A/N: And here I am again, with an uber depressing Ambrollins fic. The sequel of sorts/companion piece to My Love.
The sirens were what woke Seth up. They were right outside the hotel, blaring so loudly they hurt his ears. He blindly grabbed one of the pillows and put it against the side of his head. The action barely did anything to muffle the noise. "Fuck," he muttered under his breath. He still refused to open his eyes for the time being. "Dean did you open the fucking window or something?"
No response. Seth frowned. Dean was such a light sleeper. He should have been the first one to start complaining about the noise. Seth reluctantly opened his eyes and turned over. Dean wasn't beside him. He frowned. He hadn't heard Dean get up. Despite being a notorious insomniac, Dean rarely ever left the bed before he did. "Dean?" He sat up and looked around the dark hotel room. He listened to see if he could hear Dean in the bathroom, but all he could hear were the damn sirens. "Fuck!" He threw the covers off and got up. They were clearly right outside the hotel. He might as well get up and see just what was going on.
He threw on a pair of boxers and a shirt before leaving the room. He didn't even bother to grab his key card or put on his shoes. Instead he walked through the halls and took the stairs down. Every step he took brought on a new sense of dread. Something wasn't right here. He didn't know what, but he knew it to be true. Part of him tried to tell him to just go back. He didn't need to see what was going on. But his feet didn't obey him. They kept moving, taking him right down the stairs, through the lobby and out the door.
The night air chilled him to the bone the moment it hit his body. He shivered and wrapped his arms around himself as he moved to join the crowd that had gathered. The ambulance was still there, just sitting right in place as the siren kept going. His ears were begging for mercy while his brain screamed at him to go back inside. The feeling of dread was stronger than ever. Go back. Run away. But he still woudln't listen to himself. He kept going, his presence making the crowd part. His eyes fell on what had caused all the commotion and his mouth opened in a wordless scream. Dean's body laid there on the concrete, his skull split wide open. A pool of blood had collected under his head and was spreading everywhere. His lifeless eyes stared right through Seth, making him shake his head.
"Dean...oh god no no Dean..."
"What did you do?" one of the paramedics asked. All eyes had turned to him, giving him angry and accusing looks. "What did you do?"
"I didn't..." Seth stumbled back, still shaking his head. "I didn't do it I didn't..." His voice trailed off as he kept looking at Dean. Dean's dead eyes now gave him the same look everyone else was.
Murderer...
Seth woke up with a loud gasp. He shot up, nearly jumping right off the bed as his fingers gripped his sheets tightly. His heart was pounding and his body actually shivered from the cold sweat he was drenched in. He whipped his head around wildly, needing a few minutes to realize that he was in his own bedroom and not outside of that hotel where Dean had jumped to his death.
Seth felt his stomach turn violently. He rolled off the bed and sprinted to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before he started to throw up. Even when he closed his eyes, all he could see was Dean's lifeless body staring back at him. It was an image that had haunted him since the night Dean had died. The way things had played out in the dream were very similar to how they had actually happened. The only real difference was that he had screamed that night. He had screamed until he had been carted away and sedated.
Seth heaved until long after there was nothing left in his stomach. By the time he was done, his body was shaking and he could barely pull his face out of the toilet bowl. He didn't even bother flushing the thing. Instead he let himself fall back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand while he panted for breath. His heart pounded inside his chest and tears burned his eyes. Two months. It had been two months since Dean had jumped off the hotel balcony. Two months since Seth had woken up to find out he was dead and he couldn't get past it. There hadn't been a note, but nobody needed one to know why he had done it. Seth was to blame. The betrayal had nearly did Dean in to begin with, and Seth selfishly getting back with him just to use him had been the final nail in the coffin.
With shaky limbs, Seth pushed himself back up to his feet. He didn't dare to look at himself in the mirror. He couldn't stand the sight of his own face. They all said it was his fault and he believed them. He had taken the happiness Dean thought they shared and burned it down around them. He had let his own lust for power consume him and turn him into a monster that slammed a steel chair countless times against Dean's back. He let himself believe that Dean was holding him back. Dean made him weak. Dean needed to be cut out of him and tossed away. But nothing had ever been that simple with Dean. Even after leaving him, Seth had missed him. He hadn't been able to stay away. Yet he hadn't been able to reconcile the fact that it was his own feelings that had made him want to go back. He convinced himself that his interest in Dean had been nothing but physical. He told himself that his body craved Dean like a drug. Everything would be fine if he could just get himself one final scratch that would set him free for good. So when he had gone back he had been cold. He had used Dean physically and pushed him away emotionally. He had ignored the signs of Dean breaking down because he had been too stupid and selfish to admit that he still loved him all along.
Seth collapsed back on the bed and buried his face in the pillow. He should have known better. Under all the strength and confidence Dean had tried to give off, he had been so vulnerable. It had taken everything in him to actually trust Seth and it had gotten spat on. And now it was truly too late to take any of it back. Regretting what he had done wouldn't bring Dean back. It wouldn't even earn him forgiveness from the locker room. He had thought they had all hated him before, but that had been nothing compared to how they treated him now. Even his own Authority brethren were disgusted by him. But nobody walking the planet hated him more than Roman. Roman had been in a different city when it happened. Seth still didn't know who had broken the news to him. All he had known was the moment Roman had found him, he had wrapped his hands around his neck and squeezed, grey eyes wide and wild as he screamed at him.
"What did you do?"
"You killed him."
"You killed him."
Seth put the pillow over his head and screamed. He screamed until his voice gave out and then he just cried. He couldn't do this. He couldn't live with this. He wanted to take it back. He wanted to take it all back. But he couldn't, which made him just want to die. Maybe that was the coward's way out, but how could he deserve to live for what he did? He couldn't justify his own existence to himself. Nobody he knew would be sorry that he was gone. And maybe if there was some sort of after life, Dean could have peace in knowing he got what was coming for him.
At some point in his screaming and crying, Seth passed out. He dreamed again, this time of being in a graveyard. Dean was there, but he couldn't see or hear Seth calling out for him. He was huddled by his own headstone, knees pulled up to his chest and shivering violently. He was alone and scared. Seth tried to reach out for him, wanting to tell him that he wasn't alone. That he was sorry. That he would make it better. But Dean hadn't heard him and Seth woke up the same way he had before: gasping, shaking and throwing up. This had to stop. He had to make it stop.
Once he had pulled himself away from the toilet again, Seth opened the medicine cabinet and grabbed the bottle of sleeping pills he had. The doctor had prescribed them because he couldn't get any rest. He had refused to take them before, but now he all but ripped the bottle open and dumped them into his hand. He stared at them all, a certain kind of peace taking over for the first time in a long time. He couldn't bring Dean back, but he could give himself the fate he deserved. He could lay cold in the ground like Dean, his potential and life robbed the same way he had robbed Dean's.
And maybe, just maybe, if justice was served from this, he could find Dean on the other side and make it right from there. It was a stupid thought, but it helped him get the pills down his throat, which was all that mattered anyway.
The sense of peace grew after Seth swallowed down the last pill. He sank back down on the floor, not even caring to die in his own bed. Instead he curled up on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor, his eyes slipping shut as he curled up in a ball. Dean was the last word to pass his lips. Dean was in his last thoughts before he lost consciousness. And when Jamie and Joey broke into his apartment to check on him two days later, they found him there on the bathroom floor, wearing Dean's shirt and grey leather jacket, his body as lifeless as Dean's had been once it had hit the concrete.