A/N: More angst, and cussing. Italics indicate thoughts and Dean's memories.

Chapter 8 - there's no place like home

My left hip hurts like a bitch. I ache all over, right down to my bones.

"All this…everything that's happened to you tonight," Dark whispers, and I swear this bastard doesn't even open his mouth when he says it, "it's because of him. You know that, bro'."

I open my mouth to say something smartass. Something. Anything.

I got nothing.

All I can do is stutter. "T-that's not…h-he's not D-Dad."

"Yeah, he is. And you know he is."

I don't look at his face. Dad's face. I can't. I stare at the ropes around his wrists and ankles instead. The ropes are stained with paint.

Takes a few more seconds before I realize that dark red splatter's not paint. It's blood.

I keep hearing this little kid's voice inside my head.

"Gonna be a big brother, Daddy." The kid chirped, and he's so damn innocent and excited he's jumping up and down.

Everything's fine.

Everything's fucking golden.

I know who the kid is. I know...

"Gonna be the best big brother in the whole world!"

Dad smiled at me as Mom hugged me. "Sure you are, bud. I know you will be."

Mom was pregnant with Sam.

My hand tightens around the slick black handle of the claw knife.

Some big brother I was. Sam left me too.

My throat closes up so quick I feel like I'm gonna strangle. I breathe through my nose, hard and fast. My arm shakes. Dark leans into me and I jump when he touches me. Sonofabitch is cold now. Ice cold. I didn't notice that before. I glance back at him over my shoulder and I can see right through him. I keep my game face on but this crap is freaking me out. I can't see anything but dark clouds in there, boiling and bumping against his skin.

"You do this," Dark whispers into my ear, "and we'll be free. From here on out. No more fucking Marine lectures."

"This is how you hold the knife, Dean." Dad's skin was rough and warm against my hand as he showed me how to grip. "Keep the blade away from your body. Always keep it pointed towards your target."

Dark looks down at Dad and grins. "No more 'Dean do this, Dean do that.'"

"You need to stay here and clean all the weapons, Dean. Don't make me tell you again."

"Then we'll pay dear ol' Dad a visit in real time. And after that, maybe we'll go to Palo Alto." Dark barks out a laugh, rough and gleeful.

"You're Dad's good little soldier, Dean. That's all you think you are. Don't you realize you can be more than that?"

"Dude. Can you imagine the look on Sam's face when we show up?"

"Hey, Dean," Dad says softly. I lift my head up, and when I look him in the eyes I'm caught.

The skin around his eyes crinkles. He looks sad and tired, eyes all red and blood shot and I'm wondering how I can fall for something like this. Just another mind fuck, the latest in a long line of 'em tonight. That's all this is. This isn't Dad. Can't be.

"Come n' play with me, Daddy. I wanna play ball."

"Sure, Dean. Come on, buddy. Let's go out in the back your with your Momma and you can pitch a few balls to your old man."

"Shut up," I mumble to myself. "Shut the hell up…"

"It's okay, son. It's okay."

"You're not my Dad. You're not." I shake my head. "It's not okay, you hear me?" My voice gets louder. "I'm not okay ---"

My right hand moves. I raise the knife up and flick it sideways, stripe a line on Dad's face, from just underneath his right eye down to the corner of his mouth.

"That's right. You gonna play with him a little first, huh?" Dark sounds like he's getting off on this. He tries to lean over my shoulder. I don't look back. I can feel him pushing me forward.

My hand moves again, and I slash Dad across his chest. He flinches, bucks upward, but he never stops looking at me.

He looks like Dad, and he's looking at me like Dad would, but he's not, he's not...

I turn the knife sideways, nail him across his right shoulder.

He doesn't get mad. His face doesn't change.

"Stop lookin' at me like that, you hear me?" My hand is moving and I want it to stop I don't want it to stop, and I just keep right on moving, hitting him with the knife…

Late June. I'm sitting on the porch of that house Dad rented for us in Sioux Falls. I turned fifteen earlier that year, but we were moving around hunting so much my birthday was just another day. I didn't mind.

At least, that's what I told myself.

Dad sat down beside me, put the package in my lap. What the hell. It's in one of those white plastic grocery bags, but it's got a blue bow on it.

Dad shrugged. "Things got a little hectic earlier. Just a little something I thought you'd like…"

My hands shook as I unwrapped the box. Thought it was a gun, or a knife.

