[Fic] If It Keeps on Raining...

[rabidbinbadger5]

Title: If It Keeps On Raining...
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Crowley
Rating: T
Word count: 11,177
Warnings: Violence

Also available on AO3

Summary: He lashes out anyway, craving some sort of violent contact. His fist slams into Cas with a satisfying sounding crunch. That’s all that’s satisfying about it, though. Cas steps back, but he’s going with the momentum of the blow rather than being thrown by it. Hitting Cas used to be like punching out at a steel plate and even with the angel’s fading grace Dean should be in agony right now, knuckles raw, bones jarred. Instead he feels nothing. Not even a slight ache. Dean’s new strength might have yet to settle into his muscles properly, but the near invulnerability has and it renders the violence pointless. As satisfying as lashing out at the rain.

Dean wants to rip and tear and destroy, like most demons. Unlike most demons what he wants to rip and tear and destroy is himself.

Post S09E23 'Do You Believe In Miracles'



There’s a sourness fizzing under his tongue and around his gums. It’s not the usual sourness- last night’s whiskey, rotting and dying amongst his teeth. It’s something different. Something familiar but out of place. He swipes his tongue around his mouth, probing, examining, but still can’t quite place it.

His awareness extends to other parts of his body, brain sluggishly trying to catalogue his current state. He learned a long time ago how to deal with hangovers. This isn’t a hangover, as much as his fuzzy, tired mind keeps trying to convince itself. He’s realised what it is, sort of, but acknowledging makes it real, and he doesn’t want this to be real.

There’s something in his hand, rough, hewn. It feels right there, feels like it belongs. He accepts it, moves on.

Don’t linger. Lingering gives you time to think, to analyse, to admit. Keep moving fast enough and nothing will stick. Keep on running and never look back.

He likes to pretend that’s his philosophy, but it isn’t. He’s always looking back at his mistakes, studying them and learning them in intricate, brutal detail, but not really learning from them. He can’t afford to. Not like everyone else. They don’t get their mistakes catalogued, not by him at least. Other people get second chances, clean slates, free passes. He gets none of these because he knows he doesn’t deserve them.

He’s edging towards the realisation that he would actually rather look backwards than forwards these days. If he looks back far enough he can dig out some good memories. Forward is just a dark, roiling mess of black.

Black.

It’s that word that does it. Or at least the association that comes tied to it. He lets go of the thing clenched in his fist and brings his hands up to his closed eyes. He presses on them, lightly and then harder, can feel his eyeballs just below the thin layer of skin. They’re firm. People talk about eyeballs as jelly, but they aren’t, he decides. They feel more like peeled grapes, or those little rubber balls even, the bouncy ones you can get for a handful of small change in most gas stations. He’s digging in harder now and it should hurt, but it doesn’t. He forces himself to stop, to resist the temptation to gouge out his eyes so that he doesn’t have to look.

He stands up, stumbles to the mirror, blinks, shakes his head and fails to resist the urge to scream.

“That’s it, Dean. Howl for me.”

He ignores Crowley, pushes past him. His new strength is still building itself up, easing into his body. His meatsuit, now, a snide voice reminds him. He let one truth in and now others are getting brave, clawing and tearing at his carefully built façade.

In-one-two-three, out-one-two-three, in-one-two-three, out-one-two-three

He times his breathing, counting the seconds between each breath and using that to fill his head so completely that there isn’t room for anything else to creep in. It’s an old trick he used as a kid, when he got too scared to sleep. When he couldn’t close his eyes without his brain throwing up blood and guts and all of the monsters that his dad should have been reassuring him weren’t real but was instead ordering him to protect his little brother from. The technique didn’t work very well then, and it doesn’t work very well now.

In-one-two-threedemon, out-one-twodemon-three IndemondemondemondemonDEMON

He stumbles into the bunker’s living room. Sam and Cas are standing there, looking sympathetic and concerned. It stokes his fury. They aren’t supposed to be understanding; they’re supposed to be mad. They’re supposed to tell him off, give him something to fight and rail and shout and scream against.

He lashes out anyway, craving some sort of violent contact. His fist slams into Cas with a satisfying sounding crunch. That’s all that’s satisfying about it, though. Cas steps back, but he’s going with the momentum of the blow rather than being thrown by it. Hitting Cas used to be like punching out at a steel plate and even with the angel’s fading grace Dean should be in agony right now, knuckles raw, bones jarred. Instead he feels nothing. Not even a slight ache. Dean’s new strength might have yet to settle into his muscles properly, but the near invulnerability has and it renders the violence pointless. As satisfying as lashing out at the rain.

Dean wants to rip and tear and destroy, like most demons. Unlike most demons what he wants to rip and tear and destroy is himself.

He reels backwards, feels tears slide down his face. He rubs at them futilely, smudging them into the dried mess of blood that’s still caked there.

“I fucked up.” He says, to no-one in particular. To himself, to Sam, to Cas.

“You tried, Dean.” Cas replies. “Just like you always do.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, let’s Dean spit out vindictively, “And I failed, just like I always do. Still, you’d both know about that. I guess it was my turn to start an apocalypse of crap this time.”

The words hurt, as they were intended to. Sam bristles, but understands this for what it is. Cas flinches, takes another step back, but then he steels himself. They have all fucked up, it’s what they do, but they do it with the best of intentions, and they usually manage to fix it.

He contemplates saying this to Dean, decides against it. Goes instead with “Metatron and Abaddon are no longer a problem, Dean. There’s nothing on the horizon now, no apocalypse, no purgatory, no leviathans, nothing. We have time. We can fix this.”

“That’s my line.”

Cas’ lip curves upwards in the barest hint of a smile.

“You’re always trying to fix everything yourself, Dean. Let us try this time.”

Dean snorts. “And what if it can’t be fixed? What if this is permanent?”

Sam chips in. “You’re still you. Mostly anyway. There’s no trail of dead bodies at your feet. You’ve even managed to put the Blade down, unless you’ve got it stuffed up your shirt. If that’s the best we can get, that’ll have to do.”

“I did just try and break Cas’ shoulder.”

Cas considers, for the briefest of seconds, saying ‘I’ve done far worse to you.’ But he doesn’t. He’s always left a lot unsaid, but these days it’s more out of weariness than for the sake of deception. He’s tired, down to his very bones, and he doesn’t want to exchange more bitter words, drag up old traumas. He knows he will have to, eventually, but for now he’s happier letting unspoken resentments fester in the dark. He knows it’s not healthy, but it gives him a few more days of peace before the inevitable explosion, so he goes with it.

He doesn’t think he has long left on earth anyway. What he did, it was abhorrent, and it was deadly. He’s being poisoned from the core outwards and when he falls this time he’s not sure he’ll survive it. With that in mind he’d rather spend his last few weeks, months, years even maybe- if he’s careful about how he uses ‘his’ grace- in peace with the Winchester brothers. Or at least, as much peace as they’re ever likely to get.

