General Information:
This is an alternate ending to Season 5. Based on the central plot, etc. Please rate & review!
Sam sighed, sitting on the front of the Impala, grasping a half finished bottle of beer in his right hand. He thought back to the simpler days: the days when it was just him and Dean, going against diminutive demons – the days where they did more good than bad, the days where they didn't seen to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. Sam flexed his head sideways, only to find his eyes locked with Castiel's. They were so dull and lifeless, as grey as smoke – smoke that had risen from flames that burnt away the remainder of Castiel's hope, leaving nothing but ashes that faded into the horizon, leaving no trace of even existing. Sam raised his eyebrows as he noticed that in Castiel's hand was a finished beer bottle. Castiel chuckled as he saw Sam's wandering eyes.
"I used to be able to drink twenty of these, you know, and I wouldn't feel a thing," Castiel exhaled with nostalgia.
"Dean still can," Sam joked in an attempt to lift the dreary mood that lingered in the air, suffocating them, making every inhale bring a sharp pain that made it seem easier to stop breathing altogether. Everyone knew how miserable Castiel was. To once be so powerful, like God himself, and now? He was nothing more than a mere human: weak, helpless, incapable of doing any of the things he could once do with a snap of his fingers. He was just as feeble as his vessel. With high depression and absent faith – it really did seem like the Apocalypse. For weeks now, not once had Sam seen a genuine smile. Instead, he was merely surrounded by a sea of forced arched lips or strained laughs. The master of these was Dean.
Fingering the rings between his hands, Dean was numb. They were so close, but it all felt so far away – like in a distant land, because Dean knew that happy endings only belonged in fairy tales. But this – this was all real. He dreamed about Lisa and Ben: starting a normal life with them. How he wished he could wake up to the smell of waffles, send Ben off to school, help him with his homework, argue and make up with Lisa like a normal couple. All the people in the world, who took that lifestyle for granted, Dean yearned to trade lives with any of them. But he couldn't – it wasn't the life he was born into. No, he was born with a younger brother who had demon blood running through his veins, destined to be Lucifer's vessel, while he himself to be Michael's. Did it really have to be them, out of all the people in the world? I guess so. That's why he was there, sitting on the edge of the cliff after telling his brother he was tired and needed a break from driving, when really, he had never felt more awake. All he really wanted was to get away, to escape reality, if only for several minutes. Breathing in the country air, gazing down at the black abyss beneath him, Dean's muscles relaxed and despite all the troubles, he felt calm.
The end was near. No one knew how it would finish: who would die, who would be saved. Sam and Dean knew there was only one thing left to do – and that was to plough on, under all circumstances, and try with all desperation to save the other and the rest of the world at the same time. They tried to avoid reality – that maybe: one, if not both of them, was destined to die. Freeing themselves of the thought of living without their counterpart, Sam took another swig of beer whilst Dean pocketed the rings with a sigh.