It was tapes. My music. AC/DC. Metallica. Brand new, still shrink wrapped.

I hugged Dad so hard I think I heard bones in his spine crack a little. I could feel Dad grin. He patted me on the back. "Happy birthday, Dean."

Another knife stroke, down his side this time.

"Stop it…stop it…"

I see blood, more blood, on his clothes, on the sheets and everything.

Dark laughs.

I hold the knife sideways, turn around and slash Dark right across the throat.

I know I got him right across his jugular. There's no blood spray. He bleeds puffs of thick black smoke.

Dark coughs. I don't like the sound, so I slash at him again and again. I make him back up, drive him backwards towards the door. I don't remember how I got the door open and pushed him through, but I must have, because it's just me and Dad in the room now.

"Dad…"

His eyes are closed, but I see his lips move. "…'s okay…."

I hang onto the knife just long enough to cut the fucking ropes off him, and then my skin starts crawling from touching the damn thing and I throw it into a far corner.

I gotta get Dad to a safe place, far away from here. All the while I'm talking to him, whispering stuff like "You're fine", and "I got you, Dad, I got you."

That's a fucking joke, right? I'm the reason he's like this in the first place.

I lift him off the bed with one arm slung over my shoulder and walk him towards the window. We're two stories up.

And there's a fire escape outside.

"DEAN! DEAN!"

Shit.

I head out of the window first, only because Dad's half out of it and he needs me to guide him down.

"YOU STUPID SONOFABITCH!"

The door bows inward, and I hear myself whispering, "Just hold him back, just one more second, one more…"

I don't know why I'm doing that. Don't know who I'm talking to. It seems to work. Dark stays out in the hallway. He doesn't get in.

Not yet, anyway.

"GONNA FUCK YOU UP, DEAN. YOU HEAR ME? GONNA FUCK YOU UP GOOD, AND AFTER I DO, I'M GONNA PUT YOU BEHIND THE SAME WALL YOU PUT ME BEHIND ALL THESE YEARS…"

The walls start shaking, and hell, that can't be good.

"YOU"LL BE IN THE DARK JUST LIKE I WAS, AND YOU'RE NEVER GONNA GET OUT, YOU HEAR ME, YOU DUMB PRICK? NEVER GONNA GET OUT!"

Dad nearly face plants into the pavement once we jump down from the ladder. I put his arm around my neck, and I can hear Dark screaming and roaring in the apartment right above us. He's throwing a fit. The building's shaking, and the front door of the apartment flies out of the window and splinters into kindling when it hits the street.

Dad can't run, he can barely stand up as it is. My fault. My damn fault. I ripped him up pretty good. That dark sonofabitch is gonna catch up to us and rip us both to pieces because I fucked up. We gotta hole up, get someplace safe.

I see twenty five dead people on the street, and I should have known better to think that we're home free now.

They turn around and stare at us.

I cock my head to one side as I hear one of them whisper. "Winchester."

Crap.

All of them start shuffling forward, and that's when I wish I hadn't thrown away that fuckin' claw knife.

"We died because of you," the one in the lead whispers. Half his face is gone, ripped off, but he never takes the one eye he's got left off me and Dad. He's a big dude, taller than Sam. He still looks lively enough to rip my damn head off. There's this young girl shuffling along behind him, but at first I can't get a good look at her.

I recognize the rest of them from different jobs. That one was killed by a black dog. That other one was drowned by a vengeful spirit. The others died in just about every way you can imagine, died from fire, had the life sucked out of them by some fugly, you name it. I back up, pull Dad with me, and above us the window we just climbed out of explodes outward. Bricks and pieces of wood hit the ground all around us.

"Ace," Dad mutters dazedly, "we gotta go."

"No shit. Go? Go where?" One of them gets close enough to try to grab at us. I knock its hand away and backpedal with Dad in the direction I don't want to go: back towards the apartment building. It's the only open space.

They're herding us.

I see hands reaching out at us, and it's only a matter of time before they decide to rush us. And when they do, I'm gonna make the sorry sonsabitches work for it.

"You can make things happen in this place."

"What?"

"All this," Dad rolls his eyes skyward. "It's yours. We gotta get the hell outta here. We're stuck here only if you think we are."

"Can't...can't be that friggin' easy."

Dad grins a little. "Why do you wanna make this so damn hard?"

