Forever Forward
As we look deeply within, we understand our perfect balance. There is no fear of the cycle of birth, life and death. For when you stand in the present moment, you are timeless. - Rodney Yee
They were better hunters now than they had ever been before.
When it happened, they were hunting a pair of shapeshifters. That actually turned out to be pretty damn lucky, because the thirst is undeniable in the newly risen, and nether had changed so much that they didn't care about the innocents anymore.
Afterwards, when both shifters lay drained and with bullets in their corpses (because one really couldn't be too sure) they called Bobby, hoping that maybe, just maybe, he'd have a cure. He paused for a long time (too long) before he told them to come on over; they'd figure out something together. Something in his voice reminded Dean of someone else, and they never showed.
They researched like crazy on their own, but in the end, nothing came of it. They just had to deal.
Dean adjusted remarkably well, once they were sure that the change hadn't affected who they really were. At least, not where it mattered. He ran into moral issues more often now, but he figured that with Sam that was pretty much inevitable anyway. And now he didn't have to worry so much either. Pain and injury were, for the most part, a thing of the past. Nope, every time he didn't have to work on keeping Sam's life inside his body was another time he just didn't mind.
Sam didn't stop having visions. If anything, his psychic abilities expanded. Now, he was more attuned to the dead than he'd ever been to the living. It came in handy during hunts. They didn't even bother with the EMF anymore.
The shifters were the only things they actually ever bit, and only because they simply could not help themselves. The rest of the time they just ripped off blood banks. Naturally, Sam protested, but it was either that or people, and they were careful to grab AB positive when they could. They tried animal blood, but Dean thought it was pretty nasty, and Sam didn't really argue when he went back to the blood banks (after all, Dean pointed out, we do need it to survive, so technically its okay…)
They ran into a couple of hunters near Blue Ridge, Wisconsin. Sam took an arrow greased with dead man's blood right in the gut, and Dean barely managed to dodge the one meant for him. Seeing Sam fall made him see red, and it took every bit of his control not to kill them both. Instead, he left them tied up in the back of their pickup truck with promises of death if they ever come back. Something in their faces made him believe they'd taken his words to heart.
Another benefit to the change was the notable increase in strength. Picking up an unconscious Sam was no longer such a pain in the ass.
They found Lenore by accident. She was holed up in a little bar in a town so tiny that remembering its name wasn't even worth it. Sam recognized her first, and for a moment Dean didn't believe Sam when he pointed her out. Once, either one of them would have called her attractive. Now, she was a shadow of her former self, resembling the truly dead more than the living dead.
Her story made them both want to kill something. Apparently Gordon, pissed as hell after a day tied up in that old house, decided to finish the job. He'd slaughtered them all with a cruelty that left them broken before dead. Lenore had been lucky. She'd lost him and he hadn't come after her. Dead suffered a moment of regret for not killing him when he'd had the chance. Both times.
She came with them after that. It was kind of fun having a girl with the, to their surprise. Dean had to reconsider his whole 'necrophilia' statement. Sam was surprised it took him so long. Dean was surprised because it hadn't taken Sam that long. Lenore was just amused.
They defeated the demon a year and a half after the change. It wasn't as painful as it could have, or perhaps, should have been. Lenore had quite a few bones to set by the time they returned to the motel room. Afterwards, both slept for a week straight.
They hadn't taken her with them. It was their fight, theirs to end.
All things considered, it was a little anticlimactic. Unsurprisingly, both of them found it a little difficult to move on. Dean dealt by hunting more and Sam followed, working out his issued through Dean.
Eventually, things did get better. Like almost everything else, they buried that directionless feeling.
They years passed by, and time lost meaning. Except when Sam had a vision and they had to go, like, now. In between those frantic moments Sam started reading Anne Rice novels and after a while, Dean bought a couple of them on tape. He regretted it immediately. All that broody angsty shit could not be healthy, especially for a guy like Sam. He made a point to point this out to him a frequently as possible. Sam retaliated by initiating long, complicated, existential discussions anytime they finished a tape. Lenore actually enjoyed these and Dean, though he tried his very best to resist, occasionally found himself participating. Too his very great annoyance.
One late winters day, Lenore hesitantly suggested settling down somewhere, or at least setting up a home base. She was mildly surprised when both of them agreed.
They found a house, a serious fixer upper that probably held a few ghosts but, as Dean pointed out, they knew how to take care of those.
The house belonged to an old woman, by the name of Mrs. Sheldon, who lived alone a few miles away. It had been her parents place and they had left it to her, their only child, before they died. She'd never had an interest in living there but she hadn't ever been able to bring herself to sell it either. Money apparently wasn't an issue, and she agreed to rent it to them for practically nothing.
They spent that summer fixing the place up. It was one of the best summers Sam and Dean had had in longer than either would care to admit.
They didn't really need daylight to see what they were doing, and since they were pretty lethargic during the day, they usually spent the sunniest hours sleeping inside. The late afternoon and early morning hours weren't as bad though, and the brothers enjoyed what light they could. Too much of their lives had been spent in darkness.
They repainted, inside and out, and replaced the roof. Lenore ripped up the ground around the house and planted flowers, all in the light of the moon. She wasn't as good at weeding as she was planting though, so Sam took up it up, ignoring Dean's disparaging comments regarding his masculinity.
They were never late on a rent payment, and sometimes they even had a little left over. If Dean had been a good, even great, pool hustler before, he was unbeatable now. Being supernatural did, at times, come in handy. And Sam, well Sam had his own brand of supernatural. He had become remarkably good, in the last couple of years, at games of chance, and Dean never missed an opportunity to shove him into a casino.
They were surprisingly happy, and Dean wondered how the hell that had happened.
As the months went by and suspicion regarding the regular disappearance of blood from the local hospital increased, Sam casually suggested getting a few animals. This idea was immediate dismissed by Dean; his vision of domesticity did not include farm chores at 6 every morning. Lenore though it was probably a smart thing to do, just to take the edge off.
Dean did eventually give in, and all three of them learned to correctly and safely draw blood. They didn't have enough money to kill a cow every time they needed a snack. Still, it was pretty gross, and if Lenore and Sam noticed that Dean tended to snatch more blood than he used to when they passed through a town with a hospital, they didn't say anything.
A couple of months later, on Christmas Eve, Sam brought home a puppy. Dean rolled his eyes and whined about another mouth to feed, but he didn't complain when the dog slept with him that night.
It was the first Christmas the brothers had stopped to enjoy since…. forever it seemed. Lenore made a ginger bread house. Nobody could eat it of course, but they all enjoyed looking at it. She also taught Sam how to string popcorn and, with a single-minded intensity that had earned Sam that place at Stanford, he ended up with a string long enough to wrap around the tree. Twice.
Mrs. Sheldon died that spring and shocked them all by leaving them the house. They went to her funeral and left some of Lenore's crocuses on her grave. Then they went home.
Life was good. Which was ironic, since they weren't really alive.