"The blood never goes away," Dean muttered to himself spitefully and self-mocking, putting the knife back in its sheath within his pocket. Bobby's words had rang true and came back to bite with a vengeance.
All of this was beginning to make Dean furious. He felt as though he no longer had no choice in what was to happen next, yet every future of every individual in Arya was directly influenced by what his course of action would be in the last fateful hours. Dean didn't dare to step down, having come so far.
"I'm going to be killed anyway, might as well try to sever the head from the snake."
Dean looked to Balthazar and picked him back up again, hefting him to the manor against his better judgement. Putting Balthazar in Castiel's care, despite their new-found conflict, was the morally-correct thing to do in Dean's mind. Although Dean knew that Castiel would be willing to accept Dean's help, if only for the sake of his elder brother, they would be far from making amends.
Dean knocked on the back door ever so softly, and not a minute later Castiel was at the door.
"What happened?!" Castiel shouted, hurrying to come to their aid. "Did you-!"
"No." Dean's tone was sharp, "I didn't. We can talk about this later when Balth isn't slowly bleeding to death."
Castiel's mouth snapped shut, leading them into a bathroom. "How injured is he?" He asked, wetting a cloth to cool Balthazar's rising fever.
''All I saw was that the wounds in his back have reopened. Looks like the stitches may have been cut."
"Cut? By who?"
"I was hoping you would tell me." Dean admitted.
"How would I know!?" Castiel yelled defensively, "He was allowed to leave, not me. I have no idea who he knew outside these walls."
"Well, he didn't do it to himself," Dean said matter-of-factly, his eyes constantly darting to the door with paranoid glances.
"Clearly," Castiel muttered, his eyes falling on Dean shaking with a mix of adrenaline and fear and felt a pang of sympathy before returning his eyes to Balthazar, moving to remove his brother's blood-soaked shirt. "Why did you bring him here?"
"He's your brother," Dean whispered, eyes glued to the door.
The rest of what Dean had to say did not need to be said. Balthazar was Castiel's brother and despite what distance was between them, Dean still felt the need to save someone who did nothing wrong. Deep down, Dean knew it was a feeble attempt to balance the scales in relation to what he was about to do. Try to save one life while plotting to kill another. Had it been anyone else, Dean would have found grim humor in the irony, but as Dean looked back at Balthazar he knew that he didn't have much time left.
Dean stood, almost uttering words of farewell, but bit them down and left without another word. Dean left Castiel to care for his only brother, said brother's blood seeping through the rag Castiel pressed to his back. Castiel left Balthazar for a few moments to retrieve a mending kit from a cupboard, watching as Dean Winchester was unknowingly walking directly into the path of the one called Death.
...
The man called Death was waiting for Dean Winchester once he had reached the heart of the woods. He sat on a stump, waiting as if he had all of the time in the world to sit and do nothing but breathe. Coming upon the man just sitting there was enough to scare Dean into pulling the knife from his pocket. Death laughed, a sound that more closely resembled a wheeze than a chuckle.
"Here I was, hoping there would be a challenge, maybe a running start for you." Death remarked, watching Dean's wing with fascination. "There is the legendary wing, hm? I expected something more ornate, but what can you do? Prophecy isn't picky about theatrics, so much as just generalization. So, let's cut to the chase shall we? I'm being sent to kill you. Shall we begin?"
"You're talking an awful lot for an assassin, that's what you are, right?" Dean asked, his knife extended straight out towards the man.
"Simply put, yes. A bit like you Hunters, except we work on the opposite side. In fact, most of us do it for the ration tickets- we don't really care who the target is, just whoever pays the most."
"That sounds disloyal."
"Smart, more like it," Death walked closer, his knife at an odd angle as it was being held in his hand. "I, however, don't care for the extra rations. I don't use them."
"Then you like killing then?" Dean asked, walking backward. He hoped that if he kept the guy talking, he could trip him into stepping into an old fox hole.
"I like the ability to end lives that have a countdown until they are goners, that way, my merciless and impartial killings of these people will be quick and relatively painless."
"Relatively painless?" Dean joked, his stomach churning.
"The other Horsemen, well, let's just say they have their own, slower way of doing things. Like starving victims to death, killing them with poison, or bashing their skulls in with the hilt of a knife no matter how long it takes. They are cruel."
Death walked forward, stopping before the hole in the ground and smiled, "If you wish to kill me Dean, you will have to do better than that. I won't let you kill me easily."
Dean lunged forward, knife in hand as he cut a sliver from the man's arm. "Either you're slow, or you want me to win."
"I'm impartial," he answered, punching Dean in the stomach.
"Really now?" Dean smiled wickedly, shoving his knife into the man's knee as he hunched over in pain. "Because I think I've just won."
"Maybe the battle, but not the war." Death muttered through clenched teeth.
Dean pulled the knife from the man's leg and plunged it into Death's chest.
Death breathed the last of his life with these words on his lips, "The war comes after Michael's death."