“You’re angry.” He says, instead. “And scared. But I would prefer if you used a punching bag next time.”

Dean laughs, and the sound surprises him. He expected to feel less, for his emotions to be skewed darker now. He expected to hate and rage and scream. And maybe he does, on the inside, more than he’s allowing Cas and Sam to see, but he still feels basically himself. He’s still him, but, then again, he’s also still settling into this new nature. Maybe it’ll be gradual, so slow they don’t even notice it at first. Like scar tissue that builds up until it loses all feeling.

Maybe it’ll start with harsh words, callous remarks- and Cas and Sam will notice, and they’ll whisper to themselves, but they won’t be able to do anything about it. They’ll be kind to him, gentle, as if they can soften him up again, but it won’t work. Harsh words will progress to killing monsters that maybe don’t deserve it, because they’re there, which will progress to not caring about the innocent body count, so long as the job gets done. And it’ll end with him standing, grinning or uncaring- he’s not sure which would be worse- over the bodies of people he knows and loves.

“Well, the first step is probably to head to a church and get the demon curing ritual started.” Sam cuts through his dark thoughts, of bodies with familiar faces lying twisted and broken on the ground.

“Uh, actually, the first step might actually be for someone to go deal with Crowley. I’d volunteer but it’s probably not best for me to be around, y’know, potentially annoying things right now.”

“Annoying? That’s just rude.”

They all turn to see Crowley, cleaning imaginary specks of dust from his jacket as he steps into the room.

“Crowley.” Cas hisses.

“The one and only. Missed me?”

Cas doesn’t bother to answer, surging forwards in attack. Crowley easily sidesteps him, laughing.

“Someone’s feeling a little smitey. What’s the matter? Running low on juice?”

Cas actually snarls, which Dean didn’t think was something people did. Mind you, Cas’ head is packed full of Metatron’s pop culture bullshit now. He’s probably got more shitty fiction in his head than he has real interaction. Hopefully he’s not going draw too much on that and start living like he’s in some crappy b-movie. As funny as that has the potential to be.

“Can you knock it off for two seconds guys?” Sam snaps. “Crowley, what do you want?”

“I want my pet.”

“Pet?” Dean snorts. “I’m not your pet you limey fuck. And I’m not going howling at any moons with you. Take it back to hell or whatever, or I swear I’m going to use my considerably-better-than-yours demon mojo to shred you to pieces.”

“Rude. And don’t think I don’t know you, Dean. If you could do that you already would have. Now come with me or I’m going to kill Little and Large and make a leash for you out of their entrails.”

“Don’t go with him, Dean.”

“Yeah, no freaking duh, Sam.”

Sam signals to Cas quickly and the angel starts to edge around behind Crowley, not particularly subtly.

“I’m not stupid, feathers.” Crowley’s eyes flick to the side as he chastises Cas impatiently. Sam takes his chance, draws his gun and fires. Crowley laughs, and then realises he’s stuck.

“Devil’s trap bullet. What, you thought I’d summon you here-“

“What?!” Cas and Dean echo.

“-without a little insurance.” Sam snorts. “We’ve clearly done our job well if you’re the best hell has left.”

As they carry Crowley downstairs, back to his old dungeon, Dean tries to tell Sam off for summoning him.

“Haven’t we made enough deals that you know how this ends, Sam?” But Sam cuts him down.

“I wasn’t summoning him to make a deal. He was the reason you were dead, so I told him it was his job to fix it.”

“Wait? What? I was dead?”

“You didn’t know?”

“I knew I was dying, but when I woke up, I dunno. I just assumed someone must have healed me before I actually kicked it.”

“So- you didn’t go to heaven, hell- I don’t know, purgatory..?”

“No. One minute I was dying, next I woke up here. Nothing in between.”

“Well, you were definitely dead.”

Dean puts a hand to his chest. There’s no heartbeat. Shit. How had he not noticed that before? He doesn’t mention it, not in front of Crowley. He waits until they’re all back upstairs, considers not telling them. Would it be so bad to die? He’d be cured. Would that be enough to send his soul to heaven? He knows the good he’s done doesn’t outweigh the bad. His dead, unbeating heart is heavy enough that it’d outweigh all the feathers in the world, he thinks.

He doesn’t want to go back to hell. Of course he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to be tortured, and then torture, and slowly turn back into a demon. For one thing, there’s the sheer pointlessness of the thing. An endless cycle of being cured, dying, being shunted back to hell, corrupting himself and going back topside- where undoubtedly Sam would find him, cure him again and start the cycle over. It doesn’t appeal. None of this really appeals. His life is one long, unappealing clusterfuck, lurching from one crisis to the next. And for what reward? More of the same.

He snorts at his own self-pity, bites the bullet, tells them.

“My heart, it’s not beating. If we do manage to cure me…”

“You’ll be dead.”

“Probably.”

“Uh, Cas. I know you don’t have much mojo left, but d’ya think you could give me a hand here?”

“I can try.”

Cas steps forward, cradles Dean’s head tenderly in his hands. Long gone are the days when he healed him with an impersonal touch to the forehead. Now he takes him in his hands, offers the comfort of touch along with the physical healing. He doesn’t really know who he does it for, Dean, or himself. Maybe a little bit of both.

He knows immediately that something is wrong but it takes Dean shoving him away to break the connection. He collapses to the floor. Winded, almost empty.

“What happened?” Sam demands.

“The Mark.” Cas rasps as he picks himself up from the floor. “It wouldn’t let me heal him. It fought back.”

Fought maybe isn’t the right word. It didn’t fight him. It welcomed him, pulled his grace in and enveloped it. Wanted more.

“Why didn’t you let go, Cas?!” Dean demands, riled by Cas’ passivity in the face of his own, what? He isn’t quite sure what’ll happen when Cas burns out this time. Nothing good, he’s at least certain.

“I don’t know.”

Cas knows, he just won’t admit. It was a relief. For a few moments the poison that clogs his cells was muted, gone even. It felt like Dean was healing him, not the other way around. An illusion, but one that he couldn’t bring himself to fight. It’s not that he wants to die, necessarily; it’s that he is weary. He needs a break from this, from Sam and Dean and angels and demons and war and turmoil.

No, that’s unfair. He isn’t tired of the Winchesters specifically, but he is tired of being with them, at least like this. He’s tired of their baggage, the turmoil that follows them wherever they go and which he always ends up involved in. He wants to go back into Dean’s dream, to sit with him and fish in peace and solitude. He wants a moment of calm before the next inevitable catastrophe. Although, he thinks, he doubts he’ll be able to find that in Dean’s dreams anymore.

“Earth to Cas? Cas!” Dean’s voice pulls him from his thoughts.

“Sorry, what?”

