Previous part of When Our Minds Betray Us.

***

Sam stumbled backwards, the air rushing from his lungs. The hand holding the knife dropped unnoticed to his side as he stared at John—at Dean. Shock and horror kept him from speaking. He couldn't think, couldn't even breathe.

As soon as the words had left his mouth, Dean sagged in his bonds, his face pale and stricken. He was watching Sam, his hazel eyes wavering, but he too remained silent, save for the heavy breaths that caused his chest to heave.

The two stared at each other as time seemed to stop. Sam didn't move, but after a moment Dean shifted, suddenly dropping his head as he tore his gaze away. "Sam...I..."

Sam kept staring at him, his throat closing so he couldn't respond. Dean, unable to avoid his relentless stare, eventually raised his head.

His eyes widened in alarm.

Even as he was shouting out a warning, Sam followed his line of sight and saw Annie just as she swiped her knife at him. Sam wretched his back backward, swerving out of the way just as the knife slashed through the air where his neck had been.

The guard he had let down slammed back up and he let his instincts kick in. His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, twisting it away from him until her grip slackened and the knife fell to the ground. Backing away, her wrist still caught in Sam's grasp, Annie leveled her eyes at him and started to murmur something. Before she could finish, Sam quickly dropped her wrist and punched her in the mouth.

She wasn't invincible after all. Her head jerked back but popped forward again, and the corner of her lip was stained with blood. But then in a strange sort of delayed reaction, her whole body suddenly jerked backwards as if struck, and she fell to the ground.

Sam was confused for only a split second before he realized she had faked the collapse so she could grab her knife again. He lashed out his foot, kicking the knife so that it skidded across the forest floor.

"Sam, my gun!" Dean shouted. "Front of the rock!"

Sam's eyes widened. He'd forgotten that the other man had come armed. He whirled around and raced towards the rock outcropping, which sat just off to the side. He was there in three quick strides.

Just as Annie was staggering to her feet, her hand clutching the knife, Sam turned and leveled the handgun at her chest.

They stood facing each other in a stalemate, positioned in front of Dean, the three of them forming a triangle. Sam had to ignore the other man, refused to even think of him, focusing solely on Annie.

"You're not going to kill me," Annie taunted. Keeping a tight grip on her knife, she started to edge backwards.

"Wanna bet?" he replied calmly, following her with the gun as he stepped closer.

She raised her eyebrows and then flicked her gaze towards Dean, who still hung from the trees, his arms tugging weakly at the ropes. Sam remembered her earlier threat that if she died, so would his brother.

"Don't even try that again," Sam warned her. "'Cause I'll take my chances."

"I don't believe you," she retorted, taking another step away. "If you were going to kill me, you would have done so by now."

"Just give me a reason, and I will," he told her coldly.

She looked back at him, her face full of defiance.

"Drop the knife, Annie."

"Sorry, Sam, but I can't do that." And then her lips started to move, and Sam realized she was trying another spell.

He lowered his gun and shot a bullet into the ground, right at her feet. Annie jumped in surprise, her incantation abruptly cut off. But she reacted instantly, leaping to the side at a forward angle and bursting into a sprint.

Sam almost shot her, but he didn't act quick enough, couldn't get himself to shoot her when all he saw was her back and side. And then she was at Dean's side, a knife pressed against his throat before he found the courage to squeeze the trigger.

Sam's hands almost shook, but he just gripped the gun tighter.

Keeping a careful eye on Sam, she slithered around Dean, ducking underneath the rope and stepping over his outstretched leg. The bound man became a shield, and she peered over his shoulder at Sam with triumphant pride. Sam couldn't get to her without risking Dean.

Sam looked at the other man then—his brother, Sam amended, the term echoing hollowly through his head. Dean stared back at him with attempted stoicism, but he failed miserably, only looking helpless and defeated despite his hardened face.

"What are you going to do now, Sam?" Annie asked from behind him. She snaked her arm under his armpit and up around his neck, the edge of her knife resting against the far side of his throat.

She spoke with forced calmness, but she was breathless with adrenaline and panic. Just as Sam was.

"This is all very interesting," she remarked in between pants. Sam watched her warily, his eyes burning, as she regained composure and her breathing evened out. She cocked her head, a sly smirk spreading across her face.

"Why he didn't want you to know he was your brother?" she wondered out loud with mock curiosity.

Dean's eyes squinted in pain and he twisted his head to the side. The movement dug the knife into his skin, nicking him just enough that a drop of blood appeared and slipped down his throat. Sam looked at him for a quick moment before turning back to the woman behind him.

"I think maybe," she continued in a drawl, "He wanted you out of the picture."

Sam forced his breath through his nose, but it came out shaky and loud. He shifted the gun in his hands, making sure it was pointed at her forehead.

In retaliation, she dug the knife deeper into Dean's neck. "I'm sure you don't want me to kill him," she went on, grinning. "At least, not until you get some answers." Her eyes flashed wickedly. "Isn't that right?"

"Drop the knife, Annie," Sam hissed.

"Hasn't he been lying to you? Obviously you can't trust what he says," she pointed out, unconcerned. She tilted her head. "So how long has this been going on, Sam?"

Sam gritted his teeth, refusing to answer. By now, Dean's eyes were squeezed shut, his eyebrows pressed together.

"What do you say, Sam? Should I make him talk? Would you like to hear what he has to say?"

She tapped the back of his left knee, causing it to buckle. The sudden loss of support put all of his weight on his arm, and as he fell, it caused his arm to tug hard at its bonds, pulling sharply at his wound. "Maybe I'll even hurt him a little," Annie added over Dean's cry of pain. He quickly righted himself, locking his leg underneath himself, but his face was still pinched.

"Get away from him," Sam growled at her.

"It's only a quick incantation," she went on lightly. "You've been through it. Doesn't hurt."

Sam shifted his stance. His forehead was sweating in the Texas heat, but his lips were dry, and he licked them nervously.

"Wouldn't you like me to ask something?" Annie suggested. "I'm sure you have plenty of questions."

Sam tried to ignore Dean, who was watching him again. The other man's breath came out ragged and loud, and his chest rose and fell unevenly.

Sam tilted his head forward.

"Can you do it from back there?" he asked her.

She shook her head slightly, a small smile lifting the corner of her lip. "Not effectively," she admitted. "I need to be face to face. Helps me focus."

"All right." Sam lifted his chin and then nodded. "Do it."

She flicked her eyes towards the gun still aimed at her head. "Drop that first."

He studied her for a long moment. Then he looked at Dean, whose eyes seemed to be pleading with him. "All right," he agreed.

He rotated the gun so that it pointed harmlessly sideways as he crouched down on bent knees. With slow, deliberate motions he lowered the gun onto the ground, looking up at Annie as she watched him warily.

"Sam-" Dean said, but he ignored him.

When he came back up, Annie nodded to herself. "All right," she said, her voice with hesitant relief. "Kick the gun away."

He did, his foot pushing it so it slid about ten feet away.

She raised her eyebrows. "You really need answers, don't you Sam?" He cocked his head impatiently, and a full smile spread across her face. Keeping the knife against Dean's throat, she rotated back around, climbing between his outstretched limbs so that she stood in front of him again.

"If I do this spell," she said. "You have to swear that you'll let me do my ritual."

When Sam didn't answer right away, she went on. "I don't have to kill him, you know," she told him lightly. "All I need is his mind."

Sam looked past her at his brother. Dean's face had no color left in it, and he held his head so tensely, his jaw clenched so tightly, that his eyes seemed to vibrate.

"Fine," Sam replied, nodding once at Annie. "Do it."

She turned to face Sam completely, still holding her knife behind her against Dean. Her free arm came up and pointed at Sam's forehead, just as she had done before. "Do you swear - on your life?"

"I swear," Sam answered instantly. "If you get him to tell the truth, I'll let you do the ritual."

Annie drew in a deep breath. She took a couple of steps forward and the hand holding the knife dropped from Dean's neck. She quickly brought it forward, pointing it at Sam. "I don't want you standing behind me," she said, motioning him forward with a toss of her head.

Sam complied, silently coming up to her side.

"All right, let's do this," she announced. She started turning toward Dean, but she kept a watchful eye on Sam. Sam held his hands innocently outspread, showing that they were empty.

"No," Dean whispered. "Please. Not like this."

Sam ignored him, refusing to look at him. "Do it," he told her again. After a brief hesitation, she nodded and turned to face Dean completely.

Just as her arm started to rise, Sam attacked.

He rammed into her with his shoulder, the force knocking her to the ground. She landed with a cry and immediately rolled over onto her back. While she was down, Sam started for the gun which lay just out of reach.

Annie's leg kicked out, and as Sam jumped to avoid it, her other foot hooked around his ankle. Before he could react, she yanked his leg out from under him.

He fell onto his knees but instantly used his legs to push himself back up as he scrambled across the ground. Stretching his arm out, he reached for the gun, sucking in a breath when his hand closed around cold steel.

They rose up at the same time. She held a knife but he held the gun.

"Time to give up, Annie," he said.

But she already knew that. "Like I said," she replied, panting. "You're not taking me alive." She raised her arms straight from her sides and let the knife fall from her hand. It tumbled harmlessly to the ground.

"Shoot me, Sam," she told him. "And go home with your brother."

Sam glared at her even as his jaw twitched and his hands started to shake. After a moment his vision started to blur.

And then suddenly the forest erupted with sound and voices. People rushed in, police officers Sam realized distractedly, shouting commands. He never took his eyes off Annie, never lowered the gun, even though he knew it looked bad. One of the cops yelled at him, but Sam couldn't make out the words over the roar in his ears. Maybe he should drop the gun, he thought, but then the cop stopped shouting, shushed by another, lower voice.

Annie's eyes hardened then, and she darted away from him. Sam let her go. But she wasn't fast enough, and one of the officers tackled her to the ground.

Once she was on the ground, handcuffs slapped around her wrists, Sam let himself sag, suddenly drained. He turned away from her, absently tucking the gun into the back of his jeans, and his eye caught Dean.

The other man stared back at him, sick and pale and defeated. Activity continued to swirl around the two of them. Sam was dimly aware of the figures moving past him, but his eyes never left Dean's face.

Suddenly Sam couldn't take it. He finally broke his gaze, dropping his eyes to the ground, and stepped forward. Without a word, no longer able to look at Dean's eyes, he grabbed one of the fallen knives and began sawing through his bonds. He started at his feet, and when they were free, he rose and began working on his arms.

They stood inches from each other, close enough that Sam could feel the air move as Dean breathed. Sam concentrated on the rope, watching as they frayed under the force of the knife. Once the ropes were no longer supporting Dean's arms, they fell to his side. He held them stiffly, the blood now dripping sluggishly down to his hands.

Sam stepped back.

"Lord, Dean, are you all right?"

With a jump, Sam blinked at the middle-aged woman who had suddenly appeared beside them. He realized she must have been Lieutenant Stevens, the woman who had called him to Crider. And he suddenly realized why Dean had dropped him off at the hotel that day when he went to interview her. She knew who Dean was, even when his own brother didn't.

Dean grunted in reply, and Sam couldn't tell if he was answering in the affirmative or not. "Officer Stevens, I'm sorry, but I—we need to get out of here."

She hesitated, squinting at them through sympathetic eyes. "Dean, I can't...We need you guys if we're to charge her with any crime." Dean shook his head, refused to accept her answer.

There was a startled shout behind her, and all three of them twisted around to look. Sam bit back a gasp at the sight. Annie was sprawled on the ground, legs and elbows askew like a limp doll. Two police officers stood around looking dumbfounded while another crouched beside her, a hand pressed against Annie's neck.

"What happened?" Stevens demanded.

"She...She's dead!" the officer on the ground shouted back.

"What?"

"I don't know what happened," another one reported, taking a few steps towards Stevens with his arms spread. "She just collapsed."

"Did she say anything?" Sam asked, startling the man.

"Um, yeah, she did. But I couldn't understand it," he replied.

Annie's words ran through his head. You're not going to take me alive. Sam nodded slowly, looking at her lifeless body.

"Well, the ambulance should be here shortly," Stevens told the other officers. "We'll let them handle her." She turned back to Dean. "Do you think you can walk back to the road, or should we get a stretcher in here?" she asked gently.

He shook his head stiffly. "Sam'll take care of it," he told her. Sam noticed he refused to look at him, but he didn't protest.

But Stevens did. "Dean..." she said. "You really should have those looked at."

Dean just set his jaw. "No. I can't." Then he did glance at Sam, though only through the corner of his eye. "Sam will take of me."

She stared at him for a moment longer and then relented. "All right. But only because I'm sure Sam knows a thing or two about fixing your ass." Her words were softened by a half-smile, and she patted Sam on the shoulder.

"And make sure he takes care of your wrists too, Sam," she added, nodding at the blood that hadn't yet dried along his right hand. Sam had forgotten all about his own wounds, but as soon as she pointed them out, his wrists started to throb with pain.

He quickly refocused his attention as Stevens continued. "I was real sorry you weren't able to visit the other day with Dean," she was saying. "It's great seeing you again, just wish it was under better circumstances."

Sam's eyes widened, but he quickly recovered. "Yeah, I know, great seeing you too," he replied with a half-smile. Inside, his stomach flipped. How many other people did he know but couldn't remember?

He felt dizzy and numb.

"But I'm not going to help you sneak out of here," she went on. "You're on your own."

She gave them a sad smile, giving Sam's shoulder another pat. Then she turned around and started towards the others, pulling out a walkie-talkie. Just as she started talking into it, Dean tapped Sam softly on the arm and then turned the other way, slipping deeper into the woods.

He paused briefly to pick up his shotgun but then continued on, never looking to see if Sam was following.

Sam watched his back for a few moments. Then he started behind him.

Their strides were quick and silent as they hurried away from the crime scene. Sam, with his longer legs, soon caught up with his brother. But even as they walked side by side, neither of them spoke.

They had to make a wide arc to get back to the car, so despite their speed, the journey took longer. Or maybe it seemed longer to Sam, who wanted only to get back to the hotel room so he could demand answers, or maybe take a long nap.

They were within feet of the car when Dean suddenly stumbled. Sam was there instantly. "Sorry," Dean mumbled as Sam wrapped an arm around his back, careful of his arms. Sam didn't answer as he helped Dean as they stepped out of the woods.

Dean's back was stiff, tense, and Sam thought he would have shaken off his help if the situation had been different.

The road was empty as they came up to the car. "When I called the police, I gave them directions from the west," Dean explained at Sam's confused expression.

Sam nodded in understanding. Dean would know how to think ahead, would have experience escaping tricky situations. He felt a jab of anger in his stomach, suddenly wondering just how good Dean was at making clean getaways, leaving behind places and brothers without a second glance.

Sam eased his arm from Dean, feeling that he could stand on his own the few steps it took to reach the car door. To Sam's astonishment, Dean headed for the driver's side.

"Give me the keys," Sam said firmly. "I'm driving."

Dean felt strongly enough to shoot him a look, but Sam stood resolved. "Aw, c'mon, won't you let your own brother drive your car?" he asked sarcastically. He knew it was dirty, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

It worked. His shoulders slumping, Dean handed him the keys and he veered back to the passenger side while Sam climbed into the driver's seat. Sam waited until Dean was settled in before he started the car.

Before he could pull away, Dean spoke, his voice raspy. "Can you reach into the backseat, grab that towel?" he asked. Sam took pity and leaned over until his hand felt the texture of terrycloth. He pulled the hand towel back with him and started to hand it to Dean. "Wrap that around your right hand," Dean said instead.

Sam frowned, looking down at his wrist. It still throbbed painfully, and blood was sluggishly running down from the abrasions the rope had cut into his hand. But as rough as it was, the wound wasn't nearly as bad as Dean's.

"You're the one driving," Dean explained.

Suddenly understanding, Sam wiped the blood from both his hands on the towel and then wrapped it around the wounds on his right wrist. He tied the ends firmly, securing it tight. The pressure of the cloth pressing into his wrist and thumb took his mind off the pain, and the towel soaked up the oozing blood.

Dean, for his part, sat stiffly beside him, hunching his arms inwards so that any blood would drip into his lap. Sam found himself unsurprised that Dean would rather sit uncomfortably and ruin his jeans than get blood on his car. It was too late for his steering wheel, Sam thought, eyeing his hands and the blood-soaked towel.

The drive back to the hotel was just as silent as the walk to the car had been, but the tension in the closed, confined space felt thicker. Sam was desperate to say something, but he wanted to wait. He needed to give his full attention so he could watch Dean, so he could look at his eyes. He needed all the information he could get, even ... or especially ... the emotions he hoped Dean felt.

He needed Dean to feel something. He wondered what it all meant ... the lost memories, the sightings of Dean in Stanford, the secrets he was keeping, the lies he and the Warrens have told him over that past year ... everything.

Most of all, he needed to know why.

But not until they were shut away safe in the hotel room. Maybe then he would understand why the ache he felt now was so...real.

Halfway to the hotel, Dean rested his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. Sam didn't think he actually fell asleep, but he didn't move again until Sam pulled into a parking spot. Once Sam turned the car off, Dean opened his eyes and sat back up.

He kept his gaze forward, staring at the door of their hotel room. "I'm sorry, Sam," he whispered after a moment.

Sam waited to see if he would say more, but when he didn't, he pushed open the car door and got out. Dean followed a few seconds later, standing a few feet behind him as Sam inserted the room keycard into the lock.

The first aid kit was always kept on the bathroom counter. That was one of the first things "John" had told him. Sam went straight for it, aware of Dean's eyes on his back as he crossed the room. Without a word, he grabbed it, some towels, and the ice bucket which he filled with water. Then he turned back around.

"It might be easier if you sit in the desk chair," Sam said. Dean obeyed without a word and Sam took a seat across from him at the edge of the bed.

Once again, Sam was tending to this man's injuries. The last time, back on the floor in his bedroom, he hadn't known the man before him. This time, sitting across from him in the hotel room, he still didn't know who he was.

Sam kept his face impassive as he set out his supplies around him. With a wet towel, he cleaned the blood from both of Dean's arms, needing to refill the ice bucket three times when the water grew too red. As gently as he could, he swiped the cheap hotel towel over the bloodied skin, trying not to scrub too hard at the blood that had dried.

He knew Dean was watching his face, but Sam kept his focus on the injuries. Fortunately, the bleeding had slowed, and he didn't think Dean was in any mortal danger.

Sam took his time, determined to be as thorough and efficient as he could. Dean's injuries were the worst Sam had ever had personal contact with - at least as far as he could remember ... and, despite whatever Sam was feeling, he wanted to make sure they were properly cleaned and treated.

Besides, tending to his wounds kept Sam's mind from exploding.

He disinfected the opened skin, forcing himself to ignore the hiss of pain Dean failed to hold back. Then he dug out the suture kit and started to stitch his wounds close. It took all of his concentration, and he could only hope he was doing it right. Sweat broke out along his hairline, but he pushed through his nervousness, keeping his hand steady as he threaded the needle through Dean's skin.

Once he finished that, he went through the first aid kit again. Finding a couple of pads, he pressed one to each wound and held them in place with gauze. The entire time, his eyes never drifted up past Dean's neck.

"Will you say something?" Dean finally asked, just as Sam finished wrapping his arm.

Then Sam did look at him, lifting his head to meet Dean's eyes. He couldn't tell if Dean's face was pale from blood loss or something else, but he looked on the verge of collapsing.

"Are you really my brother?" he asked. He knew it was stupid. He would have denied it long before then if he wasn't. But Sam needed to hear the confirmation, needed to hear him actually say it.

"Yes, I am," Dean replied. His answer hung heavy between them.

"And St. Louis?" Sam asked. "I thought you killed—you died—" he stopped, frustrated. "You told me you were 25."

"That was a shapeshifter," Dean explained. "He looked like me when he died, and so that's how the police identified him." Sam didn't know what a shapeshifter was, but he figured he got the general idea. The Warrens seemed to trust him, so he had to accept that as the truth for now. "And I lied," Dean added with a shrug, answering Sam's last point.

"Well, that's not the biggest lie you've told," replied Sam harshly. He refused to acknowledge the tears that started to blur his vision.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked.

Dean had to have expected the question, but he wasn't ready with an answer. In that bit of silence, Sam was too impatient to let it stand, and he pressed forward. "You dumped me off in Stanford, didn't you?"

"I didn't dump you—"

"So what happened? Did we get into a fight? Did you beat me up?"

"What? No!" Dean exclaimed, horrified.

"I had cuts and bruises all over," Sam argued.

Realization lit Dean's face, and he sighed. "That came from a hunt," he said. "A goatman in Boise."

Well, that wasn't the first thing Sam was expecting. "A—a goatman?" he gaped at him.

"Yeah, scientific experiment gone awry," Dean replied in a tone that said he'd repeated that phrase before.

Sam narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "So we used to hunt together?" Dean nodded tightly, and Sam wasn't sure if he should be surprised. That explained his eight month absence. He would have asked more, but instead, he clenched his jaw and swallowed.

"So why did you abandon me?" he demanded, even as his voice cracked. "Because I went crazy? You thought I'd be a burden?"

Dean's eyes flashed with alarm as he stiffened in his chair. An uneasy look came over his face, and Sam wanted to look away but couldn't. Dean cleared his throat. "You...you didn't go crazy," he told him.

Sam shifted impatiently, annoyed that he was avoiding his question. "Okay, maybe not technically, but-"

"You didn't go crazy."

That stopped him. "What do you mean?" he asked guardedly.

Then Annie's words floated back to him. For so long he had thought he was crazy that he'd stopped questioning it, but answers started to fall into place. "Something happened to me, didn't it?" he realized. "Something supernatural."

Dean looked down at the floor.

"There was this voodoo priestess down in New Orleans..."

***

Sam's eyes widened. "A-a voodoo-priestess?" he stammered. "A real, voodoo, priestess?"

"Yeah," Dean nodded. "She was powerful, experienced. She practiced a lot of different magic, even developed some of her own."

Blinking hard, Sam cocked his head as he tried to arrange his thoughts. "She-did this to me?" he asked.

"Yeah, she did. She hit you with a memory spell."

A voodoo priestess. Maybe it should have bothered him more ... in fact, he was sure he'd be pretty disturbed once he thought on it some more ... but at the moment, a trickle of relief went through him as realization sunk in.

The whole past year-it wasn't his mind that failed him. It wasn't his fault he couldn't remember his own memories. It wasn't him.

Sam tried to make sense of it. "A memory spell-to erase my memory?" he asked haltingly.

Dean nodded again. "So you would forget everything that we do. Every evil, every monster, every ghost. She made you forget anything that was connected to our work."

Sam ran a hand through his hair. "Even family."

"Especially family," Dean echoed.

"But...why?"

Dean shrugged uncomfortably. "If you don't know about them, you can't fight them, right?"

Sam stiffened at his words, and his eyes narrowed as he looked down at his lap. He could have fought, if Dean had let him. Dean could have re-taught him everything he knew, could have retrained him.

But he dumped him instead. His own brother left him when he needed him the most.

"The spell knocked you out cold," Dean started to explain as Sam's silence grew. "And I knew you wouldn't remember anything about me once you woke up. So I took you to the only friend you had who knew about us. I asked her if she could take care of you."

Sam shook his head, feeling tears burning in his eyes, and glanced at Dean at an angle. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because, Sam," Dean replied. He clenched his fists in his lap. "It was better that way."

Sam's eyes shot to him. "How can you say that?" he hissed at him.

Even though he almost flinched, Dean replied in a resolved tone. "The only memories you had were of your life at Stanford...Hell, Sam, that was the life you've always wanted. It just made sense."

"The hell it does!" Sam shouted back. "You still should have told me!"

"And what if I did? Huh?" Dean demanded. "You hated hunting, Sam. So why should I make you chose between the two when you didn't need to?"

Sam glared at him, outraged. What kind of stupid question was that? Dean went on, his voice livid. "Don't you realize how dangerous this job is? What it turns you into? This was your only chance to be completely free of it!"

