It's been a long two days.
Dean's not spoken a word since it happened. He can't muster up enough strength to care about anything, let alone talk. Hell, he doesn't have the energy to fucking sleep. He sits up all night, replaying it in his head.
He marches on towards their mother and towards their Nephilim. (It's what Sammy expects. Would have expected.)
Cas tries to talk to him. Gabriel hangs back, observing. The two angels barely exist. Dean exists solely in the past, doomed to relive those horrible seconds for the rest of his life. Dean's own name, torn from his little brother's ruined throat, still echoes in his ears.
He pushes on toward the goal. There is nothing else to do.
When Dean sees his mother, he expects to feel something. Relief, maybe. She's alive here, eyes dancing, hair bouncing, smile twisting rosy cheeks up toward the heavens. (Are there heavens here? Dean belatedly wonders. Oh where, oh where did his brother go?)
Mary mocks Sam with her life. She is smiling and dancing and alive in the sunlight, and Sam is lying cold and still. He will never see the sunlight again. (God, Sam looked so radiant when he smiled in the sun.)
(Dean will never bask in his brother's glow again.)
It's when Mary takes him into his arms, when she meets his eyes and realizes that something is so very wrong, when she cups his face in her hands and asks, "Dean, where's Sam?" that Dean feel tears wet his cheeks. People usually feel things—like sadness—when they cry. Dean is beyond feeling anything.
Mary stares into Dean's eyes, and he into hers, and all Dean can think is that it wasn't worth it. God, it wasn't worth it. He wants to scream it at her, at Cas, at the goddamn sky; it wasn't fucking worth it. (Nothing is, nothing was, and nothing will ever be.)