Chapter Text
Arizona, car, interior.
The night of Saturday, July 4th.
Dean is bleeding out in the back seat of the Impala. Probably not for the last time. Hopefully for the last time. If he cracks his eyes open he can just about see greasy smears of light rushing by in the window above him. They bob up and down as Sam swerves between lanes. Scaring the shit out of sleepy truckers and lonely late-night commuters. Whipping by at twice the speed limit, barrelling into the darkness past their headlights.
This isn’t Dean’s first time dying. But he’s getting too old for this shit. When Dean imagined death (before getting what you could call hands on experience) he always kind of thought he would go peaceful. Like it would be easy knowing it was finally time to rest. Or else he imagined fear, and pain.
The pain’s worse than he thought. Because pain is always worse than you expect it to be. But that doesn't throw Dean for a loop, because how could it? The thing that really gets him, even after all this time, is how physically confusing it feels. Like a completely new experience, even though it isn’t, totally foreign and alarming. It’s like his nerves don’t know how to interpret the flood of chemicals and electrical currents that precede his body shutting down. The feeling doesn't know how it's supposed to sit in Dean’s body. It's almost a novelty. Almost.
Sam and Cas are shouting at each other over the center console. The volume and cadence of their voices prods at Dean’s fuzzy brain, like pressing a wound to keep yourself awake.
“Here, here, this exit, THIS EXIT!” Cas yells, and suddenly the G Force almost sends Dean rolling off the backseat as Sam whips the Impala around.
Piercing. “DUDE, SOME WARNING!”
Tight. “I am so sorry, Sam. Allow me to divine the ideal route to the hospital, so that the next time there is a medical emergency, you have ample time to prepare.”
Dean discovers he can flop his head to the side a bit, without his vision swimming too badly, and make out the outline of Cas’ face, lit blue by his phone screen. He is pinching his fingers open and closed, his face crumpled like an old coke can, a mix of frustration, panic, and rage. Dean would laugh if he didn’t think that doing so could potentially rip him in half. After almost four decades getting his shit rocked by every monster you could dream up, he might get done in by Apple Maps.
It's never the hunts you think are gonna be the big one. It's always some backwater town with some kooky conspiracy story your brother pulls up off reddit when he can’t stand sitting around the bunker for another minute. As if the universe knows when Dean’s let his guard down, stopped waiting with clenched teeth for the big one.
Maybe it’s because he laughed at Sam a little too hard when he’d brought them the article from some local paper about abductions . Maybe he’d made one too many “close encounter” jokes and some cosmic force had decided to put him in his place once and for all. Maybe one of the dickheads upstairs watched him rush into that abandoned scrapyard with an iota less than the appropriate amount of caution for a goddamn UFO hunt and decided: “Yup, this calls for a fuckload of rusty metal directly to the midsection.” Just as our Father intended.
Cas twists around in the passenger seat to look at him. But instead of catching his wavering gaze he zeroes in on the tangle of ripped fabric, twisted metal, and meat where Dean’s abdomen should be.
“My eyes are up here, is what Dean wants to say, but what comes out instead is “mmm mmuh-“
They rocket over a dip in the road and Dean is knocked senseless by the pain again. His head lolls back, away from the front of the car. He nestles his face into the leather seatback. This is fine.
“DEAN!”
Poor Cas, the guy tried so hard. But he never could figure out how to navigate by GPS.
“Stay with us Dean!” That’s Sam, from the front seat, but he’s too far away now. Dean knows he’s about to lose consciousness, can tell by how cold his hands and feet are getting.
He’d wanted a better ending than this, after everything, but knew better than to actually expect one. He only hopes he doesn’t wake up in a few months to an unmarked grave and some new apocalypse to prevent. He hopes Sammy remembers to soak his baby’s upholstery with vinegar before his blood has the chance to stain the leather. He hopes no one tries anything stupid. He hopes no one checks his internet history after he’s gone. He hopes Jack doesn’t take this too hard. He hopes they don’t hesitate before burning his body. He hopes Cas forgives him.