"So...you decided to just give me up? Let me go?" Sam retorted heatedly. "While you were left behind, playing the martyr?"

Dean reacted violently to that. "No, Sam! No," he said severely. He was glaring back at him, but his face was pale and his lip was trembling. "Don't say that. Don't call me that."

"What, a martyr?" Sam shot back. "Even though you gave up your own brother, never even told him you existed—just because it was easier for him? Just because you thought I'd be-what?-happier?"

Sam jumped to his feet, needing an outlet for the emotions boiling inside him and unable to find one. Dean's eyes followed him as he started to protest. "No, Sam, you don't—"

"I don't what?"

But Dean didn't finish.

"Were you ever going to tell me?" Sam asked him. "Because for some reason I decided I'd go with you, I decided to give up the life I knew for you. And you still didn't tell me."

"I was going to," Dean replied softly.

"But you didn't."

"I was afraid!" his brother exploded. "Okay, Sam? I knew how you'd react, and I didn't—I wasn't ready yet."

Sam stared at him for a long moment. This was his brother, he thought. This was the man who shared his blood, the man who shared part of his life.

"For someone's who supposed to be so smart," he started bitterly. "I am so damn stupid."

"What?"

"I must be. You obviously thought I'd never figure this all out." When Dean tried to argue, Sam just talked over him. "And I didn't. I just followed you around like an idiot." He threw his hands into the air and turned away, staring at the wall.

"What if I stayed in Stanford?" he asked. "Did you expect me to live the entire rest of my life without my memories? Without knowing who I was?"

"No, just—only until you got settled," Dean replied weakly.

Sam just shook his head, his eyes narrowing into slits. "And when would that have been?" But Dean didn't answer.

Frustrated, Sam started pacing the cramped room as new thoughts bombarded him. "I lived the past year making a complete fool of myself!" he realized out loud. "I thought I'd gone crazy, I thought my family-Oh, God, Rebecca and Zach, they must think I'm pathetic! I can't believe that they would...This whole time, they lied to me! Everything was just a damn lie!"

His ranting left him shaking with emotion and he had to grab at his hair just to ground himself.

"They didn't want to," Dean was telling him. "Believe me, Sam, they only did because I told them to. You'd already lost your memories, and I made them—"

Sam closed his eyes. "Stop it, Dean, just stop it."

His energy suddenly left him, and he dropped down onto the side of his bed, his back at an angle to the other man.

"Sam..."

Sam ignored him. He thought about all the white lies "John" had told him, the lies he knew Dean constantlygave to strangers, and the enormous lie he'd just admitted to. He was sick of these lies. How could he have kept this from him?

"I thought that with this spell," Dean said in a soft voice, "You could be happy again." Sam squeezed his eyes shut as his brother continued. "I didn't want you to be hurt."

Sam hung his head, feeling tears prickling at his eyes. He sniffed, without meaning to, not realizing his nose had started to run.

He didn't know how he felt. He struggled to put his feelings in order so he could make sense of them, because right now he couldn't tell how he was supposed to feel. There were too many emotions filling his chest, and he tried to identify them. It gave him a reason to block the other man out for a moment before he could lose his composure completely.

It stung. It stung a lot.

It hurt that Dean had kept this from him, made him sick that Dean had let him go for a full year lost and confused as he tried to put pieces of himself back together. And that made him angry, more angry than he could remember ever being. His stomach churned and his chest felt tight, and he wanted to scream at him. It wasn't right, it wasn't fair. Dean had no right to keep that from him.

But he tried to look past those feelings, just for a moment, to figure out what the truth really meant to him.

Over the past few days, he had befriended the man named John. He knew he felt an instant connection, and he thought that had come because he was different, just like he was. Even though the two of them were almost opposites of each other, he still felt he could identify with him. He even admired him, he realized.

John had been everything he could want in an older brother. Strong, noble, flawed. A real smartass, of course. And overprotective ... annoyingly so at times.

Sam could do a lot worse than having John-Dean as an older brother. In fact, for a large part of the past year, he'd thought his older brother had been a sick murderer. He could admit he preferred this version.

So maybe someday he could get past this lie, this hurt. Maybe he should take some comfort that Dean had only meant to protect him. It must have been hard for him too, and he only did what he thought was best.

He had to have been under pressure when Sam was hit with the spell, maybe even panicked when it happened. He knew he didn't have much time to make the decision. The deception shouldn't have gone on as long as it had ... and he was still outraged that it had ... but Dean had been scared, and maybe Sam could understand that.

Sam tried to imagine what it would have been like. Knowing that when your brother woke up, he wouldn't know who you were. Knowing that college would offer him safety and familiar faces. If college was all he could remember, then maybe he could deal with his sudden memory loss more easily while surrounded by only setting he knew. And knowing what the Winchesters did for a living, telling Sam that he spent his off time hunting monsters would have just freaked him out.

And, it was a messed up life. Sam could see that.

Dean had to make a quick decision, had to move before Sam recovered. So he did the only thing he could think of - he patched him up, stuffed him into the car, and drove all the way to Stanford so he could be with friends when he woke up.

Sam froze.

He turned to Dean slowly. "Didn't you just say I was attacked by a goatman in Idaho?" he asked.

Dean nodded at him, looking startled at the sudden question. "Yeah, his hoof caught your back."

Sam turned his head to stare at the floor, his thoughts suddenly running away from him. "But...the cut on my back was fresh when I woke up. It couldn't have been more than three, maybe four days old ... and I spent at least two of those days at Rebecca's."

He looked at Dean through the corner of his eye and saw that he had stiffened. "How did we have time to go all the way to New Orleans and back, Dean?"

Dean avoided his gaze suddenly as he shifted in his seat.

"We were never in New Orleans," he finally admitted.

A funny feeling started to blossom in Sam's stomach. "But then why..."

Dean licked his lips and then abruptly cut him off. "She owed me a favor."

And that little bit of understanding Sam had found shattered completely.

***

"W-what?" Sam stumbled, feeling the blood drain from his face. "What do you mean, she owed you a favor? You mean...like payback, right?"

But he knew that wasn't what he meant.

Dean's eyes looked at him, wavering, and then flicked away.

"When you were a baby, our mother was killed by a demon," he started.

Sam jerked in surprise, unprepared for that. "What?" he breathed.

"A demon killed her, right in our house. Dad found her and-Well, that was the moment that started our lives. Mom was gone and Dad learned that evil really existed."

Sam stared at him in stunned awe. His words barely sunk in before Dean continued. "Dad, he devoted his entire life to tracking that thing down-and along the way, he found there were other evils out there, too, other supernatural beings that ruined lives. And he found ways to stop them.

"That's how we grew up ... he trained us to fight, and the three of us, that's all we did. We traveled across the country, hunting and fighting evil. That became who we were. Like warriors, you said once."

Sam couldn't move as Dean explained their lives to him. He listened intently as his past was revealed in a faltering summary. He was impatient, but at the same time he thought maybe he didn't want to know.

"You never liked it," Dean told him. "You saw too many kids playing soccer while Dad made you stay inside to clean your .45. You wanted out, wanted a different kind of life. So when you turned eighteen, you left. Went to college."

He shook his head with a sad smile. "You've always been so damn smart, Sammy."

Sam ducked his head, wondering how much of this was true, wondering what Dean was leading up to and why he was going through all of this.

"And you found the life you've always wanted," Dean said. "You had friends, a real career ahead of you...Hell, you even fell in love."

It shouldn't have affected him, there was no reason his eyes should have watered. But Dean's words struck something inside him, and he was suddenly apprehensive, knowing what came next.

"But then Jessica died," Sam said, preemptively, preferring to say the wordsthan to hear them.

Dean nodded.

"Yeah. She did," he said, his voice soft but gravelly. "She was killed by the same demon that killed our mom."

Sam jerked his head up, his chest suddenly seizing. "Wh-what?" he stammered, stunned and horrified. He immediately started to protest. "No, it was just an apartment fire..." But then he remembered his dreams, the images that haunted him.

He remembered the feel of blood on his face.

"Were they both pinned to the ceiling?" he asked suddenly, swallowing past a sudden lump in his throat.

Surprise flashed in Dean's face, but when he nodded, a dark feeling came over Sam.

Dean gave him a humorless smile. "Yeah, you had that exact same look after she died," he said, and Sam ducked his head again, unable to loosen the knot in his chest.

Dean went on. "That's why after three years of school, you decided to come with me again. And together we started hunting evil and saving lives again. Just like we used to, only Dad was gone, so it was just the two of us this time. And this time you were on the same driven mission Dad was ... you wanted to kill the thing that killed Jessica. That's what motivated you, kept you going. You know?"

Sam had sunk into Dean's words, letting his monotone wash through his mind and fill in the missing pieces Sam desperately needed. But that last phrase, those two simple words spoken with uncertainty and broken indifference, ripped him back to the present. Now they were getting to the heart of the story, though he doubted Dean knew he had signaled the change with that little phrase.

"We found the demon, didn't we?" Sam concluded dimly.

Dean nodded before replying. "Yeah," he said. "Dad called us one day, asked us to join him. After all those years, he'd finally tracked it down. And he needed our help."

His eyebrows rose as he continued. "There was a long, nasty battle. Then you and Dad killed it." He spoke matter-of-factly, but his tone hid feelings Sam could only guess at.

Sam ran a hand through his hair, blinking furiously. He was relieved that the demon could no longer harm anyone, glad that it got what it deserved, but he was also unsatisfied. He wanted to remember killing it.

A memory slipped into his head. "You said your dad—our dad," Sam corrected awkwardly, "left after a rough hunt. Was that it?"

The corners of Dean's jaw clenched. "Dad devoted over twenty years of his life to hunting that demon down. But once he finally got what he wanted, he didn't know what to do with himself." He shrugged it off, but it was a stiff movement.

"So he left again. He didn't say where he was going, just that he needed to get away, needed some time to himself. To reflect." As much as he tried to suppress it, an edge of bitterness laced his words.

Sam sighed and closed his eyes. After a long moment, he looked back at Dean, who was absently rubbing the bandages on one of his arms.

"So how does this connect to what happened to me?" he finally forced himself to ask.

Dean took in a deep breath and started to rub the top of his thighs with the flat of his hands. "Sam...After that fight, you had nothing left in you. You were miserable and depressed and...that fire was gone. You just...Your heart wasn't in it." Blinking a couple of times, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before he continued.

"I knew you were thinking about changing your mind. I could tell, you wanted to go back to Stanford."

A sick, horrified feeling started to grow inside of Sam.

"The only thing holding you back was guilt," his brother told him. "After Dad left, you were stuck with me, and you'd feel guilty for leaving me behind. No one to watch my back, you know?"

"No, Dean..." Sam said in warning, though he didn't know what he was warning him against.

"But you still thought about it. You still considered leaving. That's what you really wanted."

"What? No." Sam shook his head frantically, his heartbeat racing. "Dean—"

Dean ripped his gaze from Sam to look out the window, even though closed curtains blocked it from view. "You left once before, Sam. You never even looked back." His voice shook dangerously. "And then Dad, he just...he just disappeared. Twice. Without warning."

He swallowed heavily. "Neither of you ever called," he said flatly. "Neither of you would even pick up your goddamn phone."

Sam looked at him with still-rising fear. "Dean, don't..."

The corner of Dean's lips twitched downward. "Every time I called you, every time I called Dad, I knew I would hear five rings and then your voice mail would answer." His eyes narrowed, squinting. "I never wanted to count to five again."

"Dean," Sam pleaded. "What are you saying?"

He seemed to ignore him. "You and me, we had a huge fight one night, a couple of weeks later," he said. "I thought, this is it. This would be the moment that you announced you were leaving again."

Dean looked at him, his head shaking from side to side. "I couldn't live with it, Sam. I refused to go through that again. I never wanted to know that-that you chose Stanford over me. Not again."

Sam didn't understand why it had to be one or the other, didn't understand Dean, didn't want to understand where he was leading.

"Dean, what did you do?" he whispered.

Dean didn't answer right away. "I called this priestess I'd helped out a while ago. And I asked her if she could do a memory spell."

Everything came to an abrupt stop for one still moment. And then Sam cried out in a surge of anger, leaping to his feet as the wave of rage crashed into him. It sent him reeling, left his face burning hot and his chest cold and dark. He thought his heart might leap out of his throat.

"So you made that choice for me," he burst out, furious.

Dean looked at him again, sad but defiant. "I wouldn't have done it if I didn't know you'd be happier."

That did nothing to ease Sam. His eyes burning, hardening, he sat back down on the bed before his knees could buckle. His hands slapped against the mattress edge.

"So you did this? You had my entire memory erased?"

"It was the only way you could be free from all of this." Dean crossed his arms over his stomach, clutching each elbow with the opposite hand. "I thought this would be the best way—for both of us."

"Tell me, Dean," Sam demanded dangerously, leaning forward. "Tell me there's more to this. Tell me how you could ever think you were doing the right thing. Tell me why you thought you could just throw away everything that I am."

Dean just shook his head, unable to meet his eye.

If they had been standing, if Dean hadn't already been hurt, Sam would have punched him right then.

He almost did anyway, his arm even twitched from the urge, but he bit down on the insides of his cheeks instead. Inside he was raging. His mind had been violated, his entire life had been played with. He couldn't find the words to explain what Dean had done to him. His past was gone, his whole identity had been changed, just because his brother - now a complete stranger to him ... decided it would be good for him.

Disgusted, he turned away, rotating his body 45 degrees so that he faced somewhere else, anywhere other than Dean's stolid face.

He wanted to throw up. He needed to strike something.

"You have no idea what you did to me. You don't know what it's like, not knowing who you are..." He twisted his head around to look at Dean. "You just took the most personal part of me away from me, without even—" His voice caught and he couldn't finish. A long moment of charged silence stretched between them.

Then he did stand up, although not to punch Dean. He stood silent and still, towering over his brother.

"Sammy," Dean pleaded up at him.

Sam felt his emotions shut down, his thoughts becoming a dull roar in his head.

"It's Sam."

Dean flinched, but Sam ignored it. He looked Dean up and down, eyeing the bandages that were wrapped around his arms. "You should lie down," he said tonelessly. "You've lost a lot of blood."

There was water in Dean's eyes. "Sammy, c'mon."

Sam didn't reply, leaving it up to Dean to continue. But Dean said nothing more, just looked at Sam for several long moments before tearing his gaze away. Sam remained standing by his chair, where he waited to assist his brother.

Dean finally looked up at him and sighed. "Okay. But my legs work just fine," he said, and he stood up, pushing himself up by the arms of the chair to prove it. Sam stepped back silently, letting him walk by to get to his bed.

The older brother moved stiffly but steadily. But instead of lying down, he sat himself on the edge of the mattress. He glanced up at Sam. "Do you need to use the bathroom? Brush your teeth or anything?" he asked.

Sam scrunched his eyebrows, taken off guard. "What?"

"You should get that out of the way," Dean continue, pulling out his cell phone. "I'm going to make a call."

Sam's eyes widened with rage. He almost refused, just to spite him, infuriated that after everything, Dean had the nerve to ask for privacy.

But after the day spent in the woods, he really did need to go. So he went, storming into the bathroom and slamming the door behind him.

And afterwards he brushed his teeth because he wasn't ready to go back out yet. Then he splashed water on his face, suddenly realizing just how shaky and unnerved the entire day had left him. He splashed his face again, needing that shock of cold water, just to give him something definite and real to feel. He didn't know how long he was in there, but it didn't feel like long enough.

It wasn't until he came back out that he realized maybe Dean had a different reason for suggesting that he take care of business while he had the chance.

Dean was propped up against the headboard of his bed, his legs stretched out in front of him. One arm crossed his stomach and the other was laying alongside his body, clutching the cell phone. "Everything's been taken care of, Sammy," he said, his gaze fixed on the opposite wall.

Sam looked at him, worried and confused. But he didn't have time to ask before he was hit with a dizzying wave of fatigue.

Suddenly alarmed, he stumbled to his bed, sitting down heavily on top of it. But that wasn't enough, and his eyelids started to pull themselves close despite his struggles to keep them open.

He gave Dean one last, betrayed look before he finally succumbed to his body's demands. He let himself fall completely prone, tumbling bonelessly onto the bedspread. He had just managed to pull his legs up onto the bed when he shut down completely. Everything went black.

***

When Sam woke up again, he knew a long time had passed. He was jerked into consciousness, as if his mind had been ready and waiting to wake up the very first moment his body would let him. As soon as his eyes opened, he pushed himself upwards until he was sitting up in his bed.

Memories of the day before rushed back to him at a frightening speed. The heavy revelations, the intensity of emotions—Dean. He was with his brother. After a year of separation and searching and dazed confusion, he was suddenly faced with a brutal onslaught of answers.

He remembered the past year, how he went through every day missing a large piece of himself. He remembered the past few days of traveling with a man he knew as John. He remembered the strangeness he felt learning about the world of the supernatural, the new thrill he got out of fighting evil and solving mysteries. More strongly, he remembered the overload of emotions as it all came together when he found out that Dean was his brother. When he found out that Dean did this to him.

But—

He remembered that day over a year ago, the one other time a sudden fatigue had overcome him. Even then, though he had no reason to be suspicious, he had known something was wrong when he collapsed on his bed, struggling to keep his eyes open. He had looked at Dean for help, for answers, but Dean only watched him as he drifted away. The last thing Sam saw before he woke up in Rebecca's apartment had been Dean's miserable eyes.

He could remember everything else, too. Everything. His childhood, Dean and their dad, every job and every creature they faced, the pain and determination after Jessica's death-All of it had come back, a scrambled mess of memories that he wouldn't even try to pick apart just yet. But he knew he could when he wanted to, because they were all there in his mind again.

It left his head throbbing.

Sam looked around. The hotel room looked mostly the same, though there was more garbage in the undersized trash cans. He wasn't surprised that Dean would turn down maid service with Sam in an almost coma-like state.

Dean was gone, but Sam wasn't ready to determine if it was for good or not.

The bedside clock read 7:35, but he didn't know whether that was AM or PM. But he suddenly realized he had more pressing matters ... his bladder.

After he had finished, opening the bathroom door must have masked the sound of the hotel door which opened at the same time. He wished it hadn't, he wished he had some warning, because when he stepped from the bathroom, he was unprepared to see Dean standing in the doorway leading into their room.

They both froze, staring at each other. "You're up," Dean remarked awkwardly.

"You're back," Sam replied. That broke them from their spell, and they both moved again, stepping deeper into the room, shutting their respective doors behind them.

"Did...did it work?" asked Dean, looking at Sam apprehensively.

Sam nodded. "Yeah. I have my memory now," he told him coolly. Dean nodded in return and looked away, clearing his throat. "How long have I been out?" Sam asked him.

"A little over 24 hours."

That would mean it was in the PM. Sam sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Damn." At least it was a shorter sleep this time. Then again, undoing a spell always took a less energy.

"I brought you some burgers," Dean told him, holding up the white sack in his hand. "Figured you might be hungry."

Sam took it from him. There were four sandwiches in the bag, so he handed two back to Dean and then sat down at the desk while Dean dropped onto his bed. Sam didn't think he was hungry, and he only started to eat so he'd have something to do. He didn't know what else to do. But once he chewed and swallowed a mouthful, he realized how starved he really was. He quickly devoured his two burgers, ignoring his brother.

"So now what?" he asked flatly as he wadded up the wrapper of his last burger and tossed it into the trashcan. He meant it as a rhetorical question, one he directed more towards himself.

Dean, who had been sipping a soda, replied anyway. "I, uh-" He cleared his throat, setting the cup down on the bedside table. "I got you a bus ticket back to Stanford."

Sam felt his jaw drop, but he quickly closed it, clenching it shut. He stared at his brother, unable to speak.

In Sam's silence, Dean went on, elaborating. "It leaves at two AM. It was the best I could do." He pulled the ticket from his jacket pocket and tossed it on the desk beside Sam.

Sam stared at the pieces of thin cardboard, reading the words printed across the top. Then he turned back to his brother. "What the hell, Dean!" he exploded.

Dean looked back at him with wide, startled eyes. "Things are tough, so you're going to send me away, just like that. Is that it?" Sam asked him acidly.

"I just thought you'd go back to Stanford," Dean said defensively.

"There you go, making decisions for me again!" Sam shot back immediately. "Dammit, Dean."

Dean looked back at him with steely defiance, saying, "I thought that's what you'd want. You know it is."

Sam met his gaze with one of his own. "You should have waited, you jerk. You should have let me decide."

"I'm sorry, all right? I just thought it'd be easier if I got that out of the way-"

"Don't ever make decisions for me again," Sam interrupted, slapping the ticket against the desk for emphasis. "Just because you happen to be right this time, doesn't give you any right to choose for me."

For a very brief moment, Dean couldn't hide the raw emotions from his eyes. But he recovered, slamming walls up so quickly that Sam wondered if he had even seen the crestfallen expression that had passed his face. Sam, though, was too angry and hurt himself to care. What did Dean expect?

"Don't worry," Dean replied. "I won't need to anymore."

Sam snorted derisively. "You got that right," he said, glaring at him. "The spell was lifted, but in the end you still got what you wanted, didn't you? You're getting rid of me."

Dean glared back at him, though it lacked anger.

It was a look Sam knew well, a hardened expression his older brother took on whenever he was uncomfortable with his emotions, or with Sam's. He'd always been so stubborn, always refused to acknowledge whatever he was feeling.

And Sam had long grown tired of trying, and right now, he wasn't the one who owed anybody anything. It pissed him off that Dean wasn't putting any effort. Sam deserved at least that.

If Dean wanted to part ways with Sam without any attempt at apology or reconciliation, then Sam will take that. But he'll be damned if he would ever reach out to Dean after this.

Sam gritted his teeth. After all of this,he couldn't see how he could go back to his "normal" life at Stanford. He couldn't imagine facing Rebecca and Zach, didn't know how he could live the same life he had before he knew about Dean.

But more critically, he knew he could never stay with Dean, not after what he had done to him. His trust was gone.

"Dammit, Dean!" he said again, standing up suddenly. "I can't believe you did this to me!"

Dean didn't reply.

Shaking his head, his eyes trained on the wall, Sam felt heat burn inside his chest. "I can't even look at you," he spat furiously. And if any emotion crossed Dean's face, he wouldn't know it. Didn't care to know.

With a burst of anger, his arm shot out and punched the wall, slamming his fist into wallpaper and plaster. Without looking at the damage he caused, he spun around and stormed out of the door.

It wasn't until he was outside that he noticed the tears that blurred his eyes. He cursed them, refusing to cry.

ooOOoo

Sam stayed away for most of the evening. It was harder than it seemed ... the hotel was located just off a major highway, surrounded by places meant for the traveling commuter, not a car-less pedestrian. The choices were made worse by Sam's desire to be alone, and he had trouble finding a place where he could suffer through his emotion freely and privately. The last thing he needed was to break down into tears in the middle of a strange town.

He ended up at the McDonald's. By the time he walked into the brightly lit building, he no longer felt an urge to cry. Instead, all of his emotions had congealed into a lump deep inside his chest where it rolled and burned dully.

He ordered a coffee and took a seat in the far corner, out of sight from the counter in a small wing that held only two other occupied tables. He ignored the other patrons as he slid into the last booth, his hands wrapped around the warm cardboard cup.

Time passed slowly and all he had were his miserable thoughts. He ended up nursing three cups worth of coffee, just so he had something to do with his hands. His thoughts kept repeating over in his head, and he finally forced himself to move on.

His next steps wouldn't be too difficult, he told himself. They were already laid out before him, neat and tidy.

It wasn't be too late to sign up for law school. He could still start in the fall. And this time, he'd be more ambitious than settling for a job at the grocery store. It was also time to start dating again, he realized. Jessica was irreplaceable, but he knew there were other women out there who could make him happy. He needed to stop sulking, he needed to rebuild so he could eventually settle down.

Someday he would have the life he'd always wanted, and he could forget all of this.

