A/N: Wooooowwwww! I was not expecting anything approaching the response I've gotten! I don't think I've ever gotten as many favourites or follows on anything I've ever written! Thank you soooo much!

To all the reviewers (all three of you): Thank you, and I'm sorry/notsorry for giving you Dean feels.

I had my various doubts about this chapter... but whatever. I might extend this beyond the finale, but I make no promises.

Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.

When Dean's eyes opened again, it was upon a familiar, charred crimson and burnt black scene. Hell. Just as hot, just as miserable, just as painful as before. But this time, there was no way he could get out, seeing as every angel either hated him or was dying. Oh, and none of them had wings anymore. He gritted his teeth, but did not permit any other reaction. Save it for later, Winchester, he berated himself.

If it was any consolation, he was probably the only human to come back to Hell as a human, although, glancing at the Mark still burned into his arm, he wasn't really sure how human he was anymore.

When a demon showed up, knife in hand and a smirking, glimmering expression on his face, Dean flinched away, instinctively hiding the Mark from sight. "You'll never get me," he hissed. "Not again."

The demon smirked, then cast the knife aside. "We don't need your permission to turn you, Dean Winchester. The Mark of Cain says it all for you."

Dean blinked, one hand coming up to rub at the Mark. Surprisingly, or maybe not, it wasn't hurting him. Not like it usually did. When he'd been alive, it'd burned painfully into his arm, causing him pain at every hour of the day. After he'd killed Abbadon, the pain grew worse. It got harder and harder to deal with every time he touched the First Blade.

Now he was in Hell, without the First Blade. He could feel something putting pressure on him, could feel something pressuring his soul, but there was nothing he could do. His soul, what was left of it, shivered. Cain had become a demon, he remembered. And then the demon's words fully sunk in.

He was going to become a demon, too. Maybe he would even surface not too long after he'd died. Deep in Hell, still mostly unscathed but afraid nonetheless, Dean Winchester let out a cry of pain and fear. He'd gone after Metatron alone because he knew that he was either going to triumph against the angel or get killed, preferably the latter. Death, he wasn't afraid of. He could handle death, he'd even wished it had come sooner. But the Mark, the Mark prevented him from dying fully, and kept him alive.

Alive was a funny word for it, he thought, looking down at his arms. The Mark stood out, angry and red against his skin, which was tinted slightly from the heat. He had manifested as he'd last appeared, in a blue plaid button-up with a blue overcoat. Blood stained both articles of clothing, pouring down from a wide, gaping hole in his chest that hadn't been healed. His hands were stained red with his own blood, and he could taste it on his teeth and tongue.

"You're one of us, now, Dean Winchester!" the demon from earlier crowed joyfully, waving the knife in front of his face with a dark, gleeful expression.

The words echo in his mind. One of us, one of us, one of us, one of us.

For years, us has just been him, Sam, and Cas. The three of them, together, beating the odds and carving out their own destiny. 'Team Free Will' is down a man, now, Dean thinks with an odd flash of anger.

"I'll never be one of you," he hissed, glaring at the demon.

The demon merely laughed, carelessly holding the knife out in front of himself. "You can't deny it forever, Dean-o. Sooner or later, everyone turns. Eeeevvvvvvveeerrrrryyyyyyooooonnnnnneeee." The demon's laugh echoed through Hell, bouncing off the crimson and black walls. For a brief moment, every other sound of Hell, the screaming souls and the shouting demons, was drowned out by the sing-song quality of the demon's voice. The demon cackled and then disappeared, leaving Dean alone, rubbing at the Mark of his arm and desperately hoping Sam could find a cure for demons.

-Time Skip-

After the first demon, none show up to bother Dean. He saw some, sure, but they didn't talk to him and he kept his mouth firmly closed. A few dared to meet his angry, accusing glare, but their gazes drop immediately and they hurry out.

They're afraid of him. The demons, demons of Hell, are too scared of Dean Winchester to even look at him longer than a few seconds. If Dean wasn't so afraid of what he was turning into, he might have thought about laughing. He was a hunter in demon territory, Dean should be afraid of them.

Then again, he himself was a demon now. Or at least, mostly demon. He didn't feel any different, not really. His soul felt battered, but he definitely still felt like he had a soul. He still felt like Dean Winchester, still felt, well, human.

The Mark throbbed once, as if to remind Dean that it was there, and Dean winced. He hadn't known what it was like to be human in a long time. So what, he felt as human as he did previously. There was a reason he was in Hell, and it wasn't just 'cause he was a bad person. The Mark had twisted him, twisted him into something less than human and only now was he paying the price.

Looking into his soul, which still felt surprisingly there for being a demon and all, Dean knew that he was screwed. No way out, no way of weaseling out of this one. The Mark had changed who he was, and now he was something he hadn't wanted to be.

His vision was gray around the edges, chest heaving and eyes drooping closed as he leaned against the wall, head pressed uncomfortably into the concrete behind him. "I's for the bessst," he groaned, hardly able to get the words out. "Th' Mark, it's changing me into som'thin' I don' wanna be."

Dean blinked, and the gray changed to red. Instead of a flashback, he was back in Hell… not comforting. He wondered if that was a normal thing for demons, and then cursed himself as he so casually thought of himself as one of them.

He wanted out. Dean Winchester wanted to leave, wanted to go back to Earth. Hell, he would probably end up at the wrong end of some hunter's knife, but it was better than wallowing the time away with demons too afraid to even look at him. He didn't want to see Sam, or Cas, because they were pure and good, and he was an abomination. He didn't deserve any leniency they might offer him, or any hesitation they would give him because he'd once been someone they had trusted.

He hoped to whatever cruel and capricious God was up there that he wouldn't run into them if he ever did return, but he figured he would probably run into Cas. Maybe, even, Cas could still hear his prayers. Dean was too scared to find out if the angel could still hear him, but he doubted it. Demons weren't meant to converse with angels, and vice versa. But maybe, just a tiny part of him wanted to be able to talk to his best friend again, to laugh at his dumb 'pop culture savvy-ness'. But that could never happen. Cas was a freaking angel, and Dean… he wasn't the Righteous Man anymore.

Dean sighed, rubbing at the Mark out of habit. He blinked, suddenly, and felt something tug at his broken soul. It was insistent, and powerful, and Dean couldn't resist. It was scary, it was strange, but Dean struggled against it and tried as hard as his fledgling skills would allow to stay.

He heard the tone of Crowley's voice before he actually heard what he was saying. He sounded uncharacteristically melancholy, like something had genuinely upset him. There's something there, also, something Dean can't quite place, and then Crowley's voice becomes louder and he can actually make out what Crowley's saying.

"Listen to me, Dean Winchester, what you're feeling right now, it's not death. It's life. A new kind of life." There was a pause, and he heard Crowley step closer. Dean had somehow lost his sight, and he couldn't move. He grimaced slightly, but he was fairly sure that the expression didn't show. What was going on? "Open your eyes, Dean. See what I see. Feel what I feel. And let's go take a howl at that moon."

Dean's mind raced. Open your eyes, Dean. Oh, god, had Crowley brought him back?

Probably.

Dean inhaled, relishing in the feeling of oxygen entering lungs that didn't need it but didn't object. He could tell, somehow, that he was in his own body, and he could tell his body hadn't healed. He was in a 'dead meatsuit', as he would, and he was back on Earth.

Dean's eyes opened with a flicker, and sight was given to him. Sight, and a "new kind of life."