CALM
Dean didn't sleep.
He went through the motions of brushing his teeth, stripping down to a t-shirt and boxers, climbing into bed and dragging the covers over himself, but he didn't sleep. He lay sprawled on his stomach and his eyes were closed, giving the appearance of a man at rest if anyone happened to look in on him during the night, but he didn't sleep. Wouldn't or couldn't, he didn't know any more. It had been a long time since he had even bothered to try.
He wasn't tired. Or, rather, his was an exhaustion that no amount of sleep could cure. He was bone-weary, world-weary. Every movement drained him, every breath was a struggle. Some days his limbs were too heavy to lift and his heart weighed heavier. His strength was gone.
But Dean knew his job. His duty. He had no choice but to carry on with this façade of living, sleeping, breathing.
That's why he needed the Blade.
Dean's arm slipped under his pillow. His fingers curled around the handle of a weapon carved from bone and his body reawakened as the Mark on his arm burned.
Power, poison, bubbled through his veins. Rage flooded his mind, drowning everything. The useless stains of humanity's weakest emotions washed away in the torrent, and for a moment, just a moment, Dean was free.
There was no pain. He retained all of his memories – he knew who he was, what he had done, what Sam had said to him and the way Sam had looked at him – but with the Blade in hand, none of it mattered. The tighter he held the Blade, the less Dean hurt.
Sam thought the Blade was doing something to him. He was right. It was clearing away the cobwebs.
All his life, Dean had wrestled with what was right and what was wrong, the moral ambiguity of the work that they did, the murky grey area that they were constantly floundering in as the lines between evil and good, monster and man, were blurred and broken. But with the Blade, everything was so clear. Black and white. No questions, no doubts. No mercy.
Sam had always made him feel guilty for taking pleasure in the job. The hot satisfaction Dean felt when a monster fell dead at his feet was frowned upon, the celebratory drinks he indulged in afterward were met with cold disapproval. Sam didn't think it should feel right or good to hand out death in punishment for evil. But with the Blade, killing monsters was the only thing that did feel right. It was the only thing that could feel good. Dean embraced it.
He had never measured up to the man his father expected him to be. Trained from childhood, he should have been the perfect hunter. But he was never fast enough, strong enough, clever enough. Lives depended on him, and his failures had killed more people than he could count. He was weak. Pathetic. But with the Blade, he was the perfect hunter. Cold, hard, ruthless. A tempest of blood and violence controlled and executed with deadly precision. He might have thought he had come close in Purgatory, but this was pure.
And then there was Sam. No one had power over Dean the way Sammy did. No one could hurt him like Sammy could. Dean was abandoned, rejected, scorned, betrayed and beaten down, over and over and over. Still, he always came crawling back, a kicked puppy craving any sort of attention, affection, abuse. He was dependant, needy. Hopeless, worthless. He knew Sam hated him and why shouldn't he? After all, Dean hated himself. But with the Blade, all of that pain just faded away. His battered and bruised and bleeding heart turned to stone. He couldn't feel a damn thing.
He was just… calm.