At least he knew he had a place to go to until all that happened. But before he could, he had to know.

Sam pulled out his cell phone and stared at it for a long moment. He didn't feel like talking, but he had to find out what they knew, had to find out what exactly they had been keeping from him.

"Hey, Rebecca," he said when she answered.

"Oh hi, Sam!" Rebecca greeted cheerfully on the other side. But then her voice suddenly turned sober when she realized something was wrong. "What's up?" she asked carefully.

Sam answered instantly. "I know John is Dean."

There was a long pause before she responded. "I've been waiting for this call," she admitted softly. "Sam, I'm so, so sorry. Where are you? Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Can you...Can you explain everything to me?" he asked. His voice was suddenly shaky. "I don't—I still don't understand what happened."

"Oh, God, Sam. I'll-I'll try," she replied. She took in a deep breath before she continued. "Dean showed up with you unannounced that night, said he'd been driving all day to get here because he didn't know where else to go," she told him through the phone. "He had to carry you in from the car because you were unconscious. He said that you were hit with a voodoo spell."

She paused, and Sam could hear the frown in her voice. "And then he said that when you woke up, you wouldn't remember anything about your family or your past - but you would remember us. He wanted to leave you here so you could go back to school, get on with your life. It'd be too dangerous if you stayed with him."

Dean was a goddamn liar, Sam thought for not the first time.

"And he told us to keep him a secret from you. He didn't want you to know. Said it would be too... complicated." She didn't seem to hear his snort.

Sam shook his head, even though she couldn't see it. "Why couldn't you just tell me?" he asked her.

"He made us promise, Sam. And because..." She hesitated for a moment, but then continued in a rush. "At first I thought he had a point, that it would be easier for you. After that thing in St. Louis, I didn't think you would leave your brother, but I thought this was your chance to have a normal life."

Sam wanted to crush the phone in his hand. It was already digging into his fingers, he clutched it so tight. A normal life. He never wanted to hear anyone say those words to him again.

Rebecca continued quickly. "Sam, I would have broken that promise the moment I realized you weren't happy. I swear, I really wanted to."

"But you didn't," he pointed out.

"He was your brother, Sam. I couldn't just get in the way of family like that. I didn't think it was my right to make that decision."

"So you just let him go on lying like that?"

"He's family and I wasn't," she told him, pleading with him to understand. "He should have been the one to tell you, not me."

Sam squeezed his eyes shut. "I'm so sorry, Sam," he heard her say again. "I know it was a mistake. It took me way too long to realize it." He remembered the frustration she showed at their graduation. He remembered the night she sent him home early from the bar so he could run into Dean. She tried, he realized. She did what she could.

He had to work his throat before he could speak again. "Did he-did he tell you why? How it happened?"

"Not really. But from what I gathered, it sounded like you guys had been on one of your, um, hunts, and I guess it ended badly. Sounded like the voodoo lady had it out for you, or something."

She didn't know. It was a small relief, but it didn't make him any happier. Sam sagged against the hard plastic seat. He almost told her the truth, but couldn't get himself to.

"He kept checking up on you," she told him. "The whole time, he never stopped worrying about you."

So what? Sam almost retorted. "Don't, Rebecca," he said instead. Don't make excuses for him.

"Where are you, Sam?" she asked again.

"Northern Texas," he replied dully. He didn't tell her he was getting on a bus. He didn't tell her that in 24 hours he'd be standing at her doorstep again. He knew he should, but he couldn't admit that out loud.

She was quiet for a moment. "What are you going to do now?" she asked.

"I don't know," Sam replied, scrubbing his face with his hand. "I don't know."

ooOOoo

When he walked back out of the McDonald's restaurant, ready to pick his things up from the motel, he saw the Impala sitting in the parking lot.

Sam thought he would swerve around to avoid it, but his traitorous legs took him there anyway. He needed more, he realized then. He needed more from Dean, and he couldn't stop himself from looking for that.

His brother was sitting behind the wheel, watching him through the windshield as Sam approached. Sam refused to look at him directly as he came up to the passenger side. He yanked the door open and slid inside.

"What are you doing here?" he asked him, keeping his gaze forward.

"Looking for you," Dean replied.

"Well, you found me. Congratulations."

Dean nodded. "Yeah."

"I called Rebecca," Sam told him without really meaning to.

"Oh. Good."

Sam sighed. This was ridiculous. "What do you want, Dean?" he asked tiredly.

"I know I messed up, Sam. I knew it the minute I called Ms. Valerie and asked her to do the spell."

"And that's supposed to make me feel better?"

"No. Of course not." Dean scrubbed his hair with his fingers and then dropped the hand onto the steering wheel. "I just-I'm so goddamn sorry, Sam."

Sam looked away. The apology was something, but it wasn't enough.

ooOOoo

Since it was the middle of the night, the bus station was mostly empty. Only two buses were scheduled to pass by the rest of the night, including his. It's too quiet, Sam thought with a frown.

He sat on the cold tiled floor of the station, his back propped against the wall. His bags were spread around him, laying exactly where he dropped them. There were plenty of seats, but he had felt like falling to the floor.

He and Dean had exchanged awkward goodbyes when Dean dropped him off half an hour earlier. They didn't say much on the short drive there. Dean apologized again, but even he realized how inadequate his words sounded.

Dean asked him to call once he got to Stanford, but neither of them expected him to.

Sam drew his legs up and dropped his head onto his knees. He wondered how his life became so messed up.

Dean knew he'd eventually go back to school. He had to have been prepared for that sincethe moment he picked Sam up to search for their dad. There was no reason he had to resort to something so drastic.

Sam groaned miserablyto himself. He didn't see why he should have to feel guilty for wanting what anyone else could have.

Dean and their father were both hunters. But Sam was never satisfied with that. He found contentment at school instead. It gave him what he wanted.

"What are you going to do now?" Sam asked despite himself as he grabbed his bag from the back of the car.

Dean gave him an ironic half-smile. "There're reports of a doppelganger or shapeshifter near Tulsa," he said. Sam almost laughed at that.

Some things never changed. Dean was one of those things ... although apparently he still managed to find ways to surprise him. After all, Sam never thought he'd ever betray him like that.

How did Dean get so messed up?

Sam rolled his head backwards and let his eyes slide close. His head hurt, and so did his stomach. Everything hurt.

Dean's words from the other night echoed in his head.

"-He left again. He didn't say where he was going, just that he needed to get away, needed some time to himself. To reflect."

"Sam-You had nothing left in you. You were miserable and depressed and...that fire was gone. You just...Your heart wasn't in it."

And then Sam remembered why.

***

Their dad called them on a Wednesday, just after Sam and Dean had staked an entire nest of vampires outside of Phoenix. They had just gotten back to the hotel and were still covered in dust when Dean's cell phone rang.

Even before Dean looked at the caller ID, they both knew it was important. It was nearly four in the morning and they knew no one who would call unless it was urgent. Sam had a brief flash of hope that it was their father, but he didn't actually expect to hear Dean gasp "Dad?"

Three minutes later, Dean hung up and announced they had to leave. "Right now," he said. Sam knew at once that this was it, this was the moment they'd been waiting for. He immediately got up and started packing, letting Dean explain as they stuffed clothes and weapons into their bags.

Their dad needed them. Sam didn't think he would ever hear those words either. But he had told Dean he needed their help as soon as possible, and he gave him coordinates for somewhere in central California. It was only a twelve-hour drive ... close-by when the entire country was your home.

John had cornered the demon. He had finally found the monster responsible for the deaths of Mary and Jessica. And he needed their help to defeat it.

"We're finally going to kill this thing," Dean said, quoting their father.

Sam could feel it in his bones, could taste it in his mouth. The need for justice or revenge or blood ... he would finally get that satisfaction. He could finally rid himself of those thoughts, those black desires that had always lurked just under his chest since the moment Jessica died.

The weariness he felt just after their latest hunt disappeared instantly, and he stood by the door, tapping his foot while he waited for his brother.

But Dean stalled. Like always, he followed their father's orders - but he wanted to shower first, and he refused to leave before both he and Sam were clean. Sam relented before they could waste more time arguing than it would take to shower. When it was his turn, he impatiently jumped under the spray of water and waited only until the vampire dust had been rinsed off before he got back out.

Fortunately, Dean had already packed the car and was ready to go; otherwise Sam might have accidentally killed him with his impatience.

Dean did feel the urgency as well, even if it wasn't to the same extent as Sam and their father felt. He broke his own speed record along a desert highway, and they cut several hours from their driving time. They didn't speak more than a few words the whole time. Or, if they did, Sam didn't remember it.

They met their dad mid-afternoon. When they walked up the his hotel door, Dean froze for a moment and Sam thought he wasn't going to knock for some strange reason. But then his hand came up and gave the door three simple raps.

It was the first time Sam had seen his father since he had left for Stanford. It was a simple reunion, with a few tears and quick but firm hug. They mentioned neither their last fight, nor John's prolonged, mysterious absence.

They had something more important on their mind.

Since the demon was a night creature, they spent the next few hours researching - but it was more out of routine than anything. Spread out in John's hotel room, they glanced through library materials, John's notes, rumors and legends online. But the moment the sun set, they quit at once, slamming their books shut and exchanging them for supplies and swords.

By then, they knew how to kill it. That was all they needed.

The demon had taken hold of a two-story home just outside of town. John had the family safely evacuated the night before, so the house was clear for them to use. It was a regular place, like their home had been in Kansas. Sam was grateful John had arrived just in time to get the Johnsons to safety before the demon could attack.

Their plan was fairly straightforward. First they would trap the demon within the house, preventing it from escaping. Then they needed to confine it to its human form, rendering it mortal.

At that point, it could be killed with first a slash across its middle ... the same mark it left on its victims ... and then a stab straight through its heart.

Sam and John were bloodthirsty and impatient, and they wasted no time entering the house, the setting for this final battle. The demon had taken from them the women they loved more than anything else, and they still felt that pain. They needed this battle, they needed this kill. They'd been waiting for this for too long.

So they had Dean do the spell casting, even though out of the three, he had the least experience. Dean never protested. He lived with them for too long, he knew as much as they did how deeply they needed this.

They set him up in the basement on the cold, concrete floor. John poured a circle of salt around him, and Sam gave him the Latin words he had copied onto notebook paper. Then John lit the candle sitting to his left, and Sam the one on his right. Dean sat cross-legged in the middle, studying the spell because his father told him to.

First he would reinforce the temporary binding spell John had placed the night before. Then, once he was sure the demon was trapped within the walls of the house, Dean would move onto the next spell, the one that made it mortal. As soon as the demon took on its human form, John and Sam would be ready to attack.

The demon had been on the second floor when John placed the binding spell the night before, and that's where they expected it to remain. Sam and John were determined to be present the moment it became mortal. Even as a human it was powerful, and they knew surprising it would be best. Besides, they weren't sure how long Dean could force it into its human shape.

So they left Dean there in the basement. He was safe; the salt circle would protect him from the demon and a sword from its human version. The demon was two floors away in any case, and it was accepted that Sam and John had the more dangerous job.

When the oldest and youngest Winchester gripped their medieval swords and left the basement and Dean behind, they were eager to kill this bastard once and for all. They were anxious but confident. Ready. They knew its weak spot.

But what they didn't know was that the demon drew its power from fire. They didn't know that even the flames from the two small ritual candles were bright enough to attract it. They didn't know that those lit candles would give it enough strength to pass through a simple salt barrier.

Sam and his father roamed the entire second floor, searching it room by room with their swords poised and ready. They paced the hallway, throwing open doors and checking each room as they passed. The whole time, they kept each other in sight. Watched each other's back.

But fifteen minutes passed, and they knew the spell should have been completed. The demon should have been human by then, should have been plainly visible.

They went to the first floor next as their concern started to mount When they didn't see it after one sweep through, their heartbeats started to rise. They exchanged alarmed glances and raced through the twisting rooms.

But the demon wasn't there.

Instantly they were running for the basement door. Sam was younger, quicker, and he got there first. He raced down the stairs, nearly tripping. He distantly heard his father thundering behind him.

His eyes went immediately to the makeshift spell circle, where Dean should have been sitting. To his horror, the candles had been knocked over, although somehow their flames were still flickering. The circle of salt was now a burnt ring scorched into the concrete.

And Dean was gone.

Sam crept forward in horror, his heart hammering in his ears. He stepped over the burnt salt, going into the area where Dean was supposed to perform the ritual. A flash of white caught his eye, and he looked down at the notebook paper that lay still on the ground by his feet.

And then a spot of blood appeared on the top of his shoe.

Another followed, dripping right beside it. Two drops of red on his gray sneaker.

In horrified unison, Sam and John lifted their gazes, tilting their heads back. Sam heard his father cry out, but his own throat closed up completely. He thought he might be sick, if he didn't choke to death.

Dean was spread out above them, pinned flat againstthe ceiling. A bloody gash had been torn across his abdomen.

The horrible image of Jessica flashed through Sam's mind, just as he knew his father had a flashback of Mary. But this time it was Dean who hung over them, his eyes wide open with pain and horror. He was already pale, the color of death.

But he was still alive, Sam realized incredibly. His lips were moving, although Sam couldn't hear what he was saying. It gave him a fragile, frightening sense of almost-hope as he stared up at his brother in stunned horror.

Sam stretched his arms up, but his hands only came within a foot of him. Tears blurred his eyes as he struggled to reach.

Then Dean stopped talking, his lips suddenly stilling. And then the air rushed by Sam, seemed to surge past him. Energy, he realized distantly, dropping his gaze.

And then suddenly a dark form loomed before him. Even though it looked normal, like someone he could have passed on the street, Sam knew immediately it was the demon. He knew this was the thing they had devoted their entire lives to finding.

Dean had finished the spell.

Sam instantly came alive, his blood racing. With a scream, he lurched forward, swinging the sword he still held in his hands. He brought it behind him and then lashed out in a wide, powerful arc.

The tip of the sword slashed across the figure's middle, slicing through flesh. The demon stumbled backwards from the force of his blow as blood welled from his stomach.

Sam stepped back automatically as John rushed forward, almost as if they had practiced it. He watched as his father ran his sword through the demon's chest and then yanked it back out.

The demon let out an inhuman shriek before it toppled down to the ground. They examined it just long enough to make sure its body lay limp, unmoving before them.

They had killed it.

The demon that killed his mother, that took Jessica from him, was gone. They finally ended it. They finally got their revenge.

But Sam wasn't thinking about that.

He looked up with a jerk, just in time to see Dean suddenly fall from the ceiling as he was released from whatever power that held him. Crying out, Sam tossed his sword aside and leapt forward. He got there in time to break his fall, and the force of Dean's body knocked him down to the concrete floor.

Sam lay there on his back, stunned, trying to catch his breath as Dean lay on top of him. The weight of his brother pressed heavily against Sam's chest, and his head hung limply over his shoulder.

Gasping, Sam struggled to pull his trapped arms from underneath him, finally yanking them out with a gentle jerk. Once they were free, he lifted them up into the air and carefully lowered them onto Dean's back. Then he wrapped them firmly around his brother's body, his hands grasping each side of Dean's ribage.

He hugged his brother tightly to him, ignoring the tears that leaked from his eyes and rolled off the side of his face.

"Dean," he whispered. "Dean."

Somewhere beside him, their father was frantic, speaking in a broken string of words. "Oh, God, Dean. Oh, God, no. My boy. I'm sorry, Dean, I'm so sorry," he was saying. And then strangely he started barking orders—into his phone, Sam dimly realized; he was calling for help.

Sam hung onto Dean desperately, trying to keep him anchored to him. Forcing him to know that Sam was there.

But Dean didn't move, didn't acknowledge him in the slightest. The weight on his chest never moved. Sam's arms were cold, and the warmth of Dean's body were his only comfort. As long as Dean stayed warm, he would be fine. Sam started rubbing his back, desperately keeping that warmth inside him.

And then John's arms were carefully wrapping themselves around Dean, just under Sam's grip. "C'mon, Sam," he said softly, his voice deep and shaky. "We have to go."

"What?" Sam fumbled. "But—help—"

"We can't stay here," John told him. "We gotta go. They'll meet us at the curb." As he spoke, he tugged gently at the weight holding Sam down.

Sam held on tighter. "No, Dad, wait. Don't-" he said frantically, shaking his head.

"Listen to me, Sam!" his father snapped before lowering his voice. "We'll meet them outside. It'll be quicker." Sam barely heard him, and his head refused to stop shaking. "Sam!"

Then Sam let go. He dragged in a hitching breath, an almost sob, as his arms dropped to the sides.

Dean was lifted from him, but Sam's eyes were closed and he didn't watch. Once the weight was off of him, Sam rolled over and pushed himself up.

"Get the swords," John ordered, and Sam obeyed robotically. He picked them up from the ground, barely noticing the blades slick with blood and ignoring the body on the ground. He held one in each hand and followed behind his father as he carried Dean up the stairs in his arms.

Moving on autopilot, he held the door open as John took Dean outside. Then he threw the swords into the trunk of the Impala while John carefully lay Dean on the grass next to the road. Sam dropped to his knees beside him. His father's hands were pressed against Dean's wound, but Sam couldn't tell if it did any good. Everything was so bloody.

While they waited, he tried to ignore the deathly pallor of Dean's face. He focused instead on the rise and fall of his chest, the only thing that assured him his brother was still alive.

At one point, Dean's eyes drifted open, rolling around as he searched for a face. They landed on Sam. "'Ey," he greeted, his voice hoarse. "Did you get 'im?"

Beside him, John let out a harsh noise that sounded almost like a sob. "Yeah, son. We got him."

Sam thought he saw the corner of his mouth twist into a smile. "Hell, yeah," he said before his eyes slipped close again.

Sam didn't know how long it took the ambulance to arrive. He never heard what lie his father told them. He climbed numbly behind the wheel of Dean's car so he could follow his father's truck to the hospital.

The hospital should have been closer, he thought with each turn they took. It was too far away.

Sometime later he found himself in the waiting room with his father. They sat side by side in the plastic chairs, neither of them speaking as the doctors were off somewhere working on Dean. Sam stared at the doors where he expected news to eventually come from. His dad was a pale and silent form beside him, his gaze never leaving the tiled floor. Both of them were covered in blood.

Sam could not stop the flood of thoughts that pounded him. He didn't even try.

They should have waited. God dammit, they should have waited, and they should have put more effort in studying the demon. But they were too impatient, too high on finally putting an end to the shadow that had haunted their entire lives. They went in recklessly and dangerously unprepared. And Dean was the one who suffered for their mistakes.

They got what they wanted, but it wasn't worth it.

ooOOoo

Some time later—Sam hadn't been keeping track how long—the doctor came up to them. He told them that Dean had finally been stabilized. That if he lived through the next 24 hours, his chances were good.

Sam let out the breath he didn't know he was holding.

He lost that breath again when they were allowed in to see him. Dean was dead, Sam was sure of it. Only his heart monitor told him otherwise.

As soon as they were alone, John started cursing, coming alive for the first time since they arrived at the hospital. He raged around the room, spitting out four-letter words, his voice low but violent. Sam stood stiffly beside Dean's bed as he let his father finally release the emotions that had been boiling inside him.

"God dammit, Sam," John hissed under his breath, slapping his hand around the railing of the bed. "I messed up. God dammit, I messed up."

Sam nodded, watching Dean's face for any sign of movement. "We both did," he said roughly.

"Stop it, Sam. This was my responsibility," his father told him firmly, passionately. "This was my fault. I almost got my own son killed."

Tears started to prick Sam's eyes, but they never fell. A tense quiet settled over them, and each beep of Dean's monitors sent a subtle jolt through Sam's chest.

"I can't take this," John suddenly muttered, sounding angry. "I can't stand this right now."

Sam looked up with growing alarm. He didn't like the tone in his voice. "Dad?"

John straightened suddenly and turned to him. "Sam. You got to get him out of here."

Sam took a step backwards, gasping out loud. The abrupt turn in the conversation threw him off guard. "What do you mean?" he cried, his eyes growing wide.

"We all have to get out of here," his father told him. "We left a body behind with a matching injury. It's only a matter of time before they link us to it."

"But, Dad—Look at him!" He waved an arm at Dean.

John refused, stubbornly keeping his eyes trained on Sam's face. "Sam, listen. He'll be fine." Sam glared at him, wide-eyed, his teeth grinding together.

"You'll take care of him," John added.

Speechless, Sam struggled to form words. "What do you mean—Why can't-" he immediately protested, feeling everything spin out of control. "Why me?" he demanded. "Where are you going?"

"I—I need some time. I need to get my thoughts together."

"But what about me? What about Dean!" Sam shouted at him.

His father was sad. "You guys always needed each other more than you needed me."

"That's not true, Dad," Sam shot back instantly, even though it was. But he didn't want his father to leave him. Not again, not like this. He and Dean had been searching too long for him. "We still need you," he added truthfully. John looked away, uncompromising.

Dean would be crushed.

"You can't leave," Sam said, his voice suddenly hard. "Dad, listen to me. You can't do this to us."

"Sam, everything's going to be okay. We'll see each other again."

"Dad, no, why can't you stay now?"

"I just can't, Sammy," he replied, his voice suddenly trembling. "I need some time-to reflect."

"The hell, Dad!" Sam exclaimed, barely able to see his father through the water in his eyes. He was shaking, he realized, and he had to grip the bed rail to steady himself. "Don't leave me, Dad. Don't leave Dean."

"I'm sorry, Sam."

"What kind of father are you!" Sam spat out, hoping his words hurt, hoping they stung deep.

"I know, Sam-" he whispered in defeat. "But I can't protect you two anymore. I failed. And I'm afraid-" his voice caught, and he trailed off for a long moment. Sam stood there trembling as he waited for his father to explain. "It's too dangerous to be around me. I've made too many enemies, and-I've already put you through too much. For all of your life, I've been placing you two in danger."

Sam shook his head in disbelief, not disagreeing, but too angry at his father to do anything else.

"Get him out of here, Sam. Get him somewhere safe."

Sam blinked furiously and looked down, refusing to acknowledge his father's words.

"You boys need to move on," John told him sadly. "It's over now."

Sam gripped the metal railing tight in his hands, his locked arms trembling from the force. His eyes were so filled with tears he didn't see his father as he walked out of the hospital room, leaving the two brothers behind.

***

Sam waited until the nurse came in to check up on his brother. She checked his vitals, gave Sam a reassuring smile, and then left.

Sam, his insides swimming, slowly went up to the bed. He studied his brother for a long moment before he finally forced himself to reach down. For a second his trembling hand hovered over Dean's shoulder. Then he dropped it and gave Dean a gentle shake.

"Dean," he said softly, hating himself. "Hey, Dean."

Dean slowly came awake, and Sam watched his expressions changed as he struggled with consciousness. "Sam?" he asked, his eyebrows drawn together.

"Hey, Dean," Sam replied, swallowing. "How are you feeling?"

He groaned, his face twisting. "Like crap," he replied hoarsely.

Sam nodded just to stall, unable to stand the weakness he heard in his voice. "Dad-Dad thinks we should leave."

It took a moment for his words to sink in, and he hoped they would be dismissed. But then Dean's eyes widened. "We left a body, didn't we?" Immediately he started to move, struggling to push himself up.

"Dean, do you really think-" Sam said hesitantly, thinking he should stop him from moving.

Dean cut him off sharply. "Sam, just help me get out of here," he replied in between pants.

"You can barely move," argued Sam, this time more confidently, as he watched his brother grimace in pain. "You'll rip something open," he warned, feeling sick.

"I'll be fine," Dean grumbled.

Sam gave up watching him struggle, knowing he wouldn't stop even with all the pain. He slid an arm behind him, and Dean didn't protest as he helped him sit up.

As Dean sucked in air from his new position, Sam surveyed him critically. "So, what-you're planning on walking—stumbling—out of here, just like that? In your hospital gown?"

Dean paused at that, and Sam had a brief flash of hope. "You're right," he admitted. "Is the car here? Go grab me some clothes."

"Dean!"

