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Missing scene for 10.14 The Executioner's Song.
Splintered
As soon as Crowley makes like a tree, Dean's eyes move to find Sam's, and they brighten in a way that says, Look, Sammy. I'm okay. I made it. He even almost smiles, and it's even almost convincing.
And then Dean's knees go, like the demon might have inadvertently taken them with him.
Sam steps up to catch him, long arms offered like pathetic hooks that don't at all feel it, but are somehow strong enough to keep a suddenly boneless and monstrously heavy Dean mostly upright as the toes of his boots skid soundlessly across the dusty concrete.
He feels chilled. Cold, even, just like he did the last time Sam was this close. When he was dead.
All except his right forearm, expelling heat even through layer after layer of clothing, like it's sucking any and all warmth from anywhere else right out of him. The heat is such that it's like Sam's leaning against a furnace.
It's the Mark. Singing with satisfaction at the blood it has spilled and forced onto Dean's hands. Content with the carnage it has collected. For the moment.
Sam adjusts his grip to compensate for the uncomfortable heat and Dean might misread his intent, thinking he's trying to dislodge his brother instead. Either way, Dean finds his legs, or at least wants it to seem that way. He plants his hands against Sam's arms and shoves away. Sam lets him straighten, keeping his own hands close and available as he takes stock of the wobbly, bloodied sight in front of him.
Dean can take hit like nobody's business, and has done so too many times to count or even remember with clarity. He's spent most of his life, or at least his years as an adult, displaying the many bruises he's earned in fights like badges of honor. There's more than that going on with him now, something entirely different here.
"You did it," Sam says, but there's nothing to be proud of here. The light's gone out of Dean's eyes, leaving in its place a deep, dark pit that comes only from KNOWING something you didn't want to know. Something Sam knows HE will never know, because Dean has a little box inside where he keeps those things, and Cain has obviously added to the hidden cache.
It's a different kind of damage, one inflicted not with fists or boots but with words.
But taking another look at Dean, Sam knows there's plenty of all to go around.
He's pale as snow except for a stretch of bruises that will cover the color spectrum in a few days' time, and despite the fact he's standing on his own for the moment, Dean's hardly stable on his feet. His breaths are audible, quick and short, like the very necessary act of it is causing him pain. His hands are covered in blood, and not all of it is Cain's.
Sam doesn't even know where to start, then his eyes catch a flash of light from the roof bulbs glinting off of his brother's goddamn head, and he inhales sharply. "God, Dean."
The skin over his right eyebrow is littered with cuts, and in a couple of the deeper nicks, remnants of glass slivers jut like tiny, sharp grave markers.
Face first through a window. Sam had heard the crash from upstairs…hell, he'd heard several. It's a morbid and too-easy game, matching the cuts and marks left behind on his brother to the sounds of the confrontation he and the others had been forced to stand idly by and listen to.
Sam's hands float around the bloody spot on Dean's head helplessly, and he swallows. "Cas, can you…"
"No."
Sam turns to his brother. "What? Dean, you need – "
"I'm fine." Dean raises his head, locks eyes with Sam, and it's abundantly clear that he is anything but. Only his eyes shift to the side as he speaks now to the angel. "Cas, get that thing away from me. Do it now."
Castiel looks to Sam first, as though waiting for him to second the motion before leaving them here. Dean is the last person to take at his word when the subject is his own wellbeing, but Sam is on new ground here, and it feels like a ground as littered with broken glass as his big brother's face. He purses his lips and nods once, tightly, and Cas is gone with the Blade as swiftly as Crowley was with shock and betrayal.
With the peanut gallery now gone, Dean starts to go down again, and Sam barely moves quickly enough to get an arm around his brother but he makes it, starts immediately hauling his ass out of the barn and to the car. Dean's not at all cooperating, but Sam knows he may very well be past the point of intention at the moment. His slow-moving boots stutter and drag behind Sam's, kicking up dirt and dragging along little piles of hay until he gathers enough strength to turn the motion into a genuine step forward.
"Don't you dare make me carry your ass," Sam orders.
Dean makes a sound that could easily be either a laugh, right on cue, or just a grunt of dissatisfaction as Sam adjusts his grip and accidentally grazes one of many sensitive areas.
When they make it to the Impala, Sam parks Dean against the rear panel, holds him there with a firm grip around his upper arms, ass kissing cool metal. "Don't move, okay?"
