A/N: This is it, guys. It's been a long, teary road and I can't thank you enough for joining in. Seriously, I appreciate every single one of you who have reviewed, followed, favorited, or simply read along. I'm sad this story is over (extra sad after the finale last night) but I'm keeping up the feels and angst over at "How Far We've Come", my new(ish) multi-chapter fic. It's definitely a different tone than this one but I personally think it's just as awesome. Thanks again for reading!


So leave that click in my head.
And I will remember the words that you said,
Left a clouded mind and a heavy heart.
"Hopeless Wanderer" –Mumford & Sons

Kat's mother left a week after the funeral and the remaining inhabitants of what used to be Sam and Kat's house worked themselves into a new routine. Dean rarely left his bedroom during the day, coming out mostly at night when the other two were asleep. Bullet followed him around like a shadow, something he found annoying at first but he grew used to the large dog's head at his knee. Sometimes when he came out at night he would catch Kat as she was heading to bed or sitting on the couch, staring at the muted TV. She was never crying but sometimes her eyes would slowly drift his way and she would watch him grab a drink from the fridge and walk out the door, Bullet trailing at his heels.

The beer would sit in between his legs, unopened, until he backed the Impala out of the garage and drove himself to the next town over in any direction. Once there, he'd sit in the parking lot of a bar and drink. Just one. Sometimes he sat in the quiet and sometimes to the not-so-quiet screaming of Metallica or AC/DC. It depended on how loud the roaring in his head was that day. Bullet sat next to him in the front seat. At first, Dean hadn't liked that; that was Sam's spot, and he had relegated the dog to the backseat, which was further than any other dog had come to getting inside his car. But then one night Bullet jumped in the front seat and curled up there, paws hanging off the edge, head tilted out the window, completely ignoring the fact that Dean was yelling at her to get in the back seat. It was something Sam would have done and so Dean let the dog stay.

When the bottle was finished, Dean opened the door and climbed out of the car like an old man but walked into the bar with a swagger, heading for the back tables he had already sought out. They were filled with men like him: quiet, war torn, too rough around the edges to be much good to anyone. They gambled. Poker and Blackjack and Euchre, the last being a card game he had had no use for until now. Sometimes he lost but mostly he won. He smoked occasionally when offered, kept his head down, used a different identity in each bar. The others accepted him with hesitation at first: he was too young, too handsome to be on such a difficult road. But when he proved himself to be an adept card player, they let him in. Bullet sat under the table at his feet and strangely enough, he never got flack for letting the animal follow him inside. Over time, some of the men even grew fond of the Shepherd and would slip her their pizza crusts when they thought Dean wasn't looking.

That's where he stayed for a couple hours, eyes rarely flickering to the abundance of women who sat at the bar pretending not to watch him out of the corner of their eyes. Sometimes when he got back to the house, he'd find a stray napkin with a phone number in his jacket pocket but he always threw it out.

The money he left in the middle of the kitchen table, held down at the corner by the napkin holder. He wasn't stupid and he also wasn't a freeloader. He knew he took up food and energy at the house. He knew Kat had bills to pay, many of them leftover from Sam's hospital stays or treatment. It was all he could do to help out. Plus, he had promised Sam to look after them. The first few times this happened, the money remained on the table the next morning but after the pile grew for the better part of a week, it suddenly disappeared. After that, it was always gone by morning. It wasn't much but it made him feel better.

In the mornings, he was always awakened by Parker's crying. The kid did that a lot now, much more than when Sam had been alive. Sometimes Dean felt like joining in with him, beating his own fists into the walls, screaming at the top of his lungs.

"Daddy!"

Dean winced every time. It would be easier in a few years, maybe in a few months, when Parker could no longer remember his father but for now, the pain hit the toddler anew every time he woke up. The grief was endless and the house was wrapped in it, pulsing beneath the weight. Alive, but just barely.

Kat would rush to the child and soothe him, her own voice low and calm. Dean would roll over in bed and put the pillow over his ears so he couldn't hear her. He didn't want to be comforted. He wanted to drown in his own personal sea of anguish. As the days slipped by in slow succession, the Hunter lost weight, lost muscle. He lost the will to do much of anything other than sleep and play cards. Sam was gone and therefore a part of Dean was gone. A part he wasn't so sure he could live without. It was as if a vital organ had been ripped from him and he was slowly dying without it.

When he did speak to Kat, when they crossed paths in the small house, the questions were always short and direct.

"Did you get dinner last night?"

"Yes."

"Did you go out?"

"Yes."

"Do you need anything from the store?"

"No."

He was blind to the fact she was sinking into the same abyss he was content to lay at the bottom of. His sorrow and anger blinded him from anything but his own emotions. It took a while for anything to change.

xxx

It was five or six weeks after the funeral at about ten in the morning. Dean had been up for a few hours but was still lying in bed as usual, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about the least painful way to die. He couldn't decide between a bullet to the head or taking a handful of pills. He wasn't going to kill himself – not yet – but that didn't mean he couldn't think about it. Bullet lay at the foot of the bed, her head sneaking beneath his hand every so often. Parker had been wailing for a good ten minutes, sobbing hysterically in the next room over.