Dean cocked his head, unperturbed. "Get some for yourself, too. You look pretty scary, dude."

Sam almost refused, but somehow he found himself walking through the parking lot to the car and pulling out a change of clothes from their bags. It was the middle of the night, and he was alone rummaging through the Impala by the light from an overhead street lamp.

While he was there, he quickly pulled off his own shirt and replaced it with clean sweatshirt. He wanted to get Dean's blood off of him.

Once he was back in the room, he helped Dean into the button-down shirt and sweatpants. "They don't match," Dean complained, but Sam ignored him.

It was Dean who pulled the IVs out of his arm. Sam couldn't get himself to do it, but Dean didn't even hesitate. "You know how to turn off the monitor," Dean said, and Sam nodded, doing just that with a heavy feeling in his stomach.

"All right, let's get out of here," Dean announced. He pivoted, swinging his legs off the bed. Then he seemed to steel himself, and Sam didn't want to watch the look of pain he knew would pass over his face.

Sam stood beside him, wrapping an arm around his back. His brother didn't shrug him off, much to his worry and relief. He helped him stand, and Dean's knees buckled instantly.

But he quickly recovered, and Sam had to guide him to the door even as he was thinking he should push him back into the bed. Dean told him to check to see if the coast was clear. At that moment, no one was in sight, although the nurses' station stood only a few feet away.

Dean shook Sam off of him then, and Sam looked at him in alarm. "I can't look like a patient," Dean told him, rolling his eyes.

And then they slipped out of the room, stepping softly so their shoes didn't squeak against the tile. Dean refused help, but Sam made sure he stood next to him only inches away, just in case. Neither of them risked a glance at the nurses' desk as they passed.

Somehow they made it outside. Instantly Sam's arm went around Dean's back again and he walked him to the car. Dean looked even more pale underneath the lights of the parking lot, and his face was dotted with sweat by the time Sam helped him into the passenger side. "We can go back," Sam suggested, feeling helpless.

Dean shook his head and rested his head back against the seat. He was unconscious by the time Sam pulled out from the parking lot.

ooOOoo

Sam checked into a hotel fifteen miles away, the first he found outside of town. Dean was half-conscious as Sam half-supported, half-carried him into the room, but he was out again the moment his body was stretched out across the bed.

And while Dean slept, Sam paced the room, unable to ignore the fear that had been coursing through his veins since the moment he raced into the basement.

Eventually exhaustion overcame him and he crawled into the second bed. He hadn't slept since two nights ago, he realized. The night before their father had called after their vampire hunt, before they could get to sleep, and they'd been up ever since.

He slept fitfully, but still it was late morning before he woke. Dean remained asleep.

Sam tried to call their dad, but he got his voice mail instead.

Dean was pale, still in the bed next to him, and Sam was angry. Vibrating. The hotel room was too small, the television programming too maddening, the laptop too useless. And he could almost understand why John left. But only almost.

Dean woke up sometime mid-afternoon. Sam noticed the moment he rolled his head to the side and cracked an eyelid open. "Aw, goddammit," his brother hissed under his breath.

Sam helped him sit up and handed him two painkillers from Dean's emergency stash. It wasn't as good as the stuff they would've given him at the hospital, but Sam didn't want his thoughts to go down that path again. Dean gratefully took them from him, as well as the glass of water Sam had kept by his bedside.

"Where's Dad?" Dean asked after he swallowed the water.

Sam froze.

"Is he going to meet us here?" Dean went on.

Sam's heart sank, becoming a heavy weight in his chest. He knew he would ask, but he hadn't expected it so quickly. So-instantly.

"No," he told him.

Even though he didn't want to see the emotions he knew would strike Dean then, he watched his older brother carefully anyway.

But Dean only lifted his chin slightly. "Oh." A hand slowly came up to scratch the bandages surrounding his middle. "So-Where'd he go?"

"Um-" Sam stalled. He knew how weak the words would sound, but the only explanation he had was the one John gave him. "He-He said he needed some time. He just needs-to reflect."

His brother swallowed hard, but his face remained impassive. Sam noticed how he wasn't letting him see his eyes. Then he dropped his head and looked down at his lap. Sam didn't know what to say, so he remained quiet.

"Heh," Dean said after a moment, giving a small snort. He looked back up again, glancing at Sam. "Big tough guy needs to meditate. Our father's gone soft, Sammy."

Sam wanted to call him on his bullshit. But he didn't. Neither of them had the energy for it. "Yeah," he replied half-heartedly. "I guess he did."

ooOOoo

Dean slept through the rest of the day and most of the next, only stirring to stumble into the bathroom or to throw a couple of pills into his mouth. Neither of the brothers said much to each other during those brief moments. Sam still didn't know what to say, and Dean didn't look like he wanted to talk.

The rest of the time, while Dean was unconscious, Sam was left with only himself for company. It wasn't long before he was certain he'd go completely crazy. There was never anything interesting on the hotel's limited TV channels and his laptop gave him little to do since they no longer had any hunt to research. Even though he wasn't hungry, he ordered food just to have something to do - but two days and five meals later, he was sick of pizza and Chinese.

The constant anger that had been keeping him company refused to leave him. It made his veins hum and his temples throb. He found himself standing up and pacing more often than not because his limbs refused to stop moving. He was so angry, but he had nowhere to vent.

The demon that had destroyed their lives was gone now. Just like that. At one point during the day, Sam took a couple of swings through the air with an imaginary sword, trying to remember the feel of the demon's flesh giving way underneath the blade.

He'd been in the hotel room for 48 hours straight when he finally decided he needed to get out. It was five in the morning, but he had gone to bed early the night before just because he couldn't stand the sight of the flickering television screen.

Dean was still asleep on the other bed and hadn't moved even after Sam took a shower. Sam checked him to make sure he was all right, immensely grateful for the sound of small breaths that filled the room. Once he was satisfied that Dean would be fine, Sam grabbed his wallet and headed out of the door.

It was impossible to not worry, so Sam wasn't gone for very long. He bypassed Dean's car, instead heading down the street on foot. He decided he would walk to the convenience store located just a few buildings over, figuring it would be one of the few places open.

It was a quiet morning, and the early sunlight softened the edges of the neglected neighborhood and bathed everything in a orange glow. The fresh, circulating air energized him after the stale air that filled in their room, and he took in deep lungfuls, unsure of when he'd get to breathe it again. The breeze seemed to wipe the thoughts clear from his mind, and Sam gratefully let them go.

Even though the road had no sidewalks, there was very little traffic, and he had no problems reaching the store. He walked through every aisle, even though he only planned on buying breakfast. Then he filled two cups of coffee and grabbed a couple of wrapped breakfast sandwiches, a bottle of orange juice, and some donuts. He also found a microwavable container of soup, which he had to heat up in the store's microwave since their room didn't have one. He didn't know when or what Dean would be able to eat, but the moment he was ready, Sam wanted to make sure he had something to put in his stomach.

As an afterthought, he grabbed a couple of magazines and paperback books without even looking at the covers. He needed something to do in the hotel room, and reading was as good as anything else.

Even with the unnecessary aisle time, the entire visit only took him ten minutes. With a coffee cup in each hand, the soup balancing on the top of one, and the bag of food and reading material hanging off his fingers, Sam strolled carefully back to the motel. Each step that brought him closer sent another thought flying back into his mind, taking the same spot it had been lingering in for the past two days.

He thought about their father, he thought about his own stupidity and mistakes, he thought about Dean stretched out on the bed with his pale face and sunken eyes. He thought about the demon that needed to die, and the satisfaction he should have felt. If only circumstances had been different, if only their obsession hadn't nearly gotten Dean killed.

All of these thoughts were over two days old, but Sam knew they would plague him for the rest of his life.

As the door to room 127 loomed before him, he found himself reluctant to go back to their new reality. He wondered if Dean had stirred yet, or if he still looked too much like a corpse.

But as he walked through the door, he found Dean sitting up in bed, yellowish under the light of the bedside lamp. His face was pale, and sweat plastered his hair to his forehead, but his eyes were alert, and they flicked over to Sam as he nudged the door close behind him.

Sam set his purchases on the desk, wishing he didn't suddenly feel bad for leaving. "Hey, I just went out for a moment," he found himself rushing to explain. "Just needed to stretch my legs, decided to pick up some breakfast."

"Yeah, I know."

That struck Sam as an odd statement, and Dean's tone sounded strange to him. "You know?" Sam repeated, bewildered. He hadn't told him what he was doing, hadn't even left a note.

"I mean, I knew you had a reason to be gone."

Sam wanted to curse, but he kept it to himself. "Yeah, I did," he said instead, pulling the food from the bag as he avoided Dean's gaze. "Do you think you can handle a sandwich?" he asked him. "I also heated up some soup. It might be lukewarm by now, but-"

"I'll take both," Dean replied. "I'm starving."

"I bet," Sam remarked, handing him the sandwich and bottle of orange juice. He also set coffee and the soup on the bedside table next to him. "How are you feeling?"

Dean shrugged. "Fine, as long as the painkillers kick in."

Sam wanted to ask more, but in all the years he'd spent with his brother, he still hadn't figured out how to get him to open up. "Is there anything you'd like to talk about?" he asked. "Anything you need to say?"

"Like what?"

Sam sighed. He hadn't expected anything more. "Is there anything you need to talk about?" Dean asked him pointedly. Sam frowned and shook his head.

"No," he replied resignedly.

They ate in relative silence, and Sam decided to focus on the food. The sandwich was just as bland as he suspected it would be, but it filled his stomach and gave him something to do. He glanced over at Dean, looking to see if the food was making him nauseous. His sandwich lay abandoned on its wrapper, but he was relieved it looked at least halfway eaten, and that Dean was now drinking the soup. With any luck, all of it would stay down.

Once they were finished, as Sam gathered their trash, he opened his mouth to ask Dean something. But he lost his nerve and closed it again. There wasn't any rush; he could ask later.

Dean noticed though. "Yeah?" he asked.

Sam hesitated. Then he shifted uncomfortably, giving Dean a helpless, apologetic look. It wasn't his original intention, but it was necessary. "I should change your bandages," he told him, trying to keep the nervousness from his voice.

He'd done it before, but this would be the first time Dean would be awake for it. The first time he'd have to do it under unforgiving daylight instead of in the soft glow from the bathroom.

Dean grumbled a token protest, but Sam knew he understood how important it was to keep infection away. After washing his hands, Sam took out their supplies and sat on the bed next to his brother. Dean turned around obligingly and unbuttoned his shirt, revealing the white bandages underneath.

As Sam unwrapped the gauze, he tried to steel himself for the sight of Dean's injury. But as he peeled the last of the bandages away, his breath still caught in his throat.

The wound, the slash the demon had sliced across his middle, was red and ugly and-huge.

The image of Dean on the ceiling flashed unyielding through his mind. The wide eyes, the pale skin, the gaping wound that seemed to have swallowed his entire abdomen. That gaping wound, the one that would forever haunt his mind, superimposed itself over the stitched cut Sam was now staring at. As hard as he tried, he couldn't blink that image away.

"How are you not dead?" he whispered under his breath.

He hadn't meant to say that out loud, and he heard the words come from his mouth the same instant Dean did.

It sent them both into an uncomfortable silence. After a moment, Dean finally shrugged in response. "Guess my family has good instincts. You guys got there just in time, didn't you."

Just in time? Sam thought bitterly. Just in time would have been right before the demon slashed Dean across the stomach and pinned him to the ceiling. There never should have been a "just in time." They should have researched more, should have known the demon's strengths as well as they knew its weaknesses so just-in-times never would've happened.

Sam wondered if Jessica had been still alive that moment he saw her pinned. He wondered if she had died instantly, or if she was forced to stare down at the bed as her life slowly leaked out of her. He wondered how long she had been up there, and if a just-in-time could have been possible.

He wondered how close he had come to seeing Dean swallowed by the same flames that took Jessica.

"And, I don't know, maybe Miss Valerie helped."

When Dean spoke, his words brought Sam from his thoughts. He tore his gaze from Dean's abdomen, suddenly realizing he'd been quiet for too long, and he recognized Dean's awkward attempt at filling the silence.

His statement, though, made no sense to him. "Who's Miss Valerie?" he asked. The change in conversation spurred him into action, and as he spoke, he started to work on redressing Dean's wound.

Dean shrugged lightly. "She's a voodoo priestess I helped out once, right before I came and took you from Stanford." Sam nodded once, remembering that Dean had mentioned something about New Orleans that night.

Dean flinched as Sam applied an antibiotic ointment, but he went on as if nothing had happened. "Anyway, she placed some kind of protection spell around me. It's not foolproof or anything, more like a buffer. But who knows, maybe that was enough to make a difference."

Sam looked up from his task, cocking an eyebrow. "You let her put a spell on you?" He never thought Dean would've believed in that kind of thing, let alone risk it.

"Yeah, I trust her. She's a good person, knew what she was doing." He smirked. "I had her place one on you, too, you know."

Sam gaped at him. "What? When?"

"After the whole Bloody Mary thing. Stole a couple of your hairs from the bathroom, sent it to her." He saw Sam's expression. "Hey, it's just a simple spell, no big deal."

Sam snorted. "You could have at least told me."

"It didn't seem worth mentioning. I don't know how effective it is, or if it even works." He shrugged again. "And besides, I felt kinda stupid stuffing hair into an envelope and sending it to some chick in New Orleans."

"But you did anyway."

"Hey, it was worth a shot," he replied, pressing his lips together in a sardonic way.

The image of Dean hanging above him flashed through Sam's mind again, and Sam found himself nodding in agreement. They needed all the help they could get. They've escaped death too many times.

ooOOoo

The next several days passed by dully, especially compared to their usual lifestyle. The hotel room, like many before it, became their temporary home as Dean slowly recovered.

He could move on his own, but only barely, and he preferred to stay wherever he ended up, usually at some position in his bed. A few times, for example, he moved to the end of his bed to watch TV, and when sitting up without support grew to be too much for him, he'd let himself fall backwards, merely twisting his head around so he could still see the screen.

Sam refused to leave him alone, remaining inside in the room the entire time. He wasn't exactly sure why. Even Dean tried to convince him to get some fresh air, but he didn't want to leave. He was afraid of the cheerful sun and fresh air that lay outside their room. The temptation was too great.

Just as he had before, Sam changed the bandages on Dean's wound regularly, checking carefully for signs of infection.

But each time, Dean caught him staring a little too long at the long, thick gash, found Sam's stressed expression to be a little too disturbing, and within a couple of days he insisted on changing them himself. Sam tried to change his mind, told him it was easier if he just let him do it, but Dean disagreed with his usual stubbornness and refused to be convinced otherwise. He also stopped changing in front of him, Sam realized after a while.

Even with Dean as company, Sam still found himself slowly drifting towards insanity. He knew his pacing made Dean nervous and irritated, but he couldn't stop the blood from racing through his veins. When he couldn't stand it anymore, he tried to distract himself with the books and magazines he bought, and it worked, but only for short periods of time.

He went on his laptop whenever he could think of a way to kill time with it. The very first thing he did was look for a way to replace their dwindling supply of painkillers. After some searching, he found an online website that offered drugs without a prescription, and he ordered a refill with express delivery. He wouldn't have been surprised if it turned out to be a scam to get his credit card number, but they never paid their bills anyway. Fortunately, three days later the mailman arrived with a special delivery.

Just as Sam turned from the door, package in hand, he found Dean pressing his cell phone against his ear. Startled, Sam set the small box on the desk, but in his distraction he set it too close to the edge and it toppled to the carpeted floor.

Dean's voice filled the room in a sudden rush. "Hey, Dad, it's Dean. Just wanted to let you know I'm all right, and so's Sam."

Sam frowned as he picked the package from the floor.

"Um, where are you? Sam mentioned you needed some time, but-I'd really like to hear from you-you know, make sure everything's okay. So just-give me a call or whatever." He hesitated for a second before he slid the phone from his ear and snapped it shut.

Sam was watching him, but Dean didn't seem to notice.

"Hey, uh," Sam coughed awkwardly. He didn't like the emotionless look Dean was wearing. "I got you some goodies," he said, shaking the package in the air. "Painkillers."

"Oh, Sam," Dean replied, turning his head to look at him. Sam was relieved to see a smile start to form. "You really are my hero."

ooOOoo

Sam finally asked later that day. He figured it was time.

"Hey, Dean," he started. "You remember Rebecca?"

Dean looked at him with mild surprise. "Yeah, of course I remember Little Becky."

Sam raised an eyebrow, surprised he remembered that. Dean paid more attention than Sam would have thought, even to as small of a thing as a nickname. Apparently that was important enough to Dean in one way or another.

Sam took in a deep breath, steeling himself. "I was thinking maybe we could crash with her for a while," he said, keeping his voice casual and light.

Dean shook his head, openly confused. "Why would we do that?"

"She and Zach just moved back to Stanford, into this new, huge apartment," Sam explained. "They have an extra bedroom, and they offered it to me. To us. It'd be the perfect place for you to recuperate."

Irritation immediately flashed in Dean's eyes. "You were talking about us?" he said angrily. "So she thinks I'm some kind of invalid now?"

"No," Sam replied, exasperated. "This was a couple of weeks ago. She wanted to give me her new address, told me she had an empty bedroom if I ever needed a place."

"And what did you say?" Although Sam could tell he was holding back, his tone was close to accusatory.

Sam shrugged it off. "Nothing—much. The truth. That I wasn't coming back until we found the thing that killed Jessica."

"Which we just did." Once again Dean's voice had changed, this time sounding resigned and tightly constrained.

"We can stay there until we get settled," Sam went on quickly. "I could go back to school, you could find a job-"

Dean's reaction was instant. "What?" he sputtered.

"What else would we do?" Sam pointed out, spreading his arms out.

"What do you mean? We'll do what we've always done."

"But-" Sam shook his head. "It's over, Dean."

"Sam, it's never over."

Sam was afraid he'd say that. In fact, he knew he would say that. "This is, Dean. What we've been looking for our entire lives ... it's finished now." And they almost lost Dean in the process. "We've done our part, we've made our sacrifices."

Dean's eyes narrowed and he looked away. "It's never over," he repeated.

ooOOoo

"Dammit, Dean."

Sam's mind was full with dark thoughts. With each passing moment, his feelings turned blacker, and since the conversation they had the day before, the deterioration only accelerated.

He continued trying to convince Dean, but his brother refused to listen to him. He wouldn't even talk to him. Instead, whenever Sam mentioned Stanford or hunting or their father, those walls slammed up.

And Sam found his own shell thickening. His jaw was perpetually clenched, and his eyeballs seemed to have hardened. His emotions ran the entire negative end of the spectrum. He went through anger, where he'd rail about the room with harsh shouts, and irritation as he bit out clipped words, and depression, when he'd barely speak at all, and desperation as all those other emotions melted together.

He just wanted Dean to talk to him. To tell him what the hell he was feeling. They hadn't discussed that night with the demon, even though it was almost a week ago, and they were still only fifteen miles away from where it happened. Dean never mentioned John either. That night, everything had changed - but he was acting as if it were all the same.

Wasn't Dean mad at their father?

Was he mad at Sam?

Was he disappointed? Did he blame them? Or did he accept it, maybe even expect it of them? While he was pinned to the ceiling, did he wonder where they were?

Didn't he see how this life was ruining them?

"Hey, Sam?" Dean asked suddenly, sounding hesitant. He was staring hard at himself in the mirror, and his eyes never left his own reflection. Even from his angle, Sam could see that his face still hadn't regained its full color. "Can I ask you a serious question?"

Sam looked at him with surprise. "Yeah, sure," he replied quickly, straightening up. "Of course."

Dean swiveled to face him, and Sam gave him what he hoped was a supportive look. "My scar-" he started. Then the corner of his lip twisted upwards. "Turn on or turn off?"

Sam blinked at him twice, and then his eyebrows came together. "W-What?"

"My scar, it's gonna look pretty damn ugly," Dean told him. "But I'm thinking, there's gotta be some chicks out there who dig that kinda thing, right?" Sam gaped at him as he continued thoughtfully. "I mean, as long as I have a cool back story, they shou-"

Sam jumped to his feet. "Dean," he exclaimed, interrupted angrily. "Come on!"

"What?" He seemed genuinely surprised by Sam's response. Sam realized he probably overreacted, and his tone had been more harsh than he intended.

But he had thought Dean was finally going to open up. When Dean wanted to ask a serious question, he had thought Dean would finally give him some clue about how he felt about everything that had happened. But instead, he'd just given him one of his usual jokes.

Sam scowled and looked away. "What's wrong with you?" Dean asked.

"What's wrong with you?" Sam shot back.

"Hey, I'm not the one who let a bug crawl up my butt and gave it an extended stay."

Sam slowly drew in several long, deep breaths. "Why are we still here, Dean?"

A moment passed as Dean seemed to consider his question. "You're right, Sam," he said, nodding. "We shouldn't be."

But Sam knew Dean didn't mean what he wanted him to mean ... and he was right. Dean made his way to the desk and sat down in front of the laptop.

"What are you doing?" Sam asked warily.

"Finally getting off my lazy ass."

Sam protested immediately. "Dean, you're healing." But Dean's fingers were already flying over the keyboard.

Thirty minutes later, over Sam's continued arguments, he found a hunt in a town near Death Valley, only a few hours away. Sam listened as he explained, and his words throbbed through Sam's ears, a dull, annoying force Sam couldn't escape.

For the past several years, something had been digging up fresh graves and stealing bodies. Later, the bones of those bodies would be found scattered out in the wilderness somewhere. Authorities suspected coyotes or wolves. But recently, people had started to disappear from the outskirts of the same town, their mangled remains turning up later. And while they still blamed desperate wild dogs, the attacks seemed too vicious and the prey too large for typical coyote behavior.

The case was made stranger by statements made by two separate witnesses. The first came from a man, Laurence, who had been hiking with a friend. His friend had sprained an ankle, and as Laurence helped him make his way back, they heard a horse whinny somewhere off of the trail. His friend hobbled to investigate while Laurence stayed behind, uninterested and exhausted after supporting his friend. He never saw his friend again.

The second statement came from a young lady named Audrey. She and her sister, Gina, had also been hiking when they saw a golden retriever playing just off of the trail. Audrey hated dogs, but her sister, who instantly felt sorry for the dog all alone in the middle of nowhere, chased after it even as it ran out of sight. Gina's remains were found two days later.

"Eater of the dead, picking off weary desert travels, maybe even shapeshifting abilities-" Dean listed with a grim-but-triumphant raised eyebrow.

Sam sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Sounds like some kind of a ghoul type creature," he admitted despite himself.

"If we hurry, we can get there before nightfall."

"Tonight?" Sam sputtered. "Dean, you're not exactly in the right condition-"

"What am I supposed to do?" Dean retorted, cutting him off. "Sit around 'healing' while it kills another innocent person?"

Sam shook his head when Dean stood up, unable to hide a grimace. "This is insane, Dean," he said. "You can't expect us to jump right into another hunt so soon after—" But he stopped himself when Dean shot him a look. "You're hurt," Sam said evenly. "You're not at a hundred percent."

He knew he had offended Dean, who took any insinuation that he couldn't do his job as an insult to his manhood. Dean couldn't argue his point, so he stubbornly refused to say anything.

"It's not our responsibility," Sam went on, ignoring his glare. Immediately he knew that was the wrong thing to say.

"It became our responsibility the moment we found out about it," Dean replied. At Sam's glare, he went on. "Dad raised us to fight these evils, to protect others."

Sam spoke slowly and deliberately. "Dad's not here anymore."

"Don't you think I know that?" Dean shot back, his voice taking on a dangerous edge. "But there's an evil out there, and people who need protecting. I don't have any other choice. I gotta keep up the good fight, no matter what."

Sam stood up then. "And how many choices do you think I have?"

A weird, ill look came over Dean's face, and Sam wasn't sure which nerve he struck. "That's not funny, Sam," he said. "Don't even start with that."

So Sam didn't.

