Summary: Sam said yes; Dean said no. Four years after the Apocalypse actually went down, Dean and a few other survivors exist in the ruins of Detroit. This is a story about forgiveness. Post-Apocalypse AU. Mention of possible past dub-con, schmoopy soft wincest.

A/N: This is an AU branching off from Season 5 before 'The End' and is set four years after the Apocalypse was NOT averted. It was over and done relatively quickly, not everyone died but human civilization was trashed. Lucifer won the war and is now on Earth running everything with his demon army. The few survivors of the human race are pretty much disregarded. Sam's meatsuit WAS possessed by Lucifer but his soul did not experience the Cage so he's a little more together. However, bereft of his brother, Dean is quietly broken inside.

Warnings: Suggestion of possible past dub-con with strangers, schmoopy soft wincest, happy ending.

Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, its fandom, its characters or anything connected to them. I do not make money or profit in any way from this story.

Love Me Again (Part 1: Detroit) by frostygossamer

The ex-hunter gave the generator a final good hard kick and it spluttered reluctantly into life. He snorted and wiped his oily hands on a rag that might once have been torn from some designer party dress. It was now performing a much more useful function.

"Well that's fixed. Kinda," he told the squatter, who was looking on hopefully.

Perhaps the former wearer of the designer frock, the skin-and-bones woman stood there shivering with a small, cold child clinging to her thin legs for warmth.

"Thanks. Thanks a lot, Dean. We were getting scared we were gonna freeze. Weren't we, sweetie?"

The little girl nodded, sagely. "Uh-huh," she murmured, agreeing with her mother.

Dean smiled and tousled the child's head. "You'll be OK now. While the fuel holds out anyways."

The woman tried to press a can of lunch meat in his hand. Dean shook his head.

"Can't take that. Keep it for the kid."

The woman grinned. "Thanks. Dunno what we woulda done without you."

Dean left the squat with mixed feelings, glad he was able to use his mechanic's skills to help, but sorry he couldn't do more. He made his way back through the deserted streets toward the Detroit office building where he had made his home for the past few years.

He moved quietly through the trash and burned-out vehicles, trying not to attract any unwanted attention. There were still occasional demon patrols in the area, but they were getting rarer. Lucifer and his army had bigger fish to fry running everything. Currently, Dean had more to fear from human drifters, deranged and desperate.

There were still plenty of people scraping by in the city if you knew where to look. You would never have guessed it though, moving through the decaying blocks of looted stores downtown. They lived like shadows in ruined buildings, mostly underground.

Wayward as always, Dean lived on the roof.

~o~

Dean had set up house on the top floor of one of the many abandoned office towers in the centre of town. As he slogged up the stairs, he once again questioned his wisdom for camping out in the penthouse of a tall building with no working elevator.

When he reached his floor, he had to carefully negotiate the several traps that protected the entrance to the rooms he occupied. The traps helped to deter the few vagrants who still bothered to wander the city looking for almost nonexistent food supplies and fuel. They wouldn't keep out demons anymore, but Dean really couldn't summon up the interest to give a damn.

He would actually have relished a chance to get into something with a couple fuglies once in a while, but they seemed to have enough on their plates ruling three worlds without bothering with has-beens like Dean Winchester. The Apocalypse had been over a long time. Dean and the few fellow members of the human resistance who had survived taking down Niveus Pharmaceuticals were old news.

Click, click, clunk. Dean shut himself in for the night, steel bars and heavy padlocks sealing out the darkness.

The inside of Dean's place was sparsely furnished with a couple desks and random chairs rescued from the other offices in the building. A large lockable metal file cabinet, chained to the wall, contained his meagre and precious supply of canned goods. Some he had scavenged and some he had taken in payment for his repair work. There was a small room in back that he used as a storeroom, but the main office was where he ate and slept.

In a defensible corner of the main room he had hauled an impressive three-seater, deep leather couch from the foyer and made up a semi-comfortable bed with some thin blankets and old dust sheets he had found in the janitor's closet. That was where he lay down to sleep, when the bad dreams didn't keep him awake.

Dean lit the camp stove he had rescued from a looted sporting goods store, with the flint gizmo he had improvised when the supply of matches and lighter fuel ran out. Then he put on his small teakettle to boil himself a cup of drinkable water. The office building he lived in did boast one ancient emergency generator. But they could only manage fitful power when someone could get their hands on the fuel. That someone was usually Dean. Right now the system was dead.

He unlocked his cabinet and measured out a precise spoonful of coffee. Last week he had helped an itinerant biker get mobile again and the guy had paid him with an almost half-full pack of beans. It sure wasn't the freshly brewed quality java Dean had been used to, but it smelled wonderful all the same.

He took his mug of coffee out on his balcony to savour it there. His 'balcony' was a window washer's cradle that Dean has secured outside his floor to prevent unauthorized ingress from below. From that vantage point, Dean could see far over the ravaged city. It wasn't a pretty sight.

