TWENTY-ONE
Dean and Jason found a small clearing in a ring of trees and laid their bags on the ground. Though Dean had a tent, he didn't relish the thought of sitting in one if the aswang attacked. So they slept out, unrolling their gear on a soft bed of needles.
"I'll take the first watch," Dean offered as darkness fell.
Jason slept fitfully while Dean sat against a tree, rifle gripped in one hand and a jar of the concoction Bobby had made in the other. Snow drifted down, dusting the ground and making everything a little brighter. He watched for any trace of activity and strained his ears listening for sounds in the dark.
Everything was so quiet in a snow-covered forest. Dean put his hood up, hearing an almost musical tinkling of snowflakes hitting the material over his head. As he stared out, a chuffing noise snapped his attention behind him. He stood up, tense. Branches snapped and low breathing broke through the silent snowfall. Dean remained quiet, waiting.
The breathing grew louder, and he saw something massive and dark push through the brush and enter their clearing. A head rose from a muscular body and sniffed the air, finding Dean and Jason on the wind. It was a black bear. It stared at Dean, pinpointing him in the dark. Dean stared back.
The bear tossed its head, moved a little closer, then turned away. With a crash of branches, it disappeared into the underbrush.
Dean let out his breath.
He sat down again, training his ears to the quiet. He couldn't hear anything but the sound of snow on his hood and the rush of his own blood in his ears. The wind had died down. He couldn't hear traffic or the buzz of electricity or anything out here but the wild. He imagined what this place must have been like for the Donner Party.
He knew that, miles away, Interstate 80 ran right through the Camp of Death where the emigrants had resorted to eating each other. Now people sped by at seventy miles an hour, but it used to be nothing but wilderness stretching from Fort Bridger in Wyoming to Sutter's Fort near Sacramento. They couldn't resupply in Reno or Truckee because they didn't exist yet. But right then, right where he sat, it couldn't have been very different than it must have been for them. He could yell and cry out and no one would hear him. Without his car, it would take days to hike out to civilization.
He heard Jason stir and looked over at the sleeping hunter. His brow was creased with a nightmare, and his eyes moved rapidly beneath the lids. Dean would never admit it, but he felt pretty good keeping watch, looking out for someone. His whole life felt like he'd been looking out for people. Sammy when he was little, strangers who'd been attacked by monsters. This was the first time in his life he felt obsolete. Sam didn't seem to need him anymore. He barely talked to Dean about things that mattered, and Dean knew he was suffering with images of Hell. Dean felt a punch in his gut and tried to push away the thoughts that caused it, but he couldn't. Dean felt guilty. Maybe he didn't deserve Sam's regard.
When he was a kid, Sam's life had been saved by a little girl, a kitsune-a fox creature that has to eat a certain part of the human brain to survive. The girl had killed her own mother to protect Sam. Later, as an adult, she had never killed. She worked as a mortician, getting the brain matter she needed from the dead. But when her son got terribly sick, she realized she had to get him fresh meat and killed a human for him. When her son recovered, she swore to Sam that she would never kill again, and he spared her life. But then Dean went behind Sam's back and killed her. She had murdered people, after all, even if the victims she chose were scum-a heroine drug dealer among them. Dean had a mission, didn't he? He had to protect humanity.
He felt bad about her, though. She haunted him. Dean had sent her son away on his own, vowing that if the boy ever murdered anyone, he'd show up and kill him. The boy had stared at him with hatred, and sworn that the only person he'd ever kill was Dean. Then he'd run off.
If Sam ever found out, Dean knew it would change his brother's opinion of him. He would be tarnished in Sam's eyes.
Dean knew that even when you make a decision you think is for the best, it can change how people feel about you. Killing Amy was right. He knew that. She would have killed again. But it had put the trust between him and his brother in jeopardy. Sam would feel betrayed if he found out Dean had gone behind his back.
God knew, that's how Dean felt about Castiel, though Cas sure as hell had made far more epic mistakes than Dean. Castiel had once told him that he thought of Dean as family. Dean had begged the angel to defuse after he'd taken on the power of all those souls from Purgatory, but Cas hadn't listened, and instead became drunk with power, his original good intentions lost in his megalomania.
He'd betrayed them all. Dean had trusted him, remained loyal even when Sam and Bobby suspected that Cas was going dark side. Dean had refused to believe it then, but they'd been right.
Dean forced himself to think about something else. He wondered how Bobby and Sam were faring at the seaside, and if Bobby would talk to Sam about his Hell memories.
The temperature continued to dip lower. The snowflakes, which had been huge and clumped together at first, were now smaller and discrete, a sure sign of increasing cold. Dean shivered a bit, then stood up to walk around the perimeter in an attempt to get warm.
On Dean's second lap, Jason sat bolt upright with a garbled shout.
"What is it?" Dean said, scanning the surrounding trees.
Jason looked around, confused. "Nightmare. Sorry." He slumped back into his bag.
Dean made another circuit, glancing at Jason as he tossed and turned. Finally, Jason sat up again. "I can watch for a while."
Grateful, Dean took him up on his offer and climbed inside his own warm sleeping bag while Jason took the watch.
Snow floated down, dusting his eyelashes. With only his face sticking out of his bag, Dean drifted off to the sensation of his nose going slightly numb with cold. Around him the forest creaked and gusts sighed in the trees. He knew it was just the wind, but he couldn't fight the feeling that the aswang was close by their camp, breathing in the darkness.
