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Chapter Text

"Where the heck do you think you're goin', Sam?" Bobby asked. It had been close to a week since the hell hounds came. That week had been spent arguing in circles with Sam. Sam who alternated every few hours between taking off for god-knows-where, and sitting beside his brothers' slowly decaying body. Bobby had taken to keeping the windows open like he had taken to drinking hard liquor before noon.

Sam took a step back as he turned. The look on his face wasn't one of mourning; it was pure determination sheathed in desperation. "Dean's in Hell, Bobby," he said. "I'm going to get him back."

"Oh yeah? And just how are you plannin' to do that?" Bobby said. He took a careful step towards Sam, afraid the boy would bolt if he moved too quickly. "Your brother wouldn't want you to be makin' no deals."

Sam gave a joyless smile. "Don't worry, I'm not going to." he said, hand on the door knob. As he turned to walk out, his words were rough, caught in his throat. "Don't burn him. He'll need a body to come back to."

And then Sam was gone. Bobby stared at the closed door for a moment, before sighing.

Dean had been easy to understand. He stood for his family, and lived for the hunt. The world was almost black and white: good and bad. Sam lived in a gray area between reason, emotion, and morality. It created a mixture in the boys' outlook that Bobby could never grasp.

It was only nine in the morning, but Bobby needed another drink.

Dean knew he was going to die again. The body he had was at its limit. He had died so many times before, that he was beginning to be able to tell how close he was to the edge. He would welcome death if it meant release from the pain. But Dean was in Hell, and there would never be a release. It wasn't that people couldn't die in Hell. They died all the time. It was that they didn't stay dead. The bodies rejuvenated themselves. And dying never hurt any less than it did the first time.

Dean didn't open his eyes anymore. He hadn't in a long time. He knew all he needed to without sight: he was still on the rack, he was still in Hell, and demons still had fun playing with him.

There was a sinister snicker beside his ear. A warm, female body pressed against his, small delicate hands running over his blood-soaked chest. The whispers sounded like past lovers. It made his heart ache. A small finger lingered over an open wound in his skin before digging into the flesh, scraping a nail through the blood and meat.

Dean didn't scream. The pain was small in comparison to some of the other tortures. There were wet slurping sounds, and then a tongue licked across his skin. He jerked away as much as he could, but that wasn't very far. There were murmurs further away, an amused audience. The finger returned to scrape through the wound again, and Dean ground his teeth.

He would not scream. He would not scream. He would not scream.

He screamed.

Roars of laughter and jeers erupted around him. Blows came in quick succession. Something cold sliced along his side, a distraction from the burning pain of the finger digging through his ruined flesh. Something else stabbed into his shoulder. A tongue lapped at the cut on his thigh, each lick a sharp sting. Dean panted for breath, trying to ease himself through the pain. He would scream again, but he didn't have enough air in his lungs.

"You shouldn't do that," a soft voice said from the darkness, and everything stopped. The torture stopped, and there was the sound of scuttling rushing towards the darkness.

Dean knew that voice. His eyes flew open in disbelief and surprise. Horror burned in his stomach. Sam was covered in blood and fleshy bits that Dean didn't want to think about. His face was nonchalant, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket.

"Sam?" Dean choked on the word. Sam was in Hell. Dean thought he had stopped that from happening. He relied on the knowledge that Sam was safe. Sometimes he imagined that his brother had moved on, had returned to the life he had left behind in Stanford. It was all worth it if Sam was safe and happy. It kept Dean from breaking.

But Sam was here, in Hell, covered in blood that Dean hoped was not his own.

Sam's gaze was focused past Dean, into the impenetrable darkness that began ten feet from the rack. Sam raised a hand, palm down, towards the darkness. Slowly, the long fingers curled into a fist, and wails of terror and pain rose from the depths, louder than the jeers had ever been.

Dean watched the darkness with sick fascination. His tormentors were screaming. Dean glanced back to his brother in time to see him reach out and grab a demon out of the darkness. It was like watching a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat.

Sam held the demon by the neck with one hand, its feet dangling off the ground. It looked human except for the black eyes. A smirk formed on Sam's lips as he lifted the opposite hand and pulled off an arm with a wet crunch. The demon screamed.

Dean watched his brothers' smirk turn to a grin at the sound, and something akin to fear shuddered down Dean's spine. Dean closed his eyes again. There was a rhythm to the sounds: wet-crunch-pop, scream, wet-crunch-pop, scream. Then the scream turned into a horrible slopping wheezing. Dean opened his eyes to find the dislocated head at his feet, eyes human blue. The body was by Sam's feet, still trying to scream. It wasn't rejuvenating. It was stuck like that.

Dean would have vomited if it were possible.

Dean resisted the urge to struggle to get away when his brother took a step towards him. Sam's eyes were cold, but not black. He wasn't a demon. Or at least not like Dean had ever faced before. Whatever it was, it had copying Sam down to an art form. It looked like Sam, moved like Sam, even its voice had sounded like Sam; intonation and everything. It all made Dean's breath catch at the familiarity. If it hadn't been for the brutality and the blood, Dean could almost believe this was his younger brother. Except Sam's face had never been that frozen.

It's not Sam. It's not Sam. It's not Sam.

"This is what I am, Dean," Sam whispered in his ear as he reached up to undo the chains around Dean's wrists. The emotion that was missing from Sam's face was in his voice: sad, desperate, close to pleading. Dean could do nothing more than stare. It's Sam, something inside him screamed. His heart hurt.

"What are you doing here?" Dean asked as he slid off the rack. It was difficult to stay upright. His throat was raw, and he was losing a lot of blood. He placed an arm over a deep cut across his abdomen. He'd come back to life if he died, but he didn't care. Dean didn't want to die again.

Sam stared past him into the distance and didn't answer. "Sam?" Dean prompted.

Sam turned to him then. "What does it look like I'm doing?" Sam shifted slightly, a subtle fighting stance their father had taught them at a young age. Again the screaming: it's Sam.

A demon appeared at Sam's side. It fell to one knee without preamble. "My lord," it said. "Everything is ready."

"Good," Sam said. He placed his hand on the demon's human-looking head and smiled. Then he brought his knee up crushed its face in. The demon fell to the bone-littered, blood spattered ground.

Dean stared. It was still only the second time he had ever witnessed his brother kill something human looking without hesitation. The first time being only moments before, and the body was still wheezing out high pitched screams.

"Let's go," Sam said with a casual glance at Dean. He stuffed his bloody hands in his pockets and walked away.

Dean glanced between the rack and Sam. This was a new type of torture, he decided. Instead of physical pain, the demons were going to maim him mentally. And Sam was his weak spot. Could the demons guess how much this would bother him? Could they know that he had been glad to die before he could see his brother turn evil?

It's not Sam. It's not Sam. It's not Sam.

Dean had to believe that. He had to believe that his brother was still safe, still sane. He followed the form of his brother none-the-less. He wasn't going to be put back on the rack.

Sam led and Dean followed. Trapped in perpetual darkness, there was no way to tell how much time passed. Dean marked time by how many horror scenes they came across: dismembered body, forty steps; disemboweled baby, 120 steps; person skinned alive, fifty steps.

After a while, hell hounds started tagging along side Sam. They were giant sleek hounds with jet black fur and lolling blood-red tongues. They would dart forward to lick the blood from Sam's hands and arms, off his clothes. They whined in happiness when Sam patted one of them on the head, as if they were family dogs and not the beasts that had torn Dean apart.

Dean stayed far back, trying not to choke on rising terror. The hounds paid him no mind, not even a spare growl or glance. He was grateful. He wasn't ready to truly face off a hell hound again. In fact, he was pretty sure he would hold a dislike for all canines forever onward. He was officially a cat person.

The hell hounds left when Sam started killing everything he came across.

The first came as a surprise to Dean. Sam stopped, reached out into the darkness and pulled a struggling demon into Dean's line of sight. This demon didn't look human. It looked more like the gargoyles he had read about in one of Bobby's books. It was a nasty creature with matte grey skin, wicked sharp claws, and bulging red eyes.

The thing screamed, clawing at Sam's hands. Whispers and jeers from the darkness echoed words like "Boy-king" and "Our Lord". It was enough that Dean knew there was a host of demons right beyond his vision.

Sam plunged his hand into the demons' chest, and smiled like he did when something unexpected made him happy. The he ripped out the insides, dropped them to ground, and tossed the shrieking demon aside. Sam's arm was covered in purple blood up to his elbow, but he didn't seem to care. He simply grinned at Dean and continued onward. The jeers and whispers followed them.

The next time, it wasn't a demon. It was human, a tortured soul who had yet to give in. He was on a rack like Dean had been. His irises had bled to black, so his eyes were two dark spots in all the white like an old Disney character. He pleaded, eyes flicking between Dean and Sam. The man's body was a ruin, unable to support him even if freed. It would have to rejuvenate before he could move on his own again.

"Please, please," the man said. His tears looked human. "Help me."

Sam didn't say anything. He stood aside and watched Dean. There were only whispers in the darkness now, and Dean couldn't hear what they were saying.

It's a test, Dean thought, as he fought his urge to free the man. Dean knew there was no correct answer. Free the man or not, he was still in Hell.

When Dean didn't move, Sam shrugged. With two quick strides, Sam stood before the man. He reached as if to release the chains, and the man started crying.

"Thank you, thank you," the man said.

Sam paused, but his back was to Dean so his face wasn't visible. "Don't thank me," Sam said. And the man turned to ash.

Sam stopped and Dean didn't want to look up. It was never good when Sam stopped. There was always a new horror, another soul or demon Dean would have to watch his brother decimate.

"We're here," Sam said. His voice was rough, as if he had spent the same amount of time screaming as Dean had. Except he hadn't spoken louder than a whisper since appearing at the rack.

Dean stepped beside his brother, and Sam clasped his shoulder. Sam's hand was caked in dried blood of different colors, but Dean tried his best to ignore it. If he thought about the deaths and the hounds and the demons, Dean knew he'd cringe away from the touch. He knew he probably should. But the mimicry of his little brother was perfect, and Dean didn't want to cringe away. That was the worst part.

"Here?" Dean said. The whispers, the ever-present audience was absent. The darkness was empty.

Sam nodded. He raised his right hand out toward the darkness, again his palm parallel to the ground. Then, slowly, he began to turn it from vertical to horizontal like a key in a lock. Dean watched the darkness, waiting for the screams.

None came.

Sam's hand began to shake, and the one on Dean's shoulder clenched tight.

Nothing happened.

Sam's breathing became ragged, and blood ran from his nose, ears, and eyes.

Dean watched a small crack of light form in the darkness.

Sam fell to his knees, his grip on Dean's shoulder pulling Dean down too.

The crack of light was blinding as it widened. Dean could heard birds chirping, wind blowing through trees and earthly things. He stared at the light, not daring to hope.

The grip on his shoulder disappeared, and Dean looked down at the form of his brother huddled in the fetal position on the ground vomiting blood. It's Sam, something inside him screamed again. And years of being the big brother moved him into action.

He pulled Sam to his knees when he finished retching, and Dean wiped the blood off his brothers' face with his own tattered sleeve. Sam was pale and shaking, and the light made the dried and fresh blood more apparent.

He held his brother's face between his hands and looked into Sam's eyes. They weren't cold or insane now. They were Sam's eyes through and through, the ones Dean could read every emotion in. "That's a door, isn't Sammy?"

Dean saw the weak smile before Sam broke away to retch again. Sam was growing paler. Dean wrapped his hands in his brother's shirt, ready to haul him to his feet. His every instinct was to drag himself and his brother to the slit of light.

The ground beneath them trembled, and a thunderous roar began to rise from the darkness. Something was coming. Sam retched one last time, and then rose to his feet on his own. He shoved Dean behind him, placed himself between Dean and the darkness. That was how Dean knew Sam understood what would happen next. Dean felt his stomach knot. His way out of Hell was behind him; all he had to do was walk through. Yet his gaze was locked on Sam.

"Let's go," Dean said.

Sam looked over his shoulder, past Dean. His gaze lingered only a moment on the light. Dean could see him swallow, as if he too were fighting not to run towards the exit. Then he looked at Dean, and Dean felt his heart ache. It's Sam. The look ended any doubts he may have had. It wasn't filled with insanity or hatred or grief. The look was pure Sam. The one that Dean had seen a trillion and three times starting when his brother was about four years old. It was the look that said it all: I love you, I'm sorry, trust me.

"Go. I'll follow you." Sam said.

And Dean trusted him because this was Sam. And if Sam said he'd follow then he would. Even if everything in Dean's being was telling him to grab him and force him along. Even if part of him was telling him Sam was lying.

Dean nodded, clasped his brother's shoulder. "You'd better follow," he ordered. Then Sam turned away, and Dean walked out of Hell without looking back.

Chapter Text

"I can't believe you let him go!' Dean said, running a hand through his short hair. A puff of dirt burst into the air at the motion. It would have been graveyard dirt, Bobby thought. But Dean hadn't been buried in a graveyard. So it was just dirt.

"Boy, I didn't let him do anythin'," Bobby said. He was glad his voice sounded indignant, even as he acknowledged to himself he was still staring. But, damn it, Dean had been dead for a year. Even after the fight, the splash of holy water in the face, the holy water in the beer, and Dean's own words, Bobby couldn't believe his eyes. Dean was alive, and standing in his study. Alive and pissed off already.

"You were supposed to keep him with you." Dean said. His fist slammed down onto Bobby's desk, and he winced. Dean was covered in wounds both old and new. The pain alone assured Bobby of the boy's humanity. Demons tended to ignore small things like broken bones and missing body parts.

Dean's unwounded skin was lined in white scars of all shapes and sizes. Bobby was slightly curious about the physics of it. Dean should be dead from the wounds alone. Yet he was not only alive, but up and walking. Bobby thought it had something to do with being dead while the wounds were inflicted. A man couldn't die when he was already dead, could he?

"You think I didn't try to keep Sam here? I argued with him for days. And then one day he woke up, walked out the door, and hasn't been back since." Bobby said. Then, softer: "He's as stubborn as your Daddy was."

Dean scoffed and shook his head. "Yeah, don't I know it."

"No," Bobby said. "You don't know it. Because you're the only one the kid ever listened to." Bobby took off his trucker hat and wiped at his forehead. "And with you in the pit, he certainly wasn't goin' to listen to me."

"I told him to stay with you." Dean said, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against the desk.

"Well, he didn't." Bobby shrugged. "Instead he apparently went and got you out of hell."

Dean sighed and ducked his head. He ran a hand over his face. "You really think it was him?" Dean said in a low voice. His eyes were trained on the floor.

Bobby looked at Dean for a moment, unsure what to say. The boy looked torn between wanting to believe his brother had saved him and wanting to believe his brother was safe. No matter the answer, it would hurt.

Bobby believed it had been Sam in Hell. It was what Sam all but said when he left Bobby's house. The older man just hadn't known it was possible. Normal twenty-something-year olds could not just walk into Hell. But then Bobby thought of the stories he had heard from John and a young Dean; stories of rattling windows and upturned houses. Sam had never really been very normal.

"I think it was Sam," Bobby said finally. "He said he was going to get you out of Hell," Dean looked up at him, surprise on his face. "I didn't think it was possible to just walk in, but…." Bobby shrugged.

"Damn," Dean said. It was soft, a curse that held remorse as well.

"The question being: where is he now?" Bobby asked. It was rhetorical. If Dean knew the answer, he wouldn't be there. He'd be getting Sam.

"I don't know, Bobby." Dean seemed to tighten around himself, shoulders strung with frustration. "My memory towards the end…" He paused for a moment, eyes on the floor with a faraway gaze. "He was there. He pushed me towards the exit. Said he'd follow." Dean looked to Bobby, as if the older man should understand the importance of Sam saying that. And Bobby did understand it. Sam had always followed Dean.

"I thought he was behind me," Dean said. "I told him to follow." Dean couldn't say the next words out loud, the part that haunted him: Dean never looked back to make sure his brother followed him out of Hell.

One, two, three, four, five, turn.

One, two, three, four, five, turn.

Bobby watched Dean pace back and forth in front of the kitchen counters. It had become his daily pacing spot, as if any type of movement was better than none. Bobby wondered how long it would be before the old tiles gave in and wore away to the floorboards.

Normally, Bobby wouldn't care if Dean paced his legs off. But this wasn't a normal day, and Dean wasn't anywhere near healed from his time downstairs. So with the pacing there was wincing: one, two, three, four, five, wince, turn, wince. And Bobby couldn't recall the last time Dean slept. It was at least over a week ago.

"Boy, sit down before you fall down," Bobby said. It was barely eight in the morning, and watching Dean was making him tired all over again.

"I'm fine, Bobby," Dean said as he turned on his heel and started to the other side of the kitchen. "It's been a week. He said he'd follow." Dean said for the fifth time in the last hour. He sounded like a broken record, but Bobby didn't think it was the time to point it out.

"Do you think Sam is still in Hell?" Bobby asked. Dean stopped in his tracks and turned to Bobby, eyes wide and arms dropped to his sides. Bobby knew he hit the nail on the head and snorted. "You're a fool."

Dean swallowed so hard it looked painful. "Why?" His eyes never left Bobby.

Bobby stood from his seat at the kitchen table and took the two steps to stand in front of Dean. He placed both hands on the younger mans' shoulders. "You really think that Sam would put you through the same thing you did to him?" he said, ignoring the momentary flash of hurt in the younger man's eyes. Bobby pushed Dean towards the kitchen chair and Dean didn't fight. "Or do to you what your Daddy did?" Bobby backed Dean up until he had no choice but to sit or fall.

"Why wouldn't he?" Dean asked as he plopped down into the wooden chair. He continued to stare at Bobby like a drowning man stared at the surface of the water. Bobby had a brief flash of an eight year old Dean looking at him the same way when John had been MIA for over a week.

Bobby sighed. How was he supposed to explain to a grown man that self-sacrifice sucked for those left behind? Explaining it to Dean seemed redundant. If he hadn't figured it out by now, Bobby wasn't sure he had any hope of learning.

The phone rang and Bobby picked cordless up from the table. The caller ID scrolled: "Winchester, Samuel", and Bobby's heart skipped a beat. It was Sam's private cell phone, the one he'd had since before Stanford. It was one of the only things with Sam's real name attached to it.

Bobby was aware of Dean watching him as he walked to the door to the back porch. He pointed a warning for Dean to stay in the chair. Squinting, he stepped out into the bright morning. He answered with a casual: "yello?"

The voice on the other line was male, but it was not Sam. Bobby let go of a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. "Yes, ah…I'm looking for a Dean Winchester?" the man said.

"You got 'im." Bobby said without hesitation. Bobby would be damned if he let Dean know that someone who wasn't Sam had Sam's cell phone. Bobby couldn't guarantee anyone's safety when it came to someone standing between the Winchester brothers.

"All right. Um, my name's Jay. I have this phone, and a '67 Impala that I was told to return to you," said the man. He sounded young, maybe twenties. The connection was a little fuzzy, but clear enough that Bobby heard cars in the background.

"How'd you get them?" Bobby tried to keep the hostility out of his voice, but someone else on Sam's phone didn't sit right with him.

A sigh came from the other line. "He said you'd be pissed," Jay said. Bobby wanted to laugh. Saying Dean would be pissed was an understatement only Sam would make. The correct term would be murderous.

"Listen, I'm helping someone who helped me," Jay said.

"Right, sorry," Bobby said. "If you don't mind me askin': how long have you had them?"

"For as long as he told me to keep them: to the day." Which, knowing Sam, were orders written in a letter that wasn't to be opened until he was gone. That way there was no chance of refusal.

Sam did that to Bobby before he left for Stanford, hell, before he told anyone he got in. Sam gave Bobby a sealed letter, and told him he would know when to open it. When Sam left for Stanford and Dean was walking around like a piece of his heart was missing, Bobby opened it. The letter contained a California address, a note to give to Dean, and orders for Bobby to let Sam know where his family was when he could.

Bobby had sworn to never take another letter from Sam, ever.

"Do you know where Sam is?" he asked, tired of walking circles around the question. There was silence for a moment and Bobby listened to the birds sing. The air was sharp and fresh, just starting to warm after the night's cool.

"I'm sorry, "Jay said. Bobby felt his heart drop.

"Can you tell me when you last saw him?" Bobby tried, wiping a hand across his forehead.

"I'm sorry," Jay said again.

Bobby sighed and cursed. Stepping back inside, he was glad to see that Dean had listened and was still seated in the chair. The younger man was still a whirlwind of nervous energy: fingers tapping, foot shaking. But at least he was sitting. Bobby felt Dean's eyes on him as he walked through the kitchen to his study and pulled out a pen and paper.

"I'll send a friend to pick up his things. Where are you?" Bobby asked. He quickly jotted down the address and hung up the phone. Dean was still staring, nearly bouncing out of the chair. Bobby sighed. "The Impala and Sam's phone are in Detroit. Sam's not there."

Sam kept a journal. Not a these-are-supernatural-things-and-here-is-how-to-kill-them-journal, but a private, hand-written journal. Dean found it inside the Impala under the passenger's seat when they recovered it a month ago. There was still no sign of Sam.

Dean sat on the porch with Sam's journal his hands, turning it over and over. The lock was still on it, unbroken. The key was as lost as the journal's owner. It didn't matter though. Dean could pick it if he wanted.

The summer night was humid. Rain clouds gathered black to block out the stars in the distance.

"You going to open that?" Bobby asked with a gesture to the journal. He leaned against the railing beside Dean, and took a sip of his beer.

