Postmortem
K Hanna Korossy

They drove in numb silence, on their way to a funeral.

The radio was off. Passenger sometimes cast a glance at driver before looking again out the side window. The driver's gaze would shift to his right even as his eyes remained on the road. Neither of them looked back at the sheet-wrapped figure in the back seat.

Idjits had been Bobby's final word, and Sam's mouth lifted in a ghost of a smile at the thought. There had been a world of feeling in those six letters, a very Winchester way of saying I love you. It was far more than their dad had given him. And it hurt.

He looked over again. If he was in pain, he didn't even want to imagine what Dean was feeling. He was a soldier through-and-through, and his last CO had just died. Dean was without orders, adrift even with his brother—his partner—sitting next to him, and Sam had no idea how to help him. Bobby would've had some advice, but Bobby was...

"Gonna stop for the night." Dean's voice was rusty from going unused several hundred miles.

Sam roused himself, looking around at the dark flatness of Ohio, or maybe Indiana. Still over a thousand miles from South Dakota, but he and Dean hadn't needed to discuss where they were taking Bobby for a hunter's funeral. It would not be in freakin' New Jersey. They could build the pyre on the very spot where he'd cremated Karen, next to where his own house had been consumed by fire.

It always came down to fire.

Sam saw the sign now, the billboard lit unevenly with a half-broken row of lights. He nodded. "Okay." His voice was hoarse, too. They were probably dehydrated. Exhausted from not having slept the night before. Weighed down by a grief Sam hadn't even begun to process yet.

Dean turned the car onto the off-ramp.

The hospital had balked at releasing the body. There was the small matter that Bobby had been shot in the head, suspicious even with their hunting accident story and the indisputable fact Bobby had clearly known and not blamed them in his few moments of lucidity. There would still have to be an autopsy, which meant pieces of tissue removed and stored for analysis and a delay of days and the realization sooner or later that it wasn't a rifle bullet in Bobby's head.

They'd raided the morgue that night instead, unchallenged as they rolled the sheet-covered body out the back door into the night. Sam had pretended to himself they were on a case, stealing some poor anonymous sucker. He had no idea what Dean was thinking, his brother's expression blank and empty since the doctor's final words.

The motel actually looked decent, a single line of rooms snaking around in a U. Dean didn't bother with check-in, either too much of an effort or a need to stay under the radar, or both. He drove around to the unit farthest from the main office, parked across the lot, then turned off the car and just sat.

Sam pulled in a deep breath and laid his hand on the door latch. Dean still didn't move, and Sam finally asked, "You coming in?"

"Soon. Need some air first."

Right. Because the wind that had whipped through the car when Dean rolled down his window to stay awake had been so stale. Sam didn't call him on it, just got and shuffled to the door, not bothering with his duffel. All he wanted was a few hours of horizontal oblivion.

It only took more time to pick the lock than it would've to use a key because he was barely trying. He left the door ajar for Dean and plodded to the first bed, sinking down on the edge.

"We can get separate rooms, you know."

"Bobby, you got some nest egg tucked away we don't know about? Sam and I shared a bed most of the time we hunted with Dad—we're good. Long as he keeps those giraffe legs on his side of the mattress."

"Right. I'm the snuggler."

"Shut up. I don't snuggle with dudes."

"Ow! Dean!"

"Oh, yeah, I can see this is gonna be a real restful night..."

He shook the memory free, the last time they'd gotten a room with Bobby. Before the Leviathan had taken that away from them, forced them to start squatting in way-off-the-grid shacks. Before the Leviathan took Bobby away, too.

The SUV's door squeaked outside, and Sam dully tracked its slam. There'd been no way they were keeping the van that was awash with Bobby's blood. Dean had jacked a generic SUV in the hospital employee lot and transferred their armory to the back while Sam dealt with the hospital paperwork. He'd turned down the hesitant organ downer guy he was pretty sure was the reason for Dean's cut-up hand, and accepted the bag of Bobby's things.

The squeak of another SUV door. The trunk, Sam figured. There was no following slam, however; Dean wasn't just grabbing his bag. Time passed, until reflexive worry pushed Sam to his feet and shuffled him to the window.

Yeah, Dean was working on the trunk. Sam was usually the one who got all OCD when he couldn't deal, but Dean sometimes just needed to do something. Weapon-sharpening, inventory, maybe even just holding the folded trench coat and now the bloody ball cap Sam knew he had stashed in the duffels that were their mobile stockpile. Whatever might help Dean, Sam was all for. Because he doubted anything could help this.

There was a padded chair beside the window, a vinyl hemisphere that looked like it would only fit half of him, but Sam dropped into it anyway. He didn't want to go to bed before Dean came in. Wasn't sure he could sleep, anyway, but he didn't want to leave his brother alone in any sense of the word. Or to be alone himself. They were alone enough already. He sighed, sinking in, boneless.

A dog barked in the distance, hellhound-like. He startled awake.