"Daddy! Daddy!"

Dean rarely heard him say anything else.

He rolled himself out of bed to go to the bathroom but found the door locked. He cocked his head and heard the shower running. Ah, so that was why Parker was crying. His mother was in the shower. Oh well, the kid would live.

Dean went back to bed and his contemplation of death, but it didn't last long. Twenty minutes later, the kid was still going strong and when he checked, the shower was still running.

"Kat!" he banged on the door. She didn't answer. "Hey! Kat! Parker's screaming his head off out here."

Nothing.

"What do you think?" he asked the dog who had followed him off the bed though she remained in the doorway of Dean's room. The screaming child probably bothered her as much as it did him. He snorted at her. "You're useless."

He thought about turning around and leaving but something rose in his gut, an instinctual feeling that there was something wrong on the other side of the door. He tried the door again but it was still locked.

"Kat? Are you in there?" A minute later, he was ramming his shoulder against the door. He felt the flimsy hinges give and then it knocked over completely; he caught it and leaned it up against the doorframe. He'd have to fix that later.

The first thing he noticed was that the shower and the faucet were both running, creating a steamy sauna. He coughed as the warm, moist air hit his lungs and turned them both off. The tile floor was slippery with moisture and the walls were soaked with it. Then he noticed Kat curled up on the floor in the far corner. She was crying, sobbing actually, into her arms and he realized why she'd had the water going. Her cries echoed terribly off the walls of the small room, slamming into Dean's ears with ragged edges, tearing at him. She didn't even look up as he walked in.

"Kat?" She stayed on the floor, bare legs curled under her. The only thing she had on was a purple fleece bathrobe.

"Okay," he said, crouching down beside her. "It's okay." He scooped her up, one hand under her knees, the other around her back. If anything, her crying intensified as she turned her face into his chest, arms around his neck. Beneath the fabric of the robe he could feel the sharp protrusion of her bones. It frightened him how much of her had disappeared in such a short amount of time. She was wasting away and he hadn't even noticed.

You're not taking care of them. You promised you would.

He carried Kat out of the bathroom into her bedroom and put her into bed, where she curled up in a ball. Her dark hair was a mess, stuck to her neck with sweat. Dean rummaged in the drawer of the bedside table that had been Sam's until he produced a bottle of sleeping pills.

"I'll be right back," he promised her, but she made no sign she had heard him. On his way to the kitchen, he passed Parker's room. The child was still screaming. When he returned with a glass of water, he propped Kat up and made her swallow the pills.

"They'll make it better," he said to her. "At least for a little while. We're going to be okay." She lied back down and he sat on the bed beside her, rubbing circles on her back until her sobs quieted to whimpers and then faded altogether. Only when he was sure she was asleep did he leave, shutting the door gently behind him.

"Okay, kiddo," he said, walking into Parker's room. The toddler was sitting down now but tears were still streaming down his face, which was a dark red. When he saw Dean walking to his crib he stuck his arms up in the air pitifully and Dean obliged, swinging his brother's son up into his arms. Parker buried his face in Dean's collarbone. He walked him around the room a few times and then checked his diaper. Finding it dry, he carried him out into the living room, grabbing a cup of juice on the way. Setting the juice on the coffee table he sat on the couch, the small boy curled in his arms, the screaming finally settling into something more tolerable. Once the noise stopped, Bullet came to sit next to them and Parker reached out a quivering hand to grab at her soft ears. She seemed to roll her eyes up at Dean but she tolerated the toddler as if getting her ears pulled was better than a belly rub.

Dean stroked the boy's hair, which, funnily enough, was blonde. The complete opposite of his father and mother. Then Dean remembered that Sam had had blonde hair until the age of three when it darkened. As Parker gripped the collar of Dean's shirt in one chubby hand, Dean wondered what he would grow up to do.

He hoped that instead of a revolver and a wooden handled knife, this kid's hands would grow up clutching a baseball bat or the steering wheel of a racecar. He would never know the powers of salt or holy water, never have to sit cross-legged at the end of his bed studying Latin chants. As Parker finally quieted, he stared at Dean in a way that made the Hunter shiver. It was as if the kid could see right into his soul. And even though his eyes matched the Hunter's peering down at him, Dean couldn't help but feel as though was Sam staring back at him.

"'Ean," he said softly and snuggled closer into Dean's chest. The same exact way another child had done so many years ago. Memories flashed in Dean's mind.

Sammy at age three, asking where his Mommy was.
Sammy at age eight asking Dean why he had to miss the football game when John takes them both to the shooting range.
Sammy at age ten, on his first Hunt with John and Dean.
Sam at thirteen, falling asleep on Dean's shoulder as they spend another long night in the Impala.
Sam at seventeen, screaming at John in a motel room that this was not the life he wanted. Dean watching from the bathroom, wondering how two brothers could be born so different.
Sam at eighteen, packing a bag as Dean sits on the bed and watches, wanting to ask his little brother to stay and knowing at the same time that he has to leave. Sam at twenty-two, burying his girlfriend in a graveyard they never visited again.
Sammy at thirty-three, asking Dean to forgive him one last time.

And Dean saying yes because that's what he'd been born to do.