Where Do We Go From Here? ↳ Dean Winchester

Thirty- Four

Trigger warning: anxiety, self harm towards the end

*****
"How...how?"

It's great that Dylan is alive and everything, but it is also really hard to believe. After he died, I spent the next year and a half turning heaven and hell inside out looking for him. He was no where.

"I don't know," he says, pulling out a stool at the bar and sitting down. Eli passes him a drink. Layla keeps giving me weird looks. "All I remember is flashes of blue and white." I assume he was not in hell, probably heaven.

"Sounds like heaven and Angels," Layla says, sitting down next to Dylan. "But Riley looked there." Dean and Sam moved from their positions in the doorway and sat at a small table somewhere behind me. I find myself awkwardly standing somewhere in between, feeling so nervous that my hands are shaking. I clench them into fists to keep the shaking to a minimum.

"You looked for me?" Dylan asks, taking me by surprise. We were very close as kids, so obviously I looked for him. Why would he even ask that?

"Duh," I mutter, shifting to stand in the doorway. "Why wouldn't I?" I question seriously. I'm very curious as to why he thinks I would not look for him. Well, it could be one thing, but I thought he would be over that by now.

When I was almost fourteen, I told my brother I had anxiety, which I did. It's not completely gone yet, and it's not nearly as bad as it used to be. After I told Dylan about this, he laughed; he did not realize it was an actual thing. He just said to me, "I know what you mean, I get shy sometimes, too." For some reason, I was incredibly offended by this, so I did not talk to him for a month straight.

"Why would you?" He asks, raising an eyebrow. "You were fourteen." He looks away from me, taking another sip of his drink. The way he talks about it makes me feel like maybe I should not have wasted my time looking for him and instead been doing something productive. I don't say anything, and realize that the tension in this room is so thick that I could hardly cut it with a knife. The silence is deafening, and I cannot stand it. However, I do not have enough guts to actually break it.

Instead, I slowly and quietly slip out of the doorway and outside. I unclench my fists, my hands cold, sweaty, and shaking even more now.

Pull yourself together, a voice in my head says. I freeze, immediately recognizing the voice. It's my step dad's voice, the one I heard for years when I had anxiety. His voice in my head was like a curse, and he was the reason that I had anxiety in the first place.

Your brother thinks you're a freak.

I ignore the voice as well as I possibly can, which is nearly impossible. You're a freak. I keep on walking down the sidewalk, towards nowhere in particular. They all think so. How do you think they will react when they find out about this? And how do you think your brother will react when you tell him you have less than a month left? How do you think he will react when he finds out you've been hunting, the one thing he said he never wanted you to do? How do you manage to screw everything up?

A tear fell down my cheek, a lump forming in my throat. I need to get away from here, for a day or two. I quickly teleport to the motel and pack my stuff quickly, leaving a note on my pillow saying I'll be back in two days. You always bail when things get tough.

I ignore the voice, heading out, and I know exactly what I'm doing and where I'm going.

_________________________

I light the match and toss it into the bowl of ingredients, and wait for him to show up. He has to know where to find Death, right? Who else would?