Once it reaches his ears, he realizes how long it's been since he's heard genuine laughter. Not the hollow sound that tries to mimic it, all too common within the village. It reminds him of days spent living in motel rooms with stains of unknown origins, carpet fibers matted together with a type of crust unpleasant to feel underfoot, and showers with all the pressure of a watering can. Waiting and making up games to pass the time until their dad came back from his current hunt.
He joins in, though he doesn't understand the humor or what was said in the first place to bring it about.
Sam's laugh is weaker than Dean's. Breathy in a way he doesn't remember from the days before the Apocalypse. Like small gasps, but without the expression of pain or exhaustion that would usually accompany them. Wheezy. It's a small detail, but a painful reminder that things are different now and will forever be different. The past is long gone, and the future is tentative at best.
He should have held onto those good moments in the past. The ones he took for granted.
The laughter fades from the room quicker than Dean would like, but a warmth in his chest remains afterwards. It's a foreign feeling, one he hasn't felt—or allowed himself to feel—in a few years. Longer, if he feels like being honest with himself. It wasn't like things were great between him and Sam prior to the Apocalypse. Strange how it's forced them back together like this.
Dean does his best to accept the easy moments like this between Sam and himself, but the lingering question about what it is (exactly, not this cryptic shit) that Gabriel wants him to do in order to prove that Sam's soul will be fixed in time keeps him from being able to hold onto the good moments they have without wondering if this is the right path to earn Gabriel's help.
Each night, he holds out hope that it will be the night Gabriel comes to him in dreams once again.
"Do you want to get some fresh air today?" Dean asks once the silence has gone on long enough for his tastes. "Can't be fun spending most of your time stuck inside this place. Besides, we don't know how many more nice days we'll get at this point."
Dean can admit to himself that the cabin he calls home these days isn't the best environment to live in, not that any environment can really claim that title anymore. Dust accumulated on surfaces made of rotting wood leaves the rooms filled with a pungent musty smell. The dim light that filters in through broken windows and torn shades. The faded fabric of the few pieces of furniture that adorn the rooms, covered with tears and stains of unknown origin. There's mold crawling up in the corners of the kitchen and bathroom from a time long before Dean took up residence here. It isn't well kept now, and it probably never has been. Which means that the state of things in the cabin has only grown worse over the years.
Yeah, this place is kind of a shit hole, and Dean is willing to be the first to admit that.
"I think it would do both of us some good," Dean continues before Sam has a chance to answer. "I never paid that much attention to how shitty this place really is before."
He cracks a small smile, which grows once he catches the light of amusement shining in Sam's eyes.
"Outside sounds good," Sam says. Quiet and slow, but clear.
Dean stands up from his chair and stretches, his joints cracking in the process, before he moves to help Sam up and out of the cabin. Dean slings Sam's scorched arm over his shoulders, bearing as much of his weight as he will allow.
Dean tries to convince himself that it doesn't feel like a burden to be his brother's crutch. That he's not trapped in a life that he's hated for years, but is now being forced to acknowledge that hatred through a confinement in a permanent home he never wanted.
He tries to remember the times he liked looking after Sam when they were just children. He tries to hold onto the protective instincts that used to burn white-hot in his chest when Sam's safety was concerned.
He tries to remember when all he wanted was to be with Sam and their dad. One of them might be missing now, but two of them are still there. Together.
The times when he gave a shit about anything other than his own survival.
"It's cloudy enough out that your burnt skin should be okay if it isn't all covered," Dean says. "So, that's good."
"It's fine," Sam says, like he can ignore the fact that half his body is covered in skin sensitive to the light (and pretty much everything else) these days. That it doesn't bother him when he moves and stretches tender skin over weak muscles that are unwilling to follow the commands of his big, stupid brain.
Dean snorts out a laugh. "We both know that's a load of shit. Don't try to pull your Macho Man act on me. With the way you look these days, it'll never work."
"Jerk," Sam huffs out under his breath.
Dean smiles, but no reply leaves his lips.
Dean squeezes the excess water from the old rag into the sink, twisting it until only a few droplets fall. With a sigh, he turns and wipes down the other half of the counters in the kitchen, the amount of dust and grime built up adding to the already blackened rag.
"Do you think it's working, then?" Cas asks, sitting at the rickety kitchen table that Dean wiped the dust from first. It seemed like a good place to start.
Dean shrugs one shoulder with a single shake of his head. "How should I know? Gabriel didn't exactly give me instructions. Or hints. Or anything else useful."
"Maybe—"
"No," Dean says, cutting off Cas. "Okay, I don't know what you're going to say. Don't give me that look. What I do know is that Gabriel isn't coming off as the actually helpful type of helpful people. You know, the ones who are straightforward in what needs to be done to receive their help."
"So what do we do now?"
Dean shrugs, setting his rag down and taking a seat at the table across from Cas. "Continue on with our lives until Gabriel is satisfied we've met his mystery criteria. Not much else we can do."
After a moment of silence, Cas asks, "How is Sam doing?"
"He's in the bedroom getting checked over by Annette. It's been awhile, so she wanted to see how he's holding up under my care. I'm sure she'll find something to criticize me about."
