Behind those quick flashes of confident smiles and charming words laced with promises of a bedroom lay a tired man. He drank and yelled; slumped and picked at that one piece of loose skin on his left forefinger until the skin was raw and pink. His shoulders were lowered, and he had so much alcohol that he just wanted to lose himself in it. To shrink; to fall away and forget responsibilities.

But (a voice inside of his mind adds 'unfortunately') he was human.

Fucked up and a ball of insecurities that whispered obscenities to angels and even God himself; sure.

But still human.

… Mostly.

He was the kind of man that believed he had to shoulder his burdens all by himself, that he had no one to depend on (because surely he didn't need his brother to worry about him, of all people) and that made him bitter.

You could say he was like the comatose.

He was asleep. He wasn't himself.

This man, he had a problem. All of the authoritive and influencing people that should have been there during his younger days simply weren't. He began to lose faith. (Secretly, Dean was lying to himself. He didn't even have faith to lose.) He never smiled on Christmas eve; never had the eagerness to open up bundles of carefully wrapped presents with his smiling family and glowing lights while the snow fell down like little balls of light.

The Easter bunny was a child's dream conjured by devout parents with too much time on their hands. It was a product of the kind of innocence he had ripped apart and exposed long ago.

Monsters were real. People died; people were killed. Innocence and naivety meant death.

'Get it over with, Dean – end it,' John Winchester whispered in his ear. The deer looked up at him with starry eyes, and Dean's hands trembled on the metallic object of war and pain, the kind of object Dean had begun to trust his life to.

He couldn't do it. Even if it meant disappointing his father.

Dean didn't have dinner that night.

He had to learn his lesson - Get it over with, Dean – and now, finally, he thinks he understands.

He pulls the trigger; looks at his brother watching him with starry eyes, possessed and comatose – just like me, broken and out of control, just like me he thinks – and Sam falls.

Dean drops the colt, breathes heavily like a man nearly drowned. He starts to run to his brother when a hand is placed on his trembling, bleeding shoulder.

Castiel shakes his head, and Dean just watches as the black blood pours out of his brother's body like a faucet.

Just like me, just like me.