He didn't explain how everything had changed, how his options had narrowed sharply into a single point. He didn't explain how Dean was his only choice.

"I'm going," Dean said. "With or without you."

ooOOoo

Sam couldn't believe they were back to hunting so soon. He couldn't believe he was back to hunting at all.

From the moment he first slammed the Impala trunk shut after Jessica's death, even if it wasn't explicit, Sam had planned on returning to school as soon as they killed the demon once and for all. He'd only hunted to get closer to that objective, and even though he had some good times with his brother, and even though he felt as if he had done some real good for a lot of people, he couldn't wait to get out of that world again.

But they screwed it up. The one thing they had been preparing for their whole lives, and they screwed it up. And now their father was gone, and it was only Sam and Dean. And if Sam left, there would only be Dean.

Sam hated himself. If only he had insisted on researching more. After all, he was the scholarly one, wasn't he? The reasonable, level-headed one? He should have known better.

If they hadn't been completely coldcocked by the demon like they had, their dad wouldn't have left them alone, and Sam would have been free to leave the two behind. And if John had gone away anyway, Sam at least would have known Dean could take care of himself. He knew that the two of them could make their own decisions, and if Dean wanted to continue hunting after Sam went back to school, that was his choice. He knew what he was doing. Sam had been prepared for that, even back when he suspected his father might have been dead.

But that night changed everything.

Now-

Sam was absolutely terrified that Dean would end up on that ceiling again. That if he left, one day he'd get a call telling him Dean had been found mauled to death or completely drained of blood or slashed to pieces or any other of a number horrible, bloody, painful deaths they'd come across in all their years.

So when Dean packed up and threw his things in the Impala, Sam had no choice but to follow. He found himself behind the wheel ... he insisted ... taking the two of them to small town near the outskirts of Death Valley so they could stop a ghoul from devouring human flesh.

When they arrived a few hours later, they found the trail where the most people had disappeared. It was night by the time the two Winchesters started walking it, but the moon provided enough light for them to see. They had to go at night, since all the attacks had occurred around sundown or later.

Dean should have more sense, Sam thought. He knew better than to go into a hunt at less than full capacity. But that knowledge seemed to have disappeared. "Ghouls tend to pick off the weak and injured," Dean reasoned. "That's why I'm perfect for the job."

Sam walked at his side, unable to watch him shuffle along the trail but unwilling to let him out of his sight. He knew Dean was emphasizing his pained expression and suffering walk to attract the creature - but he couldn't stand knowing his show was based in truth.

To kill the ghoul, it had to be completely destroyed, through such means as decapitation or fire. Sam carried a sword that looked like a walking cane, and Dean had the flare gun. By all means it should be a simple kill ... ghouls sometimes possessed supernatural strength and speed as well as the ability to change into animal guises, but they were generally mindless and easy to overwhelm if as long as one knew what they were doing ... and if anyone knew what he was doing, it was a Winchester.

But when Sam heard the barking of an injured dog, he froze.

The sound came from Dean's side of the trail, and Sam couldn't move as Dean started towards it. He saw Dean move away from, watched his back as Dean marched calmly towards battle. The only thing he could hear was the barking dog, the call of a vicious ghoul that had been terrorizing the area. With each step that took Dean closer towards the sound, the bark echoed more loudly, more harshly in Sam's ear.

Then Dean's foot slipped against a loose rock, and he yelped in pain as his middle was jostled from the sudden jolt. It ripped Sam from his seized thoughts, spurring him to action.

Sam jogged to catch up, quickly coming to Dean's side. By then Dean had recovered and was continuing on his way, acknowledging Sam with an exasperated glance.

They stepped through the scraggy brush that littered the dusty ground, following the sound of barking down a shallow embankment.

Eventually Sam could make out the shadowy form of a golden retriever, standing out in the open, its head cocked in an innocent manner. At once, Sam slid his sword from his cane and Dean pulled out the flare gun.

The dog reacted just as quickly. In a flash, it had turned into a gangly form, a haggard, corpse-like man. A ghoul, after all. Before either of them could react, it leapt at them, targeting Dean who was half a step closer.

Dean jumped back just in time, and its claws slashed through only air. But Dean lost his footing and stumbled backwards, falling to the ground on his backside. He quickly lifted his flare gun and aimed it at the ghoul's chest, but the creature swiped at him, knocking the weapon out of his hands.

The entire sequence only took a couple of seconds, but while Sam was watching it happen, while he saw his brother sprawled on the ground, gasping with fresh pain, he felt his blood rise into a explosive crescendo inside him, and he burst forward through a haze of red.

He had his sword in his hand, yet he used his free arm and shoulder to ram into the ghoul and yank it to the ground.

Something came over Sam as he stood looking down at its inhuman, ghoulish face. With rage coursing through, Sam kicked the thrashing creature hard, sending his boot crashing into its ribs. He heard them crack under his blow, and he rammed his foot into the side again. The ghoul let out an inhuman shriek, lifting its arms to slash razorlike claws at Sam. Sam easily avoided them, ramming the heel of his boot into its chest.

Then Sam took a hold of his sword and started whaling blows on the ghoul, swinging his sword through the air again and again. Each twick as the sword sliced through flesh had Sam sending his blade through the air again, desperate to hear that sound again. The sword swung faster and faster.

"Sam!" But Sam ignored Dean's voice, lashing at the demon below him, his blade flashing against the moonlight with each frantic pass. Sam kept hacking at the body, his muscles straining from the force of his blows, but it was an ache he needed more of.

"Sam!"

And then arms were threading through his, restraining him, pulling him backwards. "Sam!" Dean said again, his voice breathless and harsh near Sam's ear. "It's okay! You got him!"

Sam panted and dropped his sword, breaking away from Dean's grip. He ignored Dean's concerned expression. The ghoul was now only a mangled body, and Sam had to look away.

To be sure, Dean lit a match and tossed it down. The orange flames spread quickly, drawing Sam's attention and filling his vision entirely, and he watched with dulled senses as they consumed the ghoul's dead body. Sam wondered how many tongues of fire he had seen in his life. He wondered how many more he would see.

ooOOoo

That night, Jessica hung above him, just as she had many nights before. Her eyes were wide, gaping, horrified, the last look she would ever wear. The last emotion she would ever experience. Her face was lifeless, her body bloodied along the middle.

Sam stared up at her, calmly. He was used to this by now. This was what was given to him. This tragedy, this horror ... his life was full of them. That was his life.

And he shouldn't have been surprised when Jessica's image was replaced with Dean's. Her eyes became his. Frozen with the same horror. But this time, his lips didn't move because Sam was too late.

"You did this, Sam," he heard his father say. "You fix this, Sam." John stood somewhere behind him, unseen, but Sam didn't turn to him. He couldn't. Dean was hanging above him.

"I don't know how," Sam replied. "Dad, help."

But his dad was no longer there. His footsteps echoed with hollow thuds until they slowly faded away. The two brothers were left alone.

"Goddamn, this hurts," Dean suddenly said. His eyes were still frozen wide, the look of terror still plastered to his face, but his voice was the same tone Sam had heard countless times before. "Sam, gimme my shotgun and holy water."

Sam stared up him, unable to move. Dean's blood dripped on his forehead.

And finally Sam was ripped from his nightmare, coming awake with a gasp.

But a bright image of Dean was still hovering before him, somewhere passed the foot of his bed, and for a long, disorienting moment, he thought he was still trapped inside his dream. In the dark hotel room, Dean was strangely illuminated against the wall. He was bent over, his face twisted in pain, one arm bracing him upright, the other one holding his shirt open so that his wound was bared.

The image burned itself into Sam's mind, and he couldn't look away. And then he realized he was looking at the wall mirror reflecting the mirror in the bathroom, where Dean was standing, braced against the sink, his back hunched and tense. His face twisted in pain. And it was real and Sam still couldn't look away.

The image swam and blurred before him as Sam felt his eyes begin to fill, and the water grew too heavy and broke away into tears.

He hunched over then himself, grabbing handfuls of the bedspread and dragging them towards him, just to get himself to stop shaking. His chest heaved as the air in his lungs exploded outwards, and his throat tried to hold it back. But the sob escaped with an abrupt gasp, and it somehow released all the snot and tears that had gathered in his nose and in the next moment he tried to sniff it back, and the air he drew in left through his mouth in another shaky gasp.

But he couldn't stop. He clenched his eyes shut, but still he couldn't escape his nightmare.

"Oh, Jesus, Sam, what is it?" Dean asked, his voice suddenly beside him. "What's wrong? What is it?"

But the short, sudden sprint from the bathroom left his brother panting, and though he tried to suppress it, Sam could hear the pain in his voice. And Sam shook his head, unable to speak, his throat and chest constricting, and his face wet and full.

"Sam, it's okay. You hear me? Everything's all right."

He didn't want to do this, not in front of Dean, not at all, but he couldn't stop, and the harder he tried, the worse the hiccups became. Maybe the room was too dark and suffocating, maybe he was too exhausted and helpless. Maybe he'd been clinging to his anger for so long, the despair he'd been ignoring finally broke through. So he let it out, unable to look at Dean, forcing himself to focus on his breathing, but unable to force the images from his mind.

His voice came out as a wet gasp, a broken sob. "When will this be over?" he asked Dean.

ooOOoo

Dean was quiet the next day, and his face unusually pale. He seemed to drift away for long periods, his eyes focused on some faraway object, his back tense and his arms wrapped loosely but protectively around his middle.

At one point, he locked himself away in the bathroom, but he apparently forgot how thin the walls were. Sam could hear the low tone of his voice, and as the closer he crept, the more words he could make out. Dean had called their father, he realized, and by the one-sided conversation Sam was hearing, he knew Dean was forced to leave a message. Sam walked back to his bed and let himself fall backwards, his body bouncing against the mattress. After a moment, Dean came back out, but neither of them mentioned the phone call.

"Why are you still here, Sam?" Dean finally asked around midday. It was the first thing he said to Sam since he'd woken up that morning. From any other person, his tone would have sounded casual. But from Dean, it sounded hesitant, almost timid.

"Why do you think?"

Sam winced at his own words, at the tired desperation he let show, but he couldn't find the energy to apologize, so he sighed instead.

He blamed Dean, and he blamed himself, and he blamed their father. And at the same time, he couldn't blame anyone.

"Why do you do this, Dean?" he tried asking, treading on achingly familiar ground. "What do you really want?"

"Why can't you understand this is what I want?"

ooOOoo

Later that day, Dean, stubborn as always, found rumors of a goatman running around in Idaho. The new hunt seemed to shake him awake, shake off the cloud that had muffled him and made him gray. "Scientific experiment gone awry," he told Sam, his voice finding life for the first time that day. His lips even twisted into his usual smirk.

"A scientific experiment gone awry?" Sam echoed dubiously.

"Scientific experiment gone awry," Dean confirmed, his smirk widening into a mischievous grin. "C'mon Sam, this sounds like a fun one."

It made Sam mad. It made him mad because his brother couldn't find happiness anywhere else. Because what he saw in his brother's face at that moment couldn't be true happiness. Because his brother went on doing the only thing he'd ever done, refusing to change. Because his brother thought he needed this hunt. Because his brother was still in pain.

Because the hunt sounded ridiculous. Sam closed his eyes briefly. "We're going to Idaho for a-goatman?"

"Yep," Dean said, nodding. "You know how goats like to eat tin cans and rubber tires?"

Sam snorted in spite of himself. "I've seen cartoons-"

"Yeah, well, this goatman's developed a taste for human flesh."

Sam felt like banging his head against something, or maybe his fist. Or maybe he just wanted to laugh. The same crazy, unbelievable insanity. The same mortal dangers. The same freaky mess. "Don't you realize how stupid that sounds?" he asked him.

Dean cocked a shoulder. "Stupid or not, someone has to put a stop to it."

"But why does that have to be you?"

Dean's lighthearted demeanor instantly changed when he realized Sam still hadn't let go of his earlier protests. Sam felt somewhat bad, but this was more important than Dean's ruined good mood.

Dean's arms went around his middle again, a habit he had quickly formed. "What other choice do I have?"

This again, Sam thought wearily. "You keep saying that," he told him. "You have plenty of choices."

But Dean shook his head. "No, Sam, I don't." As he explained, his voice took on a tremble so slight Sam wasn't sure if it were really there. "My whole life, I've never had a choice. I didn't have a choice when Mom went away. I didn't have a choice when you left for college. I didn't have a choice when Dad decided to leave me—leave us—behind."

Sam's stomach flinched, deeply upset by the emotion in Dean's voice but frustrated with his logic. "None of us had a choice when Mom was killed," he argued, refusing to be deterred by sympathy or guilt. "As for me and Dad leaving, those were our choices to make. And you have that same choice."

"No, Sam," Dean instantly shot back. "I never had a choice. Not since the moment I saw evil take away my mother and destroy my family. There is no choice, not to me."

Sam studied him for a long moment. "I don't have a choice either."

"What the hell?" Dean said, sounding surprised. "Of course you do."

"No, I don't. Not as long as I have to take care of your ass."

Dean's eyes widened and his face became drawn. "What? Is that why—"

He stopped himself with a quick, angry shake and then started over. "Is that what you think? I can take care of myself, dammit."

And Sam knew he could. Dean was strong, was smart when it came to hunting. But it only took one mistake. It only took being blindsided one time with no one providing backup. The way Dean recently insisted on charging into battle even though he was injured did nothing to allay Sam's fears.

And Sam couldn't get rid of the image of Dean on the basement ceiling.

ooOOoo

Sam just wanted it to be over. He wanted to finish it, wanted to be done with it as soon as possible. The whole thing was ridiculous.

"I can't believe we're risking ourselves for a 'scientific experiment gone awry,'" he muttered. And by ourselves, he really meant Dean, although he knew better than to say that out loud.

Dean was lumbering beside him, an arm clenched around his middle as he stepped carefully over tree roots and fallen branches. His other hand held a gun, steady as ever ... but he had to compensate for that by going slower. He still didn't have all of his energy or strength, and his forced movements revealed the pain his wound still gave him.

It made Sam sick to see his brother like that. He should have tried harder to stop him. Made him at least wait until he was better. But Dean kept using the same argument, one he knew Sam couldn't deny. "What if this bastard kills someone else while we sit back and do nothing?"

But, Sam pointed out, it wouldn't do anyone any good if Dean ended up dead. Yet Dean was convinced he was invincible. Or that it was worth risking his life. Or some ridiculous crap like that.

All for some freak of nature.

Sam's frustration felt too close to anger for him to tell the difference. He reacted in the same way. While Dean was picking his way carefully through the forest, Sam stomped ahead.

He would finish this before Dean could do anything stupid. He would finish this, kill the bad guy, and they could get back to the hotel room where Sam would try to convince Dean that this was no life and Dean would continue to ignore him. Sam knew it was pointless, but he was sick and tired of it all.

He was sick and tired of walking through the woods, armed and ready for a fight. He was sick and tired of putting his life and his brother in danger. He was sick and tired of wondering which fight would be the end of them.

Sam crashed through the forest towards the suspected lair of the goatman. His training kicked in, and his footsteps were mostly quiet, but still, he thundered through the trees and brush, throwing branches aside and letting them snap back, their tips slapping against him and scratching across his sides.

He knew he was being reckless and foolish, and even though he wasn't ready to die, dying didn't seem quite as bad as it used to ... at least he wouldn't have to deal with hunting anymore. And even though he didn't really mean it, the sentiment pushed him forward, made him brash and uncaring.

And as he stormed through the forest, a sudden dip took him off guard, and though he tried to keep his footing, he was going too fast and the sharp decline tripped up his feet and pulled them from under him. He fell forward, crashing to his hands and knees, and the momentum sent him tumbling sideways until he was rolling down the hillside.

As he rolled, his body and limbs slammed against rocks and sharp twigs until the hill spilled him at the bottom. The impact knocked the gun out of his hand and sent it flying out of reach.

Sam groaned and cursed to himself as he gathered himself together so he could push himself up. He was so angry he almost felt like crying. But instead, he got his knees and hands underneath him and managed to climb to his feet. He ached all over, but fortunately, none of it was severe. Bruises and scratches only, he realized after a quick assessment. Nothing broken.

But it hurt like hell and was just so stupid.

Sam stumbled towards where his gun had landed, trying to keep his gasps to himself. Yep, what a pair he and his brother made. Letting themselves get beaten up on a regular basis.

His handgun had skidded out of sight and Sam had to rummage through the brush to find it. Gritting his teeth, he bent over as he ran his eyes over the ground, cursing the hidden weapon all the while. He hoped Dean was still far behind him because the last thing he wanted to hear was whatever remark he knew Dean would come up with.

And then something sharp and solid slammed into his back.

It caught him near his shoulderblade and sent him sprawling to the ground. Sam instantly knew he was in trouble, and he rolled over, ignoring the fresh pain that radiated from his back.

The monster stood snorting over him. It looked almost like a satyr, only its parts weren't as neatly defined. It had the legs of a goat and a hairy torso, but its hands were human, and his face was melted between the two. Two horns gave it a devilish appearance, but it looked more hungry and animalistic than actually evil. The drool streaming from his mouth only added to that.

It lifted one of its hoofed legs and struck downwards. Sam rolled out of the way right before it could pin him. He shot out his arms to his left and right, vainly searching for his gun while keeping his attention on the goatman.

He rolled back as the leg came down again, striking against the dirt next to his neck. Sam gasped, and the stamping leg forced him to roll once more.

But this time brought him wedged against a tree trunk and he had no more room to move. Sam looked up at the goatman helplessly, his arms still searching for steel or even a heavy piece of wood and finding nothing.

But Dean-

On cue, two shots rang out. At least one hit their mark. Sam lay frozen except for his jaw, which alternatively clenched and fell open with shaky convulsions as he tried to get air into his lungs. Above him, the goatman wavered and moaned before it toppled to the side, crashing to the forest floor with one last shudder. As it fell down and out of the way, Sam saw Dean standing behind it, panting, his smoking gun held tightly in his hands.

ooOOoo

"How could you let a goatman get the best of you?" Dean demanded. "Jesus, Sam-"

Sam ignored him, refusing to even hiss as Dean applied disinfectant to his wound. "Look at you. Your back's a mess. You're lucky as hell you didn't break anything." Sam clenched his jaw but didn't say anything.

"What the hell were you thinking, Sam?" Dean went on angrily as he pressed a bandage against his back. "You gotta get it together, or you're going to get yourself killed! I can't always protect you, not when you space out, and not when you run off like that."

"Protect me?" Sam finally spoke. "We protect each other."

He pulled away from Dean, standing up and shrugging into his shirt, pulling it down over his newly-bandaged back.

Dean had been protecting him his whole life, and as soon as Sam was old enough, he started to return the favor. Since their teens, they've watched each other's back, gave each other support, made sure the other was safe. Sometimes they took it for granted that the other person would be fine and they split up when needed. And usually they were right. But sometimes, Dean ended up on the ceiling.

As long as Dean was hunting, Sam would be right there with him.

But it tore him up inside, seeing what it did to his brother. Seeing how his brother clung onto hunting as if it were his only lifeline, holding steadfastly even when it almost ruined him. Refusing to let go even as they were falling apart.

Whatever misguided ideas Dean held on to, it wasn't his duty to do this. To face darkness after every corner, to see loved ones disappear one right after the other ... no one should live that. But Dean was forcing himself to, and by process, so was Sam.

"Look at you, Sam!" Dean said, his voice commanding attention. "You could have been killed!"

Sam whirled on him. "God dammit, Dean! Look at us!" he shouted back. "Look at what we've become!"

He had stunned Dean into a brief silence. "What do you mean?" he finally asked, guarded and confused.

"We're a goddam mess!" Sam replied with a force that scratched his throat. "You're crawling around half dead, and I'm following you like some sick puppy. Our life is so screwed up, but instead of changing anything, all you can think about is hunting!"

"Hey, that's not all-" But he stopped when he saw Sam's humorless expression and switched to a defensive tone. "Yeah, well, it's what I do," he said.

"But you talk about nothing else! Or at least, nothing important, nothing about what's really going on!" Sam slapped a hand against the desk top. "What kind of life is that?"

A sudden, stunned look came over Dean and he rose to his feet. "Were you trying to kill yourself?" he asked after a pause.

Sam sighed with frustration. Just like Dean to completely miss the point. "Don't be stupid."

"You didn't answer my question."

"No, Dean, I wasn't trying to kill myself," Sam replied. "The goatman was trying to kill me. Just like Bloody Mary was trying to kill me, and the shapeshifter. Just like the wendigo and the demon and even I tried to kill you. Don't you see how incredibly wrong that is?"

Dean seemed unaffected. "It comes with the territory."

"What 'territory,' Dean? You mean the life we were forced into? The life we need to step away from?"

"Sam, stop being so emotional. You're overreacting, all right? We had a bad gig, and I know that spooked you, but stuff like that happens." Dean had that confident, unruffled air of his, and he lifted his hands in casual supplication. "Just-take a deep breath, okay? Our life—is it really so bad?" He tilted his head and raised his eyebrows, obviously expecting Sam to agree with him.

Sam swallowed and licked his lips, knowing what he had to say and already regretting it. "Dad said to move on."

His words hit their mark, causing an instant, physical reaction. Dean took an involuntary step backwards, and his face suddenly went pale. "W-what?" he stammered.

Sam had to clear his suddenly dry throat. "Back at the hospital, right before he left. He said we need to move on."

Dean moved blindly towards the bed before he dropped down onto it. He sat at the edge and hunched over as he stared at the floor, unspoken thoughts flickering across his face. Sam watched him silently and waited, trying to ignore the tears that threatened his own eyes.

"You have a choice now, Dean. Can't you finally realize that?"

But Dean seemed to ignore him. And then after a moment, he started to shake his head. "No," he said.

"No, what?" Sam asked him.

"No." Dean looked up at him, his face determined despite the ashen sheen it had taken on. "We're doing a lot of good, and I can't just stop that, Sam. I don't want to. If you want to say that's my choice, then that's my choice."

Sam felt his stomach twist at Dean's words.

"At what cost, Dean?" he pointed out fiercely, desperately. "Until your soul turns black from all the evil you're exposed to? Until there's nothing left of you? Until you're torn to pieces by some monster? Until your life is sucked dry, or your body broken in half?"

With each fate Sam flung at him, Dean never flinched. "It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make." His words were too smooth, too certain.

Sam shook his head, his lower lip trembling. "But I'm not, Dean."

He wasn't willing to lose another person he loved. He wasn't ready to lose Dean. Sam paused to take in a deep breath. "This has to end," he said firmly, though it came out more as a desperate plea than a command.

It took a moment before Dean responded. He spread his arms out and looked up at him. "I'm not stopping you," he said, his voice low and rough.

"Yes, you are!" Sam cried instantly. "Why can't you see that?"

Dean's eyes were watering, Sam realized. "Don't, Sam-Please don't do this," he pleaded with him. His voice held a weak tremor, but he pushed through it as if it weren't there. "I can't take this anymore."

Sam ran a hand over his face, suddenly feeling exhausted and drained. He knew he was fighting a losing battle, and he dropped his head in defeat.

"Neither can I," he said, clenching his jaw. "There's no way out of this, is there."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dean turn to him and Sam lifted his head to meet his gaze. Dean looked at him squarely in the face, but though he tried, Sam couldn't read his eyes. The silence stretched for so long between them Sam almost said something just to fill it.

And then Dean finally spoke. "Yes, there is."

That took him off guard. "What?" Sam asked, instantly doubting him.

Dean hesitated, and Sam didn't like the look that passed over his face. "I-I'll tell you later."

For the moment, Sam accepted that, too tired to press. They said no more, and after a few minutes, Sam excused himself to the bathroom. It was late, and he was ready for the day to be over.

When he came out, Dean was sitting on the bed, his face stony but his eyes filled with a tormented kind of worry. And as Sam made his way to his own bed, he was suddenly hit with a dizzying wave of fatigue.

