A/N: Same stuff applies as in the Author's Notes chapter. Oh, and unfortunately I neither own Supernatural nor Dark Angel. Just this.

A/N part two: Specific episodes mentioned of Supernatural are: "Pilot," "Skin," "Hollywood Babylon," "What Is and What Should Never Be," "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part I," "The Kids Are Alright," and "Heaven and Hell." Specific episodes of Dark Angel mentioned are: none.

Of Desire and the Status Quo

Chapter I: Normal

June 10, 2021

In the end, it's a complete and total accident that gets Dean Winchester out of Hell.

In the end, Sam Winchester is twenty-six hundred miles away in Port Royal, Pennsylvania, investigating a multiple haunting taking place in a mine, an explosion that had, he discovers, occurred exactly a hundred years ago.

In the end, it's three a.m. and Max Guevara and Alec McDowell are fighting over who gets to take point on the next of Logan's Eyes Only missions, childishly in Mole's opinion.

In the end, Ames White and his group of Familiars have just finished reciting a full three pages of Latin—something to prepare for their brand of Apocalypse—never the wiser that they just unleashed one of Hell's most loved and hated denizens. (Loved, because Dean had exorcised many a demon, and all were out for his blood, so when he entered Hell…well, torturing him was their recess; hated, because even trapped for eternity in the Underworld, sliced and carved twenty-four/seven with no way out, Dean could still piss them off to the point where they wished he'd be let out, if only to spare them the constant irritation.)

In the end, an X5 who worked in Manticore's Psy Ops and now lives in one of Terminal City's rundown apartments wakes with a start, sweat streaming down her back, Alec's face covered in blood and soot clouding her vision. But that can't be right—Alec is just a few buildings over and perfectly okay. X5-685 chalks it up to her taxed brain mixing settings and goes back to sleep, not knowing her vision is real.

To say Dean is tired would be the biggest fucking understatement in the history of the world. He'd thought he'd been tired before, but this? Made those other times feel like he was swaddled in cloud candy. His fatigue is not bone-deep, but even deeper, dribbling into all of his being, into his soul, or whatever is left of it. His head feels like Sammy's—where is Sam?—did when he used to have his intense premonitions. Like the time Dean had gotten Andy's telepathic Get-your-ass-over-here-now! message. His lungs feel punctured, his stomach feels like it's been shot with JHP hollow-points, his eyes feel like sandpaper, his very skeleton feels sawn and brittle, his skin feels tight and gaunt, seared and torn all over.

Funny, that's what Dean has felt like ever since the end of that first day in Hell. Which had to be…well, somewhere around over fifteen hundred years ago. (Dean counted. Anything to help keep his mind away from the sizzling of his own flesh on an entrails-fueled fire.) To be more specific, one thousand, five hundred-sixty years in Hell.

'Course, he'd only found that out once he got down there and they decided to throw in psychological torture with the physical, that one month on Earth was equivalent to ten years in Hell. That day had sucked major ass. Especially because it meant he was that much more worried about his own sanity; he knew Sam would look for a way to spring him from the Pit, but it just meant Dean would be waiting a hell of a lot longer—pun so fucking intended—than Sam would.

The second thing he notices, after the whole I-feel-like-I'm-dying-again thing, is that he's definitely not where he's spent the last four hundred or so years. Another part of Hell's psych torture was presenting him with false scenes of Sam getting him out of Hell only a little the worse for wear, and then the bastards would rip it away through various violent means. Many of which included Sam getting ripped to pieces or some such, Dean left alone again. And then they'd yank him back to the rack and he'd realize it was all a nightmare within an even larger, real nightmare.

But after a few centuries or so of this, Dean began to realize that, oh wait, the demons would keep trying this crap until his mind broke. Unfortunately for them, they'd underestimated his stubbornness. They'd thought that John's stonewalling was legendary…ha. They'd not encountered Dean's. If anyone in the universe embodies the definition of obstinate and intractable, it's Dean Winchester.

