Chapter Text
“What’s burning?” Sam shouted from the library.
The echo through the hallway to the kitchen startled Dean, who was busy staring off into space, and he slid the grilled cheese off the pan and onto his plate in one jerky motion. “Nothing. You want a grilled cheese?”
“Well, not that one.” Sam stood in the doorway, leaning against the tiles, looking just a hair too large for the bunker’s architecture. He’d been in pajamas since they’d gotten back three days ago, and that alone was enough to tell Dean that Werther’s fucking enchantment had scared Sam a hell of a lot more than he would ever admit.
“S’okay.” Dean said and sliced another pat of butter for the pan. “Burnt one’s mine.”
“Are you okay? Sleeping on your feet?” Sam declined to comment on Dean’s dead-guy bathrobe, which was for the best.
“I was playing puzzlequest, okay?” Dean glanced at his phone on the counter, where it had been sitting since he started cooking.
“Fine.” Sam went to the refrigerator behind Dean and stood there with the door open for a dog’s age.
Just about when Dean’s patience was at an end, and the backs of his calves were goose pimpled from the cold, Sam sighed and shut the door again.
“You find what you were lookin’ for in there, buddy?”
“Nevermind. Just let me know when lunch is ready,” Sam huffed, probably fantasizing about salad. He left Dean in the kitchen with his thoughts and a sizzling pan.
His arm hurt, almost like he’d pulled something just inside his elbow. Of course he hadn’t, but he’d rather pretend that that was what the ache meant, rather than that pulsing mark.
Dean took a few breaths as he set the bread gently in the pan and took a slice of cheese to lay on top. The sizzle of butter was disruptive, grating, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. Usually he liked cooking. He privately hoped that Castiel wouldn’t visit; Cas could see right through him, and his brother was trying to irritate him into talking about it, when what he ought to be doing was leaving it the fuck alone.
The damn Werther Box could have showed him anybody, any number of people that he’d let down. Lisa, or Ben—that would have hurt just as much, maybe. Ben was turning sixteen soon, and again he wasn’t going to send the kid a card.
But nope, it had to show him Benny . Benny, who was stuck in Purgatory because Dean had asked him to go back.
It cut him deeper than he’d ever admit. He’d fucking marooned him.
He picked up the burned sandwich and chewed it, jaw aching, watching Sam’s sandwich sizzle. When he’d flipped it and watched it brown until it was enough to slide onto a plate, he’d opened and drank two beers and left the bottles on the kitchen counter. Three more full ones followed him to the library.
He’d run into the book that he thought he might need a few weeks before when he’d skimmed them, shrugging them off until now. Things that weren’t about the mark, or pre-biblical history went in a certain pile in the library, and now he tossed through the hardbacks and hand-bound notes, kneeling on the floor in his soft terrycloth robe.
His hand ran over the cover of it—black, with a silver stamped rendering of a medusa’s head. The inside was in Greek, and Dean had to translate it with a greek-english dictionary, which was a pain in the ass. He remembered something referring to “Ichor,” the blood of the Greek gods. It was a half-clue to the pre-historical origin of vampires, or maybe a miracle cure that went beyond the one that worked on the newly turned. The book had sounded like a story about immortals, and Dean had filed it under “probably dumber than Twilight” and tossed it aside.
He had thought that he’d have time, someday. Benny was immortal: Dean could get him pulled out of Purgatory when his life wasn’t so complicated. But then the hallucination had hit, and there Benny was, big as life. He even smelled just right.
There wasn’t anything turning up on the Mark of Cain, even as it bore a hole right through his soul like a hot bullet. He couldn’t sit and wait until it was deep enough to leave him hollowed out.
Dean had to move. Might as well take out his bucket list of people and lovers he’d let down, and start to make things right. It was a thin thread at best, but fuck destiny and purpose. He was going.
The Impala’s keys were already in the pocket of his jeans when he slipped them on. And of course the bag was ready with rolled socks, shirts, and underwear, in case of emergency.
Dean rattled away from the bunker without dwelling on consequences, as though it would be as easy as running away. The medusa’s head reflected onto the windshield as it winked in the sunlight on the dashboard, and he floored it, manic grin plastered across his face as he racked a tape into the stereo. Doubtlessly, Sam would call him in a few hours, flustered and bent out of shape about how Dean took off without him.
He still wasn’t sure what he was going to tell him about where he was off to, and Dean could could see an argument coming whether he told him the truth or not.
Everything was going to be fine.
---
Death looked tired, but somehow didn’t surrender any of his power with his weary countenance. He drew a boundary in the pine-needle dirt with his cane and regarded Dean with cold eyes and a tilted head.
For his part, the hunter had a grease-stained paper bag of burgers in his hand, and held it up with a stiff arm. Death tilted his head, lips a thin, colorless line.
“Look, I know it ain't the polite thing to do to call on you. You’re a busy guy.”
“Yes.” The diminutive man seemed amused. “I suppose I am.”
“This is for you,” Dean said, offering him the bag and milkshake.
“How thoughtful. Why did you call on me?” He took the bag and looked inside it.
“I need to get into purgatory.”
“Ah. I see. So you’ve driven all the way out here. You do know that I could have transported you there from the parking lot of this resturaunt?” Death wrinkled his nose. “These are nearly stone cold.”
Dean leaned on the car and set down the milkshake on Baby’s hood. “Look, I know you don’t want me loose with this thing on my arm.”
“That’s a very self-centered way of looking at it.”
“What?” Dean frowned a little.
“Have you killed anything that wasn’t going to die someday?” He ate a cold french fry and looked up at the stars.
“... no, I guess not.”
“Dean, the mark isn’t outside the natural order of things. The natural order is just considerably more strange than you would imagine.”
“Yeah, I get what you’re saying. I wanted to go through you instead of bribing any of your underlings.”
“I didn’t say no . But you know you’re only going to make things worse.”
Dean gulped and looked away. Maybe it would. Benny had come topside for revenge in the first place, and he’d gone back to Purgatory when Dean had asked. What if Benny didn’t just say no; what if he told him to fuck off?
He hadn’t come back with Sam. Dean was reasonably sure that he could have, if Benny had wanted to. It was a goodbye, and Dean couldn’t even fault him for it. They’d said Adios months before. Dean gulped and shook his head. “This is gonna be a milk run."
Death shrugged, and the world went sideways.
Dean stood up on vibrating legs and took a few ragged steps, and the adrenaline poured out of him and just left. Dean couldn’t see far past the trees, but he picked a direction and started staggering over the rolling knolls and split dry roots of Purgatory’s eternal, infuriating bastard trees.