Suddenly alarmed and confused, he stumbled to his bed, sitting down heavily on top of it. But that wasn't enough, and his eyelids started to pull themselves close despite his struggles to keep them open.

Dean was watching him, his eyes miserable but knowing.

"Dean? Wha-?"

He couldn't finish as he finally succumbed to his body's demands. He let himself fall completely prone, tumbling bonelessly onto the bedspread. He had just managed to pull his legs up onto the bed when he shut down completely. Then everything went black.

***

At 2:05 am, a garbled voice came over the loudspeaker, announcing the arrival of bus 154, with an ultimate destination in California. The handful of people inside the station immediately moved from their tired positions, gathering up their belongings. They trudged their way through the door where the bus waited outside as the voice needlessly repeated itself overhead.

Sam didn't hear the announcement. He was two buildings away, bent over a desk and straining his eyes through near darkness.

He had to pick the lock and dismantle the security alarm to get in. Dean would have been proud ... if it had been anywhere other than a library. But Sam needed to use the internet, and it was the closest place with access.

He sat hunched in front of a computer, using the low security lights and the glow of the monitor to read the newspapers he had spread out before him. Between the internet and the newspapers stored in the library, he slowly put the pieces together. It took him much longer than he wanted, but he worked steadily and resolutely until he found what he needed.

Four hours later, Sam flipped open his cell phone and dialed. Taking a deep breath, he pressed the phone to his ear and counted the rings before a voice answered.

"Hi, Lt. Stevens, this is Sam," he started, running a hand through his hair. "I'm really sorry to even ask you this, but-I need a ride."

ooOOoo

Fifteen minutes later, Lt. Stevens picked him up in front of the bus station. Even though they were friends, Sam didn't think it would have been a good idea to tell her he'd just broken into the local library.

By then the sun had already peeked above the horizon. Sam loaded his bags into her trunk, apologizing and thanking her the entire time he was shoving his belongings into place. Lt. Stevens ... Elizabeth, she insisted ... waved him off, telling him she needed the break, and that she didn't really mind the four hour drive. When Sam's guilty look refused to lift, she added that she had a cousin in Tulsa she hadn't seen in awhile.

Besides, he'd just helped put an end to a two-centuries-long murder streak, so she owed him.

Quickly accepting that, Sam climbed into the front of the car, anxious to leave. From the tense way he was sitting, he felt like he was perched on the seat. But as hard as he tried to feign casualness, he couldn't get his spine to relax back against his seat.

For the first part of their drive, as trees and fields flew past their windows, neither person said much to each other. Sam didn't miss the curious glances Elizabeth shot his way, but he couldn't get himself to explain, not even bothering to make an excuse.

He considered telling her about the case, but it would already be confusing and chaotic enough, and he didn't want to complicate matters any further. Nor did he want to put her in danger by facing a creature she had no experience with.

Before he had dropped him off at the bus station, Dean said he was going to Tulsa to look for a shapeshifter. Armed with that information, Sam had found the stories almost right away in the library's resources. In fact, all he needed to know was Tulsa, because as it turned out, the city's headlines for the past several months were dominated by a string of murders.

The first had been a sorority girl whose throat had been slit. Before the attack, a couple of her friends had seen her boyfriend enter her room. However, the boyfriend's alibi was supported by 30 students and a professor who had seen him giving a presentation in class the same time the young woman had been killed.

The second murder happened in front of an entire party. A man had been talking with his friends when his wife came up to him and started to argue with him, only to draw a gun a few minutes later and shoot him in the chest before fleeing. But his wife, an ER doctor, had been called in to work two hours earlier. She never left the hospital, and in fact had been setting a leg when her husband was wheeled in.

Authorities were called to another home one afternoon, where they found the body of Paul Rodriguez. Eyewitnesses reported seeing a fellow neighbor enter his house just before an argument was heard, a fight which eventually escalated into screams and gunshots. However, the suspect's body had already been found fifteen minutes earlier in a shallow creek, an apparent suicide complete with note that read "I did it."

There had been a half dozen other murders in the area as well, but the police already arrested suspects who had been placed at the scene of the crime. Sam had to wonder how many of them were actually guilty.

Even though Sam had found the articles right away, he spent another four hours trying to pinpoint exactly where he needed to go. It took him the rest of the night before he could make any connection between the outwardly-random crimes. But then he discovered that three suspects and five victims had lived in the same suburb at one point. It was a tenuous connection, but it was all Sam could come up with.

As they sped towards Claremont, Oklahoma, Sam could only hope Dean had come up with the same connection.

The highway stretched endlessly before them as each long minute ticked by. Sam thought he should make polite conversation to help pass time, but he was too absorbed in his thoughts and felt selfish enough to spare attention only to the road signs marking each mile.

His mind still seemed to be loading memories, processing those thoughts that were suddenly uncovered. He didn't know what to make of the old, familiar feelings that had suddenly resurfaced in his mind, but he couldn't tear himself away. Fortunately, Elizabeth seemed to sense that and left him alone.

Short memories started to pop up, events he hadn't thought of in years.

He remembered in the fourth grade, he'd scored the highest on a state history test, even though the Winchesters had just moved there three months earlier. In fact, he'd been the only one to get an A, and he missed only one question. Sam blushed red but he was secretly proud when the teacher announced his accomplishment to the class. Mrs. Henson even placed on his test a large baseball sticker with the words "Home run!" written in white bubble letters. He thought he was too old for stickers, but Kimmie, the pretty girl who sat behind him, loved both stickers and baseball, so he peeled it off and gave it to her and thought about her smile and the big red A on his paper for the rest of class.

But then at the end of the school day, Sam accidentally mentioned he had to help his father track down a local werewolf. His father had told him he wasn't supposed to say things like that, but he didn't quite understand that other kids didn't know about the things he knew about. And even though there were a couple of kids who still believed in Santa Claus, Sam didn't realize that believing in werewolves wasn't cooler like he thought it would be. It just made him strange. And Russell Johnson started to call him things like "stupid" and "weird," and Kimmie and a boy named Mark ran home crying. The next day Mrs. Henson had a long, patient talk with him, and the other kids started to look at him different.

Sam remembered when he was twelve and he forgot salt barriers were useless against water demons. His dad yelled at him because, unlike school tests, one mistake could cost lives.

It wasn't the first time Sam had heard that speech, but it was the first time he realized how much his life demanded of them. He wanted to buckle, to throw off that pressure, but his father refused to let him.

He remembered how scared he was when at ten, he first saw his dad get hurt, and at thirteen, when Dean was knocked unconscious and wouldn't wake up, and at fifteen, when Sam himself was trapped in some dark room by an evil spirit who latched onto him, surrounding him, suffocating him and refusing to let go.

He remembered how much he hated hunting. How he watched their lives become more and more messed up no matter how hard he dug his heels in.

If only he had known how much more screwed up his life would get..

Sam felt trapped in the car. If this had been the Impala, and Dean had been driving, they would have been going a lot faster. But he couldn't tell Lt. Stevens that.

They had just crossed the Oklahoma state line when Sam finally spoke up. The sudden sound of his voice was jarring, and it startled both Stevens and him. "When you first met us—"he started, pausing to lick his lips. "What did you think?"

Elizabeth looked at him in surprise. "How do you mean?"

"Just-anything. What were we like?"

Sam barely remembered that hunt when they met Lt. Elizabeth Stevens, just bits and pieces. It had been a few months into his senior year of high school, and their father sent him and Dean on a job while he finished clearing out a nasty poltergeist a few towns over.

They ended up grilling Lt. Stevens, the cop who had found the drained bodies that attracted John's attention. From her descriptions, they figured they were looking for a chupacabra, one that unfortunately attacked the elderly farming couple after weeks of killing off goats and sheep. Sam and Dean hadn't meant for Stevens to find out the truth about their hunt, but they didn't expect the police officer would be staking out the pasture the night they went to catch the creature.

What Sam mostly remembered from that hunt was the bickering. He and Dean fought the entire time, about everything. Most of it revolved around their approach. Sam wanted to trap the chupacabra, and Dean wanted to confront it head on. Either way would have worked, Sam knew now, but he also knew they hadn't really been fighting about strategies. They were just bickering, like brothers do—but they were bickering about hunting a mythical creature when Sam needed to study for a calculus test and Dean wanted to prove himself to their father.

And Sam remembered thinking how he couldn't wait to leave that hunt behind. Normal life finally stood within reach. His acceptance letter into Stanford had arrived just before they left for the poltergeist in Texas, a weekend trip that ended up costing a resentful Sam three extra school days.

Elizabeth frowned thoughtfully as she turned down the radio. "Well, I remember how sweet you were, Sam. I remember thinking how I didn't feel no wrong telling you anything, even the really crazy parts. And Dean, Lord, he was smooth." She snorted. "To this day, I still don't know what was the truth and what was pure bullcrap."

As he listened to her words, Sam stared ahead at the road that raced underneath their car. When she didn't continue, he glanced over at her. "What else?" he prodded. He didn't want to sound demanding or desperate, so he forced a shrug and a tiny smile. "I'm just curious how-someone from the outside might see us."

He remembered the strange questions they had to ask the police woman, forcing her to describe the mutilated bodies of people she knew. He remembered the way they ran across the pastures that night, chasing and shouting after the four-foot creature like crazed maniacs. He remembered the dangerous firearms they waved about as if they were only props, not because they were careless but because they were comfortable and confident with them.

"I'm not sure what you're lookin' to hear," Stevens said. But she must have seen something in his face because she went on anyway.

"You both were so young. Still are. But hell, you were both in your teens, weren't you?" Dean had been nearly 21, but that wasn't important. "You seemed so much older, though. Old and young at the same time, you know? I felt bad for you before I even knew why."

The chupacabra had panicked when they finally managed to corner it. Sam remembered seeing the needle-like claws puncturing Dean's forearm. He could still feel those claws stabbing into his own ankle. It was a nasty little creature, not too difficult to dispatch, but difficult enough to be annoying as it scrabbled and shrieked at them.

That hunt certainly hadn't been their most graceful. The sun had started to rise by the time they limped back to the car, bleeding and tired and pissed.

"I was so impressed by you two, though," Elizabeth said, shaking her head thoughtfully. "When I saw you in action-When that thing leapt at you, I noticed how Dean stepped in front to guard you. But it was so smooth and instant, like he didn't even have to think about it."

Sam blinked as the memory suddenly filled his mind. He'd forgotten that.

"And when it latched onto his arm, you jumped forward and just yanked it off like it was only a tick—and not this crazy-looking monster who just slaughtered Mr. and Mrs. Sanderson."

That was right, Sam had done that. It attacked his ankle when he flung it to the ground.

"You were both so young, but so-strong. No hesitation. You just attacked, guns a'blazing. Who knows how many more people would have been killed, how much livestock would have been lost - but you all just came in and did your thing without being asked, without getting any kind of reward."

She shook her head, glancing over at Sam. "I know I'm sounding a little overdramatic, but you just don't see that very often. Reminded me of old westerns in a way, you know? You both have that quiet strength, that dangerous power-Y'all were sneaky, of course, and you played dirty, but still-there was somethin' so noble in the air around you."

Sam was surprised by her words because that hunt hadn't been much at all compared to all of their other hunts. There was no big save, no dramatic heroics, not even a formidable foe. And she had seen their bickering, their faults, the darkness that seemed to hover over everything they did.

But he realized he wasn't shocked because her words echoed his own feelings when he had first met "John." When Sam didn't have these memories, when he couldn't even remember who he was or where he came from, he felt much the same way.

"You seemed so normal, but so different at the same time," Elizabeth told him. "I could tell what you guys do isn't easy. When you two drove off into the horizon, I kept thinking how I was supposed to take my own niece to early cheerleading practice, and I had to wonder where you were headed off to."

Even though Stevens was usually a friendly, talkative person, he knew she was saying more than she normally would have - laying it on extra thick - but maybe she could see the thoughts in his face. Maybe she was trying to say every little thing she could think he wanted or needed to hear. As impassive as he tried to be, he knew he wasn't fooling her. He wouldn't ask her early in the morning to drive him four hours away unless something was up.

He was grateful she never asked why he needed the ride.

"Hell, you even saved Gracie's cat," she finished. Sam snorted to himself, suddenly remember the tabby that had inadvertently became their bait. Elizabeth glanced over at him. "Is there anything else you'd like to know?"

Sam shook his head. He'd heard enough. "Thank you," he told her softly.

His back sank against the seat and he turned his gaze out the window.

"Does that help you any?" Elizabeth asked him.

"Maybe," Sam replied. It was as honest and complete an answer as he could give. He didn't know where he was, not yet. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Elizabeth nod and reach to turn the radio volume back into audible level.

Despite the thoughts swirling in his mind, exhaustion finally overtook him. The 24-hour nap he'd just woken up from seemed so long ago. The events from the past few days overwhelmed him, and it was too easy to fall into the gentle motions of the rumbling car engine.

Rather than figuring what he would say to his brother, he let himself drift away.

Sometime later, Elizabeth nudged him awake, announcing they were just minutes from Claremont. Sam immediately felt guilty for falling asleep. But that guilt was quickly replaced with anxiety as his focus shifted to outside.

He pulled his cell phone out, but a few minutes later, he was shoving it into his bag and cursing under his breath.

"Still no answer?" Elizabeth asked him.

Sam shook his head, his teeth clamping together. Before he had hoped his brother wasn't answering because of the time of day, but now that it was after ten, that weak hope fluttered away. Dean wasn't one to ignore phone calls, no matter who was calling. And after spending the entire night trying to get a hold of him, the battery was now dead.

As they drove through Claremont, Sam vowed to place a tracking device on Dean's car the first chance he could. Since he hadn't yet, they had to roll up and down each street in a systematic fashion, starting from the west and working their way east, combing the small town for Dean. Elizabeth offered to call it in, but she didn't look surprised when Sam turned her offer down.

Finally they found the familiar Impala, parked on a quiet neighborhood street rather than in a motel parking lot as Sam had been desperately hoping.

After making sure Sam had her number, Elizabeth let him off at the corner closest to the Impala. Sam stood on the sidewalk, his bags at his feet, watching silently as she drove away.

Once she was out of sight, he picked up his belongings and stalked to the Impala. With his spare key, he unlocked the door and threw his stuff into the backseat. Then he popped open the trunk and took out a handgun which he quickly loaded with silver bullets. He didn't know whether to be relieved or worried that Dean's favorite gun and its own silver bullets were already missing.

Even as he received no answer from Dean's phone, he'd been hoping he could find Dean without jumping into a hunt. He wanted to talk to Dean, needed to talk to him so he could get his thoughts in some kind of order. But now that he was standing there next to the empty Impala, his stomach twisted with worry and he knew his thoughts would have to wait.

He didn't want to be here. He wasn't ready yet. He'd only meant to track his brother down. But he didn't realize that meant immediately jumping into another hunt.

How did Dean get so deep into a hunt so soon? He only had a few hours head start.

Sam should have known though. In fact, a part of him already had. That was why he'd broken into the library instead of waiting for morning.

As Sam stood on the sunlit sidewalk, staring at the middle class neighborhood that surrounded him, he almost wanted to panic. He remembered St. Louis now. He now knew the bruises that had covered Rebecca. He could see the dead body that had Dean's face. He heard Dean's voice taunting him.

Another, more irrational fear made his heart pound. The last time he had been on a hunt with Dean, his brother could barely move, and he couldn't hide the pain that twisted his face. He knew Dean was healed now, he'd seen "John" in action. But he couldn't forget the last real hunt he'd been on with the man he knew as his brother. He didn't want to see that again.

But Sam had no choice, and he no intention of stopping. He pushed his new fears aside and let lifelong training and experiences take over.

Hedecided to check the sewers first, but they turned up empty. He found no evidence suggesting any type of lair, nor ... thank God - did he see any piles of shed skin. He even called out for Dean, but there was no answer.

Once he was sure this hunt didn't involve a sewer-dweller this time, he gratefully climbed back up to the surface. His next step was the explore the homes that lined the streets.

The neighborhood was a typical, unassuming one, and quiet at the moment. He assumed most of the residents were away at work or out running daily errands. Unfortunately, none of the homes looked peculiar in any way, and not a single one stood out from the others.

But Dean somehow figured the shapeshifter was near. Sam sighed to himself, deciding to look at each house individually, hoping he could narrow the search down.

Dean would never park directly in front of the house he meant to visit, so Sam skipped that one. The house closest to him had toys littered in the front yard. Sam couldn't rule it out, but he decided to save that for later, thinking it was highly unlikely to be the home of a serial killer. The home next to that one was a duplex, and while it wouldn't have been impossible, he figured a killer wouldn't want to be in such close quarters with anyone else.

As he walked to get a closer look at the fourth home, the dog chained in the front yard started barking at him. Sam, who hadn't noticed the mutt, jumped at the sudden noise, his hand instinctively reaching for his gun.

He immediately relaxed when he saw the dog, but the dog didn't stop. It snapped and snarled at him, straining against its leash, and Sam frowned, instantly thinking of the dog he'd noticed back in St. Louis.

Just then, the front door opened and a woman walked out, climbing down the porch steps and on the concrete path that led to her driveway. "Sandy, stop it," she growled, her voice clearly irritated, as she walked past the agitated animal. It stopped barking, but a low, continuous growl made his throat rumble.

"Sorry," Sam called to her from the sidewalk. "Your dog doesn't seem to like me much."

She looked up and flashed a crooked grin at him. "Not your fault. Sandy doesn't seem to like anyone much."

Sam immediately put on his innocent expression, the one that gave him the best results. "Has she always been this grouchy?" he asked, sounding openly curious.

The woman shrugged, and Sam knew it worked. "She has ever since we brought her home three weeks ago." She looked at the dog with a frown. "She seemed so sweet at the pound, too. I think we should take her back, but my husband doesn't want to give up yet." She rolled her eyes, obviously annoyed by her husband's attitude, as she continued her way towards her driveway.

Sam wasn't finished yet, and he took a couple quick steps to keep the lady within earshot. "Sometimes dogs can be picky about who they like, you know? Maybe you have a neighbor, anyone nearby, who's making her uncomfortable," he suggested hopefully.

The woman tilted her head. "She does go crazy whenever she sees our neighbor, George. I don't really blame her though, the guy's creepy." As she spoke, she gestured at the house next to theirs, on the opposite side from where Sam came from. "I think he kinda hates us, actually," she said with a laugh.

"Well, there you go," Sam replied. "Maybe he's causing it."

"Maybe," the woman agreed with a shrug. "But what can I do about that?"

Sam studied the house, searching for signs of movement. "Do you know if George is home, by any chance?" he asked.

She cocked her head, startled by the question. "Why do you ask?" she asked. "Do you know him?"

The lie came disturbingly easily. "He used to work with my father," Sam replied.

Her eyes widened and she rushed to apologize. "Oh, God, I'm sorry, I didn't mean any disrespect," she said hastily. "Just forget what I said. I think George is trying to change, you know, be more friendly, so..."

"Oh? How do you mean?"

"Well, he's been hanging around with us, my husband and me, a lot lately. Trying to be more social, I guess. I'm sure he's great guy, just got off on the wrong foot, that's all."

Sam gave her a friendly grin. "Don't worry, I won't tell him you said anything."

Her shoulders visibly relaxed and she let out a breath. "Thanks," she replied with a relieved smile. "Anyway, I'm afraid you missed him. I caught him leaving maybe an hour ago. He doesn't seem to have a schedule though, so he could be back anytime."

Sam frowned at the dark house. Was Dean inside? Did he get there before or after George left? Sam suppressed a sigh. He didn't even know if George was the right man. Just because a dog barks at a man, doesn't mean he's evil.

He turned back to the woman. "Well, thank you for you help. It was nice meeting you, ma'am."

"Alice."

Sam smiled. "Sam," he replied.

Alice gave Sam a short, friendly wave as she walked down to the end of her driveway to shove a letter into her mailbox. Sam kept a polite smile on his face, impatiently waiting as she went back to her soon asshe was inside, he walked towards the modest, single-story house where "George" lived.

The closer he got, the more he started to believe he had the right place. Or maybe it was just his nerves.

Sam snuck around to the back, peeking through each window he passed. When he saw no movement in the shadowed home, he used a paperclip he'd swiped from the library to unlock the back door. As the door swung open, he knew there was no turning back now.

His senses heightened and his guard on alert, he crept through the house, his gun clutched ready in his hand. The silence unnerved him, and he knew he could be walking straight into a trap. But he had no other choice. If George was the murderer, then Dean was probably somewhere in the house. Sam wanted to call for him, but he resisted the urge.

As he searched, hewas forced to wonder if he really had the right place. There were no piles of skin and other bodily remains as there had been in St. Louis. When the first floor proved empty, Sam started for the basement. He walked down the wooden stairs, stepping near their sides to lessen the chance of creaking.

Sam shivered, remembering the last time he had climbed down basement stairs to look for his brother.

This basement had a lower ceiling, and the room was lit by the small windows that rested just above ground. The main room was mostly unfinished, with a concrete floor and exposed beams and pipes in the ceiling. A couple of closed doors and the angles of the walls told him there were other rooms. The only rooms he had left to check.

The first door wasn't completely closed, and it led to a water heater.

Only one other room remained, and if there were anything to find in the house, it would be in there.

Sam stalked towards the simple wooden door and, since he knew it was near impossible to turn a knob without drawing attention, yanked it open with a violent twist.

Dean stood on the other side of the door.

At Sam's entrance, his head jerked up in surprise, revealing a black eye and a cut near his temple. His eyes widened and a flurry of emotions twisted and stretched his face for a brief moment.

"Dean!" Sam gasped, instantly relieved as he rushed forward.

And then Dean's left arm came up and he punched Sam right in the face.

***

Sam's head snapped back from the blow as he stumbled on his heels, his nose exploding with pain.

Immediately Sam straightened and raised his gun, suddenly thinking that this wasn't Dean, this was just a guy who shifted into Dean's image. Just another St. Louis. Dean, after all, was right-handed.

But then Sam saw the handcuff that encircled his right wrist. Dean, he realized, was chained to a metal pipe that ran from the floor up through the ceiling. Taking a quick survey, Sam saw a few lengths of frayed rope and a twisted rag lying the floor. Dean had been bound and gagged, and Sam must have caught him just as he was trying to free himself.

"Dean, what the hell!" he exclaimed, raising his hand to test his nose. He suspected it was broken, and his fingertips came back red. Normally, a punch like that from Dean would knock a man unconscious, and the only reason Sam was still standing was because Dean had to use his left hand and his arms were still injured from Annie's attack.

"You bastard," Dean spat at him, taking a threatening step forward.

Sam frowned. This wasn't exactly the reunion he expected. "What's gotten into you?" he asked. "What'd I do?"

"Oh, come on-don't play dumb," his brother shot back angrily. "I know you're not Sam, so just give it up, all right?"

Sam's frown deepened. "What do you mean? Of course I'm Sam."

"The hell you are."

"Dean, listen," Sam replied, rolling his eyes. They didn't have time for this. "How could the shapeshifter turn into me if I wasn't even here?"

Dean grunted with annoyance. "You should have used that argument before you turned into my father, you jackass," he replied.

It had turned into their dad? Sam blinked a couple of times, suddenly speechless. That was different. In St. Louis, the shapeshifter had to establish some type of visual or physical connection before it could change into a particular person.

"Dean, I'm not the shapeshifter, alright?" he said forcefully. "I'm your brother."

"My brother is on a bus headed for California," Dean shot back.

"No, I changed my mind," Sam told him, shaking his head. "I needed to talk to you."

But Dean only snorted and lifted his eyebrows. "Yeah, sure."

Frustrated and unsettled, Sam paused to study him while his mind frantically tried to think of a way to convince him. Dean looked back warily, his eyes narrowed and his posture tense and ready.

Two brothers standing before each other, one not realizing who the other one was. The situation was infuriatingly familiar to Sam.

