A/N: Title (c) Led Zeppelin, most characters (c) the CW.
What Is And What Should Never Be
1.
They started with good intentions.
That's how it always is, isn't it? People like them – 'good' people – never purposely set out to wreak havoc, to bring the world to its knees.
Somehow, though, that's what happened. They were trying to save everyone, and in the process they destroyed them. There was everything, there was chaos, then there was nothing, and they were tangled inextricably in it all.
They started with good intentions.
And now…
Now, they're on opposite sides of the coin.
.
.
.
Dean is fending off five Croats when Castiel finally shows up with the rest of the camp's warriors. He might have been worried – he should have been worried. He got clawed in the face (he's pretty sure that crazy SOB lost half of her fingernail in his jaw), and the wound is smarting something ungodly. He jammed his index finger too, on top of it.
But there is a certain easiness in being a man unmoored. There's no fear – no fear of maiming, no fear of death. Not really, anyway. Not apart from the animal-instinct adrenaline that kicks in (and oh does it kick in). He's got nothing to lose.
He's already lost it all.
Shane unloads a shotgun into a middle-aged man's back and he hits the ground hard, like a fish flopping on deck. Jo does the same, taking out a little girl with blood seeping out of her eyes.
Cas is probably cross-faded, but he manages to knock back the bitch that scratched him, and Jerry whacks a couple of Croats with his ever-faithful Old Hick. The crunch of bone against wood is sickening.
Soon enough, his (and it is his, when it comes down to it) ragtag brigade of fallen angels, reformed druggies, drifters, and scrawny barmaids gets the job done. They always do, somehow. What is it they say about cockroaches?
(Not that they haven't lost their fair share of soldiers).
Sometimes he thinks they're cursed. Cursed to witness the absolute worst of it all, cursed to survive, cursed to be the ones to pass this on (if there is ever anyone to pass this on to, anyway), to leave this blight on the earth. They're all just writhing in abject remains of what the world used to be, telling themselves it's for something better.
Because many of them believe that – that there is something better. Dean tries to believe it, too. God, he tries so hard. And when he fights, he thinks maybe he is fighting for something, fighting to get this evil out of him. He fights and fights and fights, but when the fights are over he feels no different.
These people need him, though. There has to be a reason they keep surviving. There has to be.
But when an angel loses faith, it's hard not to wonder: Did He abandon us?
And Dean never spent much time wondering in the first place.
It's only after all the bodies are fanned out around them, limbs twisted into unearthly poses and blood draining out of them, that he realizes the structure they've just destroyed used to be a church.
Dean starts laughing – a sudden, violent guffaw – and the other members of the party turn their attention to him in alarm.
"Dean?" Castiel questions, head cocked worriedly. "Are you all right?"
"The hell you laughin' about?" Shane demands bluntly in his thick Alabama drawl, cutting straight to the point.
"We're in a fuckin' church," snorts Dean.
The others glance around, as though to verify this claim. Sure enough, there's a battered crucifix dangling a few yards away, rusty nails straining frightfully to keep it aloft. The pews are razed beyond recognition, but there are besmirched sheets of paper scattered across the floor.
Shane scratches his shorn, tanned scalp, struggling to find any hair at all, and chuckles nervously. Jerry follows suit, peeling his filthy, sweat-slick blond locks away from his face and smearing his forehead with blood to better appraise the scene. Castiel and Jo, on the other hand, peer at their friend in concern.
All of a sudden, there's a rustling from the priests' chambers behind the crucifix. Dean, Shane, and Jo raise their firearms, while Jerry raises his bat, elbows askew.
Dean is the first to cock his gun. He hopes it's just a rat, or something below his aim – it would be more of an effort not to pull the trigger.
It is not a rat.
There are two people: two redheads. One male, one female. Dirtied past the point of all humanity, wild-eyed with their clothes hanging off their emaciated frames, but – and god, he can barely believe it – not Croats. The younger one, the male, is white-knuckling a board with nails poking out of it. The older one, the female, has a hunting rifle. The age difference between the two is peculiar. The woman seems too young to be his mother, but too old to be his sister. They're definitely related, though. The red hair is a dead giveaway.
