A/N: Right after the S10 finale I wrote a tag to the episode called "A Candle Burned Through," in which Dean suffers a massive adrenaline crash with the lifting of the Mark, and the Darkness hurls the Impala into the open doorway of the cantina. This story is a direct sequel to "Candle," but it is not necessary to read/reread that story if you keep in mind these two details about Dean's condition and Baby's current predicament. With the S11 premiere just a few days away, I wanted to explore a little further. On the show, the boys never truly talk. Here, they do.

"No Dominion"

Sam thought Dean looked about as powerful as a pile of overcooked pasta, but he was up on his feet again after a banquet of energy bars and water. He watched him closely, as he tended to do when worried about his big brother—and yes, Dean was often aware of it, even told him to knock it the hell off when he finally got irritated.

Sam tried. He did. He always tried. But this time there wasn't a whole lot to distract him from checking his brother out, since Dean had spent some time flat on his back on the cantina floor in a perfect storm of post-Mark adrenaline crash and sheer physical exhaustion. And no, he wasn't really steady on his pins, but he was on them again, moving around without his knees buckling, and the shakes were now the barest—and only occasional—trembles.

He needed real food, but eating the meal he'd cooked for Death? When Sam, thinking about blood sugar, had suggested it, Dean stated in no uncertain terms that the idea was not on the menu.

Literally.

Now Sam, wandering around outside with his right hand stuck up in the air in a modern-day version of prayer as he tried to get a signal on both their main cell phones and their burners, noted that Dean was inspecting the Impala's position wedged on the diagonal, resting on her two left-side tires in the door frame of the cantina's entrance. His expression was a picture of woe as he checked out Baby's undercarriage, winced over the visible wrinkles and scrapes in the driver's door.

There did not appear to be any significant damage to the Impala. Mostly cosmetic, as far as Sam could tell. But Dean mourned it all the same, as he did even the smallest scratch. He stroked a hand along Baby's back bumper as Sam approached.

"Nothing," Sam said. "I tried all four phones."

Dean patted the chrome. "Well, she's not going anywhere. The jack won't do squat. We need something with a winch on the front to get her out of here. I passed a gas station about a mile down the road; they ought to be able to send a truck back, give us a ride. Looks like we're hoofin' it."

Sam, who'd cleaned the blood from his face but still bore the gash across the bridge of his nose—which they'd determined was not broken—twitched a shoulder. "I'll go. You should stay here."

Dean stared at him. "Why the hell would I do that?"

"Because an hour ago you couldn't even stand up, Dean."

"I'm standing now. I'm walking now. We'll hitch a ride if someone'll stop for us. If not, it's just a mile, Sam. That's nothin.' We do more than a mile when we just walk the halls of the bunker."

Sam eyed him. Dean, too, had cleaned the blood from his face after an inspection of the cut near his hairline and Sam's pronouncement that it didn't need stitches. His brother was very fair-skinned anyhow, but the undertone to his skin was a little on the paler-than-usual side.

Dean clearly read his face. He spread his hands, began to walk backward. "Hey. You can come with, or not. But I'm going."

Sam wasn't about to let his brother go anywhere without him any time soon. Once again he'd lost him; once again he had him back. He caught up with alacrity.

Maybe what he needed was to put a leash on Dean. Or a monitoring anklet. Something. Because cell phones got lost or dumped, so he couldn't always count on GPS tracking. Location spells could be tricky, because they required ingredients that weren't always easy to acquire. He'd Lojacked the Impala; he needed to Lojack his brother. But for now he walked beside him, glad that he could, and began to process what had happened in the cantina.

"What?" Dean asked a while later, striding easily along a road that stretched for miles, empty of all vehicles.

"What?" Sam asked back.

"You're thinking. I can feel it."

"So?"

"Dude, you thinking? That concerns me. Because you do it so freakin' hard. So, in my role as big brother, I gotta ask—what are you thinking about?"

