[Dean pauses to consider this. It's not a state that he is comfortable in, it doesn't sit well on him, being stationary and thoughtful. He's a creature of instinct and reaction, of movement and sound and violence. Other people think. Dean does.

The hunter hedges, quirking a small, cool smirk and cracking a self-deprecating joke of the variety he's used to build the person most others are familiar with and fooled by.] Damn. I hope it's open note, and even then, I'm the worst test taker in history. All nerves.

[But it's just hedging. He's sifting through the information, wishing - not for the first or last time - that Sam was here with his giant brain and his freakish memory for random details no one cares about, though Dean does pretty well for himself in this regard. The hunter slowly sits back, rolling the pencil between his fingers, predator's gaze steady above the polished, crooked smile.]

So. You're the fairytale boy, is what you want me to believe. Created out of the imaginations of others at your direction.

The ultimate trick: make someone who existed disappear, and someone who never existed become real. That it?

[That is not, he knows, it. But the Marquis isn't the only one always testing.]