Disclaimer: I do not own characters or settings from Supernatural. Just the stuff between the proper nouns.
First-Born
Darkness.
Darkness.
Flashing.
Darkness.
Just open your eyes, he commands himself silently. Just open your eyes!
But here, too, is darkness.
Darkness.
Darkness.
Dark.
Dean bolts up in bed. Breathes hard. Another nightmare from hell. Literally.
The room is dark. For covert comfort, Dean holds his breath in his nostrils so he might hear the familiar sounds of Sam's rugged breaths.
Nothing. Only darkness to the ears.
When he expels his breath, it comes through the corner of his mouth in the form of "Sammy?"
Still nothing.
Okay. Gotta get up. Cuz something's not right.
Dean shifts his weight to his feet and stands between the two motel beds and lets his eyes adjust before peering around the room. Sam's bed is made up, a picture of sanity next to Dean's rumpled sheet and quilt hanging haphazardly off the side of the frame. Nothing strange there, except for the fact that Sam is not in the bed.
A sudden flash of velvety black at the window catches his eye and he squints, trying to make it out. But it's already gone.
Dean's hand goes automatically, confidently, to his revolver. His heart, on the other hand, hiccups, sensing where his mind's eye cannot, what is about to come.
The slow crack of the mirror should tip him off, but Dean barely notices. His eyes are, rather, transfixed on something about Sam's bed he hadn't immediately seen: the single red drop on the very centre of the pillow – blood. But the mirror's crack widens and branches now, and the walls quake as soundly as Dean's own welling anger. When the windows shatter, shooting shards of glass onto Sam's bed and into Dean's face, there is only a momentary jolt of painful surprise. Not even some "Angel of the Lord" can keep Dean in the dark for long.
Though sunken weakly to his knees with his hands fiercely pressed to his ears in efforts to deter the goliath-shrill voice, Dean roars through the din. "YOU!" A wind sweeps up and encircles Dean's curled body, wet with welts of blood and trembling in its own bestiality. "What did you do with my brother?!" he demands, barely able to hear himself scream.
The hush is immediate: the glass-shards peeling themselves from Dean's face and returning to their translucent wholeness in the window frame, the crack in the mirror healed backwards down itself, and Dean lying prostrate on his bed, casting his eyes around desperately and gasping for air.
Castiel is heard before he is seen.
"Why Dean, I'm surprised at you. You know it's not Sam I want – it's you."