A/N: *hugs Dean*
He drives.
It's something he knows how to do, like loading a gun, following an order, being let go.
Never letting go. He doesn't know how to do that. He doesn't have to.
Someone else will always do it first.
It's not the first time he's been thrown out. Not the first might-have-been girl, disappointed and angry, seeing him for what he really is.
But Cassie was different. Or might have been—past tense is a messy thing, held back by the fact that it isn't, not anymore.
Cassie was different, and Dean was the same.
Or maybe it was the other way around.
He drives until his throat doesn't hurt anymore, and that's a damn long way, somewhere west of Athens and east of Sam, north or south of Dad, because he doesn't know where Dad is at the moment, and this is life, isn't it? A map of heartbreak, of loss.
He drinks a lot of beer and lays very still in a dingy hotel for a long time, tells himself to get it together. He doesn't have time for this.
That's lie, he knows.
Time is all he has left.
There were parts of him she broke before he knew that they'd been whole, and he could hate her for that, if it wasn't all-consuming enough to hate himself.
Athens. Ashes.
When whispered, the words sound the same.