What If?

Tag for mid season 4. Dean questions his fate.

This is my first shot at SN fanfiction and I hope it won't be my last. Give a guy a chance and maybe some encouragement, you might even enjoy it. Thanking you.

A blanket of words. Smothering me. Drowning me. Reminding me. A thousand voices. Screaming. Moaning. Pleading. She told me Hell turned you. She told me how it twists you, breaks you until you finally relent and become just another one of its bitches. You could say she warned me, prepared me for what was coming. But I didn't believe her until I saw myself reflected upon the surface of black ice, the steely gaze of my own personal nightmare that was my inner demon.

And now I sit here, a warm beer in my hand as I stare across the horizon and out into the night. The breeze is as warm as the beer, I feel it caress my cheek like an old lover but I turn away. Its touch is unwelcome, undeserved.

My mind wanders.

Sam doesn't understand. How could he? That's why he's sleeping back at the motel while I take the midnight tour of eastern Nebraska. See, the thing with Sammy is he's Sammy, my baby brother. And I don't care what any demon says, whether they have yellow, red or black eyes, he's more human than anybody else on this God forsaken planet.

Even me.

My skin crawls with the memories of Hell. My heart clenches painfully in my chest from the pure guilt that is mine and mine alone.

Hell twists you. It turns you.

What if it got to me? What if I didn't come back right? An angel can heal a body, make it whole again but can it do the same for a soul? Am I truly saved? Or am I right to live in fear of the day the demons come to rip away the rest of my humanity?

Somewhere along my thinking my grip on the bottle becomes so tight that I can barely feel my fingers anymore. I wish it was my heart I couldn't feel, wish I could vanquish all the pain.

I throw the bottle at the nearest wall, watching and listening as it shatters into fragments so small they resemble my broken soul. I'm ashamed of myself. I'm ashamed that I broke and gave up my front row seat on the racks to slowly become the thing that I hate the most.

A demon.

I have to wonder. How long would it have taken? How long, from the moment I said yes to Alastair's offer, would it have taken before I became completely irredeemable? I fear that I was closer than I care to admit, closer than I dare tell Sam.

My eyes wander over to the rising sun as I lift my hand to swipe away the tears that had somehow formed. The shadow of a former man. A wounded soldier.

But if I just keep on moving, if I keep my mind going, maybe for awhile I can forget.

This life, this gig, aside from Sam, it's the only thing I've got to make me forget about the demon I nearly became and instead remember the man I once was. But as a wise man once told me, you can't run forever. Sooner or later it'll all catch up with you and you'll be left with nowhere left to turn.

I climb into the Impala, start her up real gently just so I can hear her purr. The sound of home. I could sit forever and just listen to that sound. I probably would if it weren't for the unwanted question that clawed its way to the front of the queue. My grip on the steering wheel tightens and I slowly make my way back 'home' to Sam, all the while wondering:

What if they had waited one more day to save me?

Thank you for reading.