Crowley was dead.

Mary was gone.

They'd been playing on a timetable for so long, and now it was over.

It vaguely registered for Dean that Sam wasn't behind him anymore, but he knew Sam was okay. He was okay right?

Lucifer… Was trapped. He was trapped, but it didn't feel like they'd won.

Thunder cracks overhead, and a ripple of power, of warmth, has his barely standing body swaying forward, closer to what was in front of him.

Something that hadn't really registered with him yet.

Maybe couldn't register.

They'd lost too much, and gained too little. Lucifer was trapped, but he wasn't dead. He was trapped and he was an archangel. Zachariah had swept Dean into an alternate timeline and he was nothing, weaker than… He couldn't think the name.

"Dean," Sam's voice comes from behind him, and its breathless and frightened, and tired. Dean feels tired. Like he could lie down here and sleep for hours. Maybe he would, that sounded good.

Then he wouldn't have to think about Mary. Or… Or Cas.

"What was he thinking," Dean mumbled. He didn't feel angry, or sad, he felt empty. He felt hollow, like some part of him had been scooped up and removed and he couldn't get it back. He didn't know, with all they'd lost, what part that might be. Was that the part of him that longed for his mother? Or the part that wanted his best friend standing beside him? Was it the part, conflicted as it may be, that felt pained at Crowley's sacrifice? Or Rowena's death?

"Dean we need to go," Sam's hand was heavy and hot on his shoulder, and Dean realized the numbness wasn't just internal, but he couldn't feel his legs beneath him anymore, and his body felt cold, and he wondered if Mary was cold…

Dean leaned forward, grasping the cold metal of the angel blade that had slipped from the sleeve of Cas' coat, fingers brushing cooling flesh of his hand, and Dean laughed. A broken, choked sound.

"Dean?" Sam asked, and now his brother was concerned.

"We fucked up this time Sammy." They had been so close, so damn close to having things; Mary was home, and she was staying, and everything Dean had harbored as a child was out in the open, and she knew about John and they had their mother back, and Cas was right there, even if he was a dumbass with faith in a nephilim he was there. And now they had nothing.

"Dean we have to go, Jack is gone, Kelly is dead, and we aren't sure that spell is going to hold Lucifer."

"Crowley said it would trap him."

"Okay, and he's screwed us before too, there's no point in staying Dean, let's just go." His fingers were still on Cas, gently brushing along his palm, and he could feel the cold dampness of the ground seeping into his jeans, even as the warm breeze came around, and the peace of the night seemed so wrong with everything that had gone wrong, but sometimes, life just goes on around you whether you are ready or not, it moves on and leaves you behind, and it shatters everything you thought you had.

"Where are we gonna go Sammy?" He asks, and he isn't looking at Sam, he doesn't see the way his face crumples at the break in his brother's voice, doesn't see how much it hurts him to watch Dean crumpled at the angel's feet, more contact between them in this moment than there has been in months prior.

"The bunker, a motel, anywhere but Dean, we should go. We need to – we need to give Cas a-"

"No. We can't, Cas comes back," Sam winces. Dean can't think… But he does. He thinks Cas will come back.

"Dean, Chuck is gone, off who knows where with Amara, there's no one to bring him back, and we have to make sure nothing snatches his body." Sam doesn't even want to consider a demon in Cas, because the way Dean is now, he knows he'd let the thing skewer him before he hurt the thing that looked like Cas, he'd let it kill him rather than hurt something that was already dead, someone, Cas was a someone not a something.

"He can do it."

"Dean.." Sam stops, realizing he wasn't going to get anywhere with his brother. He runs a hand down his tired face, and then through his hair, damp with the panic he'd felt earlier confronting Lucifer. "Alright, let's get him in the impala. We can put up warding for now, give him a day, but Dean, I don't think he's coming back."

"He will," he says firmly, and then more quietly, so lowly Sam almost didn't hear him. "I need him."

Sam knows those words aren't for him, aren't even really for Cas, not now, and he knows that's probably the most honest Dean has been with himself about the angel since they met, and he hates that its taken this, these circumstances, for him to say it, for him to start to realize how much he needs him. Cas and Sam were friends, yeah, but they were never what Cas and Dean were, not even close, but only Cas and Dean seemed oblivious to that fact.

"Alright, come on. Let's get him in the Impala," Sam says, dropping a hand on Dean's shoulder, and it takes a moment, but Dean finally stands, tucking the discarded angel blade into his belt loop. He's unsteady on his feet, and he looks down at Cas shaking his head before dropping to one knee in front of him, biting back a choked sob. "Dean –" Sam starts but Dean shakes his head.

"I've got him, I have to get him." He pulls the angel into his arms, and his trench coat falls over the stab wound Lucifer had inflicted, making it almost look peaceful, like Dean was carrying a sleeping Cas, not… not a dead one.

