Carry on, Wayward Dean

Dean Winchester awoke to the sound of scratching at the door. His life was like a never-ending nightmare, more so now that Lucifer had stolen his brother and taken over the world. Every person’s worst dream is to have a monster behind their door, trying to get in to harm them, and now it happened almost every day to everyone who had managed to survive. Dean muttered cursing nonsense and pushed himself up from the old smelling mattress, grabbing his sharpened dagger from the bedside table and the small gun loaded with silver bullets from under his pillow. He pushed the door open and it slammed into the zombie. Its head was soon hacked off and rolling down the hill. Dean glanced around for more supernatural creatures, saw none lurking in the darkened trees, so shut the door and replaced the salt line.

He took the rag on the dusty bench and rubbed the dark blood off the knife as he stared at his only companion. Cas… the poor bastard. He struggled without his powers, and had taken refuge in drugs, just like Zachariah had said he would when he let Dean see the future. Not everything had come to pass, but most of it had. It saddened Dean to no end. Why couldn’t he have just said yes to Michael? If he had, the Archangel would have stopped Lucifer and everyone could be living in peace.

“Dean? What was it?” Castiel grumbled, his eyes only half open. He was so inattentive, and never on edge; the complete opposite of Dean. The angel was very lucky to have Dean fighting by his side.

“It’s dead now, Cas. Just go back to sleep,” Dean said as kindly as his rough voice could manage. His finger ran over the blade, glad that it hadn’t been made blunt and that it was now shining once again.

“Thanks, Dean,” Castiel sighed as he fell back onto his pillow.

“For what?”

“Killing it for me,” the powerless angel replied. Dean bit his lip, a longing for his brother nagging him from the back of his mind. He cursed in his mind, wishing that Sammy hadn’t agreed, or that he had at least been able to fight back against Lucifer. Cas could never replace Sam, and Sam was forever gone. There would always be a hole in Dean, and he had to deal with that.

Dean’s mind was no longer temporarily at ease, so he got out a bottle of salvaged whiskey and burned his throat repeatedly. Once he had had enough, he crawled back under the small blanket and tried to fall asleep again, hoping things would somehow get better. He needed it. Hell, the whole world needed it.

Outside, Dean had missed something incredibly important. In the shadows there was indeed a supernatural being prowling, waiting for him. It was restricted by the salt and sigils that Dean and Cas were clever enough to paint on the walls of the run-down cabin they had found. But nonetheless, thanks to that pathetic zombie, Gluttony had now located the two people that held the top two spots on his master’s hit list. The demon was already tingling with excitement. He would be rewarded with such honour if he was to destroy the Archangel Michael’s vessel!

There was just one small problem. They were very cautious. Both of them had been under the radar for so long, taking care to cover their tracks and using simple magic to hide themselves. And right now they were sleeping, but were still no less vulnerable. Gluttony knew he had to come up with a good strategy to get them to break free of their cautious activities so he could strike. It didn’t take long for the perfect plan to form, and the demon sped off to the nearest road and headed north, knowing that was the direction the pair were travelling in. He didn’t stop until he found the closest town, and just his luck, there were some humans still alive there. Perfect…