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(Art by @waywardnerd67)
“I see you two have a lot to talk about.” Benny patted Dean on the shoulder, picked up his bag, and walked away.Dean watched him go, reluctant to see the look on Sam’s face. Sam finding out about Benny was always gonna suck, but whether he liked it or not, he had to look, eventually.Yeah, it was Sam’s classic bitch face. Of course.Dean met Sam’s scowl with one of his own and shrugged off Sam’s gaze by turning and walking back towards the car.Shit. Benny must have decided on walking all the way back to his ratty old camper, since Dean had driven them to the docks. All because he thought Dean and Sam needed to talk. If anything happened to Benny while he was walking… well, it would just be yet another way he’d royally screwed up. Add that to losing Cas in Purgatory, not telling Sam about Benny, losing Kevin and Mrs. Tran, and losing the ability to just be a fucking human, anymore.Years ago, before Purgatory, before the Leviathan, before the Apocalypse, even before Hell, Sam had tricked him into watching a movie about Shawshank Prison by telling him it was a Stephen King movie. Dean was pissed that there weren’t any monsters, and only watched most of the movie with one eye while flipping through his worn paperback copy of Slaughterhouse Five. It was a long-ass movie, but got more interesting as it went on, not that he’d ever admit that to Sam. At the time, when Red talked about being institutionalized, Dean had had no concept of what Red meant. All his life, Dean had been on the road. He’d never been anywhere long enough to depend on specific walls like that.Dean understood it, now. The walls of his prison weren’t made of stone, but they were just as unbreachable.The first time it hit home was when he was with Lisa and Ben and he couldn’t stop reading the papers to look for hunts, even though he never did anything about them. It was muscle memory, a habit he’d started as a child and reinforced every day since. He eventually broke it, intentionally refusing to look at any kind of news. Lisa would joke about it, saying that he’d rather just go outside and get drenched than simply leave the channel where it was and watch a forecast.The prison called Purgatory was a little harder to shake than the evening news. He’d basically been dead, and now he was alive. He’d been running and fighting for so long, covered in dirt and sweat and monster guts, without rest or even the time to wash. Sometimes, he still woke up in the night, arm extended to slice the head off whatever woke him. He’d sit there for a couple of quiet moments, chest heaving, forgetting where he was, searching the darkness for glowing red eyes, until he instead saw the glowing red numbers of the alarm clock and remembered. He was back. He was alive. Until the next night, when he’d forget again.There were no days or nights in Purgatory, no dark or light, just differing shades of grey and red in the endless forest. Walking through the trees, he’d tell Benny about the things he missed. Mostly Sam and food. God, so much food. He was never hungry there, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to eat a juicy bacon double cheeseburger followed by a slice of sweet cherry pie. That had been the first thing he’d ordered when he was topside, again. His mouth watered as he waited for his order to be ready, but when it came, it wasn’t right. For the first couple of weeks, he had that same order at every diner and was disappointed every time. It just didn’t taste as good as it did before. It was still edible, just not as good as he remembered.Nothing was quite right. Everything was just that little bit off, and because of it, he kept making all the wrong choices over and over again. Every wrong choice meant someone else got hurt. Now, Sam knew about Benny and he was pissed. If he knew about Cas, how Dean had abandoned Cas, how Cas had been yanked from his hold at the last second and how Dean did nothing, Sam would punch him in the throat and walk away. Sam might walk away, anyway. It seemed he already had one foot out the door.When did it all go wrong? When did he stop believing he was the good guy? More accurately, when did he stop being the good guy? Was it just when he failed to save Cas, or did it go back further? He thought he was doing the right thing taking out Sam’s monster friend last year, believed in his heart it was the right thing, but now he wasn’t so sure. Was Benny different than that kitsune? He liked to think so. He certainly hoped so. If Benny ever slipped up, Dean wasn’t sure he could be the hunter to take his head for it.Sliding into the car, Dean glanced at the passenger side with a sliver of fear in his chest. It eased when Sam opened the door and climbed in, still sporting that epic bitch face. Sam slammed the door shut way harder than needed just to goad Dean into glaring at him, so Dean obliged. He turned the key and put his Baby into gear, anxious to feel the vibrations of the road that always calmed him. Baby’s engine roared before settling into a purr, and Dean remembered when everything he had at that moment was all he’d ever needed: The road in front of him, his brother by his side, and Zeppelin on the radio. This version, though – with Sam acting like a stranger, visions of Hell and Purgatory plaguing his nights, and a lead weight of guilt about Cas wrapped around his neck – this version was a nightmare, and all he wanted was to wake up.