(no subject)
For TVrealm challenge 12 - Down the rabbit hole.
An AU in which the brothers Winchester were not the chosen ones and those who were chosen were, quite frankly, not up to the task.
Thankfully, Sam doesn’t really remember the old world. Snatches of it, maybe, but he was only three when the world fell apart. Dean does. He remembers his mom’s smile, the warmth of her hugs. He remembers what it is to be full and safe. He also remembers the night it all fell apart. He remembers waking to a blazing ceiling, remembers Dad wrapping his hand around Sammy’s and telling him to look out for his brother. He remembers waiting for hours in their front yard, crouched under an increasingly damn blanket, but nobody came.
Of course nobody came, it was the apocalypse. The street burnt, Dean’s entire world reduced to ash. The world burnt.
He does the only thing he can. He holds tight to Sam and he learns to be quick. It doesn’t take long to see that there is no kindness in this new world. A world with all the old rules stripped away. At the end of all things, why would care for these two orphans without a penny to their name. Guns are king. Violence and sex the only things people listen to any more. There’s no place Dean won’t go for Sam, but there are places he’d rather not so he learns to fight. Eventually he finds them a hovel, a room that could have been anything once upon a time but now it’s mostly dry and there are three ways out so it becomes home. He hides Sam there and he begs and fights and does what he had to do to stay alive.
He’s seven now, after all. He should be able to protect his brother.
He gains a reputation among the other kids on the street. He’s fast, tough. He’ll steal and fight and do what he has to do and slowly they fall in behind him, his gang. The members rotate, lost to fighting and drugs and mania and prostitution. He won’t take prostitutes. Not after Jo joins them, who watched her mother die slowly of the diseases she got from selling herself.
Years pass. They grow. Though the roster changes month to month there’s always him. Sammy. Jo. Jessica, with her pretty smile and her fondness for Sam. There’s Ash and Chuck and they get by. Dean knows taking care of Sam means teaching him to take care of himself for when the inevitable happens so he teaches him to hustle pool, to steal, to lie and bribe and do what he has to do to stay alive.
He’d 25 when he hears the first stirring of a revolution. He ignores it. He hates this world, yeah, but he has responsibilities. He’d rather stay in a world he hates with Sam then die for a revolution he doesn’t believe can work and leave Sam alone.
Then the angels break free. The demons have been holding them, torturing them. Everyone knows that. At night sometimes you heard the scream of an angel as they finally gave out. On the night it happens Jess is holding the fort, everyone else it out. Sam and Dean are hustling pool in a dive on 9th that used to be a high end restaurant, back before everything.
The demons are quick and indiscriminate in their retribution when they find the angels gone. Huge swathes of town wiped out. Jess never stood a chance.
In the chaos that follows Sam and Dean take shelter in a burnt out building and find someone else already there. A man in a tan trench coat, bleeding heavily from a wound and unconscious. Dean wants to run, everyone is dangerous right now, but Sam won’t so they stay with the man. Tear strips from his shirt to bandage his wound and sit with him.
In the morning, when the streets are finally deserted and the burning is over, the man finally wakes up. He reveals to them, then, that he isn’t a man at all. He’s an angel of the lord and his name is Castiel. As they have show him kindness he vows to help them. Dean kind of wants to dump him as, well, help can to easily mean the other thing around here but Sam is in throws of joy at finally meeting an angel so they take him with them. Chuck and Jo are the only ones still alive. Cas tells them to leave the city so they steal a car and go.
As is inevitable, because it’s Dean and Sam, Dean and Sam get pulled in to an angel plot to lock Lucifer back in his cage. As they travel, working with the angels, Cas stays with them as much as he can and repeatedly places himself in danger to help them. He grows on Dean and, eventually, on the final night before the big play that’s either going to lock Satan back in the cage or end with their side wiped out, they sleep together.
The next morning, everything goes off like it should. The gate to the cage is opened, Satan is put back in and the gate is closed. Dean doesn’t realise until after, counting the casualties, that Cas is gone.
In the wake of the mess the angels decide to offer a kind of benign leadership to earth. Dean tells them non-too-politely to shove it. Humans are flawed and sometimes petty but they need to govern themselves - to learn to live in a society again and to have laws. The angels can help but ultimately it has to be humanity which decides its own fate.
He travels with Sam, founding communities and bringing neighbours together. Re-building a society where people can be safe, happy. Work together and live full lives.
On the anniversary of the battle he leaves Sam in one of their first towns and visits the battle field again to pay his respects. He stands at the single unmarked cross on the sight and prays to a god he doesn’t believe in. He prays for humanity and he prays for peace but mostly he prays for Cas. Cas, who he didn’t realise he loved until it was too late. Cas who gave everything for him, for humanity. Who talked angels away from just fleeing the earth, talked them in to fighting and who risked his life so many times.
He finishes his prayer and stands, head down, eyes closed, until he hears footsteps behind him.
“Hello, Dean.”
When humanity finally establishes a government again they want Dean for the top job. Dean, who lead the final battle. Dean, who helped to many to heal and re-build. He sends Sam in his place. Says Sam will do a better job than he ever can. In those years, when peace is finally as near as it can be for such a contrary race, Dean becomes a recluse. He builds himself a house by a lake. Grows his own vegetables, fishes every day, and he lives there until he dies. Just a man, an angel, one bed and peace at last.