Chapter Text
Dean Winchester was pretty much born doomed.
With Heaven in his bones, hands pre-programmed for violence and a faithless heart, he was born a blade. Born a follower to a mortal God. And fuck it if he wasn’t a damn good disciple. How couldn’t he be? When one day his dad was lifting him up into strong arms and the next those same hands were bloody and shaking.
Dean learned early, that John needed all the devotion Dean could give him. That’s what son’s were for. And Sammy was still too little to know the word for father - no one would teach him the word ‘mama’ til he was four years old, there was no use for it with her gone - so Dean had to be enough for the both of them.
Dean learned early, it was the Winchester’s job to perform the more violent miracles. Kill the things in the dark that kill the people who aren’t looking. And doing that job well meant buckling in, shutting up and aiming the gun right every time. Holding it steady between the eyes of every monster they came across, breathing out, and pulling the trigger.
If that meant Dean’s own soul got dirty along the way, so be it, there was always redemption in the next person to save.
Dean learned early that doomed men aren’t guaranteed happiness, and soldiers don’t dare ask for it. So, Dean got good at finding happiness in between the wars. Hell, he even found it on the battlefield.
He can still remember the way his heart felt too big for his body when his dad whooped and cheered like he was at a damn baseball game when Dean took his first iron crowbar to his first vengeful spirit. He remembers Sam with mustard on his face at diners half-way down endless highways, he remembers John humming along to the radio in the Impala, he remembers all the hands he’s shaken after he helped bring back a lost family member, he remembers all the hours spent in front of crappy motel televisions watching re-runs of old Westerns and how he started to see parts of himself in the heroes.
He remembers how, for a long time, it didn’t really feel like he was doomed at all. It felt like he was a force for good. Like his dad was. Saving people, hunting things, turning this godless earth into one easier to sleep through the night in.
But that feeling didn’t last.
When it came to the Winchesters, doomsday would always come knockin’. It was kinda the whole point of them after all.
And so, per the grand Gospel Of Winchester, typed up in Times New Roman on the holy laptop of the Lord himself; Jess got caught up in the inferno of their fate, Dad became the next ghost to chase, and whenever he looked over at Sam in the passenger seat of Baby all Dean saw was his little brother turned inside out by grief, turned vengeful.
And Dean didn’t feel the good in any of it anymore. His entire world reduced to cursed smoke.
The flames he mistook for Hell as he pulled Sam - bundled up tight, blood on his lips - from the burning building, he now recognised as the fire of Heaven. The ashen fist of God crashing down on the aching timber of their family home before Dean was even old enough to decide whether or not he believed in him.
The tetherless life he and his brother led with barely a minute to laugh before the next monster set out to slaughter the next town, was just that, their life. They saved the people, they hunted the things, and they played their part in running.
Heaven and Hell fought through and for and against them.
Dean fought and loved and clawed his way to a free life.
And through all of it, the happinesses where never hard to find. The problem was that over the years they just got harder and harder to hold onto. Sam’s innocence, his mom’s voice, his dad’s guidance, Bobby’s affection, Charlie’s mannerisms, Claire’s jokes, Kevin’s laugh, Jack’s rambling, the crinkles in the corners of Cas’ eyes when he smiled. They were all like light between Dean’s fingers.
In the choice Cas had laid out for him years ago, between peace and freedom, Dean picked freedom. He dug his grave there and now he must lie back down in it, knowing that the hand that pulled him from his first, is lost to the darkness because of him.
Because Dean stood behind the door while Death called for him to take her fucking hand already. And he had let Cas stand between the two of them. And he hadn’t said a word when he starting telling Dean all about happiness.
Ever since I took that burden, that curse, I wondered what it could be, what my true happiness could even look like…
Because Dean could only stare back at him as he sacrificed himself for the undeserving Righteous Man.
I never found an answer…
Because the one thing I want, it’s something I know I can’t have…
I cared about the whole world, because of you…
You changed me Dean…
Dean blinking, stupid and afraid.
I love you.
Dean learned early what a weapon those three words could be.
John’s thumb smearing through the tears and the blood on Dean’s face after the shotgun kicked back too hard and broke his nose,
“You need to learn. You need to be ready to protect Sam if I’m not around. I’m only doing this, Dean, because I love you.”