“I said, what about your angel pals? You’re back in with the halo crowd; could you get one of them to help?”

Cas sighs. “I don’t think so. Even if they listened to me, decided not to smite you on sight, which is highly unlikely-“

“Douches”

Cas smiles even as he substitutes Dean’s word for something a little less harsh.

“Misguided. Even if they tried to heal you, I don’t think it’d work. The Mark was draining” the next word sticks on his tongue; he almost can’t get it out. It’s not his, it never will be “my grace before it pushed me away. It seemed almost hungry for it. Another, very powerful, angel might be able to overcome the Mark long enough to heal you, but it’d almost certainly be a fatal exercise. I could ask them to put aside their distaste for you, but I couldn’t convince them to sacrifice their lives for you.”

“So what then?” Sam bites out.

“If anyone suggests crossroads deal so help me I will work out how to summon a hellhound and have it eat your face.”

“Calm down Robert Pickton.” Sam snorts.

“Who?”

“Never mind.”

“Can’t you heal yourself?” Cas asks.

“Maybe? I wouldn’t have the first clue how though. How do you do it?”

“I just…do…”

“Well that’s spectacularly helpful. Thanks.”

“I’m not being deliberately unhelpful, Dean. It’s hard. It’s like me asking you how you move your arms. You just decide to do it and it happens. Could you explain to me exactly how? No. You couldn’t.”

“Yeah. Well. Fine. I’ll try.”

Dean closes his eyes and concentrates, trying to encourage his heart to start beating.

“It looks like you’re about to take a dump on the floor.”

“Not helpful, Sam.”

“Is it working?” Cas asks.

Dean opens his eyes, frustrated.

“No. It’s not. Still as dead as when I started.”

Sam sighs. We’re going to have to-“

“No.” Dean cuts him off.

“But-“

“No.”

*

“Well that took you all of, what, half an hour? New record, boys.”

“Shut up, Crowley.” Dean snaps.

“Oh, so you’re not here to ask for my help? Again?”

Sam interrupts, because life is short and he’s had enough of everyone bickering back and forth.

“Look. We just want to know about demonic healing, okay?”

“For Dean, I assume? What’s he done to himself this time?”

“None of your business.” Dean snaps.

“If I don’t know the problem, I can’t give you the solution, can I, geniuses.”

“I’m dead, okay. My heart isn’t beating, and I want it to start up.”

“Why? It’s not like you need a heart anymore.”

“Crowley, you know exactly why.” Sam says impatiently.

“Because you want to ‘cure’ him, blah, blah, blah, I love my boring human life, blah, blah.”

“There’s something in it for you.”

“Something better than a Knight of Hell owing me?”

“I don’t owe you jackshit.”

“You were dead, Dean. I brought you back. Dean Winchester, version 2.0. New and improved. Imagine how much easier hunting is going to be now that you’ve got all these shiny new powers.”

“I don’t want these powers. I’ve seen what this kind of juice does first-hand and I’m not biting.”

“Such a WASTE.” Crowley snaps. “Cain had to pick the only hunter so sanctimonious, so self-righteous that he gets turned into a demon and instead of going on a rampage like the rest of us he just goes off crying about how sad he is and how much he wants to turn back.”

“Maybe that’s why Cain called him worthy.” Cas says thoughtfully. “Not because he saw Dean as a killer, but because he saw him as someone who’d be able to stop.”

Dean shoots Cas an incredulous look. Thanks for the nice words but none of us are buying that crap. Cas’ only response is to side-eye him.

Crowley sneers. “He’s the father of murder. I know he’s retired, but I expected him to have some wrath left in him.”

“Well, maybe you were wrong.” Sam pipes up from behind Crowley, as he stabs a needle into his neck.

“OW. WHAT THE HELL, MOOSE?”

“If you hadn’t been so focussed on the Dean and Cas show you might have noticed me coming up behind you. I wasn’t even sneaking. You’re getting lax, like really lax.”

“What did you just inject me with?”

“Human blood. I know you said you’d kicked the habit, but I know a thing or two about blood addiction and I reckon that should be enough to make you start craving again.”

“And?”

“And so you’ll tell us how to heal Dean’s body and then you’ll get what you want. If you don’t I’ll leave you to stew here for a few days, maybe drop some vials of blood just out of your reach to make it harder.”

“Hey, wait, Sam. Was that your blood?” Dean asks, panicked.

“No I got it from the fully stocked blood bank we keep in the kitchen.”

“You keep blood in the kitchen? Where? That seems highly unhygienic, and impractical. Where do you even get it from?”

They ignore Cas.

“Of course it’s my blood. Cas is still an angel, and you, well, obviously we can’t use yours.”

“And you don’t think that’s risky?”

“Um. Not really.”

“Last time you tried to cure him you nearly died.”

He nearly adds, ‘am I the only one who remembers this?’ Realises where snappy words like that might lead- Gadreel, recriminations, blame, a vicious fight they’ve yet to still really have out, have only really danced around- and stops himself.

“Last time I was doing the trials. Anyway, I wasn’t going to actually cure Crowley. Just persuade him to talk.”

“You can dose me all you want. It’s not going to help.”

“”You’ll cave sooner or later.” Sam shrugs.

“It’s not that, you moron. There is no way to heal him. The Mark won’t let you. Either Dean stays like this, or you cure him and take away the only thing that animates his whiskey sodden sack of daddy issues.”

“No.” Sam says. “There has to be something we can do.”

“There’s that famous Winchester brand of denial. There is nothing you can do.”

“You do have a veiled interest in keeping Dean a demon.” Cas observes. “How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

“I’m not lying, but feel free to waste days and time and effort proving me right.”

Dean leaves the room without a word.

*

He goes to the bathroom first, locking the door. He wants to wash the blood off his face. It’s just another reminder of the last few days, what he did and what he lost. When he’s done he sneaks out as quietly as he can, thankful that neither Sam or Cas are sitting outside the door, waiting to lure him into a conversation he really doesn’t want to have.

He grabs a bottle of whiskey, hides it under his jacket and makes his way as quietly as possible to the other side of the bunker. There’s nowhere that Sam and Cas won’t be able to find him eventually, but there are some spots it’ll take them longer than others to remember. The roof, for example. He pulls himself up through the trapdoor and slumps, out of sight, behind a sheet of corrugated iron. Closing his eyes, he takes a deep swig from his bottle.

He’s about half way through it, and feeling nothing, when Cas finally tracks him down.

Cas doesn’t say anything, just squints at him thoughtfully. He can see something of Dean’s new form now, if he concentrates hard enough. His fading angelic power and the still growing nature of Dean’s demonic element make it difficult, much more than it should be. Cas is grateful for that. Grateful that he doesn’t have to look at someone he loves and automatically see jagged, serrated blackness writhing under his skin. Dean isn’t that bad yet. His darkness is insubstantial, a translucent shadow licking behind his physical face and at his edges. It’s not a true demon darkness. It’s a hint, a suggestion of what might be to come, but it’s still too much for Cas.

