Chapter title is from Romeo and Juliet Theme, performed by Andre Rieu.

81

A Time for Us – Andre Rieu

The first thing he was aware of was pain. Pain on a scale of one to not good, went past not good and into probably very bad. His left arm shook when he wrenched it off a hard cold floor, and pressed it to his midriff, where he could feel his blood oozing warmly into his shirt, in a way that was Really Very Bad.

He couldn't move his right arm at all.

"Sam?" He croaked weakly, because it was a hell of a beat down Metatron had put on him, before, …before…before…

He shook his head to try to clear it, only that was a bad idea. His brain jiggled, gooey like jelly, and queasy making. He leaned back, hitting his head against what felt like a concrete wall.

Great. Double the concussion for the price of one.

A concussion was the least of his problems, though, if the rasping wet breaths he was taking was anything to go by. He kept his left hand clamped over his chest wound—apply pressure, Dean—and tried moving his right arm again, but his arm stayed unresponsive and numb. All he could feel was a scalding pain around the spot where Cain had branded the Mark onto his arm.

The Mark.

His eyes flew open. Or they tried to. The right one was swollen shut and only opened a crack. The left one stabbed him with a bright glare of light, then refused to focus. He blinked furiously, trying to clear one eye, any eye—because, the Mark. He gasped air, gulped it, and tried to hold it in before he took his left hand off his oozing wound to fumble at his right sleeve, his fingers slippery with blood. He hissed when his hand touched the skin on his forearm, still taut and raw, and totally, completely, smooth.

He flattened his whole palm against his forearm, searching, ignoring the shrieking messages of pain his right arm was blaring out. He moved his left hand up and down, trying to find a line, a bump, but there was nothing. His heart squeezed as he made to sit up, to get up, to grab a weapon, because no Mark could only mean one thing.

"SAM!" He forced his sore throat to make sound. He formed a fist and tried to lever himself up. He fell back, because his fist was slippery, and all the motion was just pumping the blood out of his chest faster. He gulped air again and summoned all his remaining strength.

"SAMMY!"

There was a clatter to his left. Something big.

"DEAN!"

Heavy footfalls pounded in his direction. Dean let go of the panicked breath he'd been holding, and his ribs ached again. He heard the soft whooshing to his right, then felt two fingers on his forehead.

Cas.

He barely had time to exhale a breath of relief that everything stopped hurting, when a split second later he was grabbed by both shoulders and rattled, and then squeezed within an inch of his life, and he gave as good as he got, but only with his left arm, because his right one was still unresponsive, dead to the world—what the hell—and he gave Sam a couple of thumps on the back, on account of the whole being suffocated into Sam's jacket thing—

"Hey, hey, okay. Okay. OW. EASY!"

Sam let him up, concern still written loudly all over Sam's face, checking him over again. He let Sam prop him back up against the wall, because his head was still swimmy, and that was strange, because angel healing usually worked better than this. He turned his head to the left—carefully—to find Cas watching him with the same alarming attentiveness.

"I'm sorry, Dean. You've been dead for some time. It may take a little while to recover."

Dead. Dead? He swiveled back to Sam, only to find Sam glaring at Cas, waggling his eyebrows as if they weren't planning on bringing that up—

Dead.

Demon.

The Mark.

Panic flared again, the fingertips of his left hand smoothing over clean skin, and he was staring right at Sam, so he knew Sam was okay, and he knew that should be impossible, so

"How?" He demanded.

He shifted to sit up, with Sam's arm supporting him, and moved so the leg that was starting to go numb was eased out from under him. He took the chance to look down at his arm, though that made the room swirl and kaleidoscope for a moment before his vision settled.

The skin on his forearm was bare and pink.

The Mark was gone.

He looked at Sam again in confusion. He looked at Cas. His head did not like the rapid series of movements and did the swirling colors thing again, so he was forced to lean back and close his eyes or vomit.

"How?" He demanded again, because there was something they were not telling him, something heavy and suspicious in their silence, when he cracked one eye open, and saw them struggling to find words. Sam, who usually had all the words to fill in a space, and Cas, who had zero idea of tact. In a panic he yanked his right arm up so he could look at it, to make sure whatever it was the both of them were stuttering over wasn't some new angel sigil carved seamlessly onto his skin in place of the Mark. To his surprise, his right arm obeyed. As he lifted it off his lap, he felt something slip off his thigh and hit the floor. In the dead pool of total silence, the little plink it made as it hit concrete was as loud as a gunshot.

His heart stopped.

He'd gotten pretty good over the years at training his mind to not go places where it was going to get hurt. But his hands…his hands scrabbled on the floor, feeling blindly for the thing that had fallen from him. He found the leather loop with his forefinger, and reeled the rest in with a tug, until the small metal amulet rested in his palm. He closed his fist around the familiar shape, his eyes open, staring blindly into space, the missing pieces of recent time elapsed crashing sickeningly into place around him.

"Dean." Sam began lowly, reaching out.

"Don't." It took most of his concentration to keep himself from flying apart, to focus on pulling inward, all his muscles tight and vibrating. Cas had fixed his ribs, but every breath was still fire, ripping down his throat. He breathed, because he could do nothing else, and because each breath now had cost so much. He made to stand, placing his right hand tightly fisted onto the ground, the amulet at its center. Sam moved to help him. He stared with dry eyes around the darkness of the warehouse, at the books, only the ordinary, non-glowing, non-apocalypse bringing books, left there now, heaped in piles across the floor.

"Where'd you park?" He asked Sam. He was surprised at how steady his voice sounded, low and controlled. Controlled was good. Maybe later he'd find a bottle of Jack or maybe even the good blue stuff that was Rufus' thing to see if it worked. He gripped the amulet tighter.

He just had to do something first.