I got finals next week so I can't promise when I'll resolve this giant cliffhanger.

Where the river lies.

Dean felt like a wreck and he was pretty sure Castiel could see it, no matter how hard he tried to hide how he felt.

"Why don't you get some more sleep?" Castiel said. "I'll, I'll get us something to eat and make sure they pick up Gabriel."

Dean wanted to protest, but he knew it wasn't a bad idea. Even though he'd only been awake for about half an hour, his leg wore him out.

He would never be able to fight Lilith and win.

"You won the Games Cas," he smiled, falling on his back in the high grass. "Congratulations."

He didn't see Cas' worried face anymore. When he closes his eyes, Dean was fast asleep.

It was a long, dreamless sleep and Dean was happy with it. No Alastair, no Anna, no Jo, not even Gabriel came to torture him with his guilt and betrayal.

So when he woke up, he really felt rested. The sun was just peeping over the horizon and Dean smelled meat.

"Hello Dean," Castiel smiled. "I borrowed Jo's sling, if you don't mind, and caught us a few rabbits."

Dean felt a little worried, because he'd started to get attached to the sling and his knife, even though he probably wouldn't get to keep them when he went back to 12.

If he went back to 12. He was written off the moment that cursed Hound clawed his leg open.

Cas took the rabbit off the improvised skewer and handed one leg to Dean.

"Be careful, they're hot." He smiled.

"Why haven't you killed me yet?" he took the rabbit's leg and just, blurted that out.

Cas looked up, a little startled, but his eyes narrowed and he looked at Dean with that damned I-do-not-understand-look that Cas had mastered so perfectly.

"Don't try to work your way out of this with your baby-blues Cas." Dean grumbled. "I asked you a perfectly reasonably question. I am a cripple and you can easily take Lilith down on your own. Only one gets to win, Cas."

Cas shrugged. "I don't want to think about it. I don't want to kill you."

"I don't want to kill you either," Dean said. "So there's only one solution, we split up, like we were going to do before..."

Before Gabriel died. But he couldn't say it.

"But..." Castiel began.

"No." Dean shook his head and grabbed his backpack. "Castiel, you have helped me a lot, you saved my life more than once and what for? You deserve it Cas. You deserve to win. More than me."

Dean started dividing the supplies, he gave Cas the bottle but gave himself more bandages. He shared the food equally but left the matches, rope and blankets with Cas.

With his leg when he probably wouldn't even make it through the night.

And if he did, he would die of infections.

"So this is it?" Cas jumped up. "I saved you so many times,"

"This is for the best Cas." Dean said.

"We've been through much together, you and I, so why wouldn't we finish this together?"

Dean sighed. He got up too. "Because... because I don't want to have to fight you too Cas, like I didn't want to fight Anna. And I also don't want you to die. You deserve that cursed crown more than me. You should get out."

He said that looking Cas straight in the eyes, to make sure Castiel saw he meant it. He truly believed that Cas was the winner.

He would be dead now if it wasn't for Cas. He owed him his life.

And he was going to repay him.

Cas tilted his head, frowning. "You don't think you deserve to be saved." He stated.

Dean clenched his teeth. Castiel was right, but Dean didn't think he deserved to be saved, he knew it.

"Thank you for helping me, Cas." He said. He got up, grabbed a sturdy looking stick to use as an improvised crutch and limped away from his friend.

He didn't want to look back. He didn't want to see Cas' big eyes staring at him, betrayed, sad, scared.

When his shield was up, Castiel was a fighter, a strong warrior that would smite everyone standing in his way.

But when you got past the shield, when Castiel became your friend, he was small and sweet, he didn't understand anything, he was nervous and awkward and that's what made Castiel special.

He needed to bring that boy back to his District.

Everything would get better for him, he would get to live in Victor's Village, he would make new friends and could read books for the rest of his life.

Dean nodded. Before he would let his leg get to him, he had to kill Lilith. For Cas.

What a great way to say goodbye, he thought, but he shook that off. This was the solution.

But how was he going to kill Lilith? He had Jo's sling, but as many others had nicely put it, he couldn't hit a bear if it was right in front of him.

After he felt like he had put enough distance between him and Cas, Dean got the sling out of his bag and loaded it with a bullet.

He picked an oak for a target and started slinging the sling above his head, like he had seen Jo do many times.

One, two, three,

He let the sling go and, to his surprise, it actually went in the right direction.

He missed the tree, but he wasn't as far off as he'd expected and he loaded the sling up again.

Dean had fired fifteen sets of twelve bullets, when his arm got tired and he decided to stop. He wasn't expecting a miracle, but if he could hide in a tree and lure Lilith out onto a clearing, he could knock her unconscious and kill her while she was out.

A little bit cowardly, but it was self-defence.

Self-defence, yeah right.

But, Lilith had killed Jo. Well, she hadn't, Raphael had, but it was all Lilith's idea.

Lilith's idea and his stupidity.

He should probably hurry up. If he took too long, the Game makers might decide that it was too boring for the Capitol people to watch.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would go after Lilith.

Today, he had to practice.

Dean picked the sling up again.

He knew he would never become an expert in one day, but he managed to get pretty accurate after a couple of hours of practicing.