He aches under the weight of it. The knowledge of what Dean has had to do to himself, the self-hatred that he couldn’t do anything to stop it, and the fear of what it’ll change between them. It makes it hard to say anything, so he doesn’t.

Dean is the one who breaks the silence, fidgeting uncomfortably under Cas’ intense scrutiny.

“I was expecting Sam to find me first.”

“He’s not looking for you.” Cas stops trying to see the demonic vestiges behind Dean’s skin and sits down next to him, near but not quite touching.

“Huh. Good.”

“He’s researching.”

“What the fuck for? It’s not like there’s a precedent for this.”

Cas makes a noncommittal noise.

“So, you here to tell me to stop wallowing and drinking?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Dean laughs, bitterly, and takes another long draught.

“It doesn’t look like it’s having quite the effect you intended.”

“No. It’s not.” He waves the bottle at Cas. “You want some?”

“Last time it took an entire liquor store to get me drunk.”

“Fancy hunting a couple down? We could make a night of it.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea for either of us, Dean.”

“Huh. Spoilsport.”

“Do you, uh, want to talk about it?”

“No. No I do not. I want to get very, very drunk and then I want to pass out, and then maybe when I wake up I’ll realise this has all been a dream. A shitty horrible little dream.”

“Good luck with that.”

Dean finishes the bottle. He wants to throw it but the noise might bring Sam so he just puts it down instead. He sits in silence with Cas for a while. It should be nice. It’s the kind of thing he would have enjoyed doing before, but now it just makes him antsy. He can feel something radiating off Cas, something angelic and bitter. Pure but not pure.

“Dude. I think I can feel your grace.”

Cas jerks to the side, alarmed.

“What do you mean?”

“I can feel this buzz coming off you. I gotta be honest; it’s making me feel kinda jumpy.”

Cas shuffles away from him, looking hurt. Dean winces.

“No, dude. Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No. I’m sorry. This is a, uh, difficult time for you, Dean. I don’t want to make it worse.”

“Yeah, Cas. You could possibly make this fucking worse.”

His temper snaps, suddenly and without warning. He lashes out at the floor, driving his fist clean through it. He pulls back and tries to punch again, only to find Cas holding onto his wrist. His very touch itches and it makes Dean even angrier than before.

“Dean, you don’t want to do that.”

“Don’t I Cas? How do you know what I fucking want?”

“I don’t know what you want now, but I’m pretty sure you’ll be upset about punching holes in the roof come tomorrow.”

He realises he’s made a mistake immediately, but it’s too late to recant.

“Oh yeah? You think I’ll give a crap about some fucking concrete? You think that means anything in the goddamn shit-scheme of my life? That what you think Cas?”

“No-”

Dean vaults to his feet, shucking Cas’ grip. It’s a relief to get some cool air to the touch, even if it doesn’t quite soothe the prickling rawness. Cas tries to grab him again but Dean swats him away.

“Don’t you touch me.” He imbues the words with as much bitterness as he can. Anything to get Cas away from him. He needs to be on his own, he needs to be drunk, but, failing that, he needs to drive.

He sprints to the edge of the roof and throws himself down to the ground below, rolling to soften the impact more out of habit than because he doesn’t want to hurt himself. He can vaguely hear Cas shouting above him, yelling for Sam to head him off. Yeah, well, if they didn’t want him to piss off they should have just left him alone with his bottle.

The Impala isn’t in the garage; she’s still parked out in the open. No-one’s had time to store baby away properly yet with everything that’s been going on. He dives into her and guns the engine, speeds away. He turns the music up loud enough that it punches through his brain and doesn’t give him as much space to think. He’s mostly thinking in fragments now anyway. Like bits of his brain are shutting themselves down. He doesn’t think about why that might be.

He’s less than a mile down the road when he looks in the rear-view mirror and sees Cas’ ridiculous car. He’s driving, Sammy in the front seat. It stokes the rage coiled in Dean’s gut and he pulls the Impala over violently, swinging to the side and blocking the entire road.

He climbs out as they screech to a halt in front of him.

“What the hell, Dean. We could have crashed into you.” Sam snaps.

“I need you to back off.”

“Dean, please let us help.” Cas is still trying to be reasonable, and that makes Dean far angrier than Sam’s irritation does.

He turns to the Impala’s trunk to grab a weapon. He doesn’t want to actually shoot them, not quite, but he’s not above a few warning shots. Just anything to get them to back off. To leave him the fuck alone. He yanks with all his strength, but nothing. It’s jammed tight.

“Devil’s trap, Dean.” Sam huffs, exasperated at his older brother’s stupidity no doubt.

He punches out at Sam’s face, hears a satisfying crunch of bones beneath his fist. He doesn’t feel it, but that doesn’t matter, hearing it was enough.

“You don’t have to do this alone, Dean, we’re here.”

All the demonic rage that he’d been expecting since he woke up suddenly bubbles to the surface at Cas’ dumb, pointless kindness. He feels something click inside him and suddenly Cas’ car is flying to the side, skidding to a halt in the adjacent field. It’s not damaged enough to stop them following him, but it’ll take them enough time to get it back on the road that he’ll be long gone.

“Leave. Me. Alone.”

“Dean. You need to calm down, please.” Cas tries.

“I don’t need to do anything. Stop following me or I’ll hurt you.” Like I hurt every damn thing that touches me. He doesn’t need to add the words. He’s said them already. They’re threading through this conversation like blood through water.

“Dean.” Sam’s voice is stern, like he’s scolding a child. “We can’t let you go out there by yourself, you know that.”

Dean lashes out with his newfound power, knocking Sam and Cas to the floor and pinning them down.

“I’m asking you nicely this once. I won’t do it again. Don’t follow me. Don’t try to contact me. This is goodbye.”

He gets back in the car and drives off. He’s broken, there’s no fixing this. It’s better if they don’t see what happens next.

*

He doesn’t drive to the nearest town. That would be too obvious. He’s not even sure where he ends up, different places. He plans on drinking until he can’t taste the tang of sulphur in his mouth. A whole bottle of whiskey hadn’t washed it away, but that bottle hadn’t gotten him drunk either so maybe more is the answer.

He breaks into liquor stores, grabs what he can carry, dumps it in the Impala and then moves onto the next town. He hits four or five places, figures he must have enough booze to get him smashed by now, and parks up in the most desolate place he can find.

He doesn’t want to go to a bar. It’ll be too expensive for one, suspicious as well, if he keeps on drinking and never gets even a little bit drunk. Plus there’ll be people in a bar, and while he’s still angry, he’s not quite murderous any more. A little of his rage abated while he was driving. The open road has always had a calming effect on him. It didn’t do the job quite as well this time, though. He suspects it won’t really ever again.

