Dean had forgotten what day looked like. Night had sunken into his blood. He bled midnight blue nightmares and dreamt of galaxies. Someone had written a decree on his soul and the ink dripped off it, twisting his world into a swirling black.
It was the endlessness of it.
Dean lived by experiences. The world was a brilliance of creation, sculpted by his deeds and senses. He had lived his life in a kingdom of secret pathways and had crawled out of each one. Now, he didn't know where to go. He had ripped open every doorway and smashed at each wall. Challenges were scabs on the ceilings, ideas to pick at, but no more.
Here, there was nothing.
It took him desperate hours to discover that he was trapped inside his own soul. He was being smothered in it. He would wake up, gasping, trying to breathe through the wool of deceit wrapping itself around his throat. It had been so many years ago, eons, centuries, when he had been the righteous man.
When did it get like this? What had happened to Dean Winchester?
Dean used to be a hero. He knew that. He saved lives. He should be merited, for all the goodness he had so generously gifted to humanity. And now, he had been told that the world would be better off without the likes of him.
He wondered how the before had sunken beneath a frozen lake.
He had been dying for years and he died when he had been branded with the mark. It had warped his life into an insidious tale of real and pretend. The only surety was pain. He wanted to hurt and he wanted to be hurt. He deserved the cuts carved into his face and his ribs cracked into agonising defeat. Fever scorned his skin and there was no cure.
He didn't want to walk down those steps. He wanted to stop, fall through the wood and shut himself up in a box of oblivion. His knees seemingly belonged to another, above the quagmire that pulled at his soul, and they took him down. It was gravity languidly pulling him onto an earth which demanded submission.
Down, down those steps, into a world he was doomed to destroy.
Once he'd handed the blade over, he blacked out for a second.
And when he fell, Sam was there.
He's never going to let go.
-/-
Dean was shivering so decidedly, that he was going to break in his arms. Sam thought of Dean shattered all over the floor, his bruised bones and scarred skin. He wondered what color Dean's soul would be, if it would be an iridescent orb or a malignant shadow. And if Dean ever had a heart, or he'd given it away a million promises ago to Sam.
He doesn't want to let go, but Dean's ribs are all cracked so he pulls away, swallowing the whispers of pain. Sam puts an arm around his shoulder, afraid he'll fall or disappear, and Dean seems smaller, like his bones have narrowed along this fight. At the end of it, Dean's going to be a silhouette, a nothingness Sam cannot hold or hug, or help.
There's blood all over the floor. Dean will skid on it, and take Sam with him. It is their due. Sam does not count their stats. He stopped when the world was ending and it was suddenly all on them.
Dean doesn't want to walk, he wants to stay, he wants to disappear, but Sam is his magnet and he can't leave without him. He feels boneless, folding over into the Impala, as if he left himself somewhere else and is now a ghost. Maybe he actually is, but his clinging onto something, someone, and Sam needs to be a hunter now and salt n' burn him.
It all feels languid, like their moving back in time and the car seems to switch on in a sniff of indignation, because Baby is Dean's car, not Sam's, and nothing that happens will really change that. He's driving straight home, but its as if their taking a road somewhere else, and there's no signs, no directions, their just speeding straight into oblivion.
'Look at me,' he tells Dean. He wants to make sure Dean doesn't have a concussion, as if the medical check-up routine that he still takes much more seriously then Dean does, will somehow help keep him alive. Its not true though. Dean takes a step away from him everyday and its getting harder to reach for him, pull him back to mundane things like croissant cookies and Sam's company. Sam doesn't know where he's going. Or when he's going to die.
Sam hates that shirt, it reminds him of a night that's trapped in his brain, and Dean's only just left a murder scene which has to have made him less than human. Surely, killing the father of murder has to have some disturbing consequences. He knows that the fight was cruel and Dean must have lost a few teeth, but mostly, he's afraid the words Cain spoke are ripping Dean's heart apart, and so they'll rip his apart too.
Earlier, when Dean had smiled at him, when he was walking up those dreadful steps, into a hell Sam wanted to yank him away from, Sam thought could deal with all the consequences, because he's an adult and not the scared kid who had to save the world. Now, he's not so sure.
No man should have to bury his big brother thrice. Its obscene.
'Sam,' Dean says suddenly.
Sam's startled. Dean's been so quiet, he could hardly hear him breathe.
'What's wrong?' Sam asks, panicked, hoping its something he can actually change. He hasn't been able to do that for months now, for all that he searches, Dean is always standing behind him, waiting solemnly. Now, he turns to look at Dean and all he sees are those green eyes. He knows them more than he knows himself. He's been looking at them since he can remember. Their afraid and haunted and desperate. Yet, they aren't supposed to be Dean Winchester, with that boyish innocence that's always been there, but somehow, somewhat miraculously, they still are.
His brother is here.
He will keep him or he will go with him.
-/-
There's blood down his cheek and behind his collar. He has come to regard wounds as 'just scratches' but the truth is, they always hurt. He can't concentrate on it now. He's in a barn and there's a madman, who can wrist flick him into broken bits, but who taunts him instead, making him suffer intently, each bruise, each bone.
Dean must destroy Cain. It is for humanity and Dean is still human.
The fight is tough and dirty. He used to like those kind, grew up a street-wise kid, knew how to use knives in tricky situations. It isnt that easy anymore. His foes got more formidable and the stakes got more dire. Maybe he won't win this one. He's being strangled, and he's dying. The words are tight around his throat. He will never kill Sam. He'll leave, he'll hide, he won't let Sam live in fear of him.
'Dean!' Sam's voice is like air, yanking phantom hands away from his throat.
'You're here?' Dean's disorientated, and for a moment, stares at Sam with gasping fear, because he's alive and here to take his brother's life.
'Yeah, I am,' Sam smiles, its so random and weird at this moment, Dean doesn't know what to think.
'Why are you smiling?' he asks suspiciously. Maybe this isn't Sam, maybe it's a memory, come to sneer at him, to say he took away his brother's hopes and dreams.
'You're here too,' Sam replies seriously, like its something to be grateful for. Dean isn't sure he wants to be grateful for being alive, and Sam wouldn't be too, if only he knew.
'I defeated him?' he asks, touching his forehead, and feeling stitches, 'I'm not there anymore? I actually killed him?'
'You're awesome and you're safe,' Sam looks at him, so hopeful, so warm, and Dean remembers he doesn't really care about anything ever, except his little brother. Maybe he lives for him too. Maybe nothing matters besides Sammy.
Although he'll have to wait, to see how safe Sam is.