Dean flipped the journal over and over in his hands. His thumb ran over one of the worn edges of the cover. "No," he said. "He'll get all pissy and bitch at me."

Dean still hung on the words "I'll follow" and Bobby couldn't make himself speak the truth to Dean. It had been a month since Dean returned from Hell, and far longer since Sam had actually disappeared. There was no word from any other Hunters, not even the slightest rumor. The last person they knew to see Sam had been Jay in Detroit. And that, they had learned, had been over seven months before.

Bobby was starting to think that Dean had been right the first time around: Sam was still in Hell, and not likely to be coming back. Part of him wanted to tell Dean this, if only to allow the older brother to finally grieve.

But Bobby couldn't tell Dean to give up on Sam. So he did what he could to make Dean have a life outside trying to track down his brother. Dean would need something to hold on to when all that hope was gone. "You feel good enough to go on a small hunt?"

Bobby had lied when he'd said it was a small hunt. Shape shifters were never a small hunt. In fact, they downright tended to complicate the hell out of things.

In the middle of the fight, it occurred to Bobby that bringing Dean along hadn't been the smartest move he had ever made. He decided this somewhere between being thrown into a wall, and watching Dean launch himself at the shifter bare-handed.

Dean was coiled tighter than a rattlesnake ready to strike, and had been training rather than sleeping. Perhaps it would have been prudent to remember that the boy was never in his right mind when fighting grief. But Dean had always enjoyed killing supernatural things, and Bobby wanted to give him some joy back in his life.

"Get down!" Dean screamed, and Bobby found himself back on the floor he had just gotten up from. Something human shaped flew over his head. The house was dark, and it was hard to tell if it were Dean or the shifter. Then Dean hurdled over the couch, machete in hand and maniac grin and there was no need to question who was winning.

Bobby had time to wonder where the hell the machete had come from, and then Dean was lobbing off the head of the shifter in one smooth stroke.

Tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap.

Pause.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tappity-tap-tap.

Pause.

Tap. Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.

Bobby glared over his reference book at the younger man sitting on the other side of the desk. Dean had been tapping for the past half an hour. He now understood why, most of the time, Sam pushed Dean out the door on some errand before sitting down to do most of the research by himself before his brother returned.

Dean was a think-on-his-feet type. He was great in saving asses when there was a life-threatening situation, but his regular sit-down and sit-still habits, Bobby was learning, were lacking.

"Did you find anything?"Bobby asked and the tapping stopped.

"Huh?" Dean looked up from the book he had been using as a mini-drum set. "No, not really."

Bobby eyed him for a moment, believing the younger man clueless to the fact that he had been making noise at all. "Well, keep looking," he said, and returned to his book.

Tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap.

Bobby stared harder at the book on the desk.

Tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tappity-tap-tap.

Bobby read the sentence five times, trying to ignore Dean. He swore he used to have more patience.

Then the humming started. Bobby couldn't tell if it was Black Sabbath or off-beat off-tune Metallica but it didn't matter anymore. Bobby could do the research on his own. Dean needed to get out of the house so Bobby didn't throttle him.

Standing, Bobby pulled the keys to the garage out back out of his jeans pocket. He looked at them only a moment before stepping towards Dean and pressing them into the younger man's chest. "Go make yourself useful," he said with a nod in the direction of the large garage outside.

Dean gaped at him for a moment, eyes wide in confusion. He didn't ask any questions. He just swallowed, nodded, put the book down and left. Bobby sat back down with a sigh. Dean could make all the noise he wanted in the garage and Bobby could pour over the demonology books in peace.

Three months and there was no sign of Sam, or even any place to start looking. Bobby pushed Dean to hunt, to fix cars. Sometimes Dean slept and Bobby ignored the screaming nightmares.

They were staked outside a museum, waiting for it to close. A small time local artist had used their own blood as paint, and recently decided coming back to kill off relatives would be fun. The body was cremated, leaving only the paintings behind. Well, paintings and a journal they had tried burning two nights before.

"What am I supposed to do, Bobby?" Dean asked after an hour of silence.

Bobby gave Dean a confused look. "All you got to do is bring the matches."

Dean sighed with a shake of his head and pursed his lips.

Bobby let the silence fill the car again for a few minutes, considering his words. "You do the same thing you expected Sam to do, Dean." He said. "You live."

Chapter Text

Dean woke with a gasp and a curse, eyes popping open. He looked around at the bare white walls of Bobby's spare bedroom once before squeezing his eyes closed again.

Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.

It was a chant in his mind, meant to make him slip back into unconsciousness. It never worked either, so Dean wasn't sure why he tried it anymore. He started counting back from a hundred. When he reached fifty he gave up because he was still wide awake and didn't actually have the patience to count all the way back.

His thoughts whirled around his nightmare-memories: the ones of Sam and Hell that left him gasping awake at odd hours of the night. Often, all he saw was the gore: people without skin begging for an end, others screaming as rats ate away at chained limbs. The scenes were endless. He frequently woke up to run to the bathroom with a churning stomach.

Sometimes the last thing he saw before waking up was Sam pushing him towards the bright slit of an exit. He'd see his younger brother stand between him and demons that lay just out of sight. Those nights, he'd try not to fully wake up. He'd squeeze his eyes shut and tell himself to sleep. As if he could return to the dream and make himself look back. As if his dreams could tell him what happened to Sam.

Dean stared at the white plastered ceiling. Sleep was gone. He contemplated getting out of bed to get breakfast. Even if the sun wouldn't be above the horizon for several hours, Dean knew he wouldn't be falling back asleep. Breakfast was supposed to be whenever you woke up. Dean kicked off the blankets and pushed himself into a sitting position. It was better he didn't stare too long at his memories anyway. And pancakes were beginning to sound really good. Pancakes and strong coffee.

Dean hadn't been completely honest with Bobby about what he remembered from his time downstairs. But Bobby probably knew that. The man wasn't stupid, and could smell a lie on Dean as well as Dean's own father once could. Maybe better. The screaming nightmares were a good indication of the lie as well. But Bobby was decent enough to never mention those.

The truth was, Dean remembered a great deal about Hell. He remembered perfectly the moment Sam had shown up. It was difficult to forget watching his younger brother tear demons apart with nothing more than a smirk and his bare hands. But Sam hadn't been a demon. His eyes had been cold, not black. Above all, Dean could remember the last look Sam had given him, the one that was purely Sam.

Sam hadn't followed.

Dean growled in frustration and punched the mattress beneath him. He had been free for five months, and he and Bobby were still no closer to finding Sam than they were the day Dean had dug himself out of his own grave.

"Where are you, Sammy?" Dean asked the darkness.

There was no answer.

"Hey Dean, get in here for a sec," Bobby called from the study as Dean entered the house.

"Yeah, hold on," Dean said. He stood at the kitchen sink and scrubbed at the grease on his hands. He had been working on an old Chevy in the garage for most of the morning. "I think that Chevy needs a new starter." He said. A noncommittal grunt from the other room was Bobby's response. It meant the older man had already known.

Dean turned off the water, and grabbed the oil-stained dish towel from the cabinet door. "Did you find anything interesting?" he asked over his shoulder as he wiped at his hands. Bobby had been researching hunts when he had gone outside.

"I've been looking into omens," Bobby said, walking into the kitchen. He still had an open book in his hand, his finger holding his place on the page he was reading. "I figured that if we could get our hands on a demon, we might be able to ask some questions about Sam."

Dean dropped the towel to the counter and followed Bobby back to the study.

The desk was covered in books both opened and closed. Nearby chairs were stacked full of large volumes the thickness of dictionaries and library encyclopedias. A large map of the U.S. lay open over half the desk, balanced on stacks of books of varying levels so the map lay slumped and crooked.

"Demons lie, Bobby." Dean said. He looked at all the books, his mind categorizing them into read and unread, useful and not. He had spent most of the past six months combing through Bobby's library for information.

"Maybe. But they also tell the truth if they know it'll kill ya." Bobby said. He read a little more of the book in his hand, then made a quick note in the margin.

"Meaning they'd rub it in my face if Sam's still in Hell." Dean said, leaning against the desk, careful not to knock anything over. It was a thought that Dean had refused to entertain. He didn't want to think that he had left Sam to the rumbling darkness.

Bobby looked up and gave him a skeptical look. "You think they wouldn't? Especially if he switched sides."

Dean sighed and wished again he hadn't told Bobby about Sam's penchant to murder everything he came across while they were in Hell. But he couldn't chance that they miss anything, especially as the months continued to stretch.

"He didn't switch sides." Dean said. "He wouldn't have thrown me out if he had. He'd have left me there." A demonic Sam wouldn't have released Dean, wouldn't have given him a look only his Sam could give. It was reason enough for Dean not to hunt his own brother when they found him. Dean would deal with the new psychotic tendencies later.

Bobby and Dean stared at each other over the desk for a moment, Bobby once again weighing Dean's opinion. Bobby wasn't so sure that trusting a look was a good idea. "Well, anyway," Bobby sighed, "I found something."

"Omens?" Dean asked, turning towards the map and open books. He waited for Bobby to show him the meaning to all the margin notes and pins in the map.

"I thought so, but…it's strange," Bobby shrugged. "There are only three occurrences. Livestock isn't touched, no deaths, no power outages. Just bolts of lightning on a clear day."

"Yeah, and? Is it a demon or what?"Dean said.

Bobby tapped an area of Wyoming marked with a red thumbtack on the map. "People say it was like a bomb was dropped. In the same place, each six months apart. One was the day you came knockin' on my door nursin' splinters from your own coffin," Bobby said. He pulled some pictures from under one of the smaller stacks. "The last one was two days ago. Know a guy around there, sent me these. Take a look."

Dean was quiet a moment, looking at the pictures. Trees were knocked down far as could be seen, some singed, most with all the branches blasted off. The focal point was clear, all the trees bowled over away from it. Dean took a breath, held it, let it go. "What do you think did it?"

"I think Sam did it. I think he somehow found a way to rip the doors of Hell open." Bobby said as he shoved his hands into his pockets. "Once to get himself in and twice more to get you both out."

It was the answer Dean was expecting, but still not the answer he wanted. It meant he had left his brother in Hell for six months, and hadn't even looked back. It also meant that the brother he remembered, was likely not the brother he was going to have returned. He tried to tell himself that Sam was Sam no matter what. But if he were honest with himself, he could admit that the side of Sam he had seen in Hell frightened him. And what could six more months there do to him?

"Dean," Bobby said. "If it's true that Sam can open the gates of Hell at will, and people find out, there's going to be trouble. Every single hunter in the world will be after him."

Dean put the pictures down and bent to examine the map better. His mind was plotting route numbers and highways. "Then we'd better get to him first," Dean said, "And make sure no one else figures it out."

Dean cursed every fallen hundred year old tree he had to climb over by the time he reached the center of the lightning strikes. The area was an hour walk from the road, but clearly visible from the town beyond that. From a plane, it looked like a giant had poked a finger into the forest and pressed all the trees flat to leave behind a circular, singed fingerprint. Some people were calling it an act of God, others an act of aliens. Everyone agreed it was strange.

Dean stood in the middle of it and looked around him. It was strange. It looked more like the site of a meteor impact than a lightning strike. Everything was blasted down for miles, and it was quieter than a mid-winter night.

Dean didn't know what he had expected. But he was disappointed. He knew Sam wasn't going to be waiting in the middle of the forest, like he used to wait outside school to be picked up. Dean supposed he hoped to find something, some clue or sign of Sam: a shirt, a shoe, some footprints. Something. He hadn't expected to find nothing but dead trees, burnt soil and bright blue sky.

"Dean Winchester," said a voice Dean could place anywhere.

He turned to face the blonde with a sneer. "Ruby," he said, as if the name were poison on his tongue. His hands gripped into fists. Somehow it didn't surprise him to see her, but he wasn't happy about it.

Ruby crossed her arms, eyes racking over his form. "Dean Winchester," she repeated and continued, "thrown out of Hell by his own brother, the Boy-King." She stopped, a smirk on her face as if it were some big joke. "That's what they're all saying, you know."

Dean clenched his jaw, and started to count to ten. He got to five before he spoke. "I thought Lilith sent you back to Hell."

Ruby's smirk turned to a smile. Her hand swung behind her and she pulled out a white envelope from her back pocket. She held it towards him. 'Dean' was written across the front in Sam's curling, girlish handwriting. "You should be nice to me, Dean," she said. "I can tell you where to find Sam."

Dean hated letters from Sam. He had only gotten three letters from his brother in his entire life, but it was enough. If Sam left a letter for Dean, it meant Sam didn't plan on walking out in one piece, or Dean couldn't follow.

"Where'd you get that?" Dean asked, his voice suddenly hoarse. There was a ball of ice at the base of his spine as he stared at the letter in Ruby's hands. He really hated letters from Sam. They never even said anything specific. Just: I'm sorry or please understand or I'll always be your brother.

Ruby quirked an eyebrow. "Where do you think I got it?" She took a step towards Dean, still holding the envelop in front of her. "Are you going to take it or what?" Three more steps and she was standing in front of him, the envelope pushed into Dean's chest.

Dean took a step back from her touch, automatically catching the letter as it fell between them. He tried to blink away the images of a year and a half before: Lilith in Ruby's borrowed body, calling the hell hounds into the room, Sam crying for it to stop, and then the blackness and slow awakening in Hell.

"Stay away from me," he said, keeping careful control of his voice. It was Ruby and not Lilith standing before him. He knew that. But it was the same body that had been there that day.

Ruby put her hands up and shrugged. "Fine. Whatever." She turned and started walking to the edge of the clearing. He boots crunching on the dead ground was the only sound Dean could hear past his own breathing.

Dean stared at the envelope in his hands, running his fingers over the writing on the front. He could imagine Sam sitting at some run-down motel desk, writing the letter. He could picture the way his brother leaned over because he was too tall, the way he sometimes stopped to reread what he wrote out-loud to see how they sounded. Knowing Sam, he had written twenty different versions of the same letter, trying to get things just right. And every version before the one given to Dean would have held more of an explanation than the letter he received.

"Did you ever wonder how he did it, Dean?" Ruby said. Dean looked up from the envelope. She was half turned towards him, her eyes on the sky. The smile was gone. "How he dragged you through Hell with almost no resistance?"

He'd wondered, but he hadn't really wanted to know.

Ruby turned to fully face him. Her eyes were piercing but they we're accusing. She was merely bidding him to listen. "He took on his role as Boy-King. And then he named you his second-in-command."

Dean looked back down at the envelope, his name in swirling, bold, black letters. Sam still wrote like a girl. Their father once said that Sam's handwriting was like their mothers.

Ruby shoved her hands into the pockets of her jean jacket. "And when he set you free," she said with a raise of her eyebrows, "they did everything in their power to break him because they can't kill him."

Dean looked back up. "They can't kill him?" he asked. It was good information to have.

Ruby rolled her eyes. "As if that's a good thing. What do you think Hell will do to a living soul?" She asked.

Dean paused, not sure he wanted the answer. In his moment of hesitation, Ruby disappeared. He hated when she did that.

Dean opened the letter when he returned to the Impala.

It contained three words: Go to Missouri.

Chapter Text

Missouri Moseley picked up the phone on the first ring. "Hello, Dean," she said. There was a rumble in the background and the connection crackled.

"Hey Missouri," Dean said. He sat on the bed of another crummy motel room somewhere between nowhere-Wyoming and Lawrence, Kansas. Check-out was at ten the next morning, and the carpet was snot green. Most of the room had been new fifty years before Dean was born. Except for the crisp, clean sheets that covered the lumpy, sagging mattress. The room itself smelled like bleach and cigarettes.

"Are you really ready to find Sam?" Missouri asked. Dean almost scoffed. Of course he was. He had been searching for half a year, and wanted his bitchy, tofu-eating, fru-fru-latte-loving, pain in the ass little brother back. She continued: "Are you ready to find him as he is now?"

That was a different question.

Dean's stomach clenched with flashbacks of Hell: Sam's insane smile, hell hounds licking blood from his brother's fingers, Sam turning a soul to ash while it begged for mercy. Ruby said Sam had become the "boy-king" in order to free him from Hell. Then Sam was tortured. What was he like now?

The line crackled again, and Dean heard a sigh. Missouri said, "Don't come for him if you're not ready." And then the phone clicked to the dial tone.

Dean walked up the steps to Missouri's house early the next morning. It was Tuesday. Dean had checked. He wanted to know what day it was when he found Sam. It seemed stupid and irrelevant, but he wanted to know anyway.

It was cold, his breath fogging the air in front of him. A wreathe in cheerful autumnal colors hung on the door. The welcome mat wished visitors a Happy Thanksgiving. Snow was absent from the scene. Although in the following weeks there would be enough white powder and cold for people to grow tired of winter.

Dean considered just staring at the door rather than knocking. Missouri was psychic, right? Maybe he could yell with his mind. He glared at the door, trying to think 'knock knock' as loud as he could until he became dizzy. Then he realized the dizziness came from holding his breath, and not because he was reaching a new psychic level in his brain. Dean glanced around to see if anyone noticed him making an ass out of himself, and then knocked nonchalantly on the door.

Light footsteps sounded on the other side and the deadbolt slid back. The door opened just enough to fit Missouri in the crack. She didn't look any different than she had a few years ago. She was dressed in jeans and a bright blouse, her hair braided back from her face. Her nails were finely manicured; a silver watch gleamed from her wrist. She looked Dean up and down, her gaze not unfriendly.

"Hi, Missouri," Dean said, shoving his hands in his pockets. He shivered against the breeze.

She shook her head and closed the door.

Dean woke to a tap on his shoulder and a flashlight in his face.

"Sir?" the police officer said. Dean wiped the drool from his mouth as he sat up straighter against the porch railing. "Sir? I need to ask you to leave."

Dean grunted noncommittally as he flinched away from the light. He was cold, and his right leg was asleep. For a moment he had forgotten he was on Missouri's front porch.

"Sir, the neighbors have been calling and complaining," the officer continued. "If you don't leave, we're going to have to bring you to the station."

Dean started nodding his head, not really awake yet, not really wanting to be thrown in jail. Even half conscious he knew jail meant he wouldn't be able to find Sam. Later, he wouldn't remember what excuse he gave to the police, just that he mumbled it and probably appeared drunk as he limped and staggered down the sidewalk towards where he had parked the Impala that morning.

As he climbed into the cold and window-fogged car, he felt a strange satisfaction in knowing that Missouri hadn't been the one to call the cops. Even if she had closed the door on him, and ignored his banging and begging all day, she hadn't called the cops. Curling up on the leather seats that always reminded him of his father, he was asleep again within moments.

It was Friday morning when Missouri finally opened the door again.

"Where's Sam?" Dean asked, putting his hand in the door jam, hoping the psychic wouldn't be as cruel or desperate as to break his fingers to keep him out.

Missouri looked him up and down, her gaze piercing, searching. She then took a deep breath and stepped back, a silent invitation. She said nothing as he entered the dark hallway. The clicks of the locks on the doors seemed to echo, and Dean wondered if she knew that locks don't stop the scariest things in the world.

"I know locks don't work," she said quietly, picking up on his thoughts, "But they make me feel better anyway."

"Salt lines work," he said with a shrug of his shoulder. He knew she knew that.

Missouri glared at him for his remark. "Have you ever tried to clean salt out of the cracks of old wood floors?" she asked as she pointed at their feet. Dean raised his eyebrows. He had never tried to clean up salt, period. Once it was down, it stayed down. "I didn't think so," Missouri said as she disappeared into the kitchen at the end of the hall.

Dean followed and stood by the kitchen table, watching as Missouri prepared coffee and pulled wafer cookies out of the cabinet. Missouri's place was homey. It wasn't museum-clean, but it wasn't dirty either. There were magazines and junk mail fliers stacked on top of the white microwave, and a few dirty coffee cups sitting in the sink. The table was covered with a light yellow tablecloth, and a small vase of flowers stood in the middle as a centerpiece.

Sometimes, when Dean dreamed, it's how he pictured the Winchester home would have been. He had enough memories from when he was young to remember clean floors and windows, even stacks of magazines and newspapers on side tables, and his parent's rarely made bed. Dean knew that their home would have looked lived-in, unlike Sam's dream of OCD perfection. It would have been a place for children to play, full of laughter and warmth. And maybe also, as the years passed, a few broken windows from backyard baseball games, and arguments about illegal late-night teenaged excursions. Sammy would have been the brainiac jock, and Dean would have just been trouble.

Missouri placed two mugs of coffee and a plate full of cookies on the table, but didn't sit down. Instead she gripped the back of the kitchen chair and stared at him, biting her lip.

Dean shifted from one foot to the other, and resisted the urge to wipe at his face. "What?" he asked.

She sighed. "Sam's here, Dean."

Dean felt like the wind was knocked out of him. His brother had been here the whole time. If he had known, had suspected that Missouri had more than just a clue about his brother's whereabouts, he would have broken down the damn door. Which Sam knew, which was why he had been unspecific in his note to begin with. Damn it, Sammy. Dean was going to throttle his brother after he hugged the life out of him.

"I woke up one morning to find him curled up on my porch. A letter in his pocket said to wait for you," Missouri said. Dean thought again: Damn it, Sammy!

Dean's eyes scanned the room; as if his brother were sitting right there and he just couldn't see him. "Sam," it came out closer to a growl than a shout. He tried again: "SAM!" Then his legs had him tearing through the downstairs, searching for his brother. The stairway was in the living room, but Missouri was already standing in front of it, blocking the way. "Move," he said, staring down the psychic.

"Dean. Wait," she said. Her hands were up, inches from physically touching him to stop him from storming up the stairs. She paused, struggling with her words.

