Chapter Text
Death was the final unknown, another process in the cycle of life that was nothing more than an inevitability of birth.
Wait, no...hold on, that didn't sit well with the situation.
Death was just another beginning, an end to an era and the start of something greater beyond life's limited capacity.
Shit, no, that one was even more corny than the first, sorry.
Death was...
Death was...
Okay, fine, no easy, beautiful way around this one.
To put everything into a much simpler perspective, you were dead. Well, pretty much dead. Life support, courtesy of one of Oklahoma's finest hospitals, was the only thing keeping you tethered to the world of the living at the moment.
You only knew this because you could see yourself, literally see yourself lying there in one of the small hospital rooms, swathed in nothing but white and hooked up to various beeping machines as if you had undergone one of the most intensive surgeries of your life. Sure, there had been internal bleeding, and, yeah, three ribs were broken, and, okay, your heart had stopped maybe twice during the delicate procedures that had been performed on you, but that's not what you were getting at.
A hunt had gone bad, real bad, a few days back, and it was all because you had decided to go it alone for the most dangerous part. Technically, you were with the Winchesters at the beginning, but you had seen how worn and beaten up the boys had looked after their last hunt and decided that you could wrap up the end of this one without them.
It wasn't like you just up and left without any sort of preparation, either. You gathered information, learned what you could from the internet and the local library while the boys were out as well as listened closely to what they had found out on their own. Then, when they crashed one night after nearly two weeks of restless sleeping and four days of coffee-fuled tandems, you scribbled out a quick note letting them know what you were up to and left with the intention of wrapping up the hunt.
Long story short, Sam and Dean showed up at the most inopportune time, guns blazing, and things pretty much went to hell from there. Needless to say, you were not a happy camper. You were mad; you were livid. You were...well, you were-
"-pissed beyond all comprehension! Do you even realize what I was trying to do for you? Do you know how hard it was trying to convince that witch that I wanted to join her pact? I was literally sealing the deal and ready to gank her when you and Sam decided to come barreling in and ruined the whole thing! Are you even listening to me, Dean?"
Your questions, no matter how much you shouted and gestured with your flailing hands, went unanswered and unheard. You gave a frustrated growl and collapsed into the plush chair just to the side of the hospital bed. Dean wasn't using it at the moment, anyways, having preoccupied his time with sitting just beside your unresponsive body and staring at your face with such a defeated, heartbroken look.
This would have been upsetting, perhaps even touching that he cared so much, if you weren't so angry at the moment.
"Shit," you muttered, allowing your anger to build into a verbal onslaught of vulgarity. It wasn't like you to be so...expressive with your words, but what the hell; no one could hear you, anyway.
"Shit, damnit, fuck...damn it all to fucking hell! This wouldn't have happened if you would have just let me do this one fucking thing on my own, just this one little thing! It's like you can't trust me to do shit for you!"
The room became quiet to your ears after your outburst, all your anger and pent up frustration leaving you with your shouted words almost as suddenly as it had come on. You had reached the root of the problem, after all, and as much as it made you angry, it upset you even more.
"Sometimes...sometimes I feel like you don't trust me at all, like you expect to clean up after everything I do, even after four years of working beside you."
You watched as Dean reached forward and gently traced the line of your palid face. With a sigh, you placed your hand against the same cheek, feeling the barest tingle of his contact despite the separation of body and spirit.
"I should have told you this; I should have told you how it made me feel, being left behind on almost every hunt, made to worry like a stay-at-home wife while you and Sam risk your lives time and again."
A broken chuckle left your lips with no humor behind it. A forlorn sigh followed after.
"But no, I decided to stay quiet in hopes that maybe, just maybe, I'd get the chance to prove to you that, yeah, I can do this without someone over my shoulder! Now, I don't think I'll ever get that chance."
"Dean was never really one to listen to what others had to say, was he?"
You looked up and to the left so fast that you thought you had given yourself whiplash from the movement. That voice was so familiar....
Standing just off to the side, you were able to see a rather young looking man dressed in a nice three-piece navy blue suit, dark hair neatly combed back and a small smile lighting his features. He looked well groomed, well mannered, and held such a strange air of knowledge and finality about him that seemed almost supernatural.
