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It’s 2013 when Dean dies.
He went off as he had probably always simultaneously longed and dreaded for; in a hunt with a gun in his hand.
“No!” Sam cries, glaring at the body as if he might be able to scare his brother back from Heaven. “You jerk! You goddamn jerk… don’t leave me… not now… not after Purgatory I swear…”
He punches his brother’s bloody chest where the black dog ripped into it. It’s too much like hell hounds for his liking, and the whole scene is too similar, right down to the lifeless green eyes staring at the sky.
Suddenly Sam can’t take it anymore and he stumbles upright and away, wanting to run far and fast and anywhere but here. He’s done that before, after being left in a room splattered with black goo and no Dean, no Cas, no Kevin…
He stops after just a few steps and knows that he can’t run. Not this time. There’s no Amelia to run to anymore.
He turns back to his brother’s body, vaguely trying to think whether to bury or burn it this time.
A part of him wants to run to the nearest crossroads but even he knows that it’s just the first step on the road to hell, paved with good intentions.
He figures he’s old enough to finally let his brother go (he also knows that if positions were reversed Dean would never do it, but he’s not Dean and he never can be Dean, his brother was gone, he was dead) and so he slips into the driver’s seat of the Impala and drives on, looking for the next hunt.
Kevin phones about something he’s discovered on the tablet. Sam doesn’t pick up the phone.
Garth phones him. He ignores that too.
Dean’s phone rings and he scrambles for it, answering in some weird hope that he’d be closer to Dean this way.
It’s Benny and he laughs stiffly and tells the vampire that Dean’s dead before hanging up.
Garth phones again and he picks up, asking about a hunt, any hunt, just something to do. Garth doesn’t need him to say anything, he can hear it in his voice, in the lack of Dean, and he can probably also hear the slightly desperate note of suicidal death wish.
Of course it wouldn’t be that easy. Sam’s too good a hunter to die in a stupid hunt.
He’s aware of the irony of that when Dean died, but if his stupid protective older brother hadn’t tried to stop the black dog going for him and had just stuck to their plan even after the monster had changed its course…
He drives and drives and hunts and lives. Barely. It’s like that time the Trickster (he hadn’t known it had been Gabriel then) had killed Dean for six months. He barely functions, barely lives.
Then Garth calls him.
“I thought you said Dean was dead.”
Sam is numb and he just says calmly, “He is.”
“’Cause I just saw him.”
Sam’s world flips and suddenly colours bleed into the grey in some twisted spark of hope. “What?” he demands.
“I had a hunt. A spirit who didn’t know they were dead… hell they were just a kid. A little girl who’d died of leukaemia and was hanging around her parents and little sister. I was in the area for another ghost, one of an abused kid who got killed by a drunk driver and was killing people who drove by this stretch of highway that happened to be outside this girl’s house.”
“Can you get to the point?” Sam is irritated.
“Hey man, you need to know the story!”
“Garth.”
“Impatient man. Anyway, I got these two spirits confused, so I started poking around this girl’s house which reeked of EMF. I came back later when the parents and sister weren’t home and snuck in. Headed up to the girl’s room to see if she was vengeful but when I busted open the door she was just sitting there, flickering slightly, talking to someone.”
There was a pause, and then a clearing of a throat.
“She glanced at me, and seemed to be listening to someone,” Garth continued, “So I asked her who. She said it was a nice man who was telling her stories of his brother and him and about how brave his little brother was, and that she could be brave too and let go. Now that sounded kind of familiar but before I could ask anything she looked around, flickering and the lights flashed and then she looked kind of sad.”
“What was it?” Sam asked hoarsely.
“She told me then that the man had gone, but not after sayin’ that I’d look after her. Mr Fizzles and I would help her. She was only eleven, but she looked at me with those big blue eyes and I knew I would. I did. She moved on.”
“But…” Sam presses.
“I asked her about the man. The one she was talking to. She passes on a message from him to me before he left. He said… he said… ‘Tell Sammy it’s going to be okay.”
Sam chokes and drops the phone. He can hear Garth asking after him on the still open line but he stumbles to the bathroom and sinks down onto the cold floor in relief and fear and confusion.
When he gets back to his bed two hours later there are several texts from Garth, and another text from an unknown number. He replies to Garth confirming he is still alive and not to worry, and then open the last message.
There are co-ordinates.
Garth checks it out for him and tells him it’s a spirit of an old woman who died ‘falling down the stairs’ but that he thinks may have been killed by the carer because the valuable jewels were stolen after her death. She goes after local thieves and vandals but Sam still turns up there, and deals with it as he would a usual hunt, right up until the digging up the grave part.
He’s expecting the woman to show up, and isn’t surprised when she does, but then she stops and doesn’t do anything.
Sam watches her warily as he pours salt and kerosene on her bones. She smiles at him, and next to her, the air shimmers.
Then he drops the match, but in the second before he did he could have sworn he heard her say ‘thank you’ but not to him, to the guy standing next to her, watching Sam with pride.
