a/n: Okay (rubs hands). I got one week off from school, 'cause I'm graduating to the tenth grade, or atleast I hope I will. This particular piece is set during the season four premiere "Lazarus Rising" and it's just a 'what if the scene in the gas station had been longer'. Like always, don't own 'em, nor make any profit off of 'em. Reviews definitely help. :)
Dean had been feeling something close to good. Maybe it was still a trick of hell, but he didn't care. It had been done too many times and something about this one felt final. Nevertheless he cared too much for the fleeting pain free moments to think he was stistill trappedin hell. And the date only reaffirmed what he was thinking. Four months? That's it? He looked at himself in the dingy mirror above the sink, really looked. He noticed that something was off right away. Not that he'd been expecting new scars from his time getting close and personal with Alastair's carving knife- his skin was always back to normal the next day, as if accomodating for newer wounds. But the older ones were gone too.
The faint, almost faded line in the middle of his forehead, the one that greeted him most mornings until four months ago, was gone. Nothing. Dean lifted his shirt, only to be met with smooth, unscarred skin. He ran his fingers over his torso, as if expecting something to show up. His front used to be covered in a myriad of marks, each one a milestone. There used to be one on the lower left side from his first hunt ever. His love for things throwing him into stuff had only grown from the time he had been a stupid eleven year old.
The tattoo was missing too, and that had taken some serious work. No hellhound scars either and he wasn't sure if he was glad about that one. He released the shirt and pulled it down from the collar to the side. Unlike before there was neither a neat bullet shaped circle, nor was there the remnants of a burn, courtesy of a hot poker. Of course, back then the heat from the poker had been intolerable but after an eternity of burning, it was a piece of cake.
Dean also had mixed feelings about the messy, raised scar being missing after Sam had dug his thumb into it. Not Sam. Meg.
And then there were the ones that had never made it to the gallery. The long, thin slices running from elbow to wrist on both arms if he'd actually gone through with it. Coward. The first time he'd seriously contemplated taking the easy way out he'd been fourteen. Fourteen and depressed and idiotic because he'd messed up on a hunt and Dad had been laid up for a week and Sammy for two.
Dean had been supposed to keep his brother in the car and provide his Dad with backup and he'd failed both. He had been mesmerized by the way the Siren had called for him. And his Dad hadn't eased up on drilling into his head that it had been Dean's fault. When Sammy had finally been let out of the hospital, Dean had shut himself in the motel bathroom with a Swiss Army for company. He'd stared into the broken mirror and met the empty eyes. It hadn't mattered that Dad had forgotten his birthday. Nothing had mattered. He had been ready to let go. Dean had gone as far as making a small cut but was held back. By the sound of his brother pounding at the door to use the bathroom.
He had quickly put the knife back in his pocket and thought. Of what Sammy would think of him when he found out that the guy he idoloized had... But what had really done it was how he couldn't leave Sam alone with Dad because even at ten, it was clear the kid had different dreams. And if he wasn't there- he had let that thought trail off.
There had been many times in between but the second time he'd really thought of ending it, Sam was grown up and going to be some hotshot lawyer. Two years after he'd left, Dad had done the same. There had been no one left, no one to miss him and Dean had been once again staring at himself in some generic motel. That time, his Dad calling him about some hunt had brought him back. Maybe he had needed Dean more than Dean had needed him. Maybe, and he had let that time go too.
The scars that had been on his body- they were all marks of him overcoming something. Each one had held a story and now he had no proof. Who he was going to prove them to, he had no idea. He felt like he was in someone else's body. He felt violated. Like someone had taken something from him.
But then again, maybe this was life's twisted way of asking him to start over. And that was what he was going to do. Dean rolled up his sleeve to see the handprint shaped mark. Well then, one down, one hundred and thirty-six more to go.