Disclaimer: They're cute, but I don't own them.

A/N: Well, good news is we got a snow day at work so you guys get words! Hope y'all enjoy and don't forget to tip on your way out!

Chapter 2

Collateral Damage

It was the silence after a storm that was always the loudest, that prolonged absence of sound when the world took a deep breath and attempted to right itself. That sort of stillness had a physical presence that pressed in, surrounded, and threatened to drown you with its soundless, deafening, roar.

The non-stop pounding that had been beating inside his head for well over a month was gone, and the silence it left behind was just as painful. Suffocating him, trying to pull him under.

Exhaustion was quickly flooding the areas where Michael used to be, causing his thoughts to become slippery, chaotic. His mind was filled with so many conflicting thoughts, he was sure his skull was about split in half. Of course, the whole having his face smashed against a wall might have had something to do with that feeling.

Guilt, relief, horror, elation, exhaustion, anger, dismay – they all warred for top billing, mixing and swirling together in a volatile combination that sent his stomach rolling, his head spinning, and his heart thudding painfully in his chest. Through it all, the thoughts wouldn't stop roiling, surfacing long enough to steal his breath before disappearing back into the rolling abyss.

Jack is himself again

Six hunters are dead.

Michael is gone.

Six hunters are killed.

Sam's okay. Cas, Jack, Rowena – they're all okay.

Six hunters just had their eyes burned out.

I survived.

They didn't deserve to die, not like this.

Six more are dead because of me.

It should have been me.

"Jack, you're . . ." Sam's voice sounded warbly and distant. Some of his words faded like a badly tuned radio, like they were coming through wrong. He could hear Jack's response, heard the explanation but he couldn't really understand anything beyond, Michael is dead.

Dean threw out a hand as the bunker tilted sharply. The ache in his head ratcheted up a few notches and his stomach rolled with the room. Suddenly his brother was in front of him, Sam's hand gripping his arm. The contact was probably the only reason he was still standing.

"Dean." Sam's voice finally cut through the silence, making contact and drawing his slow, weary gaze. "Dean, you okay?"

No. Not even close. I'm alive and six more are dead. It should've been me. But that's not what he was supposed to say, was it. "I'm fine." Those were the right words. Not the true words, but the right ones. The ones that were expected of him, the answer his brother was really asking for.

Sam made a face, lips pressed in a tight line and brow furrowed tightly.

Dean frowned, wavered in his brother's grip. Did he not say the right thing? Was he supposed to say something else? He was sure that was the right answer.

"Cas?" Sam turned to the angel to his right. "Can you—"

Cas nodded and extended a hand, clearly intent on healing his concussion. Dean leaned back, out of reach. He wanted to tell the angel not to heal him, that he didn't deserve it, not after this. He wanted to tell Cas that he needed the pain, needed the nauseating spikes shooting through his head, because the pain was grounding him, giving him something to latch on to so he wouldn't have to think about other things. But he didn't know how to say the words, not into a formation he and Sam would understand.

He was too slow, and in an instant the gash on his head was sealed. The fire that had throbbed behind his eyes cooled, and Dean was left with the silence.

The sudden change stole what was left of his precarious balance. Dean's knees buckled, and his brother's hand tightened around his arm as another bracing presence joined him on the right side.

"Whoa, Dean. Hey." He was shifted, man-handled. The backs of his knees collided with a chair and he went down, falling heavily into it.

Sam knelt in front of him, lips pressed once more into a tight line as he appraised Dean, then he looked over to the angel still standing next them. "Cas, can you and Jack . . ." He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to; even Dean, in his suspended state of quasi-awareness, understood what he was asking.

Can you take care of the dead?

Can you clean the blood?

Can you bury our friends?

Our family?

They must have agreed on a course of action, because the next thing he knew, Sam was tugging him to his feet with a quiet but firm, "come on, Dean" and pulling him from the room.

Dean locked his knees, planted his feet. "No." He pulled his arm from his brother's grasp, overbalancing and nearly ending up flat on his ass for the effort.

"Dean?" Sam stopped, his hand hovering in the air between them. He wasn't quite touching him, was giving him space but was ready to catch him all the same.

He shook his head. "No, I need to . . ." He looked around the room, to Mark and David slumped over the table, to Ava lying just inside the library and William on the stairs below, to Grayson sprawled below him and finally to Maggie, who'd survived the apocalypse and rabid vampires, who'd been killed by Lucifer and brought back, who'd stepped up when she was needed and led a group of hunters to try to stop Michael's army, only to be killed because Dean couldn't keep it together.

"They deserve a proper funeral. A hunter's funeral." Dean ripped his eyes away from Maggie, desperate to look somewhere else – anywhere else – but the entirety of the room was covered with casualties and blood.

"And they will, Dean. But you're exhausted, I mean—" Sam threw a hand out in his direction, tilted his head. "—you're barely standing, man."

"This is my fault."

"Dean. . ." Cas moved from behind him, coming into view. "I told you, this is not on you. It's on us."

"No." Dean held the angel's gaze for a long moment before turning back to his brother. "I let my guard down. I should've. . ." he trailed off, pressing the tips of his fingers against his forehead and closing his eyes against the slow, lazy spin of the room.

"Michael was pounding on that door nonstop for over a month," Sam said. "You haven't been sleeping. Hell, you've barely been eating. Dean, you couldn't keep that pace up forever. No one could."

