Author's Note: Ficlet for Give A Read Challenge Week #2 (via mishadmitrikrushniccollins on tumblr). Prompt was "New Year's."
Disclaimer: These characters are not my property.
The Winchester boys have never really gone in for holiday celebrations, but New Year's Eve… well, that's always been their one exception. It's their own private thing though - raising their glasses to another year, celebrating making it through the last one alive (or least being alive at the end of it). Even when they've been at each other's throats, even when the world is literally ending around them, they've taken that one night off from hunting, from arguing, and just appreciated that neither of them, at that moment, is dead.
It's never been a big party or anything - last year they barely spoke to each other, downed a few beers, watched the Times Square insanity from the warmth of their shitty motel room. And at midnight, they lifted their bottles, tapped them together with a dull clink and a toast to coming back from the dead, again.
This year, though… this year was supposed to be different. No musty motel, no cheap beer (or at least some actual champagne for the toasting - Dean wasn't gonna forgo beer entirely), and there was going to be an epic party.
Dean had gone all out prepping for it - multiple shopping trips to get all sorts of ingredients for a huge spread of food, driving halfway across the state to pick up some impressive fireworks for celebrating the new year in style, even convincing Charlie to somehow get them cable access for just that one night (he wasn't gonna ask how she managed that one, so long as they could tune in to the traditional festivities). For the first time, they had a real home, and for the first time, they were gonna have a real New Year's Eve party.
That was before. Before Dean's world imploded. Before he watched Sam - no, not-Sam - burn out Kevin's eyes. Before the thing that he allowed into his brother took control, murdering the kid Dean was supposed to protect. Before Dean lost half his family in one night.
So tonight, on New Year's Eve, he gets in the Impala and drives for hours, wandering along the back roads of Kansas (or maybe Nebraska - he's not sure anymore which state he's in). It doesn't really matter where he goes; he just needs to be anywhere but in that empty bunker, staring at the seat where Sam should be, at the spot on the floor where Kevin's body lay.
Eventually, he finds himself in a rundown bar in some no-name town, drinking alone. The TV is tuned to Times Square, but he does his best to ignore it and the memories it would bring. Instead, he drinks, bottle after bottle, trying to numb his pain.
But alcohol doesn't do much for an agony that starts in your soul, and he can't find any sort of relief, can't find any escape from the damnation that he brought on himself. Everything - Kevin's death, Sam being possessed, Cas getting tortured - it's all on him.
And as New Year's Eve turns into New Year's Day, he buries his head in his arms to hide the tears streaming down his cheeks. There's no toast to make this year, no raising of glasses to celebrate life.
He screwed up.
And now his family is gone.
What a way to ring in the new year.