Those who see you stare at you, they ponder your fate:
"Is this the man who shook the earth and made kingdoms tremble?"
Isaiah 14:16
The setting sun streaks a motel room in red and orange, the colours camouflage mysterious stains. Whiskey bottles and greasy take out boxes litter the filthy carpet. A muted conversation seeps into the room, backed by the sounds of an analog clock with too many hands. Each tick tears through Dean Winchester's thinning sanity.
Long ago, when Dean was still careless and young, an angel came to him.
"You don't think you deserve salvation?" The angel had asked. Dean only clenched his jaw and turned away. The angel squinted and continued. "I see your guilt and anger and confusion. I see pain. But big plans exist, even for little fish."
Now, in the final hours of his life, Dean returns to the question. Do I deserve to be saved?
He made a fine soldier, exceptional even, that much held true. But in every war, casualties fell. Dean's body count became innumerable.
His mother went first, burnt alive in an explosion of hellfire and rage. His brother, last, after a string of hundreds. Both hunted, both faced the same pains but never on such a scale.
The years sag with aging blood. Dean crows, tipping back another glass. I don't deserve a damned thing.
Where was that angel now, in the midst of brutality and shame? Or the god whose many faces betrayed the hunter? Where was Dean's own humanity?
He figures it bled out with every unfinished job and unknowing sacrifice.
No plans remain.
No fish gasp for life.
The walls around him creak and shift under some invisible force. All Dean has is the many handed clock that slows as darkness spills through the window. And with each slinking minute, shadows claw out of cracks and corners, alive with judgment and revenge. They heave and hum in time with some distant radiator.
Dean nods his head and sighs.