You were supposed to be dead. No, you were dead.

Standing in front of Dean was a mockery of you. Flickering in and out of corporeality, the stains of blood still running down your lips and the hole in your chest from the gunshot wound. You weren't supposed to be here like this, haunting him, watching over him.

Because that's what you were doing. It had to be - why else would you be here instead of moved on? You had to know about the guilt riddling Dean restless and nauseous every day, about the fact he'd slept maybe 14 hours in the last month since your death, too busy throwing himself into work upon work upon work.

You were always so selfless. Dean fucking hated it. If you weren't, you wouldn't have taken the bullet for him. You wouldn't have even dared try. It was only going to graze his shoulder, but you? It struck true.

You were the only thing that kept his heart thrumming in his chest. How ironic it was now.

Part of him worried - the part that wasn't half-drunk on whiskey - that you weren't who you presenting yourself as. Some shapeshifter, stealing your face right out of his thoughts and memories, taunting him. What the hell was he supposed to do if you were a demon? If he was supposed to look into your pretty eyes and kill you?

"Shouldn't be here," he grumbles, realizing belatedly that he's talking to air, to anyone outside of this room. To anyone that couldn't see you. How unlucky they were, to not be able to get another look at your beautiful face like he did. "Should be..." Dean waves his hand dismissively, aimlessly, "moved on. Gone. Eternal peace or whatever."

Dean's fist tightens around the neck of the liquor bottle. He can't bring himself to look at you again, but he has to, doesn't he? He's a selfish man, and selfish people cling to the traces and remnants of things they love, even after they're long gone. Meeting your eyes takes his breath away. "Have you been here this whole time?" he asks, even though he doesn't want to know the answer, "just watchin' over me?"