"Wait!" she pleads desperately, shoving the boy behind her. "Don't shoot!"
Dean lowers his gun.
.
.
.
Claire and Charlie. Siblings, after all. They eat ravenously in the mess hall as the rest of the troupe looks on with unfettered interest.
Claire talks a lot.
Charlie doesn't talk at all.
Not one word since entering the compound – it's starting to unnerve people.
"It's just us," Claire tells them at length. She nods sympathetically in her brother's direction and says, "The others are gone. He's taking it hard."
The 'the others are gone' part is apparently all the explanation she thinks they need. The obvious deduction is that they lost the rest of their family. Or their traveling group. In this day and age, the two are practically synonymous.
(To most people, at least).
It's a marvel they're there – a miracle, almost. He can't even begin to comprehend how they survived on their own. He can't believe it.
She smiles a couple of times, baring straight, gleaming teeth. Something that used to be a typical display of human emotion has become shocking – unnatural. She even laughs, and he would compare the sound to church bells, if he could still remember what they sounded like.
For the most fleeting of moments, he can't shake the sense that she was sent here.
.
.
.
"They can't possibly stay," Risa snarls heatedly. "There's a reason they were on their own." (There is always a reason). "If you're not part of a group by now," she logics, "it's because something is wrong with you."
"Damn right," Shane concurs.
Castiel is stoic and quiet, with an all-knowing air about him. Dean turns to him (always) for advice.
Loftily, he says, "Do what you think is right, and I will follow."
A few others nod enthusiastically, and Dean feels a tremendous yoke fall upon his shoulders.
At first, it was just he and Sam. Then there was Lucifer, there was pain and suffering and bottomless anguish and death. He was lost, then it was he and Cas fumbling aimlessly through the desolation, stumbling upon survivors and accumulating them by accident.
After a while they started avoiding the uninfected too, because nowadays people are almost worse than Croats. Humanity has been reduced to bands of feral creatures roving the earth, scraping what they can from it and committing untold sins for the sake of 'their own.' There's an otherness about every group they've encountered recently, an inherent mistrust that they find impossible to overcome. People have sorted themselves into clans, tribes. These tribes don't merge – one can only exist at the expense of another. It's survival of the fittest, after all.
Dean does not know what possesses him to advocate for them.
But he says, "One of them's just a kid. If we send 'em back out there, they'll die."
Shane gives a noncommittal, 'not-our-problem' scoff.
Risa's features soften and she tries, "We have enough mouths to feed as it is, Dean."
"They'll die," he urges them to comprehend.
"Well, we're all gonna die, eventually," Jerry pipes in lightheartedly. "But there's no sense in makin' 'em suffer out there on their own."
"Let's put it to a vote," suggests Jo. "'Yes,' they stay, 'No,' we send them back out there."
Castiel distributes little torn parcels of lined paper. They only have one pen on hand, and it's running out of ink. By the time it reaches the last person, they have to scratch their vote into the paper.
In the end, Dean's constituency comes out on top.
.
.
.
He wonders where they came from, how they got here, how they got to that ruined church smack dab in the middle of Arkansas. How many people had to die to get them there. How many people (Croats) they killed.
He wonders why.
.
.
.
"What's that?" she asks one day.
Dean has to look to see what she means, and when his eyes fall upon what she's pointing to he feels a sharp prick in his chest.
Through the foliage, he sees: it's the Impala.
She hasn't been driven for months. She rots in the underbrush, vines and weeds sneaking under the hood, through the rims, into the trunk. She looks more like a carcass than a car, a picture of neglect and disrepair and mechanical evisceration. Nature has overtaken her, and she has succumbed.
When Dean doesn't answer, Claire's nose crinkles. She must notice something in his face. She asks, "Is it yours?"
"Yeah," he answers blandly.
One scratched-up headlight catches the sun, glints at him accusatorily.
He…
She's obsolete – they had no use for her. Now it's just jeeps and trucks, vehicles they can fit supplies and guns and bodies into. She's just… obsolete.
