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Dean flopped onto the bed. It wasn’t until after he’d flopped that he realized he was on Sam’s bed. It didn’t matter. Maybe he’d even done it on purpose, somehow. It hurt. A lot.
Earlier that day, they’d had one of their blowout fights after a phone call from Benny, and Sam had stormed off. He hadn’t said anything about leaving for good, and he’d left his bag, but he hadn’t said anything about coming back, either. Dean still had a hunt to finish, though. He’d called in Castiel for help. By the time the hunt was over, Dean was in a better mood. Sam had a cell phone. He’d call if he needed help. In the meantime, when Sam got in these sulking fits, smartest place for Dean to be was as far away as he could get.
He took Cas to a bar. Sure, Cas wouldn’t get drunk, but he’s spent months thinking his best buddy was dead. The good mood of hanging out with Cas without something trying to kill them lurking just behind the next tree evaporated, though, when Cas suddenly dropped his drink.
“I have to go. Dean, I’m sorry.”
“Wait a minute.” Dean grabbed Cas’s arm. “Cas. What’s the rush? Can I help?”
“Maybe.” Castiel met Dean’s eyes, and Dean was surprised by the amount of pain rippling through the blue. “If you can find Sam’s… Sam’s body…”
“Sam’s body? What?” That made no sense. Of course he could find Sam. It usually wasn’t even hard.
Castiel jerked his arm away from Dean. “Sam is dead. I don’t know how, or why, or where, but if you can find his body that will make it easier to return his soul to it once I find the soul and convince him to come back.”
Cas had taken advantage of Dean’s shock to take off, leaving Dean without any kind of answers. He’d tracked Sam’s cell phone – Sam had only gone about thirty miles, it wouldn’t be hard to find him. And if the body had been found, he’d have no trouble getting access to it. It’s what he did for a living, and in this case, it really was his brother.
That didn’t help now. Now, Sam was dead, Cas was gone trying to rescue him, and Dean was well and truly alone. He could call Benny, but that’s how he and Sam ended up in this fight. That’s why Dean wasn’t there with Sam when Sam… why he wasn’t there to keep Sam from dying. Maybe Kevin, but Kevin probably wouldn’t care that Sam was gone.
He’d give Cas a few days. After that, though… crossroads demon? Find Death and beg again? That probably wouldn’t work, Death didn’t like undoing his work as he’d explained when he went to get Sam’s soul out of the Cage. Another Reaper, another angel…
If Sam were here, he’d probably be yelling at Dean for thinking like this. After Sam’s soul had been restored to him, he and Dean had a long talk about dying and they’d made a pact that if one of them died, the other would let them stay that way this time. Everything tended to just get worse if they tried to change that. Apparently that had actually meant something to Sam, since Sam hadn’t looked for him when he went to Purgatory.
But that was the whole point. Sam wasn’t here. There were a lot of things that Sam would kick his ass for, but Dean would gladly take the ass-kicking if it meant having his brother alive and riding shotgun, complaining about the music that Dean knew Sam secretly loved, cracking bad jokes and calling Dean an idiot for his. The pact had made Sam happy. And Dean had his own pact with himself: he was going first. Sam could let him stay dead, fine, whatever made Sam happy.
The pact with Sam wasn’t the only one that was broken.
Might be easier to join Sam in death. He wondered if his get into Heaven free pass was still good. The angels had dicked him around enough, he thought it should be, but it was hard to say. Still, probably safer to avoid outright suicide. Dean was a hunter, he’d lost the backup he relied on so heavily, suicide by monster was probably not going to be difficult. It was as true now as it was in November 2005: he could do this alone, but he didn’t want to. There’d been days, when a hunt was going poorly or Dad was hitting the bottle unusually hard, when the only thing keeping him going was knowing Sam was safe, happy, and free. Now he didn’t have that.
Dean curled up on the bed. What he should probably do is gather their stuff and take it to the Impala, haul ass to the town Sam died in, recover the body, and wait for Cas. But that involved moving, and he wasn’t too sure he could do that just yet. Maybe sleeping would do him some good. He could sleep right where he was. The nightmares would be a problem, but it wasn’t one that would go away if he delayed it, and he needed his four hours.
In the morning, he’d go get Sam back.