shoulder that reminds him of the unholy number of times it's been dislocated. His bones groan, an old house that can't be fixed. Rain must be coming.
It's in these creeping, calm moments before the first taps of raindrops that his guard slips, just for a moment, and stumbles back into the arms of a day he just wants to forget.
He remembers the sounds sharper than anything. The bass tones of two knees hitting the floor, the slap of hands after. That choking, haunting gurgle through the blood— "Dean..." —and the crumple of jacket and jeans. Dean went on pumping his shotgun, emptying the surgeon general's recommended daily allowance of sodium into the flicker of a being in front of him. He dispelled the ghost just in time to see Sam go starfished on the rotted floor, dark with his own blood. He remembers rasping his brother's name, turning over the huge body he'd mocked so many times, straining against the weight of limbs gone heavy.
"No, Sammy, don't—" He didn't know who he was begging. Sam, God, Castiel. It didn't matter. They were all as good as dead.
Sam clung to Dean's jacket, that stupid-long hair plastered to his bloody mouth, blinks erratic. Great rattling heaves rose out of his chest, escaped from the gash up his ribs, too deep and wide and full of jigsawed bones for Dean to help it. All the king's horses, all the king's men: useless motherfuckers.
"Don't you dare." Dean said it without meaning to, but he didn't— still doesn't— regret it. He was too old for this dance with Death, this middle school grind-n-bump that ended in the afterlife dissatisfied and the brothers Winchester violated. Disentangling Sam from the great beyond, putting him back together, keeping him from blowing apart at the over-stitched, hell-rotted seams... God, he couldn't do it again.
"Don't you leave me, Sammy."
"Dean," Sam gasped, and it wasn't so much a word as a struggle. "Don't— don't bring— back. Not— not again."
"Like hell I won't."
A strangled sound left Sam as Dean hefted him up, held the kid's graying head against his shoulder, tried to put pressure on the wound, but the whole damn heel of his hand sank into it.
"Please," Sam rasped. "Dean."
"I'm not leavin' you, Sammy." If he snarled, that wasn't his fault; panic writhed hot and cold under his ribs, tight around his lungs.
"Don't." Drool and blood dampened his jacket, hot with Sam's half-tempo breaths. The kid's last conscious movement was to reach up, wipe the saliva off Dean's neck. "Love you, Dean."
And the exertion eased out of Sam in one long, limp movement, leaving Dean with tons and miles of empty body in his arms, a head lolling on his shoulder.
"Sam?" He clutched at the mess of hair, tugged it when he got no response. "Sam." He ripped the head back, met the half-open eyes, the hang of an unclenched jaw. "Sam!" Dean shook the body, too rough, too angry. No response, no change. He wrapped his arms around it, fierce and crushing, and spared a wince for the crack of fragile rib. "Sammy, don't you dare! How could you? How—?"
He's crying again.
"Shit," he hisses, pushing the back of his hand over his eyes with too much pressure. Purple circles bloom over his vision. He shoves to his feet with a swear under his tongue at the protest of his knees, his lower back, his hips. Fifties be damned: he's still too young to feel this old.
He walks to the other side of the two-bed motel room where a single table stands garnished with a bowl of slapdash ingredients, symbols smeared in blood and seven fluttering tea lights. Sam's laptop sits open on a chair, flickering over the Word document where he saved copies of their various rituals. Dean isn't sure which is nerdier: the fact that his brother saved them at all, or the fact that they were protected under the password "D4nt3s_1nf3rn0."
Dean casts a long glance over his shoulder at the body on the second bed. It has been stripped of most of its layers, down to jeans, an undershirt and a dried shell of blood gone brown. It's starting to get ripe, but hell if he can't handle that old body smell by now. Sam'll want a shower, though, if he wakes up.
When he wakes up.
"Alright, let's do this," he says to the lifeless body, and picks up the laptop. It's not the most elegant setup, but Dean's years beyond worrying about that kind of thing. He clears his throat and begins to read: "Terribilis messorem, spiritus qui congregat mortuis, audi, ausculto, ac exaudi me..."
