better man/worse than nicotine » arthur ketch

two: after everything that's happened.

A/N: I needed to write something sad so hello. This is a filler. 

Dean is speeding. A hell of a lot faster than he should be going, but he's pissed. He can barely think with everything he's just witnessed.

"We still have holy oil, right?"

Sam turns to look at his brother, the question being the first thing Dean's said in the past hour. "For what?"

"'Cause we're gonna have to hit him with everything we got," Dean replies, like it's obvious.

Sam nods then, understanding. The Nephilim, Jack, was born just hours ago. And naturally, Dean's first instinct is shoot first, ask questions later. He plans to kill the kid before even trying to talk to him about what's going on.

"Hold on a second," Sam presses. "Can we just talk about what happened back there?"

But Dean doesn't want to. All he can see is red. "Sure. Which part? Let's see, Crowley's dead, Kelly's dead, Cas is..." Dean shakes his head, not being able to bring himself to say the words. "Joy's gone, and apparently the Devil's kid hit puberty in 30 seconds flat."

Dean isn't exactly wrong. The Nephilim that threw the brothers back against the wall was nowhere near a newborn baby. He already looked like he was a young adult in a matter of minutes.

"Oh, and he almost killed us," Dean adds.

"Yeah, because you tried to shoot him," Sam points out, leaning his head against his hand.

"I tried to shoot the monster, Sam. That's kind of what we do."

"We don't know what he is yet, Dean," Sam argues. "And I had it under control."

"I'm sorry, are you defending the Son of Satan?"

"I'm not defending anything! I'm just saying, look, with everything that's happened, I'm obviously spun out too, but we need a plan."

"Yeah, kill him! Okay? That's the plan. Look, right now all that matters is finding him and ending him before he hurts anybody else. And once we do that we'll figure everything else out."

The statement hangs in the air around the brothers. Everything else. Everything else, meaning, how to get Cas back, how to figure out what's going on with Jack, and how the hell to get Joy back into this universe.

Further down the road, they come across Pirate Pete's Jolly Treats, and Sam immediately tells Dean to stop the car.

Dean pulls into the parking lot – or lack thereof – and slams Baby into park. "You really think that he was like, 'Before I destroy the world, let me just grab a bag of curly fries.'"

Sam waves his brother's annoyance away. "If Jack kept to the main road he would've past it and I don't know—"

"Fine. Just make it quick."

"You're not coming?"

"No. Look, maybe you're right. Maybe the Devil's kid is in there just hanging on, okay? Or maybe he's halfway across the country, torching Chicago." Dean shakes his head. "I'm gonna call Jody, check in, see if she can't help us put a nationwide APB out on a...creepy Satanic nudist."

"Yeah, right, good."

"'Good' is not the word I'd use."

But as soon as Sam exit's the car, Dean doesn't call Jody. He never was going to. Instead he walks around the back of Pirate Pete's, close to the edge of the lake where he has some privacy. And he does something he hasn't in a very long time.

Pray.

"Okay, Chuck...or God or whatever. I...I need your help. See you – you left us. You left us. You went off...You said...you said the Earth would be fine because it had me and it had Sam, but it's not, and we're not. We've lost everything. And now you're gonna bring him back," Dean's voice cracks again. He still can't bring himself to believe Cas is really gone this time. "Okay? You're gonna bring back Cas, you're gonna bring back our sister – you're gonna bring 'em all back. All of them. Even Crowley. 'Cause after everything that you've done, you owe us, you son of a bitch. So you get your ass down here, and you make this right. Right here and right now."

The tears sting Dean's eyes by the time he finishes his tirade. He shuts his eyes tight, tight enough to push back the tears, tight enough that maybe he'll wake up from this dream with Joy banging pots and pans together and spraying him with silly string and telling him he's late for breakfast.

But he opens his eyes and he's still here. Cas is still gone. And Joy isn't standing beside him anymore.

He knows she pushed Lucifer through that rift for them. He knows she did it so they would have one less thing to worry about – or so she thought, because now they're worried about her and wondering if she's even alive. But he knows she did it because she wanted to do something good. She wanted to try and show them that she could do something good, after everything that happened.

And after all this time, Dean never got the chance to tell her how much guilt he's carried around for years. From all the times he said he hated her, from all the times he said he wished she hadn't been born, and from the time they found her dead...in the motel room.

They didn't know why she had made that deal. Or that it was a deal in the first place. But all Dean knew was that she made that deal thinking the world – her brothers would be better off without her.

He knows she pushed Lucifer through that rift with the same mindset. Thinking they would be better off with her out of their hair.

And Dean wishes – Dean prays that somehow, he'll see his little sister again, just so he can tell her how much he regrets everything. And how badly he feels. Because he'll never be able to forgive himself for making her think the world would be better off without her. And now he'll never be able to forgive himself for this.