Anyone who knows him well—namely Sam—would say, even under threat of ass kicking, that Dean has a heart of gold and would go to the ends of the Earth to save even a stranger if he had to. But he didn't live with mediating between John and Sam (not to mention dealing with John's hidden and angry depression after Sam left, and Sam's Eeyore personality) without gaining an iron will when he needed to use it. Okay, so he didn't think he'd have to use it just to maintain a fragment of sanity while being sliced and diced in fucking Hell, but then again, life's a cruel bitch that way.

No one's said demons don't catch on eventually, though. And once they acknowledged that, hmm, this Dean guy's not giving into that brand of torture, they went with a different tactic. And although they returned to the physical torture with a newfound vengeance—Christ, despite the fact that Dean's body went more or less back to its original state every "day," he's still uncertain that that part of his anatomy returned to normal after one particular torture session—they coupled it with a little isolation here, a little more alternate reality there, what have you. Until Dean was crying out in pain as well as screaming the kinds of screams he didn't think at all sounded like him but couldn't be anyone else.

But Dean wouldn't break. He couldn't. As long as he held onto that shred of hope—hope? Dean? Yeah, he hardly believed it either—that his baby brother Sammy would swoop in and rescue him, he was sure he could maintain his mind. And as much as Dean appreciated, and knew other people appreciated, his body, his mind was the thing he treasured most. Almost equal with Sam. After all, Dean didn't average a full one sixty-two on those few I.Q. tests John once gave to him and his brother for nothing. (Sam averaged one forty-five, Dean remembers.)

There were a few days back then where tensions were high, once John recognized the certainty that Dean would be admitted to any university in the country if he so chose. In at least one way it was a good thing when Sam voiced his desires to go to college and Dean stayed silent. Winchesters were good at that restraining "unreasonable" aspirations thing. Dean didn't say anything about his intelligence or schooling unless it was derisive or jibes at Sam; and John never mentioned those acceptance letters from schools like Yale, UCLA, Brown, and Boston College that bore Dean's name and a vigorous "Please come here, we'd love to have you" from important sounding officials, letters Dean had definitely read and not crumpled, but had forgotten to completely hide underneath his smokescreen of porno mags and spare Bowie knives.

Which had made John wonder: how had Dean managed to portray himself as such a slacker and delinquent to the point where his schools would track down his father just to scold him, if Dean was able to get high enough marks and test scores (John'd had no idea when Dean had managed to take the SAT, but he'd gotten a nearly perfect score despite everything) to get into the freakin' Ivy Leagues? Talk about teaching his sons all sorts of tricks backfiring on him. Leading an academic double life was practically nothing compared to the kinds of paperwork gymnastics Dean'd have had to have performed in order to apply with his real name and everything and yet keep his identity a secret.

That was part of the reason, John'd reluctantly allowed, that he was so hurt after Sam left. It wasn't just his youngest son that walked out; it was a part of Dean, a part of Dean that, in all likelihood, would have been pursued had Sam not stormed away first. In truth, Sam himself had thought the exact same thing that day so long ago when the thing that had Dean's face but wasn't Dean snarled, He's sure got issues with you. You got to go to college, he had to stay home. I mean, I had to stay home. With Dad. You didn't think I had dreams of my own? But Dad needed me. Where the hell were you?

Sam, of course, couldn't answer any of those questions, and honestly, he'd been so hung up on Jessica and wanting to find John that he hadn't lent the questions much thought. Not till much later, and by that time, even if he were able to come up with a way to broach the topic, there was no possibility that Dean would give him a straight answer.

That was the worst of it. That Dean had so wanted to lead a normal life—arguably more than Sam even—and go to a college that his higher-than-normal intelligence could get him into, and yet he'd never, ever admit it, not even to himself. Sam wouldn't trade road tripping with Dean for the world (okay, maybe he would, if it meant Dean wouldn't have gone to Hell), but living with knowing that deep down Dean probably resented not only his missed opportunities, but also his brother just a little, was Hell for Sam, too. (Me, I know I'm a freak. And sooner or later, everybody's gonna leave me.)