The incantation runs long against his throat. A few moments in, his arms tire and he sets the laptop on the table, forced to bend to read the screen, much to the complaint of his back and neck. The uncaring glow of technology grates on his eyes; he's reduced to squinting and eventually must battle for focus. Just as he resorts to making the font size larger, the lights flicker and the room plunges into a chill. He glances about to confirm all the changes, then snatches the knife out of his waistband. He presses a deep cut into his forearm and bleeds into his palm, still chanting the words on the screen. When the rivers of red have gathered into a pool in the valley of his hand, he shouts the last bit of spell,
"...manifesta ante teipsum in oculo mortali!"
and slams his hand onto the center of the table.
For a moment, there is nothing but the shimmy of the table settings and the gleam of the blood spattered like a firework beneath his hand.
But then, "Dean?" The sound is more a creak of old hinges than a voice.
Dean turns with his knife at the ready and is met by the balls-shriveling stare of a reaper, weathered and knobby and wearing an Oxford suit. It squints at him, eyes roaming between his mouth and his chest, as if silently judging him for his need to breathe. Then it sees Sam on the bed. It heaves a sigh and the air about it writhes and convulses until the reaper is a recognizable countenance of feminine slopes, black hair and sharp eyes.
"Look," says Tessa, "I don't know how you came by that spell, but I'm not going to play this game again. Here's the bottom line: Death doesn't want to do any dealing with you. All Winchesters are blacklisted with no returns. Sam is gone. End of story."
Dean slaps his knife down on the table. "Look, every time we've met it's been the same story, you tellin' me you can't do anything about it, and every time there's ended up being some loophole, so believe me when I say I ain't takin' no for an answer on this one."
"Yes, you are." The finality of her statement hits the bottom of Dean's stomach like so much lead. "I watched him carried into the afterlife myself, Dean. He's in Heaven now. Only Death can carry him back, and He'd sooner damn you Himself than run another errand for the sake of your comfort. This is not a matter of urgency. The apocalypse has been over for decades." She pauses, casts a long glance at Sam's empty face. When she turns back to Dean, her mouth is flat and her eyes are unflinching. "No one is going to move Heaven and Earth to bring back one man who's already overstayed his time in life. You and Sam were two giant wrenches in fate, but that's over now. The natural order is just getting back on track."
Dean's stomach yawns into an abyss. He flicks a glance at Sam, then meets Tessa's eyes. She has a stare like buckets of ice in his shoes.
"Tessa, you gotta understand. This can't—"
Glass shatters.
Dean hits the floor, speckled with bits of light bulb, window and mirror. Tessa stands rigid, but unharmed by all appearances.
"What the hell!" Dean pushes himself up, careful to avoid cutting his hands on the minefield of a grimy carpet. "What're you—?"
"Shut up," Tessa snaps and turns away from him. When she looks back, her eyes are blown wide, pupils pinpoints. "He's here."
A breath catches in Dean's throat. "Death?" Tessa doesn't respond, just rushes for the door, standing on the tips of her toes to see out the peep hole. Dean crowds in behind her. "Is it Death?"
Tessa opens the door and falls face-down on the threshold.
A long, keening wail breaks out of her, a requiem and a jubilation all at once, a jarring sound manifesting on so many frequencies that Dean nearly pisses himself. He's caught just staring at the prostrate reaper for several gasping breaths, then finds the air to say, "What the hell?" but she doesn't respond.
It's then he realizes that she's saying something, one word, over and over, with a joy so sheer it flirts with dirges. He stumbles back from her, and the further he gets, the clearer the word becomes: Father. The reaper cries Father.
Dean turns toward the parking lot.
The woman who stands before him is small. She wears only an overlarge sweater and a pair of sweatpants, feet bare and body unadorned by any sort of jewelry or makeup. Hair tumbles unkempt down to her waist, a wild kingdom of chestnut twists and kinks. She is dark-skinned and fine-boned, though her race and age are imperceptible. The soft edges of her allude to the barely-there curves of a girl younger than fourteen, but her eyes are old, cradled in crow's feet, deep with the weight of millennia.
She says, "Hello, my son," and Dean's body shudders from the core outward. It takes a few shaking moments for him to realize that the very ground beneath him just convulsed.
