I don't own Dean or Sam. Too bad.
Dean Winchester had often puzzled over why it was always them. Did the Winchester family just attract trouble, or was it just part of being hunters? Now, looking down at the gravestone, he shifted awkwardly.
"We never did find out who you really were," Dean bowed his head and rubbed his neck uneasily. "I- I looked. For a long time I figured that if I could figure out who you were, I could figure out what Sam knew and find him. I gave up on that a while ago." He chuckled mirthlessly. "Two years. Two fucking years and I still have no clue what happened to my brother. I can't even figure out why it all went to hell when it did. It was just a normal hunt..." His voice trailed off into silence. "Well, I guess I should go. I have a demon to fight." He laughed again. "I have a lot of demons to fight."
Without hesitation, Dean turned, and started off at a brisk pace towards the Impala. Afternoon sunlight beat down on the black metal and silver chrome, his burning chariot. Caught up in memories, he missed the stranger with the loping stride heading back the way he'd came.
Lingering in the wasted field next to the graveyard, wild stalks of wheat crunching beneath his feet, another man stared down at the grave marker just minutes later. A small humorless smile graced his lips. "There is no coffin." He sighed. "I don't even know why I'm talking to you like this. You're not even down there. I wish I could remember… By the time I came for you, I was too late, and you were ashes in a bag. John Doe." The chuckle was mirthless.
The man clenched his fists. "I should be down there. I should be in hell right now after all I've done."
He groaned as he noticed how the sun had fallen. "I've gotta go. There's no rest for the wicked, even in this podunk town." He shifted his black leather jacket over his broad shoulders, a little tentatively. The movement looked strange on the powerful man, the killer.
"I am in hell, though- a living hell. It's no less than I deserve. Before I go, I'm taking them all out with me. Every last one of them. For you. Goodbye, brother."
The man ghosted off in silence, all of his words spent. For two years, that was the most he had said. For two years he had held his silence, the same silence forcibly held on all those dead at his powerful hands. He was a broken man, so it made sense that all he was fit to do now was break, shatter irreparably the lives of others. It didn't matter to him anymore that each time he took a life, he was saving many others. He couldn't see past the blood on his hands, so he shut it all out and did what he was raised to do.
Crowley frowned at the demon cowering before him. "What. Did. You. Say?"
The being writhed like a fish caught in a net. "His wrath," it choked out, "is worse than yours. I'd rather be ended at your hands than the Reaper's."
"He's just a hunter!" Crowley growled.
The thing shivered. "He is much, much more than that. He is death, and death he brings. It is said nothing can hurt him, for he has already killed himself on the inside. There is no soul to be sold for he has torn his own soul out, just as he Reaps others. You are wrong, he is more than just a hunter, he is God's Wrath."
Crowley glowered and the thing stopped writhing and started whimpering pitiably; it was suddenly silenced.
Wreathed in the red and black blood of the damned, Crowley should have cast an intimidating silhouette as streaks of moonlight pinned his figure to the wall, but the hunch of his shoulders belied a terror of which he had not known he was capable.
He had no soul- or if he did, it was a pitiable fragmented thing even God would not acknowledge. He wasn't capable- he didn't think he was capable- of those pesky feelings. He was never given that one figment of sentiment that even the most unpleasant of these human meat-sacks had been gifted with. Of course, he noted, his ability to gather sarcasm and dry wit like a cloak around him was worth a thousand of the most delectable pests in humanity's stumbling inefficiency. And he did own the moon.
….Yet Crowley was terrified.
Demons cowered in sewers. Skinwalkers locked themselves in silver cages. Vampires turned themselves in to bewildered hunters, offering their hearts for a swift demise. It was said Death himself had demanded his Reapers yield to this One's will.
God's wrath was raining down.
The tall man with broad shoulders walked into the bar, his glare enough to burn people alive where they stood. He carried no obvious weapons, but there was no doubt that he had them. With a purposeful stride, the man headed towards the bartender. There was a banshee he had to attend to.