He felt better, as most people do, after the cry. The overwhelming emotions had shut out the fragmented memories that had been battering against his being all day like...

bugs blanketing a house.

He shook his head with a quizzical expression, wondering just where that weird ass-analogy had come from.

"I'd think you're losing it, Winchester," he muttered, "but I don't know for a fact that we ever had it."

His spell hadn't helped his exhaustion, which was worse, heavier, but the purge had done him good emotionally, and mentally. He was more settled now, focused enough to push the storm of returning memories onto the back burner to simmer quietly while his thinking mind focused on the immediate concerns of his current situation. He was, he realized, pushing his luck on how long he could safely stay in a building that he had broken into and burglarized. Some part of him knew he should feel guilt about that and wondered why he just didn't.

He pushed the thought away, dumped it in the back burner pot with all the other background noise where it couldn't distract him from the needs of his here and now. Now, he needed not to be here. Here was bad. He needed to put here behind him before whoever owned here showed back up and now developed into an even bigger mess.

Blessedly, unlike the scattered puzzle pieces that somehow (hopefully) fit together to form his past and identity, his skill sets seemed to be intact. Just like the primal drive of survival that had driven his body to food and water while his mind had been otherwise occupied trying to cobble itself together out of shattered fragments, muscle memory...

That's what Sammy would have called it.

...had hotwired the car as naturally as breathing, or walking.

Pulling out of the lot, leaving a dust plume in his wake, Dean felt good, really good, the best he'd felt since the sweet relief of fresh air bursting into his tortured lungs at the end of a hellish journey through dirt and darkness that morning.

Driving the car came as naturally as starting it had, and it felt comfortably right. A destination wasn't important, not yet. His first concern was to put as much distance as he could between himself and the crime scene he had created, so he just chose a direction and went. At some point, he knew, he would have to figure out where he was, and where he needed to go, but for now, he just let himself sink comfortably into the way the rumble of the engine and the feeling of the wheel under his hands somehow made him feel more like himself than anything else had so far.

Soon he was humming contentedly, his thumbs drumming in time on the wheel. With no effort, he just slipped into being Dean, and he embraced it, luxuriating in how good it felt to just be, without having to try and make it happen. He still wasn't clear on who Dean was, but he knew how Dean felt and this was it.

Absently, his hand drifted over the center dash, intent on nudging a tape into the player. Not finding it jerked him out of his fragile, new found sense of self. He frowned, not in distress, but confusion. Something was still off. Driving still felt good, hell so good, but something, something important, was off.

He was better though, not like that first hour when it had been like stumbling through a choreographed dance, blundering into bits of the world that moved according to a plan he didn't know and couldn't see. Now it was more like he was in step, but off beat, a step behind.

He focused on the drive, grounded himself with the familier sounds and feelings while he worked the situation over in his mind. He couldn't just keep on like this, living off pilfered road food. Sleeping...where? In a stolen vehicle by the side of the road in...damn, he still didn't even know where he was.

He continued on, a few more miles until a sign announced the approach of a roadside motel. The sight of it sparked the same feeling in him that first pulling out onto the road had. It was right. It was comfortable. It was in step and on beat. "OK," he agreed with himself and pressed down harder on the gas pedal, loving how god damned good it felt to at least know his next move.