"Who are you?" His voice breaks across every syllable. Moisture slips over the corner of his mouth and salt flourishes against the tip of his tongue. His breaths come ragged. He's crying.
"I believe you know me, Dean," the woman murmurs, and behind her, lightning cracks jagged toward the earth. "Though you have not spoken to me in some time."
Dean almost chokes on a laugh. He doesn't know why; this isn't funny. "Sammy was more the prayin' type."
"I know." Thunder washes over the parking lot just as a smile rises on her face, an untethered balloon that grows until Dean realizes he's sucked his lungs so full of air that they're aching. He exhales and on the next breath is filled from the lips inward by the sweetest taste he's ever come upon, rich and full and rattling the back of his mouth so hard that it is almost a sound.
The woman stops smiling and Dean is able to think again.
"We've had a long talk, Samuel and I," she says. "He had many questions, but he is at peace now. He has a single request."
A gulp rocks through Dean, so fierce that he wonders if he just swallowed something living. "What'd he want?"
"He wanted me to be with you for this." Lightning again, three branches this time, so slow that Dean sees each length jolt forward like channels flooding.
"For what?"
Thunder hits, closer, and it comes not from the sky but from her lips, a rolling, living breath: "Your death."
And then Dean's sitting on sticky plastic.
He jerks around, takes in the busy diner and the whining kids and the waitresses pulled six ways. When he turns back, the woman is sitting in the booth across from him. A glass of water stands in front of her with a half-squeezed lemon buoyed on the top and a bright blue straw perched in the middle.
"Do you know how old you are, Dean?"
Dean tries to speak and finds his lungs, throat and lips entirely still. Not paralyzed, not wounded. Just still.
"Your body is fifty-one," the woman says, lifting her glass to her lips. The straw brushes her eyelashes as she takes a drink from the rim. Her lashes are white, Dean notices. Snowflakes. "Your soul has endured almost a hundred years."
Dean blinks at her. "Y'd think a guy could get Medicare."
Her lips perk to one side. "Sam's soul lived twice as long, and several unfortunate Tuesdays." She smiles again, a rueful, beckoning thing that strings Dean along like the fat kid losing tug-of-war. "Yet, he was ever still your little brother." The glass meets the table with a ping of pure silver, the sort of sound that has no business slipping from the butt of a chipped diner piece. She twirls it by the rim in her fingers.
"Why'd you have to take him?" Dean writhes under her stare for a gasping moment. Every hair on his body prickles up. It takes a few centuries for him to realize he spoke aloud. He swallows, reiterates: "Why?"
"He was so tired, Dean," she says, and says it with such conviction that Dean shudders. A bird-brittle hand goes to her forehead. Oceans rest on the cusps of her lower eyelids, but she does not shed a tear. "Just struggling. So sick in his soul, in his body. So ruined. I let you have him longer than you should have, but it was time to go."
And something happens in Dean's twisting gut; maybe a too-taut string finally snaps, or a door left unlocked blows off its hinges, or the struggling Atlas inside him finally succumbs to the weight of his burden.
Whatever it is, it breaks him.
"He was ruined because of you!" he screams, and every word is serrated blades over his throat, whispers of Alistair's flicking wrist. He's on his feet, knocking the table askew before he knows quite what's happening. "You made him Lucifer's vessel, you stood by and did nothing while he got bathed in demon blood, you were the one who let him nose dive straight into the pit, you made the trials that almost fucking killed him, you let Bobby get shot, you let Castiel get plucked and die, you made our father a wreck, you took our mother from us— you—"
he slaps the table,
"ruined—"
slap,
"every—"
then beating with his fist,
"fucking—"
bang,
"bit—"
bang,
"of—"
bang,
"our—"
bang,
"lives!"
And he expects to be carved open by lightning then and there, because fuck, that would be a fitting end. He stands still, breathes so hard that he feels as if he's growing and shrinking. The entire diner stares, silent.
He waits for death.
Instead the woman looks up at him, and she is awash with tears, so many that her hair sticks like seaweed to the damp column of her neck and clings in the dips of her collarbones.
"And I could have given you peace," she whispers, a rush of wind, a flurry of beating wings, a breath escaped in slumber. The entirety of the restaurant turns back to what they were doing, as if Dean didn't just tear his throat apart yelling. "I could have given you peace, if only you had asked me."