And it's weird, because these thoughts come and go, like standing in a flood, and watching the eddies swirl around his feet, but the thing that sticks, the thing that he holds on to as he drifts under, is an old country song.
The thought conjures a memory so strong he can almost hear Willie Nelson there in the backseat of that car.
“Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys-”
And Dean Wichester lets go.
Kansas, apartment, interior.
The night of Saturday, June 27th.
“That’s what the Empty was like”
“What?” Dean turns to stare at Cas, sitting cross legged beside him on the couch in Dean’s tiny apartment. He’s wearing jeans and a ratty gray sweater from the goodwill. Dean was there when he’d done it, finally bit the bullet and bought clothes that weren’t business man cosplay. He’d chosen the crewneck because he liked the print: a water-color of a fluffy bunny nestled in amongst purple and white flowers.
Dean hadn’t had the heart to tell him it was a woman’s sweater.
It’s still weird, even months later, seeing the guy without his uniform. Dean half expects him to show up wearing that ugly trench coat every time they hang out. Cas’ new jacket is thrown over the arm of Dean’s couch, oozing mud onto the upholstery. Its a gore-tex slicker.
He’s gone native Dean thinks.
Cas catches the staring. “You’re not listening to me.”
Dean shakes his head, “Sorry-” He covers his embarrassment by taking a long swig of beer. Its craft, he buys wholesale now, gets a good price because the owner of the brewery likes him, “-late close last night. What’s that?”
“This-” Cas nods at Dean’s TV, the movie they’re supposed to be watching, “- is what my last experience in the Empty was like.”
Dean almost snorts beer out of his nose. He coughs, eyes stinging, “the- shit- the diner from Pulp Fiction is in the Empty?”
Cas's face is completely blank. Dean thinks he’s committing to the bit- his laugh dies awkwardly when Cas remains stony. “You’re kidding.”
“I rarely do that.”
A blatant lie. “Ok, no, I mean I thought the Empty was like… the inside of a black hole or something, total void.”
Cas narrows his eyes in that innately bitchy way of his, “You don’t seem to accurately understand the physical properties of a black hole.”
Dean scoffs, pushing his shoulder, maybe a little gentler than he means to, “Ok, Steven Hawking, stop being a jackass.” This gets a smile, finally.
“So what, the Empty’s a big Tarantino fan or…”
Cas turns his head to hide his grin, “Not exactly.”
“So you weren’t actually in the Empty?”
“Mmmm-“ Cas hums, “it’s more like a pocket dimension within the Empty, created for me in response to the disruption caused by my grace absorbing the-“
“This conversation’s turning into a headache real fuckin’ fast.” He doesn’t mean it. Dean never means it. He’s just built to be kind of a dick all the time.
“Forget it.” Cas shrugs, “forget I said anything, I don’t know why I brought it up. It’s too hard to explain.”
Huh.
Dean blinks at him. It’s not that he’s not interested, he really wants to know. It’s just they don’t usually talk about it. What happened. There was one last big war, the world was ending, and then it wasn’t, and Cas’ kid was the new god or whatever, until he cut that out, then Cas was gone, until he wasn’t, and Dean was dead, until he got better.
So it goes.
Then time kept marching on, and there were hunts, because there would always be jobs for men like Dean, and as time went on he started getting up slower and slower, especially after the thing with the vamps and getting speared on a rusty nail. So he decided he should throw in the towel. Not permanently, because fuck that, but Dean could afford to go part time.
There just isn’t as much work anymore, honestly. And he’s way too old to hustle pool and run credit card scams and bounce from shithole motel to shithole motel.
So they liquidate some of the Men of Letter’s funds, and split it three ways. Dean buys an old dive just outside of town and fixes it up to be a place hunters can go, some place Ellen Harvelle herself would be proud of. And he moves his stuff into the apartment above the bar, because he can’t find a good reason why he needs to live underground any more. He likes having a place with windows. He likes having a purpose other than killing. And if he installed new locks on the windows, added a second deadbolt, and carved sigils into all the doorframes downstairs, then that’s his business.