He throws back bottle after bottle. He loses count pretty quickly so he has no idea how many it’s been, or of what, when he eventually starts to feel something. He’s always been a fuzzy, happy drunk, and he expects that to happen this time. Just goes to show he was always right when he called himself the stupid brother.

The anger that had settled, hot and thick in his gut uncoils itself. It stretches its way through every cell of his body, until he can feel himself thrumming, vibrating with furious energy. He shouts out, harsh and grating, and feels something swell forth from his throat. Trees flatten under the power of his roar, and it threads a small spike of malicious glee into the rage he’s feeling. He spins in a circle and screams up at the sky, relishing the power he has now. He’s been weak in the face of monsters his entire life. He’s always struggled against their supernatural strength with nothing but his cunning and his guns. Well, now he has power too. Now he’s king of the heap. Will never have to worry about getting torn apart by something with three times his speed or strength or fucking psychic powers. It’s a burden lifted from his shoulders. One he hadn’t even realised that he was carrying.

He’s not worried about anyone hearing him. Let them come. He’ll send them flying. He’ll eviscerate them. The thought comes out of nowhere and it jerks him back to consciousness. To some level of awareness. The anger dissipates as quickly as it’d come and he drops to the floor, curling up into a ball. He won’t become that man. No, not man. He won’t become that demon. He won’t. He won’t turn into everything he’s despised since he was young. He won’t. HE CAN’T.

He doesn’t sleep. He’d forgotten that about demons. Even drunk out of his mind, he can’t keep his eyes closed for more than a few minutes. That thought, the one that had snapped him back to a semblance of himself, it bounces around his head, over and over, until dawn, until he sobers up.

He’ll be fine. It was the drink. He’ll just stop drinking. It’s fine, it’ll be fine.

“It fucking won’t be fine.” He mutters to himself under his breath as he clears all of the bottles from his car. The full ones he throws, shattering and spilling so he can’t be tempted to come back here, to his stash, if he feels the itch again.

He drives again. In which direction he doesn’t know. Might be towards the bunker, might be away from it. Regardless, he’s not ready to see Sam and Cas yet, to tell them what happened, to see the disappointment on their faces.

*

It takes three days. Three days of hurtling down mostly empty roads, three days of driving until his fingers lock into position and he has to coax them back to some kind of flexibility. Demons get stiff, demons get itches, demons get uncomfortable sitting in the same position for hours and hours and hours, he learns. It just takes them a lot longer than humans. Demons have more stamina, but less willpower. When they want something, he learns, they find it very hard to deny themselves. Which is why, on the evening of the third day, he finds himself in a bar.

He feels empty, and he wants desperately to fill that emptiness with something, so he goes to one of his old standbys, alcohol. He asks the bartender for the strongest thing they have, doesn’t bother to check what exactly it is. His taste buds have been on the brink for the last few days and it makes no difference to him. It could be absinthe, it could be tap water. As long as he can feel the phantom burn when it slides down his throat- sense memory, not actual sensation unfortunately- he doesn’t care.

On some subconscious level he might have expected the familiarity of this routine to settle him, the same way that driving does, and after a fashion he’s right. The noise and the heat seep into him, wrapping themselves around that hollow itch in his stomach. It doesn’t calm him, exactly, but it helps, in some small way.

No-one comes near him. He doesn’t do it intentionally, but there’s a clear warning oozing out of him. The same one he deliberately gave to Sam and Cas, even if they did ignore it. Leave me alone. I don’t want to be disturbed, and I will hurt you if you try.

He finds himself scanning the joint, out of habit, looking for someone who fits his taste. Someone to fuck or get fucked by. There are plenty of attractive people, ones he’d normally jump at the chance to take to bed, but now none of them draw his interest. He finds his lip curling in a sneer as he surveys the room, thoughts lurking on the edge of his conscious mind that have no place there.

He turns back to the bar, thrusts his empty glass at the bartender and asks for a triple. The guy looks at him sceptically. He’s encountered Dean’s type before, he reckons. All hard man bravado now, wait until I have to scrape you off the floor and kick you onto the street in a few hours’ time.

“Are you sure? It’s strong stuff.”

“I don’t get drunk that easy anymore; now fill up my goddamn glass.”

The man raises his hands, expression slightly too annoyed to be placating, and fills Dean’s glass. He doesn’t get paid enough to deal with jerks like this, but whatever. The customer is always right, even if the customer is a prick.

Dean polishes off that glass in short order, earning an astonished glance from the bartender. He thinks he might be starting to feel a slight warmth, but that might just be wishful thinking.

“You weren’t joking about being a heavy drinker.” The guy notes. Most people would be at least slurring by this point, eyes unfocused, but this guy looks as sober as when he came in. Dean doesn’t reply, he just slides his glass back to the guy and motions for him to fill it again.

He drinks a little more slowly this time. Anything to stop the bartender talking to him again. There’s something about him that rubs Dean up the wrong way. Something that makes him feel angry and contemptuous. He could leave, find another bar, but he suspects he’d have the same problem. Suspects the issue isn’t so much with the bartender, as with himself.

A number of drinks later and he’s finally starting to feel something definite. The bartender is looking at him with a sort of confused awe, blue eyes wide, as he tries to figure out how Dean’s doing it- is he pouring it down his shirt, is he on some sort of weird medication that means drinking doesn’t do shit for him, or does he just have like a really delayed fuse and it’s going to hit him in a few hours and he’ll keel over dead?

Dean motions for another drink and the guy shakes his head, holding up a bottle. It’s empty. It was the second, and last. He could sell him vodka or whiskey or something, but frankly he doesn’t want to. If something goes down and this guy dies then it’s going to be on him and the bar. He doesn’t want that. He’d rather have an irate customer than a fucking lawsuit or something.

“No can do. We’re all out.”

“Give me something else, then.” Dean snarls.

“Haven’t you had enough?”

“I’ll be the fucking judge of that, now get me another drink.”

“Look, I’m being polite about this, but man, I can’t. You’ve had way too much. I’m gonna get in a shit-ton of trouble.”

Dean’s sneering dislike of the guy seethes and reforms itself into outright hatred.

“I said get me a fucking drink.”

“And I said no.”

Dean’s temper, frayed already, snaps. His hand jerks out across the bar and around the guy’s neck, squeezing. He can feel the tendons and muscles flexing wildly in his grip, feel how the guy’s throat vibrates as he tries to shout for help. Dean squeezes tighter until the only thing that’s coming out is a whining gasp of air. A hand grabs at his other shoulder and tries to pull him away and he lets go of the bartender and turns around. The blood is singing in his veins now and that itching hollow ache is satisfied. It didn’t want booze, it wanted adrenaline and violence and blood, and it knows it’s about to get it.

