A/N: Yeah, I don't know. I noticed Dean's started doing this and then this happened. Thanks ImpalaLove for reviewing the last chapter!

Spoilers: Season 10

New Canaan, Connecticut

November, 2014

He knows it has something to do with the First Blade, he just isn't sure what it means.

He never does it around Sam. Sammy already reads far too much into his every action, no matter how insignificant, and he doesn't want to give him even more fodder for skepticism. No, he only does it when he's alone.

Because the weight of everything feels wrong in his hands, now. Anything can be made into a weapon – Dean should know – but he has become attached to one very particular one. And when adrenaline pumps through his veins his hand searches it out, but it's always, always met with a cheap imitation.

Sometimes, it's met with nothing at all. When he wakes up in the middle of the night thrashing, grasping fistfuls of dead, empty air, he knows his body is reaching for it on its own accord. His blood cries for it, pounding like a jackhammer in his temples.

It's almost fitting that the Blade is made of animal bone, because surely his own skeleton became fused with it. It was an extension of his own body, as natural as any appendage he'd been born with. And without it, now, he feels as though something has been… severed.

So – as a demon – when he picked up that hammer, it felt wrong, and – as a human – when he picked up that wrench, it still felt wrong. He'd tested them both in his hand, flexing his fingers around the hilts, longing for something different. The cold metal froze a trail of ice through his veins, aggravating that mark, angering it, making it pulsate hotly to remind him it's still there, it's still part of him, and he's still branded.

But what Sam doesn't see, he can't analyze, and what he can't analyze, he can't bitch about. Dean internalizes his suspicions, his fears, because it's what he always does, and maybe, in doing so now, he can feel a bit more like himself and scrub away at whatever vile residue was left behind inside him.

So when Sam complains about those extra shots, he could almost laugh – You have no idea, he thinks, knuckles tightening around the steering wheel to fill a void that can't be filled. Again, the Mark throbs, smoldering just beneath his skin.

You have no idea.

I miss it.