And Sam stays in the bunker, because he’s a perma-dork and can’t bear to be parted from his precious library. He sets up ,like, a hotline for hunters who are too green to tell a poltergeist from a possession, and he comes by for dinner on Sundays, like they’re real people or something. Sometimes Eileen comes along with, and lately Sam’s been looking so happy it makes Dean’s chest hurt to think about.
And Cas. Cas wanted a house. Of course he did. When Dean drove over to help with the move he actually got misty-eyed. He had to pretend to be shuffling around for something in the glovebox of his car for five minutes so no one would see him crying over a house. It’s an honest to god farmhouse, with planter boxes for growing tomatoes out front, a place for Cas’ bee hives, and an actual weather vane shaped like a fucking rooster. No one has ever deserved something as much as Cas deserves this.
It almost makes up for the painful quiet. For the waiting for the other shoe to drop. If it's only an interlude, the eye of the storm, it's a pretty nice one Dean thinks.
“Can I unpause the film now?”
“What?” Dean startles, finds that Cas is now the one looking at him, his head tipped in concern.
“Oh yeah- sorry. Go ahead, hit play.”
Arizona, Car, interior.
The night of Saturday, July 4th.
In moments after he’s gone the car goes icy quiet. Sam’s ears are ringing.
“Is his heart still beating?” He asks, because that’s what he always checks for first. His fingers are already numb where he’s gripping the wheel. He’s probably going to go into shock, adrenaline keeping his body moving until this, another tragedy in a whole lifetime full of tragedies, manages to catch up to him. First thing’s first they need to get to the hospital, see if they can resuscitate Dean, if not, retrieve the body, go from there.
“Drive faster,” Cas grunts, he’s yanking on the seatbelt Dean makes him wear when they drive, but it’s locked. “My seatbelt won’t move.”
He struggles to twist around enough to reach into the back. He gives the belt another fruitless tug, and chokes back an incredibly human sound that Sam hadn’t thought him capable of producing, thrashing his whole body in frustration. “Samuel, drive FASTER!”
Sam’s already pressing the gas pedal all the way to the floor. He won’t let himself look in the rear view mirror, has to keep his eyes on the road. His ears are still ringing.
“What’s that noise?”
“What?”
“Can you hear that noise?”
Cas can’t. But it’s a high pitched keening, almost musical, barely loud enough to be heard. If he hadn’t met so many of them already, it’s what Sam might’ve said angels sounded like.
“Shit,” Cas says, “Stop the car.”
It’s a testament to Sam’s trust that he does so without asking why, even as heat bleeds out of his brother’s corpse in the back seat.
Cas opens the door and is stepping out before the Impala’s wheels have even stopped rolling, he walks around to the front of the car and places his palm flat on its black hood. The high beams bleach the color out of his skin and clothes until he glows white in the darkness.
There’s a horrible metallic groaning, and before Sam really realizes what’s happening, they’ve appeared in a parking garage, the Impala rocking heavily in its frame, like a massive crane has dropped the whole car, Sam and Dean included, from the ceiling.
“Dude,” he says, a little bit awed.
Cas is looking around, seeming equally shocked, “I wasn’t sure that would work.”
Then he leans over to one side, and vomits onto the concrete.
Nevada, Hospital room, interior.
The morning of Sunday, July 5th.
Dean wakes up in a hospital bed. Probably not for the last time. Hopefully for the last time. He knows where he is before he even has to open his eyes: because of the sour chemical smell, and the fact that someone’s hacking out cough after phlegmy cough somewhere on the other side of the wall.
He can tell he’s doped up on painkillers, his mouth is so dry. There is a bubble of nothing around his midsection, gesturing towards the absence of pain. Panic blooms suddenly behind his throat. He has no memory of how he got here.
The lights are so bright when he opens his eyes. Instinct has him immediately clawing at his forearm, trying to rip out the rubber IV tubing.
“Dean! Hang on.”
