Author's note: I haven't been around much because I have been working on my DCBB (which is finished now, so – go me) and I found an intriguing theory that I just had to write about. Enjoy!
He could remember when he used to pay attention to time, when he had not yet become the last, the unavoidable truth of what was to come, when a few words, a touch had meant more to him than the great nothing of space, of stardust glittering in the distance, of peace amongst the remains of what had been.
There was nothing left but him and two others, two others vast, immortal beings, and only to him had they ever been equally important.
No one else would ever have thought so much of the Angel, the last of his kind, the last of any kind.
It was his destiny that had allowed him to live on until everything he had protected and stood for, everything he had served had crumbled to dust. And he was pleased. What the Angel had once been to him he was no longer; but what remained was strong enough to make him content that he had stayed until the end.
He had been aware of what was coming for a long time, since he had finally accepted the role that had always been his. He had screamed and fought at the beginning as he had always done when he was faced with the inevitable. It had taken the man he had been a long time to understand. It had taken Dean Winchester a long time to understand.
It had been millennia since he had even thought of himself as Dean Winchester. There was no point. The destiny of Dean Winchester had fulfilled itself on the day he raised the scythe, when Darkness bled over the world, and his little brother had found himself alone in a car that would never be called Baby again.
Eons after he had reaped him, for the last and final time, he thought of his brother once more. The brother he had once sold his soul for, before his humanity had been gone forever.
He had gone to Heaven. He knew where each soul went. Sam had gone to Heaven.
Even then, looking upon his soul as it left his body, knowing that he would never see him again, he hadn't told him the truth. Sam Winchester had finally, after a long life of battles and attempts to save a world that would end as all things did, found peace. He would not pierce it with the knowledge what had become of his brother. Thirty years had been enough to soften even Sam's pain at never knowing what became of him.
The Angel knew. The Angel always knew, and the Angel stayed regardless. He could see him as he reaped, as he guided souls into eternity; as he walked among humans unseen; always near him, but never too close.
The caution wasn't necessary. He wouldn't touch him until the time came. Until their time came.
Sometimes he contemplated that the Angel might not keep back out of fear. That there was something else, something passing, fleeting in human minds but not his, something he should never have felt, something he hadn't been created for.
He never wondered if Dean Winchester would have been glad for it. Dean Winchester was his past, long gone, not even the Winchester gospels to remember the man who had struggled against destiny and become the proof that it was inescapable.
It was an idle question if the Angel still saw something in him to remind him of what he had been.
If so, the pain he felt at the remembrance might be the one thing that had lasted millennia.
It would end soon. They would end soon.
He would touch the Angel, and the Angel would vanish as if he had never existed, as had everything else.
He would find Him, the one he had once known as Chuck (and how long he had needed to understand, to realize) and do what he must.
And then it would be time for him to travel once more.
He was everywhere at once and all times; it was undeniable. And yet there were times when he pulled himself together, when his whole being was condensed once more as if he was mortal, as if he had an actual body.
The times he had gone back to speak to himself, he'd always done so.
He could not say why he had made this decision. He no longer cared about what happened, had happened, would always happen, to humans and the planet they called home.
Maybe it was nostalgia, he thought once, looking into the green eyes of the man he had been, so long ago that he was unable to recall exactly how long.
This man, full of love for his brother and desperate rage against fate. This man, soap opera watcher and junk food lover.
It was ironic that this affection for what humans had once called comfort food was all that was left in him of this man. It reminded him of the past, and of the future that was now so close.
The darkness had consumed him that day, all his fear, all his rage, had left him prepared for the task he then undertook, had always undertaken and would always undertake.
The ring was not easy to bear, and if it had been in his power, he would have given it away willingly, as he did once, for a short time, if only to himself; but he still did what he had to do. It was his fate. It was everyone's fate.
He took them all, those whose faces he had known as well as his own. He could have left them to the reapers, but felt compelled to do it himself, and there had to a reason in his destiny that he did.
So he took them all.
Mary Winchester, helpless on a ceiling, her eyes trained on her children to the last. He didn't spare the young boy who was running out with a toddler a single glance.
John Winchester, forced to make a deal with the creature he'd hunted his whole life.
Jo Harvelle, scared and bleeding.
Ellen Harvelle, blind with grief.
Bobby Singer.
He had to admit that he paused, just for a second, as he reached out, standing next to Dean Winchester, and remembered the grief.
Then he touched him gently over the heart.
And many, many times did he collect Sam and Dean Winchester.
They were always terrified of leaving the other behind, he reflected, even when they had believed themselves to be angry and indifferent. They had shared a close bond.
Sometimes, he saw the Angel in the distance. Sometimes, as he walked around and collected, he was there, in the corner of his eyes, watching him with his blue eyes.
He ignored him until the day everything ended.
Nothing was left but Death and the Angel and Him.
The Angel would be the first to go.
He didn't have to look. He didn't have to call.
The Angel appeared before him voluntarily, age-old sorrow in his eyes that were still blue and shining like his grace.
And somewhere deep within him, something that had been a part of Dean Winchester like his bones, his veins, something that he had carried for years and thought extinct by the darkness, stirred.
And then it happened.
The last time he touched the Angel was through a kiss.
He turned around, not wishing to see him crumble to dust, and found him.
No one had uttered a word that day, and he stood in the peace and quiet that was left behind, and for the first time in eons, he felt pain.
Then he returned to two brothers, a Mark on an arm, a fight. It was over. It was finally over.
He looked without emotion at the man for whom millennia were about to begin.
He felt the scythe sweep through him.
He crumbled to dust.
Author's note: Just something quick to get the mojo flowing. Sorry for putting Destiel in there. Force of habit by this point, I'm afraid. Dean turning into Death is just a wonderful idea, and I had to play with it.
Hope you liked it, please review.