Sometimes it's hard to think in a world where all of his beliefs are wildly considered wrong, disgusting, horrible.
Looking over his shoulder every day, every hour, every minute makes his neck ache and his eyes water. It gives him a headache, but he doesn't dare stop 'cause they'll kill him if he does.
The fires aren't usually very warm in a world where it's always so damn cold. The ghosts are following at a close distance, haunting him and reminding him of sins he'd long since thought he'd buried. They stick close when he's sleeping, when he's awake and looking over his shoulder. They're with him when he sits up at night, keeping watch, and they whisper horrifying realities into his ears, making him feel sick. He wants to throw up but he can't because he's always running and there's nothing in his stomach anyway.
He sits there and lets them talk, even though he knows he should run as fast as he can. But he's already running and you can't run from your own mind, he knows. They're steadily draining him of his will to live, to move, to run, to breathe. His comrades tell him to stop listening, that this will end soon, that everything will be okay. He'll believe them for a while but then the ghosts will open their mouths again- do they even have mouths, he wonders again and again- and they'll contradict his friends' words and suddenly he'll start falling into his depression all over again.
Nothing seems to help.
He can't think, he can't hear, he can't breathe. His dreams don't make things better; in fact, they only seem to make it worse because he'll revisit his worst memories all over again. He can't take it anymore and it isn't fair but the ghosts remind him- oh, honey, when was life ever fair, especially to people like you?
People like him, he'll repeat in his mind, under his breath, and he'll think of the people he left behind, the person he so desperately wants to see again. They can never meet again, he knows, but when has daydreaming ever been much of a problem? It hadn't been, but now it only serves as a reminder of the things that slipped through his fingers like that sand on the beach he went to that one time over the summer of fifth year.
But if that sand ever mattered, it sure as hell doesn't now, when he's looking over his shoulder every second not only to make sure that they're not following, that they haven't caught up again, but also to make sure that one person isn't following either. He knows he would if he'd been given the chance.
But that would only be another one of those hideous, ugly sins. He can't allow someone like him to follow; it would never work. That old friend would be lost in a dream, like always, and would be long dead before the night ran out. The ghosts would only be worse, and he wonders, briefly, how that would be possible before he dismisses the idea, knowing that no matter how bad things seem, life has a way of kicking ass and taking names, making everything worse by the end of it. By the end of the final life it takes.
But it will never stop taking names, will it? He knows it won't, and sits by the too-cold fire and prays that the next life won't be the life of that wonderful person he left behind. He prays and prays and prays, never knowing if it works. Never knowing if that beloved friend is still alive, still remembers what they once had.
Maybe he'll never, know, he realizes one night, and the thought takes the breath away from him violently, viciously, remorselessly. Maybe, maybe they'll never meet again.
And oh, he thinks, oh, wouldn't that be another one of terrible, terrible sins, leaving that friend alone. But then, he wonders, would it really be? Maybe not, after all, it wasn't as if they had needed each other before, never like this.
His eyes slip closed, and the ghosts return, hungry and ready to feed off of his deepest fears once again. He lets them, like always, even though ever fiber in his being resents it and fights his mind on this one decision.
They feed and they feed and they feed, whispering and repeating those horrifying, terrible, heart-wrenching realities over and over and over and over again…
"Dean?"
And oh, isn't that another one of those horrible sins?