Sam stared resolutely ahead, watching where he walked. The road's asphalt shoulder was crumbling. He didn't know how to answer, because he knew what Dean's reaction would be if he explained. They weren't in the car, so his brother couldn't crank up the radio, but he might start singing loudly and off-key. Or get pissy.

Dean stopped walking and held his ground. "Dude, I'm invoking a need to know basis, here. Yes."

Sam stopped as well, angling his body to look at his brother without completely committing to remaining still, because he thought it likely Dean would take off like a shot as soon as he learned what Sam was thinking about. "Yes, what?"

"Yes, as in: Spill. Here's your chance, Sam." Dean lifted both arms away from his body, let them slap back down. "Me, willing to talk. That ought to warm the cockles of your Gigantor heart."

Sam sighed deeply, stuffed hands into jacket pockets and hunched his shoulders forward. Instead of looking at his brother, he stared at the ground. Kicked a stone away. Then lifted his eyes and met Dean's. "I was thinking about what happened. And it comes down to those same three words. You've said them to me, I've said them to you. Over and over again."

Dean's brows knitted and he squinched his eyes narrow.

Sam shook his head, forestalling a snarky comment. "No. Not those three words; Winchesters never say those three words. Well, not to one another." He'd said them to Jess. He doubted Dean had ever said them to Lisa; he didn't know if his brother ever could make such a declaration to a woman.

"Then what?" Dean asked. "'Fries with that?' 'Want a beer?' What three words?"

"'It wasn't you,'" Sam quoted.

He saw the shift in Dean's eyes, the acknowledgment that yes, on several occasions they each of them had made that three-word statement when one had done terrible things to the other. Rock salt shot into a chest. A bullet in the shoulder. A hammer raised high in the halls of the bunker. Nearly beheading his brother with a scythe.

And now here they were in the aftermath of the Mark being lifted.

"It wasn't you," Sam said, meaning it, and waited for a classic Dean Winchester deflection.

His brother turned away, stared off into the distance. Then swung back abruptly, shoulders squared, legs spread slightly, as if preparing himself for battle. And in a way, Sam knew that's what his big brother always did, not only for physical confrontation, but when emotion was at the core of discord, or discovery. Yet he wasn't avoiding. He wasn't deflecting. He was talking.

"I remember it," Dean said. "All of it. Being driven by the Mark, being a demon, what I did to the Stynes after Charlie. I remember what I said to you at her pyre. It wasn't true, Sam . . . I didn't want you in her place. I just . . . I thought—" But he broke off, made a distracted gesture of helplessness, as if he'd lost the ability to find the words he wanted to say. Probably he had; this was not his wheelhouse.

"I know that." Three more words, but unlike 'It wasn't you,' they were rarely stated. They went unspoken, as did 'I love you.' "And I know why you said it. I don't blame you for it."

A muscle twitched in Dean's taut jaw. "It made sense to me, what Death offered. I couldn't—I couldn't go on like that. I really was a nuke on the verge of exploding. And I knew, too, that you wouldn't quit. Hell, you found me and Crowley . . . you tracked down the King of Hell and his Knight. Plus you spent over a year trying to find a cure for the Mark. You'd have come after me, and you'd have found me no matter where I went or what I did."

Sam nodded decisively. "I gave up on you once, when you went to purgatory. I wasn't going to do it again. I never will."

"And that's why I knew nothing I said would change your mind." Dean shook his head. "Yeah, it hurt to realize you gave up on me when I was in purgatory. But it's why I knew you wouldn't quit again. Back at the bunker, when the Mark resurrected me . . . crap, Sammy, I didn't want you to come after me, to see me as that thing. That's why I left the note. I didn't believe that you could find a cure for the Mark, not after what Cain said, but I knew you wouldn't quit trying. And then Charlie . . . " Dean's face twitched as he stared hard into the distance. "Well, it was all the Mark after that."

Sam nodded. "From the time you took on the Mark, you weren't really you anymore. Not completely." He hitched his shoulders briefly. "I know why you did it. Abaddon needed killing. But let's face it: thinking things through and weighing potential repercussions is not your strong suit. You're the bravest son of a bitch I know, but dude . . . man, you gotta think sometimes."