He punches out at the guy who grabbed him. Noticing, but not particularly caring that it was actually a woman. All’s fair in reckless violence. He caves in her nose and dislodges a few of her teeth and now the rest of the bar is starting to take notice. Someone ushers the woman away as a couple of guys round on him. He tried to strangle their bartender, and then he hit a girl. He’s the lowest of the low, scum. He’s going to get it.

He cracks his knuckles and smiles. He feels right for the first time in days. This is what he was made for, even before the Mark, before he woke up a demon. He wasn’t born a fighter, but he was turned into one at such an early age that he might as well have been. He had his four years of normal happy life and then he was turned into an attack dog. Bred for battle.

As these thoughts rush through his head there’s a tiny buzzing portion of his brain that tries to remind him that even if this was true, even if he was just a mindless demon killing pit-bull, this is not the battle he was raised to fight. This is close enough to the opposite. He’s supposed to protect people, not throttle them, beat them up and make them bleed out onto the ground. That voice is faint, though, faint enough to be smothered rapidly by the clamouring, aching, burning need that fills the rest of him. He needs this. He wants this, and so, because of what he is, he’s just going to take it.

Someone lashes out at him from the side and he catches their arm, spinning them around until they’re directly in front of him and going in with a Glasgow kiss. Blood spatters onto his face and his tongue flicks out to taste it. It’s the first time he’s come into contact with someone else’s blood since he changed and he feels anointed. He has been gifted an inverted divinity, a blackened, beautiful, twisted sanctity.

He feels feral, pure. It’s a goddamn relief, the same relief he imagines that junkies feel where there’s nothing but the hit, the high. His world has been reduced down to one focus and it’s so fucking easy. He doesn’t have anything, anyone else to worry about anymore. He just has one goal, one aim, one purpose in life. Just him and his need to destroy. Nothing else to worry about.

He doesn’t have time to stop and savour the rightness singing through his veins, nor would he want to. It doesn’t crave calm or introspection; it wants to be fed with surging fists and gore and screams. He drops down low to avoid another hastily thrown punch and surges back up, grasping his attacker around the waist and slamming them to the ground. He only gets in a single punch before he senses someone behind him and propels himself backwards, knocking their legs out from under them before he leaps back to his feet and grabs hold of a chair. The next two people to come at him get swatted away before he drops it. It’s too impersonal. He wants to get up close, he wants to dig his nails into flesh and feel bones crunch and blood bubble up under his fingers.

His attackers are more wary now. They’ve seen what he can do so they don’t want to attack him alone. They’re psyching up to come at him in a group, which suits Dean fine, he just wishes they’d fucking hurry up about it.

Three of them come at him at once. Two from the front and one behind. Easy. He takes a deep breath, bounces a few times on the balls of his feet, and then springs forward. He hasn’t mortally wounded anyone so far and now that he’s warmed up that need is itching under his skin. He gets one in a headlock and manages a good few punches before he’s yanked off by the other two. Now one of them has his arms pinned while the other punches at his chest and head. He lets them, for a moment, and then he kicks out at the man in front of him, caving in a section of his chest with the force of the blow. Now to deal with this last fucker.

He pulls out of their grasp, spins around and slams them viciously to the floor. His blood is truly up now, demonic fury surging through him and he throws all of his strength into the first blow.

Then he looks at her properly. The girl he has pinned to the ground. He hadn’t seen her before, not really. She’d been behind him for pretty much the whole fight. Now he can see details. Her blonde hair, her brown eyes, how she looks the spit of someone he used to know. A girl who worked in her mum’s bar. No, not a girl. Not someone to be infantilised and reduced. A woman. A woman who was as good as a sister to him, who died saving his backside. A hunter, a friend and a sister who guiltily haunted his nightmares, when she could get the room. A lot of people used to haunt his nightmares. Sometimes they had to take turns.

Jo. She looks like Jo. Even with half of her face caved in and blood spurting from her broken nose, or maybe because of it. It doesn’t matter. Maybe she looks like Jo, maybe she doesn’t, but Jo is who Dean sees.

The anger, the pain, the desperate need, they all crack into insignificance at this realisation. Retreat but don’t disappear. They’re still lurking, waiting. He jack-knifes backwards, apologies, curses, threats punching out from between his teeth. He dodges grasping hands and runs out of the bar, into his car, punches out a text, isn’t even sure who he sends it to.

Help me

He stows the phone in his pocket, ignores the rings that start up barely a few seconds later, unnervingly quickly. He drives and drives and drives until he’s far enough away, until he’s reached a motel. He checks in as quickly as he can, grasping onto the voices in his head telling him that what he’s done is abhorrent, disgusting. That he needs to stop. For once his self-loathing is an aid. He clings onto it, drowns himself in it. Needs to feel it, because if he doesn’t, he feels nothing.

Another lie. It seems the only way he can survive is by his own patchwork of self-deception. ‘Nothing’ is far from what he feels under his self-disgust. He feels something real, and tangible, and too repellent to dwell on, now that he’s somewhat and probably temporarily back to himself.

He gets his key, throws himself into the room and locks the door. Writes another text.

Sands Motel, UT

He pauses. Can’t decide who to send it to. The two people who’d want to know, feel they need to know- he doesn’t want to involve them. He doesn’t want to let them down again. He considers Garth, but he’s a werewolf now, he couldn’t help even if he wanted to. Charlie is in Oz, probably having a happy and, if not uncomplicated, then not quite Dean Winchester complicated life. What other friends does he have? Who does he know that isn’t dead?

It’s a short list.

He taps in Cas’ number. Sends it. Grits his teeth and closes his eyes for a moment. His phone starts ringing again, even faster than last time. He doesn’t answer. He isn’t ready to. Maybe he’ll be more ready when he sees Cas and Sam; maybe he’ll be less ready. He’s wary of the horror of his actions wearing off so he carves a devil’s trap onto the floor, sealing himself inside it. He waits.

It doesn’t take as long as he’d expected. He’s a hunter, and he’s good at covering his tracks, but Sam and Cas know him too well. It’s less than four hours before he can sense Cas’ presence. It scares him. How broken Cas feels. It only gets worse when he texts them his room number and Sam charges the door down. Cas is like an empty space, a blankness from which radiates the rancid sweetness of something that used to be beautiful but is now decaying. It’s the smell of dead roses, but on an intellectual scale. He can feel Cas’ putrid sweetness down to his very core. It makes Dean want to shout and scream and throw him out, but it also makes him want to keep him here as long as he can.

Cas is broken too, and where before that would have been a travesty, now he selfishly laps it up. I’m not the only one who’s wrong here, he thinks, and it gives him the strength to speak. To admit.

“I need your help.”

