Dad had taught Dean how to make a tourniquet when he was eleven years old. He'd known how to do it desperate, when you had few supplies and fewer minutes to stop the bleeding before you were carrying a corpse back rather than your buddy. Dean hadn't asked then, and never did, how many times John got it wrong before he'd gotten any good at them. It wasn't the sort of thing that occurred to a kid, not one who saw their dad take down creatures twice his size to protect his son, the one he sat out in the open to lure them in. It came to Dean a lot more as an adult when the people dared care about dropped like flies around him.

It felt like their world had gotten so much smaller, though it was already a corner all their own to begin with, only a few familiar faces popping in to say hi. Dad's bones would be rotted clean by now if Dean hadn't burned them himself. Jo and Ellen were ghosts that Dean had trouble remembering the voices of. Rufus went out too quickly to say goodbye, and Bobby went out too slowly for it not to hurt. The old guard was down to him and Sam.

And the Mark on Dean's arm made him more monster than man. Hell, if Dean was someone else, he'd want to hunt himself. Not that it would do any good, down for the count an hour or three and back out of the grave with black eyes and a fuzzy grasp on why he shouldn't bash his brother's brains in.

Dean shuddered. His arm was almost numb below his elbow. The tourniquet squeezed the life out of him, but even through the dim sensation beyond it, he felt the Mark digging its claws into him as deep as it could. Dean grinned, drunk off the adrenaline seeing the saw he'd sharpened up for this sent through his body.

And off of the bottles littering the floor around their kitchen counter. It had seemed funny when he handcuffed himself to it: chopping a hunk of himself off where he cut up the deli meat from that little place Sam liked. He couldn't feel the cold metal of the cuff anymore or the counter beneath his arm. There was only dull pressure left. He glanced down at his fingers and moved them barely. The were tipped in blue.

Dean reached for his phone. He tapped out Sam's phone number and held it to his ear until he heard it ring. The sound of it rattled through Dean's skull as his vision swam. He leaned more of his weight against the counter. His other hand clenched up into a fist. The saw glinted his own determined expression back at him, teeth bared for both him and the weapon he'd use to set himself free. Sam's phone rang twice before he picked it up.

"Hey-"

"I'm cutting it off," Dean told him. There wasn't a point in beating around the bush. Sam's silence was one of shocked confusion.

"Sorry?" He paused, and without seeing him, Dean could picture his frown perfectly, a wrinkle between his brows and his nose scrunched up. He'd been doing it since he was a kid. Dean wondered if Sam knew how much he looked like Dad when he made that face. "Are you drunk?"

"Very," Dean answered. He'd done his job in worse condition. Sam knew that. "I'm only calling to make sure you start heading home. I don't want to die of blood loss."

"What?" Sam said, alarmed now. He couldn't write whatever Dean was saying off to drunken rambles. Good. This was serious. "Dean-"

"Listen. My arm. The one with the Mark. I'm cutting it off. No more fucking around trying to find a cure. I'm taking care of it, Sammy." He heard Sam's breathing pick up on the other end of the phone. He'd be paler, Dean thought, and his eyes would be wide and watery with panic.

"Dean, don't. You-"

"I didn't call you to talk me out of it," he snapped, a tendril of anger that was clever enough to feel like his own strangling him. He tried to rein it back in, but he still sounded like he was trying to bite Sam's head off. "Get in your car. Go back to the Bunker. Get ready to keep me from dying."

Sam didn't say a word. All Dean could hear was his breathing and the faint sound of his pacing footsteps. Dean stared down at the saw. It was so easy. He couldn't believe they hadn't thought of it before. If he trusted Sam to make the tough call, he'd have had him here to take the damn arm off himself while Dean was strapped down, but Sam wasn't capable of that anymore. (And Dean was good at telling him what was going to happen over the phone, but facing down those eyes begging him to stop in person? He couldn't take the chance that he'd back down. This was for Sam's own good as much as Dean's.)

"No," Sam said, his voice shaking. "I'm- I'm not. I'm staying right here." Dean glared at the opposite wall. The Mark whispered to him a tempting fantasy, his hands around Sam's neck, choking him out until the only words out of his mouth were, Yes, sir. I'm on my way.

Dean bashed his fist against the counter. He didn't have to see Sam flinch. He knew it had happened. No matter how far away Sam was from him right now, he was still scared of Dean.

"What the Hell do you mean 'no'?" Dean demanded.

"I'm not coming. I'm not going home to find you bleeding out on the floor." Dean worked his jaw. It stung like betrayal, but he knew his brother better. Sam was aiming higher than that. He was looking for a bluff that didn't exist, thinking he could make Dean stop if he stayed away. Dean let out a long, slow exhale. Calm settled over him. The Mark's heartbeat was steady up his numb arm, and he didn't care what he had to do to silence it.

"You've been waiting for this." Dean knew where Sam was tender, easy to bruise. "Want me to know you keep your word, huh? Same circumstances, you won't lift a finger to keep me from death's door." Sam made a noise, soft and hurt like a prey animal in the jaws of something hungry.

"That's not-"

"You talk a big game about curing the Mark and saving me, but you don't mean it. You're just going to leave me to die." Dean bit down harder, wringing more pained noises from Sam's throat with each accusation.

