The muse hasn't been cooperating as of late, so I tried writing the old fashioned way, with a pen in a lined notebook, and then made myself write stream-of-conscious. This is the result.

Title: Full Circle
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 707
Warnings: Character death, "What Is and What Should Never Be" Wishverse fic
Summary: No other families needed to suffer what theirs had.

+++

When Sam called, voice strained, overwhelmed, it took her a moment to process what was being said. When it sank in, she dropped the phone, the sound of the plastic rattling against the flood seeming so far away.

Her son was dead.

Dean had killed himself in some abandoned warehouse in Illinois, Sam unable to stop him. By the time the ambulance got him to the hospital, it had been too late.

Mary could hear Sam calling for her through time and space, getting transported back for a moment to when Dean had taught him how to ride his bicycle. Sam had been too busy making sure everyone saw that he was doing it to pay attention to where he was going. He sounded older, though, a man's voice calling for his mother instead of a boy's, and Mary picked the phone off the floor.

The hospital wanted to know when the arrangements got made for a place to send Dean's body. Mary couldn't help but wonder what curse had befallen her that she had to bury her husband and her son within the span of a year.

+

Sam drove the Impala home in silence, trying to piece together what exactly had happened. Ever since he had gotten to Lawrence for their mother's birthday, Dean had been acting strangely.

On the way to Joliet he'd been talking about ghosts, werewolves, vampires like they were real. That there was a djinn in a warehouse and it was taking people. Sam had seen it with his own eyes - its blue skin, piercing gaze, the lightning that formed a layer between its skin and the girl's as it drank her blood. Then Dean had said that Sam wasn't really there, talking like they weren't alone when it was just them and that thing.

Suddenly, to Sam's horror, his brother turned the knife on himself, plunging the silver blade into his stomach. Sam called 911, telling them where they were and to hurry. As Dean's blood slowly spread on the floor, Sam gathered him into his arms, praying to God that Dean would be fine. The waiting was torture, and not just because of his brother's attempt to take his own life, but what he said as his life ebbed away.

He had been confused - didn't know where they were, what had happened, why he stabbed himself. Sam had never seen his brother cry before, his cocky, too cool brother who was sobbing into Sam's chest, leaving his shirt wet even after Dean's blood stopped flowing. Dean hadn't wanted to die.

Watching the doctors in the hospital try their best to bring Dean back, Sam knew with a strange sense of serenity that his brother hadn't killed himself.

Something else had done this.

+

Mary listened to Sam recounting what had happened, his face brave even as his voice wavered. Other things were out there, he was saying, evil things that killed so they could live - creatures that were thought only to exist in nightmares.

The day before Dean's funeral, they drove back to the warehouse armed with silver only to find it empty.

At the wake she met a woman who introduced herself as Missouri. Missouri told Mary how she had felt something dark at work when she read about Dean's death in the paper. They went into an adjoining room to talk more privately, Missouri confirming what Sam had said about monsters being real.

After everyone left Mary went into the attic, finding John's hunting rifles and the casting moulds he'd gotten from his grandfather for making bullets when he'd joined the Marines. With Sam's help, the good silver got melted down, and they started doing research. No other families needed to suffer what theirs had.

There was a lead in Minnesota, and they took the Impala. Mary had hated that car, it wasn't safe, but Dean had loved it, and when she was in it, Mary could swear that sometimes she felt like Dean was there, as well, supporting them and their mission. It was like the briefest of touches that was gone before she could seek out the source, but then Mary would look over at Sam and know that he had felt it too.