Dean wanted to rail against his brother's words. Just because his failure had been inevitable didn't make it okay. It didn't absolve the blood of six more people on his hands. But his already depleted reserves were waning quickly, and right now he just needed his brother to understand that he had to do this. "Sam, please." His voice cracked around the word. "I have—" he stopped, swallowed around the growing lump in his throat. "I need to be a part of this."

That look was back on his brother's face, the one with the pressed lips, furrowed brow, and heartbreak. "Okay." Sam gave a small nod. "Okay."

Dean's shoulders sagged in relief before he squared himself back up. He moved to kneel beside Maggie's still form and slid his arms around her, tucking her head against his shoulder before lifting her off the ground.

00000

Sam left Cas and Jack to cut the wood for the sizeable pyre, while he and Dean brought the bodies out, one at a time. Even Rowena helped, laying sheets out on the ground then reverently wrapping each hunter before they were moved onto the pyre. The five of them stood silently as the fire grew, spreading hungrily until they could no longer see the bodies lying within.

Jack had attempted to heal them, but even he couldn't undo the damage the archangel had wrought. It didn't seem fair that the kid could kill the most powerful archangel they'd ever faced but didn't possess the power to save his friends. He knew Jack was feeling guilty over it, but he'd let Cas talk to him, knew the angel would be better at empathizing in this particular moment. Right now, Sam's bigger concern was his brother, who had disappeared shortly after the fire outside had burned down to embers.

He stopped by Dean's room and was troubled to find it empty, the bed untouched. Sam looked up and down the hallway, trying to guess where his sleep-deprived, exhausted brother may have wandered off to. For the first time in what seemed like a very long time, they didn't have an enemy to worry about. No one was trying to end the world, and none of them had an egg timer on their shoulder ready to go off. They had no immediate, imminent concern, just run-of-the-mill monsters and demons. He could easily picture Dean trying to find another hunt, eager to bury himself in work, but Sam had just passed through the library and it was empty.

He thought about the places in the bunker that Dean might have wandered to in a wounded, shattered stupor. Sam briefly considered just letting his brother be, allowing him time alone to process what had just happened, both the good and the bad. But he also knew his brother, knew how hard he'd take the deaths. Especially with nothing to hit or shoot to distract him from it. So, Sam backtracked through the bunker, taking another long look in the library, when he noticed the light to the garage was on. He frowned, headed in that direction and he found his brother sitting in the Impala behind the driver's wheel. The car was silent, and Dean didn't appear to be getting ready to go anywhere.

Sam walked carefully up to the opposite side of the car, not wanting to startle the hunter, before pulling the passenger door open and leaning in. "Hey, Dean."

"Mm," Dean grunted but kept his eyes fixed on the something in front of him, something far beyond the windshield and concrete walls of the bunker.

"What are you doing out here?" Sam asked. There was a glass of whiskey in his brother's hand, half-empty. He couldn't be sure whether his brother had drank half the glass or had only poured half a glass and hadn't managed a drink. Either seemed equally plausible, given the state of things.

"S'a free bunker."

Sam tipped his head. "Yeah, but it's freezing out here, and you should really get some sleep."

"Yeah," Dean dropped his eyes from whatever he was seeing down to the glass in his hand, shifting the amber liquid a bit before taking a slow drink. "Yeah."

Sam waited another long moment, watching Dean closely before realizing was going to take more than a gentle nudge to move his brother to elaborate further. He straightened and closed the door, moving around to the other side and opening the driver's door instead. "Come on, Dean." He tucked a hand under his brother's arm, pulling gently but firmly.

Dean looked up at him and for a moment, his gaze was open, the pain and anguish showing clearly before he blinked, and it was all gone. "Yeah," Dean said once more, finishing the whiskey off in one large swallow that left Sam wincing. His brother then allowed himself to be pulled from the car and guided down the hallway then deposited on his bed.

Sam worried at his lip, concerned with how pliant his brother was being, hoping it was just the whiskey and sleep deprivation. "I'll be right back, Dean."

He walked the short way down the hall to their now-destroyed infirmary, something else that would need cleaned up and headed for the cabinet, routing through bottles of old prescriptions and stolen pills, pulling out a nearly empty bottle of Temazepam. He crushed two pills on the counter and dumped them into a glass of water, mixed it as thoroughly as he could. Sam had no doubt his brother would fall asleep with little problems once he let himself, but this would ensure he stayed asleep, at least for a little while.

Sam returned to Dean's room, unsurprised to find his brother still dressed sitting on his bed, head resting in his hands.

He crossed to the bed, holding out the glass. "Here."

Dean looked up, hesitating before taking the water, but he did, staring sightlessly at the glass.

Sam took a deep breath before sitting on the bed next to his brother. He wasn't used to seeing the man like this. Dean had always been good at bouncing back from every hit he took. He didn't always land on his feet, but he had the means to get there pretty quickly. It was something Sam had come to depend on, and he found himself hoping once more, if not selfishly, that this was simply a side effect of the past several sleepless weeks.

"You know," he started hesitantly. "No one blames you for what happened."

Dean pressed his lips, his gaze still on the glass. "Yeah, well, I blame me so . . ." He looked away, downing the water in one go.

Sam frowned at that but knew there was nothing he could say that would change the way Dean thought, not when it came to blaming himself. It was like a dog chasing its tail; he never got anywhere, and it just made him dizzy. He dragged a hand across his mouth, wishing his brother didn't always need to carry the world, and the dead, on his shoulders. He patted Dean on the shoulder as he stood up. "Get some rest, man."