"If you hadn't spent so much time hitting on her in the beginning of the Apocalypse, she might be more inclined to believe in your abilities."
Dean chuckles and runs his hand over the stubble of a beard forming on his jawline. "Yeah. It's not that I regret it, but I look back and think of all the wasted time and the time I spent wasted because we all gave up on finding ways to fix the world. And now we learn it can be done."
"We're trying again. Don't lose faith, Dean. We have a chance to stop Roanoke this time."
Dean holds his tongue, not pointing out that Cas lost his faith and angelic powers with it only a few years ago. He resorted to dulling his mind with medications and mortal pleasures. Amazing what receiving divine favor for the second time can make a guy forget.
But Dean hasn't had faith since he was a toddler and his mom told him every night that angels were watching over him. He wasn't exactly in danger of losing it again. He's never regained it in the first place. Not in any way that mattered.
"Yeah," Dean says. "We're trying."
It isn't long before Annette joins them in the kitchen with Sam following behind her with his usual lumbering gait. She gives Dean a slight smile as she walks in, the amusement in her eyes clear to see.
"I have to admit, I'm impressed," she says. "Given his condition when you brought him here, I never expected to see this much improvement. What's your secret?"
"Sobriety and removal from leadership," Dean says.
Annette rolls her eyes. "Sober? You? Well, who would have thought that might help? It's not like anyone was telling you to lay off the alcohol years ago."
"Ah, go to Hell, Annette," Dean says, no malice in his voice.
"I'm already there."
It's how everyone answered to that. Dean may have real experience when it comes to Hell, but damn if this world wasn't becoming a worse and worse place to live for those who managed to survive the initial shit show of the Croatoan outbreak. He knows what Hell is really like, but he understands how the rest of the sane population feels like they're living in it these days.
"Aren't we all," he says.
"Yeah," Annette says. She pauses for a moment before continuing. "I should go, though. People are always getting hurt. Whether it's going about their days or coming back from scavenging trips."
"Don't let us keep you," Dean says.
She accepts Cas' offer to walk her out, even though the door isn't far and the social courtesy of doing so has more or less died off.
"Great social skills," Sam mumbles with a half-smile on the unburnt side of his face.
Dean shrugs. "Like yours are so great? You can barely say a full sentence."
He regrets the latter half of his words as soon as they leave his mouth, but it's short lived as Sam laughs in that raspy way of his that's becoming pleasantly familiar to hear in his voice. It isn't the voice Dean remembers, but it's still Sam's.
Dean clears his throat. "I, uh, I didn't mean it that way."
"Not wrong," Sam says.
Dean chuckles. "Maybe. But you weren't wrong either. I guess I've lost my charm."
"Never had any," Sam says.
Dean shares another laugh with him. While he appreciates the ease they have around each other now, Dean can't stop a nagging feeling deep down that warns him to stay on edge. To keep his guard up.
He lets out a slow exhale. He's as safe as he can be in the post-Apocalypse world while he's within the borders of the survivors' village. And really, he tells himself, Sam was never a villain. He may have convinced himself of that over the years, but Sam was as much of a victim as the rest of them.
And he made his decisions to save Dean from suffering in worse ways than having to survive the fall of Earth.
"I wish you'd had a better world to come back to," Dean says after a long silence.
"Not your choice," Sam says.
"Yeah, well, it wasn't yours either." Dean watches Cas step back into the room and says, "The angels would have used us as their pawns one way or another. We couldn't escape this."
Cas tilts his head down and looks to the side before he meets Dean's eyes with guilt shrouding his face.
"You're right," Cas says as he turns to look at Sam. "Even if you felt that you had choices, it was because we let you feel that way. Humans enjoy their free will, but they can still be manipulated. Even angels can be manipulated by each other… Like I was. And I'm sorry, but that will never change what has been done."
Dean plasters a grin on his face, feeling the muscles protest at this now unfamiliar expression. "That's right. We were tools. No matter what we did, we would have found ourselves right back here."
He pauses and looks at Sam before he continues. "The past is behind us, and we need to leave it there."
Night falls and Dean finds himself unable to sleep. Over the years, he's grown all too used to sleepless nights. Yet somehow, they feel a little different now with Sam sleeping under the same roof. There's a familiarity he's long forgotten, even if he spent so long trying to push it away. Deny that it wasn't a relief to see Sam alive and devil-free.
He eases himself out of bed and takes practiced steps out of the room, knowing how to avoid every creak in the floor.
Sounds of shifting from the kitchen send Dean into high alert, and he stalks from the hall to the kitchen to find Chuck adjusting his position in one of the chairs with uneven legs. He curses under his breath as he moves and the chair tilts a little too far in response.
Dean lets the tension flow out of his muscles and settles himself in a chair across from Chuck, running a hand over the stubble growing on his chin. "You scared me, Chuck."
"Sorry. I-I couldn't sleep," he says, fidgeting in that nervous way of his.
"And so you chose to come here why?" Dean asks. "You aren't known for breaking and entering, and you know that your inventory concerns aren't my problem anymore. I've been removed from leadership."
"I'm not here about inventory," Chuck says. He takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. "I'm here because we need to talk. About the beginning. And the end."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that as part of the beginning, I should be part of the end."