Soaked With My Pathetic Blood
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a/n: I just got through watching 4x16, when Sam kills Alastair. I know that I'm not anywhere caught up with the series, but I felt an odd need to write about this episode. Bear with me, lovelies. First time writing for this fandom.
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"The light is fading. Your lungs are screaming as you're dragged down, down, too exhausted by this point to struggle. Instead, you relax and feel Death's tendrils wrapped around your ankles, Life's hands about your wrists, caught in a battle for your soul. You've been holding on for too long, and it's so hard. Down here, resting against the current, down where no one will find you, the darkness looks beautiful, inviting. You long for it."
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Dean sits outside on the patio of their motel room, because Sam told him not to. The light from the neon sign advertising Baracuda Springs (why someone would ever same a motel that is beyond his understanding) flashes uneasily overhead, crackling from red to dusty purple and back. A cigarette dangles from between his fingers loosely. Dean brings it up and takes a slow drag, wincing as the smoke curls in his mouth before spilling back out. He doesn't like smoking - he tried it for a brief bit during his high school years when Dad was gone more often and he needed some kind of release, then gave it up - and he probably never will, but Dean found the opportunity to bother Sam irresistable.
They should probably be heading off to find another job. That's what Dean has been subjecting Sam to for the past months, ever since he came back from hell. But if there's one thing that Sam doesn't understand, it is that once you've been in a place with so much despair and hopelessness, you have to keep moving. Otherwise, your thoughts, memories, being, will eat you alive.
And oh, it is, slowly but surely. Dean can feel the poisonous thoughts that Alastair implanted spreading through him slowly, teasing him. He can still feel the burn of the blade cutting into his flesh, spilling blood into hell's abyss. He can still remember how he screamed, night after night, as they healed him, tearing away his hope that maybe it would be all over.
But, at least for tonight, Dean doesn't have the energy to get back into his precious Impala and drive away to another godforsaken town where fast-food restaurants and hospitality are the punchline in rusty jokes.
Without his permission, tears stir in Dean's eyes. He blinks them away, muttering to himself, "Pussy."
He can feel his brother's eyes burning holes into his trench coat and smiles to himself, living in the moment; or, trying, anyway. As his eyelashes skim the skin underneath his eyes, flashes from the past few days rush into Dean's head. He crushes his teeth together, jaw tightening. Dad lasted a century and you couldn't even last thirty.
Weak. Dean squeezes his eyes tight, tighter, until it aches. Pathetic.
He lifts the cigarette to his mouth, desperate to chase the demons away.
"Do you think that's wise?"
God, he hates that thing's voice.
"Do you think you'd mind shutting your mouth for a minute?" Dean retorts, taking another drag and gently exhaling. "What are you doing here, Cas?"
Castiel leans against the wall, the shadowy outline of his wings blurring into non-existance. He eyes Dean, brows working.
Dean grunts, shifts his eyes to the side, and mutters, "Look, if you're here to apologize for the leaky pipe thing again, just leave. I'm done with all of you."
A faint smile drifts onto Castiel's lips.
"You are looking better," he comments in that deep voice of his that somehow manages to sooth and rile up Dean at the same time.
"Well, thank God for that," Dean snaps sarcastically, dropping the cigarette on the ground and stomping it out with his shoe. "I was worrying that my delicate features would be marred."
Cal almost laughs, but maintains his composure. "You shouldn't anger your brother like this."
Dean turns toward the angel incredulously and barks, "I don't see why I shouldn't. He lies to me, keeps secrets, and then goes and kills that son of a bitch with his psychic stuff." His tanned arms fold over his chest, and Dean eyes the various cuts and bruises he's accumulated over the past months. All of his blemishes had vanished when Castiel had pulled him from hell, yet it seems that his body is working overtime to make up for it. Dean's muscles ripple under his shirt, tightening.
"He saved your life," Castiel says.
"Oh," Dean says, "so now you're all for his abilities, huh? What happened to "stop him or we will?"
"I do not like his abilities," Cas murmers after a minute, "but Alastair wouldn't have broken. Sam did what was best."
"I could have broken him," Dean snarls, and suddenly, they're getting somewhere.
Rising to his feet, Dean fixes Castiel with a dark glare. "My brother had no right to kill that monster, not before I was finished with him."
"Dean," Castiel begins, his eyes softening with sympathy. He takes a step toward Dean.
"After all I went through," Dean hisses, "the least my brother could have done was let me deal with Alastair. I'm the one whose supposed to be protecting Sam, not the other way around."
"Dean," Castiel says, "you were done."
Dean stares at Castiel for a long minute dangerously.
