A/N: Guess who lied about posting this one soon? That's right, my tired little ass. You have no idea how much trouble this chapter gave me. I think I re-wrote it about five times before being remotely satisfied with how it went. I know it stops at an awkward place, but that's as good as I was able to manage. Maybe next chapter will go more smoothly.

Also, I have to say that this is the chapter where my story goes more AU. Nothing dramatic yet, but at this point the differences start affecting the time-line.

Enjoy and please review.

DISCLAIMER: I am disclaiming that "Supernatural" and any other work recognizable as belonging to another author is not mine. The shitty dialogue is mine, though.

Dean opened his mouth. It took him a second to realize - he'd opened his mouth! He could move again. He was about to cry out to Sam that something was wrong when his body moved and his mouth formed a word that wasn't his own.

"Sammy."

Something was very, very wrong.

"Not now, Dean," Sam muttered before resuming his chant, oblivious to the train wreck happening inside his brother's mind.

"Sam Winchester," Dean's mouth said. The voice coming out of his mouth was his own, familiar one, but the intonation was all wrong. To someone who knew Dean as well as Sam did, it would become immediately apparent that the person speaking with Dean's voice was not Dean. And it did; Sam immediately reacted with pulling a gun out and aiming it at his older brother's head, though he never stopped chanting. Bobby did the same, and Dean found himself unable to move, aimed at by two experienced and extremely good shots. Today is not my day, Dean thought.

"Such a wonderful day today, isn't it?" the thing in control of his body asked, seemingly purposefully mocking Dean's earlier thought. "The sun is shining, the air is light, it's not too hot nor too cold. How are you doing, Sam Winchester and Bobby Singer?"

"What are you and what have you done with Dean?" Bobby asked in his usual gruff voice.

"You know, it's usually polite to ask "who are you," not "what are you." And I don't have to tell you. You're not interesting," the thing said, unperturbed by the two weapons pointed its way – Dean's way!

Struggling seemed vain to Dean, as he'd already tried to move a muscle, any muscle, several times during the conversation with no success. He simply relaxed as much as one could while possessed by some entity and listened to the conversation, all the while trying to mentally fight the invader and lift its hold from Dean's body.

Sam's chant was still ongoing. At this point, the littlest Winchester was throwing in the necessary ingredients for the completion of the last part of the exorcism. Dean dared hope that it would be enough to let him regain control of his body, if not to banish the thing that possessed him completely.

"I'm asking you again," Bobby demanded, "what have you done with Dean?"

"I haven't done anything with Dean, Bobby Singer," the entity replied mockingly. "He's still here, having fun riding shotgun. Do you know how many fascinating things he thinks about?"

"Leave his body before you get your ass kicked so hard you'll feel it on the other side," Bobby threatened. All he got in response was a mocking laugh and a twisted smile Dean had never made in his life.

"Oh, or you'll do what? Exorcise me?" the entity jeered, shooting an amused glance at Sam's background exorcism.

"Oh, we'll do worse to you," Bobby said.

"Short hair, don't care!" the entity said in a sing-song voice and began half-reciting, half-singing something about Humpty Dumpty. The whole thing, coming out from Dean's mouth and in Dean's voice, had a rather comical – and creepy – effect.

At this moment, Sam finished the incantations with a shout and threw something final into the bowl he had been steadily adding ingredients to. There was a great poof of smoke, and then… nothing. The two men and the entity possessing Dean looked at each other for a few seconds in silence. Dean wasn't sure whether he wanted to laugh or cry at the situation. Except he didn't cry. Of course not. Winchesters didn't cry. Then, the entity started laughing like a mad… person. The laugh was even more disturbing than the last had been. It was breathier than Dean's one and more maniacal than the mocking one the thing had emitted a few moments before.

"That's really sweet," it chortled. "It doesn't work that way, darlings."

"Really?" Sam asked. "'Cause from my perspective, you were forced to show yourself because of this exorcism." He moved closer, shifting his head closer so as to better look into Dean's eyes, as if he was trying to look through Dean's eyes and into the entity's. "We'll have no trouble finding another one that'll take you out."

"Sam, Sam, Sam," the thing chided. "Didn't you hear? You can't do that. I'm just hitching a ride," Dean was made to shrug. "I get in when I want, I get out when I want. Dean's just gonna have to wait before he gets the steering wheel back."

"So you don't intend to harm Dean?" Bobby asked. "You're just hitching a ride, and then what? Moving on to someone else? Excuse me if I don't believe your possessing lying little ass."

Hey, I don't have a – Dean thought before the entity interrupted him. "Dean doesn't have a small ass. And right now, his ass is my ass and my ass is his ass. No insults here, you insulting stupid little brain."

"Can't you just go before we kill you?" Sam asked, exasperation coloring his voice.

"You can't kill me," it answered. "After all, what are you going to do, shoot Dean?" it asked. As soon as the last word was out of his mouth, Dean regained control of his movements.

"Sam!" Dean immediately called out, "it's gone! I can move again!" he said with more relief than he'd originally intended to let be known. It had been very unsettling to have no control over his own body, to feel it talk and move without his input. If that's what it was like to be possessed by a demon…

Bobby and Sam weren't long in releasing Dean from his bonds after that, thought they kept sneaking worried glances behind his back whenever they thought Dean couldn't see. He understood that he was basically a ticking time-bomb, but there wasn't exactly anything they could do about that, except researching more lore.

