I know that we all now know how Dean was cured of the Mark but i can never leave a story unfinished, so this is how i would have ended it :) Chapter Nine to be posted soon! sorry about the wait.

Chapter Eight

Sunlight is a temperamental thing; it's never in the right place at the right time. For some reason the suns beam seems set on finding your eyes so that it is impossible to do anything other than fiddle about finding positions where the sun won't reach you. This was what Dean was experiencing as the sun rose on the morning after the night before. He was still laid on the deck chair with his marked arm left limp across his chest, he was settled and could have slept for longer if it wasn't for that dammed sun coming thought the grubby windows of the swimming baths. His arm was hurting him again – this was becoming an everyday occurrence.

The deck chair creaked as he went to get up off it, groaning and holding his head in pain it took him a while before he realised that there was a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Dean looked up to see Sam stood above him smiling; he looked somewhat younger than he had the previous night. Looking away from Dean, Sam looked over in the direction of the showers where Cas was stood leaning against the door frame. However Dean looked passed Cas and focused in on what he was holding in his hand, the Aur Band.

'You did it' the eldest Winchester said slowly as he rose from the chair and walked like a zombie seeing flesh towards the band. Before Dean could reach out and touch the band his hand was snatched away by Sam.

'Not yet' he said softly

Despite anger bubbling up inside of him Dean let himself be pulled away and didn't show his feelings to his brother. Cas kept the Band close by his side but even he couldn't stop staring at its beauty and elegance, it was beyond anything that he had seen in heaven.

Sam had dragged Dean to the other side of the room where there was a bag of take-out waiting for them on one of the plastic tables, burgers for breakfast.

John said very little when he came back to the motel that night; he was aggravated from waiting for so long for nothing. When he walked through the door Dean sat up straight away moving off the couch to stand to attention. John dropped his bag on the floor and began packing it with everything they had, no matter the monster or ghost everything went into the bag.

'Dad?' Dean asked quietly

'It's not shifters Dean, I don't know what it is…' John looked up from the bag 'we're going to need everything we've got'

'We?' Dean was smiling broadly where as John turned cold at the question

'Yes, we…but you do everything I say. If I say jump you jump and if I say run you run!' John was strong when he spoke so much so that it silenced anything Dean was going to say 'Dean?'

'Yes, sir'

The car was packed within the hour and Dean found himself sitting in the passenger seat of the impala for the first time in months, even though he wasn't driving he still found his feet moving in sync with the pedals as they drove on.

'Them things that were at the motel, I know where they are' John informed Dean as they drove

'How?'

'Bobby has been on the phones for me asking hunters in the area what they have seen; apparently there is a swimming baths in the centre of town that are apparently never used'

Good old Bobby, if it wasn't for him Dean was sure his father and he wouldn't be alive today. The car moved through the dead streets of the town, even though it was the middle of the day there were very few people around.

They parked at a small supermarket in the empty car park just down the road from the baths, only a stray shopping trolley rolled across the parking lot. John grabbed the bag from the boot and slung it over his shoulder, Dean held a small hand gun in his hand, it was the one he always kept in his belt but the silence of the streets had caused him to reach for it. As they walked towards the building John held his arm up to stop Dean from going too far in front of him, the fact that John was making Dean feel like he was seven years old let Dean know that his father was scared. They walked around the whole building only to come around the front again with John wearing a confused expression on his face.

'They've warded and barricaded the place, from demons and humans' he pushed his hair back from his face. He didn't recognise half the symbols carved or painted into the doors and windows but some he knew were demon wardings.

'Dad' Dean whispered

Dean pointed at some small windows that led to the shower rooms, the windows were unwarded.

Using his gun as a guide John stood on the tips of his toes and poked the end of the gun through the window, peering through he could see nothing but an empty shower room. The tiles were black with grime and the shower ends were covered in rust. The window was too high to simply climb through, so John pulled Dean over by the window and got Dean to give him a leg up. Struggling to find a grip for his boot on the slimy shower tiles John realised that he would just have to slide down the wall. With one leg on the outside and the other inside the building John stopped and looked down at Dean, he lent down and put a hand on his eldest sons shoulder.

'Dean, I want you to stand here and guard the place from anything coming in'

Dean couldn't hide the disappointment on his face, the impression his father had given him in the motel led him to believe that this was going to be a joint effort. Dean's shoulders slumped but he gave a small nod that could easily have been missed if John had not of been paying attention.

'What about things coming out?' Dean asked

John tightened his grip on Dean's shoulder 'if anything comes out…I want you to run'

'What?'

'Listen to me Dean, if anything comes out of this building you run. As hard and as fast as you can, I don't care if you run to Bobby's, to Stanford…'

'Sam?'

'If I am alive I will come and find you, do you understand?'

'Yes, Sir'

With that John let go of Dean's shoulder and slipped through the window landing in the shower room, despite the hunt ahead of him John only had one thought going through his mind, and that was how that boy damm well better do as he had said.