"You won't." He didn't know what Sam's aiming for, but it ended up as begging. "You won't do it. You'll die if I don't come, and I won't, so-"

"So what?" Dean took the phone from his ear and set it down, turning it to speaker. "You don't care enough to come save me. Why should I care if I live through this?" He was already a zombie thrice over, or a ghost, or a demon. If death wanted him so bad and Sam didn't, why not hand himself over already, get rid of two cursed things with one fell chop?

"Dean-" Sam stopped, like he'd registered the change in Dean's voice, how much further away he sounded from the speaker. Panic rose in him. "Dean, wait! Don't do this!" Dean ignored him. The saw had a good weight to it, and Dean had been sharpening it to perfection for days alone in his room. Sam didn't even notice. "Dean, please!" Sam made a sound Dean recognized as a sob, but that didn't move him. That horrible pulse was drowning out Sam's voice, leaving only Dean's need to get rid of it. "I'll come!" Sam pleaded, voice cracking, "I'll come right now, just don't hurt yourself. I didn't mean it, okay? I'd do anything to save you. You were right. That's what we do."

"Glad you're seeing reason," Dean told Sam as he rested the teeth of the blade against his arm. Short hairs sheared away from his skin from how sharp the edge was. Sam's footsteps pounded over the other end of the line, carrying him obediently back to his car and back to the Bunker. He adjusted his grip on the saw. The angle would be awkward, and Dean wasn't sure how far he would manage to get through before he passed out.

"You'll stop?" Sam said, with a beaten sort of hope.

"If you get here and this thing isn't off of me, forget about saving my life. You saw the rest of it off first." Dean heard the sound of a car door slamming shut.

"Don't-"

"Hanging up now, Sam."

"Wait!" Dean stopped just before he did. He could hear Sam's shaky inhale. "Dean, if you're dead before I get there…" He couldn't finish that. Dean understood. There was no way to get used to the sight of your brother's corpse.

For only a moment, Dean hesitated. Sam didn't take his death well last time.

If he died right, that wouldn't be his problem anymore, whispered something that had learned how to mimic his inner voice almost perfectly. He'd get Sam back eventually when he died, too. That was what mattered. He'd go out in a bloody blaze of glory and get his reward at the end.

"Don't hang up," Sam pleaded.

"I don't want your last memories of me to be me screaming my head off," Dean said. It had the shape of a joke, but it was built with too much honesty to hold itself up. It crumpled between them.

"Then don't do this," Sam said. Dean could hear the sound of Baby's engine.

"Treat my car better this time." The tourniquet was done right, but Sam could be minutes or hours away. Dean was starting to realize, no matter how tight he'd wrapped it, he hadn't expected anyone to bring him back from this war. Not even Sam.

That thought didn't make him hesitate the way widowing Sam did. Dean always knew he would die for the cause. He shut his eyes, bit the collar of his flannel between his teeth, and began to saw.

The pain burst up through the numb flesh like fireworks. Dean grunted as blood filled his vision, but he didn't stop the harsh motion. The Mark pulsed with fury as Dean sawed into his arm. He tried to gauge through the pain if he was bleeding more or less than he should be, but that was a useless endeavor. He wasn't stopping either way.

The saw freed fat from around his muscles, and Dean screamed for the first time. He could hear Sam yelling over the phone. His voice swirled around Dean's head. Dean's name joined the rhythm filling his ears, the Mark's pulse against his own pounding heartbeat, the pain coming in waves against his brother's terrified calls. Dean bore his weight down on the saw. He swore he could feel the muscle separating under the serrated edge. His arm split open into ugly meat. Dean's suffocated blue fingers twitched at the end of it, but he couldn't feel that, only watch them.

He hit bone faster than he thought he would. It resisted more than the rest of him, but Dean was going to break it off no matter what. His vision danced with black spots, grey at the edges and blurry in the middle. The white of his bones sticking through his cleaved muscle was the only thing he could focus on.

His own screams were in the chorus now. It didn't feel like he was even making them anymore. His body was breaking apart. The only bits that still felt attached to him were the arm coming off and the one removing it. His legs were long gone, trapping him against the counter. His mouth wasn't under his control anymore, and he could have been babbling anything to Sam without being aware of it. His bones cracked under the pressure of the saw, and he heard another of his own screams.

When he broke through the bone, he threw up. He wasn't even aware of it until it was out of his throat, leaving only the burning taste of acid behind. He barely turned his head from his arm. Vomit splattered over his open wound and the tourniquet, burning against the wound. He could hear Sam say something, but it was all just noise now. A hum built up of everything Dean could still register. He might have yelled at Sam to shut up or might have only imagined doing so.

He rallied all the strength he had left. It wasn't much, but supplemented with stubbornness, which he had in spades, it would get him through carving up the rest of his arm.

He didn't notice the space between severing his tendons and lying on his back on the floor. He didn't remember sawing through the last flaps of skin holding his arm together. He turned his head, but his arm was too far away, bent the wrong way. His hand reached back towards him, corpselike fingers curled stiffly against the floor. Dean stared at it. He raised his arm to get a better look at the saw wound, grasping weakly with his other hand for the saw but not finding it anywhere on the floor on his other side.

His upper arm moved. His hand stayed where it was until the sawed off stump below the tourniquet, sluggishly bleeding out, nudged against his fingers.

Dean laughed. He couldn't feel the Mark anymore.

He couldn't hear himself laughing either. He just felt the way his chest convulsed and his lips pulled wide across his face. He couldn't hear anything at all. He blinked, and his hand seemed to blur. He blinked again, and all that was left was blotches of dim color across his vision.

He shut his eyes, and there was only darkness.