This was a man you had not seen in over five years, a man that had been long gone from this world and now stood before you in the very suit he had been burned in. You knew because it had been one of your favorites of his getups; he had joked with you once, saying that he'd gladly be buried in it once he was killed off, but your protest was that it didn't belong on a dead body.
You never anticipated seeing your dead brother in that suit those many years ago, and you sure as hell didn't expect to see him in it now.
"Olly? Oliver, is it...is it really you?" you questioned, standing abruptly and nearly gaping at the man walking toward you. His smile widened a fraction when he came as close as he deemed necessary, his eyes giving you a quick once-over.
"It's been awhile, hasn't it? You've grown up so much since I've been away. And your hair, it's so much longer now. You used to keep it short."
"It's not that long," you interjected, trying to keep your tears at bay.
Oliver reached to you with the intent of placing his hand on your shoulder to comfort you. At the last moment, you pulled away, an abnormal sense of fear having moved you into action.
You were in complete disbelief, so much so that you began to wonder if any of this was real. You hadn't expected any of this to happen to you. The dying part, the being a ghost part...and having your own dead brother be the one to ease you over into the afterlife. That part was perhaps the biggest surprise of your new eternity.
"So this is it, then," you began with an edge to your voice, hands thrown up in defeat, "this is my last hoorah? The end of me? This isn't just some dream I'm having?"
"No, not a dream, just a formality to something even greater," Oliver assured, but you were reluctant to agree with his words.
"But...but I don't want to go just yet. It wasn't supposed to be like this, Olly!"
"Did you think I wanted to leave you the way I did?"
His words, though spoken as if trying to convince you of something, held such malice in them that it gave you pause. He seemed to realize how he had spoken, as well, and immediately readjusted his speech.
"You remember that hunt, don't you? It was a group of vampires out in Colorado. Nothing went like we planned, we got distracted, and because of that, well... We know how it ended."
You nodded and wiped at your cheek quickly, ridding yourself of the tears that had escaped, of the memory that plagued you every so often.
"I was able to give you five more years, (Y/N). That's all I could have asked for you, just five more years for you to live on and discover who you were."
His smile was warm as he held out his hand to you, nodding to it just slightly in an offer for you to take hold.
"Now, you've got all of eternity to just be."
You stared at his hand for a long moment, feeling your own twitch at your side in wanting to take hold. Your eyes then drifted to Dean who had taken that moment to lean down and whisper something in your ear.
"You...back to me," he said, his voice sounding raspy and filled with too much static, "you come...to me, or...coming with you...swear...."
"What about Dean," you questioned, "and Sam? What about them? I can't just leave them like this, can I?"
Oliver looked over to the moving display without so much as batting an eye. If you had seen him, you would have thought the underwhelming response to be strange for his usually sympathetic demeanour.
"You know better than I how...accustomed to loss the Winchester brothers are. They've been through this time and again, and they will continue to experience such tragedies, even after you're gone. But you don't have to experience this sort of loss ever again. They will trudge on, just like you did for me, and when their time comes, you can be there to help them along the way, just as I'm here for you."
You continued to watch Dean a moment longer, his whispers now nothing but a gentle stream of static in your ear. When his lips moved to leave a kiss at your temple, you turned away. You could no longer feel his touch, and knowing that you would never feel it again hurt more than it should have.
"Okay," you said with a deep breath, giving a shaky smile as you reached for your brother's hand. "Guess it's just me and you, just like it used to be."
As your fingers just began to make contact with Oliver's skin, an unbelievably loud screeching began to echo in your ears without so much as a warning. It was awful and grating, like the amplified sound of sandpaper against chalkboard and a high-pitched airhorn sounding at the same time.
You immediately cringed away from your brother out of instinct to cover your ears and shy away from the source of pain coming at you from all angles, screaming for the sound to stop. Oliver didn't seem to hear it, but the look on his face showed that he was horrified at your startling reaction. He was speaking, trying to figure out what was wrong, but you couldn't hear him over the deafening roar of too much sound.
As a last resort, he reached for you...and then disappeared before your very eyes as if he had never been there to begin with. Your hands remained over your ears in a vain attempt to block out the noise when you noticed that everything around you seemed to be fading away. The hospital room, the machines, Dean...everything was fading into nothingness until you were left in utter darkness with nothing but the horrid sound surrounding you.