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It took them a while to get used to this new reality; on the one hand, it felt good to know that there wasn’t some “divine plan” for them. No one behind the scenes to manipulate them or the people around them-- beyond a few humans (dealt with), and a half dozen or so creatures (also dealt with, but violently) -- but there was still that occasional pang of loss. That little fresh ache of missing something. Or someone.
Little pinpricks of “I should totally show this to Cas”, “Cas would love to see this.” Only to realize the impossibility a moment later. The realization that injuries were going to take a longer time to recover from-- concussions would be more dangerous. Not that Cas had been able to take care of them that way for a while-- but the little things.
And the contacts in their phones still had his number near the top of the list.
(Dean’s still had Cas’ number near the top of recent calls, because sometimes he just hit the number out of habit. Or so he told Sam.)
Of course Dean wasn’t calling the number regularly, just to hear Cas’ voice one more time. Or leaving long, rambling messages when he was drunk, or alone in the middle of the night and had too much time to think about everything.
Sam forgot occasionally too, a momentary lapse of memory, habits that he was getting better at avoiding. But he hung up almost as soon as he dialed-- and said nothing, when he caught his brother talking to the voicemail a few times. Or just repeatedly dialing and listening. Or listening to the sparse voicemails that had been left on his own phone.
Sam dreaded the day that the service contact on the phone would run out, or the voicemail box would be full. He hoped it lasted long enough to help Dean through this.
The dog that they’d found in their trek through a depopulated world appeared in the Bunker one day-- but Sam suspected that had more to do with Dean, and the shelter that had apparently taken Miracle in, when his owners didn’t claim him, than anything Jack had done. No matter how many times Dean claimed that the dog had just shown up.
Miracle helped. For the first time since Cas, since Jack, Sam saw his brother laughing again. Saw his brother slow down on the whiskey.*
Jack never surfaced-- but the world kept on turning, monsters needed defeating, people needed help.
They had work to do.
It was nearly a year later when they found Danny.
Danny was four. A pair of ghouls had killed his family, and with no one left to take him in… Sam had suggested Sonny’s, but there was something about the kid-- maybe it was in the set of his eyes, and the way his tousled hair couldn’t be tamed. Dean couldn’t just leave him to the system.
Besides. Miracle liked him.
Danny took Jack’s old room-- and proved to be the distraction that Dean needed. They hunted less. Researched and fielded phone calls more. The hardest thing Dean was drinking was beer-- and not much of that.
The number of voicemails started dropping off.
Then came Kara.
She was blonde, sedate, and twenty. Her calmness in the face of the natural disaster that had destroyed most of her life (fires. But set by humans this time.) was almost unnatural, as was the deep blue of her eyes. Kara was determined to help
( and not because of a crush on either one of them, but because she wanted to make sure Danny didn’t lose everyone as she had.)
Claire and Kaia visited occasionally, and seemed amused by the way that Danny and Kara could twist Dean around their little fingers.
(Sam was relieved to see that Claire’s visits weren’t setting off as many late night calls to a phone that probably didn’t exist anymore as the pair had so shortly after Cas... was gone.)
Melanie was next.
Melanie was dark complexioned, dark haired, but with streaks of silver-- but her eyes were a shade of blue that was ever so familiar. She was seventy, and took no prisoners. One of the few survivors of a djinn, she managed the Bunker almost as well as Mrs. Butters, and managed Dean, when Sam got into a little trouble on his own.
(She hugged Dean, when the tears inevitably came, and told him that everything would be all right. The phone call that night was short, heartfelt, and Melanie told no one.)
The next year passed; Jodi visited a few times, teasing them about being so domestic, and about their little family. (But she was the first to hug the newcomers, and sometimes sent a few people their way who needed a brief respite from hunting.)
Jack was never among the visitors, but the sparkle of someone’s eyes-- the smile on someone’s face--the joy that was being within each other’s company-- Both Sam and Dean found glimpses of him in those moments, and said so.
And in the wisdom of blue eyes, the quiet happiness in taking care of things, in the wildness of someone’s hair that never seemed to lay flat… Sam found himself seeing glimpses of his friend, realizing just why Dean had that little fond smile that he’d only given to Cas when he looked at their three strays. (Four, if one counted Miracle's loving devotion) He never said a word about it though.
The phone calls were still regular. No matter what phone Dean was using at the time, Cas’ number was still near the top of the phone list.
Sam wasn’t sure where it had come from, but Dean still kept one of Cas’s old coats in the trunk. Maybe he was hoping that Jack had brought Cas back, and he was just out there, living a human life, and that one day he'd need to have his coat back. Cas had died before-- but that was when Chuck was writing the story, and both of them had been too overwhelmed that day, nearly two years ago, that they’d been freed to ask if Jack would. If he could-- please.
But God was not supposed to have any sway over the Empty, or so Jack had told them in one of their conversations what seemed like a lifetime ago.
Kara moved on, eventually, taking Danny to Washington, and her sister’s home-- they’d all agreed that the now school-aged kid needed a stable environment that wasn’t a hidden bunker in the middle of nowhere. Didn’t mean that they didn’t miss him-- and Sam caught Dean making a late night phone call, beer in hand, that uncertain lost look on his face.
Melanie left not long afterwards, heading towards warmer climates, and the last of her family.
And then it was just the two of them, in an echoing empty bunker. Well, three, since Dean insisted Miracle counted as another person.
Three years, after it had all ended.
They’d gotten into an easy routine. Set bedtimes, rising times, exercise for Sam-- walking the dog for Dean. Hunts had gotten to be few and far between, with most of them being taken by a younger generation of hunters, like Claire. Even Eileen was starting to cut back-- though she was still out on the road more often than not.
Sam was used to it, and sort of enjoyed the downtime that allowed him to read, and do something other than prep for their next hunt. He was considering following Dean’s example, and going out to try and find a part time gig-- maybe at the Lebanon library. Just something to keep him occupied in the now frequent idle times.
Dean usually hung out in the library, looking for cases or things of interest within a day’s drive, so that they didn’t have to leave Miracle home alone for too long.
(He spoiled that dog, Sam swore, and if he caught Dean letting Miracle ‘help’ with the dishes one more time, so help him…)
But they were healing, and they were still going, and even though Dean’s speed dial still had Cas as his number two selection in recent calls, and they never really talked about how things had changed. Some days, though, it felt as though they were just going through the motions, and Sam… well, Sam was thinking too much.
And then there came the day when it felt as though the world was changing, and the Apocalypse was back, even though it was only Sam’s world that changed.
And now Sam was the one who made the phone calls to a number that would never answer.