That's all moot at this point, though, and it isn't like Dean knows what Sam and John had thought anyway. No, at this point, Dean is feeling like he spent almost two millennia in the Pit, and he knows, in a way he can't quite describe, that he's not in Kansas anymore. (Were Kansas fire, brimstone, and scalding knives, that is.) Maybe it's the dank, dark, wooden ceiling that smells of real must, or the vague hints of real sunlight filtering through little mouse holes on the ground, or…wait...voices. Like…people voices. Not the ichor-laden hissings of demons and Hellhounds, but real, resonating, articulating voices of men and women. Granted, they aren't speaking English, they're speaking the Latin that Dean's been fluent in since age eleven, but he can still tell they're human.

And it's that fact that causes Dean to dare to think that maybe, maybe, maybe, he's not in Hell. That somehow he busted free. Maybe someone opened the Devil's Gate again and he stumbled out (because John had climbed valiantly, but Dean being Dean, would be the kind of person who'd amble, yet smirk and crack a one-liner like he's friggin' John Dillinger before passing out face first. Then Sam'd take him purposefully to a hospital without hot nurses just in case, you know, Hell wasn't enough). Or maybe Sam had made a bet with an evil son of a bitch and the being had lost. Or maybe Sam had made a deal…

No. Dean won't go there. He won't. He casts that idea away from him, as well as the reeling he's doing over the steadily becoming truer prospect that he's not Lilith's dolly anymore, because neither of those will aid him now. Now, he needs to focus. He takes silent stock of his body once more, and to his shock realizes that he's not got a scratch on him, least not that he can detect. Perhaps that rock digging right into his spinal cord is a wee bit pesky, but overall, no breaks, no bruises, none of the slightly ridged scars he could sometimes feel when he moved a certain way.

Moreover, he appears to be exactly like right before he'd died. Which, in retrospect, he should have thought makes sense, considering the demons would get more satisfaction out of making a youthful man cry than a geriatric one, but then, the guy does deserve a break. Regardless, he can't say he's not the very smallest bit glad that, in all physicality, he's back to being twenty-nine again. From now on, he vows, he'll never complain about getting older, or let anyone annoy him with it, again. And just for that, the first thing he's going to do once he gets all re-calibrated, is get a double bacon cheeseburger. Extra onions.

Next, he concentrates on the voices he'd been so psyched—all right, maybe psyched isn't quite the word, but whatever—to hear. He hasn't heard Latin in more than half a millennium, and then it was only some sort of spell to hurt Dean even more, but languages have a tendency to stick with you. And when he deciphers enough of what they're chanting, a small chill runs through his body.

This isn't your everyday, joke shop Latin that some band of teenagers decided would be cool to recite, just because. This is the real deal. And Dean has a sudden flashback to that case he and Sam had worked back in Los Angeles; only that was a movie set, and Dean senses this isn't exactly the same.

In any event, he doesn't like this. Which totally goes along with his luck. Or lack thereof. Since when has anything in his life gone right? Figures that the moment he finds out he's escaped Hell, he's placed smack dab in the middle of some sort of summoning ritual…or maybe it's a deity worshipping…either way, not daisies and puppies, that's for damn sure. And they're saying something about snakes. Dean hates snakes.

He decides to try moving. His bones creak inside him, his muscles intact but feeling atrophied, and he wishes he had some water. Just a drop or two would be great. But no, the best new news he has at the moment is that he's hidden behind a stack of crates, and he stifles a groan as he gets on his knees and peers through two boxes. He's glad that, however he got out, he's able to wear airy attire; all he sports is his green t-shirt, jeans, and cropped hair, which means he doesn't feel the solid heat of the warehouse as badly. He's had quite enough heat to last, oh, about twenty-one lifetimes, thank you very much.

Not so much can be said about the group of people spouting Latin. They are dressed all in dark, blood-red, heavy cloaks, like they're from freaking Harry Potter or something, and, to Dean's dismay, have a good number of big-ass serpents hanging around. He just hopes they don't smell him or what the fuck ever. The last thing he needs is a snake snarling and clawing after him. Shut up, snakes totally snarl and claw, they do.