"Peace?" Dean can't stand the catch of his own throat. He's still crying, though by now he can hardly be bothered to care. He's probably going to run out of tears soon, anyway. "Like any of that coulda been peaceful. I don't want your goddamn crocodile tears!" Holy fuck, did he just say 'goddamn' to—? Oh, shit. He did.
Yeah, the smiting can't be far off now.
With a slow, sweeping gesture, the woman indicates Dean's seat.
"Sit, my son."
He does.
She draws a deep breath and thunder breaks outside; the diner rattles, tiles and light fixtures and silverware and all, but none of the patrons or staff seem to notice.
"Be at peace, child. I am not going to kill you. This is not a visit of judgment." Her head cocks backwards, a motion reminiscent of Castiel but infinitely wiser, older. Her lips part as if to speak, but she says nothing. Dean is drawn, breath shallow, to the edge of the booth. He wants nothing to do with anything she has to say, and yet feels as if he will lose sleep for the rest of his days if she doesn't feed him another word.
A moment languishes as she waits, and Dean watches her tears dry. He tracks the glistening lines back to her eyes and realizes he can't tell what color they are, not a simple matter of "is that green or blue or grey?" but more an inability on a sensory level to understand quite what he's seeing. Whether it's a color at all, he's unsure. He knows only that it's beautiful and at the same time twists his guts into a heaving mess that longs for a good, purging vomit.
"I have been waiting for you to call out to me, Dean," she says finally.
Gulping, Dean fights the rising revolt inside his body. Fuck butterflies, he's got damn albatrosses in his stomach. "I'd find that a lot easier to swallow if you hadn't been AWOL this whole time." He clears his throat and presses on, because hell, he ain't dead yet and apparently this is about his peace of mind. So he's gotta know: "Where the hell have you been? What have you been doing?"
She smiles for a third time, and this one physically draws Dean forward, planting his hands on the edge of the table, sucking all the moisture from his mouth. He tastes that sound again, and can't decide if it's honey or the croon of a low voice, or perhaps the feeling of skin scrubbed clean.
"I have been everywhere," she says. Lightning peels white through the window. "I have done the work my followers have not. Mondays are for the homeless, Tuesdays for the suicidal, Wednesdays for the war-torn, Thursdays for the abused, Fridays for the orphans, widows and the widowers, Saturday for those in prison, and Sunday for those who have left the doors of their churches with their souls still hungry."
Dean chokes around a half-aborted laugh of hysteria, because of course she's gotta be a philanthropist.
"Thought you said we weren't your problem."
Thunder shatters the windows of all the cars parked outside; Dean flinches, bites his tongue. Copper tickles the secret places around the bed of his mouth.
"I love my children, Dean."
For a moment Dean can see floodwaters churning behind the not-color of her eyes. He swallows down the copper. "Then why the hell didn't you intervene?"
She takes a long sip of her water, then sets the glass with another lovely ping against the tabletop. "Dean, would the free will I gave to my creations have meant a thing if I stepped in and made all of the important changes?" She reaches forward and lays her hand upon Dean's (he experiences simultaneously the sting of hornets and a tactile pleasure not unlike orgasm). "A good parent gives their children independence."
Dean tears his hand away, and it smacks dumbly against the back of the booth. He's numb from the elbow down. "A good parent doesn't walk out without even calling," he says, and the venom is lost to the tremble of his throat.
"Who do you think brought back Castiel, Dean? Who saved you from the raw wrath of Lucifer's grace?" She watches him a moment, gaze deep and probing and painful, then breathes a sigh that stirs the diner into a rustle of loose hair and fabric. The patrons hardly glance up as their ponytails and jackets flutter. "Who do you think allowed Mary Winchester to wake and die on the eve of Azazel's poisoning, that you and Sam should be raised to be hunters equipped to fight when the time came?"
Unbidden, Dean is accosted by images of apple-pie, pre-law Sam folding beneath the pressure of the devil with nary a lick of sense to say no. He grits his teeth against it.