A man he had yet to notice covers the room in two huge steps, grabbing Dean’s wrists in massive hands. Dean thrashes against his grip, stomach muscles protesting, pain threatening push against the cottony barrier of morphine there.
“Dude, you’re safe. Stop.”
That makes him freeze. Because Dean thinks he’d recognize that voice anywhere.
You’ve got to be fucking joking. Dean’s definitely in the middle of some sort of drug-induced psychosis, or a very vivid coma dream or something. The man leaning over him has long brown hair, gargantuan shoulders, and a deeply familiar pinched expression on his face.
Dean goggles at him, arms falling limp at his sides. “Sammy?”
Dean’s seen enough movies to know what this is. He can’t think of another reason he’d wake up with mysterious injuries in a random hospital, with some middle aged dude who looks like a bizarro world version of his baby brother.
“Is this… the future ?”
Mirror-verse Sam stands up, looking amused. “You’re high.”
“Maybe,” Dean allows himself to relax back into the crunchy hospital pillows. He looks up at the ceiling tiles for one, two counts, then back to the Sasquatch with his kid brother’s voice.
“Nope! Still old-”
The man frowns.
Guess it’s really Sam , Dean thinks, classic bitch-face .
Everything’s so unreal, he’s too numb to try and summon any kind of reaction to the wrongness of this situation. That’s not his brother, and anyway Sam can’t be here, wherever here is.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
Dean forces himself to think, but it’s like swimming upstream, or trying to fuck when you’re half a bottle of whisky deep. Going nowhere. “I was driving… I think.”
That narrows it down, considering he basically lives out of the Impala.
The Impala.
“Shit! Where’s my car?”
That would be just perfect, after everything, totalling the Impala. Dean guesses maybe that’s what landed him here, freak car accident. Maybe he drove into a worm hole or something. Would explain mirror-verse Sam, and the apparent amnesia.
“The Impala’s fine,” Sam assures him.
Sure, in this universe.
Dean tries to make himself remember. Driving. He’d been driving somewhere. Where? It was dark maybe…and he was pushing past exhaustion… probably rushing from state highway to state highway… Oh.
“Sammy, I have to tell you something.” He struggles to fold his body upright again, tugging at edges of his hospital mattress for leverage.
“I think you should lie down.” Sam reaches out to steady his shoulders.
Dean bats his arm away, “Dude, listen to me. I don’t care what sort of alternate timeline dimensional bullshit this is, we’re in trouble. Dads in trouble.”
He sure hopes this isn’t the future, because he hates to think what could have happened in the, what, fifteen years he’s been caught in the time stream or something. Hunters tend to age hard and fast, so he can’t be sure, but he’s guessing Sam is at least pushing mid thirties, and he clearly HAS been hunting. His bloody clothes and haggard face make that obvious.
What the fuck’s been going down without me?
Sam looks terrified. He glances over his shoulder at the open door behind him. “Dad?”
“Is he here?!” Dean strains to see around him.
“Is DAD here???” Sam takes a step back. The scope of the horror on his face tells Dean that he’s missing something. His stomach drops.
“You know something I don’t.”
Fifteen years, and hunters never live to retirement do they? Dean’s breath is calcifying in his lungs.
Sam scrubs his face with his hands. He checks the door again, like he’s hoping someone will walk through it and save him. When he turns back to Dean the pain on his face hurts to look at.
“Tell me-“ he croaks. “Tell me what you were just going to say.”
Dean feels cold all over, “Dad’s been on a hunting trip-“
“Oh fuck. ” Sam cuts in before Dean can finish: “-and he hasn’t been home in a few days.”
What?
“Wha-“ Dean has no clue what to say to that. But it doesn’t matter because Sam finally catches sight of someone just beyond the doorway.
“Oh thank god, Cass”.
Dean leans to see whoever this mysterious figure is, but before he can catch a good look-
“-what the FUCK IS THAT!?!”
