A/N: A big thank you to all that favorited/followed! I probably wouldn't have continued the story without all the support!
Although I did notice that you guys are an awfully silent crowd... maybe you should review, eh?
I have my issues with this chapter, but whatever. It's alright. I honestly have no idea where this is going to go after this, or anything, really, so... yeah. Whooo!
He didn't like this 'new kind of life' much. Everything was different, somehow, darker, harder to perceive and yet somehow easier to spot. He sat up slowly, wincing as his muscles tensed as he tried to move muscles he wasn't exactly used to moving. Inhabiting a vessel was different than just being, he realized. It took more thought, more conscious effort to move and more focusing on the individual movements instead of the overall movements. Instead of thinking sit up, he had to tense his own stomach muscles and lever himself up.
"Crowley?" he hissed, aware that his voice sounded slightly lower than it had before. He cleared his throat, coughed softly, then groaned. His throat hurt, and he was surprised that things like that could hurt. His chest ached, but that was reasonable.
"Are you done marveling at yourself, Squirrel?" Crowley snapped. He'd called Dean's name a couple of times, and the hunter-turned-demon hadn't responded.
Dean blinked, and his eyes went from pitch black from green. The weird grayness dissipated, leaving everything in his room much the same as it appeared when he was alive. "Huh?" he said, sounding once again, very human and not very demon.
"I said are you ready to blow this joint?" Crowley was growing impatient. He'd brought Dean back so he could use his formidable powers, but now Dean was showing surprising human-ness. Something was wrong.
Dean frowned, blinking again and bringing back the blackness that covered his eyes. "No," he hissed forcefully. The lamp on the table flickered, the light bulb going off and then on again, sparking as the fuse blew and smoke floated up. "I'm not leaving with you."
Crowley's plan wasn't going so smoothly. He sighed, giving Dean the message that he was less surprised than he actually was, and vanished, leaving Dean alone with the smoking light bulb and his thoughts.
Dean's first thought, after Crowley left, was Sam. Oh, God. Sam had been there, had seen Metatron shove the angel blade into his chest, and the fact that he was in his room, in the bunker, told him that Sam had brought him over. His heart went out to his little brother, knowing from experience how much that hurt. But he was alive, right?
Alive. Hah. He was a pitiful replica of life. The black covering his eyes remained, and although he blinked it away, he could still feel the otherness of himself. He felt like an intruder in his own body, like something crammed in that shouldn't be there.
Dean sighed, a low, soulful sigh that expressed much of his inner pain. He stood up, aware of how strange the feeling was. Being a demon was going to take some getting used to.
Anyway, he had options. He could wait for Sam, wait for Cas, and with them try to figure out a solution. If he wasn't so afraid of them rejecting him, he would do it, because he knew that the only way he could find a cure was with them. But he really, really didn't want to see the look of disappointment that would inevitably cross their faces when they saw his black eyes.
He hung his head down, unwilling and unable to leave, or get up and talk to Sam. He couldn't handle it, wasn't ready to handle the emotional upheaval that would come from confronting his brother and his best friend. With a sigh, he lifted his head and touched the door handle, wishing there was an easy way through this.
As soon as he opened the door, though, Dean realized that there was no choice in the matter. In the hallway, staring at the open door, was Sam, his brother, eyes red rimmed and face flushed from alcohol. "Sam?" He blinked, hoping his eyes remained green and clear. Sam looked as surprised as he was.
"Dean?" Sam seemed shocked and disbelieved.
"Uuuh…." Dean shifted, ran a hand through his short hair, and was surprised to find little flecks of dried blood in his hair. He pulled his hand back, then glanced down at his chest. His blue outershirt had been taken off, leaving him only the plaid shirt he'd been wearing when he died. The blood had dried in a stream down his chest, and he stared at it for a couple seconds. "Wow," he muttered, then met Sam's eyes again.
"Did… did Crowley bring you back?" Sam asked tentatively, reaching out to touch Dean's shoulder as if the youngest Winchester couldn't believe Dean was really there, almost alive and in the flesh.
"Don't think so," Dean muttered back, breaking the eye contact to examine Sam closer. He smelled of alcohol, and his face was flushed red. His eyes were watery, and Dean knew his brother was either drunk or almost there. It made him angry, knowing what his apparent death had done to Sammy, but he was… worse, but back. Sort of.
"Ho-how are you here?" Sam blinked sluggishly, yep, he was drunk alright.
Dean kept silent, but avoided making eye contact. Absently, he rubbed at the Mark. The urge to kill someone was much, much more manageable, but it wasn't entirely gone and Dean was scared that his new demon soul wouldn't be able to handle it. "The Mark wouldn't let me go," Dean answered, then winced. He'd revealed more than he really wanted to.
"The Mark?" Sam inhaled sharply. "The Mark of Cain brought you back?!"