"Fuck. That's— shit. Okay, fine, I get— I get the logic. But why…" he pulls a long swallow, because he's been asking this of himself for years and this is his the only time he's ever gonna get an answer, "why did it have to be so fuckin' hard? Just once, couldn't it have been easy?"
"Do you think the sort of bond that strangles devils could be forged through anything other than fire and blood and pain, Dean?"
He gulps. "I don't—"
"It can't," she breathes. "And would that I could have taken that cup of suffering from you, but someone must bleed." Then she leans in and whispers, so close that her breath disturbs the tiny hairs on Dean's skin, "The pain you have felt over Sam, Dean, is only the barest fraction of the pain I have felt for you. But it's time for the pain to be over."
Dean stiffens. "I'm gonna die?"
The woman gives a small nod, then drops back into her seat. "You are."
"You care to explain that?"
"It will happen in two minutes."
Dean whips around to the check the clock and claps his hand to the gun in the band of his pants.
"No."
He turns back to the woman from him. Her lips smile but her eyes do not. She says, "A thousand enemies outside the house are not as dangerous as one within."
Dean feels confusion crease his face but doesn't bother to curb it. Across from him, she lifts her glass and tilts it back until an ice cube knocks into her teeth. She lets it slide into her mouth, then appears to swallow it whole.
"I gave that Proverb to the Arabs," she says.
Breathing comes hard. "How'm I gonna bite it?" Shit, he sounds wrecked.
"Heart attack." She sets her glass down again. Another ring of silver. "There is a history in your family. Stress and a high cholesterol diet have not helped, either."
"Fuck," Dean says, and she only smiles at him.
"Do not be frightened, Dean. You will not be alone."
The plastic underneath him becomes starchy motel sheets. Ozone and old corpse mingle, an unholy affair in Dean's nostrils. He faces Sam's stony form on the opposite bed; a breeze says the door is still open. Broken glass crunches beneath the shifting of his shoes. Tessa is gone.
The woman sits beside him.
The first kick of his death throes comes counterpoint to her hand on his shoulder. He grasps at his aching chest; she grasps his arm.
Love swallows him whole.
He is torn apart and put back together, gutted and refilled, scorched raw then bathed in new skin, washed in a symphony of stillness and goodness and power. Jagged edges whisper over his cheeks, his fingers, the brush of something home, wings soft as down and hot as his mother's lips against his fever-warm forehead.
"Dean."
He meets her eyes. They are not a color. They are heat, he realizes. Wavering, shimmering, glorious warmth.
"I have something for you," she says. The hand on his shoulder slides gently until it reaches his limp fingertips. She leaves something in his palm, an object foreign yet so familiar that he doesn't have to look to know it's glowing.
"Put it on me," he gasps, chest pinched, heart thundering to the beat of a different drummer. He'll be damned if his jaw doesn't feel like it's trying to crawl backwards into his throat.
With a smile that stills his heart for a blessed moment, she takes the pendant from his hand and drapes the cord about his neck. Then she presses a hand against his chest to lay him down; he goes, aching and quiet, into the coarse blanket.
Perhaps it is only the confusion of dying, but Dean is sure he hears the distant croon of his mother.
And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain.
The woman smiles, all glory and warmth and everything Dean gave up believing in a long time ago. "Say goodnight to your brother."
Feverish, Dean turns, faces his lifeless counterpart on the next bed. Through the gleam of the amulet, he can almost imagine Sam breathing, filling the room with the legato half-snore Dean can hardly sleep without.
"'Night, Sam."
Don't carry the world upon your shoulders.
Then Dean is four years old.
His hands press tiny and loving against the swell of his mother's body. Flurries of movement turn inside.
"What's that?" he asks.
Mommy smiles. "That's your brother moving."
Dean grins so big that his cheeks hurt.
For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder.
Then he's eight.
"I'll trade you," he says to Dad.
Dad looks up from his bottle, eyes all purple beneath. His beard is scruffy and his hair is long. Dean remembers when Dad's face was soft and his hair looked nice; that was before they slept with salt across the windows and fear inside their stomachs.
"Trade me?" Dad asks, brow knitted. He stares at the bowl of ice cream Dean holds out, then down at the Whiskey in his own hand. He huffs a low sound, not a laugh but close enough for Dean. "This stuff isn't for you. Eat your ice cream."