About four miles away, as the crow flew, stood the ugly edifice that served as the demon headquarters for the district. By day it seemed innocent enough, blending in with the remains of shattered office blocks around it. You might have imagined nothing worse than administrative paper-pushing took place inside such a gray, faceless construction. But only if you hadn't heard what went on in the basement.

Dean shook his head sadly. "I know, Sammy."

He could almost hear his brother's nerdy observation on the sight before him. It was a shame about Sam. Dean couldn't bring himself to go beyond that thought anymore.

~o~

Four years had passed since Sam had betrayed the elder Winchester by sneaking off like some big-ass weasel to go to Detroit and say yes to Lucifer. The damn fool had figured he could save the world from the Apocalypse all by his idiot self. The stupid jerk!

Dean rolled over in his couch bed and scraped his hands through his hair. Sleep was evading him again. Memories of his little brother and the events leading up to him sacrificing his fool self for mankind never seemed to want to leave Dean alone in the dark hours of night.

He guessed insomnia was probably his penance for continuing to say 'Hell No!' to Michael right to the end. Sometimes Dean wished he had simply given in and gone with the angelic plan. That way, at least he wouldn't have had to go on with his pointless existence on Earth. At least he would have been with his Sam.

He used to feel angry and betrayed. He used to curse Sam and the whole self-righteous angelic host. But, after all this time, he simply didn't have the energy left to feel a damn thing.

~o~

Of course, it hadn't taken four years to get to this place. As it happens, it hadn't even taken one.

The Apocalypse had gone down, exactly as promised. But it hadn't been like they had expected. Sure the sky had become a sea of crimson flame and monsters had stalked the Earth, to begin with. Then there had followed a season of fire and brimstone below and bloody war in the heavens. Many, many had died. Humans, angels, demons, pretty much fuglies of every race, had been decimated.

Soon Lucifer had gotten bored with the everyday mayhem and instead instituted a military rule with himself as the new Emperor of the Three Kingdoms. Platoons of demons had marched the streets mopping up opposition with punitive measures, cold-blooded and peremptory. Sometimes they still did. Terrified people had fled their homes and hidden in cellars, basements and rat holes in the dirt. Some were still down there.

What was left of Team Free Will had quickly fallen apart, blown to the four winds by disaster after ineluctable disaster. Dean had lost so many friends, and he had no idea where any survivors might have wound up. He himself had spent a couple years being shifted around the country on a sort of underground railway, as no doubt were many others: hunters, fighters, leaders, preachers, all sorts.

Then, when it looked like there would be nothing left of mankind but a smoking pyre, things had suddenly chilled right down. Hostilities had ceased. Death stats had topped out. Everything had ground to a creaking halt. Now there was only typical post-war disintegration: food shortages, fuel shortages, disease and despair.

When the bloody whirligig had stopped, Dean had found himself in Michigan. Ironic, seeing as Detroit was the city where his brother had said yes to Lucifer and let Dean down big time. And he had wound up living without enthusiasm on the top floor of an abandoned office block in Motown, along with a ragtag rabble of haunted souls.

He scavenged for food, clothing and fuel. Anything. He bartered for his living, using his self-taught skills as a mechanic to keep other people's old rattletraps, generators and assorted machinery ticking over. He was barely scraping a life, and he was living largely to spite THEM because, honestly, he had lost all hope.

While all this was going down, he tried not to see his brother's face plastered everyplace on billboards and TV screens, or hear his voice on the crackling radio, issuing Lucifer's infernal agitprop and laying down his devilish decrees. Gleeful. Evil. Not Sam.

Dean KNEW his beloved brother was gone, long gone, lost forever the moment he agreed to be part of the archangels' internecine master plan. But Lucifer wearing him like a fright mask hurt more than his mind could deal with. So he had just... stopped hurting.

Then one day Lucifer had made an appearance in a new meatsuit, some handsome rock-jawed Nordic Apollo created especially for his purpose. Dean was forced to conclude that what was left of his brother, the husk of Sam, was gone for sure. Dumped out, as it were, with the garbage. That final realization had Dean letting fall a solitary, bitter tear. It was his last.

Dean Winchester's heart was totally numb.

~o~

When Dean dragged himself out of bed, early the next morning, a couple of raggedy birds were sitting on his makeshift balcony looking hopeful. Avian behaviour didn't seem to have yet accommodated the fact that humans were no longer the providers they once were.

Sometimes he would spare a handful of crumbs so he could watch them enjoy something he no longer found any joy in. Life.

Gone were the happier times of delicious bacon cheeseburgers and luscious apple pie. Dean got by, food-wise, but he was so lean these days that his clothes hung loose on him. Anyways, if someone had offered him a prime beefsteak he wouldn't have been able to taste it for the bile in his system.

He rapped on the window glass, scaring the hungry vermin away.