Words roll over Sam’s tongue. ‘You didn’t want our help before.’ But he knows not to voice them. He’s still angry about being pinned to the side of the road while Dean drove off, but he understands, more than Dean realises. He was hooked on demon blood once, a demonic addiction that he didn’t want help for. He knows what that kind of power feels like. The highs and the lows. He knows how it feels to need to be alone and to fix things yourselves.

Between the three of them they’ve run the gambit of supernatural ailments disguised as blessings. Doesn’t mean they’re sensible about it, doesn’t mean they’ll let each other in. Just means they have a useless, squandered empathy for what’s happening.

“What do you need from us, Dean?” Cas asks.

He sounds stable, accepting. He’s been anything but. He’d writhed and bitten and fought while Dean drove away. When it’d been hours and Dean had shown no inclination towards letting them up- if he even realised he was still pinning them- Cas had dredged what little grace the Mark had left him with and used all but the tiniest fragment to release them.

Since then he’d been, well, fragile. He gets sudden, unexpected bouts of exhaustion. Sometimes he collapses for no reason. Sometimes his hands start to shake so badly he can’t hold things. His attention span is limited now, Sam’s noticed a few times while he’s been talking that Cas’ eyes have glazed over, filled with he wish he knew what. He’s tried asking but all he gets are vague excuses and apologies.

“I need the cure.”

“But we don’t know how it’ll affect you.” Sam cuts in.

Dean lashes out at the space beyond the devil’s trap. Clawed hand hitting an invisible barrier, fingers scraping down it like he wants to make the air bleed.

“I’m not in here for my own protection, Sam. I’m in here because I’ve changed. I’m here because people are in danger.”

“What happened?”

The questions are making him frustrated, and the frustration is helping to stoke the fury that seems to now live permanently under his skin.

“Right now I feel hollow. And that’s a good thing, because when I don’t feel hollow, when I don’t feel empty, I feel furious. I either feel nothing, or I feel like the world has taken away everything that I ever deserved, back before all of this shit. I feel like it’s my turn to get back at it. Like it’s my due.

“I used to look at other people, random strangers, and think, hey, I saved you, and that made it feel like this was all worth it. No matter what shitty things happened to me, I could still hold onto that.” He tails off, unwilling or unable to say the next thing.

“What’s changed?” Sam asks.

“Me. Now I look at them and I despise them. I want to tear them apart with my hands and teeth because of everything they have, have had, that I was denied. I hate humanity for being there, being able to carry on as normal while I have had to fight and suffer and die for their sake. They aren’t worthy of my pain. That’s what’s changed. When it was just the Mark I needed to kill, but I could take that out on monsters, on demons or whatever. Now all I can feel is this creeping fucking hatred of humanity. I think about monsters and demons and nada, I think about people and I want to eviscerate every LAST FUCKING ONE OF THEM.”

He stops, pulls in deep, rattling breaths, eyes flickering between green and black so fast that it makes Sam’s head hurt.

“See what I mean.” He continues, shakily. “I’m trying to keep a lid on it, trying to control myself, I swear, but every minute that goes past I get more shitty and more resentful. A week. That’s all it’s taken. A week and I want to kill people, people who aren’t to blame, people who I don’t even know, as revenge for all the shitty things that have happened to me.

“How long before I’m Abaddon? How long before I’m in it just for the joyful, mindless glee? I don’t fucking want to do this, but I have to. You understand, you have to. I need to do this while I’m still me enough to let you, before the fury takes me back and I cut a swathe through the whole country, the whole world in vengeance. You know I have the capacity in me. You know I could, you know I would do it.”

Sam starts to say something but Cas shakes his head, pulls him out of the room. Dean can hear their raised voices, but he can’t hear what they’re saying. He doesn’t want to. With his humanity he lost most of his self-discipline. If he wants to do something now he just does it, instinctually almost, without consideration or weighing up the advantages and disadvantages. Maybe that will return with time, maybe it won’t return at all. The point is he reckons the vague slivers of resolve he’s holding onto would be torn apart by their arguments. Reckons if he could hear either of them arguing for him to stay like this he’d grasp it, renege on his horror. He doesn’t want that to happen. Maybe they understand this, maybe that’s why they’ve taken this conversation away from him.

When Sam and Cas come back into the room they both look furious. It’s a good job Cas hasn’t got much spare mojo left, because going by the expression on his face if he did Sam would be a smoking pile of carbon right now. Dean can’t tell who won the argument; neither looks like they’ve won anything. They look like they’ve been told they need to put down their favourite pet. He snorts at the comparison and they both look at him.

“So, are you going to let me die with dignity or what?”

Sam flinches, so Dean figures he’s the one who doesn’t want to go through with this. Well, none of them want to go through with this, it’s just the least shitty option they have. And doesn’t that sum up their entire lives, the three of them?

“We’ll do it, Dean. If you’re sure-“

He cuts Cas off, doesn’t have time for his sympathy, his concern.

“I want this now. Doesn’t mean I’ll want it in an hour. We need to hurry the fuck up.”

All he gets in return are nods, and then everything goes black. He understands why, in case he reverts, to stop him contacting someone, anyone who could stop it. They have his permission now, and they’re going to do it their way. It doesn’t stop the raging, frantic claustrophobia. Not claustrophobia really though, he’s not scared. He’s furious beyond measure.

*

When the bag is removed he’s in an unfamiliar church. Cas is sitting at his feet, slightly out of reach. He understands, he wouldn’t trust himself if he were them either. The rage from the darkness and the trap still has its talons dug into his mind. He screams at Cas. Not words, just feral noise. Cas doesn’t even flinch. He sits there, staring with his usual intensity, until Sam appears from wherever the fuck he’d been hiding.

The first injection makes him worse. He itches; deep in his veins, threaded through dead bones that can’t be scratched. He howls and howls and howls. Unaware of anything around him. Unaware of the worried glances traded between Cas and Sam. They don’t know how the cure affects different kinds of demons. They don’t know how the mark of Cain affects this process. They. Don’t. Know.

The second injection isn’t an itch. It’s ice. The last time he was this cold was in the same room as Lucifer, and at least then it was on the outside. This is flooding through every inch of his flesh. He writhes and shivers and begs for fire. Cas finds him a blanket. He shucks it off, clawing at Cas’ arm as he does. A drop of blood falls onto his skin and it burns. He roars, tries to wipe it off and ends up spreading it. He can’t stand the touch. He feels like his skin is melting but when he looks all he sees is a stain.

The third injection is giddiness. He feels drunk. Human drunk, not raging monster drunk. He looks at his brother and his best friend and he laughs. Eyes flickering open and shut, he reaches out a hand, tries to touch Cas, can’t breach the devil’s trap and giggles. He leans forward and tries to lick it. Feels a sharp, fizzy jolt. Laughs delightedly at the sensation and forces out a few words. “If my brother wasn’t here...” with a jokingly suggestive eyebrow wiggle.

The fourth injection is unconsciousness.