Whatever being enters the hospital room is accompanied by a supersonic blast of light and color. It would be impossible for Dean to describe what he sees, only that it is like no monster he has ever faced, and that he knows in his gut it is wrong for him to even be looking at it.
Without even realizing it he is reaching for Sam, for his waistband, for the gun he already knows is there. His fingers barely brush cold metal before Sam grabs him, hard.
Dean’s eyes snap down to the vice grip on his arm, betrayed. Sam has positioned himself between Dean and the door. Was he protecting Dean or the thing at his back?
“Cut it out,” Sam hisses, voice low. He’s curled around the place where their arms are tangled up, like he wants to hide what Dean is doing, is trying to do.
Dean wants to argue, but his eyes keep darting over Sam’s shoulder, where he can see something like the sheen on an oil slick warping the walls behind him. Tendrils of that bright white iridescence are curling around a figure Dean has not yet noticed by the doorway. Only now can he see a human form in silhouette amongst the light. But… that isn’t right. He cranes his neck, unable to stop himself from looking, though he still fights against Sam’s grip, fumbling to get a grasp on the gun.
“What the fuck is that Sammy?” He can hear the naked fear in his voice, and he wants to get to grips with it, to quit whimpering like a goddamn baby, but his heart is pounding like a prey animal’s. He can feel fear running cold fingers along the inner seam of his ribcage, and sweat pricks at the back of his neck.
It isn’t a human being standing in front of the horrible alien power that Dean is seeing. The light and that strange strange energy is emanating from some impossibly large creature , so huge it goes right through the ceiling of the hospital room, and extends down even through the floor. A nightmarish amalgamation of every animal limb and head and tail and wing in every unnatural and impossible combination extending out past the limits of what the walls of this room allow him to see. And in the middle of all of that surging, twisting, and burning energy, black like a solar eclipse, is a human shape. A shape. Just another animal part amongst the countless writhing masses that make up this ethereal horror.
Dean must have gone slack in his arms, or blacked out, because the next thing he’s aware of is Sam shaking him, “Dean! I don’t know what’s happening to you but we’re gonna go get help.”
Dean doesn’t see who could possibly help him now. And oh god it’s moving towards them, he feels himself shrinking away, trying to pull Sam with him. He can’t stop babbling.
“What the FUCK is that thing?!”
“What is what?!” It is this that allows Dean to rip his eyes away from the light and towards Sam’s face, and he sees only confusion there. He feels his arms slide away from Sam’s grip. He looks from Sam’s face to the enormous thing cutting into their reality, and winces at the brightness.
Sam follows his gaze, “it’s ok, he’s a friend.”
He . The more Dean’s eyes adjust to the light the more he can make out the human shadow in the center of it all. It’s a man, his silhouette is oddly lumpy, like he’s maybe wearing a puffy coat. The light becomes incrementally more bearable. It’s another middle aged dude, wearing mom jeans and a crewneck with a bunny on it. He’s surrounded by wisps of burning energy, like a super nova. A hysterical laugh starts bubbling up in Dean.
“Fuck me- I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more.”
Nevada, hospital corridor, interior.
The morning of Sunday, July 5th.
Dean makes it clear, several times, with increasing hysteria, that he isn’t going to calm down until “that thing” leaves his vicinity, so Sam ushers Cas out into the hallway, and closes the door behind them. The revelations brought by the past few minutes have Sam desperately longing for a drink. And he’d been doing so well with this whole detox thing too, drinking less beer and more water.
Cas if possible, looks even worse off. His chest is heaving, though he doesn’t need the oxygen. He stops breathing when he notices Sam noticing.
“What was that all about?”
“It seems…” Cas pauses, clearing his throat.
There is a woman in blue scrubs wheeling a laundry cart down the adjacent hall, eyeing them both with suspicion: two admittedly odd looking men just standing in the middle of the walkway, muffled laughter and cursing still audible through the closed door behind them. Cas flinches at a sound like a hospital IV stand being kicked over and crashing to the ground. Exactly like that. Sam manages a weak smile in the woman’s direction and shrugs like what can you do? She grunts and continues pushing her cart.