Dean had intended to keep his demon-ness from Sam. But now, he saw that there was no way around it. "Mostly," he said, to buy some time while he shuffled awkwardly and considered smoking out, like he'd seen other demons do. But was bunker was probably warded against that, even for a Knight of Hell, and he didn't really want to reveal his secret like that.
"What d'you mean, mostly?" There was some of the famous Sam Winchester sass.
"Sam…" Dean trailed off. There was nothing keeping him from blinking, allowing the film to cover his eyes, nothing stopping him from showing Sam everything. But there was, because it felt so wrong. Dean had been the vessel of Michael, the angel warrior of God. He had been the Righteous Man of Heaven, and now he was a Knight of Hell.
Like Castiel, he'd fallen, and fallen so hard there was no way to crawl back up.
Sam had walked off while he was busy being an introvert, and returned with… Dean's heart sank. A bottle of holy water, a silver knife. The usual stuff they checked each other with. Dean permitted Sam to cut into his arm with the knife, but stopped him before the holy water.
"Sam, I need to tell you something." He took a deep breath, and steeled himself against Sam's only slightly drunk gaze. He blinked, once, deliberately, and allowed the black film to cover his eyes.
Sam practically screamed, and flung the holy water in Dean's face. Dean flinched, then looked at Sam.
"Sammy! Please! It's still me, still me!" he practically begged Sam to listen, but he didn't. Sam fell away from him, shouting.
"Get out of my brother!" he shouted, anger lowering his voice into a passionate bass, making his face twist with concealed and not-so-concealed emotion.
"I'm not in your brother!" Dean shouted, trying to calm down. If he lost control, who knows what he could have done? As a Knight of Hell, he'd rather not find out.
"Stop lying to me!" Sam screamed, eyes still furious.
"Sammy, please! Listen to me!" Dean could feel himself losing it, and this was happening too damn fast and he needed to get out before something happened, and oh, God, the Mark was hurting him now and he wanted to curl into a ball and suffer, but the Mark stopped him and there were bright lights and loud noises but Dean couldn't absorb any of them as his mind blanked and he almost lost consciousness.
When awareness returned, he looked down to see the handle of Ruby's knife, sticking out from his chest. He reached up, slowly, and pulled the knife out, letting it fall from his grasp onto the ground, just like Cas had all those years ago.
"Sam, listen to me!"
"Why the hell would I listen to the demon possessing the body of my brother?" Sam shouted, eyes panicked now that the knife was no longer available to him.
Dean sighed. "I'm not possessing the body of your brother. Well, I am, but I'm not just some demon. The Mark brought me back as a demon." He chuckled dryly. "Trust me, I'm not any happier about it than you."
For one precious second, Sam seemed to calm down, eyes suspicious instead of threatening. "Dean?" he questioned, as if briefly allowing himself to consider the possibility.
Dean nodded, making sure to blink away the black film. "Sam," he said. He'd intended it to come out strong and confirming, but it was warped and emerged emotional and thready. Damn.
What little control Dean had managed broke, and it seemed as though, even after years in Hell and time on Earth, a dam inside him broke and he realized the implications of his curse. He'd been expecting to comfort Sam when Sam needed it, not to start crying and feel Sam's arms wrap around him. Sam, clearly, had accepted or shoved Dean's new issue aside, and he could see his brother needed help.
"I still don't really believe you," Sam whispered quietly, but his embrace around his brother's shoulder did not get any less tight. Dean couldn't answer, just relaxed in Sam's grasp and allow himself to feel all the emotions. Grief, sadness, anger, pity, horror, fear, wistfulness, all of it.
He didn't want it this way. He'd wanted to die. He'd gone in expecting to either triumph or die, and he didn't care which one. He probably would have killed himself somehow when it was all over. But now it was useless. He couldn't die, because he was a Knight of Hell and because Knights couldn't even be killed by the First Blade.
Dean wanted nothing better than to just curl up and let the tears flow. He felt like, after over 35 years of pain and suffering, he could finally allow himself a moment, but he knew he couldn't. Maybe there was a cure for demons that wasn't Sam's blood, maybe there was some hope for him despite him not believing that at all.
He had to pretend, though. For Sam, who had pulled back and was holding Dean at arm's length away. For a long, long moment, neither of them said anything, merely stared at each other, hazel and green eyes meeting unflinchingly.
Dean broke the silence first. "Where's Cas?" he asked, determined to at least try to be one of them again.
Read and review! Next chapter, we get to see Cas and what he thinks of Dean's new sunglasses!
JULY 10th UPDATE: In lieu of the Season 10 synopsis that's recently been revealed, I'm thinking about rewriting it to fit that. But the jury's not yet out. I'm sorry about the lack of updates, I had a huge bout of writers block (which I still haven't really gotten over yet, but it's not as bad).
See you soon, I hope.