"Missouri," Dean said through clenched teeth. "Move." She was becoming an obstacle between him and his brother, and that was never a good thing to be.

Missouri didn't move. She glared back. "No. You need to calm down and listen."

"Listen?" Dean gestured at the stairs. "If my brother is at the top of those stairs, that's all I need to know," he said.

"No, it's not all you need to know. Sam's terrified, Dean," Missouri spat.

Dean took a step back and looked at Missouri who now stood three stairs up. He didn't remember her moving, and briefly wondered if he had pushed her before her words truly caught up with him. "Wait, he's terrified? As in scared?" He asked. That had never occurred to him. He had been prepared to find his brother handcuffed to something and foaming at the mouth, homicidal crazy.

"Yes, as in scared. You think there's another meaning to the word?" she asked. "I'm psychic, remember? Sam's so scared that I haven't been able to sleep because I wake up with screaming nightmares!"

That explained the coffee cups in the sink.

"Look, I'm sorry for everything that's happened to you Dean. I am. You're a good man. Although you're a damn fool for makin' that deal to begin with," she said, placing a hand on her hip.

"Yeah, I know," he said in a voice suddenly rough. He didn't want to think about the deal that led them along this path. "But I'd do it again in an instant, if it meant saving Sam."

Missouri seemed to deflate. The bite went out of her words. "I'm sorry. About this week, I mean. It's just—I took one look at you and I knew you weren't whole yourself, you see. That even you came back so changed. And I thought what Sam needed was someone who was whole." She paused as if debating the correctness of her assessment. "But maybe not." She sighed. "There's something you need to understand about Sam. But you're not going to believe me if I tell you." She moved to the side and gestured for Dean to pass. "Second door on the left."

Dean paused. "What changed your mind?" He asked.

"Sam said your name this morning." She said.

It was all he needed to hear to have him taking the stairs two at a time.

Sam was curled into a ball in the corner of the small bedroom, shaking, rocking, and Dean froze in the doorway.

His heart beat in time to the memory of a five year old Sam curled in a similar ball and sobbing desperately for the clown to go away. It was funny after; when Sam was a grown adult and Dean could terrorize him by simply renting horror movies about killer clowns. But it wasn't funny when five-year-old Sammy was red-faced, hyperventilating, bawling on the floor and clinging to Dean's pant leg in fear. Not even close. Dean didn't remember what he did to the clown, but John never took them near a circus again, not even on a hunt.

Sam was rocking slowly; forwards, backwards, forwards, pause. Then backwards, forwards, backwards, pause. Then the cycle would start again. Dean knew because he counted: one, two, three, pause, three, two, one, pause. Sam was nearly a skeleton, his clothing barely more than rags. All the musculature seemed to have withered away, leaving skin clinging to bones and barely anything in between. He looked like a stick figure come to life.

Dean had imagined the reunion with his brother a thousand different ways, a million different times. In most of them, he found himself dealing with a homicidal sociopathic Sam who could murder people with a look. In others he had to deal with a sullen, withdrawn Sam, one much akin to his teenage self. Never had Dean thought that he would find him cowering in a corner.

From the doorway, Dean drank in the sight of his brother. Even as his heart broke for his condition, it still soared because Sam was there. Half-starved and seemingly not totally sane, Sam was one of the most beautiful sights Dean had ever seen just because he was alive and in the same room. Dean could protect him now. He would make this better.

Missouri placed a hand on his shoulder, and Dean jumped. "Do you know what I think, Dean?" she whispered. Dean shook his head, his eyes never leaving Sam's rocking form. "I don't think he planned on being alive when he got here."

Dean didn't think that was completely true. Sam hadn't gone into hell expecting to die. He simply hadn't thought about what would happen afterward. It hadn't mattered to him. Dean knew it, even understood. It was how he had felt when he made the deal with the crossroad demon. Nothing had mattered except for saving Sammy.

"What's wrong with him?" Dean asked. The word catatonic slipped through his mind, but he waited for Missouri's answer.

"Think of puzzle pieces, or shards of a broken mirror," she said. "You can only see one piece at a time, not the whole picture."

They did everything in their power to break him. Ruby's words. Dean always hated Ruby. Now he hated her even more. And he refused to let her be right. If Sam was broken, Dean would be superglue. He'd save his brother from his own insanity.

Dean moved into the room slowly. His footsteps were muffled by the plush blue carpet. The small bedroom was brighter than the narrow hallway. Sunshine streamed in through two side-by-side windows and the walls were white with a border of blue rabbits. A twin bed sat against the left hand wall accompanied by a lacquered night stand. Sam had shoved himself between the right hand wall and the table. Muffled Birdsong filtered in from the closed windows.

"Sam?" Dean spoke softly, kneeling in front of his brother. There was a slight pause in the rocking. Sam's hair was longer than Dean was used to, brushing past Sam's shoulders in long greasy strands that obscured his face from view. Dean moved his hand slowly, as if reaching towards a wild animal with a tendency to bite. Sam whimpered and tried to cringe away from the touch. Dean frowned.

"Sam?" he said again, low, soft, comforting. "It's Dean. I'm here."

It was the voice he used to talk Sam out of nightmares of Jess burning on the ceiling. The nightmares Sam never talked about, the ones that left Dean listening to his brother whimper in his sleep until Dean sat up in his own bed and just talked. He sat for hours every night that first year and just talked until his voice was close to gone, until Sam was deep enough asleep to rest.

Dean reached out again and brushed his brother's hair back, catching his first glimpse of the too-thin face. "Are you in there, Sammy?" Dean asked as he gently pulled his brother to face him, right hand cradling the back of Sam's head, left hand grasping his shoulder. The rocking stopped as Sam met his gaze.

Dean watched the struggle in Sam's eyes. Watched as the brother he knew filtered in, watched the pain and confusion fill them for a moment. "Are you there, Sam?" Dean asked again.

Sam nodded minutely. He swallowed. "I'm here. I'm here. I am. I'm here." Sam's voice was hoarse. Dean didn't want to know if it was from disuse or overuse. Sam's eyes closed, and his fist came up to grip the front of Dean's shirt. "I followed," Sam said. "I followed. I did."

"Yeah. Yeah, you did," Dean said, running his fingers through Sam's hair like he had done when Sam had the flu when he was eight and they had no medicine left. "You followed. You did good," Dean said, pride mixed with something else. He wondered if this was what hope felt like.

The knuckles on Sam's fist were bone-white, and Dean wondered how hard it was for Sam to hold on to himself. Sam's eyes opened and again met Dean's. "It hurts," he said, his eyes puppy-dog large.

Dean nodded, "Okay," he said, and watched Sam slowly slip from lucidity. "Okay." And Sam was gone, but not. Shards of a broken mirror, Dean thought. And he still had that strange, confusing, light feeling within him. Gathering his brother to himself, Sam all skin and bones and catatonia, Dean felt, for the first time in years, a fierce triumphant joy.

Chapter Text

"I found him, Bobby. I got him." There was intense relief in Dean's voice. It was also tight with worry and fear. Dean's relief told Bobby Sam was alive. He didn't ask if the younger brother was alright because Dean sounded on the edge of desperation. And there were only a few things left in the world that could put that tone there.

Bobby listened to the roar of the Impala in the background for a minute. "What do you need, Dean?"

A heartbeat and then: "A place to stay."

There was more to it than just that, Bobby knew. The boys didn't have to ask if they could stay with him. "Am I going to need the major med kit ready?" Bobby asked, hoping Sam wasn't bleeding out.

"No," Dean said, and Bobby let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"What will I need?" Bobby asked.

Another heartbeat. "Food." Dean said. And since Bobby knew Dean's idea of food was five pound burgers with everything on them he was glad when Dean continued: "Healthy food. You know how Sam eats like a rabbit."

"I'll see you soon, Dean."

Bobby watched Dean cover a sleeping Sam with a blanket. Sam was out like a light on the couch in Bobby's study, half the pieces of a cut up apple left on the plate on the floor. Dean picked the plate up and frowned at the amount of food left. Bobby followed him into the kitchen, and watched as Dean dumped the now-brown apple pieces in the trash and put the plate in the sink.

As Dean sank into one of the kitchen chairs with a sigh, Bobby tried to think of where to start.

After talking on the phone the other night, Bobby had tried to prepare himself for anything from Sam being comatose to being stark raving homicidally mad. His imaginings had leaned more towards Dean having him handcuffed and gagged to keep him from escaping. Instead, Dean had walked in and a vacant-eyed Sam followed shadow-like behind him.

Sam's weight, or lack of, had been the next shock. His arms were rail-thin, and the clothes he wore were far too large. The belt on the jeans was cinched tight to attempt to keep them on, but they still came dangerously close to dropping to the floor. The large button-up shirt made Sam look like a child dressed in his father's clothes. The clothes were Dean's, Bobby guessed after seeing the too-short pant legs. A year before, Sam wouldn't have fit into most of Dean's clothes.

Sam had always been lanky and underweight as a teenager, no matter what John fed him. Bobby could remember a frustrated John calling him, asking him to ask the local doctor if it was normal for a teenage boy to weigh so little, asking what could be stopping his youngest from gaining weight, worrying Sam was sick and they didn't know it. "Dean never had this problem," John always said.

Sam was still scrawny at seventeen, the last time Bobby had seen him before he left for college. Then one day Dean and Sam showed up on his doorstep years later, and Bobby had difficulty matching the Sam he remembered with the tall, broad-shouldered man who stood before him.

Seeing Sam so thin again, after seeing the healthy build his adult form had taken, worried Bobby.

"Why did I make that deal, Bobby?" Dean broke the silence for him. He slouched in the chair, but looked expectantly up at him as if Bobby could actually answer that question. "I never wanted Sam to end up like this. It defeats the whole purpose."

Bobby walked over to the fridge and pulled out a couple of sodas. "You're an idiot for ever thinking Sam would just carry on a normal life," he said as he handed a can to Dean. "Sam's as much of a stubborn, obsessive ass as your daddy was. He wouldn't give up just because you were dead. You're stupid for ever thinking differently." It was a truth Dean couldn't argue.

"I didn't think he'd find a way into Hell," Dean said, exasperated.

The soda popped and fizzed as Bobby opened the can. "Yeah, well," he said with a shrug, "That makes two of us." Leave it to the Winchesters to go and do all the shit that's unheard of: climbing out of Hell, being sent to Hell and coming back, willingly walking into Hell. Sometimes Bobby wondered how he got mixed up with such crazy people. It probably had to do with a bar fight and John. Most definitely had to do with John, anyway.

It was silent for a moment as Bobby contemplated his relations before Dean pressed on. "I think Sam might have bought my soul, Bobby," he said quietly. His eyes were fixed on the floor in front of him, and at first Bobby wasn't sure he had heard right.

"What?" Bobby asked, genuinely caught off-guard by the statement.

Dean looked up and met his eyes this time. "I think Sam owns my soul."

He had heard correctly.

Bobby put his soda down. He slowly sat in a chair beside Dean and tried to form a response that would be more helpful than the ludicrous-sounding 'what' bouncing around in his head. Dean had obviously put time into thinking about this, had taken the time to think about it. It had taken Dean four days to travel a stretch of road that he usually traversed in one. And while Dean hadn't been alone for those four days, a catatonic, non-responsive brother was not good company.

Bobby ran a hand over his face and said, "Explain."

Dean shrugged his shoulders and took a drink of his soda. For a moment, Bobby let himself see John in Dean's movements. John had been a stubborn, stupid, prick sometimes. But he had also been his friend, and Bobby missed the other Hunter. "Well, I told you I ran into Ruby," Dean said.

"Yeah. You weren't very specific with what she said," Bobby said. Although Dean had been more than specific with the words he thought properly described the demon, and where she could go, as well as what she could do when she got there. Bobby tended to agree with Dean's opinion, but that was beside the point.

Dean hesitated. Which meant he wasn't happy about the information he was about to share. "She said that Sam had taken up his…role," Dean said, as if not sure what else to call it. "And she said he named me as his second-in-command."

"His role?" Bobby asked, still slightly incredulous. At the same time, he couldn't deny the idea. After all, Sam had found a way to walk into Hell. Bobby had been doing the research ever since Dean dug himself out of the ground. Other than the Hell gate, Bobby hadn't found another way for a human to enter the pit without a deal to stay there for a very long time. And Bobby would have known long before now if Sam had opened the Hell gate again.

Since John passed, anything the Winchester boys did to wrong the Hunter community seemed to fall onto his shoulders. If the pissed off phone calls weren't enough incentive to help keep the boys out of trouble, then avoiding the sneers and sometimes outright hostility from Hunters while in bars or on other hunts certainly was. The boys were lucky Bobby loved them like his own because they were a royal pain in his ass.

"His role as 'boy-king'," Dean said, bringing Bobby back to the conversation at hand.

"The role setup by Yellow Eyes," Bobby said. He leaned back in his chair as Dean nodded. "And Sam named you his second?"

Dean huffed out a breath before continuing. "She said that's how he was able to get me out of Hell."

Bobby nodded slowly, his mind running the information over.

It made a scary kind of sense. If Sam had tapped into his powers, had told the demons he was the one they were waiting for, he could have found an entrance to Hell. He probably even had demon guides. Sam wasn't stupid. He would have thought it out carefully, wouldn't have made a suicide run into Hell unless it included freeing Dean. One thing still wasn't adding up: "How does this come back to Sam owning your soul?"

"Because I still have a contract," Dean said as if he were saying he ate pizza for lunch.

"How do you figure?" Bobby asked.

Dean leaned forward to lean his elbows on the kitchen table. He glanced over Bobby's shoulder, checking to be sure the doorway was still empty. Sam wasn't there, but Dean lowered his voice even more regardless. "That contract was for an eternity in Hell, Bobby. I was told, if I tried to break it, then Sam drops dead. Well," Dean shrugged, "I'm out of Hell way past my expiration date. I broke the deal."

"Except Sam's still breathing," Bobby said, pointing out the obvious.

Dean held up his hands in a 'see what I mean' gesture, and then ran them through his short hair. "Plus," he continued, "It's the only reason I can think of for why they didn't come after me. Think about it—all these months and the only demon I've seen is Ruby?" His voice was incredulous. Bobby thought he sounded a little indignant, too. "They should be coming for me in hordes. You don't break a contract with Hell."

Bobby ran a hand over his face and said the only thing he could think of: "Well, shit."

Bobby watched Sam run his fingers over the book spines on the shelf. He still wasn't used to seeing the younger man in such a state. He kept hoping that Sam would turn to him to ask one of his many questions, those bright eyes once more curious and filled with intellect. But in the two days the boys had been there, there had been no questions. Sam hadn't even made any sound.

Bobby could hear Dean in the kitchen, knife quickly chopping something into finger-food sized pieces. There was a clink, clink, clink every few seconds, and Bobby wanted to yell at Dean to use one of the cutting boards rather than dulling his knife on a plate. He didn't yell though and the sounds soon stopped anyway.

"How many corners of Hell did you see, Dean?" Bobby asked when Dean came back in with a plate of cut up vegetables.

Dean paused for a moment and blinked. "Just one, I think," he said, "but it was enough."He placed the plate on a stack of books on the desk, then gently pulled Sam from the bookshelf. He backed Sam up until there was no choice but to sit on the couch or fall on it.

Sitting with a plop, Sam slowly looked up at Dean, mouth open, squinting a little. Bobby's heart jumped. It was the first hint of recognition Sam had shown. Dean smiled down at his brother and tousled his hair before grabbing the plate of food from the desk.

"How much of Hell do you think Sam walked through before he found you?" Bobby asked, readjusting his truckers cap.

Dean shook his head as he handed Sam the plate, an unspoken command to eat. Dean watched Sam pick up a piece of carrot before saying: "I have no idea."

And that, really, was all Bobby had wanted to confirm.

"Dammit, Sam," Bobby heard Dean snap from the hallway. It was more exasperated than angry, and Bobby allowed himself a smile. "I was just going to the bathroom."

In the past week, Sam followed Dean everywhere. If Dean were in the garage fixing a car, Sam was in the garage, curled someplace nearby. If Dean were watching TV, Sam was on the couch beside him. If Dean went to the kitchen for some food, Sam was close behind.

"What? You got to go?" Dean said. Bobby heard shuffling and then the bathroom door closed. "Go to the bathroom, Sam," Dean's voice echoed from the hallway again. And Sam would, because Dean told him to. Sam did everything Dean told him, unless Dean told him not to follow. Sam was Dean's shadow, that's all there was to it.

Bobby found it amusing. He remembered a toddling Sam following a child-Dean much the same way. And even as a child, Dean had nagged and picked and snapped and bitched, again in much the same way.

Bobby allowed himself a laugh as he shook his head and continued cooking dinner. It was good to know that not even Hell could change some things.

"Do you think Sam will ever come back?" Dean asked on Christmas Eve. It was close to midnight, and Dean and Bobby sat at the kitchen table. The living room was dark except for the glow of the Christmas tree lights, and the house was silent. Sam wasn't with them, but that was unsurprising. He had stopped playing shadow earlier in the week, and tended to wander through the house as if walking through another place, another time.

"He'll come back," Bobby said. "It's only been three weeks." Dean nodded slowly, taking a sip of his beer. "He is getting better, Dean. When you guys came here, he wouldn't even move on his own."

"And now he wanders around wherever the hell he wants," Dean muttered. He wasn't looking at Bobby. He was looking at the cobwebs in the corners of the room, at the books and random junk piled on the kitchen table.

"That's a good thing, Dean." Bobby said. He nudged the other man in the arm and Dean nodded.

Earlier in the week, while Bobby was in the kitchen on the phone with another Hunter, Sam had quietly walked in, sat at the table and stared out the window. He hadn't looked at Bobby, had never indicated he noticed the older man. Bobby ended his conversation, and sat opposite Sam.

Sam's gaze was far away, and Bobby was sure he was seeing something other than the snow outside. Sam was trapped somewhere in his own mind. But he had still moved on his own, which was a step forward. Bobby was becoming hopeful as the days went while Dean was growing more anxious.

A minute passed, maybe two, while Bobby sat in silence with Sam. Then a wild-eyed Dean came storming into the kitchen, looking ready to fight. Dean's gaze landed on Sam and Bobby watched Dean's shoulders relax, watched the younger man back down from the violence ready to brim over in order to protect his brother. That, more than anything, let Bobby know that Dean still suspected something was coming.

Snapping out of the memory, Bobby took a sip of his beer. He needed to ask the question sometime. Better sooner than later. "Should we be preparing for a two fronted war, Dean?" Bobby asked. Dean tensed and Bobby wanted to smack him upside the head.

"Two fronted?" Dean said. His eyes slid to Bobby.

"Don't play stupid with me. You know someone is going to figure out what Sam did, what he could probably do again. We're going to be fighting other Hunters, Dean. I need to know if you think demons are going to come chasing Sam." Bobby paused. "Are we going to have both demons and Hunters coming down on our asses?"

"I don't know. Maybe." Dean sighed. "We are so fucked."

Dean woke with a jerk. When he blinked, on the back of his eyelids, he could still see the blood and gore: the raw meat of what was once a human being. It was a good incentive to keep his eyes open. The alarm clock beside the bed read four-fifty two in the morning. Three hours of sleep was the best he'd done in a long while. He felt a little proud of himself.

Dean was unsurprised to find the bed opposite his empty. He sat up slowly, eyes traveling around the bedroom Bobby had set up for him and Sam when they were just kids. There wasn't much in it: twin beds, identical dressers, a desk, and some high school text books Sam had left behind in case he wanted to read them again. Dean's contribution to the room was the multitudes of Busty Asian Beauty magazines shoved into the desk drawers, and between the mattress and box spring of both beds.

Dean's gaze finally settled on the corner on the other side of Sam's bed. His brother sat huddled, back to the corner, knees to his chest. For one terrible moment Dean's mind flashed back to Missouri's spare bedroom, to Sam being too thin and too unresponsive. It was the moment when Dean had finally found his brother, and faced the reality that he may never see the Sam he remembered again. The thought had Dean getting out of bed faster than he would have on another night. He refused to believe he couldn't get his brother back. He'd just try harder. He had to try harder. It was becoming his daily mantra against waning hope.

Sam held their father's journal in his hands, the book closed, and clasp still bound. He stared at it as if he could see through the cover. But then, Dean considered, that was how Sam looked at everything now. Like he either could see too much of it, or he was seeing something else entirely.

Dean glanced at the window as he stood and stretched. The sky was growing light. Soon, one of the local coffee shops would open, ready for the early morning rush. Coffee shops meant he didn't have to drink Bobby's sludge.

"Good morning, Sammy," Dean said as he approached his brother. "You looking at Dad's journal?" Sam didn't respond; not even a flicker of his eyes. Dean sat on the floor beside his brother. He was close enough that their shoulders touched. "Are you going to open it? I don't think the cover is the most interesting part."

Slowly he reached over and took the book from his brother's grasp. Sam whimpered a little at the loss of the object. His hands stayed in the same position, but his eyes slowly slid to Dean. Sam didn't see him, Dean knew. He looked, but he didn't see. Dean quickly undid the clasp and flipped the book open to the first entry. Maybe looking at their father's scrawling handwriting would lead his brother back to himself. Dean placed the journal back in Sam's hands.

"I know you're lost, Sammy. But you've got to find your way back." Dean said. He fought his voice from turning it into the plea it was. "I'm running out of breadcrumbs to give you to follow."

