Your legs are burning. Every step is agony now, muscles screaming at you, but you don’t stop. You can’t. The forest swallows you whole, dark and endless, trees tearing at your skin, breath loud and useless in your throat. And still you hear him behind you. Not footsteps. Just the voice. “I’m disappointed,” Dean drawls from somewhere in the dark. Too close. “I expected more of a fight.”

You nearly choke on the sound of it. Because it’s still him. That voice, rough and low, like whiskey and ash. But there’s something rotting underneath is something feral. You keep running, dodging branches, stumbling through mud, heart a wild drumbeat in your ears.

“You think I didn’t notice?” he calls again. “How your hands were shaking when you tied me up? Like you were scared to touch me. But not scared enough to leave.” You crash to your knees, breath tearing out of you in panicked bursts. The silence after his words is worse than the voice itself: thick, smothering. He’s giving you a head start. Toying with you. Letting you think you have a chance. The leaves rustle, while the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

“You looked me in the eye when you left me there,” he says, voice like a snarl now. “Like I was nothing. Like I wasn’t still apart of you.” You spin around, and there he is. A shadow peeling away from the trees, black eyes gleaming, grin carved across his face like it’s stitched there. Dean. But not Dean. Not the one who bled for you, laughed with you, held you when the nightmares came. This version looks at you like he’s starving. Like you’re the only thing in the world that exists. “I should gut you for it,” he murmurs, stepping closer. “But where’s the fun in that?” Now you can’t move. “You broke me open,” he says. “Now I wanna see what you look like when you snap.” He tilts his head. “Run.”