Dean Winchester’s eyes fluttered open, not to the grime and broken concrete he expected, but to a view from several feet above. He was looking down at himself.

Lying in a crumpled heap on the grimy floor was his body. The worn leather jacket was torn, a dark, wet stain spreading across the abdomen. His face was pale, smudged with dirt and blood, lips slightly parted in an unnatural stillness. A deep, primal part of him screamed, but no sound came out.

Son of a bitch.

He pushed himself up, his movements feeling strange, disconnected. He looked at his hands. They were clean, uninjured. He patted his chest, feeling the solid form of it, the worn cotton of his shirt, the cool press of the amulet he no longer wore but still felt the ghost of against his skin. He was solid.

He was… himself. Just displaced. An out-of-body experience. He was dying, but the big guy upstairs, or downstairs, or whoever was in charge of the cosmic roster today, had apparently stamped his ticket ‘Return to Sender.’

He took a tentative step. His boot sole made a soft scuff on the dusty floor, the sound eerily loud in the vast, silent space. The abandoned warehouse loomed around him, a skeletal carcass of rust and decay. Moonlight, stark and white, sliced through grimy, broken windows, illuminating the floating dust motes like tiny, trapped stars.

And that’s when he saw you.

You were standing in the corner of the room, half-concealed by the skeletal remains of an old office partition. You were just a silhouette at first, a shape that made his breath catch in a throat that wasn't technically his. He told himself it was a trick. A demon. A Djinn. A ghost playing on his oldest, deepest wounds. He had seen it all before.

The moonlight caught your profile, then the soft curve of your cheek. As you turned fully to face him, the world tilted on its axis. Dean’s heart, whatever ethereal version of it was currently beating in his chest, seized. Every rational thought, every hunter’s instinct, vaporized into a fine, shimmering mist. It was you.

You wore the same outfit he remembered from that last night—a soft grey sweater and a pair of worn jeans. Your hair fell the way he liked, framing your face. Your eyes, the ones he saw in his dreams every single night, were looking right at him. He almost thought he’d faint. A second death, right here on the dusty floor of his own personal hell.

“No,” he breathed, the word a choked whisper. “You’re not real.”

You stood there, a sad, gentle smile gracing your lips. You took a step towards him, and he instinctively took one back.

“Don’t,” he warned, his voice rough, laced with a desperation he hated. “What are you? Another one of Hell’s little home movies? Get the hell out of my head.”

“It’s not a home movie, Dean,” you said. Your voice. It was exactly the same, a soothing balm on a wound that had been open and festering for 365 days. “It’s me.”

He shook his head, a sharp, jerky motion. “No. You’re… you’re gone.” The words were like glass in his throat.

He had failed you. He had gotten to that damn house too late, kicking in the door to find the room already destroyed, to find you… He squeezed his eyes shut, but the image was burned onto the back of his eyelids. “You’re dead because of me.”