Dean's mouth flattened. "I think we may be screwed, is what I think."

But it wasn't surrender Sam heard. It wasn't a declaration of helplessness, or desperation. There was an edge to Dean's tone as there always was when he was thinking about what he needed to do. What he was willing to do in order to succeed. "Dean—"

"We've gotta find this Darkness," Dean said flatly, "and stop it. Whatever it takes."

The old familiar apprehension rose in Sam's gut, because here it came again: his big brother willing to do whatever it took without considering repercussions. "We don't know what it will take."

"So we gotta figure it out. It's what we always do." Dean's mouth hooked into a brief wry smile. "Exhibit A: Sam Winchester finds a way to lift the Mark of Cain."

"We don't even know what the Darkness is," Sam reminded him. "This is exactly what I'm talking about, Dean. This decision to throw yourself in front of an oncoming freight train."

"Because it's my responsibility."

Sam's tone rose. "Why is it your responsibility?"

Dean stared at him like he'd lost his mind. "Hello? Broke the first seal and helped start the apocalypse. Took on the Mark of Cain and unleashed a pre-Biblical . . . " He trailed off, then waved a hand, " . . . thing."

"That's what I mean," Sam said pointedly. "We don't know what it is. If you don't know the enemy, you can't fight it."

"Death knew."

Sam scowled at him in what Dean would likely describe as bitchface. "And we can't exactly ask him, now, can we?"

Dean winced, then heaved a sigh. "You know . . . he was kind of a cool dude. I mean, who'd think Death would like pickle chips?"

"Can Death actually die?" Sam asked. "Did he? Really?"

Dean shot him a sharp glance. "He's a Horseman. They die."

"We didn't kill the other three," Sam pointed out. "We just took their rings."

Dean waggled a flattened hand in a maybe/maybe not gesture. "Brady said War and Famine are pretty much out of the game, that even having their rings back wouldn't help them. Husks, he said. I assume it's the same for Pestilence."

"But Death still had his ring," Sam noted. "Maybe it's like a ghost dissipating after contact with iron. We salt and burn the bones to get rid of ghosts permanently. Could be the same with Death."

"I used his own scythe on him," Dean said dryly. "That's got to mean something."

"What it means is we can't ask him for answers."

Dean dug into his coat pocket and pulled out his cell phone. "Maybe Cas knows something." He turned back toward the way they'd been heading and started off again.

For the first time since he'd departed the warehouse where he'd stashed Rowena, Sam remembered Cas. He'd left the angel in order to find Dean after that phone call from Rudy, and obviously Rowena and Cas had managed to gather the final necessary ingredients to lift the curse.

He caught up to Dean again, stretching his strides. Dean lacked three inches of Sam's height, but his natural efficiency of movement, along with what Sam privately suspected was a symptom of undiagnosed ADHD, meant Dean walked with much greater speed than most men once he had a goal. When Sam was a kid, before he'd shot up to overtop father and brother, he'd always had to hustle to keep up with Dean.

"When you're done, let me talk to him," Sam prompted as Dean held the phone to his ear.

After several minutes, Dean shook his head. "Voicemail." He tucked the phone away again.

"He didn't know how to lift the Mark," Sam noted as they walked. "He might not know anything about the Darkness, either."

"Yeah, well . . ." But Dean trailed off, frowning.

"What?" Sam made it a callback to something his brother had said earlier about him. "You're thinking really hard. I can hear all the gears grinding."

Dean looked back over his shoulder at the road behind, as if hoping a car—and a ride—might miraculously appear and save him from having to answer. Because Dean was clearly no longer in the mood to talk. But since no car arrived to rescue him, he finally lifted one shoulder in a shrug and surprised Sam by returning to the conversation after all. Maybe killing Death transformed even taciturn Dean Winchester into Chatty Cathy.

His brother's head was lowered as he watched his steps. "Just—what Death told me."