Something inside Sam that hasn’t been right for weeks on end clicks and suddenly everything is good again. Well as good as it can get when your brother is a reaper working for Death (because really, who else would recruit a Winchester).
Sam passes it onto Garth who seems to find the whole thing amusing. “Heaven doesn’t want you guys and Hell is scared you’d take over,” Kevin had muttered in the background and Sam had hung up on the laughing duo.
He tends to stick to ghost hunts now, because he’ll see a shimmer where he knows the reaper is standing. In six months the image gets clearer, Dean’s grin and mock salute as he vanishes to take the soul away.
It’s not just during hunts though. There is a shimmer in a restaurant one day and he stares at it, expecting Dean.
It’s not Dean. It’s an old man who is looking about confused. Sam blinks in surprise and the image is lost. He stares at his food suspiciously in case someone drugged him.
He is just paying when one of the waitresses lets out a gasp and whispers to one of her co-workers about the man in booth three who looked like he had a stroke. Sam catches sight of the man and stiffens when he realises it’s the same guy he saw standing confused.
He whirls around to where he saw him and freezes at the sight of Dean and the guy talking. A waitress walks right through them and the man flinches, but Dean doesn’t even blink.
The old man nods, suddenly looking younger and lighter and Dean smiles and reaches out with one hand.
The man vanishes in a burst of white light. Dean looks up and sees Sam there. He signals something with his hand and then vanishes.
Figures, Sam laughs inwardly, Dean had to get off work before he could speak to him.
“How come I can see you?” is the first question he asks his brother when Dean materialises in the motel room.
“Because Death recruited both of us,” and Sam hadn’t quite realised how much he had missed the sound of Dean’s voice.
He makes an abortive movement for his brother and then stops. “Can I…” he gestures.
Dean frowns, “Go ahead,” he sighs, but still looks curious, right up until Sam wraps warm arms around him.
Dean is cold and warm at the same time, but solid and tangible. “I missed you,” Sam mutters, and he feels eight again, when he first found out about monsters.
“Get off me you lump!” Dean shoved Sam off him.
“Why didn’t you…?” Sam feels anger creeping in through his relief, “Why wait until now?”
“I started at the bottom rung,” Dean shrugs, “Long lists of dead people to collect. But now I’ve got more slack and…” he falls silent.
“What?” Sam asks, “What is it?”
Dean speaks quietly, “You’re running towards your due date,” he seems to wince at the phrasing but meets Sam’s gaze.
Sam should feel really bad, but he really doesn’t.
“How physical are you?” he asks instead.
“Getting there,” Dean shrugs, “I can manifest to other people now a bit.”
“Can you drive the Impala?” Sam asks.
Dean considers this, a grin tugging at his lips. “I’m sure we could work something out.” He says.
Sam smiles, and for the first time in almost a year, he feels whole.
****************************************
Dean is 34 and Sam is 30 when they die.
Garth doesn’t hear until a month later about Sam. He sighs and closes his eyes, hoping that Sam didn’t run straight towards death to join his brother.
There is a knock at the door and Kevin, poor kid, jumps a mile. There are voices outside and then the knock sounds again, but the order is specific and the prophet kid looks suspicious.
“That’s the secret knock,” he accuses, walking towards the door. He grabs a holy water gun and slowly turns the handle.
Seconds later Dean Winchester blinks water from his face. “Nothing changes,” he sighs.
“You’re dead,” is stupidly the first thing Garth can say.
“Yes.” Dean surprisingly agrees. “I am. So is Sam.”
He stumbles slightly and rolls his eyes at a blank space next to him. “Sam’s here.” He gestures to said blank space, “But he can’t manifest yet. We… uh… we’re kind of reapers. Death recruited us.”
“Are we going to die?” Kevin asks, perfectly naturally.
“No!” Dean shakes his head, “We just wanted to tell you we were okay. Well as okay as dead guys can get.” He sighs. “Look, just don’t feel sad or anything.”
Garth sniffs. Dean looks at him, then sighs and opens out his arms.
“Umm Garth…?” he asks, a minute later, “You can let go now.”
“This hug is for Sam too!” Garth says, voice choked, “Since I can’t see him, you get it.”
Dean puts up with it but Garth knows he enjoys it really.
“Hey, Dean?” Kevin asks, from where he is perched on the table.
“Yeah?” Dean escapes Garth’s grasp and looks to the prophet.
“When I die, will you or Sam come and get me? ‘Cause then at least I know I’ll be in safe hands.”
Dean smiles grimly. “Of course kid,” he ruffles Kevin’s hair. “We’ve got your backs.”
The other hunters Garth meets don’t understand what he means when he says he doesn’t fear death. Then again, the other hunters don’t quite understand how if the Winchesters are dead, there are still reports of a big black 1967 Chevy Impala being present around the country at hauntings and monster sites.
Garth just laughs quietly to himself and thinks that maybe the Winchesters got their peace after all, even if it wasn’t the afterlife they were expecting.