#moots who don't follow me for finale fix-it's please bear with me 😅

[deaneverafter]

In a Million Memories

By Anastasie Denholm

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Everlie (OFC)

Chapter summary: A routine hunt goes wrong, and someone has to make a difficult decision.

Warnings: angst, so much angst, injuries, this is a rewrite of the cursed scene, so 15x20, which is its own warning

Length: 1341 words

Notes: This does deal with the last episode, so please, be mindful of that, if that's going to be upsetting.

Song: Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush

Chapter One: Running Up That Hill

Three weeks ago. May 18th, 2020.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this. It was supposed to be their last hunt, but not like this. They were getting out. They were finally going to be safe and happy and live their lives. They weren’t even supposed to be hunting. They had decided to stop. But then they’d heard about the people getting killed, and there hadn’t been time to call any other hunters in.

And more than anything, she wouldn’t lose Dean. She couldn’t. Not again. Though her ears were ringing, she could hear him telling Sam everything he thought Sam needed to hear, and none of the things he needed to say. She mixed the ingredients, her tears blurring everything. She knew she had to stop herself from crying, because either she could keep crying or she could do something to fix this. She couldn’t understand why Sam was content to stand there and do nothing.

“Everlie,” it was Dean’s hoarse whisper that made her realize that he’d finished his goodbyes to his brother. Sam stepped aside, giving them the semblance of some space. “Please come here. You’re the last thing I want to see.”

“Dean, no. There won’t be any last seeings, I’m going to fix this,” she said, bringing the ingredients in her fist towards his wound.

“Ever, I know what you’re trying to do,” he said, a drop of blood on his mouth. So he had been watching her after all. “But you can’t, it could take too much of you, it could kill you.”

“It won’t, Dean, trust me. I can heal you.”

“My love, I-,” she cut him off as she felt her heart drop. He reserved that endearment, using it rarely, and when he did, it was something really good, or something really bad. The windy day they’d gotten married on the beach. As he’d gurgled his goodbyes through his own blood, after that fight with Metatron. When he’d rushed over to her that warm afternoon, as she’d lay bleeding to death in Bobby’s junkyard. Right after he’d knocked on the door of that middle of nowhere motel room, when he’d gotten out of purgatory. This, what was happening here, what he thought would be their last goodbye.

“Dean, please, let me do this. Let me save you. Save us,” she finally saw his eyes soften, and he gave an almost imperceptible nod. He let her see how much he wanted to live, how much he wanted to have a life with her.

She pressed the ingredients to his back, and repeated the incantation. His body remained tense. She repeated it again. And again. The tears returned.

“Why isn’t it working?” she sobbed. She repeated the spell again.

“It’s okay, this isn’t your fault,” he whispered, cupping her cheek with great effort. “I love you.” And then he slumped against her.

“No!” she screamed, “No, you’re not going to die!”

“Sam, help me lie him down,” she cried. “I’m going to fix this.”

“Maybe it’s ti-“

“It is not time, Sam,” she cut him off, no more harshly than he deserved. “Help me lie him down.”

He did. She balled up her jacket and gently lowered Dean’s head on it. Sam had helped her thus far, but she could see he didn’t think she could do anything. He expected her to yell and scream and then give up. She didn’t care what he expected. Or wanted. She knelt beside Dean – or what was left of him. She tried another spell. And then another. Blood seeped into the straw beneath them. Just out of earshot, she could more feel than hear Dean standing there, telling her to stop. Telling her it wasn’t her fault. She knew it wasn’t. She was going to bring him back anyway.

“Sam,” she said finally, having run out of all the spells she could think of. Well, almost all. “Get my bag from the trunk.”

“Everlie, what are you thinking?” he tried to ask her, trying – and failing – to be there for her in that moment. She found it bizarre how okay he seemed with it all.

“Get my damned bag, Sam!” she screamed. He scurried out to the Impala and returned a moment later. He handed her the bag, still unsure what she was going to do. He didn’t know what was inside the bag. “Everlie, can we just think about this for a second? Please don’t do anything rash.”

“My husband’s body is getting colder by the minute and you want me to be rational?” she said, as she began pulling ingredients from her bag, along with a small stone bowl, more a hollowed out rock than anything else. A knife. It had taken her the few moments Sam was gone to stop sobbing and come to a decision. Now, she was calm. Eerily so.

“He’s my brother, I do-,” he cut himself short when he saw what she’d pulled out of the bag. “No. Absolutely not. You remember what happened the last time we messed with that book. You bring him back using that, he’ll never forgive you.”

“He forgave you,” she said without stopping, mixing ingredients in the bowl and pressing the glass knife into her palm.

“Everlie, stop!” Sam said again, and she ignored him. He stepped toward her, to stop her, shake her out of what she was doing, to maybe snatch the book from her. She snapped her wrist, a bit of the energy from her soul coursing through and suddenly he was across the barn, paralyzed where he was. Her soul would recharge eventually. Or, it would’ve anyway. It didn’t matter now.

For the first time since she’d felt him leave this plane, she looked up at the phantom of her husband, standing there, trying to reason with her, trying to tell her to not trade her life for his, to not get herself killed trying to bring him back. The look on her face stopped him for a minute. Because he knew her. Better than anyone else did, better than he knew anyone or anything else. And in that moment, he knew the price she was going to pay would be much worse than just her life. He started protesting again, panic tinging his every word, but if she was going to bring him back, a glance was all she had to spare for the ghost of him. She went back to work, blood from her hand gathering in the bowl. Quickly, she lit a match and threw it in the bowl. It extinguished itself after the briefest of moments, and when she opened her mouth, the words tumbling out belonged to a language so ancient, the earth beneath them shook.

It made him think of that song she liked to sing. If only I could, I’d make a deal with God, I’d get him to swap our places. Her singing was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard, but he hated it when she sang that song. Because he knew how true it was. Every time she’d put herself in danger to save him despite his best efforts, he’d been scared that the next time would be the last. That the next time she saved him, it would be by swapping places with him, and usually, the place he was in was something life-threatening. Or actually death. The next time would be the one where the price would be her life. And here they were. The next time. The last time.

Dean, incorporeal as he was at the moment, lunged towards her to engulf her in a hug, instinctually, to calm her enough to try to tell her to stop, to try to get her to listen. But a white light spread out from her chest. His hand landed on her shoulder against all odds. With his cold, lifeless body beneath her hands, she looked up and mouthed three words. The last thing he saw was her shielding his head and chest with her body. The barn burned white after that.

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All rights to the characters and Supernatural belong to the original writers, but I've worked really hard on this, and I ask that this story please not be saved and/or copied to other places or sites.

Tagging: @deanwinchesterswitch, @siospins2

#in a million memories #dean winchester fanfiction #dean winchester x oc #dean winchester x ofc #dean winchester x happiness otp 💟 #chapter one is up besties #moots who don't follow me for finale fix-it's please bear with me 😅 #if anyone just wants the story content i will be reblogging it to my sideblog deaneverafterstories #where i will also eventually start reblogging stories from all the great writers i haven't gotten to reblog on here before!