Where the Road Runs Out
It was something from a fairytale, except for the ending. Michael had found them. When they'd been out hunting straggling demons from the Asmodeus days of all things. The Winchesters quickly learned that Michael had summoned the ghosts of every monster they'd ever killed along with legions from other worlds. They were here for them alone.
Sam leaned out the window and exchanged fire with them with a long rifle they'd had in the back seat for 20 minutes. Dean guided their car through a hailstorm on fire as Michael summoned the wind, the sky, the road to torment him. It was ride and it was die. It was "come whatever".
In this haunting reprisal of Apocalypse, Dean felt his brother beside him. He didn't listen to the pelting battle swirling around him. It was Sam's measured breath as he loaded, opened fire, and reloaded all to the tune of a hummed Hey, Jude that was keeping him next to godliness calm.
They drove straight through the iron gates of an abandoned white church. Here the snow fell, for Michael had used a summoning ritual to wake up frost giants. Sam and Dean parked the Impala behind a frozen rose hedge where a curse turned the branches and thorns to blades. They ran inside the church only to feel the door freeze and iron melt behind them.
The church was eerily empty but an altar burned in the center. It looked like the altar where betrothals became vows. And Dean knew. The poetic justice of what Michael meant to do.
"Look at him...Look how close we are! Other people will die if I don't finish this!" Sam, desperate, worn away by the trials. Sam with the keys to Hell in his bleeding hand.
"Think about it. Think about what we know. Curing demons, pulling souls from hell...Hell! Ganking a hellhound. We have enough knowledge on our side to turn the tide here. But I can't do it without you…"
"I was right." Dean smiled. Sam had just pushed a rifle into his hands.
"What?" Sam's face fell with horror. Dean looked him dead set in the eyes, closing their free fists together. Their hands were bloody again with the warfare they were making. Their blood and the blood of legions ran together and spilled to the floor in the spirit of the unsung pact that always was between them. Brothers by blood, bond, and the gears of war. Brothers to the end.
"The last time I made you a promise in a church. We turned the tide alright. Turned it toward us. If this is where it ends, then...I'm glad you're the one to be with me where the road runs out." Dean smiled. Sam's eyes were laughing.
"I'm flattered, but who said anything about this being it?" Sam winked. Michael rattled the walls.
"WINCHESTER! This is where I wipe you from history!" Michael bating, hissing, sending lightning through the roof.
Dean took the rifle in both hands, ready to die. Sam took the other. They stood shoulder to shoulder with the angel blade rounds ready to hold off the onslaught of Michael's manufactured army until they could do nothing else.
"There will be no prisoners this time, Dean Winchester!" Michael called through the walls.
"Great! I always hated cages!" Sam shouted when Dean's voice faltered. Sam's clear voice echoed off the walls. Dean looked at him. Looked and remembered the last time the world ended. How brave he had been at the end when it was his responsibility- his and his alone. Here was his Sam, again. The rock on which his church was built. The beginning, middle and the end of all his stories. This was his legend maker and the reason why all his blood was spilled.
"You know how you said I couldn't save you?" Dean's voice was steady to his amazement. Sam looked his way for a second. He smiled.
"You weren't wrong. But if I can't save you I'm going down with you. And in another life, whichever one comes next...If I have to hop through dimensions like we did when we saved Mom? I'm gonna find my way back to you, little brother." Dean smiled. Michael was ripping holes in reality like water droplets freeze-framed in the air. Soon they would open and the symposium would begin. The war of the worlds and their destruction would close them in the belly of the whale. Win or lose they were probably done for. Unless someone came for them, but who would come in time?
Sam laughed.
"See you on the other side."