"How dare you say that to me," Dean growls.
"Alastair was upon you," Castiel says, taking another step forward despite the murderous expression that Dean is wearing. "You would have been dead in seconds if it weren't for your brother. I know you hold many things against him. Don't let this be one of them."
Dean's fingers curl into a fist, but he doesn't punch Castiel. He just glares at him as time fades away.
"You should know by know that I don't hold things against my brother," Dean mutters, glancing up at the shifting lights of the motel sign. A breeze whips through, tousling his hair. He ruffles it back into perfection.
Cas is still staring at him with those blue eyes. "You do," he says gently, "but you wish you didn't. You wish you could hold it all against yourself."
Dean's mouth opens, but nothing comes out. His lips quiver.
"I hate him for existing sometimes," he admits roughly, smoothing his hand over his face, chasing away the tears that have not yet come. The stubble that he should have taken care of earlier pricks his palm. "If he hadn't decided to come with me, then I'd just be fending for myself. I wouldn't have to worry about protecting his sorry ass all the time." His lips quiver again, and Dean licks them. "I wouldn't have had to go to hell just to keep him alive," he says more softly.
"You were the one that found him when your Dad went missing," Cas says, but that is all. He just stands, looking off toward a point just over Dean's left shoulder, allowing Dean a moment to compose himself.
Cas is the one person who doesn't wait for an apology. Even Sammy sits there pouting, waiting for his big brother to get all sentimental. It's all bullshit, the emotional conversations and long hugs. The silence is refreshing.
"I was just-" Dean begins, but he can't force the words out. I was just tired of being alone. That would make it sound like he couldn't handle the things creeping in the night on his own, and that he was capable of. No, it wasn't about being afraid. Maybe it was about those nights sleeping in the Impala, staring up at the ceiling and thinking. Just thinking, sometimes about his mother, sometimes about his Dad gone off on another mission he won't tell Dean about, and sometimes about Sam in his picture perfect life.
And yet, he ruined it all for his brother. Sam lost Jessica, lost that sense of normal he'd desperately been trying to retain. Sam had lost all of it simply because Dean was too weak to take sleeping alone in the car.
"Damn it," Dean mutters, staring at the ground.
Cas says nothing, but Dean can still feel his presence.
"What's fair about having to go to hell because of my brother?" Dean asks, not sure why. "Why did I have to pay?" More images, of blood spilling down his chest, of Alastair's leering face. Dean had wanted to kill the monster himself, torture Alastair until he bled out, but even that was taken from him.
"Do you regret your decision?" Cas asks.
They both already know the answer.
"He's my brother," Dean says, the words like a broken record. "It's my job to protect him, keep him alive. I'd make the decision a thousand times over just to keep him here."
Weak. Laughter, ringing in his ears. Dean leans back against the side of the motel, wincing as the sharp wall scrapes his arm. You break so easily, pathetic little boy. He bites his lip, trying to banish the shouts, but they won't go away. Sam would be so much better off without you. Look what you've done to him. He's changing into a monster, and it's all your fault.
There is a hand on his shoulder then, cuticles rounded in perfect crescent moons, the nails clean and polished. Cas looks up at Dean with an unreadable expression, and still says nothing.
"I should have never went to get Sam in the first place," Dean croaks after a long pause. He can feel the tears creeping back into his throat, damn them, but he can't stop it. It crashes over him in a tidal wave, ferocious in its power. "He would have been better off without me."
"This is what was destined to happen," Cas says.
Dean hates those words. Rage bubbles up within him, frothing against the tears in his eyes.
He doesn't know what to say, how to express the haunting voices within him. It is all too much, and not enough at the same time. You have no right to feel like this, a voice sings in his head. A tear rolls down Dean's cheek and his knees threaten to buckle. More tears follow, hot on his skin. They trace the edge of his jaw before falling to the ground.
"Do you know what it's like to hate yourself so much that it's hard to breathe?" Dean asks quietly, a sob bursting from deep inside of him. He hates the sound of his weakness, exposed to the world. The sounds from inside their motel room have silenced, and the window is cracked. Sam is probably listening to all of this. But Dean can't stop it. He's so tired of stopping it, so tired of hiding it from everywhere because they don't deserve to deal with him. The tears blind him and Dean can't breathe for a minute.
It's your fault that Sam is like this. It's your fault that your father is dead. You're never enough. You'll never, ever be good enough for anyone. You're just a pathetic piece of shit that's better off dead. Images of Alastair ring in Dean's head, and the words scream inside of his head, reverberating until he wants to rip his skull off.
"No," Cas says, his hand still on Dean's shoulder, unmoving. "No, I don't."