Dean Winchester

It’s still dark when Dean opens his eyes. He’s been drifting since Jane rolled off of him, content to lie next to another warm body, even if he finds no rest. She doesn’t stir when he does, and through the moonlight filtering through the cabin window, Dean retrieves his shirt and jeans from the floor.

Putting them on takes more time than he’d like. His exertions in bed have torn the stitches in his side, and Dean gives up on being careful, tugging his t-shirt over his head with only a grimace. He needs rest, and food, maybe another visit to the camp doctor, but he grabs the bottle of whiskey on Jane’s nightstand instead, tucking it under his arm on his way out the door.

Outside, the camp is still and quiet. Dean checks with the sentries on his way to his own cabin, shares some small talk and a few swallows from the bottle in his hands. Watching for Croats, whiskey settles the nerves, and every man on the wall has proven himself a good shot, inebriated or otherwise. Dean wouldn’t have put them there if they weren’t.

Perimeter check complete, Dean finds himself heading not home, but to the junkyard. Beneath the far corner trees, the Impala doesn’t rise up in the moonlight. It should hurt him to see her swallowed up by shadows, but Dean lost far worse to the darkness long ago. He looks at her, drinks his whiskey, and listens to himself breathe.

Cas would call it meditation, Dean thinks, the way he watches her decay. There are leaves on her roof. Rust on her door handle. It’s been years since he opened the hood, but he knows he’d find more inside. The leather on the seats is cracking. Dean never comes any closer than this, but tonight a glint of light against something in the mantle has him step forward. The i-Pod jack. Of all the stupid things to hang onto. The i-Pod itself is long gone, taking all of his brother’s music with it. The amulet is buried. The photographs are burnt.

He should wrench it out, should open the back door and pull out the army man that rests in the ashtray, too.

Maybe he will, when he finally puts that consecrated bullet in his brother’s heart.

Dizzy, Dean steps forward, spreading a steadying hand against the cool black roof. He shakes his head, but it doesn’t go away. Fucking stitches. He touches his side and finds it wet - he’s losing more blood than he thought. “Dammit.”

He turns for home, but it comes up like a wave, a blackness that crushes Dean against the Impala’s side. He’s falling, and he can’t make it stop. Dean’s own mumbled curse is the last thing he hears.

It feels like minutes later when he wakes, it feels like years.

Dean expects cool, wet grass beneath him, but finds cold concrete instead. The trees are gone, replaced by towering skyscrapers, but the shadow rising over him is the same.

Amazed, Dean touches fingers to the shiny gloss of the Impala door. “The fuck?”