i was talking to @andromedaskyline about how we just know whatever this ending is gonna be will beâwell, a punch to the gut at best, but then it got us thinking about what kind of ending we want for dean and listen. listen.
when all is said and done, dean is alive and well, and he drives off into the sunlit horizon, and at the end of that road after however much time he needs to recoverâ
he starts a halfway house.
a halfway house for hunters, yes, but mostly for kids.
kids like claire and krissy and josephine, and alex and patience. kids that fell out of their normal lives and into hunting, with no feasible way back out. kids like dean.
itâs a place to crash and recuperate, where thereâs a roof over their heads and a bed to call their own and a food-stocked pantry (it never runs low. dean never lets it run low.) but also: a waypoint.
deanâs still got sonnyâs number, and if thereâs one person who can help a kid find a future or a family or a purpose, itâs sonny. (itâs also deanâbut heâs not used to advertising himself; itâll always feel like overselling.) he sits up late at night working through college applications, scholarship applications, to help these kids through the nightmare that is lying convincingly on paperwork. he teaches these kids all the things he had to learn by his lonesome: how to cook, how to clean and mend clothes and treat wounds and hustle pool without getting decked in the face. and if theyâre set on huntingâand he gets it, he does, because retiring was never an option for him when thereâs lives to be saved, and he knows howâthen he rolls up his sleeves and he teaches them.
hunters are a special kind of people, too rebellious for their own good, but he knows not to push. anyone can leave, but anyone can also stay. and when they do, heâs got things to tell them: the fastest way to decapitate a vamp and torch a wendigo, where to park their getaway car, which weapons to always have on hand and which to leave in the motel room, never to leave a case too early to miss something or late enough for the cops to get you. who to call when they do. basic skills, survival skills, but thereâs nothing basic about them anymore when theyâve amounted to his entire life and heâs perfected them, had to perfect them to stay alive through it all.
heâs seen things, butted heads with things that go unmentioned in even the thickest of lore books, and he makes sure they know how to take all of them down, or else how to sweet-talk it back where it came from. he makes sure every kid knows the vampire antidote by heart. he also tells them about purgatory, and to think hard before mercy-killing anything into an existence of blood-slash-blood-no-rest-no-peace. some things can save themselves: if they want to, let them, but make sure they follow through. itâs about the saving, not the killing, and if the two of them become muddied you have to save yourself first.
dean has a bed for you, in that case. a bed and a mean burger and an ear tilted in your direction.
sometimes, sam calls: dean lets it go to voicemail, and thatâs a gift to them both. dean will leave a voicemail of his own, in time. heâll talk for however long he wants to, about whatever he wants to, answers the questions he likes and doesnât answer those he doesnât. talks about the kids, all the time, about how much he wishes he couldâve done this for kevin. thereâs no interrupting in voicemail, no pointed glares, and the new routine is maybe the healthiest theyâve ever had.
he still goes out on hunts, as a teaching outing with the kids or to let off steam or because itâs an all hands on deck sort of thing. he canât let himself get rusty, but that doesnât mean he doesnât indulge: memory foam on his bed, a monthly road trip in the Impala planned and followed through with, a nice, slim pair of new boots perhaps more often than he needs. itâll take a while, but someday in the future, he even goes to the beach. leaves the united states to do it, and comes back toasty and bug-bitten and about fifty tons lighter by way of his soul.
it evolves, as kids leave and new ones come in, because no one can leave deanâs house without his number. it becomes a hub. dean makes sure thereâs a weapons arsenal in the garage, stakes of various obscure woods and silver bullets by the thousand and machetes besides. theyâre all for borrowingâheâll get new ones if some donât return. the rest of the garage is divided: the impala and all thatâs needed for her upkeep, and a workbench, a visor, a torch. he works on side-projects. lets his inner inventor out to play. EMFs that can detect hex bags, glasses that fracture the light just weirdly enough that no ghost can slip past the wearer unnoticed.
thatâs how, in ten years, heâll reinvent the Colt. he makes as many bullets as he can, and itâs expensive, slow work, but itâs the largest ace any of them have ever had up their sleeves and he wants it to be available to anyone who needs it.
knowledge isnât something to hoard, not when it can save lives. and fuck if holding the world together with his bare hands more than once, more than twice, didnât leave him with some unconventional wisdoms, some hard-earned truths and bits of trivia that could never end up being useful but also very well could. heâs prepared for that. makes sure his kids are prepared, too.
itâs not just the kids anymore, though, not when the hunters among them have branched out and met other hunters and the world knows his name, anyway, for all kinds of reasons, good and bad. his is not a name that slips someoneâs mind when itâs mentioned in passing. hasnât been for a long, long while, and that was never a good thing until this: until it just grows around him, not murder-plots or resentment or a heathy dose of fear of being associated with him, not like a snare drawing tight but a garden. (he keeps one, out back. hasnât really got that much of a knack for it, but some of the kids like ripping roots out of dirt, and hell, so does he.)
itâs not replacing bobby. he doesnât pretend to be the FBI superintendent or social services or someoneâs lawyer, not when heâs not out there in a suit. when a phone rings, the person on the other end always knows his name.
it starts out messy, and itâll always be messy, but it becomes more structured as they go. a demon case comes in: theyâve got people specializing in that, send them out. a rugaru: the same. and if itâs something thatâs truly Out There, they send dean, and heâll handle that. when he comes home, heâll make sure that next time, it wonât be just him who knows what to do.
some kids start penning down comprehensive lore books, his dadâs journal with the volume turned up, with only the stuff thatâs true and none of the fluff, the muddied waters. dean contributes to that more than he expects, at first, and suddenly theyâre crowding and crawling around him, eager for his input. turns out he has a lot to say.
not enough for the kids, though, it seems, because they keep sneaking carver edlundâs books into the house when he has banned them, has made it a bold point on his penned-down list of house rules. he finds them stuffed under mattresses and as pdfs on phones. he burns what he can. but he also says, okay, all right, iâll write a fucking memoir if thatâs what it takes to get you people to stop smuggling this trash in. and he lays down the basics: azazelâs plot and meddling angels, an apocalypse or two, whatâs there besides the earth and how to make sure you never go there. nothing warranting gaudy pulp covers with half-naked men on them. if anyone wants to know which brother did what, theyâll have to be damn good at reading between the lines, because deanâs too over it to point fingers, especially not when his words might stick around for other generations to read and judge and point their own. he doesnât put his name on it. leaves it anonymous.
what he doesnât count on are the notes in the margins, the whispered conversations after dinner or the glances heâll get: that heâs the hero of that story, heâs just too humble to write it down.
he only yells about that once.
in the end, itâs like this: thereâs no american men of letters, but thereâs people of action, and they all cluster around the heart of the country where the drive is about the same to each coast, and at the heart of that is dean.
in the very, very end, itâs like this: his memoir goes into print, and thereâs a preface telling his name in bold letters, and clarifying the details he had made sure to leave extra vague. if youâre in a roadhouse bar somewhereâand thereâs more of them now, run by those who wouldnât stay but wouldnât leave, eitherâthereâs a solid chance youâll run into a dean or deanna or ten, and they can tell you exactly who they were named after and why.
but right now, itâs just a chance, something to build out of nothing, something he wishes he had back when. something to turn his north towards, to pour all his strengths in that have grown from pain and weakness. they do always say the best leaders are those who never wanted to lead. out of all the rubble, something thatâll hold up without him there to keep it together, though heâs the heart that beats in it, anyway. heâs the home it grew up in.
