I wrote this towards the beginning of season 8, but I hadn't made up my mind to post it or not-I wrote it more to understand Dean's state of mind post-Purgatory than to be an actual story. But after 8x07, and the emphasis they're putting on Dean's guilt complex, I figure I might as well post it after all. So, this takes place sometime after the first episode-Dean's killed the monster they were hunting, but more importantly, he killed a monster he didn't need to. Enjoy :)
He is a warren of decomposing choices: he is the quantification of failure. Once he was defined by things, but now he is defined by this. The angel and his brother occupy the same space in his mind. There might be words to describe what he is; he reads, he finds them between the paragraphs, among the sentences, like ghosts. He dresses in army green and navy blue and observes with detached deprecation that Purgatory has improved his aim.
He is a man without expression; he has no mastery over the words he reads nor over the thoughts in his head nor the things that he feels. He can grip a blade and plunge it deep but that is an oxymoron of being; Purgatory has taught him the meaning of predator and shown him how absolutely he is prey. The blade is a mockery of teeth and claws he doesn't have. He can carve shapes into flesh but he cannot write out the words on a page. He cannot leave the blade anymore than he can leave the words.
His brother is standing in the doorway.
The rules aren't complicated. He knew them already, but Purgatory drew them into clearer shapes. Some eat, some are eaten, and some sacrifice that the toothy god might postpone the eating for another day. This body under his hands, this thing that used to be, this is the natural progression. Some eat. Some are eaten.
"You didn't have to kill him," his brother says, and later, when he's alone, he looks through the pages of the motel Bible and wonder if prayers can walk between realms. Somewhere there is an angel that believed he could be human. He isn't sure. He doesn't believe it himself. The spilling of blood isn't as hard to forget as the renting of souls. He tried his hand at it for too long. He was seeped in it. Poisoned by it. It escapes into the things he does. It leaked into Purgatory, made him good at it.
"You didn't have to kill him," his brother says, but what does that mean to the monster—-the monster is meant to kill, isn't he? Somewhere there's an angel, but not here, not right now, not beside him. There's no angel to hear his prayers tonight.