For a split second, Sam thought about taking advantage. It was so tempting. His brother was locked up, unable to go anywhere. Maybe Dean would tell a shapeshifter things he would never tell Sam. Dean wasn't the type to spill his guts to anyone, let alone his enemies, but even the sarcastic answers he spouted could tell Sam more than the brushed off replies Sam usually got from his brother.

But Sam couldn't do that. He dismissed the idea as quickly as it had occurred to him. As much as he wanted to get inside Dean's mind, he'd do it the long, old-fashioned way. The ugly version of a chick-flick moment.

But he'd have to set Dean free, first.

He sighed to himself. "Look, let's just get you out of here," he said, stepping forward.

But Dean reacted violently, shoving Sam away with his free arm. "Stay away from me, you son of a bitch."

Sam stumbled backwards with a grunt. "I'm trying to get you free!" he protested, raising his arms in a quick surrender. But Dean only snorted derisively. "Dean, it's me. You can tell that, can't you?"

"I can tell you're projecting my mental image of my brother, yeah." Dean crossed his arm around his middle. "Great job, by the way. My father was at least believable."

So the shapeshifter used mental projections somehow ... Sam filed that away for future reference, along with Dean's last remark. Right now, he was more concerned about getting his brother to trust him. "But I'm trying to release you!" Sam tried again, showing him the twisted paperclip he had in his hand.

"So what then—You taunt me, make me think I'm safe and free, just for giggles?"

Sam frowned, confused by Dean's resistance. Even if he were just toying with him, Dean would still take that opportunity to get free. He can't fight as effectively if he's cuffed into place.

"Hey, listen to me read your mind this time," Dean went on scathingly, startling Sam. "Let's see-You'll release me and we'll go upstairs together, right? And you'll tell me things you know I want to hear." His glare darkened with each word he spoke. "And just when I start thinking that, hey, maybe you really are my brother, you'll shove all my deep dark nightmares down my throat and tell me how much you hate me, just to see if I'll cry for you."

He raised his eyebrows jeeringly. "Pretty close, huh? And then-get this-right at the height of this little angst-fest, you're going to blow me away with the gun you stole right from my own car."

Sam glanced down at the gun he still held in his hand. "What? No! Dean, you don't-"

Dean shrugged one shoulder. "Or maybe you'll stab me in the back, or hell, slit my throat. That's the only part of your plan that isn't so goddamn predictable."

Horrified, Sam shook his head and wanted to interrupt, but Dean talked right over him.

"Whatever you do, you'll make sure we're out in public, just so people can see that my brother was the one to do it. That way you get to ruin two lives at once." Sam made a disbelieving, protesting noise in his throat, but that only angered Dean. "That's how you work, isn't it?" he spat. "That's how you get off, you sick freak?"

Sam felt his stomach twist, not realizing until just then how complicated this was turning out. "Dean, you have to trust me-"

"I'm not playing your stupid little game," Dean shot back. "If you want a fight, we'll do it right here."

"But I don't want to fight you," Sam tried to tell him, wishing his voice wasn't so pleading. "I just want to get us out of here." He took a step forward, brandishing the paperclip in his hand.

"I'm not going with you," said Dean, stopping him in his tracks.

Sam didn't like the sick sheen on his brother's face, and he knew he needed to end this as soon as he could.

"Dean, I remember now," he told him in a rush. "At the bus station, I remembered the demon, I remembered how you were hurt." Sam spoke frantically, the words tumbling from his mouth as he desperately tried to get Dean to believe him. "And I called Lt. Stevens, asked her for a ride. You told me you were in Tulsa, and we tracked your car down. Dean, I remembered how we were, how I was in a really black place, and I remembered how things ended. I didn't want to go back to Stanford, I wanted to find you-"

"Stop it!" Dean suddenly shouted, interrupting him. He chopped his arm through the air in a violent gesture. "Stop playing with me—Just kill me now, alright?"

Sam froze instantly, feeling the blood drain from his face. "What?" he breathed.

"If you're going to kill me, kill me now, dammit."

Sam had never seen that reaction from his brother before. He couldn't tell if he was bluffing and putting on a tough front, or if he really meant what he said. Sam stared at him for a long moment, and Dean glared back unwaveringly.

"So you're giving up? Just like that?" Sam asked, appalled. He didn't hold back the shock or anger that colored his tone.

"If that's what it takes." Dean looked back at him, his chin slightly raised. "I'm not going through this with you. I'm not letting you drag my brother into this."

Sam wanted to smack the sense into him, and he would have if he thought it would work. Dean had always been protective; that didn't surprise Sam. Family was Dean's weak spot. But that never meant giving himself up, not unless it was a last resort. And Dean never really believed in last resorts ... there was always another way.

Sam set his jaw. "If you're giving up, then I am too," he said.

He could tell that startled Dean, though his expression only flickered for an instant. "What do you mean?" Dean asked after a beat, sounding weary and hesitant at the same time.

Sam handed him his gun, turning it so it was pointing back at himself. As soon as Dean's hand was wrapped firmly around it, Sam stepped backwards and held up his hands. "There," he said. "Shoot me now."

"What?" Dean stammered, his eyebrows furrowing. The hand holding the gun bobbed through the air.

Sam knew he was taking a big risk, but he counted on the fact that Dean rarely killed a creature in cold blood. As long as Sam didn't try to attack Dean, he figured ... hoped ... he'd be safe. "If you're sure I'm the shapeshifter, go ahead and shoot me," Sam repeated.

Despite his confident words, his chest heaved with heavy breaths, and drops of sweat broke out along his hairline. He couldn't stop his eyes from straying towards the weapon aimed at his chest.

So this was how it felt to be on the opposite end of the gun from his brother. Sam definitely owed Dean a better apology for the Rockford Asylum incident, he realized.

-If he ever got the chance. Dean steadied his hand, leveling the barrel straight at Sam's heart. His face took on that same confident, determined look he always wore whenever he stood behind a gun. Sam tensed involuntarily, recognizing that look, but he took a deep breath to calm himself.

But then Dean's hand started to shake again. "Change, goddammit," he said through gritted teeth.

"Huh?" Sam asked, startled.

"Dammit, be someone else," Dean demanded, louder this time, waving his gun threateningly. "Pastor Jim, a Playboy bunny-hell, turn into my mom!" Sam gaped helplessly at him, taken aback by the desperation in his voice. "I don't care-just change!"

As understanding dawned on him, Sam swallowed and blinked back the tears that suddenly started to burn in his eyes. They had already too much crap to deal with to now go through this.

He took a small step forward, painfully aware of the gun still aimed at his heart. "The first time I saw the shapeshifter in St. Louis, it looked just like you, Dean," he said to him. "It even knew everything you did." Sam tilted his head forward for emphasis, his eyes never leaving Dean's. "But I could still tell it wasn't you. And I had a chance to shoot it, to end it right there. But I couldn't. I couldn't shoot my own brother."

He paused, keeping Dean's gaze as his story sunk in. "Did you know that?" he asked pointedly.

Dean shook his head, not as an answer to Sam's question, but a denial of what Sam was implying. "I'm sure you—Sam told me," he said.

"No, Dean, I didn't." He had been too embarrassed, and he knew Dean would only rag on him for letting himself be overtaken so easily when he had a gun on him. He rather let Dean think he'd been tricked. And if Dean didn't know about that incident, a psychic shapeshifter couldn't know either.

But Dean refused to be convinced, and Sam saw him swallow before a terse smirk twisted his lips. "So you're a creative son-of-a-bitch, so what?" he replied dismissively.

This was getting ridiculous. Sam just knew he was going to lose his mind.

"Dammit, Dean!" he cried, throwing his hands into the air in exasperation.

To Sam's surprise, a grin started to spread across Dean's face. "Hey, that was pretty good!" he replied brightly, gesturing at him with the gun. "You're getting closer to the real Sam."

Sam choked. "What!" he sputtered indignantly.

But inside, he let himself breath a sigh of relief. Even if Dean still didn't believe him, Sam now knew they'd passed a critical point and hit a kind of long asDean was cracking jokes, everything would be fine.

It was time to get moving so they could both get out of there alive. Then they could sort this whole mess out.

So Sam rolled his eyes like he always did at Dean's jokes, and got down to business.

"Okay, I'm going to pick the lock off your handcuffs, alright?" he told him. He indicated Dean's hand with a nod. "Look, you still have the gun. You can shoot me if I do anything funny."

"See, that's how I know you're not really Sam," Dean replied.

"What do you mean?"

"Sam hasn't done anything 'funny' his whole life."

Sam gave him a long look and thought maybe he should smack him. But instead, he just shrugged and stepped towards the metal pipe.

"I don't know," he said lightly. "That girl Jennie thought it was pretty funny when I replaced all your band posters with Saved by the Bell." He grinned as he grabbed the handcuff around Dean's wrist. Even ten years later, he remembered the expression on his brother's face the moment he saw Screech and A.C. Slater plastered all over his bedroom walls.

"That was not funny," Dean protested, but the corners of his lips were twitching. Sam grinned back at him and nodded. It was definitely funny.

But then suddenly Dean's face paled and he dropped his head. "Why are you doing this?" he asked, his voice tired again.

Sam sighed, feeling his heart sink. You started it, he wanted to say. I thought we were getting somewhere good.

"Because I'm your brother," he replied instead, fingering the paperclip in his hand into position.

Despite the frustration gripping his chest, Sam reminded himself that the situation wasn't nearly as bad as he feared it would be. So far, he hadn't had to jump straight into a fight and save his brother from the clutches of an evil madman. This monster of the week wasn't even home.

Hell, if Sam hurried, maybe they could avoid the shapeshifter altogether - or at least hold off the confrontation until later. And God, that would be such a relief. All he had to do was pick the lock and get Dean outside and Sam could somehow prove he was his brother.

In fact, all he needed was show Dean his bags in the car, or even call Elizabeth.

With a start, Sam felt his pockets, but then he remembered he'd shoved his cell phone into one of his bags because the batteries were dead. "Hey, you have your cell phone?" he asked. "Call Lt. Stevens, she'll tell you."

Dean's answer was quick and annoyed. "You took it, remember?"

Sam groaned to himself. He should have figured. Wasting no more time, he angled the metal cuff and slid the paperclip into the lock. He wasn't as quick or as experienced as Dean, but even so, Dean would be free in no time. Even if he heard the shapeshifter come home that very instant, he could have the lock picked before George ever made it down to the basement.

As Sam fiddled with the handcuffs, he was aware of the gun pointed at his side - but it wasn't a problem for him. As long as he remained calm and steady, Dean wouldn't shoot. And after a lifetime of intense situations, Sam knew how to stay focused under pressure.

Yet, for some infuriating reason, he was still having trouble with the lock. His hands weren't shaking, but he couldn't get enough control for the precision he needed. Sam took in a deep breath and tried again. As much as he wanted to hurry, he told himself there was no immediate need to rush.

But he was distracted, and it took him a few minutes to realize why. His ears heard it before his mind could process it as something more than just background noise. The dog, Sandy, had started barking again.

And as soon as Sam heard it, he couldn't ignore it. The sound was muffled, distant, but it vibrated through his skull, and he kept finding his hands stopping mid-action, and he had to concentrate to force them back to work.

"Getting nervous there, Georgie?" Dean taunted.

Sam barely heard him over the snarling, barking dog. The dog had gone insane, he realized, and it was taking him with it. The noise pierced through his eardrums straight into his brain, and his hands jerked with each bark, making it impossible to work the locking mechanism.

"That goddamn dog," he cursed to himself as he forced his hands steady. He just wanted to get out of there, it was that simple. But the barking refused to stop stabbing him in his ears.

Sam's hands dropped away from the handcuffs and he stalked out of the tiny room, over to the window that hung on the opposite wall. The barking grew clearer the closer he walked towards the sound, and he could hear how it was growing more and more harsh. Sandy was barking so ferociously, it sounded as if he was about to choke on his own throat. And when Sam finally saw the dog through the window, he realized Sandy was straining so hard against his leash that he was slowly strangling himself.

But instead of yapping at a neighbor or passerby, the dog was straining towards his own house. Sam followed the dog's direction just in time to see a man slip through the front door.

Sam gasped, jumping in alarm. "Alice!"

"Who's Alice?" Dean asked from his position back behind him. But Sam's mind was running too quickly for him to catch the question.

The way the dog was acting, that man had to have been George ... but rather than coming home, he went into his neighbors' house instead. Which meant Sam had enough time to unlock Dean and get out of there before being discovered.

Even as he was thinking, Sam turned around and quickly dashed back towards Dean. "Dammit!" he shouted angrily as he hurried into the side room where Dean was held. He didn't want this.

Back in St. Louis, when the shapeshifter went after Rebecca, every second of delay meant one more second of torture Rebecca had to endure. If they had waited any longer to call the police, she could have been killed. If Dean had arrived any later, Sam would have had the life choked out of him.

Sam couldn't hesitate now, either.

During a fair fight, the two Winchesters were almost evenly matched. But it wasn't a fair fight, and Sam, with two healthy arms and a moment of surprise, took the gun away from Dean within seconds.

In exchange, he immediately shoved the paperclip into his hand. Dean, after all, had always been faster at picking locks. "Next door!" Sam told him just before racing away.

"Hey!" Dean shouted at his back as Sam pounded up the stairs, two at a time. "You stay away from her! Or I'll-" But Sam was already too far away to hear the rest of his threat. The hunt was here.

***

The instant Sam entered through the unlocked front door, the sound of shouting filled his ears. An argument, coming from upstairs. The house rumbled with the noise, but the voice shouting was t

***

If it had been a school test, Sam would guess that Dean probably would ask questions first, if only because his brother was involved. But it wasn't a school test and Sam couldn't afford to be wrong.

Sam felt his blood rise and his heartbeat accelerate. Just before Dean burst through the door, Sam shouted out to him. "Don't, Dean, it's a trap!"

Dean burst through the door anyway, just as Sam knew he would, but at least with Sam's warning he wouldn't jump to action without thinking.

And he didn't. Instead, he quickly got into position where he could see the entire room from behind the safety of his own gun. Despite the efficiency of his moves, Sam could see the way his breath caught in his throat when he saw the two Sams standing before him.

"Sam?" he gasped. Both Sams nodded, and Sam saw a flicker of ill emotion flash across his face before it was wiped away, replaced with a business-only expression.

Sam felt his chest swell with relief. His brother was here. "I told you that was me back there," he added, almost petulantly.

"Hey, what was I supposed to think?" Dean complained with typical Dean fashion, increasing Sam's relief. "It didn't help that you suddenly got angry and started yelling some chick's name before running out of the basement like some madman."

"Yeah, because I saw this bastard running for her," George explained indignantly, gesturing at Sam.

Startled, Sam rolled his eyes at him. "Oh come off it, that was you."

"Was not!" George replied, looking shocked and offended.

Shaking off his annoyance, Sam turned to his brother and watched anxiously as Dean assessed the situation. He saw the way Dean was evaluating their positions, studying their features and any dangers he needed to be aware of. He ran his eyes over each of them, flicking back and forth between the two, searching both of them.

Then Dean's eyes rolled upwards and he let out a groan. "Ah jeez, Sammy, what kind of mess did you get yourself into this time?"

Sam's jaw dropped. "What?" he sputtered.

"Hey, I wasn't the one who got himself handcuffed to metal pipe," the other Sam added, just as indignant. Sam turned to glare at him, but George ... to Sam's deep frustration - copied his movement exactly.

"One pair of matching bookends, different as night and day." Dean let out a long-suffering sigh as he waved his gun, alternating between the two Sams. "All right, so how am I supposed to know which one of you is really Sam?"

"I am," they said at once. Sam rolled his eyes, but he refused to look to see if George did the same.

"O-kaay then," Dean went on, gesturing at them with his gun. "Which one of you can change shape?"

They twisted the same angle to send him matching glares.

When he caught the shifter moving in tandem with him, Sam immediately turned to him, severely wishing he could slap his face off. And from the sight he was met with, he knew George decided to mirror his own impatient expression. It reminded him of that stupid game Dean used to play when they were littlein whichhe would repeat Sam's every word and movement. It was annoying then, and a hell of a lot more frustrating now.

Dean looked between the two of them and let out a sigh. The change in his tone was slight, but Sam still heard the stress in his voice. "You're not even supposed to be here, Sam. What the hell happened to the bus?"

"I told you, I changed my mind," Sam told him impatiently.

Dean shifted his eyes to him, and Sam saw his eyebrows twitch with constrained emotion. "But-why?"

"Because," the shifter interjected, drawing Dean's attention. "I couldn't leave things the way they were. I needed to talk to you-chick-flick moment and all."

Sam had to choke back his frustration. Hearing his own voice come out so soft and earnest, Sam realized why he was able to get strangers to trust him on each hunt. But he couldn't let Dean trust the shifter, no matter how much he sounded like Sam. "I had the chance to think things over, and there were some things I needed to say to you," Sam added, desperately wanting Dean to sense something in his voice, to realize he was Sam.

But Dean only tilted his head, his eyebrows slightly furrowed as he waited for him to continue.

Sam frowned, suddenly and intensely hating this. This was not the way he wanted to talk with Dean. "I just—I just wanted to know why," he struggled to explain. "And I wanted you to know why."

"We were just so-screwed up, Dean," the other Sam went on, his tone just as breathless and determined as Sam's. "But we don't have to be. I don't want to lose my brother. Not again."

Sam's gut twisted painfully. He didn't want to hear his words coming out of George's mouth. He didn't want Dean to hear those words coming from George's mouth. He came back so he could have a heart-to-heart with his brother, so they could really duke it out—and he didn't want that to degrade into some game to see which Sam could out-Sam the other.

"C'mon, Dean," he pleaded, trying to catch Dean's eye. "Don't make me do this here."

But his brother's expression hardened, and he looked away, down at the floor. Sam felt a flash of anger and irritation, exasperated that once again he couldn't convince Dean he was his brother. "Don't make me do this here," he repeated.

"Don't turn this into a competition," George said, quickly echoing Sam's desperation. "I'm trying to-"

"It's just not-"

"It's personal, Dean."

"There has to be another way," Sam finished, wishing it didn't sound so much like a whine.

After a tense, quiet moment, Dean finally looked up, his face impassive as he eyed the two of them.

Then he let out a low whistle. "All right, that didn't work," he said with a slight smirk. He cocked his head and gave it a dramatic jerk. "Time for the lightning round."

"Huh?" Sam choked. Beside him, he saw George shift anxiously.

Dean nodded once but instead of explaining, he immediately pressed forward, his eyes narrowed in concentration. "What was my first car?" he asked them.

"'67 Chevy Impala," Sam told him with a frown. This was his new plan? Now they were playing who knows Dean better?

"It was Dad's," George added, and Sam had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep his anger in check.

"First hunt?"

"A ghost in Missouri," George said quickly.

Sam grunted in annoyance. "You were nine," he jumped in, refusing to be outdone.

"Boxers or briefs?"

They both rolled their eyes. "Boxer-briefs."

They set into a quick rhythm as Dean fired questions at them. Sam noticed the speed Dean forced them into, and it worried him. Was he testing them, to see who knew the answers the quickest? Did he think the shifter, needing to "read" the answers first, would be slower? Sam tried not to panic, but he wasn't confident he would know all the answers right away and pass Dean's test.

"Favorite band?"

"Led Zeppelin," Sam replied instantly.

"Birthday."

"August 12th, 1979," snapped George before Sam could open his mouth. Dean's plan sucked.

"Coffee."

George answered first. "Two sugars-"

"-No cream," Sam finished for him.

"Who's the black private dick who's the sex machine with all the chicks?"

Their frowns were identical. "Shaft," they replied in unison, and Dean's face split into a wide grin.

Then without missing a beat, he asked, "Favorite color."

Suddenly, Sam blinked and stumbled. He felt blood drain from his face and his stomach fall when he realized his mind was blank. "Black?"

The word had barely left his mouth when George jumped in with triumphant glee. "Silver," he answered confidently.

Even as his heart jumped into his throat, Sam immediately started to protest. "Oh, come on, Dean!" he complained. "That's not even a real co-"

But then he saw the flicker of alarm that swept across George's face ... and at the same time, in one swift motion, Dean spun and aimed his gun at him.

As Sam stared at the scene, trying to readjust to the sudden shift in tension, realization flooded through him. Of course the shifter, reading Dean's mind, would know all the answers - but the real Sam wouldn't. Dean had been waiting for that, for Sam to get one wrong. He was just lucky George had been too cocky to figure it out.

"What are you going to do? Shoot me?"the shifterasked with narrowed eyes, recovering quickly. "You know those aren't silver bullets in there."

"It'll slow you down," Dean replied. "Then Sammy here-"

He bit off the end of the last word, the rest of his sentence left unspoken. Without any warning, George had suddenly morphed right before their eyes. He changed into himself, Sam realized ... or at least the modified version, judging by his full head of hair. As Sam and Dean started at his shifting features, he used the distraction to whip out the gun from the back of his jeans. Sam could sense Dean on the very edge of shooting, that he had all but depressed the trigger in reaction to George's sudden movement.

But the shifter was half an instant quicker, aiming the gun at Sam before Dean ever got the chance.

"It won't slow me down enough, will it?" he pointed out as he cocked the hammer.

Even though he wasn't a mind reader, even Sam could hear the curses running through Dean's head. Sam stared into George's modified face, purposefully ignoring the gun pointed at his chest. "Give it up, George," he said. "You're outnumbered two-to-one, all right? Just put it down, and no one will get hurt. You won't get hurt."

"Yeah, and what if I decided I like being armed?"

"Then I'll make sure you can't hurt anyone else."

"So, you're going to shoot me?" George asked. "I'd like to see you try." He cocked his head with mock curiosity. "Now, how does that work, Sam? How much time passes from the moment the thought enters your head to you pulling the trigger? A split second? Is that enough time for me to jump out of the way?"

"He won't miss," Dean said, and Sam couldn't deny the small rush of gratitude that filled him. Spurred by the boost of confidence, he shifted his stance and gave George his own cocky stare, with one raised eyebrow and lips that twisted up at the corners.

George was unfazed. "Even a few inches to the side, and you'll miss my heart," he replied smoothly. "So I shoot, you're dead, then I shoot your brother, because his gun won't work on me, and then I cut Alice's throat with the knife Dean is keeping in his boot."

His words caused Sam's heart to seize for a moment. But he couldn't falter. He knew he could fire off several rounds in mere milliseconds, and if he missed the first time, he would get him with the next.

George, of course, heard his thoughts. "What if I duck? Will your instincts draw the gun down? Will you be able to stop yourself from squeezing the trigger?"

Sam glanced down at the crumpled woman at George's feet and felt sweat trickle down his armpits. "I won't hit her," he said, hating that he was half-speaking to himself. "I'm good at this."

"You're rusty." George looked at Dean then, though he still spoke to Sam. "Your brother left you rusty. Unprepared. Until a couple of days ago, you didn't even know you could shoot a gun."

"But I know now," Sam replied. He briefly considered glancing at Dean, but he didn't.

"You're not going to shoot, are you, Sam?" George asked him confidently. "You don't want to kill me." Sam glared at him in response, refusing to answer, and the shifter went on. "You know too much what it's like."

Sam frowned and tilted his head. "What what's like?" Dean snarled irritably, just as confused.

George kept his stare on Sam as he answered. "To be a freak."

Beside him, Sam heard Dean groan. Sam himself gritted his teeth and shook his head. He and Dean would joke and call themselves freaks, but they were nothing like George, nowhere near as demented.

Of course his thoughts were heard. George's entire face twitched and he narrowed his eyes. "Remember high school?" he asked sharply. "You know what it's like to be the freak. To see the way others looked at you through the corners of their eyes, hear their whispers whenever they passed." Sam narrowed his eyes, but that seemed to energize the other man. "Remember when Lori van Dyke found that ten-inch blade in your backpack?"

"C'mon man, what the hell you going on about?" Dean asked. "Cut this you're-just-like-me crap."