Dean won't meet his eyes, head bobbing around as he stares out at the pastures over Sam's shoulder. The blood on his face glistens in the moonlight.
Sam gives him a shake. "Dean."
"Yeah."
"Don't move."
"Yeah."
Sam releases his hold and watches as Dean slumps to the side. He stays mostly upright, but is dependent upon the frame of the car to keep himself that way. His left arm comes up sluggishly to brace against the Impala, and he jams his right elbow into his side, grimacing as he does so.
Sam frowns as he moves around to the trunk. "Anything broken?"
"No."
"Dean."
"No, Sam."
Dean's a bad liar, and for someone whose lies so often involve saving his bacon, Sam should really be more worried about that fact than he is. Instead, he reaches out, grabs Dean's right hand and pointedly raises his eyebrows at his brother's puffy, lobster-red fingers.
Dean pulls his hand back, gingerly returns the appendage to its new home against his side, attempting to stabilize the pain in his obviously equally fractured ribs.
Sam shakes his head, frustrated. He's overcome with a familiar, immature urge to give his brother a shove to send him to the ground, just to make him show exactly how badly he hurts and exactly where. "Stop acting like I haven't done this before."
"You haven't done this before." Dean's words are low and even. Cold, but not necessarily for Sam's benefit.
He's right, says the know-it-all stuck inside Sam's head. The know-it-all who knows Dean might not be DEAN anymore. He pushes the voice aside and jerks open the trunk, begins the search for the first aid kit they always seem to need but never seem to pack on top. For a family that's been in the game as long as they have, Winchesters spend a fair amount of time living in hindsight.
Dean's leaning like it's a full-body cast he's in need of, but their little kit is fresh out of those, so Sam instead underhands him an ice pack for the shiner around his left eye and a pair of splints for the fingers. Then he finds the long tweezers that are great for retrieving bullets and shards of things sticking out of his brother but are bad for subtlety. But Dean's the one who made this call. He's the one who sent Cas away, not Sam.
There's no change in Dean's expression as Sam yanks the first splinter of glass free from his forehead. It's small enough to not make a sound as it falls to the pavement near their feet, but even so, a fresh bloom of blood wells from the hole, as it does from the next two.
Sam sandwiches the last, slightly larger shard between the skinny metal arms and pulls it out without warning. This one leaves Dean blinking away hot tears of pain, and despite the fact he's thankful for a response of any kind, Sam's just about DONE with the driveway triage. He crams a wad of clean gauze into Dean's frigid left hand and guides it to his forehead.
"Thanks," Dean mumbles. His eyes are searching for anything that isn't Sam. Stars, moon, trees, gravel.
"Don't mention it," Sam says, throwing everything back into the kit and then tossing the entire package through the open window onto the bench seat in a rare act of forethought. "Even if I drive like you, we've still got about a twelve hour haul ahead of us." Sam stares, worries his bottom lip. So you need to cry uncle right the hell now if you need anything more than some sleep in the car, bro. Wants to say it but won't, because Dean is…well, it's a whole new ballgame right now.
Dean finally levels his gaze up at Sam, and his bloodied hand is already crabbing across the black metal, making its way to the door handle. "I'm good."
You're not GOOD, Sam screams silently as Dean wordlessly folds himself onto the stiff leather bench. You're broken and bleeding and I just pulled pieces of WINDOW out of your FACE.
But he's Dean, so when he says he's good, you make like he's good. So Sam lets him wipe what's left of the blood from his own face and stare blankly out of the window for hours on end and breaks more traffic violations in the next half-day than the rest of his life combined.
When they get back to the bunker, it's not even a question of whether or not Dean's muscles have locked up on him; Sam has some amount of experience in these things and he KNOWS they have. He puts the Impala in her spot in the garage and of the two of them has the advantage of speed, makes it out of the car and around to the passenger side before Dean seems to have even registered they're home.
He may not have the benefit of strength but he's sure as hell found his attitude on the drive, and Dean shoves Sam away. "Get offa me. I got it."
So Sam steps back and holds his hands up in surrender as Dean takes nearly three minutes to extricate himself from the front seat.
He watches his brother weave an uneven line down the dark, tiled hallway to the shower room and nods to himself, swallows around a lump in his throat the size of a small dog.
It's a whole new ballgame now.