"Not really," he admits with a halfhearted shrug. "I mean, hopefully it'll just go away on its own, but uh, it was kinda meant to kill me."

It would have been so easy, to let the blazing and boiling in his blood simply go on and on and consume him and it would have been for a good reason - closing the literal Gates of Hell, and giving everyone, even Dean, a chance to live a life devoid of demons and all that fucking baggage.

He'd held embers in his veins, and he'd let them die.

There's no point in regretting it now.

"It'll pass," he says with more confidence than he has. "It has to, eventually."