Sam looks on, considering, watching the way his brother staggers slightly under the weight of the angel, but refrains, knowing the look in Dean's eye, knowing that determination wasn't going to be swayed. It's been a look he's seen on his brother more often in recent days than it used to, much more common than it had been when they were growing up, when he was John's soldier, and Sam is reminded how much of a good thing Cas had been for his brother, as a friend or otherwise, and his feet feel like lead.

He knows Dean is right, he knows they fucked up, but they hadn't had any other choice. This was all they had, the only possible plan. Now they were down all of their friends. Everyone. Eileen, Cas, Jo, Ellen, Bobby, Kevin. The only solace was that they'd kept Claire out of everything, they'd kept her safe for Cas, for her father. They had Jody, and they had Claire and Alex.

But compared to what they lost? It was like staring into a dark lake that had once been alight with life, and compared to what Cas had lost? Like looking into the blank expanse of space. He'd lost so much for them, and now he'd lost his life too.

Fuck, the car. Right.

He opens to the back door to the Impala and climbs in, ready to help pull Cas in but Dean stalls, just standing there looking down at the angel, and Sam knows there's something broken in his brother now, and he doesn't know if he's going to be enough to fix it this time, if he'll be enough to hold him together.

A sinking feeling in his gut tells him this will be worse than after the Leviathans.

"Dean," he says, and Dean looks up at him slowly, green eyes filled to the brim with pain before he slides Cas into the seat, but he surprises Sam when he leaves him upright instead of laying him down, and he keeps staring at the display until the click of the seatbelt around the angel's waist resounds in the space. Dean pulls at it until it holds taut and then backs away, closing the door to the car and Sam backs out the other side uneasily.

"Here," Dean says, throwing Sam the keys, and walking back towards the house.

"Where are you going? Dean?!" Sam calls.

"I'm driving his truck. We can't leave it here. Go on," Dean makes a shooing gesture, and against his better judgment, Sam climbs into the Impala, carefully angling the rearview mirror in a way he can't see the slack expression of the corpse in the back seat, and he pulls away.

The gravel crunches under the Impala's tires and Dean climbs into the truck, immediately overwhelmed by the familiar smell and he crumples in the front seat, head falling against the steering wheel with a thud.

"Fuck Cas," he says, sniffling as tears he'd refused to let fall around his brother finally break free and his nose starts running. It isn't his usual cry either, it's not the gentle tear sliding down his face but still held firm composure, he's gone. It's gasping and hiccups and desperate panting and screaming until he throws his fist through the window.

"You dumbass why'd you come after us," he says, and he doesn't know who he's talking to. It's not a prayer, and there's no one there, nothing but the resounding embers of their failure.

He gets back out of the car, goes into the house and grabs a container from the kitchen, siphoning gas off from the tank of the truck.

He paces the length of the downstairs, leaving a trickle of liquid in his wake, taking the stairs one at a time because Sam be damned who gives a fuck anymore. If Lucifer breaks out distance won't save them.

He draws a circle around the bed with it, trailing down the hallway and into the room Kelly had intended to raise a child in. There's an ipad with a cracked screen in the floor beside a table, and Jack on the wall, and Dean throws the container at the wall with a shout.

It doesn't make him feel better.

His eyes fall on the ipad again, and he picks it up before making his way back outside, and lighting a matchbox and dropping it on the deck. The pinprick of fire launches off inside the house, following the trail Dean had left, and he walks away, climbing in the truck and inching forward, clearing the immediate vicinity of the house, remembering how he'd left the gas on in the kitchen to help the fire catch.

He doesn't stay to watch it burn, he's just there, part of him remembering the way everything had started, his mother and a fire, and looking at where they've gotten as the fire catches on curtains and railings, plaster and paint, and its ablaze in his rearview mirror when he finally pulls away, drying tears still on his cheeks.

A few miles down the road Sam can't take it anymore, and he pulls off to lay Cas down, unable to stand the mockery of life Dean had created in the backseat, and wonders just how broken Dean is now, and what the hell they're going to do. He yells and beats the steering wheel because what can he do, what can he do when all their friends are dead and his brother is grieving and their nephilim Cas tried so hard to protect was in the wind. He had to have it together when he got to the bunker, but right now, he didn't. He couldn't. He needed his time to mourn their friend too.

Under the cover of night, both brothers make their way back to the bunker, what used to be damn close to home, and was damn close to being a tomb, to burn their best friend. To finalize the addition to the Winchester body count, and then to… to what? Because there had to be something, because even if everything falls apart, the rest of the world goes on, life goes on without you, whether you are ready or not.

The credits keep on rolling

And I'm the last to know

Lifehouse – Hurt this Way