When Dean got antsy, the resemblance between father and son struck Bobby the most. Dean didn't know how to stay in one spot for too long. Perhaps it was from never stopping his entire life, or perhaps it really was just that he was John's son. Either way, Dean tended to pace and nag and generally drive everyone else nuts when he was static and bored.

As Bobby sat at his kitchen table and watched Dean pace back and forth while bitching about one of Bobby's customers, he knew what he was seeing. He had seen it in John first, and later recognized it in the older son. Dean needed action, motion. He thrived off the adrenaline of hunting, which he hadn't had in far too long now.

Dean had done well for a long time. He had lasted a little over two months. It had been two months of fixing cars, living life like a civilian, and waiting for either a Hunter or a Demon to show up on their doorstep looking for Sam. Bobby had known Dean's patience would run out, had been waiting for it since Christmas. With Sam factored in, he just hadn't known how long it would take.

Sam was still more than half way over the edge of sanity, walking a border between not there and there. He had made progress in the past few months. Recently, Bobby would catch Sam watching him, and it was more than a vacant stare. It was contemplative, intelligent. There was a hint of the old Sam in those eyes.

More often, though, Bobby would see him watching his brother. Dean cooked breakfast every morning and Sam would sit at the kitchen table, his eyes following his brothers every move. He'd be relaxed; no rocking, no fixating on anything for the repetition. He'd just be watching his brother like any normal kid waiting for breakfast to be served. Bobby thought that maybe Sam was trying to gage if it was safe to return to the real world, that maybe Sam had always measured safety by the way life reflected off his brother.

Bobby didn't think Dean ever noticed Sam's gaze, had probably grown so accustomed to it over the years that ignoring it was second nature. After all, Sam had only hero worshiped his brother for most of his life.

"Dean," Bobby broke into Dean's tirade on how Mrs. Watson was an old hag. Bobby tended to agree with the opinion, but that was beside the point.

"What?" Dean snapped, continuing his pacing.

"There's a hunt north of here," Bobby said, picking up a file folder from on top of the pile of odds and ends on the table. The folder was full of research on what looked like a spirit. He had received the call asking for help two days before from a woman sounding young, frightened, and nervous. Bobby figured Dean would enjoy getting out, as well as helping the proverbial damsel in distress. "I was wondering if you would go."

Dean stopped in his tracks and sent him a scathing look. "Are you kidding me? I can't bring Sam on a hunt!" he said.

Bobby had another one of those urges to hit the boy upside the head. He had been having those more and more recently. "Of course you can't, you idiot. I wasn't suggesting you do."

Dean scowled. "No. I'm not leaving him."

"Dean," Bobby said, and sighed. He glanced outside at the waning sunlight, then back to Dean. "I love both you boys like my own. I won't let anything happen to Sam. You know that."

Dean shook his head again. "No. I won't leave him again. I swore. I swore when I found him at Missouri's. I won't."

"Wait a minute. Again?" Bobby narrowed his eyes. "What are you talkin' about?" Bobby watched the set of Dean's shoulders sag, a shift away from stubborn refusal. It made him look slightly beaten.

"I left him there, Bobby," Dean said, hands clenching and unclenching. His gaze was locked on the floor, although Bobby doubted that was what he was actually seeing. "I left him there and I didn't even look back."

"Aw, kid…"There was really nothing more Bobby could say. He had known something was eating at Dean, had been at him before he and Sam ever reached Bobby's. When something was wrong, Dean tried extra hard to act like everything was okay; patented Winchester denial. John was the best at it, had been the original. Sam was good, could deny things left and right if he wanted to. More often than not though, Sam didn't want to. Dean was good, too. Almost as good as John. Except Dean always had an exploding point while John seemed to never break.

Dean huffed out a joyless laugh and his shoulders came up in a shrug. "And now I can't do anything. I can't fix him! I keep thinking I just have to try harder. So I talk and talk and talk, memories, Mom, Dad, places, hunts. I show him pictures, things, anything familiar. And there's nothing." Dean ran his hands over his face in the pause. Bobby decided to pretend he didn't see the tears.

"It's like his mind is just gone. Everything that made him Sam is on a permanent vacation." Dean continued. "And I keep thinking, you know? What if I had looked back, if I had tried harder then and dragged him with me? Yeah, he was a little bit homicidal."

Dean paused, shrugged, eyes searching the room a little as he tried to find the words. Bobby was sure that Sam being a little bit homicidal was an understatement. Dean had told Bobby about his time downstairs. Bobby didn't fail to notice that the part with Sam was very, very brief. The silence spoke louder than any details Dean could have given.

"But when he looked at me, he saw me, Bobby!" Dean said, "He didn't look through me. And that last minute? That was Sammy. I knew when he spoke that it was him, but I didn't even try to take him with me. I left him there!"

"Dean?" Both men stopped at the one word. The voice was soft and rough from disuse, and Bobby felt his stomach give a violent lurch. The color had leeched out of Dean's skin, his wide eyes locked on the doorway behind Bobby. The house was suddenly silent; the only noise that of snow outside falling from the roof to the ground in a wet thump.

Bobby slowly shifted in the chair to be able to look behind him at the doorway that led into the living room. Sam stood in the doorway, hair sleep-tousled from napping on the couch. There was a red line imprinted from nose to jaw, and his eyes were still red and slightly sleep-glazed.

Sam was no longer sickeningly skinny, Bobby realized as he looked at the younger man. It wasn't overly surprising though. Dean had shoved enough food into Sam to feed an army until he once more fit into his own clothes. The only thing that was really missing now was the musculature that Sam had before.

"I'm sorry, Dean," Sam said, shoulders drooping. One hand was white knuckled on the doorway. Bobby could see he was rocking just a little.

"Sammy." Bobby heard Dean's whisper, but was sure Sam hadn't. It hadn't been much more than an exhalation of breath.

"I'm sorry," Sam said again, for all the world sounding like he was five. Then his brow creased, and there was the kicked puppy look that made total strangers trust in him. "Don't be mad, okay? I'll try harder, Dean. Please don't be mad."

"I'm not mad at you," Dean said, moving slowly towards his brother. His steps were even, boots barely making a sound on the cheap linoleum floor. There was a slight hum from the basement as the heater in the turned itself on.

"You sounded mad," Sam said as he slowly leaned against the doorway. The rocking was becoming more pronounced: forwards, backwards, forwards, pause. Backwards, forwards, backwards, pause. That was always the order of Sam's repetitions.

Dean stopped an arm's length from his brother, and Bobby knew he was searching for words. Because Dean was mad, and part of it was anger and frustration at Sam. Another part was anger at himself, and a larger part was the anger at the world that all Winchesters Bobby had ever met seemed to carry.

Bobby stood so he could see Sam past his brother's back, and suddenly Sam's intense gaze was trained solely on him. "He was mad at me," Bobby said, and wasn't sure if he had ever seen Dean's head whip around that quickly before. Sam didn't seem to notice, too busy weighing Bobby's half-lie.

"Don't be mad at Bobby, either," Sam said, gaze switching back to Dean. "I'll try harder, Dean. And it'll get better. It will." His voice dropped to a whisper as he leaned towards his brother a bit, like a child about to share a secret. "It's safe to try harder now, isn't it?"

"Yeah." Dean nodded furiously. "Bobby's here. And I'm here. You're safe, Sammy."

Sam smiled a full-dimpled smile that Bobby hadn't seen in over a year. It made his heart hurt. "Okay," Sam said, and whatever hold he held on lucidity slipped away, not to return even as Dean broke his fist on the wall.

Chapter Text

Sitting in the coffee shop, watching Nicole Whitman bend over to pick up her dropped straw, Dean was slightly grateful Bobby had kicked him out of the house and forced him on the Hunt.

Once he started driving, he realized he missed being on the road. He missed the purr of the Impala over empty highways, blasting his music so it echoed into the night. On the road, there was nothing but him and miles and miles of towns that he kept safe. Thousands of people didn't have to know about the monster in the closet because he played guardian. It was a lonely world, but it was the only one he knew. Even when he felt tired of it, even when he felt the injustice of having the Hunter life thrust upon him, he didn't know how to leave it behind.

The empty passenger seat bothered him. He knew his brother was safe. Bobby would care for Sam. Hell, the man had the only supernatural-proof panic room Dean had ever heard of. That and Dean hadn't wanted to pick rock salt out of his backside. And there was no question about whether or not Bobby would have shot. Still, being alone on a Hunt bothered him. It was too close to what it was like in the months when Sam was missing.

Upon reaching the middle-sized, middle-class white-America town, he met with the woman who called Bobby: the beautiful half-French Nicole with her thick accent and mile-long legs. She had the body of a porn star, the face of a supermodel, and a honey voice that was meant to whisper naughty things in the dark.

As she returned to the table and handed him his coffee with a smile, Dean miraculously remembered that saving people was always a good cause.

For the five seconds he was in the air falling from the second floor to the first of the two-family home, Dean decided he didn't know who to curse: himself or Bobby. Bobby for sending him on a Hunt that was supposed to be a haunting, and definitely wasn't. Or himself for always falling for a pretty face. Nicole of the boyhood-wet-dreams-come-to-life was going to die.

Dean hated witches.

He woke up tied to a chair in the basement. Dead dogs, cats, rabbits hung from the ceiling, slightly swaying back and forth as if someone had walked through them. It was still winter, and the basement was cold. The smell of rot was low, nothing to what it would be in a few months when the summer heat kicked in.

There were giant pentagrams on the floor, as well as other designs and inscriptions Dean couldn't recognize. Blood dripped and pooled from the animal carcasses, turning the white paint red. Trying to ignore the fact that the German shepherd nearest him had a dog tag and was still twitching even though half its guts were pulled out, Dean wondered if blood got moldy. If so that would be the perfect way to find witches: just look for the places with mold problems.

"Well, I see you're awake now," Nicole said as she parted the carcasses to his left and walked up to him. Her bright yellow sundress was smeared with red, and gore covered her hands to the wrists. Once he probably would have been horrified. But he had seen worse. It was hard to top the sights in Hell. Instead he looked at the beautiful girl in the yellow blood-smeared dress and thought of ketchup and mustard, thought of McDonald's and hamburgers.

"How do you like your accommodations?" She asked with the same smile she had used to hand him his coffee. She brushed a hand over the animals, scratching behind the German shepherd's ear.

Dean looked around and repressed a sigh. Witches were just people. People were crazy. Dean wondered how many times that would be proven to him. "Have you thought about hiring a decorator? Fur is so last season." He said.

Her smile faded and the slap on the cheek smacked wetly. "Where is Bobby Singer?" The voice was still honey, but there was an edge of anger to it now.

Dean wiped his mouth as best as he could on his shoulder. He'd be damned if he was going to lick animal blood from his lips. "Probably fixing up a car somewhere," he said with a shrug. She slapped him again, but he didn't care. The slaps didn't hurt, and her anger was a good distraction. He slipped the bindings from the rope around his wrist, and punched her in the face. Then he realized how much of an amateur she really was.

After all, who was dumb enough to use rope?

Dean looked down at the woman who sat stunned and wide-eyed on the floor. She'd probably never been hit in her life. Dismissing her, Dean scanned the room, quickly locating his gun on the altar on the other side of the room.

And that killed two birds with one stone. Nicole was a witch. Witches drew power from altars. Destroy the altar and the witch was nothing more than human. Humans couldn't use spells that sent him flying across the room. Dean plowed forward through the dead animals, ignoring the ache in his ribs, his broken fist. Blood squished under his shoes.

"No!" Nicole screamed from behind him. And the race was on for who reached the other side of the room first. Dean had to hand it to the woman: she was fast. She grabbed the gun just before he did, but Dean used his momentum to tip over the altar. The gun he could deal with; the hexes and spells not so much.

"How dare you!" she screamed, gun shaking in her grasp, finger trembling on the trigger. "How dare you! That spell wasn't meant for you! Do you know how long that took?!"

Dean snorted. She was talking about a conglomeration of animal blood and infant bones as if he had ruined her home-cooked gourmet meal. "It was meant for Bobby, right?" he said, keeping his movements slow. He could tell she had never used a gun before: she hadn't taken the safety off. Dean wondered if she knew how.

"Yes!" she cried, and the voice wasn't deep honey anymore; it was razor-edged hysterical. Her face was red, tears threatening to fall.

"Sorry, lady," Dean said, "That's not going to happen." He punched her again. Somewhere inside him, he knew he had never so freely punched a woman before. Well, he had punched women before. But there had always been a bit of hesitancy to it. Briefly, as he picked the gun off the floor and aimed it at her, he wondered where that reserve had gone. "What do you want with, Bobby?" he asked.

"I want him dead," Nicole said through clenched teeth. The tears were falling, but there were no sobs to accompany it.

"Yeah, I got that part," Dean said. He pressed the gun to her forehead to give a solid reminder that death was in front of her. "Why?"

"He killed my sister," she said. "That's why. She was the only thing I had left in this world, and he killed her." Her voice was steady, her gaze burned into his.

Vengeance.

Dean thought of his father on the floor of an isolated cabin, begging his brother to shoot him; to finish the yellow-eyed demon. Telling Sam to avenge the mother Sam had never known, and kill the father he loved. He thought of himself: leaving Gordon Walker tied to a chair for three days for hurting Sam, of finally finishing the hunt his father started the night his mother died. He thought of Sam walking through Hell with Hell Hounds lapping the blood from his fingers, Sam vacant-eyed in Missouri's bunny-bordered bedroom.

Dean understood vengeance.

He had made a deal with a demon, had gone to Hell for his brother. Compared to that, murder was nothing. What made him better than this girl?

"What will you do if I let you go?" he asked, lowering the gun a little. "What if I tell you that if you leave Bobby alone, I'll let you go?"

She spit on him.

Dean pulled the trigger.

Damn it, Dean thought, as he watched the house in the woods burn. He hated the hunts where he had to kill the pretty girl. He hated more that he wasn't sure if he had been right. For the first time ever, pulling the trigger on a witch had hurt.

He could hear the sirens coming, knew he should be down the road before anyone arrived. He was covered in blood, both his own and of various animals. Police and fire fighters don't take kindly to finding someone covered in blood at the scene of a potential arson.

They'd find Nicole's body in the basement along with all the animal corpses. He didn't think the cops would look too far into her death. She wouldn't be very popular, not with her having killed their pets and dug up dead babies.

Dean turned with a hiss, wrapping his previously bandaged hand around his now probably-cracked ribs from his fall over the second floor banister. He was also sure he didn't float down to the basement. His body was sore, and several scratches were still leaking blood. At least he hadn't landed on his head. Concussions were a bitch to drive with.

Dean wanted a beer and then to pass out in his cheap hotel room. He hoped that the combination of alcohol and exhaustion would let him ignore the feel of cockroaches walking all over him.

The bar looked like any other he had ever been in: bar stools, beat up billiards, darts, and tsunamis of cigarette smoke. And no matter how a bar looked, they all smelled the same: stale vomit, spilled beer, smoke, and wood chips. It was crowded for a Thursday night, which suited him just fine. The more people there were the less he would be noticed. John had taught him early on that the best way to hide was in a crowd.

It took a minute to get the bartender's attention. When he saw the girls the guy was talking up, Dean couldn't blame him. He bet the guy was hoping to walk away with more than a good tip.

"Well, hot-damn!" The call came from behind him as the bartender placed his beer on the counter. Dean closed his eyes and sighed. He had only wanted a drink, not to be social. And running into another Hunter, especially an intelligent one, wasn't in his brother's best interest. Not when said brother had walked into the pit and shown a talent in commanding demons.

Plastering on a smile, he turned on his bar stool. "Hey, Tucker," he said.

The man smiled and sat beside him. He was shorter than Dean, and dressed like a Country star knock-off: wide-brimmed cowboy hat, big-heeled cowboy boots, tight jeans, and tucked-in plaid button-up shirt. He also had a brain that would have given Sam a run for his money, and knowledge of weaponry to rival John's. All this combined made Tucker a frighteningly skilled Hunter.

Dean met Tucker on one of his first solo hunts. They had joined forces against a wendigo, and the partnership turned into an easy friendship. They Hunted together a few more times, and sometimes Dean stopped by Tucker's area for a drink and a night of banter.

"I've never seen you so far north. I thought you stuck to Texas?" Dean asked.

"Well, you know how things go," Tucker said in his thick Texan drawl. He pulled off his hat, placed it on the table, and pushed the chin-length blond hair behind his ears. "Hunters disappear, gates get opened, and favors get called in. It forces a man to leave his comfort zone every now and then." He smiled at Dean as he signaled the bartender with a shake of his empty glass. The bartender nodded.

"You got a Hunt around here?" Dean asked, taking a drink of his beer. In the corner of the bar, a small crowd erupted into cheers.

"Something like that," Tucker said with the same happy-go-lucky tone that flavored all his words. Dean imagined he would sound that way on his deathbed. It was the veil the Hunter hid behind: a happy idiot to be underestimated. Dean knew better.

The bartender refilled Tucker's glass with Jack Daniels. Cheesy music blared into the room. A whine of feedback turned into a woman with a screechy voice singing off-key. Dean sipped at his beer, watching the other man out of the corner of his eye. Tucker didn't try to focus on his drink. He was staring at Dean as if he were a puzzle piece that didn't fit the last hole. After a few minutes Dean couldn't stand it anymore.

"Say what you want to say," Dean said after a gulp of beer.

Tucker grinned at him. "Not one for small talk tonight, huh?"

Dean shrugged and looked the other man up and down. "Sorry, you don't have the right body parts to interest me." The banter was still comfortable, and Tucker's laugh came easily.

"How'd you get out of Hell, Dean?" Tucker asked, his smile never faltering. "If I pour holy water in your drink, will it burn your throat?"

There were cheers and cat-calls from behind them. Someone bumped into Dean's back, and an order was shouted over his shoulder to the bartender. Dean shook his head. "I'm not a demon," he said.

Tucker took out a metal flask, and poured some if the clear contents into Dean's beer. "Prove it."

"Thanks for watering down my beer, asshole," Dean said. It wasn't vehement, just annoyed. He took a swig out of his bottle.

Tucker stuffed the flask back into his shirt pocket, his bright eyes watching Dean carefully. When Dean didn't start smoking in the middle of the bar he said, "Beer tastes like horse piss anyway."

"The Texas farm boy would know what horse piss tasted like, wouldn't he?" Dean replied. He looked at his beer bottle and cursed himself for drinking too fast; the beer was almost gone. He debated the merits of being stubborn and ordering another versus the merits of getting away from Tucker and where the conversation was heading.

The screechy-voiced woman continued to sing, her voice breaking at the crescendo of the song. The roar of the crowd increased in a subconscious effort to drown her out. Dean held back a wince and thought it might be better for his eardrums to escape the karaoke, never mind the other Hunter.

"Then the rumors are true?" Tucker said.

Dean's attention refocused. "What rumors?"

Tucker's grin faded, and his smirk was not so friendly. Dean could see the nastiness that lay beneath the charismatic mask. "The rumors that Sam Winchester commands an army of demons," Tucker said, staring into his drink. "That precious Sammy gave his older brother a get-out-of-Hell-free card. And all he had to do was become the demon's 'Boy-king'." Tucker took a sip of his whiskey.

Dean suppressed a shudder at hearing his brother referred to as "Boy-king". It brought back memories of dark places reeking of blood and bowels, and Sam pulling demons to pieces by hand. Dean met the other Hunter's gaze. "Is that all?"

Tucker shook his head, the whiskey glass still in his hand. The drink sloshed back and forth as he moved. "Oh, no. There is the most disturbing rumor of all: that the youngest Winchester can open up a gate to hell at will."

"And where are you hearing all these rumors?" Dean asked. He wondered how many Hunters had heard the half-truths Tucker was spewing. He wondered more if anyone other than Bobby would actually believe they were half truths. Dean's bottle was now empty and he couldn't even take another drink for a distraction. Instead he slid the bottle back and forth along the counter top from one hand to the other.

"Demons, Dean. Some very, very pissed off demons," Tucker said as he placed his glass down with a heavy thump.

"Demons lie," Dean said. Tucker gave him a look and Dean wondered if there was any hunter in the world who didn't torture a demon when they got their hands on one. It suddenly struck Dean as a little prejudiced. Especially when he had no doubt Sam would be treated like a demon.

The screeching woman stopped singing and the music faded out. Even with the rumble of the crowd, the bar seemed suddenly quiet. "Where's your brother, Dean?"

Dean looked around the bar, as if searching. "Well," he said turning back to Tucker, "He ain't here."

Tucker stared at him a moment and Dean fought the urge to fidget. The look was judging, measuring, and an I-don't-get-what-the-hell-you're-thinking. It was a look Dean had seen John often give a teen-aged Sam.

Tucker nodded, some unvoiced decision made. Suddenly the grin and cheerful charisma were back. He emptied his glass and stood from his bar stool. "Well, wherever you're hiding him, I hope he's hidden well."

Another song started on the karaoke machine. This time the singer was a man with speech slurred beyond recognition. Dean thought the song was supposed to be Frank Sinatra's "My Way."

"Is my brother being Hunted?" Dean asked.

Tucker dug into his pocket and pulled out a handful of change and some lint. He dropped the lint to the floor and shoved the change back in his pocket. "Can he really open a gate to Hell?" Tucker asked as he dug into his back pocket.

Sam, sane and whole, had opened a gate to Hell three times. Sam, three months out of hell, couldn't figure out how to hold on to lucidity for longer than four sentences. Could he still open up a gate?

"I don't know," Dean said.

"You'd better find out," Tucker said, giving Dean an easy grin. He slapped a crumpled twenty from his back pocket on the counter and left.

