Set after 10x14. Spoilers. Dean's POV.

Drenched

I am staring at the sun and it is not as bright as I have always imagined it to be. You're not supposed to do this. Everyone says you'll go blind if you stare directly into the sun, but here I am, breaking all the rules again, eyes somehow still intact. Usually when I break rules, I'm not so lucky.

Apparently I break a lot of rules, because I haven't had much luck. Ever.

Wait.

Does bad luck count as luck?

Things shift, and I am looking at my own reflection in the moldy bathroom mirror of the bar instead of the fluorescent light above my head. I study that reflection. There is something different about the alignment of my features, the title of my jaw, or maybe the shimmering tint of green in my (still intact) eyes. They look darker somehow, as if the sun..the bathroom bulb..has stolen some of their light. The face in the mirror shifts and so do I, looking back towards the door that leads to the bar that has another door that leads outside. Suddenly, that's where I need to be. And then I am, staring up at the stars because it is the closest thing I can find to the sun right now.

I am blinking away the world and things tilt again.

Sam is there, staring at me from across the parking lot. He leans against the side of the Impala, his long arms folded across his chest, muscles straining against each other as if he is waiting to pounce. The moment he catches sight of me, he starts walking, fists now clenched at his sides, mouth set in a thin line. I wait for him to reach me, running my left hand not-so-absently along the raised Mark on my right forearm. It burns slightly, a tingling that hasn't truly gone away since I killed the King of Murder himself. Cain's face blurs in and out of focus in front of me, his words echoing in the space between my brother and me.

My story began when I killed my brother, and that's where your story inevitably will end.

"What are you doing?" Sam asks. He has closed the distance and is standing a few feet away now, and I am staring at the stars again. His face, like the sun, like the bathroom light bulb, is darker than I remember.

"I was just...just had to get away." The words slide off my tongue as if they are exactly what I should be saying. They feel right, but based on Sam's expression, that instinct is wrong. His lips tighten and he shakes his head. I used to read him so well.

"Couldn't leave a note?" he growls, the worry barely seeping in past the anger. I remember when it was the other way around. Worry always used to come first for us. For each other.

"Didn't think you'd wake," I shrug, suddenly hoping he'll start throwing punches. My bones are itching for a fight, every nerve standing at attention. If I had to find a way to describe the Mark of Cain, that would be it. Every particle is alive inside of me, the static of all those colliding atoms constantly pushing against my bones, my skin, the inside of my skull.

Kill. Kill. Kill, they scream. They do not sleep, and they have become more and more difficult to ignore.

I do not sleep much anymore either.

Sam huffs and throws his shoulders back. He is shaking his head again.

"What's wrong with you?" he whispers. He sounds sad. Resigned. It only infuriates me further. I thought he was supposed to be the one who wasn't giving up.

"Take your pick," I snarl, watching with satisfaction as his eyes narrow. I know which buttons to push. I know how to make this conversation go in the direction I want it to. Every fiber is singing. I push again.

"Why don't you just go home, huh Sammy?" I chide, voice low and calculated and just the right balance between dead and alive. "You really think chasing after me does anybody any good? Ever? How many times do I have to tell you: I don't need a goddamn babysitter."

I press on before Sam can answer, and I can tell he is on the verge of exploding now, that vein at the side of his temple hammering out the most unstable of beats.

"Leave. Now." I am trying to hide the rapid pounding of my heart as I turn away from him, the pounding that matches that vein of his, but even now when I am no longer looking at him, I am coiled. Waiting.

One more push.

"Stop trying, Sam. Just stop. It's been a lost cause from day one. Time to face it."

"How...how can you say that?" Sam's voice should be painful to my ears. It crackles and folds over itself like a piece of paper left to burn in the furnace of our lives. But instead of regretting the words I've said, there is a pit of bubbling glee in the bottom of my stomach. It only magnifies when Sam can no longer stand the fact that my back is to him, when he grabs my shoulder and spins me around to face him.

His wrist snaps quick and easy beneath my hold, his shriek of agony resounding in my ears as he stumbles back, cradling the injured limb.

"D...Dean, don't do this," he pleads, steps faltering a bit as his heel hits the side of the curb. My head tilts, watching him from a different angle, and I follow after him, the Mark aching in anticipation. He doesn't even have his hands up for the first few blows, maybe too shocked or possibly still convinced I will stop, that I will come to my senses.

But my senses are completely overwhelmed, and I do not stop, not even when his knees buckle under the force of the fourth or maybe the sixth punch.

Somewhere down deep, past the back of my mind and buried at the edges of my consciousness, there is a voice screaming at me. Stop, it bellows. Stop. You're hurting him. This is wrong! This is Sammy! STOP!

My hands are curled around the collar of his shirt, my knuckles cracking apart. I watch the blood trickle from them and from Sam's nose, his lip, his gushing cheek. I run a vibrating hand across my forehead, pushing the irritation voice back to where it came from. Beneath me, Sam shivers and coughs, spitting up more blood.

It needs more blood.

I don't remember reaching for the knife in my boot, but suddenly it is in my hand, hovering just above my brother's collarbone. I hear the gasp he attempts to stifle, the low moan he tries to hide beneath rapid, panicked breathing. I revel in the sound of his fear, the raw smell of it, as I glide the knife further up to his neck, nicking the skin so that a thin line of red opens up where the blade passes over.

"Dean. Dean, please," he gasps, wrapping his fingers around my hand, the one still holding onto his shirt. I cannot feel him. I only feel the reassuring warmth of the Mark's influence as it spreads over my arm, across my entire body and all the way through to my fingertips. The choice is easy. The choice is not a choice at all.

I bring the blade up. I bring it down. There is one scream, one horrified whimper that tears from his throat, and then he is trembling again, keening as he loses his blood, his air; as the knife in his chest does its job. I pull it out, eliciting one final breath from him before he is still beneath my hands.

Noooooooo!

The voice is back. The screaming is louder this time, impossible to ignore.

No no no no no no no. Sammy.

My breath hitches, lungs collapsing inside my ribcage once, twice, a third time.

I check frantically for the knife that I am sure must now be buried within my own chest based on the pain there, pawing clumsily for it, but all I feel is the hollowed out beating of my heart and the ferocious fire of the scar that pounds madly against my arm, proclaiming its victory.

"Oh god."

This voice is not inside my head anymore. It belongs to me, but I barely recognize the anguished moan, the disbelieving catch in between stuttered gasps that don't count as real breathing.

Real?

This can't be.

I gag. I cannot look down at the body, the bloodied face I know lies beneath me so still. My oxygen is almost gone, leaving room for one more agonized scream that rips a hole through everything that I am, everything that I have ever been.

"SAMMY!"

I wake up drenched in my own sweat; a thousand horses stampeding across my chest, pushing me deeper into the mattress, even as I writhe against the twisted sheets that hold me captive. It is not the first time I have dreamed this nightmare, but my reaction is the same as all the times before.

I gasp for air. I squeeze my eyes shut until I can see the outline of a thousand burning stars, their forms twisting and writhing as they plummet toward the back of my head, searing themselves deep into my ruined brain, making them my ugliest memory. I see my brother's face. I listen to him scream. I gasp out another strangled spiral of air and memories.

I open my eyes to look, and there is no sun.

I open my eyes, and there is no light at all.

I think I intended this to be a kind of tag to Dean's nightmare in 10x17, but it's been so dang long since I actually wrote it out that I can't remember anymore. Anyway, thank you so much for reading. Reviews are gold. So are you.