Claire smiles sadly at the car and keeps walking.
.
.
.
He doesn't know how it starts, really. But when it does start, he's seven whiskeys deep, Jo's flirting with Jerry, and Castiel is in his barracks with Risa.
Drinking is dangerous. But the compound is safe as anywhere, and not drinking is probably more dangerous. Everyone needs a release every once in a while.
Especially Cas. Dean suspects he has several releases a day.
Not that he doesn't. Well, didn't. Things changed and the compound is small, too small, and fighting among the ranks is a definite morale-killer. Head-in-the-clouds Cas is somehow above it all; even in his hedonism, he's sanctimonious. There's no vying for his attention, no wild catfights – all the women are perfectly content to share him.
And then…
For a little while there was Jo, but Jo knew him before this and so there was never any hope for them. She saw the transition – she knows what he's become better than anyone else. And so, there was never any hope.
Claire knows only post-Apocalyptic Dean.
Claire looks at him with blue eyes that make the world just a little bit brighter.
Claire smiles at him kindly, genuinely.
Claire, with red hair that rivals the sun's brilliance, Claire, with an enormity of affection for her little brother that only he can fathom, Claire, this inexplicable survivor, turns her attentions towards him.
He's the leader of the camp. Maybe that's why.
And he's seven whiskeys deep.
And no one would ever know it, but when it comes down to it, he's weaker than most of them.
.
.
.
It would have been more difficult not to fall for him.
It starts as admiration, and then transmutes to something different.
He saved her and her brother – he's their savior – for no discernible reason. It's only natural that she would harbor some level of affection for him, right?
Plus, she wagers half the women in the camp are at least a little bit in love with him.
Because he's just...
He's beautiful, he's brave, he's silent and strong, he's everything they ever imagined a leader should be.
It's just a fantasy, at first. A story she creates in her head to pass the unending days, the unending nights. It makes her feels a little bit better, makes her think a little less about everything on the other side of that fence. It's just a fantasy. A silly, girlish dream.
It's hero-worship.
.
.
.
"My sister likes you," says Charlie, like there is still some innocence left in the world.
Dean is taken aback, drops the gun he's been cleaning.
"Why d'you say that?" he musters.
The boy shrugs. "She just does," he replies, answering a question he didn't ask. He stares at Dean calculatingly, territorially. His eyes are a different color than his sister's.
He feels a rush of something strange, of something that, for a blink, makes him feel normal.
.
.
.
The first time they touch, it's pitch-black behind the granary.
It happens so slowly, and then all at once. He imagines it's something like bleeding out – the drawn-out tortuousness of it makes the freedom of death all the sweeter.
Her hands in his hair, his hands up her shirt.
It's dark, and she's a beacon of heat in the darkness. Her mouth is hot on his, her touch brands his torso. It's hungry, feverish, anarchic, desperate – all the things that life has become, distorted in a way that's actually pleasurable.
Jesus, he missed this.
And he's drunk, too drunk, and she's drunk too. Her back is jammed against the paneled wall and his hands are everywhere, his lips drinking her in, stealing each vital breath from her lungs. And it's beautiful, beautiful to feel like this, to feel something other than emptiness, to forget…
Their blood is pounding in their ears, drowning out the howls of the undead on the other side of the fence.
They break apart, and his hooded eyes rake over her, searching.
"We shouldn't," he murmurs. Part of him thinks he's using her, like all the others; part of him thinks he isn't, which is even scarier.
She's still in his arms when she says, "It's okay," and her kiss makes him believe that it is.
.
.
.
They keep watch together, sometimes. They sit in the steeple under the stars, gaze down at the army of infected trying to claw their way inside. They only shoot when they have to; even with silencers on their snipers, the noise attracts others. Mostly they just watch them scurry around like vermin, completely out of their minds.
Claire observes a ragged-looking child through the crosshairs. "How did you get it like this?" she whispers. "The group I was with before, we always had to move around."
"I knew this was coming," he says cryptically.
.
.
.
All of a sudden, there is hope in a hopeless world, there is something in the nothingness.