It was the first time he’d managed to get his mouth around the words since Mary died. Dean stopped crying instantly. He lifted the gun, and hit the bottle dead centre first try. It exploded into light like a wave crashing against a rock.
Cassie’s eyes pleading and desperate and angry. She stood in the doorway, cardigan around her shoudlers, feet still bare after Dean had ruined everything in a vulnerable whisper while they were still tangled sleepily in bed.
“I love you,” he said. Testing the words for the first time.
For a moment she looked like she was going to cry. Then she slammed the door in his face.
Sam leaning back against Baby, taller than he had been the night he left for Stanford. His head bowed, hair falling messily to cover most of his face as he talks to Jessica on the phone half way through their hunt for the Woman In White.
Dean tells him they need to get a move on. Sam’s still grinning down the phone, he takes no notice of Dean at all.
“I’ll see you soon, I promise,” a pause, “Okay, I love you, bye.”
Cas with tears in his eyes, looking more human and more divine than Dean had ever seen him.
“I love you.”
Cas broken open, all the radiant light of him shining over Dean.
“Don’t do this Cas.”
And then he was gone. He’d made a deal with Doomsday and it came right on time to cash in. The person to whom Dean owed everything, was taken by the Nothing and there was no getting him back. The light was there, warm, and overwhelming as the sun, and then it was gone.
Leaving not even the eclipse of a halo behind.
All this to say, Dean Winchester is pretty much the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet.
Because turns out, being born God’s favourite comes with as many perks as it does apocalypses, even when God’s not around anymore. The award for Most Compelling Puppet means the strings never quite got cut. Look at him, better or worse, he’s still fucking standing.
Dean lived his life on the road, raised on greasy diner burgers, monster hunts, and the memory of a mom. He’d been stabbed, possessed, killed so many times he’d stopped counting - hell, even literal Hell had become more of a vacation home than a torture chamber. He’d slaughtered innocent monsters and evil men. He’d been the saving hand of heaven and the thing in the dark. He’d lost everything good he’d ever got - God-given or scavenged and hoarded with his own two hands - and he’d been left alone with only the brother he started with.
Only a fraction of the family they’d both found.
The Winchester brothers. Born doomed. Born lucky. Because every family member they ever lost had come boomeranging back to them. In some way, for however long they were permitted to stay. Dean got to see them all one last time.
And all that luck made him greedy. When Dean lost Cas, again, for good this time, he couldn’t find a shred of happiness in any of it. He couldn’t remember all the times he’d lost Cas and have him return and be grateful for them. All he could feel was the absence. That black hole of emptiness draining Dean of everything.
And it swallowed his life whole.
Sam handled it better, he picked himself up and dealt with the losses, he cleaned them both up of the blood and started his research on the next case. He spoke to Eileen on the phone every now and then, dodging answering her questions about when would be a good time to come see him in person. He ignored Dean when he pressed him about it. He prayed to Jack every night and he placed a steadying hand on Dean’s shoulder as he carved Cas’ headstone into the oak of their dining table.
The one he and Sam eat most of their meals together at in silence, just so Dean can make sure they both actually eat, while both of them are haunted by the echoes of glasses clinking that ricochetted off the walls from all those last-nights-on-earth they’d celebrated with the family that were all gone now that the world hadn’t actually ended.
The same table he was slumped over now, clutching his dad’s favourite whiskey in his deadened hand, his watch telling him it had just turned 11:54 am. And he stared at the full glass, waiting for enough seconds to tick by so he can take a sip without Sam being able to accuse him of any of the shit he’d been judging Dean for lately.
Chuck was gone. The Empty, Death, the Devil and Doomsday. None of them would ever come knocking at Dean’s door again.
His life was one endless road, and he was driving down it at night in Baby with the headlights out, unable to see even a fraction of the way ahead of him. All his focus was on the rearview mirror, where Cas stood getting smaller and smaller, aglow in the setting sun that crowned him in a broken halo. Looking like a smear of gold blood against his jaw.
And Dean thought that feeling would last forever. That he’d drive til he hit concrete hard enough to crush him back to unholy dust.
Because Dean had forgotten the number one law of this fucked up universe, which was, that Dean Winchester was a luckier bastard than he deserved.
Because now, the sky he lived under held no God in it. There was only the sun.
Dean looks up.
“Hello Dean.”
Only the sun.