Title: future lore

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: future!fic, spoilers for everything aired

Pairings: none stated

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 700

Point of view: first

Prompt: Dean/Sam, highway to Hell

Notes: I never state it, but the narrator is Ben Braedon from 3.2 "The Kids Are Alright"

Those who survive... cope. All they can do is endure.

o0o

The end begins on a beautiful day (in some places) when a nice enough boy is stabbed in the back by someone he spared.

That boy is never so nice again.

o0o

Winchesters are made to survive. They're like cockroaches that way. So even though the world ends, hellfire raining from the sky while the angels flee like scared bunnies to a far corner of the cosmos(or maybe another nice enough boy said angels aren't real and they weren't anymore), even though Creation cries for its Maker, unheard and unanswered, there are still Winchesters.

Two of them, in fact. And probably not the two you expect.

(Just tell the story, you say? But I am.)

o0o

The beginning ends when a pretty little blonde (she's good with a gun and better with a knife, so you better watch out and you better think twice) catches a demon's fancy.

You see, for those in the know, the entire tapestry got rewoven that day. The Campbell family should have been a blip on the radar, a little clan of hunters who'd die a hundred years later in the demon wars.

There were no vessels then. Those came later, when that spitfire Mary made a deal.

(Hush. You wanted the truth, didn't you? I can't help that you don't like it.)

o0o

So, the mother of two vessels (though, of course, that wasn't true yet) marries a soldier. She's a hunter; he's a warrior. Match made in Heaven, or Hell, if you want to get technical. They're both trying to escape their pasts, though—doesn't it always?—the past comes calling with fire and blood.

(Fine, fine, I'll skip ahead a bit. Sheesh, you're impatient.)

o0o

So, there's this nice enough boy and his overprotective big brother. The boy gets stabbed in the back and dies in his brother's arms.

(Oh, you know that part? Hmm. I guess I'll skip ahead some more.)

o0o

In Hell, that overprotective big brother becomes the Tormentor's favorite pupil, with potential to spare. He takes to torturing like blood to a knife, like he'd been made, bred, and born for it. Never has Alistair had such a student, not in all the eons since Sammael became Lucifer. (And yes, that's important. Remember that.)

Anyway, though he doesn't know it, when he takes the razor from Alistair's bloodstained fingers and slices a poor soul from neck to navel, he shatters the first lock on the door of Lucifer's cage.

But that's not the point. Dean Winchester broke the first lock, yes, and his sweet little brother—no longer quite so sweet, and actually taller and broader, if you want to get technical(isn't that the way with little brothers?)—broke the last.

So, yeah. That's what happened.

(Huh? What comes after? Well...)

o0o

Those who survive... cope. All they can do is endure. We're survivors, sweetheart. We're like cockroaches, us Winchesters. Dean and Sam didn't make it—that final battle, when Lucifer and Michael fought for the first time since the War in Heaven, burned them both up in incandescent light, brighter than the sun, and far hotter. They were scorched to nothingness.

I wouldn't have believed it myself, but my brother told me so.

Yeah, I know... he could bring them back, maybe. And the angels, too. Except he doesn't do that anymore. He refuses, or maybe he can't. Because like he wished away the angels, he also removed the power, see. He's just a normal anymore. Like me.

Well, as much as we can be, us Winchester boys.

(Hey, you wanted the truth. Dean and Sam are dead, but they died together. Jesse swore, that one time I asked, that they knew, that they held each other in those final moments, soul to soul as they left existence.

Jesse swore. And he doesn't lie to me.)

o0o

Hey, look, sorry. I gotta go. My brother's calling. Maybe next time you'll request an easier story, yeah?

Oh, don't worry. It's no secret. I just... sometimes, it's hard to talk about, you know?

Anyway. We'll endure. Nothing else to do, and we're Winchesters, me and Jesse.

We'll survive, 'cause it's what we do.