Dean decides now is the time that, were this a script, his cue would read "Dean Winchester exitstage left." He looks around and, all right fine, maybe he does have one last stroke of good luck, because he finds that there's a door a few feet from him that is ajar. The wood looks rotten, and even though the hinges look as if they're made solely from ferrous oxide, they don't appear to be ones that squeak like trapped rats.

So, with one last shuddering glance at the conglomeration of wizard freaks (or whoever they are, Dean really doesn't want to stick around and find out), and with more grace than he thinks he had, he silently creeps across the dusty floor, seeking shadows, and makes his way to the door. One of those damn snakes looks at him, beady eyes calculating, forked tongue flicking out, but it doesn't seem to be able to speak—hey, after what Dean's seen, he wouldn't put that past it—and none of the humans pay attention, so he steps through the door.

Like he'd suspected, it doesn't creak, and Dean finds himself in an alleyway. It's frankly rather putrid, though not much compared to some of the things Dean's viewed and been forced upon him (that decade was totally disgusting, Dean would be more than happy to not relive it. Ever). Puddles line the burgundy brick, filled with particles Dean doesn't want to contemplate, and there's a few cardboard boxes scattered around, what looks like a tattered pair of slacks hanging off one of them.

Satisfied there's no immediate threat (yeah, like he'd be able to defend himself anyway. He's about as intimidating right now as a runt cockapoo), Dean starts walking away from the warehouse, the alleyway leading into some abandoned parking lot. He's far enough away from the freakish robed people that he dares to look up. And there's…

The sky.

It's gray, watery, and filled with large rain clouds that oppress everything around them, but it's the most beautiful sight Dean's ever seen.

It's…it's the sky. Dean hardly ventures to hope that that muted ball of light behind one of the clouds is the sun. Because if it's really the sun, then that means it's bright and yellow, and not a sparking red. Hell had a sun, you see, but it seemed old to Dean, old and weary and tortured by Hell's denizens just like Dean was. Like it'd given up and all that was left was a crimson half-circle, the massive star stalled in a gruesome version of a sunset. It screeched hate and horror, and Dean never wanted to look at it.

But this one…well, this one is young and happy and real, and Dean, of all things, starts to laugh.

His voice is barely more than a whisper, what with his vocal cords not having been used in over a thousand years apart from shrieks, and it's to be honest rather maniacal, but Dean just laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs until he's afraid he's going to burst. But then he looks at the quicksilver sky again and he falls to the slimy ground and nearly kisses it, but is too busy with a new wave of laughter. He feels tears start to fall, tears of mirth, and then his body betrays him.

The tears of mirth turn into tears of pure, raw, sheer pain. And they're not like Dean's laughter, they don't seem to have an end in sight. Dean feels the salty, acidic water make tracks down his face, knows there is a well buried deep within his core, sapping whatever few emotions he has left and hauling them up, up, up.

Dean cries for being in Hell. For all the centuries he didn't let himself cry until the demons went for the tear ducts directly. For all the centuries he couldn't do anything but watch as his fingernails were dragged out of his nail beds one by one, slowly. For all the centuries he had to watch other souls being tortured, that one young woman who appeared so innocent and alluring and remorseful Dean wanted to look away as her hair was ripped out and her body was filleted, but the demons forced him to stare. For all the centuries he wished he could tell people he loved them before he went to Hell. For all the centuries he bereaved the millions of opportunities he'd had in the past but chose not to act on them; like Lisa, who he knew in his heart had lied to him about being Ben's father and with whom he knew he could've had a life; or Ruby, whom he could've killed when he had the chances (he'd found out she was a lying bitch who'd played them like fiddles, and who knows where she is now); or Mom, to whom he'd never said I love you often enough (and, goddamn it, why didn't he say it when they'd gone back to Lawrence, or even when the djinn had fucked with his head?), or Sammy and Dad, to whom he'd never said it, as far as he can remember.

