Dean felt torn apart from head to toe as he laid on the floor of his prison cell. Whatever they had done to him, they hadn't gone easy on him. He knew he had at least one broken rib and he was pretty certain that his cheekbone below his right eye was cracked. He could be wrong, of course, but he doubted very seriously that he was.
The pitch black of the room usually made him feel claustrophobic, but after the beating he'd only survived because they needed him to, the darkness was now so very comforting.
Dean drifted off to sleep and let his mind go. How long he slept, Dean really didn't know. Nor did he care. The longer he slept, the less he had to think about what was happening and how the god he'd prayed to hadn't answered yet. He knew that somewhere out there, Sam was looking for him. But what if Sam didn't find him in time? If these demons had their way, Dean thought for sure that he'd already be dead. He replayed the questions over and over again in his mind. They were looking for a boy, and they truly believed that this boy was his son. Probably the hardest part for Dean was that he again was struck with the thought that they could be right!
What if he really did have son out there? What if his blood really did flow through the veins of some poor kid? No matter who the kid's mother was, the poor child didn't stand a chance. Dean knew it was all over for that kid – especially if these guys were looking for him. It was a "him", right? Yes. Yes, it was. The demon had said it was looking for Dean's son.
Dean thought about Ben as he laid there on the floor of the room. The boy had been so much like him, and he'd really thought for a few minutes then how much he would have liked being Ben's father. So if he'd thought he would have loved parenthood for Ben, wouldn't he equally love it with another child? Of course he would! After all, it was what he wanted most in life – normalcy. He wanted a family, right? He just didn't want it like this. He wanted to have a real job – not one where he had lie, cheat, and steal his way through life. He wanted a house, a proper place to raise a child. A kid could only do so much "growing" in the back seat of Daddy's Impala. He was proof positive of that himself.
However, a decision made by his mother just over thirty years ago had prevented him from ever having those things. Sam, too. They'd both been doomed even before they'd been born.
Dean allowed tears to fall now. Tears of anger and sadness and hurt and more anger. He was angry at his mother for making the deal she'd made. He was angry at his father for being so hell-bent on revenge that he'd dragged Dean and Sam both down into the trenches with him. He was angry at whatever woman had his child and didn't tell him about it. Hell, he could have done something! He might have even been able to prevent this moment from coming to pass if he'd known that he had a kid. Dammit! Deep frustration and anger only got worse the longer he thought about the current situation. He'd been held prisoner in this room for however long – he'd lost track long ago – and there was apparently no way out. He was going to die right here in this place. No one would ever know what had really happened to him, and Sam was going to be the one to pay the price for that.
Dean couldn't even think about what was going to happen to Sammy. Sam would always be the one that had to wonder. Dean knew how Sam would react to that. It was the same way he'd react if it were Sam that had been trapped down here. He would never stop searching, never stop looking for his brother. Sam wouldn't, either. He'd spend the rest of his life on a manhunt for Dean, and there would be no possible way for Dean to ever give his brother a moment's peace about what had happened to him.
Dean wanted to punch something. He jumped to his feet and began to pace back and forth, looking and feeling very much like a caged animal. There were parts of his body that ached with every step he took after the beating he'd gotten earlier, but at the moment, the anger that coursed through him threw the rest of what he was feeling off balance. He didn't care that he hurt. In fact, that only fueled his rage. Even though the room was still beyond pitch black, Dean had memorized the layout of the room and knew exactly where he was. He ran over to the heavy metal door and began to kick at it. It didn't matter to him that his wimpy little human kicks wouldn't make the slightest dent in the door. He just had to do something to release some of the emotions that were running around like mad within him.
Dean continued to kick at the door until he'd literally worn himself out. Breathless and more sore than before, he stumbled back a few feet before half sitting, half falling to the floor. It was official. He'd gone completely mad. Insane. He was no longer Dean Winchester, hunter and protector of Sam Winchester. He was just a creature, much like the ones he hunted, crazy and wild, unable to distinguish reality from fantasy anymore.
Dean sat where he was on the floor and stared into the blackness. His mind had officially tipped over the edge of whatever ledge it had been standing on. He began to count. "One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand…" The numbers grew higher and higher the longer he sat there. His voice died in the hollow room the minute it left his throat, but he didn't stop. He couldn't. It was all over. He was going to die in here, and he was going to know exactly how many seconds had passed between his soul dying and his actual physical death.