Dean frowns and pushes the bowl up under his dad's nose. "You eat it. It's better for you."
Sighing, Dad drags a hand over his face. "Fine. Okay." He sets the Whiskey aside. "Alright, Dean, I won't drink any more. Now enjoy your treat."
"No," Dean says, and plops down next to Dad. "I want you to have some."
And Dad gives him this weird look, long and sad, but sort of proud. "Look, how about this, tiger." He cups one big hand around the bowl, warming Dean's ice cream-chilled fingers. "We can share."
Dean lets Dad have the last bite.
You have found her, now go and get her, remember to let her into your heart.
Seventeen hits him in a burst of light and color.
Best fucking Fourth of July ever, even if the field did go up in smoke.
So let it out and let it in, hey Jude begin.
He's twenty-seven and putting a plastic spoon into Sam's sleeping mouth.
You're waiting for someone to perform with.
Thirty and laughing outside of a whorehouse with an angel of the Lord on his shoulder.
And don't you know that it's just you, hey Jude, you'll do.
Thirty-one and landing a bullseye on the dart board to make Ben smile.
Hey Jude, don't make it bad; take a sad song and make it better.
The same year but a different lifetime, forgetting to breathe as Sam clings to him, full of life and, most importantly, soul.
Remember to let her under your skin, then you'll begin to make it better…
better...
better.
This road is new.
Dean stands in the middle of two-lane asphalt. The blacktop still simmers, though the sun has nearly succumbed to the call of the skyline. Trees stand stark against miles of orange and pink. Pine and warm dirt mount a tango through the breeze, and Dean draws them in.
He casts a glance over his shoulder at the road that trickles off into the blinding sunset, then shades his eyes.
"Sam?"
Sam grins at him, and there's blood in his teeth— Sam's own, Dean thinks. Kid looks good, otherwise; clean, strong, young.
"Took you long enough," Sam says. "Did He talk to you?"
Dean pockets his hands and shifts on his feet. "Yeah."
Sam's brows lift in that stupid quizzical way he's prone to, and everything inside of Dean twists up because he missed that curiosity so fucking much.
The kid shifts forward. "And?"
"And what?"
Sam scoffs off at the horizon, like the sky's gonna take his side. When he looks back at Dean, he's trying to quell his smile. "What'd He say?"
Dean shrugs. "Nothing much."
A snort, and Sam nods at the ground. "Yeah, same here." When he peeks up from his bangs, he's smiling. "Kinda made it worth it, though, didn't it?"
"Yeah," Dean says, and means it. He clears his throat, gestures to the road. "Where's this lead to?"
The fresh chill of car keys is pressed into his hand, Sam's fingers lingering a moment over his palm. Sam's grinning. "Don't know. Thought I'd wait for you to find out." He nods down the road.
Dean squints, then draws a sharp breath when he sees the Impala sitting there, shining and good as new. His face splits wide into a grin.
"Race you," he says, then they're both running.
It's the ache of his legs after a good hunt, the burn of running and victory. His lungs are too small and too big all at one, heaving and scathed; they hurt, but it's good, the kind of hurt that is not actually pain. He slings his head sidelong and sees a blur of long, strong, quick limbs, the flicker of hair that needs cutting. They run alongside each other, like dogs, like gazelles, like children, always another rush of energy left, one hurrah of aching legs after another.
Dean's hands hit the Impala before the rest of him, and the words "Beat you!" punch out of him on impact. Sam slaps into the metal second, breathing hard and still smiling, smiling so wide. He wipes his teeth with his sleeve and both come away clean, pure and unsullied and good.
They pull the doors open and take their seats in tandem, and when Dean turns the ignition, there's a whisper of Legos rattling in the air conditioner. The radio kicks on, and Sam snorts.
"Dude, really? Spirit in the Sky?"
Dean grins until his crow's feet hurt and cranks it all the way up. "Shut your pie hole," he shouts over the shudder of the speakers.
Sam shuts up, but he's still smiling. Dean throws her into gear and hits the gas.
The road stretches eternal before them.
"To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to gain, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate;
A time of war,
And a time of peace."
-Ecclesiastes 3:1-8