The wall closest to the door was cracked and falling apart, the tiles had fallen off the wall leaving all the wiring exposed. Using some stray splinters of wood to test if the wires were alive or not, John quickly found that they were duds. He pressed his ear against the thinning wall and could hear breathing from the other side of the wall; someone was leaning against the wall on the other side…

For some reason the knowledge that one of them was so close caused John to hold his own breath, especially when he went to pull his largest knife from the bag. In one hand the knife in the other a gun for back up, John decided that it was now or never. He pressed his ear back against the wall to hear where it was; when he got the exact position John believed that he could feel that the wall was warmer. He could visualise the shadow of the man, if it was a man. John pressed the tip of the knife against the wall, he breathed in getting ready to push all his weight against the knife. With one swift exhale the knife ran through the wall and hit something sold…a body…cutting through John could hear the cutting of flesh. He had hit his target, he could now wait for the dead weight on the other end of the knife but that moment never came. Instead the knife got lighter, as if the body was moving away from the knife.

Plastic furniture had flown across the room when the knife had struck into Castiel's back. Dean and Sam jumped off their chairs and stood quickly, Sam ran over to where Cas had been stood against the wall. However Castiel looked less horrified more confused. He looked at the shard of metal sticking out of his belly, he studied it. Finally he made the decision to walk forwards pulling the blade out of himself, it didn't take long for the wound to heal but when it did Cas looked tired and less like the powerful angel he had the night before. Of course the blade rushing into him had made Castiel physically jump, it was a reflex that he had developed ever since he started becoming more human. In the jump Castiel had dropped the Aur Band leaving it to roll across the floor landing in the dried out swimming pool, where Dean watched it with desperate eyes.

Sam pulled his gun and pointed it at the wall where the knife remained, he looked over at Cas and nodded towards the door.

'Let's give our visitor a little scare?' Sam whispered

Cas nodded, his raised his limp hand to the door…SMASH! The door splintered into tiny pieces smashing across the shower room floor.

When the knife through the wall trick had failed, John had begun ripping the cubical doors off the showers. He created himself a small barricade around the door making sure that he and the window stayed cut off from the rest of the bathroom. The old hunter hadn't known what to expect but he didn't expect the door to explode in front of his eyes. Panicked John rushed towards the window, out of it he shouted 'DEAN! RUN!'

Sam had his gun pointed towards the door ready to go in; he looked over at Cas oblivious to the state the angel was in, Sam nodded a signal that he was ready to go in. Sam looked back at his brother but froze when he saw his brother stood in the centre of the dried out swimming pool looking down at the Aur Band.

'DEAN! NO'

Dean didn't look up, while Cas was looking down at himself wondering how the band had slipped through his fingers.

Worrying that he was losing time Sam shouted again 'DEAN! STOP!'

Dean's head snapped up looking at his baby brother, Dean's eyes were as wide as a child's would be. He took a step back from the Aur Band, his eyes fixed on Sam.

'Don't move until I get back' Sam warned

Dean didn't respond, he just stood still his eyes still fixed on Sam. Reluctantly Sam turned his back on Dean and turned his attention back to the assailant in the shower rooms. Sam crept into the room a little further, seeing the barricade towards the back of the shower rooms, the youngest Winchester sent out a shot across the room. Bullets soon came flying back in his direction hitting the wall less than a finger length from his head.

'Cas, cover me'

Cas had a small handgun that Dean had taught him to use when he was still Dean. Cas fired out shots in the direction of the barricade giving Sam time to seek shelter behind a set of lockers, Sam then began shooting giving Cas time to meet him behind the lockers.

It could have been something out of a western; the endless shooting from both sides littered the shower room with bullet holes and empty shells.

Dean didn't know what to do he had been told to run but he didn't want to, he wanted to help! He began running towards the Impala but soon stopped, he wasn't a child and he couldn't be pushed away like this! Dean changed direction and began running towards the front door of the Swimming pool. The door was well barricaded but the noise of shooting soon rained out, so Dean came to the conclusion that the people within would be otherwise occupied.

He took off his denim jacket and wrapped it around his hand, using it to smash at the glass in the windows. The glass smashed and the symbol drawn on the glass smashed too. The door was re-enforced with plastic furniture fashioned into spikes and anything else the occupancy could find. Dean carefully climbed his way over the barricade, at one point slipping and catching his leg on one of the sharpened chair legs. Hopping slighting, Dean stopped to wipe the blood off his leg. Where he stopped, a bullet flew out of the far wall and passed his face. Dean stopped his walk and began crawling towards the large hall where the swimming pool was, pulling himself up he found himself stood listening to the sound of endless gunfire to the side of him, and the blinding light of the sun bouncing off the windows. His heart sank knowing that his father was being shot at in the next room, he pulled out his gun but before he could move a gruff, painful voice caught him off guard.

'Hello Dean'

It was like looking in a mirror, only older. The man before him had bloodshot eyes and a face that had seen a hundred more deaths than the younger Dean. In his hand the older Dean held a large gold arm band, holding it in an arm that was a blistering red and covered in pronounced dark veins.