"You're such an asshole, Dean," Ruby said, crossing her arms and scowling at him. As Dean predicted, the first thing she had done was look up. She had seen him, and known he would trap her.

Dean laughed and nodded. "That's good coming from a demon."

It was a little past two-thirty in the morning. The small one-floor house with plush red carpet and cream painted walls was the first abandoned place he had found. There was no furniture, but the kitchen had all major appliances, and the tiles on the kitchen floor had little flowers weaving through the room.

There was no electricity, so Dean had pulled out an old kerosene lantern kept for the hunts that brought them camping in the woods. Even in the weak lighting, Dean could almost imagine the cookie-cutter family that would live in the house. The mother would make pancakes on Sunday mornings, the father would work on the car in the yard, and the boys would play baseball in the street with the neighborhood kids.

It was the type of life Sam had always wanted.

Ruby's eyes narrowed in the darkness, as if reading his thoughts. "You were so close to becoming one of us. I thought that you'd be a little more sympathetic to our situation."

"No," Dean said with a shake of his head, "If anything, I just hate you more."

Dean was tired. A physical lethargy that not even three cups of black coffee could erase. He had really been looking forward to sleeping. His hand hurt, his ribs ached, and various other places on his body hurt for reasons he wasn't even sure of.

He had tried to sleep; had lain on the lumpy bed and closed his eyes. He spent an hour chanting 'sleep' over and over. He even tried counting imagined fluffy cartoon sheep jumping over a fence. Then he tried counting the cockroaches scurrying around near the bathroom. But words kept circling around his mind like sharks around a life raft.

We're going to be fighting other Hunters.

Dean hadn't spent much time thinking about the Hunters. He had been preoccupied with the nightmare idea that one day demons were going to rain from the sky and drag both him and Sam back to the pit. It hadn't happened yet, but it didn't stop him from waiting.

"If you hate us, then why did you call me, Dean?" Ruby said with a gesture at the candles and summoning inscriptions. She paced from side to side like a lioness in a cage.

Dean leaned back against the wall and thought that, once, he would have played it cool. He would have acted like a bad-ass, as if he had everything under control. He didn't have the patience for word games. He needed answers. He asked, "Are demons coming for Sam?"

A two-fronted war.

Dean tried not to let the words echo for too long in his mind.

Ruby stopped pacing. She tilted her head, considered him. A smirk was growing on her face and Dean wanted to blast it away. There was still a part of him that shrank at the thought of being close to her, close to the body that had been there at the last. A larger part of him wanted to destroy the body and the demon within it.

"If I tell you," Ruby said, "will you let me out?"

Demons lie.

It was rule number one when dealing with anyone from the pit. Demons did anything if it meant they would get something out of it. No matter what story Ruby sold, Dean could never be sure it was true.

Dean huffed out a breath. He had to try, though. For Sam, who had followed him into Hell. For Bobby, who would side with the brothers until the sky fell. Or until it filled with demons.

Some very, very pissed off demons.

Dean considered the blond in the Devil's Trap. By the end of the night, Ruby would remember that humans lie too. "I'll think about it," Dean said. "Are they coming?"

Ruby shrugged; the smirk was still on her lips. "Lilith still wants Sam staked on a pike." This wasn't new. Lilith had been a threat for over a year now. She didn't have a large enough army to constitute a full-blown war. Otherwise she would no longer be sitting around twiddling her thumbs.

"But he must have pissed off more than just Lilith," Dean said.

Sam had done a lot more than just 'piss off' Lilith, who had wanted him dead to begin with. It seemed like he had found a way to make the entire world angry. There should have been some kind of award for that.

"He pissed off a lot of demons," Ruby said with a nod. "But they already broke him." She quirked an eyebrow, looked Dean up and down and asked, "Unless he's actually sane again?"

Dean rolled his eyes. "Like I'd actually tell you."

Ruby held up her hands in surrender. "Fine, whatever. Doesn't matter to me."

Dean snorted. "Yeah, I see that your interest in him has died down." It was hard to tell in the darkness, but Dean thought Ruby's eyes flashed black. No one ever said Sam was the only one with a knack for angering demons.

"I'm not stupid," she said. "Would you really have let me near?"

No.

He didn't say it, but it was a knee-jerk gut reaction. Sam didn't stray far from Dean, and Dean wanted nothing to do with Ruby. Dean shrugged. "Your lack of trying hasn't gone unnoticed." And that was conviction enough that she had just been trying to use his brother.

Ruby didn't respond for a moment. She wrapped her arms tighter around herself and sighed. Her gaze was locked on the plush carpeting now stained with drops of paint. Dean hadn't worried much about making a mess. He had just wanted answers.

The kerosene lamp flickered and Dean wondered how much oil was left in the bottom. Ruby's voice, when it came, was quiet. "What if I told you I'm just following Sam's orders?"

Dean tried not to glare incredulously. He wasn't sure he succeeded. "And why would you do that?"

"Sam was in Hell for a long time, Dean. What else do you think he did while he was down there?"

"Bobby?"

"Yeah, Sam?" Bobby asked.

Even a week later he was still glad that Sam was talking, even if the rambling didn't ever really stop and half of it was non-sense. Most of the time, it sounded like Sam was stuck in a memory, reliving whatever good or nightmarish event he had survived before. And even when he was hysterical, Bobby didn't care. The boy had been silent for far too long. The youngest Winchester had always been about talking, whether it had been a 4-year-old's dozens of questions or a teenager trying to psychoanalyze every part of his life. His silence had been eerie, and talking had to be a giant step towards coming back to the waking world.

"I did something really stupid," Sam said. And he sounded so much like his old self that Bobby turned towards him. Sam was curled on the couch in Bobby's study, knees tucked to his chest.

"What did you do?" Bobby asked. He set his book on his desk, slipping a piece of paper into the pages to save his place.

"I made a lot of very powerful demons extremely angry when I let Dean out," Sam said, his eyes skimming around the room as if scanning through a crowd. Bobby wondered what he was seeing because the room wasn't that large. "And then I made a whole other group extremely angry when I left."

Bobby tried to absorb that information. He leaned back in his chair, considering the implications. "Are they going to go after Dean?"

Sam shook his head, his gaze locked on Bobby's. "They can't. But they will come after the one who holds his contract."

Bobby shifted in his chair uneasily. He didn't want to ask the next question. "Who holds the contract?"

Sam didn't look away, didn't wince or cower. His eyes were puppy-dog large. "The Boy-king."

"Yep," Bobby said, "I was afraid you were going to say that."

Chapter Text

Demons and Hunters.

Dean sighed.

Hunters and Demons.

He was giving himself a headache. The only thing he knew for sure was that he and Sam were facing a war that he couldn't see the end of.

It was mid-morning, and the sun was rising higher in the sky as he drove down the highway towards Bobby's. The road was clear, melting snow turning the pavement black. It was near the end of February and with the window cracked, he thought he could smell the first hint of spring.

The radio was off, Dean instead opting to listen to the purr of the Impala. The exit signs ticked passed along with the mile markers. He absently wondered if Ruby had found a way out of the devil's trap yet. He hadn't tortured her, and he was vaguely proud of himself for being able to curb an urge so strong; especially when she had taunted him at the last.

Her lips had quirked up into a smirk. "You didn't find it, did you?" she asked.

Dean turned to her. "Find what?"

There was a glint in her eye as she shrugged. "Nothing," she said. "It doesn't really matter now, Sam being insane and all."

Dean ground his teeth. He was not going to tell her that Sam was slowly climbing out of the recesses of his mind. He was not going to tell her that Bobby had called him and told him Sam had started talking again.

Demons lie.

He wasn't a fish. He wouldn't take the bait.

"See you around, Ruby," he said and walked out. She hadn't called after him about letting her out. They both knew someone would enter the house eventually.

He had only been gone from Bobby's for a few days, but between the witch, Tucker, and Ruby it seemed like a lot longer. He was glad the drive back wasn't much further. He was looking forward to two things: sleep and Sam's voice. Even if Sam was rambling insanity personified.

Sam was at the kitchen table reading a book when Dean walked into Bobby's that evening.

Dean froze in his steps.

Sam looked up at him with a full-dimpled smile, and Dean found it difficult to breathe. He had despaired of ever seeing his brother's smile again.

"Dean," Sam said, lowering the book to the tabletop. "You're back." For a moment, Dean wondered if he had fallen asleep at the wheel and was dreaming. He bit the inside of his cheek until it bled then winced at the sting of the bite and the coppery tang of blood.

He wasn't dreaming.

"Yeah. I'm back," Dean said when he remembered how to speak. He plopped into the seat across from his brother. The grin that spread across his face made it feel like it was about to crack in two.

Dean watched Sam, ever meticulous, carefully mark his page and close the thick book in front of him. The encyclopedia sized tome read something about ancient Rome on the cover. "How was the hunt?" Sam asked, leaning forward onto his elbows, full attention on Dean.

Dean stared for a moment. How many conversations had they had like this over the years? Too many to count. Dean wondered what Bobby was talking about when he said that Sam was still a few steps away from sane. Sam seemed perfectly fine. Better than fine: he seemed like himself.

"You know, it was a normal hunt," Dean said. "We thought it was a haunting, but turned out to be a witch. No big deal."

Sam's brows furrowed and his eyes clouded a bit. "I thought you were going after a woman in white. And wait: since when has a witch been no big deal?" He said as he looked over Dean's shoulder at the closed door. "And where's Dad?"

The world seemed to slip out from beneath Dean's feet.

Bobby appeared in the doorway, a disassembled shotgun in one hand, cleaning rag in another. "You know how your daddy is: probably got stuck up in another hunt already." Bobby's hands were grease-stained; always were, always had been for as long as Dean's memory of the man went. Dean wondered if Bobby's hands ever washed clean.

Sam deflated. "Yeah," he said. "True." And Dean remembered a ten year old Sam before his crusade for normal. A time when Sam believed Dean and John were super heroes, because Dean had said so and Sam believed everything Dean said.

"How about steak for dinner?" Bobby asked. Dean's stomach rumbled in agreement. Steak sounded wonderful.

Sam sat upright and looked at Bobby. "Steak's good." He said, tone light, his attention taken in another direction. "Jess loves steak." He said.

Bobby froze and Dean didn't dare move. He had a feeling he didn't want to know what would happen if he broke his brother out of whatever happy place he had found to occupy. He had seen an evil side of his brother's insanity once before. It had been enough.

"We have steak every Monday. She says it cheers her up at the start of the week," he continued blithely, and then stopped. The easy smile fell from his face. His brow furrowed and his eyes turned distant. He looked like a man who was trying desperately to remember something forgotten. The swaying was barely perceptible, but it was there: forwards, backwards, forwards, pause. Backwards, forwards, backwards, pause.

"Today's not Monday, Sam," Bobby said quietly, "So why don't we have burgers, instead."

Sam's gaze was still a million miles away when he answered, "Yeah, sure."

Dean wondered if Bobby had already followed Sam along a similar road, and what had happened at the end. He made a mental note to ask the older man about it after, when Sam was well out of hearing range. If it came to breaking the news to Sam about Jessica every day, Dean would rather his brother remain ignorant.

Sam came back to himself slowly, the swaying faded, his eyes focused on Dean and a grin spread across his face again. "Dean! You're back!" he said.

They were the same words, but it wasn't the same exactly. The grin wasn't as mega-watt bright, and the enthusiasm was in check. It wasn't glee that the superheroes had finally returned. It was more a tone of weary relief that they had come back at all. It made Dean think of a teenaged Sam: cynical and arrogant.

It was as if Sam's sanity had gone from one corner puzzle piece to the next, but skipped over a whole bare patch where the rest was supposed lay. Maybe, Dean thought, putting Sam back together would take more superglue than he originally thought.

"Yeah, I'm back," he said with a small smile even as he felt his stomach sinking.

On March sixth, Bobby's phone rang at ten in the morning. Dean was cooking pancakes and listening to Sam talk about his sixth grade class as if he were there yesterday. He heard Bobby answer, was vaguely aware of the low murmur of the other man's voice drifting in from the other room as he poured batter into the frying pan and focused on his brother's voice.

After a moment, Bobby entered the kitchen grave-faced. "Go put your car in the garage and shut the garage door," he said.

Dean nodded, handing the spatula to Bobby and ignoring Sam's wide-eyed gaze. "Make sure he doesn't burn the pancakes, Sammy," he said as he passed his brother.

When he walked back in, the phone was ringing again, two pancakes were burned, and Bobby was telling Sam to ignore the phone.

"Why?" Sam asked.

"It's just Mrs. Watson wanting to complain. Old bag." Bobby replied.

Well, Dean thought, at least he picked a believable lie.

Dean rolled over in bed, turning away from the window with a curse for yowling cats. He wasn't sure how long ago he had finally fallen into bed, but he knew it hadn't been long enough. He could tell through his closed eyelids that it wasn't even light out yet. What business did cats have being up at such late hours of the night?

Then there was the sound of a low non-animal-like growl followed by the screech of claws on glass, and Dean was sitting up in bed as if he had never been asleep. The blankets tumbled to his waist, and one hand was clenched on the blade under his pillow.

His first instinct was to look to the bed beside his to check on Sam, but his gaze didn't need to travel that far. Sam was unmoving at the window, his colors blue monochrome in the moonlight. For a single heart-thudding second, Dean thought his brother looked just like a corpse. The demon on the other side of the window growled again, and Sam reached a hand towards the glass.

If Dean hadn't been to Hell, he would have thought the thing sitting on the overhang of the roof was an alien or a long forgotten monster. The body was more beast than human; some foul parody between cat and dog, and its skin was the gray of mummified corpses. The milk-white eyes were unblinkingly locked on Sam. A long black tongue hung out past rows of razor sharp teeth to dribble red-tinged drool onto the black roof tiles. It could have been a monster. Dean wished it was. It wasn't. It was a lower level demon; one of the ones that couldn't possess a body, too stupid or weak.

All demons were not created equal.

It growled again and Dean thought he could hear words of some long forgotten language in the growl. It was a language that would have been in use before the Tower of Babel, one so long forgotten that only the demons could remember it. Dean had heard a lot of it in the pit.

Sam's hand pressed against the window and the cold surface fogged around the warmth of his skin. The demon licked the glass that stood between it and Sam's flesh, leaving behind a black-red smear in the blue moonlight. Sam tilted his head, as if listening to something no one else could hear. Dean had an odd flashback of Sam as a toddler listening to things in his own mind, and then of Sam in Hell listening to Demons far beyond the shadows surrounding them.

The shudder that ran down Dean's spine launched him into motion. Dean kept a knife under his pillow, but Bobby kept a sawed-off under every bed. It wasn't paranoia; it was safety. In one sweeping move, Dean had the shot-gun in his hand, cocked, and aimed at the window.

His logical mind knew that the protective seals on the woodwork around the window kept the demon outside, but with it mere inches from being able to tear out his little brother's throat Dean wasn't taking the chance. He would have shot the demon immediately but Sam's silhouette blocked the shot. Dean could only see the slightest bit of movement past his brother's form. Still it was enough to have his heart hammering in his chest.

"Sam," Dean said as he stood. He was proud of himself: here was a thing out of his nightmares and his hand was as steady as if he were at target practice. When Sam didn't move or respond, he tried again: "Sammy."

Dean could hear the click of claws on the shingles of the roof, and now that he was standing he could see the flickering of the lights outside. Something moved on the roof above them; a thump, two, and then a howl. Dean's mouth ran desert-dry.

Down the hallway, a thunderous snore issued from behind Bobby's closed bedroom door. Dean wondered how a Hunter could sleep while he had demons and hell hounds on his roof. He made a mental note to tell Bobby off for being too damn self-assured in his wards.

Sam turned towards him then, half-lighted in the moonlight from the clear, starry sky out the window. He looked like an angelic thing of half-dream half-reality while the demon was the solid nightmare from the dark side of the mirror. Sam's eyes were wide in that wondering look that Dean had become acquainted with as little-brother's-sanity-is-out-for-a-stroll.

Sam titled his head again, this time to the left instead of the right. He looked as if he were waiting for his brains to pour out his ear. "They want to know if I'm sane," Sam said, eyes far away and unfocused. "Am I sane, Dean?"

Dean shook his head, "No. Not in the slightest," he said. He forced himself to swallow. "You're just this side away from a clean white room and a fashionable jacket that ties your arms around you."

Sam's mouth formed an "o" and he slowly nodded his head, as if Dean had just reminded him of some important fact. The demon clawed at the window again. There were thick white scratches dug into the glass. Dean wasn't sure how many more swipes it would take for the window to shatter, but he didn't want Sam near it if it did.

"Sam," Dean said. "Come over here."

Sam shrugged and backed away from the window.

And that was Sam now: either completely bat-shit insane, horribly indifferent, or lucidity peaking through different shards of broken sanity. He spend hours discussing books and history and theology in depth with Bobby. The other day during dinner he had gone on a spiel about why Dean needed to eat healthier.

But sometimes, like a few days before, Sam's rambling would touch upon their father, or Jess, or Dean's death, and all semblance of sanity would disassemble. And it happened when thought came near enough to the yellow-eyed demon, or Hell, or anything at all that had occurred in the past two years. It was like a line in his own mind that Sam could no longer cross.

Sam would stop, and his brow would furrow like a man trying to remember something he had forgotten. First, he'd rock, or his hands would find some way to mimic the repetitions: forwards, backwards, forwards, pause. Backwards, forwards, backwards, pause. Then his eyes would dull, and his mind would flee. Dean and Bobby would be left again with a lifeless, catatonic doll. It scared Dean. It scared Bobby. So they did everything they could to avoid that giant break in sanity.

Another snore erupted from down the hallway. He decided it wasn't fair that Bobby was sleeping so well through this.

When Sam was within reach, Dean grabbed him by the arm and, still aiming the sawed-off at the demon, Dean forced Sam to sit on the end of the bed. Sam was compliant, but his eyes never left the creature at the window.

Dean took a step towards the window, making sure there was no chance of missing his target. The creature snarled, but Dean snarled back. "You're not taking him."

Dean shot and missed.

The blast within the small room deafened him for a minute. He didn't hear the waterfall sound of shattering glass pouring down in a thousand shards on to the bedroom floor. He could imagine it, though. A blast of cold air whooshed into the room and Dean shivered. Bobby burst through the doorway, his own sawed-off in his hands, sleep-lines engraved across his face. Bobby's lips moved in rapid-fire questions, but Dean couldn't hear what he said through the ringing.

The demon was gone. The hounds had followed. The lights out the window were no longer flickering. Dean wasn't egotistical enough to believe he had chased the demon off. It had gotten the information it had come for, and had left after playing a game of chicken.

Sam made a motion to stand, but Dean and Bobby both sank a hand down onto either of his shoulders. Dean's hearing slowly came back and Bobby asked: "What the hell happened?"

"There was a demon," Dean said pointing towards the window.

"It's like me," Sam said.

Dean turned his head so fast he wondered if he gave himself whiplash. "What?" he asked, his voiced infused with the incredulity he felt. Sam was not a demon. Dean watched Sam's hand for a moment smooth over the sheets Sam's usual pattern.

Sam looked up from the floor at Dean's voice. His eyes were focused, all the intelligence that was once Sam poured into them. "The window," he said. "It's shattered. Like me."

Dean's heart clenched and he felt the urge to tell his brother that he wasn't shattered. But the truth was in Sam's eyes. There was no lying. So Dean ran his hand through his brother's hair like he had done when Sam was young and sick, and he said nothing at all.

"Can you see them now, Dean?" Sam asked as they drove to the neighboring town. Dean missed the Impala, and couldn't believe he was driving around in a minivan again. Bobby had sent them to pick up a truck part, but had forbidden Dean to take his car.

The Impala was a dead give away to any Hunters who may be looking for Sam. The calls hadn't stopped past the first week of March. So Bobby had changed his numbers—all of them. But just because he changed his phone number, didn't mean the Hunters wouldn't come looking. They were Hunters, after all.

The late March day was warm, the sun melting the remaining snow to puddles of water. The windows of the van were open half way, and Sam's hair was long enough to whip into his face. Dean noted to himself to bring his brother for a haircut soon.

"Can I see who?" Dean asked with a glance at Sam. It was hard to tell where Sam's mind was without seeing his face. Driving and talking to his brother at the same time was a little like juggling flaming sticks.

"The demons that are always following us," Sam said.

Dean almost drove off the road. He slashed another look at his brother. "What?"

Sam slouched down in the passenger seat, knees pushed against the dashboard. His gaze stayed locked out the window on the passing buildings. Dean wondered if there was any car that his brother would fit into comfortably. He tried not to think about their father's truck.

"Sam," Dean said. "Look at me." Sam complied and Dean felt both relief and fear. There was his brother: the one he had dragged from college, who had found their father dead on the floor, the one who Dean had traded his soul for, who had fought for Dean's soul because Dean wouldn't fight for it himself. The person facing him was Sam whole and scarred, not just a fragment.

A thousand questions ran through Dean's mind, a million and two things that he wanted to say to his brother. Not a single word slipped past his lips.

"I can feel them." Sam said. "I know where they are, I have their memories crawling around in my head at night. They're waiting."

Dean tried to absorb that information. He was suddenly very glad he didn't have to share in his brother's nightmares. He also felt an irrational irritation towards his brother. "What are they waiting for?" He asked.

"Me." Sam said, as if he knew what the next question would be and had prepared the answer. He probably had. "They want me to release them from their contracts."

"And how do you do that?" Dean asked.