The fifth is hatred. He lashes out at Sam first. “You stole my childhood. I raised you- gave up everything I had so you could play at normal, so you could be safe. And how do you repay me? You abandon me, again and again. You let me think you were dead for a year and then when I vanished and you didn’t even look for me. You blame me for everything. I do all I can, I try and help you, keep you alive, and you tell me it’s wrong, tell me you wouldn’t do the same for me.”

Sam’s about to flip, to scream out and fight back when Dean turns to Castiel. He looks at him with a hatred so pure, so inverse to the way he always looks at Cas that it’s almost like a physical blow. He looks like he’s going to spew out the litany of Cas’ sins, going to break the slowly decaying angel in two. He doesn’t. He just says three words.

“I. Blame. You.”

He doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t need to.

The sixth is waking nightmares. Flames lick at vision. He can’t tell if they’re hellfire, or if they’re from the blaze that started him on this path. What does it matter? They’re both hell. Just different kinds.

The seventh starts with pain. He screams and he screams and he screams. He screams like they’ve never heard Dean scream. He screams someone watching everything they have ever loved crumble to the ground. He screams like a child watching his mother burn alive on the ceiling. And then he’s silent like a boy whose father has told him, chin up, you have to carry the weight of the world now, and you have to do it like a brave little soldier.

The seventh ends with fear. As Sam steps forward with the final needle he flinches, cringes and screams.

“Please Sammy, please not this. I don’t want to die, I can’t. I’m going to go back to hell and I don’t want to I can’t please, don’t make me go back there I CAN’T. DON’T DO THIS TO ME SAMMY. CAS, CAS, MAKE HIM STOP, PLEASE CAS, I CAN’T, I DON’T WANT THIS. It’s not worth it, I’ll be good, I promise, I swear, and when I’m not we can just do this again and it’ll calm me down but not all the way, not the eighth shot, I don’t want to die, please…”

The eighth shot is remorse. He cries, fat ridiculous tears rolling down his face as he begs Sam and Cas not to take what he said to heart. He didn’t mean it. It wasn’t him. It was the demon. He doesn’t mean it. He loves them and he understands why they did what they did. Please, don’t hold that against him. He wants to die reconciled with them. He wants to go to the pit with as few regrets as possible.

Cas reaches out, grasps his right hand. Sam grabs the left. There are only two more steps to go, the chant and the final drop of blood from the split palm. Sam begins to chant in Latin and Dean shuts his eyes, braces himself. The weight of his actions in the past few days claw at him, threaten to pull him under. And isn’t that a sick joke, considering where he’s about to be headed.

He feels a soft pressure on his lips, opens his eyes. It’s Cas. And that’s what brings everything home for him, truly. He knew this was going to kill him, but he didn’t know it. There have always been reprieves. Not this time. This time his reprieve, the angel that literally rescued him from hell, is kissing him, chastely but finally. This is a goodbye; this is a last chance for Cas to tell him he loves him. This is too late. The actions of a terrified man, taking for himself something that he is about to lose forever, gifting Dean in his final moments something he’d always been too afraid to take. Dean kisses him back, squeezes his hand so hard that he’d break the bones of anyone mortal. Hears a rough crunch. Realises Cas is close enough to being mortal, to death, that he has that power now.

Maybe he’ll see him in hell. They’ve never been good at following divine plans. He’s branded with the mark of hell, and Cas has disobeyed an unjust heaven at almost every turn. It would be fitting, if agonising, for them both to end up there.

“You’re not going to hell, Dean.” Sam says, as he finishes his exorcism. “Even if you die here, you’ll be fine.”

Dean appreciates the kind words, but he knows they’re wrong. He’s branded with the mark of Cain. He belongs to hell now. Has done for a while. All he’s done since he was pulled from the pit is dodge time. He’ll have plenty to make up for. What they’re doing now, it’s for the living. It’s to give them some peace of mind. For him it’s a stopgap, a delaying tactic. Utterly pointless.

Cas doesn’t say anything as he pulls away from the kiss, just strokes the thumb of his uninjured hand lightly down the side of Dean’s face. Dean appreciates the gesture. He was never good with words anyway.

Sam carves a line down his palm, holds his hand over Dean’s mouth. Blood that was once tainted by a demon, now being used to cure one. No-one really considers the symbolism. It’s not important. What’s important is the result.

Dean feels nothing for the first few seconds, and then he feels everything. It’s the opposite of the second injection. Where before his body had turned to ice in an instant, now heat meanders through it. It starts at the drops of Sam’s blood, sluggishly working its way through his entire body. He feels like he’s thawing, and all that cold, solid fury is steaming out of his pores, evaporating.

It’s a slow process, unlike Father Thomson’s, stops entirely when it reaches Dean’s right forearm. The mark digs in, entrenches itself in an icy furrow. Dean starts to shiver and Cas notices, moves his crushed and broken hand, blood welling sluggishly from Dean’s nail marks, over the area, paints over the mark with his own sanguinary fluid. It burns, but this is a different kind of burn than before. This feels like cleansing.

The mark fights back briefly, and then it explodes from Dean’s arm, taking a chunk of flesh with it and leaving a gaping crater. If Dean does survive this he’s going to have a starburst scar, one he will never forget. One so deep it’ll ache at changes in pressure.

The warmth, the heat, it continues to spread downwards through his body, reaches right to his toes until eventually the only cold places left are his heart and his head. He wills the process to slow down, to give him just five more minutes looking at Cas and Sam, five more minutes with them.

Dean Winchester’s wishes are rarely granted. The warmth spreads to behind his eyes, and everything turns black.

*

He’s aware, but not of anything. There isn’t anything to be aware of. There’s no sound, no colour, no life. He’s not in hell, he’s not in heaven, he’s not on earth or even in purgatory. He’s in a place where there is nothing but silence. Once he might have thought it peaceful. Now it scares him. He doesn’t want to be stuck alone with his thoughts. That would be hell.

Oh…

Like it was waiting for him to figure it out, something happens. A noise starts up.

Thud………………………………………….thud…………………………………….thud………………………………thud

It’s getting louder and faster. Not quickly, so it must still be far away, but it’s enough to terrify him. Whatever it is, it’s coming towards him, coming for him and he knows it can’t be good. Nothing has ever been good for him. Not really, not in the long run.

It’s settling into a rhythm now, almost a gallop. The more scared he gets, the faster it seems to go. Like it can sense his fear. It’s vibrating through his body now, the only noise in an atmosphere deprived of any other sensory input. It’s all he can focus on.

Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thudthud-thudthud-thudthud-thdthudthud

He tries to enlist his hunter instincts, pinpoint exactly where it’s coming from so that he can either run or face it, but he can’t get a fix. It’s coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

No. He realises. No it’s not. It’s coming from inside him.

It’s his heart. It’s beating.