The Ninety-third Day
On the first day, he feels fine. His friend—maybe best friend—just died, but it's not something he can't handle. It's not as though he hasn't lost people while the world was in the toilet. Ash, Jo, Ellen, Rufus… hell, Dad. That angel is just another one in a long list of lost friends.
Maybe family.
Yes, family.
And if he lies, tosses, and turns so much that he finally gives up and lies awake all night, it has nothing to do with the fact that he is unable to close his eyes without seeing a set of wide, intense, blue eyes staring him down.
On the fifth day, Bobby asks if he's sleeping. Of course he is, he replies. Why wouldn't he be? He knows Bobby doesn't believe him. But it doesn't seem to matter.
On the seventh day, Bobby asks if the boys are up to a hunt—Sheriff Mills encountered some weird stuff going on at the hospital. Sam agrees to the hunt immediately, but Dean is wary. Are the hallucinations still there? Sam says that he's fine. Dean doesn't really believe him.
Again, it doesn't seem to matter. But he makes himself care. Because it's Sam. He'll always be there to take care of Sammy. At his insistence, they pass up the hunt, and Bobby goes to investigate on his own.
Sam's upset with him. He can tell. He keeps a close eye on his little brother like he's a time bomb, just waiting for an explosion.
He still can't sleep.
It still has nothing to do with those blue eyes.
On the eleventh day, Sam cracks. Dean finds him at a warehouse and almost gets his head blown off by his own brother. The sight tears at his already twisted and mangled heart, and he wonders if a person can die of heartbreak.
Probably not. He would never be that lucky.
He manages to talk Sam down, convince him that Lucifer isn't there. Then Bobby calls. He's in trouble. The brothers hurry, but when they get back, the house is a wreck, burned down.
He joins Sam in calling out for Bobby, but deep down he already has this feeling that Bobby might be dead. The dread curls around his gut. Can he handle another death?
Of course he can. He's handled so many deaths already. It's just another friend.
Family.
They get attacked by a Leviathan, one of the creatures who killed his best friend, and maybe Bobby. Anger nearly overrides all his other emotions. He tries his best to defend himself and his brother. His leg breaks. He hardly feels the pain after he sees Sam go down.
No one gets to hurt Sammy.
He drops a car on the creature and dials 911.
On the fifteenth day, he's in a motel room, unable to go anywhere without crutches. Bobby was apparently not in the house when it burned down, which is a relief. But the hollowness in his chest doesn't go away.
He still hasn't really slept. He's passed out for maybe two hours at a time, after a bit of alcohol. Bobby looks at him differently. Sam seems to have returned completely to normal. Dean suspects that it's all an act.
On the seventeenth day, he extracts the tan trench coat from the trunk of the Impala while Bobby and Sam aren't around to see.
He doesn't even bother to come up with an excuse for this. He just wants it. He doesn't need a reason to want it. When he lies down to sleep—or rather, pretend to sleep—he clutches the coat to his chest.
For the first time since that son of a bitch waded into the lake, Dean feels tears prickle his eyes. And once they start, they don't stop.
He sobs into the surprisingly thin, smooth fabric. He pretends not to notice that the room is suddenly silent except for his own quiet sobs, pretends he doesn't notice that Sam's soft snores have stopped.
On the eighteenth day, he wakes up. Which means he must have slept.
Sam won't look him in the eye, and he fleetingly wonders if Sam thinks he's weak now. No, he just doesn't know what to say. He knows his brother well enough to know that.
He asks about the hallucinations. Sam denies with a practiced smile, but his protest comes too quickly. Dean knows something is wrong.
He just doesn't have the energy to do anything about it. And even if he did, he wouldn't know where to turn for help. Bobby doesn't have a solution. And the angel up his sleeve is gone.
His heart doesn't ache when that thought crosses his mind.
On the twenty-third day, Bobby notes that he's looking better and asks if he's sleeping. He remarks that he has. Bobby seems to believe him this time. Neither Sam nor Bobby has commented on the fact that the trench coat disappears from the Impala in the evenings and reappears in the mornings.
As Dean lies down to sleep, he thinks he can smell his best friend on the coat and buries his nose in the material even though it's impossible—he'd fished it out of the lake. It's just not possible that any of his best friend's scent remained with it.