Dean cries for Sammy. He wishes he could've stayed in contact with his brother those many years ago, John's shouts of Your brother made his fucking choice, Dean, he chose to leave, now leave him, that's an order be fucked. He wishes he'd lied about a hunt taking a week when he could've said it took two and driven to Palo Alto and said, Sammy, I'm sorry. Forgive me. You've got to forgive me, Sammy. Oh, is this Jessica? She's beautiful, Sam, she really is. Look, I understand if you don't want me in your life, but God, Sammy, just forgive me, please, but he didn't. He wishes he'd waited a few days until he broke into Sam and Jess's apartment; wishes Sam could have proposed, because Sam had told him once that the day Dean ruined his life, he planned on asking Jess to spend forever with him. And, God help him, he wants a sister-in-law. Much as he loves Sam, he's always thought having a sister would be nice.

Dean cries for his childhood. For Mom dying when he was only four and barely able to cling to her memory. For Mom dying when Sam was only six months old and unable to cling to her memory. For Dad going on his blind crusade for death and destruction to a nemesis he'd named freakin' Yellow Eyes, for Christ's sake. (What kind of name is that?) For Dad dragging his still-says-"rabbit"-with-a-"w" and can't-do-more-than-gurgle sons along, leaving them in motel rooms where they could get kidnapped, taken by CPS, or get fucking tetanus and John wouldn't know because he's unconscious somewhere in Nowhere, Tennessee, and Dean and Sam are in Nowhere, Virginia. For Bobby acting as babysitter—Bobby denies it of course—with puppy Rumsfeld knocking baby Sam onto the rug, forced to abandon his quiet semi-retirement of hunting to care for two kids he'd more likely feed beer and Doritos than vegetables for Dean and mashed peaches for Sam, while their daddy went to kill what he thought was a spirit but turned out to be a poltergeist and came back with a mangled leg that put him in ICU for a week. For Dean having to act like a father, mother, and brother for Sammy, as well as a son and hunter for John, which meant he took fifty times more guilt and responsibility than any adult would dream of. For his childhood that was completely and utterly nonexistent.

But most of all, Dean cries for the future he could have had. Fuck it, he wishes he'd never met that stupid djinn, never got that glimpse of what life could have been. He hates ifs, ands, and buts, and yet that alternate reality? There are no words for how much he wanted to stay. He'd told Sam he did, but…Sam had no idea, he didn't. He didn't know how, with even one single extra word from Mom, or Sammy, or Carmen, or Jess, Dean would drop the knife and collapse to his knees, and Mom would come over and cradle him in her arms like he was four again, not twenty-eight, and Dean would sob, but no one would care.

Mom would shh him, and maybe sing that song Dean's never forgotten—it's "Tomorrow," from some musical, and Mom always said the sun would come out when Dean woke up (but the day after she dies, Dean remembers there was the worst thunderstorm in the Midwest in forty years) and he knows all the words, but he's never told Sam, because if he does, Mom's voice'll fade away—no matter how much Metallica he plays. And Mom would hold him for however long it took for Dean to stop crying, and then she'd hold him till he fell asleep, and she'd let him sleep at home; then Carmen would pull up a chair next to the couch, and she would rest close to him, but not hold him yet, because that was Mom's job.

Not that Dean would be helpless: he'd have a good job, and he knows he'd be a great dad. Carmen wouldn't be Lisa, and he wouldn't have Ben, but he thinks that'd be okay. He'd want a girl and a boy, he thinks, and maybe name them Mary and Sam, but he's not sure, because Dean wouldn't hear the end of it from his brother. (Maybe a middle name, then.) Dean can't have that future, though, 'cause John only saw Mary, and he didn't see his sons, didn't see that Dean wanted—wants—a normal family, more than anything in the whole world. John took it away, and though Dean's world is hunting, his soul is written with normal, and safe, and love, and family, and grow old together, and, more importantly, no hurt, no death, no pain, no hunting.

And then the sky opens up, and he's huddled against that brick wall, and he feels like the raindrops are his own tears, like the tears on his face aren't enough to show how much he hurts. Like maybe this is like what Hell was supposed to make him feel. Then he realizes:

Dean wants normal, but normal doesn't want Dean.