Sam looked away from the window and down at his hands. Dean could see his face scrunch in dismay at his dirty finger nails. His brother was such a girl. Dean didn't clean his own fingernails; he wasn't going to clean Sam's. If Sam wanted clean hands, he could get his sanity back and clean his own damn nails. The irritation was moving to anger with Sam's silence.

"Sam," Dean prompted, trying his best to imitate his father's 'this is an order' voice. "How do you release the contracts?"

Sam sighed and dropped his hands into his lap. "I have to die."

"No," Dean said with an adamant shake of his head. "Not happening, Sammy." He slowed the car to a stop at a red light and then faced his brother. "Think of another way."

Sam shrugged and fidgeted under his stare, and Dean felt his anger growing. He wanted to yell at him, ask him why he had been so stupid. Why had he followed Dean into Hell to begin with?

It was easy to be angry at this rational, sane Sam. After all, this was the Sam who had made so many decisions that had brought them to where they were. This was the Sam who had broken himself to save Dean. And that, above all else, made him angry. It was his job to protect Sam. Not the other way around. Sam wasn't supposed to save him. Sam was supposed to go back to his college-boy life. Not open a gate to Hell.

"The light's green," Sam said after a minute. His words were punctuated by a car horn from behind them.

Dean turned back to the wheel, jaw clenched. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Sam starting to slowly sway back and forth, his hold on reality thinning. He took a deep breath and asked the next question in a calm voice:

"You thought you were going to die, didn't you?"

"I'm sorry, Dean," Sam said.

"Sam?" Dean called. He placed the two sandwiches in the space on the kitchen table he had made, and dropped a bag of chips between them. "Sam?" he called again. There was no answer. The house was quiet. Out the window he could see Bobby working on an old beat-up Bronco, but Sam wasn't sitting next to the tools like he would have been.

"Where is he?" he muttered to himself. He eyed the sandwiches with a sigh. He missed the days when he could assume Sam would feed himself when he got hungry. But he and Bobby both learned the hard way that physical needs like food, clothing, and bathing somehow didn't factor as important in Sam's disjointed mind. The kid could quote Latin by heart, but he couldn't remember to take a shower.

He picked the bag of chips back up.

A thorough twenty minute search of the house and a lack of other places to look led him to the Impala in the closed garage out back. He wiped chip grease onto his faded jeans as he walked to the rusted metal building. The chips were now half gone, and the bag had been returned to the kitchen table.

"Sam?" Dean called as he walked through the slightly ajar garage door. It was cool and dark in the garage, the single overhead light turned off. Dean had to squint through the darkness to make out the outline of his car. When he noticed the back door open, he let out a relieved sigh.

"Sammy?" he called again, stepping up to the open door and leaning over the doorframe. Sam lay curled on the backseat, his face red and pinched as if in pain. When he looked up, Dean could tell it was more worry and panic than physical hurt.

"It's gone," Sam croaked, his hand reaching out and resting on the backside of the passenger seat.

Dean walked around the door and knelt in front of his brother. "What's gone?" he asked. He looked around the Impala as if the item his brother was so distraught over would magically appear.

"It was here," Sam said. One hand patted the seat in front of him while the other hand was white-knuckled in his own shirt. "It was here. I wrote it and it was here and it's gone."

"Okay," Dean said. "It's okay. " He recognized the signs of Sam trying to hold on to lucidity, knew his brother was struggling to come near something without falling into the abyss that was his mind. He also felt guilty because he had a pretty good idea what his brother was looking for.

Sam shook his head. "No, it's not okay," he said. Then he sat up, placed a hand on either of Dean's shoulders and looked him in the eye. "It was to you."

Dean felt as if the air was pushed out of his lungs. He struggled to stand and then pulled Sam up after him. It used to be easy to get Sam standing; then he grew to be the Jolly Green Giant. It had been years since the younger man had outgrown him so Dean wasn't really sure why he was lamenting the height difference now, of all times. Perhaps to keep his mind off other things.

"Come on, Sammy. You need to eat something." Dean said.

Sam nodded glumly and followed him back to the house.

Dean sat on the couch in Bobby's living room with Sam's journal in his hands. It was a little past five thirty in the morning, but the sun was already starting to peak above the treetops to move the predawn light into early morning. Out the window, birds chirped and sang and screeched like swarms of people at a black Friday sale. Every now and then the birdsong was punctuated by the sound of Bobby's snores.

The smell of coffee drifted in from the kitchen. Dean was tired.

It had been months since he had looked at the journal, or had even thought about it. It had been put away in the desk in Bobby's spare bedroom to wait for the day Sam completed the journey back to lucidity.

Dean thought he had been protecting his brother's privacy; the privacy Sam had always preached as sacred. And yet, in the end, Sam had been depending on Dean to be as he had always been: without scruples when it came to family. Then again, Sam had gone into Hell relatively sure that he wasn't walking back out.

If Dean had found that Sam was truly gone, would he have read the journal?

Yes. He sighed.

He ran a pick through the lock until the tiny latch popped open with a click. Opening the journal, he quickly skimmed through the contents. Each paged was filled with Sam's swirly, girly, bubble letters. The top of every few pages started with: Dear Dean. The first page was the day after he had been torn to pieces by Hell hounds.

Dean felt his throat constrict. "Oh god," he muttered and closed the book.

He closed his eyes and leaned over his knees, book clutched out in front of him. He could picture Sam, sitting down every day to write letters to a brother he believed to be dead. Sam, grief-stricken and alone in the world, writing letters that may never be read. Dean had always wanted first draft letters, and Sam had known that. So here was a journal of letters addressed to Dean, and all of them were Sam unfiltered.

Opening his eyes again, he caught sight of a small stationary envelope sticking out of the back of the journal. He pulled it out, and looked at his name written in blue ink. Taking a breath, he opened the envelope.

By Sam's standards, the letter was long.

Dean, it read, I'm sorry.

I told you once that you were my brother, and I would die for you. It was the truth. I have no regrets. As long as you are out of Hell and free to live your life, I consider the trade worth it. Don't seek vengeance for me. I learned something, Dean. I have demon blood running through my veins. I have since the day Mom was killed. That's where the powers come from. I would have gone darkside—I figure it was only a matter of time. At least this way, I can use evil powers to do something good.

You said you were tired, Dean, of Hunting, of always having to be the savior. Break the cycle of our family; stop all the self-sacrifice, stop Hunting. You don't have to worry about me or keeping your promise to Dad anymore. Live the normal life I know you dreamed of. Be happy, Dean.

Love, Sam

Reading a letter never hurt so much, Dean was sure.

Chapter Text

"Do you believe in God, Dean?" Sam asked.

Dean looked away from his channel surfing to glance at his brother. Sam was curled up on the other side of the couch, impossibly long limbs curled around himself to seem as if he were much smaller than he was. Sam was turned to face the TV; his head resting on the back of the couch. He wasn't looking at Dean. In the living room beyond, Bobby had put his book down.

Dean turned back to the TV but kept his brother in his peripheral vision. "Does it matter?" he said. He wondered if his tone had been nonchalant. He had probably failed.

Sam shrugged and there was something to the slight, despondent movement that screamed to Dean of a young teen Sam. It just wasn't the fierce, angry movement of an older Sam who would fight against every spoken word. There were a few years between the happy-go-lucky child Sam had been and the angry defiant teenager he grew into.

Dean had hated those years. It wasn't that Sam was difficult to live with. Sam had done everything that was asked of him, when it was asked. He had just been unhappy; a melancholy so deep that Dean couldn't find a cure for it. And with the melancholy came an apathy that bordered on defeat and millions of difficult questions that Dean didn't want to answer; questions about God and faith and destiny.

Dean nodded to Bobby in the other room, and the older man picked his book off the desk. Dean could probably steer Sam through this piece of himself without letting Sam slip back into the shell his mind sometimes still became. His brother had been making progress by leaps and bounds in the past two weeks; he had spent more and more time aware, and less time as a catatonic doll. Bobby had noted that the mindsets Sam cycled through were becoming older: leaving them to deal less with a happy, innocent child and more with an angry, aggressive teenager. Perhaps, Bobby said, Sam was crawling out of wherever he was, catching up with his 25 year old self.

"Why do you want to know if I believe in God, Sammy?" Dean asked, lowering the volume on the TV and putting the remote down on the couch beside him. Dean pushed himself up from his slouched position. The remote clattered to the floor as he turned on the couch to face his brother. Dean ignored it, focusing instead on Sam's despondent shrug. "Hey—no," Dean said and nudged Sam with his foot, "You started this, now talk."

Sam didn't look at him, didn't say anything.

"Do you believe in God, Sam?" Dean asked. Sam shrugged. Dean rolled his eyes and nudged him again. "Words, Sam."

"I don't know," Sam said, eyes shifting from the TV to his fingernails. His nails were clean now, Dean noted. Sam had been staying semi-sane enough to return to some of his OCD tendencies. Dean thought the odd feeling in his chest might have been hope.

Dean wanted to ask again if it mattered to Sam if Dean believed in God. But he knew that answer: of course it mattered. Dean was Sam's measuring stick for everything because their father had made it so. If Dean said he didn't believe in the guy upstairs, then neither would Sam; even if it made him unhappy.

"Do you want to believe in God?" Dean asked instead.

There was silence for a moment, but Dean waited. "I want to believe there's a reason for this." Sam said as he raised his gaze to his brother's. There was something more than the 14 year old there and yet something less of the 25 year old; a broken fragment of his brother, a piece that had cracked off and now searched for a place to fit.

"Reason for what?" Dean asked, well aware that he was treading thin ice between breaking his brother more and possibly helping him heal.

"For everything, Dean. For Mom, Dad, you, me. Jess. I have to believe that there's a point to this; some kind of destiny."

Destiny. The word made Dean want to rip his hair out. Why did all of his brother's thoughts seem to wrap around God, belief, and some inescapable destiny. Dean wanted to say that God and reason didn't matter, and destiny wasn't what Sam wanted. That Sam learned his destiny, and had ignored it all to march into Hell to break Dean out. He wanted to answer the question about God with the story of how Sam had broken himself in order to save his older brother. And even though Dean thought it wasn't worth it, Sam would. Sam would think there was a point to it then, even if destiny sucked.

But Sam had believed in God before. What right did Dean have to take faith away from his brother?

"Then believe in God, Sam." Dean said, repressing a sigh. "It's not like they've found some way to disprove him yet."

"But what if there is no God?" Sam asked, voice quiet. It was a simple question that had never been definitively answered. Dean decided he wasn't even going to try.

"I think that's why they call it faith." Dean said with a shrug. "You just have to believe."

Sam nodded and Dean watched the younger man's brow furrow in contemplation. As Sam turned back to the TV, the worry melted off his face as if it had never been there at all. Whatever in-between fragment had passed, and Sam was now looking out through another piece of himself. "Hey," Sam said as his face lit in a smile. He looked at Dean and pointed at the TV. "The Simpsons are on!"

The house was shaking when Dean woke up.

His first thought was that he was in an Earthquake like the last time he was in California with his father. It hadn't been large, they learned later. The locals had barely broken a sweat, but Dean and John had huddled together under a doorway waiting for the nauseating movement to either stop or get worse.

Dean's next thoughts were that he wasn't in California, and his father was dead. His mind clicked on. He opened his eyes to find Bobby standing grim-faced above him, his hand pulled back in a fist and Dean's name being pulled from his lips. Suddenly Dean felt the ache in his jaw.

"Dean! Wake up!" Bobby yelled. Dean could feel Bobby's other hand white-knuckled on his shoulder. There was a line of blood dripping down Bobby's forehead.

"I'm awake," Dean said, before Bobby could punch him again. The room continued to shake as he sat up. There was a crash and the sound of glass breaking from downstairs. "What the hell?" Dean said.

Bobby jutted his chin toward the other side of the room. "He won't let me near him."

Sam stood at the window, hands clenched into fists by his sides. His shoulders were stiff as if waiting for a blow to fall across them. Chunky red- black goo was smeared and dripping down the window. On the rooftop overhang was a pile of red meat and broken white bone. The head beside it stared in at them; it wasn't human. Dean wanted to make a joke about splattered demon but the words stuck in his throat.

"Sam," Dean called, moving slowly, holding onto the wall for balance. The house gave a lurch and he stumbled. Bobby had backed up to the doorway, and held onto the frame. "Sam," Dean said again, reaching out a hand to his brother's shoulder.

Sam whirled to face him and Dean thought that his brother was going to rip him apart like the thing on the roof. He held his breath, fighting the instinct to run. Then Sam's anger vanished, and the shaking stopped. The house groaned beneath them as if it were going to collapse from the abuse.

"Are you okay?" Sam asked, eyes wide and searching Dean for injury.

Dean nodded dumbly. "I'm fine."

Sam looked at him doubtfully. "Really?"

This is Sam, Dean thought, trying to ignore the fact that there was a bloody corpse in the window beside him. This is Sam, not a monster, and this isn't Hell. His heart still beat a little too fast as he pushed his panic down along with the flashbacks. Taking a steadying breath, Dean gently nudged Sam towards his bed. "Yes, really, I'm fine. Go back to sleep. It's late." Sam didn't sit down on the bed automatically; Dean gave him a slight push until he was no longer standing. The old bed springs squeaked under Sam's weight.

Sam's hands clenched together in his lap, and he rocked slowly in his pattern: forward, back, forward; back, forward, back. "You sounded like you were in pain," Sam said quietly as he looked up at Dean.

Dean froze and saw Bobby's raise an eyebrow from the doorway. He knelt in front of his brother and looked him in the eye. "It was just a dream, Sam. A nightmare." And if anyone could understand, it was Sam.

Sam stopped rocking and stared into his eyes for a moment, weighing the truth of the words. Then he nodded and lay back down. "Okay. Goodnight," he said, as if he hadn't just shaken the entire house with nothing more than a thought.

Dean stood with a sigh. "Night, Sammy."

Dean followed Bobby out of the room and closed the door with a quiet click behind him. He stared at the floor, hand still on the doorknob. He couldn't make himself meet Bobby's gaze. It was silent in the hallway, not even the low hum of the heater. It was still early spring, and no crickets defied the cold to chirp into the night. There had been no crickets in Hell either.

"Do you need ice for your jaw?" Bobby asked and Dean shook his head. His jaw ached, but that was all. "Sorry I had to hit you, but you wouldn't wake up, and…" Bobby trailed off. He didn't need to complete the thought. Instead he made a gesture towards the room behind Dean.

"Did that really just happen?" Dean asked. The whole scene kept playing over in his mind, cataloging all the ways it could have gone wrong. Dean was pretty sure he had a new nightmare.

"Well, seeing as I have an exploded demon on my roof, I think it did," Bobby said. "That was all Sam, wasn't it?

Dean nodded. "Not unless there's a fault line here that no one knows about."

"Damn." Bobby said with a huff. "I never did believe your Daddy. I just told him to stop drinking so much."

Dean did a double take. "What?"

"You're daddy used to tell stories about hotel rooms shaking and windows rattling. I guess it even happened at Jim's house. He thought Sam was the cause."

Dean felt something close to dread tickle across the back of his spine. "So, what did Dad do about it?" he asked.

Bobby shook his head as if searching for the right words. "Nothing," he said, "He said it just went away." A moment of silence stretched between them. Bobby looked him up and down. "The nightmares still bad?"He asked.

Dean looked away. He didn't like to talk about the nightmares. No one needed to know that he woke up in a cold sweat more than three nights a week. Bobby didn't need to hear about the torture and the gore; that sometimes he dreamed his brother was irrevocably demonized; that sometimes they were more than dreams.

Dean scratched the back of his head, and looked the older Hunter in the eye. "Define 'bad', Bobby."

Bobby sighed and wiped a hand over his face. "Look," he said. "Sam did that as a reaction to you; to protect you."

Dean opened his mouth to say something but couldn't find a good retort. What could he say: 'I never asked him to help me'? When in reality, he could have done just that by calling out in his sleep.

"If I were you and I had a brother who could do…that…" Bobby said, still not able to put a name to what Sam had done. "I'd be more honest with him. Sam knows you. He knows when you're hiding something. He knows you're not invincible. And he knows that when you lose that air of invincibility, and show some damn emotion, that the pain must be bad. You saw what just happened. That could have turned into a massacre, all because you probably groaned in your sleep." Bobby paused for a moment, letting his words sink in before adding, "Imagine what Sam will do if you're ever truly hurt."

Dean thought about it and hated to admit it made sense. Sam, in his half-sane state of mind had stood to protect him as if it were as natural as breathing. If the Hunters attacked or the Demons came to collect Sammy, and Dean was hurt, Dean didn't know what his brother would do; wasn't entirely sure what he could do. A massacre was probably the least of it.

Dean sighed. It had been a long time since he's had seen his brother's powers, and he hadn't been unhappy to see them go. "His powers aren't going to go away, are they?" Dean asked.

Bobby looked around at the mess that was the hallway: shattered picture frames, toppled over books, one long crack going up the ceiling. "Doesn't look like it, no," Bobby said.

Dean's throat felt dry, and he leaned against the door behind him. That hadn't been the reassurance he wanted. His mind flashed back to Sam in Hell, bloody with a frozen smile. "He's still Sam, isn't he?"

Bobby studied him as if trying to read his soul. "I think," he said, "maybe that's something you need to decide." He turned and started walking back to his bedroom.

"Hey, Bobby?" Dean said and waited for his friend to turn back to him. "I kind of wish it was an undiscovered fault line."

The air outside Bobby's place smelled permanently of sulfur. The demons were never far away, even now when Sam was gone.

Missing.

Again.

Dean punched the steering wheel of the minivan and cursed the soccer-mom car, cursed Tucker. If he'd had the Impala, Dean never would have been outrun by the other Hunter. He would have been able to catch up to the blue Mustang that carried his brother away from him.

Through the lazily falling chunks of April snow Dean saw Bobby step out onto the front porch, face grim. In his right hand he held up a phone.

Dean bit back a growl as he got out of the car. Cocky bastard, he thought. Calling to gloat over his victory. Dean slammed the car door shut and jogged the few steps in the cold up the porch stairs. Taking the phone and lifting it to his ear, he didn't waste any words: "Where the fuck is Sam?"

"Relax Dean," Tucker said in his usual cheerful voice. "He's right here. Not a hair harmed on his head." Dean could hear the humming of the Mustang in the background, and wondered how far away they were. They could be on the highway heading towards Texas as they spoke.

Bobby opened the screen door and pushed Dean inside to the warmth of the kitchen. The smell of this morning's breakfast still clung to the air, and Dean had to fight with himself to not look around for Sam. "Let me tell you this:" he said into the phone, "wherever you take Sam, I will find you. When I do, I will tear you apart piece by piece. And I will enjoy every minute of it." It didn't matter that Sam could probably do such himself.

"Believe it or not, Dean, Sam came with me willingly," Tucker said, cheer suddenly turned serious.

"And pigs fly," Dean said, pacing back and forth in the kitchen. Bobby was leaning against the counter, watching intently as if he could discern what was being said on the other end of the conversation. "If Sam were lucid, you'd still be bleeding in the parking lot of that grocery store."

"Are you so sure?" Tucker asked.

"Yes," Dean said. Even if Sam hadn't had Jedi powers of the dismembering variety, Dean was certain Sam could have beaten the other Hunter. Dean had fought Tucker hand to hand before, and Dean had laid the shorter man flat. Dean had taught Sam well, and had rarely seen his younger brother lose in a fist fight to anyone except himself.

Dean paced the length of the room, all his attention focused on the sounds on the other end of the line; the rumble of the car, the sound of traffic passing, the low country music. His eyes skimmed over the dirty dishes toppled in the sink, the oil rags piled on the counter, the various mounted phones labeled as different agency lines, and the car parts strewn on the table. Bobby stood out of Dean's path, arms crossed over his chest.

Tucker sighed. "Do you know that Sam has over a hundred demons circling him at any given time?"

A hundred demons. No, Dean hadn't known there were over a hundred demons. A chill slid down his spine and the world tilted a little. Tucker continued in Dean's silence: "And you also have a group of Hunters planning an attack on you. They want Sam dead because he's turned into such a demon magnet."

"And you don't?" Dean spit back at him. The TV was on in the living room; Dean could hear the laugh track to some sitcom echo from the hallway.

"Want Sam dead? It's no longer my primary goal, no," Tucker said. Dean didn't miss the innuendo that it once had been the goal. There was a ruffling of cloth and the short fizz of a soda bottle opening on the other end of the line. "Even if Sam could open a gate to Hell, I doubt he'd be able to stay sane long enough to do so." The words made Dean wonder at which phase his brother's mental state was in; by the silence he was leaning towards catatonia.

"Then what do you want?" Dean asked. He stopped pacing, and somehow missed the sound of his own footsteps. The room was quiet except the buzz of the old fridge.

"To kill demons," Tucker said, good cheer back in place, "and Sam has an awful lot of demons following him."

Dean took the phone from his ear to look at it in disbelief. Was he hearing right? "So what? You're going to use my brother as bait?"

"Something like that." Tucker said. The line went dead.

Dean cursed, but withheld the urge to hurl the phone across the room. He turned to Bobby. "What'd he say to you when you picked up?"

Bobby shrugged. "You know how he is: most of what comes from his mouth is meaningless rambling." Bobby paused. "So he's got Sam, huh?"

"He wants to use him as bait for the demons," Dean said. In his mind he was already planning Tucker's death. He was going to scoop out the man's eyeballs with a spoon. Scalp him with a butter knife.

Bobby pried the phone from Dean's hand before setting it on the table. "He thinks the demons are after Sam to kill him?" Bobby asked as he rearranged the trucker hat on his head.

Dean shook his head and started pacing again. "I don't think the term 'boy-king' holds much meaning for him yet, no."