When it got to dark to properly see his target, Dean ate some of the cold supplies and rolled up in a bush, hoping that Lilith wouldn't find him.

He hoped and prayed that this night would be easy for him, that Alastair would leave him be, but he was ever so wrong.

"Well well, still alive then?"

"Leave me alone," Dean said. His head lulled forward. "Please, just, just leave me alone."

"Why would I?"

This time, Dean was in a dark room, he was tied to a chair and the only source of light was a shady lamp in the corner.

Alastair was standing in front of him, with the surgical knife.

"Because I know that I'm a monster, I don't need you to tell me!" Dean cried out. He wanted to lunge forward, but he was tied to the chair with leather belts so he wasn't much of a threat to anyone.

The chair itself didn't even move, it was probably bolted to the floor.

"Yes, so it's all your fault?" Alastair stroked Deans face with the knife. "Jo, Balthazar, Gabriel, and all the others, even the ones you hate, Raphael, Michael. Did they deserve to die? They acted just like you did, they only wanted to go back home."

"Everyone in here wants to go home. Only one can. They can just suck it up." Dean growled.

"Really?" Alastair moved the knife down to his left leg and applied pressure to cut through the fabric of his jeans. "Do they? And what about Castiel?"

"You stay away from him."

Alastair pushed harder and broke skin. "Why? He is the only one that doesn't want to go home. He has no home. And you are forcing him into a porcelain cage."

Alastair smiled. "Oh- a nice little home in Victor's Village. You know what I think Dean?"

"I don't care what you think." Dean spat Alastair in the face.

"I think you don't want to go home." Alastair wiped the saliva off his face, but didn't react on it in any other way.

"Shut up!" Dean bellowed. "I do want to go home."

"You don't." Alastair shook his head. "You are running away from you responsibilities. You don't want to take care of Sammy anymore, you don't want to go back to the mine."

"If I went back, I wouldn't go back into the mine." Dean growled.

"Smart, smart," Alastair nodded, with a smile on his face that read 'trouble'. "But do you know what I think the real reason is? You're afraid Dean."

"I'm not afraid!"

"Yes, yes you are." Alastair sounded so, belittling. Dean wanted to punch him in the face if it wasn't for the belts.

"And I know exactly what you're afraid of."

Alastair got up and walked over to the shady lamp.

Dean's heartbeat raised a little. Alastair was right. In the dark he couldn't see where his enemy was going anymore. He tried to keep his breathing under control, but he was pretty sure Alastair could hear him panic.

"You're afraid of the dark," his Demon smiled. He turned the lamp off and Dean lost sight of him. He could hear footsteps, but he didn't know where they were coming from.

Suddenly, he felt the cool blade against his cheek again.

"Admit it Dean. Just admit it."

Dean woke up, sweaty and sticky. He looked around for any signs of enemies, but there was no-one there.

He sighed, relieved.

In the East, the sun had just risen and she gave the forest a fresh, cool look.

"Today is the last day." He said to himself.

Last day on Earth.

He felt a little melancholic. If you'd asked him three years ago how he'd spent his last day, he wouldn't have said in the Arena, without his friends and family.

He had breakfast, some leftovers from the rabbit, some of the bread and dried fruits Cas had found and some...

Water.

He had left the water bottle at Cas, so now he would have to go look for a stream or river.

"First the bandage," he mumbled.

In the next twenty minutes, Dean found out how hard it was to safely remove and reapply a bandage without ripping the wound open.

Castiel had managed to stop the bleeding by stopping the blood flow in his left leg using a tourniquet, and had seared the artery close with his own ragged knife, hoping it would hold. Then he had removed the tourniquet to prevent his leg from dying away.

Dean could also just rip it open, and it would be over in three minutes, tops.

He shook his head.

No more running away you selfish bastard. You need to help Cas first.

He quickly applied some of the ointment he had still left from Bobby's gift and wrapped a thick layer of bandage around it.

The pressure felt good, it was a stronger feeling than the actual pain and helped him relax.

The pain also brought him a little back to Earth. He needed to stay focused on his mission for today.

Dean got up and walked around for a few minutes, to get the blood flow going.

When he armed himself with his sling and his ragged knife, he looked at it, a little bewildered. He had never actually given it much attention, because it was a practical knife, one side was smooth, for precise cutting and the other ragged, for hacking.

It had a long, sharp tip for stabbing and that just made it perfect.

Until now, he had never noticed the weird writings on the side. It didn't look very Latin or Celtic, more like, ancient Northern European Runes.

He had read about similar looking symbols in one of the books he found in the Seam.

When he held the knife up in the sunlight he saw that there was still traces blood on it, in the carvings.

It had dried up, so trying to wipe it off was hopeless, but it made it shine more beautiful.

The reddish shine looked almost transparent, like a gemstone.

Like a Ruby...

He chuckled.

Ironically enough, that was also the name of the first person the knife had killed.

He shook his head when he remembered about Anna. He didn't want to remember Anna.

Ruby would be its name anyway. Ruby is a nice name for a knife.

He didn't say it out loud, Dean wanted to keep this to himself. It was his knife, so the entire country didn't have to know that he shared some weird bond with it.

He wanted to get up to go look for Lilith, when he heard rustling of leaves to his left.

Probably a rabbit or something like that, he thought.

Boom.

But for who?