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It was just the anger left now. Everything else had been scrubbed away. Sometimes even the anger was still. Those were the days that Dean felt ancient, like a bit of stone. Remote, immovable, cold. On days like that he thought he understood why Cain kept bees. They buzz and collect and dance and regurgitate and keep active. They live, they die, they collect, they create, they are in a way that Dean, and Cain, cannot be.
Demons don’t eat or sleep and even their memories don’t work the same. Or at least Dean’s didn’t. Early on he’d discovered that he could sit in a memory as if it were a waking dream. He’d do that from time to time, visiting his past almost as a stranger; a black cloud of anger gathered at the corner of someone else’s life.
There was a dark night, some thirty years after his transformation, years after Sammy’s death, when a demon came to him. A would-be acolyte with an offering: the amulet Dean wore in his youth. Dean’s answer was to slaughter the demon and every life within a one mile radius.
He then sat for two weeks, traveling through his memories to his early days on the road with Sam. Back when they sought their father. It should have meant something, evoked something. Anger or hatred, at the very least. Instead Dean felt nothing.
That sense of nothingness was what finally brought him to find Cain.
He didn’t need tracking spells or summonings. Once he bent his will to Cain it was like a beacon. The call was so strong Dean didn’t bother to drive; he went step by step until he stood face to face with his maker.
“Hello, Dean,” Cain smiled, holding a tray of honeycombs.
The air was warm and shivered with their ancient power, reunited.
Dean nodded and put his hand to the Blade, unsheathing it slowly. Cain smiled and replaced the tray.
“I didn’t call for you yet, but if you’re quite sure it’s time then, by all means.”
Cain offered a half-bow and a deep smile but Dean didn’t move. He was waiting for the anger to flare. Instead, there was nothing but a deep emptiness.
“Blade or bees, Dean, that’s a question I’ve asked myself every morning for nearly 200 years. Blade, or bees?”
Dean stood motionless, for days perhaps, walking through every moment he’d ever shared with Cain, then Azazel, then Lucifer. He lived them again and again and when he came to the final moment, that second when Sam clawed himself out from within Lucifer, something stirred. Dean came back to the present. There, still, stood Cain, amused.
“You’ve made a decision, then?” Cain asked.
Dean took a moment to recognize what that emotion was. It was far from anger but no less a sin.
“I got some unfinished business,” Dean said, finally. “A matter of pride, really.”
Cain nodded, encouraging him to continue.
“Is there a way for a demon with the Mark to enter the Cage?”
Cain laughed, "Well, looks like you may live up to that reputation after all."