"But that can always change." Bobby said as he sat down. The chair creaked as he leaned back. "And that could either be bad for Tucker or bad for Sam."

Dean nearly growled in frustration.

Dean tried to focus on the rhythm of running: the thud of his feet upon the earth, the sting of the cold air as it entered his lungs. He tried to let it become meditation the way his father had. Turn everything in your brain off, John had said. Focus on the physical: your body, your surroundings. Then let everything else go. Dean tried not to think about Sam missing, the demons undoubtedly trailing him in the dark or that Bobby had thrown him out of the house to wear off some energy.

Dean stopped and looked at the deserted street around him, at the woods. His panting breaths formed puffs of smoke in the early Spring night air. He liked running, but he sucked at meditation and always had. John and Sam had been good at it. They would run for hours together in the morning, neither of them saying a word. It was the only time they weren't trying to rip each other's faces off. Dean had gone with them just to enjoy the rare peace between the two.

"Do you know what happens when a bunch of demons are released from their contracts, Dean?" Ruby said from behind him, and Dean ground his teeth in anger.

"What do you want?" Dean asked, turning to face the demon. He wasn't up for this. It was night, and cold, and he hadn't found Sam.

It had been easy when Sam was addicted to technology and always had his cell phone. All it had taken was a single call to the phone company to ask about the GPS. But in Sam's constantly shifting mental state, he hadn't found much use for electronics; his phone was always forgotten or dropped or dropped and then forgotten. Dean had given up and put the phone away for when Sam wanted it again. He had never let himself think that day wouldn't come.

"Should I just tell you what happens?" Ruby asked, taking two sashaying steps towards him like a predator stalking its meal. Dean thought he saw some glint of delight in her eyes. "Being released from a contract doesn't make a demon any less a demon. They don't suddenly go to Heaven. They go berserk, and do what demons do best: mayhem and murder."

Ruby took another step towards him and Dean stepped away. She was a demon; he would never forget that. "And you're telling me this, why?"

Ruby stopped where she was and looked around at the woods. "You have to get to Sam. The contracts are about to be released, Dean." She said it matter-of-factly.

I have to die.

Dean felt his stomach drop as he remembered the words. Sam dead. Again.

No.

"And I suppose you're trying to help me out of the goodness of your own heart?" Dean asked incredulously. His words lost some of their bite since he was still panting for breath.

"No," She said with an exaggerated eye roll. "It's called self-preservation. Those demons hate me. They'll drag me back to hell and deliver me to Lilith for sport." She scowled. "I'd rather keep them trapped under Sam's orders."

He disregarded the mention of Sam giving orders to demons. He wouldn't rise to the bait Ruby was throwing at him. He wouldn't get upset or frightened or have a particularly vivid flashback of bloody ground and Sam's indifference. "So you know where Sam is?" he asked.

"I'll tell you," Ruby said and took a step away from him. Shaking her head she continued: "but I'm not coming with you."

Dean didn't want to ask. He didn't really want to know. But there was always a reason when a demon turned tail and ran. "Not that I want you to come with me, but: why not?"

Ruby shrugged, and again matter-of-factly stated: "Because you're probably not going to make it."

Chapter Text

Dean and Bobby drove two hours to the abandoned rope factory on the side of the old interstate. It was long passed full dark, and there were few lights along the barely travelled road. The building itself was brick with dirty broken windows, and overgrown weeds and vines. It stood proudly in the night like the ruins of a castle.

The entire building was crawling with Hunters. They passed the cars parked on the side of the highway, and a line of them sat outside the building. Here and there flashlight beams shone out of the windows of the factory as if the men and women inside were jailers on patrol.

"How many Hunters, do you think?" Dean asked as he carefully shut the Impala door. He had ditched the soccer mom car, and refused to ride shotgun. He didn't remember insisting on the Impala, but he figured he must have. Not that hiding the car in the first place had done much good; the demons basically crawled around inside Sam's head, and the Hunters had found them anyway.

Bobby's gaze locked on the building. "Tucker said twenty, right?" he asked.

Dean nodded as he rounded to the back of the car, and opened the trunk. As soon as Bobby stood beside him, Dean started handing out weapons: guns, salt, jugs and vials of holy water, a random can of spray paint. "Doesn't this seem like more than twenty to you?" Dean said, stuffing his pockets full of holy water and salt.

Bobby nodded. "I'd say it's about double that." He shoved weapons into a once-green duffle bag and slung it over his shoulder. Then he started filling a second.

Dean pursed his lips and slid his hunting knife into the waist of his pants. He passed Bobby a flashlight then took one for himself. "Tucker decided to have a party," he said as took the second stuffed duffle bag as Bobby handed it to him.

They shot a Hunter immediately after entering the building. Their flashlights were off, and they were blinded by a light in the face. Bobby paused, but Dean opened fire with once-in-a-lifetime luck.

"You realize you just called every Hunter in here down on our heads?" Bobby said as he looked blindly into the darkness.

Dean shrugged and it was more a creaking of leather and rustle of fabric than a motion as their eyes adjusted to the dark. "Good. Then they have less time to try and kill Sam." Dean nudged the body with the toe of his boot as they passed. "You know this guy?"

Bobby stood over the dead man for a moment, bending down a bit for a better look. He shook his head. "Nope."

They moved on.

The factory itself was a maze with traps of Hunters in every room and corridor. After the gunshot in the entrance, the Hunters were searching with weapons drawn. Bobby and Dean avoided run-ins when they could in order to save time, and avoid any fatal accidents. They were methodical in their search: downstairs first; left side, down the center and then up the ride side. They found nothing on the first floor.

Dean lost his patience by the second floor.

Every new hallway blended into all the others: bare, rundown and dark. The silence made it simple to hear the approaching footsteps of patrolling hunters. Most of them they hid from, others Dean or Bobby knocked unconscious. They knew the alarm was going to be raised as to their whereabouts sooner rather than later, and it impressed upon them the need for urgency.

"I'm sick of this," Dean muttered as they entered the second to last hallway on the second floor. They had found nothing, not even a clue. There was still a third floor, and they hadn't checked to see if there was a basement. Dean was ready to find Sam, and find him now.

Across the hallway, a single door was open into darkness. There was no flashlight beam from the room, but there was the scuffle of shoes on dirt-covered cement. Dean moved slowly towards the door, Bobby following close behind, ready to play back-up.

Dean peaked into the room. The space itself was large, filled with random articles of abandoned furniture covered in white sheets. To people fifty years before, the space would have looked like it was filled with ghosts. Dean still had a difficult time believing people were truly that stupid. But his father hadn't been joking when he'd shared the bit of history with Dean. John had thought common people were stupid, too. Which was probably just one more reason why Sam's quest for "normal" baffled John, Dean figured

A Hunter stood at the opposite end of the room, silhouetted by one of the large factory windows. The man was a few inches shorter than Dean and lanky. His guard was down, gun pointed at the floor. It was all Dean needed to sneak into the room and grab him from behind. The Hunter struggled, but only minimally as Dean placed his well-honed hunting knife to the other's throat. The Hunter's gun clattered to the floor and echoed in the empty room. Dean realized in that moment that his captive was maybe no more than sixteen. The kid had wide puppy-dog eyes like Sam.

Dean's stomach rolled.

Bobby's back was to the room, shoulders stiff as his eyes scanned the dark hallway. "Hurry up and ask him before someone comes along," the older Hunter said, not sparing a glance back. Dean wondered how well Bobby was able to see in the darkness. He obviously didn't see that Dean was scaring the crap out of some teenager.

The kid spoke before Dean could: "You're Dean, right? You're here for Sam," His eyes, as he looked over his shoulder at Dean, turned from puppy-dog eyes to resolution-hardened.

"I'm here for Sam," Dean said, ignoring the urge to trust the kid just because he knew Sam's name and had the same kicked puppy look. "And if you tell me where he is, I just might not kill you."

The kid kicked his own gun away. A sign of surrender or a death wish; Dean wasn't sure which. "Third floor, down the right side hallway," the kid said quietly.

Dean saw Bobby turn to the room out of his peripheral vision before the older man said, "And how do we know you're not leading us into a trap?"

The kid shrugged. "Sam helped me when he didn't have to. He's a good guy, even if he is kind of crazy."

Dean sighed. That sounded like Sam: he could bury himself into anyone's heart if he gave enough puppy-dog eyes and was allowed a chance at a heart to heart. To Dean, it was like magic. He couldn't figure out how to do it. John had said that Sam had compassion, and the tone of voice he said it in made Dean glad that he didn't seem to have any.

Dean removed his knife from the kid's throat, but brought the handle of his flashlight down on the kid's head hard enough to knock him out. Dean caught him before he hit the floor, and gently settled him against the wall.

Dean glanced over at Bobby, who had gone back to guarding the doorway. "You think his family's here?" he asked.

Bobby glanced over his shoulder, and nodded. "Without a doubt." He readjusted his trucker's cap on his head. "How many times did you leave a reluctant Sam in a room that didn't really need a guard?"

Dean looked down at the teenager at his feet. He wasn't the only one who saw Sam in this kid. "Right," Dean said, and stood. "Let's go."

They were in the third floor hallway when the room furthest away exploded. The entire building shook and black demon smoke burst outward like a sonic shockwave, knocking both Dean and Bobby off their feet.

Dean didn't remember getting up; didn't remember running down the hallway; didn't remember jumping over knocked out Hunters and dropped guns. He wasn't even thinking at that point. Years of auto-mode had kicked in: get to Sammy, protect Sammy, look out for Sammy.

Dean froze in the doorway, his breath stolen from his chest.

Ruby had been right; Dean was too late.

Sam lay motionless in the middle of giant devil's trap, slack-jawed and eyes closed. For a moment, Dean imagined the ground beneath his brother was muddy, and a sky full of jewel-bright stars replaced the network of rusted pipes that comprised the unfinished factory ceiling. He could almost feel the blood cooling on his hands all over again.

Then Tucker bent over Sam to administer mouth to mouth, and the trance was broken. The stars and mud were gone, and there was no blood on his hands. But Dean knew that stillness, had spent days staring at it before starting him and Sam both on a path that would lead them to Hell itself.

Sam was dead.

Tucker pulled away from mouth-to-mouth and restarted chest compressions. He didn't look up, but said, "Are you going to help save him or what?"

The dissonance between Tucker first killing his brother and then trying to save him held Dean immobile for a few seconds. He wasn't sure if he wanted to shoot the man in the face, or curl up at his feet and beg him to bring his brother back. There was a gunshot from the hallway behind him and he jolted into motion.

He was on the cold cement floor beside his brother within a few breaths, shoving Tucker away with an unintelligible growl. He was still on auto-mode when he started the CPR.

One, two, three, four, five.

There was a discarded plastic bag laying less than two feet away. In his peripheral vision he saw Tucker stand and draw his guns as a pale demon the size of a toddler climbed along a pipe overhead.

Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

There were scratch marks on the sides of Sam's neck. None of them were bloody; just angry red welts rising along the sensitive skin. There was an enraged screech from overhead followed by the rapport of a gun. Dean suspected he'd be deaf before the end of the night.

Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five.

Bobby yelled something from the doorway, but Dean didn't understand what he said due to the ringing in his ears. A demon-possessed human ran at them from the side, but soon met the ground as a bullet shot through the human's heart. Dean leaned over Sam and gave two puffs of air and watched with relief as his brother's chest rose and fell. That meant his neck hadn't been damaged, that it was clear for air.

"Come on, Sammy," he said as he sat up to start chest compressions again. He tried to push away the terror rising in his veins. CPR alone wouldn't save his brother, wouldn't restart his heart. His brother needed an ambulance that would never arrive in time to save him.

Several more gun shots rang out, along with a few curses that only Bobby could spout. Human screams of pain and panic reverberated from other parts of the factory; some muted by walls, others as close as outside the door.

Murder and mayhem.

The air was thick with the smell of sulfur. Dean felt like he was choking on it. Tucker dropped back down beside him, yelled something in his ear that was drowned out by a demonic screech and a whirlwind of black smoke.

A high-pitched whine broke through Dean's deafness, and Tucker gave him a hard shove away from his brother. Even as he fell to the floor, Dean's eyes never left Sam. It was as if life had snapped into a bad slow motion sequence.

Dean felt his shoulder hit the cement with a thud as Tucker ripped open Sam's shirt. A demon on the other side of the room smiled in the darkness and started slinking towards them, its eyes fixed on the non-moving Sam like a cat with new prey. Dean's gaze was suddenly shooting between the demon and Tucker spreading gel on his brother's bare chest. He shouted to his body to move, but he couldn't, unsure of which place to be.

A pair of dark-blue jean-clad legs stepped in front of him, cutting off his sight of the demon, just as Tucker placed two paddles against Sam's chest. Sam's body stiffened but didn't jolt like it showed in the movies or TV. Dean recognized the jeans before him as Bobby's as the older man pulled up a sawed-off shotgun and fired.

The demon kept moving, and Bobby threw a vile of holy water and started reciting Latin. Tucker checked Sam's pulse and swore; Dean didn't hear it but saw the other man's mouth form the words. A second later and Sam's body stiffened again. Dean didn't want to think about how Tucker knew how to use a defibrillator. There was another explosion of black smoke and Bobby turned back with a self-satisfied smile on his face, and Tucker leaned to check Sam's pulse.

Tucker paused with his hand on the side of Sam's neck. He nodded at Dean and the world returned to normal pace. "He's got a pulse!" Tucker yelled as Dean pulled himself off the floor. Tucker continued mouth-to-mouth while Dean checked for his brother's heartbeat himself. He held his breath as he pressed his hand to his brother's pulse point, barely daring to hope. When he felt the thump-thump against his fingers, the rush of relief was dizzying.

Tucker announced something better a moment later: "He's breathing!"

Dean carded his fingers through his brother's hair. "Good boy, Sam. Hang on, okay?" Then he leaned over and punched Tucker in the face.

The warehouse turned into a guerilla warfare battlefield; every corner turned was filled with hunters and demons fighting. There was gun fire, explosions and even the clang of swords. Dean was amazed the building hadn't fallen down around their ears yet. Although, judging by the way the floor was shaking, the warehouse wouldn't stand for much longer.

Dean shifted Sam's weight, and felt Tucker do the same on the other side. There was a splash of black and crimson on the wall and floor that they gave a wide berth to as they passed. Bobby muttered something from behind them that sounded suspiciously close to a prayer.

"How much further?" Dean asked. Tucker's nose was still bleeding slightly, he noticed with triumph. He had probably broken it with that one punch. It was petty, but it made Dean feel better. Tucker deserved far more after killing his brother, Dean believed. Unfortunately, they needed him to get the hell out of the demon-infested building. Safety in numbers.

"Not much further," Tucker said, aiming one handed at a demon crawling along the wall towards them. His shot hit it between the eyes, but didn't slow it down.

Dean started the Latin chant to send it back to Hell, and it scurried away.

"Not too eager to go back, I see," Bobby observed. Dean didn't volunteer the information that demons were cannibals and the small fries without contracts didn't survive very long.

An explosion rocked the ground and the wall beside them cracked. There was a roar on the other side of the wall, followed by human screams unnaturally cut off. "What the hell was that," Dean asked without expecting an answer.

"Let's not stick around to find out." Bobby said. "Which way, Tucker?" They had come to the end of the hallway, their only choice to go left or right.

"Left." Tucker said, and Dean cursed. The roar had come from the left.

They turned the corner slowly, Bobby going first, shotgun aimed. The hallway was empty: no bodies or lesser demons crawling along the ceiling or walls. It looked like everything had been painted a rich, deep red. Then Dean noticed the dark chunks slowly slipping down the walls, and he had a flashback of the bedroom window at Bobby's. There was a molar imbedded in the wall nearby, and a finger under Dean's boot. This time, Dean was relatively sure the victim had been human. The carpet was cheap and thin, not as absorbent as a plusher carpet would have been. Instead of making the sickening sucking sounds of sneakers through mud, it was like walking through a shallow puddle with each step taken carefully incase the puddle unexpectedly grew deeper or your shoes leaked. Dean remembered why he didn't wear sneakers.

They moved slowly, Bobby scanning before them and Dean and Tucker taking turns checking behind them. The hallway was entirely too quiet. "So, where's the big baddie?" Dean asked.

Tucker's eyes glinted with anticipation, a grin spreading across his face. He looked less than human with drying blood smeared around his chin and swollen nose from the nosebleed. "He's probably not far." Even his voice didn't hold back his excitement.

Dean wanted to roll his eyes and call the other Hunter a lunatic. But he couldn't. A few years before, he had been the same way about the Hunt. Killing off evil had been the light of his life. Now he was just perpetually tired.

Suddenly Sam's weight doubled as Tucker pulled away, and Dean struggled not to drop his brother. "Jesus, Tucker, some warning next time."

Tucker turned to him with a broad smile as he checked the ammunition in the two pistols he carried. "Sorry, Dean," he said, all thick Texan drawl and charm. He turned to Bobby next, and Dean swore he could almost see the excitement rolling off him in waves. "Bobby, you have any holy water left?"

The ground shook beneath them, and Dean tightened his grip on Sam. He could only imagine how much his brother would bitch if he was dropped in a small lake of human blood. Bobby stared at Tucker for a moment. "You're going to pull something stupid, aren't you?" he asked.

Tucker shrugged. "I came here to hunt demons. That's probably a big demon. Are you really going to stop me?"

Bobby glanced back at Dean and Sam. "Nope," he said. He dug in his pocket, eyes still shifting in front of them from time to time, and pulled out two small vials. Then he handed over one of the duffle bags he had been carrying. "It's not much," he said, "but it's better than nothing."

Tucker shouldered the bag and turned to Dean, smile still on his face. "Take care of your brother." Then he turned, and with a loud whoop, stomped down the hallway. More blood spattered the walls as he walked, droplets kicking up behind him to splatter black on his blue jeans. He was only ten feet away when an invisible force grabbed him and tore him through the wall.

Dean stared for a moment, and then Bobby was hefting up the other half of Sam's weight and smacking Dean upside the head. "Move, you idiot!' he said.

Dean didn't look when they passed the human-sized hole in the wall. The gunshots reverberating through the unnatural silence were the only sign Tucker was still alive by the time they made it to the emergency exit at the end of the next corridor.

Chapter Text

Sam's hospital room was the white of all hospital rooms, and smelled like the rest of the building: disinfectant and decay. Dean took comfort in the constant beeps from the heart monitor. Sam was so still in the bed that the sound was the only thing keeping him from checking his brother's pulse every other minute.

Everything about the room felt uncomfortable; the chair Dean sat in was just a little too hard, the starched sheets too unwrinkled, and the tile floors without a scratch. Sam would approve, Dean thought, but it was driving him mad. He wanted to muss the sheets and leave black marks on the floor. Maybe spill coffee over all the pristine whiteness: some dark stain to hint at the true nature of the world.

Dean's eyes rested on Sam. His brother was too pale, too still, hooked into too many machines. Dean wanted to shake him awake, make Sam prove he was okay, that he hadn't slipped further away into his own mind like the words "possible brain damage" suggested.

"Dean, don't even think about it," Bobby said from the doorway.

Snapping out of his thoughts, Dean looked at his hand placed on Sam's shoulder and blinked. He didn't remember moving. "I wasn't going to," he lied.

Bobby rolled his eyes and handed him a paper cup filled with something that looked more like tar than coffee. Dean sipped it cautiously.

"I can't believe you put us on the salvage yard's payroll, got us legal insurance, and never told us," Dean said as Bobby pulled up a chair and sat beside him.

Bobby shrugged. "Dean, I've been having you out in the yard working on cars every time I've seen you for the last fifteen years. That's a lot of free manual labor, if you think about it," he said. "Especially this past year."

"And what did you put for the job title?" Dean asked, wrapping his hands around the warm cup.

Bobby rolled his eyes. "Tooth fairy," he said. "What the hell do you think I put?"

It was Dean's turn to shrug. He didn't know many official job titles outside of government agencies. "Since when?"

Bobby took a sip of his own coffee-sludge, and Dean watched him suppress a wince. "Oh, I don't know," Bobby said. He leaned back in his chair, his mouth moving as if silently counting the years. "Maybe since Sam was fifteen, or there about."

Dean nearly dropped his coffee. "What?"

Bobby met his gaze, his eyes fierce. "I would have had you boys insured much sooner, but your daddy was a paranoid bastard. He didn't want your real names on anything. He thought that even your birth certificates were too much, and that was the only proof that you existed at all."

Dean nodded. He knew his father had been paranoid. He had been present for the drunken rampages, and the rants about his and Sam's birth certificates. "So, he never knew, did he?" Dean asked.

Bobby gave him an incredulous look. "Are you kidding me? Your Daddy would have shit a brick if he'd known I'd put your legitimate names down somewhere."

"Did anyone else know?"

"Pastor Jim knew. Caleb. Joshua."

Basically all the people Dean would have turned to for help if couldn't reach his father when he was younger. And not reaching his father when he needed help, Dean hated to admit, had happened a lot. Dean always went looking for trouble; Sam, who wanted nothing more than to be normal, to be invisible, was a magnet for it. Between the two of them, they were never really completely safe.

"Thanks, Bobby," Dean said.

"Don't mention it." He took another sip of his coffee and this time he did grimace. "This coffee is terrible."

Dean grinned. "Yup."

Dean didn't remember what he had been doing when Sam woke up. He wasn't sure if he had been sleeping, resting his eyes, or just passed out from lack of sleep. All he really remembered was the light, warm squeeze from the hand he was holding—and when he had started holding his brother's hand was something even he couldn't guess at. But the response from Sam had him jolting upright from his slouched position on the edge of the hospital bed.

