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Alone.
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He saw the door swing open.
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His fuzzed mind was still scrambled by the detox he was undergoing, but he wasn't so befuddled as not to take his chance when he saw it.
He had a mission to perform; he had to kill Lilith and stop the Apocalypse, even if he had had to hook up in tandem with that demon bitch to do it.
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How had he ended up here, he recriminated; locked in Bobby's panic room, like the most disreputable of junkies?
He was dirty, stinking and any self-respect he had once possessed was drowned in the aching need to suck the blood from his Hell-spawn mistress Ruby.
He asked himself again how it had come to this, but he knew the answer.
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He had seen his brother die, torn to shreds by the Hellhounds; a brave last smile to his little brother on his face before the invisible
but ever so effectively slicing claws of the hounds had dragged his beloved brother to Hell.
Something had snapped inside him then.
He had felt his heart and soul being ripped out of his chest, still beating, and consigned to the netherworld along with Dean.
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In fact his life HAD become pure Hell afterwards.
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His first thought had been to kill himself and join his brother in that infernal kingdom;
at least he would be tortured for his sins and maybe that would assuage the guilt he felt for Dean's permanence there.
Perhaps they would become demons and still be together, in some twisted way sure, but still together.
He didn't exactly understand the mechanisms that changed souls into demons but anything was better than being alone on this Earth,
his shattered soul eternally screaming for his brother.
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But he didn't take that last decisive step in honour of the sacrifice that Dean had made for him.
If he killed himself it would all have been in vain and Dean would have died, in lieu of his miserable little brother, for nothing.
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That however didn't stop him from taking to drink, drowning his sorrows in an endless string of whisky bottles,
becoming something no longer human, but the dirtiest, most thieving, most unkempt and undignified hobo on the planet,
constantly praying for someone to put a bullet in him; or better a knife and feel the satisfying thrust of the blade in his body
as it took him from this miserable existence and delivered him to Hell with his brother.
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Oh, but the irony of it all was priceless!
When he was a hunter, death leapt out at him from every turn but now he journeyed unscathed through every vile thing and criminal act
he committed in order to be able to fuel his continuous mind-dulling stream of alcohol.
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He had tried to exchange his soul for Dean's but the crossroads demon had only laughed disparagingly at him.
He could understand that. The demonic hordes had the good brother in Hell; the one that was left on Earth was a nullity.
Without Dean by his side he was of no danger to Hell or its minions.
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Then she had come along, tending a hand, offering him a human contact after months of utter loneliness and degradation.
His alcohol fuzzed brain had at first refused the touch but the primal need of any human for some kind of interaction
with another person got the upper hand, and that need coupled with the sexual seduction she had proffered,
had been the moment in which he had gone from Dean's brother to Ruby's pet whore and junkie.
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Her outward appearance didn't even really register.
He knew the body she inhabited was not ugly but that was never in the forefront of his thoughts anyway,
for he was well aware, having seen the death certificate displayed to him by Ruby herself, that the body was dead
and that he had now added necrophilia to the long list of aberrations he had committed.
For him she was only a font of demon blood, the red liquid that would lead him to kill Lilith, his unforgettable obsession.
Oh yes, he realised that there was the little problem of the apocalypse too, but everything took second place to Dean, even that.
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He knew intimately that frequenting a demon was all wrong and that his big brother was correct in trying to keep him away
from her and her toxic blood by imprisoning him in this room, but what Ruby was offering he just couldn't refuse.
She had continually assured him that he would become strong enough to defeat Lilith and take that longed for vengeance for Dean.
He believed her, because he remembered Lilith's amazed reaction on that dreadful day of Dean's death, when she had regarded him with fear and awe.
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His thoughts came back to the newly opened door. Who had unbarred it?
Not Dean, nor Bobby; demons couldn't get through Bobby's wards, he doubted that any human was roaming round Bobby's yard, so that left angel,
but was it really important?
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The way was open and he would go and kill the demon that had done this to him and to Dean.
His brother had been forty years in Hell, tortured in every way imaginable, and brought to the point where
he himself had been initiated onto the road to demon-hood.
Yes, Lilith had a lot to pay for and pay she would.
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He made his way weakly to the door. He needed his blood-fix.
Lilith would die and maybe he and Dean would be able to find peace, put all this behind them and be true brothers again.
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