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Epilogue

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Dean was silent and unmoving when they found him, his jeans dried in pools of his brother's blood as he held him to his chest with a grip that no human could break.

He didn't know when or how they were able to move them, but when he fluttered his eyelids open and he looked around with any coherency again, he was sitting alone in a cell.

All alone.

Without Sam.

Because Sam was dead.

Still dead. Always dead. And never going to come back to life again.

Dean had nothing left to bargain with now. Even if he could break out somehow, and make his way to a crossroads, his soul was already bound for Hell and that deal hadn't been to keep Sammy alive forever or even give him a long and happy life. Just to bring him back. It wouldn't do anything to keep him from getting killed again.

That was his job. To make sure he stayed that way. Always his job. Watch over Sammy. Keep Sam safe.

Always the one thing he failed at.

Even now, when all he had been trying to do was make sure that he would be safe from the biggest threat the Yellow-Eyed Demon had left behind. That he wouldn't have to deal with a second round of those twisted games when Dean was dead and gone.

But he had failed. And had lost his little brother forever.

He blinked slowly at the cold metal surrounding him.

All he wanted to do was die, to end his existence and finally let the black hole in the pit of his stomach swallow him alive and stop his heart from bleeding.

He could find a way to outsmart the guards that seemed to have taken everything from him and left him defenceless with nothing but a paper thin orange suit. He wasn't a Winchester for nothing, though. He was resourceful; he could still find a way to kill himself and join Sam except that, no, Sam was in Heaven now. And he was going the other way. In just one short year from now. All for nothing. Because he had screwed it all up again just because he was trying to make it all right.

He should have listened to Sam. About not going to Amity Park. About slowing down, enjoying the ride. About being brothers again. Hadn't that been all that he had wanted to do? When did he forget that?

He should have listened about everything.

"That's right, kiddo."

Dean looked up again and saw the Yellow-Eyed Demon leaning against the railings, smirking.

He blinked a couple times, knowing that he couldn't possibly be there because he'd shot him between the eyes with the almighty Colt. It was dead. It had to be dead.

And why would he be smiling?

"Because," the thing answered. "So things didn't go my way," he shrugged. "Your brother's generation is all gone now and so is the gold medal favorite in the next. But hey, that's happened to me before. I've still got some tricks up my sleeve. Even though you killed me."

The demon that destroyed everything the Winchesters had ever had sauntered forward before conspiratorially confiding, "What, you think that I don't have a backup plan for when I finally get taken out? You think that I don't have a dozen protégés lined up that will take my place and spread my blood? My endgame has been in production for millennia. I'm not letting your little handgun stop me just because things… didn't go my way," he winked.

Licking his lips, he continued, "And you know what? Things didn't exactly go your way either," he laughed.

Dean rose up to punch the smirk right off of the demon's face, but was yanked back down to his hard metal bench by handcuffs even before his fist met empty air.

When he looked up again, his family's personal demon had gone.

Leaving him all alone until the rest of his time ran out and Hell came to claim the soul that was rightfully theirs.

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Dean didn't say another word until, eleven months later, he screamed his brother's name as guards raced to the usually abnormally quiet hallway to reports of a body torn to shreds, the cell painted in bloody streaks reaching nearly up to the ceiling.

No one knew how to explain it.

But then again, no one knew how to explain how Dean Winchester had died twice.

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They buried what they could piece together of his remains in an unmarked state grave.

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And, like with his brother, there was no one there to tell them to salt and burn his bones.

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That's it; the fic is complete. Thank you to everyone who followed this story and endured the trauma. ;D

*muahahaha*