They get everyone squared away. Mary back in her room, New Charlie and New Bobby as close to Dean as he can reasonably put them. Ketch and Mary seem to have come to an uneasy truce, but he still puts the man as far away from her as possible. Some people have already partnered in one way or another, and others pick roommates. It works. It’s fine. Most of the good guys made it through safely, neither of the bad guys did, and dear god Sam is alive. He’s here and alive, standing in the kitchen in bloodstained jeans and someone else’s sweatshirt, drinking whiskey. They don’t need to think about how it happened. It happened, and nothing else matters.
(Sometimes Dean watches Sam do something he never did Before – an overly-startled flinch at a loud noise, a very specific hands-clenched thousand-yard stare, the way he accepts Cas’s healing with fearful eyes and a stubborn jaw – and he thinks this is from Hell, this is Lucifer’s doing. And if he allows himself to think about it further, which he tries not to do, he thinks if I had let him go to Heaven after Cold Oak, if I’d just had the balls to let go, he never would have gone to Hell. He never would have met Lucifer. This is all on me.
He has never mentioned it to Sam, because he’s terrified that his brother will turn to him with those sad, fearful eyes and say yeah, I think about that too.)
Fic: Swim out past the breakers, watch the world die (13.22 coda)
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