AN: SIXTEEN DAYS TO GO, PEOPLE! I hope everyone's seen the trailer? It's VERY EXCITING! (If you haven't seen it, don't worry – this is spoiler-free for anything post 7x22, trailer included.)

Summary: Post 7x22. All living creatures typically have one of two reactions programmed into them for when they're faced with a threat. Something terrifying comes racing towards you, you either get scared or get angry. Dean? Dean gets seriously, seriously pissed.

WARNING: Here there be mild language.

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Fight or Flight

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It was Walter Bradford Cannon who first came up with the concept of Fight of Flight, and the concept has since been generally accepted all over the world.

The theory? You're faced something seriously fucking scary and it's racing straight towards you, you're gonna do one of two things.

Either you're gonna piss-bolt the hell outta there as fast as you damn well can, or you're gonna stand your ground and fight.

Rabbits, for example – they're runners. Horses too, and most birds. There's a whole host of creatures that tend more towards the flee-response and to be honest, most of them are the kind of animals that fall under the "prey" category.

On the flip side, there are many that naturally react the other way. Predators, for the most part. Wolves and bears, lions and cougars and tigers.

And yes, there are exceptions to every rule. A cornered rabbit will get damn vicious if it can't run because it's trapped, and a wolf will startle backwards if a branch falls unexpectedly from the sky to land right in front of it's nose. But the rabbit's only fighting because it can't run away, and the wolf's only moving backwards so that there's more distance between it and the thing that it's preparing to fight.

So Dean – stranded suddenly in Purgatory, surrounded on all sides by glowing, angry looking red eyes, and abruptly Cas-less (he'll come back – the angel will come back, Dean knows he will, trusts that he will, but he's not here this very second and that's kind of problematic) – has two choices.

He can flee, tail between his legs and hope to Metallica that he can outrun these red-eyed beasties before they can gut him. But from what he understands of the whole "souls are power" discussion back before Cas went all Godstiel on them, there are a lot of souls in here, and Dean knows that no matter how hard or fast or far he runs, he's gonna run into one of the bastards at some point, and then what? He'll run some more? There's only so far a guy can run.

Or…

Or he can fight. He can stand his ground and let these assholes come to him and he can give as good as he gets. He's not completely naked in this hostile environment, he's very glad to say. He's got a knife in his boot, another strapped to his calf, and his big-ass hunting blade is strapped to his hip, and it's times like these that Dean's really damn glad he's always go so many weapons stashed on his person.

And he's a hunter, damn it. He's been hunting these things since he was big enough to wield a shotgun, and he's known about them since before then. He's killed countless numbers of fuglies in his years as a hunter, and he doesn't doubt his ability to either kill or seriously maim them all over again if that's what's necessary. He's the predator here, not them. He hunts them, not the other way around. It's how it's always been and how it always will be, if he has any say in the matter.

He's a predator. He's a hunter and a warrior and a fighter and he doesn't back down from a fight, ever. He's faced off against shifters and werewolves and ghouls and Leviathan and killed every single one of them. He's killed angels and demons both – defied Lucifer and Michael themselves and been the only one left standing at the end of it. He's saved the world more times than he cares to remember, he's been to heaven and he's been to hell and he's come back alive and very much kicking every single time, and even after all that he's still got a hell of a lot of kick left in him.

Dean's never much liked running anyway.

"You wanna dance?" he hollers at the eyes, holding his arms out wide as an invite before stepping back into a fighting stance.

The eyes bob and weave a little as the creatures they belong to move a bit closer, and Dean grins, feral and bright.

"Well then let's dance."

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AN: I have read a few purgatory-fics where Dean comes out terrified and shaking and a completely ruined shadow of his former self, and – while a lot of those are well written, very good reads – personally, given what we know of Dean's character, I can more easily see him spitting in Purgatory's murky black face and telling it to go jump. And thus, this fic was born.

Bundi.