On the twenty-sixth day, Sam confronts him about the coat as he's getting it out of the trunk again. You can't just keep everything bottled up like that, Sam rants. You can't rely on a coat to sleep. You need to talk about Cas, Dean.
He can't handle it. He explodes. Tells Sam never to say that name to him and realizes in the process that he hasn't even thought the name to himself in all this time. Tells Bobby to shut the hell up when he tries to intervene. Limps away without his crutches and slides into bed. Snaps when they try to talk to him. Turns away and ignores them.
They eventually give up and leave him alone.
He realizes that in the heat of the argument, he left the coat in the trunk.
He doesn't sleep that night.
On the twenty-seventh day, Sam apologizes. Dean only grunts in response.
That night, he doesn't get the coat, too sore from the fight. So when Sam leaves the room and returns with the coat, of course Dean's still awake. Sam sets it down beside him quietly, and if Sam knows that he's only pretending to be asleep, he doesn't say anything about it.
Dean silently thanks God for small mercies.
And then he gets a nasty taste in his mouth. God is gone. He doesn't care anymore. He wonders if God ever cared.
No, he can only thank Sam. Sam and Bobby are all he has left.
The gnawing emptiness closes in on him again, and he pulls the coat close to him.
On the thirtieth day, they're in Rufus's old cabin, somewhere in Montana, intending to follow some more leads on the Leviathans. He had thought Sam was getting better, but he catches Sam trying to ground himself in reality using the scar.
They'll never catch a break, will they? Never.
On the thirty-third day, he kills Amy Pond. He feels a bit guilty about it when he sees the orphaned boy standing in the doorway.
Dean tries to use that guilt to fill the gaping hole in his chest. It doesn't even come close to enough.
He still uses the coat to fall asleep that night.
On the fifty-sixth day, he tries leaving the coat in the trunk.
He lasts about half an hour without it. Then he slides out of bed and goes to retrieve it. When he returns, Sam doesn't even bother hiding that he's awake, watching him with sadness in his eyes.
Go to sleep, Dean tells him. Sam closes his eyes obediently.
He lies down in bed and hugs the folded trench coat to his chest.
When he falls asleep, he dreams of flying. He isn't afraid.
On the ninety-third day, Bobby is shot in the head.
The situation looks worse and worse. He can't do anything about it. Sam can't do anything about it. Dean paces back and forth in the hall in front of the operating room. Sam sits on a bench and tries to keep calm.
Some schmuck approaches him, asking him if Bobby's organs will be available for donation. Dean snaps at him and storms out.
He can't deal with this.
It's too much. He can't lose Bobby. Not now. Not after everything, everyone. Bobby will make it. He has to.
Dick Roman's car pulls up, and he loses it. As the crowd gathers to take pictures of Dick, Dean cracks. Threatens the monster. Dares it to kill him, knowing that it won't do it.
Part of him hopes that Dick will do it, anyway.
Part of him thinks it'd hurt a lot less to be dead.
Dick does nothing. The limousine drives away. Dean heads back toward the hospital, one part relieved, one part disappointed.
Just before he enters the doors, he pauses and turns to look up at the sky, saying a silent prayer. Help me. I need help. I can't lose Bobby. I won't be able to make it.
He knows there won't be an answer. He knows his best friend isn't there anymore. He still hasn't said or thought his name.
Minutes later, Bobby wakes up. He scrawls five numbers on Sam's hand. Mutters "idjits" one last time. Flat-lines.
Dean's mind goes numb. He doesn't know what to do with himself.
He stumbles out of the room, barely aware that Sam isn't following him, that Sam is still calling for Bobby, as though that will help. He makes his way blindly out the front doors of the hospital.
Drops to his knees and stares up at the sky again.
"Cas!" he finally cries out.
Because no other angels would ever listen to his prayers. Because Cas was the only one of them who cared. People stare at him, but he doesn't move, just shouts his best friend's name at the sky.
He gets hauled to his feet at some point. He recognizes the strong grip and unwieldy, large hands as Sammy's and allows himself to be dragged back into the hospital.
A thousand miles away, in a psychiatric ward, a nameless patient who hasn't spoken for the two months that he's been there suddenly fixes an intense stare on the nurse who's going through the daily struggle of convincing him to eat.
"Dean!"