*I am super sorry, I had not been prepared at all to write this chapter, I didn't plan it out this far I was just going with it, I hit a dead end and then got distracted, started watching The Originals (great show, right?) and excuses, excuses, I am super sorry.
The second part of this chapter is set after "Blade Runners" because I feel like a story about the effects of the Mark of Cain needed the effects of the Blade too.
I might add one or two more chapters after this but I am so sorry I didn't update sooner. Deepest apologies. Read and review.
The drive back to the bunker was exceptionally awkward. Sam drove as Dean, now aware enough of his surroundings to realize how much his stitched up wound hurt, was drinking heavily and in these circumstances, Sam would silently get behind the wheel and Dean would not protest. However, Dean wondered if maybe he should drive because Sam was very rarely looking at the road and more often glancing over to check on Dean.
In an apparent submission to his potential death by distracted driver Sam, Dean laid back in his seat and shut out the world and slept.
"You and I are very much alike." Cain had said, and the memory echoed in Dean's subconscious as he dreamed.
"Yeah, except I didn't kill my brother."
"You saved yours. Why?"
The question was surprisingly harder to answer than he had anticipated. He wanted to respond immediately, felt like he could. But it took him a minute to finally retort lamely,
"Because you never give up on family."
You never give up on family? What did that even mean? You continuously give up on family, just let something go that you shouldn't and move on. That's the exact opposite of not giving up.
"Where's your brother now then?"
Dean remembered how he'd felt a painful pang of regret. Why had he left Sam? Oh, right:
"I'm poison, Sam. People get close to me, they get killed- or worse. "
It was true. And with the mark burning tenderly on his arm it was only becoming more and more true. Abel-dammit- Sam wasn't safe with him. The natural pull towards murder he felt now was going to endanger anyone and everyone he encountered. He wondered if maybe he should take off again. Just to make sure he didn't lose control and do something he couldn't fix this time.
"You never give up on family."
Yeah, well, Sam's long since given up on me.
He's been pulling you back whenever you've gone all Patrick Bateman on him or someother innocent since you got the mark. He cares.
He can care. That doesn't mean he hasn't given up. He knows.
"Dean."
His eyes snapped open and he felt Sam's hand gently hitting his shoulder as he woke up.
"We're here."
He sat up in his seat, regained his bearings and shook his head clear of thoughts of Cain and Abel as he followed Sam into the bunker. And for now he felt the near attempt on his brother's life would tide him over until the next attack of Cain.
WEEKS LATER
The mark burned but Dean was barely aware of it as he fell deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of his homicidal mind.
"I can give you the mark, Dean, if it's what you truly want."
"What?"
"The mark can be transferred to someone who's worthy."
"You mean a killer like you?"
"Yes."
The mark seared its way across his forearm as it branded itself there when Cain had given it to him. But even then the feelings of rage and aggression were more difficult to overcome.
These feelings had slowly retreated back into his mind only to creep back unexpectedly and fill him with a bloodlust that felt so normal to him now.
"You'll get used to the feelings. Even welcome them."
The emotion that shook Dean's mind and soul when he held the First Blade was even stronger than the mark. He couldn't decide whether it was better or worse but the feelings of rage and aggression had been replaced by an emotionless bloodlust that stripped him of the fear the mark brought on.
That is, until he let it go. When he dropped the blade the fear of the complete lack of moral control he'd just felt hit him hard. He felt so mentally, emotionally, and even physically weak in comparison, or perhaps because of, the unimaginable power the Blade had given him.
The weakness he felt without it was almost unbearable. His hand shook, desperate to hold the Blade, desperate to feel that powerful control that a lack of thought control brought him.
He didn't think in emotions and rationale, he just thought in killing. The strategy, the practice, was unnecessary now that anything he wanted to kill was going to die. He couldn't miss unless he wanted to.
His hand shook, his eyes stared out into space, seeing only peaceful, bloody red.
"Dean?"
He snapped back into reality as Sam suddenly walked into his line of vision.
"You okay?" He sounded genuinely uncertain and the worry was evident in his tone.
Dean blinked, cleared his throat, "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."
Sam stared at him, he knew he was lying to him and the concern only etched itself deeper into Sam's furrowed brow bone.
"You're sweating." Sam said flatly.
Dean hadn't been aware of this. He touched his forehead gingerly and his fingers came off with a dab of moisture clinging to each of them. Not to mention the fire that was growing inside his head.
After his run-in with Magnus and his first time holding the Blade, the effects of the Mark seemed to have gotten worse. He wasn't afraid of what he was becoming, he was afraid of what he already was. The second the Blade hit his palm he felt a familiarity but also a more potent strength than he'd experienced before with the rage that embodied him.
He felt like a twisted combination of how he'd been after he'd lost John, and he felt the power and the sickness of himself as a torturer in Hell, and he felt the purity of his kills in Purgatory, but worst of all he felt himself beginning to understand the person Zachariah told him he would become in 2014 if Croatoan and the apocalypse began again.
In fact, next to how he felt now, the soldier of a man he saw execute his own friend in cold blood because he might've eben infected, looked like a logical, upstanding citizen.
"Dean-"
"I said I'm fine, Sam." Dean said, wiping the sweat off his head, an uncontrollable fury stirring inside him, "So, I run a little hotter now and I get a little twitchy. Hey, at least I'm not firing weapons at an invisible Satan or drinking demon blood."
He knew it was entirely uncalled for. He knew he was completely in the wrong and that he should apologize because it was his own fault, and his alone, that this was happening to him. If he'd let Cain explain what was going to happen, he might've been able to control some of this. Or maybe he might not've accepted it.
But Sam just scoffed, in that obvious attempt to cover how hurt he'd actually been. And he walked off, glancing back at Dean with worry etched clearly into his face.
Dean picked up his whiskey glass and hurled it at the wall Sam had just passed.
Why am I doing this?!
He couldn't control himself. And the familiarity of the feeling was beginning to make him think this might not just be the Mark of Cain or the Blade that made him like this.
He'd always been a monster.