He’s trying to maintain an air of calm authority, because it seems that like usual he’s the only one of the three of them that’s capable of this. But the truth is Sam’s scared. Scared because he has no idea what’s going on and no idea how to go about starting to figure that out. One minute they’re on a hunt, looking for aliens of all things, and the next his brother’s on death's door. And now…
Cas’ hands are balled into fists at his side.
He tries to shoot his best friend.
“It seems Dean is now able to witness my true form.”
Sam snorts out a laugh, before it hits him that jokes aren’t really Cas’ thing. “For real? Like…” he casts around for what he remembers from his research, ‘burning wheels and…”
“Something like that, “ Cas’ jaw is like iron, “I have to go.”
“Wait-“ it’s useless, there’s a noise like tearing paper, and the air whips up around him and Sam is standing alone in the hallway. He buries his face in his hands
Utah, car, interior.
A night, many, many years ago.
Dean’s trying to figure out if he can make it the rest of the 10 hours to Stanford or if he needs to stop some place and sleep before he hits Nevada. It’s one of those first cold nights of the year, and rain is lashing the windshield as he barrels down the empty highway. It’s been at least an hour since he’s seen another set of headlights, and even the spray from the open windows isn’t enough to keep him alert and focused any more.
Dean gnaws on his lower lip, grinds his knuckle into the soft meat of his eye. He really shouldn’t stop. He has a bad feeling, has had a bad feeling ever since Colorado Springs, when he realized Dad was supposed to call and check in more than 12 hours ago.
His tires hiss through a muddy cascade flooding the road and Dean feels them disconnect from the asphalt for a second, the back of the car fishtailing.
He groans and pulls into the shoulder. Just a few hours. He’ll wait for the rain to let up and catch a quick nap and then he’ll start fresh in a few hours. He clambers into the back seat and tries to stretch out with his head against the door, arms folded across his chest. His neck is already killing him from the last two nights spent in this exact same position. He’s 26 and he’s getting too old for this shit.
It takes him a while to get to sleep. His ears are ringing pretty badly, he must’ve let a gun go off too close to his head again, burst an eardrum like an idiot. Except he can almost hear static, and quiet music in the distance. Maybe he accidentally jammed the radio dial. Dean smiles when he recognizes the chorus as it fades in and out of his attention.
… I got down on my knees (got down on my knees)
And I pretend to pray (I pretend to pray)…
…California dreamin’…
Miles away from where Dean is just drifting off to the Mama’s and Papa’s and rain hitting the roof of his car, Sam Winchester wakes up in California. His cheek is partially stuck to the pages of his textbook, open to the paragraph he’s tried to read and reread several times tonight. It’s not happening.
Gathering up his notes, he starts making his way upstairs to his bed, and his girlfriend. Jess’ finished her midterms already and is well into celebrating by getting wine drunk and passing out at 2 am.
It’s Halloween, and the scariest thing Sam has to worry about is an exam on Tort Law.
He doesn’t know that the past is racing to meet him, that after tomorrow everything will be different, and the same, again. He doesn’t know that miles away, along the Utah/Arizona border, unusually dark storm clouds flood the desert highways, and conceal strange lights in the sky from the cars below. One of those cars in particular is a ’67 Chevy Impala.
Nevada, hospital room, interior.
The Morning of Sunday, July 5th.
Dean doesn’t have the strength to curl his fingers, but his legs work just fine. He kicks his IV pole, sending the whole apparatus crashing to the ground, its connection severing. He jackknifes upright, groaning as he forces his body vertical, and shuffles in the opposite direction of the door Sam left through, trailing tubing like an umbilical cord.
There’s another door on the opposite end of the room that opens electronically thank god . Dean nudges the button with his hip and waits. It leads to an adjoining bathroom: speckled beige linoleum with a drain in the middle of the floor, a toilet, a ceramic sink, and-
A mirror. Dean catches his reflection for the first time in ten years. He barely recognizes the old man looking back at him. Except for the eyes.
He screams.