They gave Dean a proper hunter's funeral. Standing side by side with Sam, John watched the flames and thought of the fire that had consumed Mary so many years ago. He'd told himself so many times it was worth it, that hunting the thing that had killed her was truly all he could do. Ten feet from the burning corpse of his boy, ignoring the pork dinner smell that wafted all around them, John couldn't see how that could possibly be true. Sam had been right.

Not before everything.

The memories came unbidden.

Dean as a baby, cooing at him from Mary's arms. Dean at four, taking Sammy in his arms and running down the stairs. Dean at five, smiling when John ruffled his hair. Dean at ten, his tongue poking out of his mouth in concentration as he put his weapon back together for the first time. At thirteen, already a ladies' man, smirking assuredly at the girls when John picked him up from middle school. Dean at sixteen, standing tall beside John, watching the werewolf burn with pride. Dean at twenty-two, quietly fielding John's anger and stony silence when Sam left for Stanford. Dean at twenty-six, bleeding on the dingy cabin floor and begging Sam to please not to shoot.

John wished, with every fiber of his being, that Sam had.

He would have given Yellow-Eyes the Colt. He would have given him his soul. But the demon had been right—and now, for all that John had won, he'd have to spend the rest of his life feeling the weight of what he'd lost.

Dean had gone to the grave thinking that John wasn't even proud of him.

His chest felt tight and his throat was burning. Tears pricked his eyes, but he told himself it was the smoke from the funeral pyre. Beside him, Sam was crying, silent but for the occasional sniffle.

They stayed out there until the fire died down and night fell, bringing with it a chill breeze that whipped across the South Dakota plains and made them both shiver. Then they buried the ashes.

Sam didn't say a single damn word to him the whole time.

When they came in from the funeral, smelling of smoke and fire, dirty from building the pyre, Bobby had been there waiting for them. He enveloped Sam in a tight hug, which was more than John had done so far. Sam had to resist the urge not to turn into pathetic, sobbing jelly right there. He thought about what Dean would say. "Cryin' like a girl, Sammy?" Or, "That's weak, man. Pull it together. I don't want to see you bawlin' over me."

Of course, thinking about that only made him want to do it more.

So he thought instead about how John hadn't even acknowledged that Sam might be a little upset his brother was dead. Hell, his dad had barely reacted at all. It was like he didn't even care that Dean was dead. As Bobby let go of him, clapping him on his shoulder with a deeply sympathetic expression, Sam was dry-eyed again.

Coming to Bobby's had made the most sense. It wasn't as if they had anywhere else to do. And just as he'd promised, Bobby had welcomed John back into his house with no more than a, "Sorry this ain't better circumstances." John had only grunted in response.

Bobby had set them both up in the guest rooms he kept for hunters in need of a place to say. They were the same rooms he'd put up Sam and Dean when they were kids, and Sam had to fight back another wave of disbelief and grief as the memories crashed down around him. Dean, showing him how to clean his favorite guns, right there. Being much younger and running into Dean's room in the night when the creaking of the old house had scared him, and Dean laughing as he'd told him, There aren't any ghosts here, stupid. Playing Bobby's old board games splayed out on the frayed, circular area rug beside the bed, and giggling when Dean pretended to make the little monopoly pieces talk. They'd spend a lot of time in those rooms, talking at night in low voices about when John would come back and where they'd go next and, sometimes, even Sam's dreams of leaving the family for a normal life. For all he'd learned it had hurt Dean later on, Dean had never given him a clue back then.

Sam wished he'd never left. Those four years at Stanford were four whole years he could've spent with Dean. Four years that he'd never get back.

Sam found that he couldn't wait to get out of his house. He buried his head in his pillow and wished he had anything to distract him the gaping hole in his life where his brother used to be. Even if Dean had been in the hospital as a spirit, he was gone now. And gone forever.

The tears came again, and Sam sobbed carefully, and quietly, into the pillow. Eventually, though he had no memory of it, he fell asleep.

"It's not salvageable," John told Sam flatly, gazing over the twisted hulk that had once been his Chevy Impala. "We've got the truck."

Or, rather, they would have the truck when Bobby took them out to pick it up. It had plenty of space enough in the cabin for two, which was all they'd need. Once, he'd liked having the Impala around because it reminded him of Mary. Now, he wanted it as far away as he could get it. It was Dean's car. Had been Dean's car.

Sam was being stubborn. It was the most he'd said to John since Dean had died. His arms were folded and he was glaring at John like he hated the sight of him.

"You're not scrapping it. As long as one part's still working—I'll fix it."

John snorted his disbelief, shifting his arm in his sling. As funny as the thought was, it also brought to mind how Dean would have insisted on fixing it too. The pain helped pull him away from that.

"You," he said, letting his voice drip with disbelief. "Rebuild that thing from the bottom up. You even know where to start?"

He could see the tears shining in Sam's eyes again, and felt a little guilty. But it was nothing compared to the monumental weight of how he'd failed Dean, and so it fell by the wayside. He didn't want the damn car around. He'd loved teaching Dean how the engine worked, and had barely been able to contain his pride at how deftly his boy had taken to tinkering with her, even when Sammy had turned up his nose. When Dean had turned eighteen, giving him the car had seemed the only thing to do, and Dean had lit up like all his Christmases had come at once. He couldn't look at the twisted frame without seeing Dean's young face shining with a smile, and that was almost more than he could bear.

"I'll figure something out," Sam said tightly. "Bobby's got the parts. I can do this."

"No, you can't," John said.

In the end, he lost the argument.

Dean had been worried about how he'd cling to the mortal coil after they burned his body until he remembered that racist truck that had terrorized Cassie's family and her father's friends a couple months back. As his body turned to ash, he slipped into the Impala, and found that it grounded him just as well. He was also pretty glad to hear Sam fighting to keep it. Finding another object to jump into might not've been easy.

Also, it was his friggin' car. He couldn't believe his dad would just go and scrap it like that. But then, he'd never have thought John would have let him die without making a phone call or trying a single damn thing. No, in line with Sam's worst accusations—the kind that Dean had argued with fruitlessly for so many years—his dad had just done nothing but go after the demon one last time. Dean gathered that Yellow-Eyes was dead. He found that he really didn't care.

He'd spent the last day wandering the grounds of Singer Auto, mostly following Sam, sometimes his dad, sometimes Bobby. He tried to make his presence known but it seemed his ghost mojo was still too weak. Sam had hadn't tried to talk to him, either, since he and Dad had torched his body.

So he was all the more surprised when, late that night—long after Sam and John and Bobby had retired to their rooms—Dean heard his name ring out through the thick silence. He walked right through the wall to Sam's room, only to find his little brother kneeling on the rug beside his bed in his sweatpants, head bowed.

"I know you can't hear me," Sam said, "but I miss you, man. Me and Dad—we could never do this without you. I don't know how we're gonna do it now. It's like he doesn't even care. But I saved your car, Dean. I wouldn't let him scrap it." An expression like a smile crossed his face and it took Dean a few seconds to realize that Sammy was just trying not to cry. "I did that much."

Dean bowed his head in sympathy, and wished to God he could get strong enough talk to Sam before his little brother broke into pieces entirely. Unsurprisingly, God didn't do a damn thing.

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