WOTR | Epilogue
War Of The Regions:
Epilogue
Masterpost
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Dean sets down the firewood in the corner of the room, and walks over to the sink to wash his hands.
Someone walks into the room behind him, and then there’s a soft kiss on his neck and Dean smiles and lets out a small sigh. “You’re back early.”
“I managed to get the early train,” Cas says against the back of his neck. “So I could spend some more time with you.”
Dean rolls his eyes, but smiles and turns around in Cas’ arms, pulling him close for a proper kiss, and he melts into it, bringing his hands to rest on Cas’ hips.
“Oh!” a voice says, and Dean looks over Cas’ shoulder to see Sam standing in the doorway, his face scrunched up. “Gross.”
“Hey, Sasquatch,” Dean says pulling away from Cas but keeping his arm around his waist. “How was school?”
Great, he says, walking over to the fruit bowl to pick up an apple. He puts it in his mouth, and signs, Got Jess as a science partner.
“You should ask her out,” Cas says, and walks towards the cooker to see what Dean’s put on.
“I’ve been telling him that for ages,” Dean mutters, shaking his head in dismay.
Sam frowns at him, chewing around a bite of his apple, and before he even has a chance to ask Dean to repeat, Dean shouts, “I said, you need to stop being a wuss and ask her out!”
Sam goes red, like he always does when they talk about Jessica, and Dean chuckles, turning around to swat Cas’ hand away and check the timer. Dean recently got a job at the hospital, helping with some of the patients and learning the basics. He’s enjoying it, almost a natural at the caring side of things, and is working his way up to becoming a nurse. He works a lot of nights, so he’s often back before Cas and Sam, and he’s gotten pretty good at cooking over the last month.
They live half an hour away from the Highlands if they use the train, which is something they’d never had the opportunity to experience before moving. The Region they’re living in is full of people like them who had lived in the burnt out Regions, and had to find new homes.
It’s taken some time adjusting but Dean can honestly say life is better here than it was before the war.
The war. That’s what they call it now. It’s still on everyone’s lips, and it’s always in the news one way or another. In the last two months, the Regions have been deserted and even people from the Outerlands have moved into the Highlands. For the first time ever for many, people have been experiencing hot showers and full-time electricity, and trains and buses. It’s all so fast and overwhelming, but Dean is never, ever turning his back on a hot shower ever again.
A few weeks after they find their new home, John takes them to see a doctor for Sam’s ears. The doctor says Sam’s hearing loss is due to the fevers he had suffered, and that he’s lucky he pulled through. The news makes everyone nervous, but the doctor also tells them that maybe, with new technologies, Sam could regain a little of that hearing back.
There are a lot of appointments during the next couple of weeks, and Sam is finally fitted with a device called a hearing aid, one in each ear. The day comes that Sam gets to try them out, and they’re all bursting with the hope it will help.
Dean watches with held breath as the doctor helps Sam properly wear the hearing aids, putting them into his ears. Sam looks nervous and glances over to him and Dean gives him a thumbs up and a smile and Sam smiles back, and gives his own thumbs up
“Okay, Sam,” the doctor says, tapping him on the shoulder. Sam looks up towards him and bites his lip. “Ready?”
Sam nods, and the doctor leans forward to flick the tiny switch on each one of Sam’s hearing aids. He turns them up on each side and then sits back.
There’s silence, and Dean says, loudly, “Sam?”
Sam’s eyes widen, he turns to look at Dean, and his lips part in surprise.
Dean grins at him, leaning forward. “Can you hear me?”
A huge grin, with dimples and all, splits across his face and he’s nodding and he’s staring around at everyone with wonder.
“I can... I can hear a little bit now,” he says, and the doctor is smiling at him, writing something down on his clipboard.
They spend the rest of the day just chatting and shouting, as Sam enjoys the simple act of listening.
He will never be able to really hear again, not properly, but it amplifies sound enough for him to hear conversation if Dean speaks loudly, and that isn’t something any of them had ever dreamed of happening. He still speaks with his hands, and sometimes he gets frustrated or tired with the hearing world, and puts his hearing aids away and takes refuge into the silence. At other times, the hearing aids are invaluable, and Dean is always happy to hear Sam speak, because he’d missed his gentle voice.
Castiel has been asking for news of Gabriel from newcomers to their Region, and in the offices in the Highlands, but nobody has heard of him or of Jo. It’s a feeling on uneasiness that lingers in Dean whenever he thinks about it, and there have been nights where Cas is restless, unable to sleep and Dean sits beside him and asks him what’s wrong. It’s always the same, and it’s always his family, and Dean understands even if he’s found some comfort in their new way of living.
“To absent friends,” Dean says one evening, lifting his glass in the air. Sam and Cas lift theirs in respect, and they drink down the cool liquid that Rufus had offered, and it burns on the way down.
John lives a few doors down, and he keeps busy doing odd jobs and helping people around the neighborhood. He often comes around for dinner with Dean, Cas and Sam, and he stays in the room that’s already set up for him. Sam gets a bedroom all to himself downstairs, and Dean and Cas get the upstairs one, with a huge bed with a soft mattress, that they didn’t leave for an entire week when they first experienced it.
There were many times during the war that Dean was sure this, whatever this is, was over for them. No more dinner times around a table, no lazy afternoons in the sunshine, no place to ever call a home. And they’d come close in the Outerlands, had even experienced happiness, but now it’s a constant thing. Dean couldn’t imagine life being any more perfect than it is now.
He misses the friends they’ve lost, and he still feels a deeply embedded guilt over some of the choices he’s made. Cas tells him time and time again that he took the only options he had, and it was his priority to keep Sam safe, which he did. Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night, nauseous from anxiety, feeling like they need to flee again. But then Cas pulls him close, wraps his arm around his waist, and kisses him, slow and lazy, until Dean calms down and falls asleep.
Dean knows they made it out of there and came off lucky. Sometimes he’ll catch Sam staring at him, his eyes so full of love and admiration it allows Dean to put everything into perspective and remember that he’s alive because Dean tried so damn hard to keep it that way. It takes him the first month to pull back and realize that Sam doesn’t need him watching over him all the time now, and John steps forward to look after them both, in such a different way than back in their home Region.
Except this is home now. This is home, and none of them would change it for anything. At the end of the day, after they’ve eaten dinner and Cas has helped Sam with his homework, Dean and Cas make love to each other in the soft, white sheets of their bed, and fall asleep together under the soft blankets. Dean will get up early in the morning and light the fire in the living room, and Cas will come down with a book, and they’ll eat breakfast and watch the sun rise. It’s the same routine, and it’s comfortable, and most of all, it’s safe.
“I love you, you know that?” Dean says, as he always does, every morning over their first cup of coffee. And Cas smiles back, like always, and leans forward to kiss him.
“I do know that,” he says, before stealing a square of pancake from his plate. “I love you, too.”
Dean sits back and watches him, smiling, and gives a small wave to Sam as he enters the kitchen. They sit together at the table, and they talk and tease, and Dean knows he wouldn’t change anything that’s happened for anything in the world.
Acknowledgements | Masterpost
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Please note: I have a lot of trouble with LJ, where full stops/periods tend to go missing at the end of sentences, so huge apologies if this happens. If anyone knows why this happens, or how to correct it, please let me know. If it continues I will have to find an LJ alternative, but I'm going to try and stick here for now.
For the 'verse masterpost (including timestamps etc.), please see here!