Sam sat up, blinking away sleep if not fogginess. Crap, so much for staying up. Skipping sleep the night before must've caught up with him; Dean had at least slept off his drugged sandwich, but Sam and Bobby had stayed up to stake out Biggerson's.

Bobby. The memory sank like a stone in his gut; for a few wonderful seconds he'd actually forgotten. Bobby was gone. And Dean... Sam shot to his feet. Dean wasn't there, either.

He quickly pulled the curtain back and scanned the parking lot. The SUV was in the same spot, but Dean was not. "Crap, crap." How long had he slept? He hadn't bothered to look, couldn't have cared less about something like time. Sam grabbed the door—still ajar—already pulling out his cellphone.

Dean didn't answer, and Sam didn't hear the echo of his ringtone as he stepped out into the empty lot. It was still dark; the moon had not set yet. Maybe he hadn't slept more than a few minutes then. Dean said he needed air. It wasn't out of the question he'd gone for a walk and lost time as badly as Sam had.

His heart wasn't buying it, however, tightening in his chest in desperation to find his brother. It was a need, and whether it was for his own sake or for Dean's, Sam couldn't have said and didn't really care. He broke into a half-run, hissing calls to Dean as he went.

He swung by the main office, peering inside to find a middle-aged clerk sitting alone, focused on his smart phone. There was an attached diner, but it was closed for the night. Sam glanced both ways down the road they'd come down on, but it was little more than an off-ramp for the motel, no other establishments in sight. A walk seemed increasingly likely, even as Sam's worry climbed higher. He shouldn't have left Dean alone, not now. If the idiot did something...

Sam broke into a run, heading back the way they'd come, then peeling around the corner to the rear of the motel. Into the bowl of the U, where there was nothing but—

A flame danced in the center of the gazebo, a tall shape moving beside it.

Sam bit out a curse and raced for the structure, hoping to beat whatever it was Dean was summoning.

"Dean!"

He was close enough to see his brother's head tilt, acknowledgment he'd heard Sam but no surprise, no other reaction to his arrival. Which meant he wasn't worried about Sam stopping him, which meant—

"Dean!"

He slid to a stop by the gazebo's entrance. But by then there were two figures inside instead of just one, and the smaller echoed Sam.

"Dean!"

Sam stared, slack-jawed. He'd been expecting a crossroads demon, maybe even Crowley. Not her.

From Dean's tone, he was pretty sure his brother was surprised, too. "Tessa?"

The reaper crossed her arms, looking as coolly annoyed as ever. "Seriously? What is it going to take to teach you two that reapers are not at your beck and call? I am an Angel of Death, Dean, not a lapdog."

Sam shut his gaping mouth and turned to his brother for the answer.

"I know. I know that," Dean said quietly, hands up to ward off her anger. "I didn't— I wasn't trying to reach you, okay, I just... I needed to ask a reaper something."

Tessa pursed her mouth. "I thought your time as Death would've taught you, we're not in the answer business. Things happen because they're meant to—they don't tell us why."

Wait, Dean's time as Death? Sam's eyes ping-ponged between the reaper and his brother as the two ignored him, focused completely on each other.

"It's not that kind of a question," Dean said, voice low.

Tessa studied him a moment. Maybe softened a tiny bit. "I can't bring Bobby Singer back."

"I know. That's not what I'm asking. Just...did he get a ride upstairs? I need to know if..." His voice was on the verge of breaking, and Sam's heart with him. "Is he good now?"

Tessa was silent, impassive.

"Please," Dean wavered, "I'm beggin' you. Just give us that much."

Us. Sam moved the one step up into the gazebo, hovering now to his brother's right, on his side.

The reaper surprised him by glancing over at him, acknowledging his presence for the first time, then dropping her arms with a sigh. "I can't tell you that. I don't know—that wasn't for me to see." Another pause. "But...I did hear what he said, at the end."

Idjits. Sam's throat constricted.

"Yeah." Dean's shoulders fell in defeat. "We—"

"Not that. What he said in one of his final visions before his passing. He told his father he'd adopted two sons and they'd turned out 'great. Heroes.'"

Dean rocked in place, shaken by the blow. Sam laid a hand flat on his back to steady him, to complete the circuit between them and quell his own shock. He saw his brother's head come up.

"The last vision he had, the last one he chose, was of an evening with the two of you."

His eyes blurred. Dean made a small sound.

"That's all I know. Now let me go." It was oddly gentle for an order.

When Dean didn't move, Sam knelt down to rub a break in the chalk lines his brother had drawn. Dean didn't try to stop him. By the time Sam stood, the two of them were alone in the gazebo.

He didn't know how long they stood there. The fire in the pot had died to embers and dawn was glowing on the horizon before Dean finally turned and silently walked past Sam, barely skimming him with a glance. He trailed out of the gazebo, across the grass and around the corner, out of sight.

After a moment, Sam followed.

Hours later they hit the road again, after they'd pretended to get some sleep and that the other had slept.

They drove in numb silence, orphans.

The End