"About the Darkness."

"And what it almost made me do." Then, abruptly, Dean stopped walking again. He stared at his brother as Sam swung around, and there was despair behind the eyes. "You showed me those pictures. Mom. Me. You as a baby. And said those words about finding my way back. And Death knew it was enough to stop me. So he said, and I'll never forget these words: 'To be what you are, to become what you've become, is a stain on their memory.'" Dean's deep voice wasn't quite steady. "And he was right. He was right, Sam. Dad held out a year in hell and never became a demon. I broke after thirty years; had Cas not pulled me out when he did, who knows how long it might have been before I became a demon? Days? Weeks? I was torturing, Sam; it probably wouldn't have taken much longer. And so what happens? I take on the damn Mark, get offed by Metatron, and come back a demon anyway."

"We cured you, Dean."

"And then I lost myself, Sammy. Cain told me . . ." He passed a cupped hand over his face. When it slid away, his expression was anguished. "Cain told me I'd kill you. He predicted it. He said he'd never stop killing—and that I wouldn't, either. That's why I told you to stop looking for a cure, Sam. There was no magic answer. There was no hope. I summoned Death because I wanted him to kill me, to keep the dominoes from falling the way they did when I broke the first seal. I figured he could manage it without me coming back as that thing again. You weren't part of the equation. But then he told me about the Darkness, and what would come of it. And I knew that you wouldn't listen to me, and I'd keep killing, and that passing the Mark along to someone else would free me, yeah, but it wouldn't rid the world of the threat... and that damn thing on my arm had me all screwed in the head. By the time you showed up, I saw no other answer. No other way out."

Sam was transfixed by his brother's monologue. He was afraid to interrupt. Maybe if Dean had talked like this after hell, after purgatory, things would have been better for them both, with heartache reduced, hard words never spoken.

Dean drew in a breath. "I thought—I thought I could do it. And there you were on your knees, accepting my decision, willing to die, just like you've been willing to die before. You didn't try to talk me out of it. That's not what the pictures were about. That was just belief in me, and sheer, blind loyalty—"

But at that, Sam had to break in. "It wasn't," he contradicted. "It wasn't blind, Dean. And yes, it was belief, because you are a good man. You've never seen it, you've never understood it, but you are. And that's why Death said what he said to you. He knew you couldn't do it, not when it came down to it, unless he pushed your buttons. And so he did. Yeah, I heard him: 'To be what you are, to become what you've become, is a stain on their memory.' How the hell else do you manipulate a man as stubborn as Dean Winchester, a man so willing to sacrifice himself? I think maybe he was actually afraid of us. But he couldn't kill you. So he had to kill me." Sam shook his head a little. "He thought by invoking family, he could make you do it. What he didn't realize is that it's family that makes us what we are. It's not a weakness he could exploit. It's our strength."

"Sammy—"

But it was his turn now, and Sam plowed on. "You know, back in the bunker—you missed with that hammer. No demon misses, Dean. You could have stove in my skull, but you missed. And just now, swinging Death's own scythe? You missed again, because you wanted to. Jesus, Dean, with everything you've done over the years to keep me alive, even bringing me back from the dead . . . " He smiled, huffed a brief, breathy laugh. "God asked Abraham to kill his son to prove his loyalty—and then he stayed his hand. But this wasn't God. This was Death. And Death shall have no dominion over Dean Winchester."

Dean stared at him. "Are you done misquoting Dylan Thomas?"

"St. Paul said it first in his letter to the Romans."

Dean grunted. "Of course you would know that." Then he drew in a deep breath, held it a moment, released it on a fast whoosh of sound. Of finality. "Okay. Let's get my baby back on all four feet, then go find and kill this Darkness bitch."

And Dean strode out again, moving with that characteristic coupling of grace and power. Sam smiled, stretched his legs, and once more fell in beside him, moved into the place where he belonged: walking with his brother toward the enemy.

No dominion indeed.

Not over Winchesters.

~ end ~