Epilogue

With confused thanks and tight smiles, the frightened family hustled the Winchesters out of their house. Sam was surprised that they asked for no explanation and wanted no questions answered about what had happened. They didn't demand to know what had attacked them or why, nor how the brothers had known it was coming. They just thanked them politely for whatever it was they had done, and got rid of them as quickly as possible.

'It's weird,' Sam reflected later, sitting back in the Impala with his eyes closed. 'After we were attacked… Dad wanted to know everything about what did it. But those people…'

'They just want to forget,' Dean interrupted, finishing Sam's thought. 'Dad lost Mom… nothing was ever going to be the same. But they can just pretend nothing happened and go back to life like before. It's easier. We couldn't do that.'

Sam nodded, considering. He's right. Then his lips curved into a smirk. 'When did you get so damned insightful?'

Dean looked up at his brother, almost surprised to see him smiling, after everything that had happened. Then, all at once, he could feel the freedom of a long quest finally fulfilled settling into him, and he grinned. 'Yeah, whatever…'

Sam settled further back in his seat. 'I could sleep for… I don't know. Ages,' he muttered.

Dean grunted his agreement. 'Motel?' he suggested, starting the engine.

'Motel,' agreed Sam, without opening his eyes.

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It was late afternoon in the next day when they finally woke up. Too tired to do anything other than collapse fully clothed onto the twin beds, they had left the blinds open, and they woke to find the room bathed in soft, golden sunlight.

Something was nagging in the back of Dean's mind, and gradually a memory surfaced, of a conversation in Chicago, what seemed years ago. At the time, it hadn't seemed so important – 22 years after their mother's death, 'when we've killed the demon' had begun to seem an imaginary time which would never really exist. At that point, Dean had begun to suspect that they might never rid the world of the thing. But now it was gone, and the half-forgotten conversation was suddenly vitally important. Feeling a certain amount of apprehension, Dean voiced the inevitable question:

'So, what do we do now?'

Sam was caught unprepared by the question. He, too, recalled the words they had exchanged in Chicago. He thought about going back to school. 'Normal life'… the phrase sounded strange and alien in his mind. Somehow, 'normal' lacked the appeal that it had once had.

After it had so nearly been lost, family seemed the most important thing to hold on to. With John gone, Dean was all he had left, and he was all Dean had. His brother's brush with death in the cabin had made Sam realise that a life without Dean had become inconceivable. He would rather be without 'normal life' than without Dean, any time.

He had been away from school for too long; his friends would be strangers: they belonged somehow to a different world, one that he could not see himself rejoining. After everything that he had been through, the petty concerns of his college life – giving papers in on time, getting enough sleep the night before an exam – seemed trivial and superficial. He had seen too much now to slip back into that life.

Now, despite everything he had said in the past, hunting was all he had left. And yet, it didn't seem so bad. After some moments, he finally gave the answer that he had never expected to hear himself say.

'We go on… find the next hunt. There'll always be something to hunt, right?'

Dean felt himself fill with relief. Part of him wanted to ask what had made Sam change his mind, what had caused this drastic change in his brother's point of view. But then he realised that he didn't need a reason; it was enough just to know that Sam was staying. Somehow, he managed to express everything he was feeling in his short reply to Sam's question.

'Yeah, always.'

Fin

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Wow, I finished it! ;) Thank you very, very much to everyone who has read all the way to this point, you guys have made my first fanfic a pleasure to write! If you have any thoughts or comments, I'd love to hear them.

This was going to be a one-shot when I wrote the first chapter, but I was persuaded to continue it, and it kind of… grew. The point is, this is a bigger story than I ever intended to write, and I hope I did it justice!

Sally

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