The possession didn't seem to be demonic, as Dean had been conscious during the whole experience, and the holy water they'd thrown at Dean seemed to have had no effect on him.

"I hate this," Dean swore.

-:-:-:-:-:-

"I hate this," the entity said. "Do you know how weird your dreams are?" it asked the immobile Dean.

They were once again in his dreams, and Dean was once again unmoving, looking at the entity from the corner of his eyes. Even though it had started interacting with him directly during his dreams, he still couldn't see it in more detail than a dark silhouette from somewhere at the fringe of his vision.

"Too much porn and not enough gore for my taste," it continued. Dean refused to acknowledge the entity just as much as he had when it had first started monologuing at him. Not that he'd be able to speak even if he wanted to. The intention was what counted, he tried to convince himself.

"Do you ever notice how much empty space there is in your head?" the entity asked. "You focus on so little that there's so much space left."

Dean stubbornly kept his attention on the road in front of him. The dream was of him and Sam driving in the Impala, on the way to another hunt. He didn't even know why he was dreaming about that. He wasn't even sure when it had happened. The entity was in the backseat, behind and slightly to the right of Dean.

"And your brother, Sam Winchester. There's a lot of him in there. Funny how he seems not to be doing much in your dreams. Always just sitting quietly. Reading, watching, sleeping."

Dean did his outmost to focus on the road. He wasn't actually responsible for driving in this memory-turned-nightmare, and so he took the time to look at the sky, the trees speeding by the Impala, the interminable lines lining the road.

"And your father, John Winchester. There's a bit of him in here too, but it's mostly hunting lessons and punishments. Interesting."

There, a bird flew off of a branch and disappeared behind as the car drove past it. Dean was counting the number of bumps in the road. 7, 8, 9…

"And your mother, Mary Winchester. She died? That's sad. You dream about her quite a lot, too. Missing your mommy?"

Dean started singing the first song that came to mind – fittingly, Highway to Hell – as loud as he could in his mind, as if it would keep out the sound of the entity's rant.

"And you dream about Hell a lot? Do you even know what it's like? How can you dream about something in so much detail when you don't even know what it's like?

Okay, it was really really getting on his nerves now. He entertained himself with the idea of socking it in the nose – if it even had one – as hard as he could. Even that couldn't keep the anger and annoyance from rising and rising and rising.

"And- "

"Shut up!" Dean shouted as he woke up. He was completely disoriented for a few seconds until he saw that he was in one of Bobby's guest rooms. He'd woken himself up in annoyance.

The entity just wouldn't shut up. It's been days. Every time Dean would start dreaming, it would be there, at the edge of his vision, talking and talking and asking questions it knew Dean was unable to answer. It was driving him mad.

The most worrisome parts were those where the dreams seemed to shift, more and more often. They would start normally, but by the end Dean would find himself in what he imagined Hell would be like. The entity was always there, stalking him and his memories, commenting on every little thing, mocking his fears.

His inability to do anything about it was driving him absolutely insane. Even more worrying was the fact that he started getting more and more lost in his thoughts. Dean had never been the dreamt type of guy. Nowadays, he'd snap back to reality only to realize he'd been conjuring up insults to hurl back at the possessing sonofabitch instead of focusing on the road in front of him. Luckily, there's hadn't been any incident with that yet. The fact that he could crash his baby without even noticing was a scary thought.

Bobby and Sam were frantically researching anything they could in hopes of finding trace of a demon that could jump into a body without automatically taking the front seat. Dean was being kept out of it, in hopes that the entity wouldn't be able to stop their efforts to exorcize it. It was a smart idea on their part. That didn't mean Dean had to like the inaction.

He was more of the barge-in-with-guns-blazing kind of guy. Not the sit-around-and-wait-while-others-fix-the-problem type of guy. So Dean didn't; he ran errands around town for Bobby. He took care of baby. He went on a few simple hunts close-by. He cleaned and re-cleaned all of the weapons from the Impala's trunk. Hell, he even read a book or two that he pilfered from Bobby's shelves.

All through that, the nightmares and the entity plagued his night hours, never letting him rest properly. Dean had to agree with Sam that he looked like shit when he saw the black circles under his eyes. He was more twitchy than normal, more paranoid. A few times, he'd pointed his gun at what he thought was the entity before realizing that it was just Sam or Bobby coming into the room. He'd stopped going out so much after that.

-:-:-:-:-:-

One morning, almost two months after he got saddled with the entity, Dean came down to the kitchen for some breakfast. They'd bought takeout yesterday evening, and he could practically smell the leftovers from his assigned bedroom on the second floor.

He was rubbing his eyes and making a bee-line straight for the fridge when his legs gave out under him and he fell on his knees, hard, on the linoleum floor of the kitchen. Only then did he notice that the table that usually stood in the middle of the room was gone. He barely had the time to catch himself before he hit his nose on the floor. Behind him, he heard Sam's voice, reciting something. He turned around just in time to receive a face-full of holy water.

Guess they found how to exorcize me, Dean thought.

Not today, something replied in his thoughts. Dean promptly lost control of his limbs again. The entity was back in the driver's seat, and it was pissed.