He will have to kill Lucifer, or be killed by him. If he succeeds, he kills Sam. If he loses, Sam kills him. He figures this is what you call a no-win situation. But something's gotta give, and soon.
The name 'Sam' means nothing to Claire. The word 'Lucifer' means her dead mother, father, and brother.
The name 'Sam' doesn't really mean much to anyone anymore, which makes it even stranger when he acknowledges that it means everything to him.
It's daylight. They're sitting on the stoop outside his cabin.
"What if it were Charlie?" he demands candidly. "What if you had to do this to him?"
Tears well involuntarily in his eyes and he snarls to keep them back, fists clenched in his lap.
She touches his shoulder, face screwed up compassionately. Charlie is troubled. She suspects the only reason Charlie is still alive is because civilization has collapsed, because the degradation of social order hasn't left time for anything so petty as mental illness. And she suspects that, sometimes, waiting for death is just the same as actively pursuing it.
"Charlie's not well," she hisses, hating herself for admitting it aloud. "You know that. Don't say things like that about him."
This makes his heart twist viciously. And Sam is? Sam, of everyone, is the furthest thing from 'well.'
"You know what I mean," he mumbles, rubbing his eyes wearily. "He's… he's my brother."
She wonders if Dean's put it off this long just because he can't bear to do it. She reaches for him, ghosts her fingertips over his cheekbone. "Lucifer isn't your brother, Dean… It will stay like this forever, if no one does anything." She begs him to see reason. She chokes, "You're… you're the only one who can stop it."
Why? Why is he the only one? Surely there are other heroes out there, heroes who would gladly slay the dragon. Why does it fall on him?
Dean groans, "Why?"
"It doesn't have to be you in spite of him being your brother – it has to be you because he's your brother."
His mossy green eyes can see her soul, she often thinks. They glint up prettily at her in the sun. He knows she's right. "Isn't it funny how things work out like that?" he says. It doesn't sound very funny at all.
She feels incredibly sorry for him. "So many people have died," she tells him, like it's a fact he might be unaware of.
He sets his jaw resolutely, now looking past her. "I'll do it."
.
.
.
Castiel is blindly intoxicated ninety percent of the time. Now that he's left on down earth, he can only function when he's high as a kite. Maybe it makes him feel closer to God.
He says things that sound insightful, wise, but sometimes Dean can't help but wonder if maybe he's just stoned.
Like now: "It will all end once Lucifer's dead," he croaks from the doorway of Dean's cabin.
How? How can he know that?
(He's not an angel anymore).
"You've changed," he goes on. "You're changing."
Dean laughs humorlessly. "So have you. So are you."
"No, I mean…" He studies him carefully, eyes scanning his posture like a laser.
"You mean what?" he probes.
"Yes, you changed right after, but you're changing now, too. And you will change even more, after you do what has to be done. You can't let it destroy you. The world will evolve after this," he says.
Evolve? He wants to scream. Doesn't 'evolve' imply progress?
"Okay, Cas," he capitulates dismissively. He has changed, Castiel has changed, and both of them have changed together. Castiel has gone from divine sage to drunken mystic, and Dean has gone from tortured hero to savage antihero.
He trusted Cas's advice, once. He's not sure if he still does.
.
.
.
The night before he leaves, she is there.
It's springtime; it's chilly when the sun goes down, but they don't feel the chill.
She wants to be with him always, with him when it happens, but he has never been so adamant about anything as he is about her not coming.
She worries there's something he's not telling her.
(There's something she's not telling him).
His bed is softer than hers (the one she hardly ever sleeps in anymore), and his cabin is bigger than the one she shares with her brother (the one she only leaves once he's asleep). He is their leader, truly. These people see themselves as his people. He has a responsibility to them. He can't care for Sam, so he has to care for them. He can't have both. He can't take care of both.
In all honesty, he does feel a deep allegiance to them, to Claire. He's doing this for everyone, but he's doing this mostly for her, to keep her safe.
Because this is the Apocalypse.
Because they don't have modern amenities anymore – not apart from what they glean on the raids, which are becoming few and far between as the farm flourishes.