They're so close I can smell them: dried blood, rotten meat, and bile. The smell of burned flesh fills my nose and I start thinking there's no place like home. There's no place like home...

Something's happening, and I don't know what it is. I look at the girl in the Green Day t shirt, and she's dead and bloody and mangled, just like the rest of them are. Her throat's been cut from ear to ear. We finally get a really good look at each other, and she turns an even paler shade of dead grey and falls to her knees on the sidewalk, shaking and crying.

Then Dad and I are gone. We fade out, go somewhere, but I get it. I do.

That was Anne Marie.

We're in a house somewhere. Doesn't look any different from any other abandoned, boarded up place I've ever been in before. There's just enough light coming in so that I can walk around without falling down and breaking my frigging neck. I know it's not good enough. I know that.

Dark's gonna find us. I know he is.

I can hear him off in the distance, laughing, but I try not to listen as I sit Dad down with his back against the wall. He's not bleeding anymore, and I can tell by that look on his face that he's got something on his mind.

I don't want to hear it. My fingers have started shaking again. I limp over to the window and bend down, take a look out between the boards. The sky overhead is getting dark.

Dark booms in the distance. "COME ON, DEAN. WHY YOU GOTTA BE LIKE THIS, HUH?"

He's close. Won't be long now.

"Dude," Dad says hoarsely. "You gotta go back." He leans his head and shoulders back against the wall, and I can almost imagine that everything's fine, that Dad and I are waiting for the fugly we're hunting to show up.

Everything good. Everything's normal.

Except we're being hunted by the darkness inside me and I don't have squat to defend us with.

"Go back? Where?" I laugh and shake my head. "I got nowhere else to go."

"Bullshit." Dad grates out. "Those bastards opened you up, but you can put everything in here back the same way it was before."

"You're not my Dad." I try to straighten up and my left hip starts singing opera. Christ, it hurts so bad I wanna start screaming. My game face slips and I try not to groan as pain throbs from my hip to my toes. "I don't even know why I'm listening to you."

"I'm everything John Winchester ever told you. Everything he ever taught you, all the love he ever gave you."

"Love?" That's enough to make me snort. "My Dad? You really expect me to fucking believe that?"

"Hell yeah." Dad rumbles. He leans forward as I finally stagger back, put my back against the far wall and slide down. I can't stand up anymore. I can't run anymore.

"I didn't leave you. I didn't. You gotta believe that. Open your eyes, Dean."

The ground shakes and the building moves.

"WAKEY WAKEY, DEAN. I FOUND YOU. I FOUND YOU AND DEAR OLD DADDY…"

"You gotta go, Dean. You gotta trust me on this. I didn't leave you."

" 'm tired. I'm so fucking tired…"

"I know you are, Ace. You do this one thing for me, and I promise this will all go away. You gotta open your eyes, kiddo." The house shakes again, and Dark laughs again, loud and cheerful. "Right fucking now," Dad grits out. I recognize the tone. It's an order, not a request.

"What about you?"

Dad grins, bright and wicked. "I'm always here, Dean. I'm not going anywhere, no matter what."

The house starts shaking. It's coming apart all around us, and the last thing I see as I close my eyes is Dad sitting there with his back against the wall, defiant as always.

Dad smirks. "Come on, you sonofabitch! You can do better than that!"

The roof overhead opens up and Dark comes pouring in like a thunder cloud.

I hear this rumble all around me, and I open my eyes.

This might be some illusion, something else my fucked up brain decided to come up with, but I know it's not. This is real.

First thing I see is the open road out in front of me. We're out on the highway somewhere, and we're rolling. The girl's engine sounds just a little off. She might need a tune-up.

I'm sitting in the Impala, on the passenger side of the bench seat. I can't move, and I don't know why until I look down at myself.

My right arm's duct-taped to my right leg, just above my knee. My left arm is taped to my left leg. My ankles are taped together too. I wiggle my shoulders and I can't move. There's duct tape around my upper shoulders and my chest too.

My Dad doesn't do things halfway.

He glances away from the road for a second, looks at me and chuckles. "Glad to have you back, princess."

I laugh out loud. I sound like a damn fool, but right now I don't give a fuck.

Not my regular cliffie, huh? That's okay. This story isn't over yet. The next installment will be posted this weekend, and the last chapter will be posted Tuesday.