where do you think you're going (dean winchester)

2002

He'd sent his coordinates a few days ago, but that hadn't changed anything the past two months...

Darkness.

Hands on his shoulders, shaking him awake. A string of curses.

"No! No, no, no... Dean... son, my son... stay with me, Dean. Please, God, stay with me... why would you... You've gotta stay with me, son."

His words had been interspersed with more bouts of blackness, and then he'd come out of it in a different position than he'd gone in, draped over his father's back as he moved him, then being dragged out into the main room, then being laid back on the bed.

"Sorry. 'M sorry."

He wasn't sure if the words had ever really come out, but he'd tried to say them over, and over, and over again.

"Tell Sammy 'm sorry. Tried to stop. Tell 'im I tried to stop."

Eventually, he'd blacked out for real. At last, sweet relief from both physical and emotional pain.

Until he woke up on a motel bed now stained with blood. And John started to yell while Dean's mind grappled with reality, went over what happened, both laughed and cried at the irony of it all until it realized that he was alive after slitting his own wrist and almost bleeding to death, and his father knew about it. Then he just wished he'd done a better job at stumbling into his own demise.

"What did you think you were doing?" John screamed, his face red with anger. "You're a Winchester! Did I raise you to just give up? Did I?"

Dean opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

This was not a good time for his tongue to stop working.

"You stop talkin' and I swear, Boy."

Dean swallowed hard and worked a word and half out of a throat that felt like it had dried closed.

"'M sorry."

It was barely audible, but it was there.

"Is that all you have to say to me?" Spit flew from his dad's mouth as he leaned forward and his son flinched back. "Is that all you have?"

"Didn' mean to," Dean croaked.

The back of his father's hand connected with his jaw hard enough to slam his face into the wall he was propped against. He cursed the small whimper that escaped him.

"You didn't... You didn't mean to? And you think that makes this better?"

Dean couldn't find the words to answer, just staring at the carpet and wishing with utter desperation that he was dead.

He thought it might.

But nothing was going to make it better. Nothing except doing a better job of accidentally killing himself.

"Look at me!" More spit flew into his face, then hands were on his collar and he was being hauled up to eye-level with his father.

As his eyes met John's in utter terror, a strangled gasp slipped past his lips.

His vision was swimming, but he did his best to hold the older man's gaze, because he knew looking away again would only make everything worse.

"I told you to stop, Boy! What part of that didn't I make clear?"

"No part," Dean gasped, cursing the single tear he could feel running down his cheek.

Six weeks after dumping him and Sammy at the salvage yard, John had shown up in need of his hunting partner.