Shreds of Humanity

The itch was back.

It crawled under his skin like ants gone insane, burning the tissue and searing his veins, until his whole body was one big, twitching nerve laid bare and vulnerable, left panting and spent, waiting for mercy that never came. 

He wanted to scratch it out, to scrub himself clean from the inside out, to wash it all away, but he knew he couldn’t. 

It just didn’t work like that.

It was night again — still? 

He didn’t care. 

The bunker had no windows and he didn’t have it in him to switch the lights on. They would only sear through his eyes into his skull and wash everything bright and too white, something he wasn’t ready right now.

Without artificial light, his room was obscured in darkness. Even though it should have felt better than the light, it didn’t feel any more comfortable, but just pressing and suffocating instead, closing in on him on every side like molasses. It was like it wanted to slowly draw him under until he stopped fighting, stopped breathing, and was still. 

Forcing himself to be calm, he clenched his hands into fists, gritted his jaw, and made himself breathe. His chest spasmed and fought against him until it relented, bent to his will, and expanded, allowing air into his lungs. 

The gasp sounded ragged and raw in the darkness, dry and brittle, something akin to the rattling breaths of old people on their deathbeds. Human. Frail.

The burn on his right forearm flared, throbbing in a rhythm just off-beat from his pulse, like it was mocking him. Slowly, the feeling seeped down to his wrist, making his fingers twitch involuntarily, and he grasped the bed covers to have something else than his own flesh to clutch.

He was so tired of this: the fighting, the anger, the hunger. There was a chorus of intentions and desires in him, swirling like bile in his gut, demanding to be let loose, to be fulfilled in any way they wanted. He felt like a live wire, flayed bare and raw, exposed to the elements of life and death, of emotions he didn’t know how to handle. 

Not like this.

He forced himself to breathe, turned to his side, and curled into a tight ball. Staring into the darkness with wide, unseeing eyes, he wished he could sleep even a little.

Sometimes, on silent nights like these, he wished he could sleep outside. He remembered how he and Sammy had snuck out with their sleeping bags to camp under the starry sky, gazing at the immense expanse of universe hovering just beyond their reach. But he knew he couldn’t. It wasn’t safe — not for him, and definitely not for the others out there. He couldn’t always control himself, and he didn’t want to cause any more grief than he already had.

There was so much grief that sometimes he felt like he would crumble underneath it.

At times, he looked back and remembered the simpler times: the long drives across the country and the easy salt-and-burn gigs where everything was straightforward and uncomplicated. Now, nothing was ever easy and things had gone from slightly muddled to blurry gray, from right and wrong to vague and confusing. 

A bit like him.

The fire that licked itself under his skin felt familiar, the anger burning pure and righteous. 

He knew it, knew how to use it, how to draw strength from it. Afterwards, it was always a contented purr, a pleasure he didn’t remember having from anything else from a long, long time. 

He loathed it almost as much as he craved it, but he feared it even more. 

He knew he couldn’t fight back. Sooner or later the Mark would turn from thrumming embers into a roaring flames, consume him from the inside out, and burn the world in its wake.

Sometimes, he wished he could get away from it all by just revving Baby up and driving on mile after mile, outrunning and exhausting his worries until they gave up, got bored, and went to pester someone else. He let himself indulged in the image of himself carefree and content for a split moment, and then he let out a slow breath, blinked, and braced himself to face yet another day with his faithful companions by his side. 

It wasn’t like him to turn and run from his problems, even though it might have kept him alive in the past.

He had always been stupid like that.

He wasn’t sure how long he had been awake this time. Perhaps just an hour, perhaps the whole night. 

It really didn’t matter.

The bunker was quiet around him, the concrete hard and unyielding, a structure built by better men for a brighter future that never came. There were so many silent rooms, so many vacant hallways and empty storages, and at times he wondered how they didn’t lose themselves in the maze.

Sometimes, he wondered if there even was anything to lose anymore.

He turned to his other side, his breathing in a low hiss in the void. The brand twisted and throbbed and he resisted the urge to rub it. He had done it before, unconsciously, and, instead of easing the burn, it had only increased it until it had been a fire under his skin, ready to break free. He had been surprised Sam hadn’t seen it, the desperation in his eyes.

Thankfully, Cas hadn’t been there that day. 

Cas would’ve seen it.

Minutes or a millennia later, he heard the door open and then close again with a soft click. He didn’t have to ask or turn around to know who it was, he felt it in his bones.

The darkness drew back slowly, reluctant to surrender even a bit of its hold of him in the face of the presence that pushed itself forward, demanding to be recognized. Under his skin, the burning was insistent at the arrival of a rival, refusing to let go without a fight. Willing himself to stay silent, he bit his lip as the Mark tore through his flesh, hoping the pain would be enough to distract him from the burn.

It wasn’t.

The mattress dipped gently and then a warm, solid form settled itself behind him, close, but not touching him. 

Even though he knew what was happening and why, he tensed for a moment, ready to fight as his body remembered things from the past that had nothing to do with the present.

The warm weight did nothing, just waited patiently, like there was nothing else in the world than time. 

Perhaps there weren’t.

He didn’t remember when this had started. He only knew that one night, his door had opened and then he had been cradled in the warm, unassuming presence of his friend. The itch and burn had bowed and given way — at least for that night.

They never talked about it, but it was like Cas was two different angels. Daytime Cas was back in his familiar form of awkwardness and bemusement, trying to survive on his stolen grace and wings that didn’t function, and Dean didn’t know how to talk to him anymore. The harsh light of the day revealed too much, stripped him bare of his layers of excuses and explanations, leaving him with only stuttered words or snapped retorts. 

Daytime Cas blinked and looked at him like he was lost, and Dean couldn’t meet his eyes.

Nighttime Cas never said anything. He just laid down and waited.

He didn’t know how it worked, this moth-eaten security blanket of diluted angel juice, but he didn’t even care. Perhaps not knowing kept the darkness and the hunger uneasy, open for banishment even for a couple of hours, and he could be safe.

He let out a slow, deliberate breath and waited for his pulse to slow down. The burn under his skin made his fingers clench and unclench, gathering the bed cover into a messy and wrinkled lump, but he let them. 

The Mark would yield easier like this.

No matter how many times they’d done this, he never felt them at first. The cool, invisible bindings wrapped themselves around him gently, covering him and securing him in place. They were tentative, almost like they were asking permission as they went, as if he would ever deny them. They held him tight, pushed the burn of the Mark away, calmed the itch, and soothed his anxious mind until he was able to close his eyes without seeing rivers of blood and pillars of smoke.

The weight shifted slightly, and he sighed as a hand took a gentle hold of his shoulder. The echo of a bond long-formed and since-lost resonated through him, drawing out the essence of the Mark like poison from a wound. Before it surrendered for the night, it snarled and fought, clutching him like vice, as if it was afraid it wouldn’t be allowed back in the morning. 

As if it didn’t have a home in him already.

The night slid forward, eating away time like there was infinite supply to consume. 

He knew there wasn’t. 

There wasn’t time and there wasn’t a happy ending, not for his kind. He had seen and done too much to pretend otherwise.

But tonight, guarded by a fallen angel and surrounded by a Grace that was as frayed as everything else in their lives, Dean Winchester was able to sleep.

It would do for now.