Because they can only be so careful.
Because he's seen her throwing up behind the chicken coop the past five mornings straight.
And this doesn't horrify him nearly as much as it should, but it lights a fire under his feet. There's a time-stamp on things, now. There's a deadline he has to meet. There are people other than Sam.
He needs her to be safe, he needs her…
They're all tangled up together, part of one another, and the closeness is the most untainted thing he has ever felt.
He knows what this feeling really is. He knows the name for it. And lo, it's so ironic it has to be predestined: Dean Winchester has fallen in love at the end of the world. How the hell did that happen?
They've gotten themselves into an insurmountable mess, and this is how, but he couldn't stop even if he wanted to. She is the one thing. She is the one thing in all the world that he's allowed to care about, and he can't give that up.
When they stop, when they just lay there, arms flung around each other, she whispers, "Don't you dare get yourself killed, Dean."
He's staring at the shoddy ceiling; the planks just don't line up quite right, and it's bothering him. They're not collated properly. He should have done a better job.
"I won't," he assures her.
"Are you sure you're ready?"
"I'm ready."
Her ear is over his chest, measuring his heartbeat for signs of dishonesty. He plays with her hair, testing it languidly between his fingers. She worries that he knows what she's doing, that he's trying to distract her. Every trick she knows, she learned from him. Tragically, this makes it easy for him to predict how she's going to behave.
He feels moisture all of a sudden and realizes she's crying on him.
"I need you to be safe," she says plaintively, shifting closer and grabbing him tighter.
Dean cranes his head up, moves his hand from her hair to her bare back. "Shh," he soothes, surprised. "Hey, I'll be all right. I'll be back before you know it."
She props her head up to look him in the eye. "I love you, you know. You probably don't want to hear that, but I do."
He recoils to some degree, but steadily replies, "You're all I got left in this shithole of a world, Claire."
He kisses the crown of her head and they settle again, drifting off into a shallow sleep.
.
.
.
Detroit is a ways away from Pleasant Valley, Arkansas. He mourns each one of his traveling companions before they even hit the road: Risa, Jerry, Jo, Shane, Ace, Castiel, Martin, Steve, Laura.
He watches Claire in the steeple, watches her fade into the distance as their convoy rolls out. They're loaded with an arsenal, a month's-worth of gasoline, and a righteous hatred of everything they have become.
He doesn't know Charlie's stowed away in the back.
(No one does).
.
.
.
After…
He doesn't return right away.
.
.
.
Dean doesn't let Lucifer monolog.
He sees Sam in a pristine white suit, sees him contrasted starkly with the carnage surrounding him, and shoots him right in the heart.
Blood blossoms from the wound, and that's it. It's anticlimactic.
Those who died in the outer circle were lucky: Shane, Ace, Steve, Laura, and Martin were lucky. The outer circle was all Croats. A ton of them, sure, but it was a familiar fight, and they went down swinging.
The inner circle was all demons.
Old Hick is broken in half to his right, Jerry's gutted, lifeless body nearby. Jo's throat is slashed out, heart in the grass five feet away. Risa's head is limp and her face is wearing Glasgow smile. Everyone is dead. Everyone around him died sadistically.
And at the epicenter of it all, is Sam.
This is the first time he's seen his brother's face in years – since he said yes.
He looks the same as he remembers him, completely unscathed.
There are rivers of blood running through Detroit, running all the way to Little Rock.
It's over.
Suddenly, it's over, and he doesn't know what to do.
A/N: Honestly, I don't know why I wrote this. But I did and so here it is. I've been watching A LOT of The Walking Dead, so maybe that's to blame, and I've written a lot of Sam and Dean angst lately so I felt like doing something a tad different. This is supposed to take place over the span of a year or so. I intentionally left Castiel/Charlie's fates unwritten because I didn't want this to be a clean ending. I haven't seen this episode in forever, so I'm sure a lot of the details don't mesh. I put them in Arkansas because it's two letters away from Kansas, the Winchesters' home state but not quite there lol. If you have have time, please let me know what you think! Thanks for reading :)