Sam was staring at him, glassy-eyed.

"Hey Sammy," he said with a quick swipe to his face to rid it of collected drool. "How you feeling?" Dean asked as he stood up and pressed the call button for the nurses' station. Sam's heart beat on the monitor was solid and steady, the same since he had been hooked up to it the night before, but Dean felt his nerves jitter more every second his brother didn't respond. No response meant no recognition, and Dean couldn't allow that.

Finally, Sam's brows crinkled and a small frown pulled at his lips. "Dean?" he asked in a voice hoarse and confusion filled. And there was something desperate in it, more than the casual 'what's going on?'

"Yeah. Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty," Dean said, the incredible dread breaking away, and a grin spreading across his face. He nudged his brother with his free hand, hoping for more: a whine, a grunt, a bitchface—anything. He wanted his brother talking, needed Sam to confirm that his freaky-smart mind was still there somewhere.

Sam's eyes slid away from him, but his hold on Dean's hand held strong. Dean jabbed his thumb onto the call button four more times, as if pushing the button harder would make the bell at the front desk ring any louder, or make the nurses and doctors arrive sooner.

"You with me, Sam?" Dean asked, leaning forward and gently turning Sam's head back to meet his gaze.

Sam's eyes were glassy, his lids already drooping. Dean wondered if he should be shooting off questions for his brother to try and correctly answer like they did on TV. Except his brother hadn't been able to answer the questions before Tucker had killed him. So Dean didn't try it.

Dean glanced at the door behind him, and the empty hallway. Where were the damn doctors?

Sam met his gaze as he turned away from the hallway, and Dean was more than relieved to see some awareness lurking behind his brother's tired hazel eyes. "Are you really here?" Sam asked in a smaller voice, and his grip tightened.

Dean ran a hand through his brother's always too-long hair and smiled. "Yeah, I'm really here. " Sam was looking at him like a drowning man looks at a life preserver.

Sam licked his lips, but whatever he was about to say died on his tongue as a nurse entered the room.

"It's okay," Dean said as he dislodged his hand from his brother's hold, and took a step away from the bed. He held his hand behind his back and shook the feeling back into it with a few quick flicks of his wrist. Sam's face almost crumbled into panic as the nurse stepped forward, but Dean moved to stand in Sam's line of sight. "It's okay," he repeated, softly, in the tone he only used for hurt animals and his scared, half-out-of-his-mind brother.

The nurse was blonde, cheerful, and well endowed, Dean noticed. In between her checking Sam's vitals and asking him questions, Dean fired his own questions at her. Her name was Andy; she loved nursing, kittens, and her fiancé, who had placed a rock the size of the Emerald Diamond on her left hand.

Sam, meanwhile, had no idea what date it was, didn't know his age, but he knew Dean, Dean's birthday, and his own. There was something in the way Sam was staring at Dean that made him pretty sure that Sam, at the moment, believed Dean dead and gone. Sam's focus during the questioning was slight, at best. But it was no worse than it had been before the warehouse. The nurse didn't understand that, though, and told Dean with a pitying look that the Doctor would talk to him shortly.

Then Nurse Andy shot Sam's IV full of 'good things to help build strength', and Sam was soon asleep again.

It was Sam's second night in the hospital and Dean's face was itchy with the need to shave. He was sure Bobby would harass him to shower soon, but until then he was sticking close by his brother. Dean had spent the day hitting on the nurses while eavesdropping on anything the doctors may be saying about Sam past they were 'taking it a day at a time'.

As far as Dean could tell, the doctors were baffled. Sam should have been a vegetable; they said to each other, and his heart should've been damaged by so many volts going through it. The nurses whispered about miracles and God's mercy. No one said those things to Dean and Bobby, though. To them they said that Sam was very lucky. Dean didn't believe that, couldn't believe it; Winchesters didn't have that type of luck.

Even while he was watching TV—some sitcom rerun from twenty years ago—Dean found himself subconsciously counting the seconds between his brother's heart beats on the monitor next to him. The night before, he had held his breath between each pause of his brother's heart, waiting for the one long beep that would signal the end. Having seen Sam awake eased his fears, but it was hard to stop listening. He was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because Winchesters really didn't have the luck the whole hospital was whispering about.

Dean looked away from the TV towards his sleeping brother. He thought about Sam asking about God and faith, and believing just because he needed to believe that everything would be alright, that something would make it alright. Dean had never believed in God; God never made anything okay. Dean had believed in John, his father; because his father had always been able to make things better. Until that one day three years ago when his father made everything so much worse by sacrificing himself and laying Sam's life at Dean's feet all in five horrible minutes.

Dean found it difficult to believe in anything after that.

But now, here he was, not a demon and yet free from Hell; and Sam not evil and yet free from Demons and, even, returning to sanity. Dean could almost chalk it up to not sleeping for forty-eight hours, but when he thought about the fates they had escaped, his chest tightened and he thought that maybe, just maybe, he wanted to believe it would all be okay. Just for a little while.

"Do you believe in redemption, Bobby?" Dean asked, putting the hospital room TV on mute. He stared at the remote in his hands. Half the rubber power button was gone, and there were bite marks like someone had snuck a dog in as a visitor.

"What? Like God and the biblical sense of atoning for your sins?" Bobby asked in a tone conversational and not incredulous. Dean was thankful for that. It gave him the courage to look the older man in the eye.

He shrugged as he met Bobby's gaze. "Yeah. That and—you know, being saved from evil, given a second chance?" He knew, out of anyone, Bobby would hear the question beneath the question: the echo of Sam's 'Do you believe in God?'

Across the hospital bed, Bobby shrugged. "I don't know," he said, slowly, considering. "But I believe in second chances, and I believe that everyone deserves one."

Sometimes Dean felt sorry for the older man being so entwined with his twisted little family. Mostly, Dean thought as he nodded and unmuted the TV, he was just grateful.

A week after Sam died in the warehouse, Dean stepped outside the grocery store with a bag full of food to find Tucker leaning against the Impala smoking a cigarette. He was still dressed like a country-star knock-off: too big cowboy hat, matching boots, plaid shirt hidden under a tasseled leather jacket. His left arm was broken, and his face was various shades of black and blue. He had two black eyes: the telltale sign of a broken nose. The long blond hair was gone, either hidden under the hint of bandages under the hat, or sacrificed to treat a nasty head wound.

Dean gritted his teeth as he placed the bag of groceries on the floor of the backseat of the Impala, unsure whether to shoot the other Hunter or thank him. Not a word or glance was exchanged while Dean arranged the groceries until he was content the bag wouldn't spill. Tucker just continued to lean against the hood of the car, blowing smoke rings into the chill of the midday air. After a moment, Dean joined him.

"Those things will kill you, you know," Dean said casually.

Tucker grinned. "I'm gonna die young anyway," he said in his Texan drawl. "Like all the great cowboys."

Dean smirked. It was part of the old banter. "If cowboys were killed by demons."

Tucker shrugged. "Details." He blew a smoke ring in Dean's face, and Dean waved it away. Smoke didn't really bother him, but Sam would nag if he smelled like it. Dean couldn't stop the smirk. The idea of Sam being sane enough to nag at him was still a novelty. In another month or two he would be rolling his eyes about it. But right now it just made him feel like a little boy on Christmas.

"How's your brother?" Tucker asked seriously, as if reading Dean's mind.

Dean's smile faded to a grimace. "You mean the one you tried to kill?" He didn't bother to keep the hostility out of his voice.

"Hey," Tucker said, holding his hands up as if surrendering. "That bit hadn't been my idea." Dean only glared harder and Tucker sighed. "I guess Sam didn't tell you that part, huh?"

"No, he must have left that it out," Dean said, leaning away from the Impala, squaring his shoulders. He didn't mention that his brother said he couldn't remember that part. But that was something Tucker could learn the hard way—preferably after Dean got to deck him again.

Tucker huffed a laugh and shook his head. "I know I'm going to die young, but do you think I have an immediate death wish?" he said with a flick of the cigarette. A pile of grey ashes fluttered to the ground.

Dean didn't answer so Tucker continued: "You're a natural born Hunter. If you hadn't been raised into this life I fully expect you would have been a homicidal sociopath." Tucker grinned. "I had no wish to be Hunted and killed by you, Dean. I was under no illusion that my life would last longer than a year if that happened."

Somewhere in his mind, Dean acknowledged that he was right. He also acknowledged that Tucker would have been Dean's last Hunt, and not because he had given up Hunting, but because he would give up on life. In all likelihood, Tucker and Dean would have killed each other, anyway. They were both disturbingly good at their jobs.

Dean crossed his arms in front of his chest, eyebrows drawing down in confusion. "So you kill him, and then bring him back to life? Why kill him to begin with?" he asked. A few feet from them a mix of pigeons and gulls were beginning to gather around an open bag of potato chips. The gulls shrieked and the pigeons cooed, flapping their wings when another got too close.

"Because Sam asked me to," Tucker said. The grin fell from his face as he flung the cigarette butt to the ground. Smoke swirled lazily between them, the embers in the cigarette growing dark red as they fought for life. When he looked up again, Dean met the gaze of the scarily intelligent Hunter that lurked under the joyful façade. "That afternoon, in five lone minutes of lucidity after hours of shrieking madness, Sam begged me to do what you wouldn't."

I have to die.

Tucker stepped on the dropped cigarette. His boots scrapped against the pavement, setting a quick rhythm to the bird cries. "I promised him I'd kill him, and that I'd kill the demons leashed to him so he wouldn't have to worry about innocent lives."

Dean ground his teeth and counted to ten. Damn it, Sam. "And the defibrillator?" he asked, watching the birds fight over the chips.

Tucker shoved his now free hands into the pockets of his jacket. One of the birds picked up the bag of chip crumbs and flew away, the rest quickly taking off after it, squawking in anger.

Tucker turned to Dean with his cockiest grin. "I never promised his death would be permanent."

Dean could hear the screams of the souls and the sick wet sound that occurs when skin is slowly peeled off muscle. He could see the hell hounds lapping at his brother's finger tips, and he could feel the press of a female body against his own, a signal of pain to come. His arms ached, his back was shredded to pieces, and his father was nothing more than a mass of red meat and bones next to him. All while Sam smiled from the dark and someone laughed from far beyond that.

Dean woke screaming and soaked with sweat.

For a moment his mind didn't register where he was: the lumpy mattress, the scratched and magazine-stuffed desk, the books of history and math and physics perfectly lined up. It took him a moment to erase the nightmare from his vision, to recognize it as not a memory of Hell, but something twisted that had come from his own mind. He'd never been one for nightmares. A sharp knife under his pillow had been a cure to fear when he was younger. His mind didn't believe such a comfort any more.

Dean's eyes wandered the dark of the room as he caught his breath. Moonlight soaked in from the window, a small rectangle of wall glowing blue in the night. His blankets were jumbled on the floor, his pillow across the room as if he had thrown it. He could hear Bobby snoring down the hall, oblivious to the world. His eyes finally wandered over to his brother's bed, expecting to find Sam sleeping like the dead. Except Sam wasn't there; the bed was made without even a wrinkle in the blankets.

Rubbing his eyes, he groaned. Dean was new to nightmares. Sam had always been the King. And if Sam wasn't in bed it was because he had already had his wake-up-screaming moment. Except Sam didn't scream; he shook the house, and sometimes shattered the windows. Although, Sam was almost fully sane now, and Dean had noticed he'd been cleaning up considerably less glass. The shaking was still unnerving, though.

Splashing water on his face in the bathroom, Dean listened for the sound of the TV on downstairs. He wanted to find his brother glued to some late-night History channel documentary that would have bored Dean back to sleep. He didn't hear anything, though, so he slowly padded down the stairs.

Sam sat on the bottom step, arms curled around his knees, face buried in his arms. He rocked slowly in the familiar pattern Dean dreamed of never seeing again. But with each passing day, he was coming to accept it as another part of his brother who had come out of Hell just a little bit changed. Dean was beginning to get the feeling that Sam would never regain all of himself he had lost. Just like Dean would forever have nightmares and too many memories he didn't want. They had survived, but it was a bittersweet victory.

Dean sat down beside his brother, close enough for their shoulders to brush, but far enough to give a sense of personal space. "What's wrong?" he asked, wrapping his own arms around his knees. The floor was cold, and he wished he had thought to put on socks.

Sam looked up at him, eyes wide. It wasn't the puppy-dog look exactly, but it pulled at Dean's heart anyway. Sam shouldn't be able to look like a lost, desperate five year old when he was a grown man who towered over his brother. But he did. "It's so quiet," Sam said in a whisper, "it used to be so loud and busy." He continued to rock; forwards, backwards, forwards pause; backwards, forwards, backwards, pause. "I don't know what to do."

Dean was afraid to ask, but: "What do you mean it was 'loud'?"

I have their memories crawling around in my head at night.

Sam looked at him. "I don't hear them anymore," he said. "I'm alone now." It was a lonely and broken admission that would never be whispered in the light of day.

I can feel them.

Dean shuddered. There were no more demons in Sam's head, but Sam didn't know what to do with the silence, the sanity. He didn't remember the feel of being alone in his own mind.

Dean wrapped an arm around his brother, pulling him close and stopping the rocking. "You're not alone," Dean said into Sam's ear, voice rough and ready to break. He cupped the nape of his brother's neck in his other hand and said again, fiercely: "You're not alone, okay?"

Dean felt his brother nod, and released him. Sam didn't continue rocking, but his hand followed the pattern across the step. "I can't sleep," Sam said.

Dean nodded. "Me neither." He stood and held out a hand to pull his brother to his feet. He nodded to the living room. "Let's see if we can't find one of those boring documentaries you like so much."

May came quickly.

Bobby's house didn't smell like sulfur anymore; there were no more demons at the window or Hell Hounds on the roof. Bobby's phone didn't ring off the hook with Hunters looking for Sam. All was quiet on the demon front except for a few rumors of Lilith's movement.

It was the perfect time for a barbecue.

The air was still chilly, but the sun was warm on Dean's back as he stood at Bobby's grill cooking the steaks. Bobby had the Impala of grills. It could accommodate enough meat for a pro-football team. It was a shiny chrome deal with five levels of racks and every cooking gizmo you could think to have attached. It was one of the grills that they showed in movies or on TV, where the father is the manly-man that must fulfill the stereotype. Dean didn't care much for grills, not like he did about cars. But he cared about food, and the grill cooked a damn fine steak.

The screen door opened behind him and Dean knew it was Sam from the faint cacophonous drone drifting from his now ever-present headphones. Before, Sam had reveled in the silent study-type atmosphere that made Dean fidget and want to crinkle plastic bags. Now, his brother had to be surrounded by noise: TV, music, people, running water; anything. In silence, Sam curled up and rocked back and forth; a catatonic, non-functioning doll. The first week out of the hospital, Dean had watched Sam go from room to room turning on every single thing that would make noise. At night, his brother turned the TV onto a static-filled channel, turned it up full volume, and curled up on the floor in front of it to sleep.

Dean hadn't cared about the noise. He never liked silence; give him blaring music and rambling TV any day. He liked it even more now that it kept Sam attached to sanity. Dean would do anything if it meant keeping his brother functional. But Bobby had muttered something about high electric bills, water bills and flashbacks of Poltergeist before going and buying his brother a band new headphones because he hadn't been able to locate Sam's old ones.

So now Sam always had his headphones in, or the TV on, or the radio turned up. Dean thought that one day he'd have to get his brother used to silence again. They were eventually going back out Hunting, if only to track down and defeat Lilith. There was still revenge and the family business. But he was tired and Sam needed more time to recover. So Dean would wait.

The screen door banged shut with a metallic clang. An unopened beer bottle was set on the grill's side tray, and Dean glanced at his brother as he flipped a steak. "Thanks," he said when he saw that one ear bud was out of his brother's ear, allowing him to be heard.

"No problem," Sam said as he opened his own. Dean listened to the thudding hollow footsteps of Sam's boots on the wooden deck as he took three strides and sat on the porch steps, looking out over the salvage yard.

Sam did this a lot now: searched Dean out just to be near him; most of the time Sam didn't say anything; just sat and listened to music. Dean would never say so, but he enjoyed having his brother nearby, within his line of sight. If it were all a flawed dream, Dean didn't really mind if he never woke up.

"Do you remember it at all?" Dean asked a few minutes later as he shut the grill. Smoke crept out from beneath the lid and floated up to the sky as he placed the tongs on the plate for the finished steaks. "Hell, and everything after?"

Sam looked over at him with a careless shrug that was more practiced than true. "In dreams," Sam said.

Dean picked up the beer bottle. The glass was cold and wet against his skin. With one solid movement he placed the cap against the porch railing and knocked it off. Then he sat down next to his brother on the steps. "Only in dreams?" he asked.

Sam shrugged again, and took a sip of his beer. This was Sam filtering himself, Dean thought while taking a sip out of his own bottle. He probably wasn't going to like whatever came next.

"Every now and then I get snapshots: you cooking breakfast or Bobby fixing a car. I remember talking to Tucker in the parking lot of the grocery store. And I remember," Sam paused as if he couldn't find the words, "…other things." Sam glanced at Dean, waiting for condemnation. Dean was silent, giving his brother the time to say what he needed to. "I remember blood, and claws; the feel of bones snapping."

Dean nodded and leaned forward on his elbows. It could be worse, he thought to himself as silence fell between them. A year ago, he hadn't even known if Sam was still alive. Six months before, he had almost given up hoping ever talking to him lucid again. It could be so much worse than Sam having some bad memories.

"You're not evil," Dean said, because that seemed to be his brother's default fear since Dean told him the promise their father had forced on him.

"But the things I did—"

Dean cut him off. "You did to demons, Sam."

"They were still wrong, Dean!" Sam said, voice rising in a plea.

Dean sighed. This wasn't going the way he had wanted. "Your actions were evil, yes," he said slowly, 'but you're not."

"How do you know that?" Sam asked. It was barely more than a whisper.

Dean was silent. Sam wouldn't accept 'I just do' as an answer. Dean knew that Sam thought Dean was too easy on him, would absolve him of anything. Maybe that was true, but Dean could usually admit to himself, at least, when his brother didn't really deserve absolution. But he didn't think there was anything to forgive this time. So he had to try and put that into words. This was worrisome because Dean was never good with words.

"I know because you willingly walked into Hell to save me," Dean said slowly. A shiver raced down his spine as an image of Hell flashed in his mind. "You were scary as hell, yes. When I saw you, and saw what you could do, and saw that you had an army of demons at your beck and call, I didn't think it was you, honestly. I prayed it wasn't you," Dean said and stopped. Sam's expression was pained as he looked out over the yard.

Dean put his hand on Sam's shoulder, noticing for the first time that he could only faintly hear the music coming from the IPOD. Sam was definitely listening. "Sam, look at me," he said, and his brother complied. "You threw me out of Hell, and then threw yourself to the demons." Dean shook his head and scoffed, holding his brother's gaze. "I'm pretty sure if you were evil, you would have left me there, and gone and taken over the world. It's not like you couldn't have done it." Dean let his hand fall from his brother's shoulder, and took a sip of his beer. "That's how I know you're not evil. Okay?"

Sam looked away, gaze moving over the land in front of them. Dean looked out at the yard too, wondering if he could see what his brother did. He didn't, of course. The salvage yard never changed. The grass was only green on the front lawn. The side yard was dirt and piled rusted cars. It really wasn't that fascinating. Dean didn't know what Sam saw, but it couldn't have been the same thing by the crease of worry on his brother's forehead.

Sam took a deep breath and nodded. "Okay," he said, still nodding. "Okay."

Dean patted him on the back as he stood and went back to the grill. Sam didn't really believe him, and was processing future arguments against his words. But that was okay. Because Dean would give his argument over and over again, however many times Sam needed to hear it to believe it. Now, unlike before, they had time. His chest felt warm and light with the thought. Dean tentatively labeled it happiness.

"Do you still believe in God, Sam?" Dean asked as he opened up the lid to the grill. A wave of heat rolled up and over him, and Dean squinted against it. Most of the steaks were a medium brown, needing only a little longer to grill.

Sam's answer was preceded by a long pause. His voice was hesitant: "I guess so, yeah."

Dean nodded to himself, having already suspected the answer. If Sam didn't believe in God, then he wouldn't fear being evil, and wouldn't so desperately believe that everything had a reason, that somehow the world would be okay. He wouldn't suspect that his destruction would be for the greater good.

Sam had always had faith—in teachers, in books, in God, in Dean. Dean's faith didn't spread that far. He didn't believe in God; wouldn't, couldn't, and didn't want to believe. Partially because, if God's destiny for him was to save the world by killing his brother, he'd rather not be good; he'd rather let his brother be the Boy-King. But his disbelief was also because he was fairly certain that things would never be 'alright', even if he wanted them to be. Sam's mental state was most likely forever cracked, and Dean knew his own stability really only hung on a string. Plus, there was too much true evil in the world: demons, ghosts, rampant Pagan gods. Lilith was still out there, probably starting to hunt Sam again. No, everything would never be 'alright'.

"Keep believing in God, Sam," Dean said as he piled the steaks from the grill onto the plate. He glanced back at Sam to see him nod, confused. He wanted his brother to believe because Dean couldn't when he knew too much truth. But sometimes, Dean wanted to believe.

After all, they had been to Hell and back. They were both alive, on Earth, breathing and more or less whole. Luck just didn't seem to cover it, and Winchester luck couldn't even touch it. 'Miracle' just about summed it up though.