"Yeah, go on! Get outta here!" he snapped. "We don't have little enough without you coming around here panhandling? Feathery freakin' douchebags. Nothing for you in the city."

He watched them fly, winging their way downtown, instinctively avoiding the forbidding demon HQ tower marring the morning skyline. He sighed and turned away.

Today he had arranged to go meet with another ex-hunter, an old guy named Ted, who said he had Tylenol. Dean hoped he would be able to barter a few hours of manual work. He knew a couple people in his building who could really use some serious pain relief.

At least there was a treatment for physical pain.

~o~

Dean hit the sidewalk cautiously. He walked with his head down these days, the cocky spirit knocked out of him by failure and betrayal and by the loss of everyone he cared about.

There were still a few demon punishment squads around and all it needed was to look wrong and you could wind up picked out for special, and summary, attention. He knew no one of any importance was actively searching for him anymore. His big purpose was kind of 'last year', but he knew that he was still liable to suffer payback from certain parties if his luck went bad.

Keeping his head down also meant Dean didn't have to see the tattered remains of the Big Brother-style bills that still clung to scarred walls. Faded and torn they lazily flapped in the breeze, bearing his lost brother's face, fiendishly jubilant but still too 'Sam' for comfort.

It took him almost an hour to get to Ted's hideaway in the basement of an old paint store. He had to do the fancy-ass coded knock thing three times before the asshat drew all his door bolts and let him inside.

"You see I got a mess of paint thinners and combustible crap out back," Ted was gabbling as he led Dean inside. "And I reckon I could mix up some kinda fuel for this old motorcycle I got my hands on. Only the dang thing ain't running."

Dean hummed, not entirely convinced. "Not so sure that's gonna work, buddy. But I'll take a look at your machine, as I'm here anyways."

He got on with stripping the machine down and, while he worked, he got to listen to Ted prattle on about all kinds of crap. Clearly the guy hadn't had anyone to talk to in a while, not uncommon with shut-ins, so Dean let him run his mouth off.

"...and so I found this dumpster. Back of Hooky Street. Figured I'd take a look-see. Found a whole case of soap in a dumpster last month, you get me. Nearly crapped my pants when this big guy jumped up. Been sleeping in there I guess and..."

Dean wasn't actually taking much notice. "Yeah. Sure," he mumbled, his mind on the bike.

"...and damn it if he didn't look like freakin' Lucifer himself," the guy went on. "Got outta there toot sweet."

"Like Lucifer himself, huh?" Dean parroted, unthinkingly. Then he looked up at the guy, squinting suspiciously. "This better not be the start of some lame-ass joke at my expense, assclown."

Ted threw up his hands. "Oh no! Noooo! I, uh- Oh God. Sorry, Dean. Wasn't thinking."

Ted had met Dean and his brother once, back in the day, so he got Dean's drift. For looking like Lucifer read looking like Sam. Dean grunted and got back down to work.

"Although," Ted continued, mostly to himself. "Come to think of it, he did kinda look like..."

Dean ground his teeth. If he had had a dollar for every time somebody told him they had seen 'some guy that coulda been Sam'... He wasn't even going to give that thought houseroom.

His Sam was gone.

~o~

Right after dawn the next morning, Ted was rudely awoken by loud banging on the entrance to his secret lair. He stumbled out of his bed and grabbed his pistol. He still had two bullets left that he had hung onto throughout everything. His thinking had been, worst case scenario, one bullet for the demon, one for himself. He ran to the door and aimed his weapon.

"C'mon, Ted. Lemme in. Gotta talk to you. Gotta ask you about something," insisted the guy outside, hoarsely.

It was Dean. Ted wondered what the hell Dean Winchester was doing banging on his door at bird fart in the morning. He unbarred the door and let him inside.

Dean rushed past him. He was breathless and on edge. Ted guessed he must have run there. The truth was, Dean hadn't slept all night imagining Sam jumping out of some back-street dumpster in Ted's face. He needed to see that garbage container with his own eyes.

"Where? Where was it? The dumpster."

He grabbed Ted by the shoulders. Ted was bewildered for a moment.

"Whatcha? What dumpster?" Then light dawned. "Oh yeah. That. Where I saw the big guy? It was on Hooky Street. Behind ReadMission the book store, I guess."

"Book store," echoed Dean. "Crap. It HAD to be a freakin' book store. Freakin' bookworm."

Fate was really making sure he checked this one out.

"You OK?" asked Ted, solicitously.

He wasn't used to seeing Dean so discombobulated. These days he was typically all business.

"Guess I scared you, huh? Sorry, Ted, but you know..."

Sure Ted knew. Even when you have given up, hope has a way of never letting you be. He had been there himself.

Hasn't everyone?

TBC

A/N: Finally got this story ready to post. Started it at Christmas, would you believe. So what is Dean going to find in that dumpster? More tomorrow. I'm going to try to update this daily.