Sam couldn't help but think of Lori, a cute brunette from tenth grade, and the way he found her, hunched over his forgotten bookbag one day at the end of school. She'd quickly straightened up, rising to her feet. Sam saw the horrified expression on her face and the knife dangling from her hand, and he instantly exploded at her, demanding to know what she had been doing with his stuff. She had only meant to put a note into his backpack when she found the knife Sam's father made him carry to school.

She didn't tell on him, at least not to the administration, but neither did she keep it to herself. By the next day, every student had heard and every student started treating him differently. Just as George had said, Sam saw their strange looks and averted stares and heard their whispers behind his back. When the Winchesters moved on a month later, Sam left no friends behind.

"Now imagine what it was like to know exactly what they were thinking," George said, his voice rising into a yell. "To hear their cruel, ugly thoughts every single time they looked at you! To be sitting in class, and even the damn teacher is laughing at your nose, or sneering at you just because—just because you're different!"

"You were in high school?" Dean asked, sounding surprised. George ignored him, his glare never leaving Sam.

"I grew up like that, hearing people's thoughts. Bombarded with their nasty judgments. It took me five years of hard work and concentration to learn how to change my appearance. I developed these, these powers all by myself, locked up in my room for hours on end."

"Had nothing better to do, huh?"

Once again, George refused to acknowledge him. "No one was ever there for me. I was twenty before I could finally get people to look at me normally." His hand shot out against the bed again, slamming against the post. This time, used to his sudden outbursts, Sam didn't jump. "Goddammit, everything should have been better then! I even went on dates!"

"With real girls?" Dean asked, but George acted as if he didn't hear him. Maybe he didn't, the way he seemed to be frozen in a rant.

"Except-It never failed - those same nasty, heartless thoughts would start creeping into their minds. After a couple of minutes, or a couple of hours, whether I was on a date, or at the store - they would all start thinking I was a freak. That I was worthless. Like Alice!" he shouted suddenly, throwing his hand through the air at her. "They hadn't even lived next door to me for a whole day before she started calling me weird and creepy. What, she thinks she's better than me?"

He spat at her again before turning back to Sam. "You can't change, Sam," he said, his voice low and dark. "No matter how hard you try, you're still a freak inside. Even Stanford didn't change that. Even your own brother erasing your memories, couldn't change that." Although he remained silent, out of the corner of his eye Sam saw Dean react physically, jerking his head, his stance surging forward even though his feet never left their spot.

Sam turned back to the raging shifter and sighed to himself.

"Just because you don't fit in with what other people consider normal, they act like you aren't even worth the time of day! Like you aren't even worth the shoes you walk in! And they just go around, thinking whatever they want, not even realizing just how heartless and cruel they consider their own fellow human beings!"

"People are so mean," Sam agreed, shaking his head slowly.

"Man, you're really desperate for company, aren't you?" Dean asked. Sam was so glad he was there beside him. "I guess even a freak with no redeeming qualities needs someone to talk to, huh?"

Sam pressed his lips together and cocked an eyebrow. "No, I think he's just trying to get me to feel sorry for him," he said. He smirked dryly. "And he's getting really upset because he knows it's not working."

George reacted just as Sam thought he would. His face reddened and spit started to fly as he started ranting again. "You know what it's like! Walking around knowing you're different." He spat out the last word, his eyes narrowed into focused points. "No matter what you do - whatever Dean tries to do," he added for extra ammo. "-You can't escape."

Sam looked at him levelly. "Who said I want to?" he calmly asked.

George's eyes widened. "Oh, don't kid yourself, Sam!" he yelled, his voice loud and sharp. "You're just like me! You hate it just as much as I do!"

Sam glanced slowly over at his brother. He kept the look easy and casual, even though at his end, Dean was looking tense and a little pale. "Oh, I don't know about that..." Sam mused lightly.

"Of course you do!" George cried. "I can read your mind, remember?"

"Well, you must be reading wrong then." Sam creased his forehead, frowning thoughtfully. "You know, I think you're projecting."

George stiffened for a moment, his eyes boring into Sam's. "You know what, Sam? You're just a scared little boy."

"Maybe—No, wait, you're right," Sam quickly amended. "I do get scared sometimes. But that just tells me I'm normal. That I have people I care and worry about, that I haven't gone over the edge yet."

"But you flirt with that edge. And sometimes you cross it," George fought back snidely. "You know what that darkness is on the other side. You can taste its heat, you can feel its icy grip—admit it, it touches you just like it touches me."

Sam shook his head. "No," he said coolly. "Our darkness is different. I might be a freak, but I'm not sick, not like you. I'd never torture and kill anyone, just because I couldn't handle a little name-calling."

"Shut up!" George screamed at him. "Goddammit, shut UP! It's more than that, Sam! My life—everything about it was torture! Even my own damned parents looked at me weird!" Sam raised an eyebrow, watching as tears started to shimmer in the shifter's eyes as his cheeks burned red and a vein throbbed near his hairline. "Goddamn torture!" he shouted again, his voice breaking. "They all think they're so much better, with their happy little lives that don't mean a goddamn thing!"

"So you're a bitter son-of-a-bitch psycho, we get it," Dean said with a roll of his eyes. "You honestly think we're going to let you go?"

George rounded on him. "They deserved what they got!" he screamed.

"That's funny," Dean shot back with a smirk, not missing a beat. "Because we're here to give you what you deserve."

"That's a riot, coming from you!" George spat at him, laughing harshly, even insanely. "Sam knows how hard it is to be a freak, but you—you know how much it aches when people abandon you the moment you need them the most. You know personally just how far a person will go when their own loved ones-"

Dean didn't let him finish, cutting him off with snarled words, and though Sam didn't know exactly what he was talking about, the shifter undoubtedly did. "Did your mother cry for you before you slit her throat?"

George reacted instantly, leaping forward with an enraged yell. He raised his gun into the air, not to shoot, but to strike him. Dean started to duck, almost cringing out of the way.

And not even a split second after George made his move, Sam squeezed the trigger. His aim was true, his reflexes were sharp, and his hands confident and ready.

But the gun clicked hollowly.

Sam tried again, and again. Each click vibrated straight through his heart. A sick feeling started to blossom at the bottom of his gut.

Yet, fortunately, the gun managed to stop George in his tracks. The instant the empty sound echoed through the room, the shifter halted, his arm frozen in mid-swing before he spun to face Sam. By the time he finished the movement, a wide, evil grin had completely replaced the outraged scowl.

"What did you think, Sam?" he asked with a snicker. "That I'd carry a weapon loaded with the only thing that could kill me?" His eyebrows went up into his forehead, and he tilted his head gleefully.

His heart hammering, Sam clutched the empty gun in his hands, but just as he started to pull his arm back, George was already gesturing with his .45. "You're not actually going to throw that at me, are you?" He started to laugh. "God, that was fun. You should see the way your nostrils are flaring!" He let out a long breath. "Whew! Thank God for that, I think I needed a little levity." He winked at Sam.

Sam suddenly wanted to scream at him, call him names and fill his chest with silver. But he'd just been denied that opportunity.

He couldn't believe he'd let himself get tricked—and this time should have been more obvious than back at the asylum, when Dean pulled the same thing.

"Sucks, doesn't it?" George asked him. "Thrown back into a hunt that wasn't even yours. And now look at you ... you're stuck with a gun that's unloaded, and Dean's might as well be, as good as it'll do him."

Sam opened his mouth to respond, to argue with him, to show he really wasn't worried, even though the thoughts running through his head would betray him. But then he was distracted by movement out of the corner of his eye.

And just as he turned to it, a scream ripped through the air.

"Alice," Sam gasped. But even as he spoke, he saw George swing around towards her.

"You goddamn bitch!" he screamed. Sam saw the gun in his hand, and he froze for a panicked moment when he recognized his actions.

Whether he felt it or saw it, Sam knew Dean was already reacting. That was enough to spur Sam into action. On instinct, he understood that Dean, closer to the shifter, would disable George, and Sam would take care of Alice.

He dove forward, throwing himself between Alice and the gun to knock the woman back to the ground.

Three shots rang out. They happened in such quick succession Sam wasn't sure which one caused his right shoulder to explode with pain. Unable to stop his momentum, he fell to the ground on top of Alice, landing awkwardly on his side.

The entire scene lasted only an instant.

Sam quickly rolled over, his vision almost disappearing, and saw George standing over him. Two spots of blood were quickly expanding across his chest.

A weak look of betrayal had twisted his face. "You said they had to be silver..." he complained, his voice already slurring. And then he fell to his knees before collapsing completely.

"We were wrong," Dean told his body matter-of-factly.

Sam watched with dim fascination as George's hairline suddenly receded and his nose grew twice its size. Even his bulk disappeared as wiry muscles slimmed away to mostly flab. Without his mind to project his modified image of himself, they saw his real body. He wasn't a true shifter, Sam realized. Just a guy who developed his psychic powers into something more.

"How about that..." Sam whispered.

Dean jerked at his voice, flicking widening eyes down at Sam still on the ground, and Sam could see the blood drain from his face. "Oh, Jesus, Sam!" he gasped hoarsely, rushing forward.

Sam grunted as he felt Alice underneath and behind him slowly try to disentangle herself from his unresponsive limbs. Dean dropped to his knees beside him, his face stricken as he reached out for him. His hands gripped Sam's shoulders firmly, holding him steady as the woman slid out. "Sam—Sam—Are you okay?" he demanded unevenly as his eyes searched Sam's body. "Goddammit."

"Is it really that bad?" Sam asked, wincing because his voice came out more raspy than he intended.

"No, no, of course not," Dean rushed to assure him. "You just have a frickin' hole in the middle of your body."

Your bedside manner sucks, Sam wanted to tell him.

"I'll—I'll call 9-1-1!" Alice said frantically somewhere above Sam. Her shadow quickly passed over him, and he knew she had run out of the room in search of a phone.

"Jesus, Sam, what were you thinking!" Dean cried the moment she left. Sam felt the fabric across his chest move, and he knew Dean was trying to get a better look at his injury. Sam bit his cheek, trying not to gasp at the prodding fingers. He didn't think the bullet had hit a lung, but then again, would he know? He felt fine though, didn't he?Just...weird.

"Dean," he said. "What George said back there—what I said—you need to know-"

"Shush, Sam, I don't even know what you're rambling about," Dean told him in a rush of words as he worked frantically above him.

Sam shook his head stubbornly, refusing to be dismissed. "About why I came back," he got out. Dean tore his gaze from hisinjury toglance at him.

"Oh. That,"he replied, pressing his hands down on Sam's chest. "Yeah, I wasn't paying attention."

Sam almost surged up, but Dean held him down. "What?" he bit out, incredulous.

Dean shrugged defensively. "Yeah, well, while the shifter was busy reading your mind, I was trying to think of a way out of the mess."

Sam went limp, his head rolling back so that it stared up at the ceiling. He almost laughed, but he didn't think his chest would let him.

"Hey! Al-Alice?" Dean shouted, his tone both urgent and uncertain as he called out for the woman he'd never been introduced to. When his call wasn't answered, he looked back down at Sam, his eyes shining. "Sam, I need...I need to get some towels," he said, and he stood up jerkily.

His hands were shiny and red, Sam noticed as his eyes followed Dean. He realized suddenly that blood was really a pretty shade of red, colorful and bright. Unless there was too much of it, he amended to himself - then it started to look black, even menacing. His undershirt probably looked black.

Just as Dean started to backtrack towards the door, Sam stopped him. "I wasn't going to leave," he said.

"Huh?" Dean stammered, freezing in his tracks. "Sam, shhhh, I'll be right ba-"

But then there was another presence in the room, and Sam knew Alice had come back. He didn't turn to her, but Dean did. "Quick," he shouted at her. "I need towe-"

The end of his command was clipped, and then Sam saw a flash of fuzzy white before that heavy pressure was pressed back onto his chest. Alice had already brought towels, Sam thought with relief, and that meant Dean didn't have to leave him.

Sam wished Alice would leave though, but he couldn't draw up enough energy to ask her. But it was only fair, he realized dimly, since he'd already overheard George as he humiliated her with those personal, private insults.

Sam looked up at Dean's blurry form as he hovered over him. "I just wanted you to know," Sam told him. "I wasn't going to leave."

"No, I'm sure you spent the night at the bus station for kicks," Dean soothed, and only he could fit sarcasm into that cooing tone. Sam opened his mouth, but Dean saw and stopped him. "Shh, it's all right, Sam. Just don't talk, okay?"

Sam shook his head tightly, determined to finish. "No, I mean, that night in Idaho." His throat was closing on him and it felt as if he were talking through the roof of his mouth. "I wasn't going to leave you."

"Sam-" Dean warned.

"You messed up, Dean," Sam told him, feeling his voice fade. "You messed up."

"Sam, shut up!" his brother threw at him, his voice sounding almost like a shout to Sam's ears. "Goddammit, just shut up already!"

"I just-" Sam started, but Dean cut him off instantly.

"No, Sam, stop it! All right?" His voice trembled from some emotion, but Sam couldn't work it out. "Look—I'll talk, okay?" he continued in a rush, his eyes forcing Sam to focus on him. "You can yell at me later, but for now-I'll do the talking, and you just stay there and not let yourself die. You got it?"

Sam opened his mouth to reply, but Dean's expression stopped him. So he nodded instead and found himself relaxing, not even realizing his body had been tensed.

"Sam, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, and I don't know how..."

Sam closed his eyes slowly and let Dean's voice wash over him. He heard some of his words, bits and phrases, or maybe he heard all of them but his brain chopped them up, too lazy to string them together.

"I missed you—maybe even worse than the first time you left for Stanford...I did this to you, to me...And then when Dad..."

But Sam heard his tone, heard the rise and fall in his inflection. He recognized the different emotions that colored his voice, though he didn't bother to identify them. Dean was talking, Sam realized. Dean was actually talking, was spilling his guts to Sam-and to Alice, but even the stranger's presence didn't stop him.

It really did feel good to let himself go, to feel like he was sinking into the carpet below him. The pain in his chest was fading, or moving away from him, and if he kept his breaths shallow, it didn't hurt as much. Alice was somewhere around, still talking to 9-1-1 it sounded like, pacing the room and still breathing. The monster of the week was dead. And Dean ... Dean-his-brother, not Dean-as-John, or Dean-the-murderer, or Dean-the-weird-stalker-guy, but Dean-his-brother ... was at his side, talking to him and saying things Sam wanted to hear—although Sam knew he'd ask Dean to repeat himself, later, when Sam could listen and respond and tell him things he needed to tell him.

But for now, Sam knew he was okay, and as he listened to his brother'svoice, he let that darkness at the edge of his consciousness flood intohis mind until he knew nothing else.

***

Sam knew this wasn't the first time he'd woken up. He remembered some time earlier a disorienting mix of Dean and brightness and voices that were or were not familiar. But this time, this slow ease into consciousness, he was fully aware of himself and, after a few halting moments, his surroundings.

Sam came awake to Dean's voice. To him, it almost seemed an unbroken train of thought that wasn't his. It had been the last thing to slip in before darkness overtook him, and it was still there when he came back to consciousness, a low tone that overrode every other sound and even Sam's own thoughts.

But something was wrong, something was off. His hand was given a squeeze and his shoulder was patted, and then there was nothing, and in a sudden panic, he struggled to force his eyes open. But he must have been too slow, and by the time he could see, Dean's back was turned to him and he was already halfway to the door.

Sam reacted instantly, surging forward in blind desperation, propelling himself with an arm stretched towards his departing brother, but he was held back, hooked up to more tubes than he'd realized. He tried to roll away, to jerk free, but a sudden, blazing pain in his shoulder stopped him short, ripping a cry of pain from deep in his throat.

Dean stopped and turned, his eyes widening. "Sam!" he cried in alarm, immediately rushing back to him. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"You can't leave me," Sam gasped at him, trying to ignore the throbbing in his shoulder that seemed to suck the air from his lungs.

Dean froze. Then he shook his head slowly, looking slightly ill. "I'm not leaving you," he said. But Sam didn't stop glaring at him, even though Dean seemed to ignore it as he pushed him back gently into bed. "I'm not," he repeated firmly when Sam opened his mouth to argue.

"But I heard you, just now," Sam protested. His position lying down frustrated him, so he scrambled for the bed controls, raising himself up so he was almost sitting. Now he was more level with his brother, a little less vulnerable.

A confused frown crossed Dean's face as he helped Sam readjust his position. "Then you heard me say I was going for coffee..."

Startled, Sam faltered at that, tearing his gaze away so he could concentrate. As soon as Dean said those words, it yanked the memory out, almost as if it were a dream he suddenly remembered, and Sam realized that was what he'd heard. "But..." he fumbled, instantly feeling foolish, "You sounded—bad."

"Bad? Did they teach you that word in college?"

Sam scowled as he relaxed against the mattress. "Fine then. You sounded despondent. Dejected. Remorseful, penitent, sullen-" Dean held up a hand, cutting him off—which, thank God, because Sam's still-fuzzy mind fought against coming up with even those words.

"Yeah, well, I needed a cup of coffee to stay awake - but I didn't want to leave because I knew, the minute I walked out that door, you'd wake up." He looked down at Sam with a dry smirk. "Looks like I was only half wrong."

Sam blinked a couple of times, feeling his body settle as the situation sunk in. "Sorry," he apologized with a shrug. "Next time I'll have a schedule ready. Who told you you needed to stay awake, anyway?" Just looking at the dark circles underneath Dean's eyes made Sam tired.

Then again, everything was making Sam tired. He felt like he hadn't completely woken up yet.

Dean didn't answer him, instead glancing down to guide himself into a chair next to Sam's bed. As he sat there, his eyes skimmed across the room and along Sam's body, as if he wasn't sure where to rest his gaze. For a brief instant he met Sam's eyes, but he quickly looked away.

"Goddammit, Sam," he suddenly cursed. "You almost died."

"Did I?" Sam asked, immediately curious. He glanced down at his chest, although the angle was bad and his wound was too high and hidden underneath tight bandages. He knew the injury had been serious, but..."Didn't seem to hit anything vital."

Dean shook his head with a jerk. "You were in surgery for over three hours, Sam. There was no exit wound-they had to dig it out from your ribs. It just barely missed a lung. They barely missed the lung."

Sam raised his eyebrows at the information. "Wow, really? Huh." He was pretty lucky, it seemed. Not too shabby for his first gunshot wound. He wondered if they'd let him keep the bullet as a souvenir.

Without any warning, Dean slammed a hand against the cheap wooden arm of the chair. "Dammit, Sam! This is serious!"

"Dean," he said slowly, with a patience he was surprised he had. "We face death all the time, in every hunt. I survived, everything's okay ... we've done this all before."

The corners of Dean's jaw twitched. "But that part of your life was supposed to be over," he said.

Sam snorted humorlessly. "The last time I thought that part was over was the moment right before you broke through my front door and told me Dad was missing. And then Jessica died."

Dean shifted and gave a couple of false starts, licking his lips before starting hesitantly. Even before he started speaking, Sam knew what he was about to say. "But...this whole past year, you-"

"The hunt couldn't be over if I didn't know the hunt existed."

"What does that matter? It was over, whether you knew it or not."

Sam had hoped he wouldn't be asked to explain because he wasn't sure how to, not even to himself. "Look, I am who I am today because of the way I was raised, because of the hunt," he began, pushing through his weariness. "It's a part of me now. Even this whole year, I felt it-but I couldn't identify it, and I-I didn't know how to ignore it, like I could before. It was there, and I couldn't turn my back on it because I didn't know what it was."

He couldn't tell if Dean understood or not. His brother was staring at the far wall, but then he turned his gaze to Sam, his eyes crinkled just slightly as if he were in thought, or maybe in pain. "Forgetting the circumstances," he started with a strained force, "Forgetting that I put you there-you gotta admit, that was better. Wasn't it?"

Sam shifted his gaze away, unwilling to look at him. Dean went on anyway, dogged despite Sam's reaction. "You had a new life, Sam, you had innocence again. You were safe and free and happy."

Sam was silent for a moment. "How's Alice?"

"She's fine," Dean replied with a frown. "Sam-"

Sam turned to him and tilted his head. "Do you know if she's talked to her husband?" he asked. "I think George put some ugly thoughts into her head, left her feeling pretty bad about herself."

Dean shook his head distractedly. "I don't know—I mean, they both stopped by to see you—Looked fine to me, I guess." He gestured at the window. "They brought you those flowers."

Startled, Sam looked over and felt a smile stretch his face. Sitting on the wide windowsill was a large, glass vase bursting with flowers—daisies, Sam thought, though he wasn't sure. "Oh, wow, that was nice of them," he said, pushing himself up a couple of inches. "You know, I don't think I've ever gotten flowers before."

"Dude, you took a bullet for her. I think the least-"

Sam pursed his lips thoughtfully and cut his brother off. "I don't even know what I'm supposed to do. Should I send her a thank you card, some kind of acknowledgment? Let her know I got them?"

Frustration was plain on Dean's face. "Who cares?" he grunted, waving a hand through the air. "They're just flowers."

Sam stared at the daisies for a moment before he replied. "It's just-I'm not used to being in the hospital. At least, not from this angle."

He looked back up at Dean, suddenly remembering how tired he was. "I've seen you here. Twice in one year—too many." He suppressed a shudder and forced those thoughts away. "But the last time I was in the hospital was-man..." He trailed off into thought, letting his mind separate emergency room visits and on-site treatment from actual stays, trying to remember the last time he spent the night in a hospital bed.

"You were seventeen," Dean told him. "A ghost threw you down a set of stairs."

"Ah, that's right," Sam said with a nod, suddenly feeling phantom pains from that time. "Funny, I was just thinking about the chupacabra." Was that yesterday, or just this morning, that he shared a car ride with Lt. Stevens? "I remembered I was so mad because I had to miss a couple of extra days of school. And then bam, I ended up spending the whole next week in the hospital."

"You really freaked Dad out."

"I freaked you out, too."

Dean shrugged, trying to be casual, but it looked more as if he were trying to get out from under a heavy weight. "Those first 24 hours-Doctors told us your, um, survival depended on how hard you were willing to fight for it. " He hesitated for a moment. "I was so—I thought you might just give up and leave us."

Sam frowned as he thought of that time. "And then a few weeks later, I did leave you." He graduated two months after getting out of the hospital, and the very next day told his family he was going to Stanford. It took another three years before he saw his brother again.

"Yeah, well, at least you were alive." Dean shrugged again and leaned back in the chair. "Turns out you did have something to live for."

Sam frowned, feeling a sudden wave of exhaustion sweep over him. "And now?" he asked Dean after a moment, letting his eyelids slide shut.

"What?"

Sam reopened his eyes and turned his head to look at him. "Do you think I have something to live for now?"

"Jesus, Sammy," he said, sucking in a breath. "What do you want me to say?"

It turned out he didn't have to say anything, because just then a nurse walked in to check up on Sam. Sam lied back passively, taking the chance to rest as he let her do what she needed to do. Dean ignored her, though Sam couldn't tell whether it was because he was too upset, or if she was a couple of years too old for him. Probably the former, he thought vaguely as he was poked and prodded, since age never seemed to be a problem for him before.

It wasn't until the nurse asked that Sam realized how much his chest hurt. A large yawn overcame him as she fiddled with the settings somewhere next to him, and he wondered if it were too soon to take another nap. Dean, still in the chair next to him, kept moving his hands around, as if he weren't sure what to do with them.

Then the nurse left after only a few minutes, leaving the two brothers alone again. Sam rubbed his face tiredly, running a hand across his scratchy, unshaven cheeks. The air in the room seemed to have stilled, and a long moment passed before Dean finally broke the silence. "You look like hell," he told Sam.

Sam pursed his lips into a kind-of smile as he met Dean's gaze. "Like looking into a mirror, I bet."

"Just go to sleep, man," Dean replied, giving his shoulder a pat. "You're practically there already."

But Sam shook his head. "Nah, I'm good." The last syllable was swallowed by another yawn.

"Ha, that's a good one," Dean said with a snort.

"Thanks."

Dean seemed to be waiting for Sam to act, but Sam didn't do anything more than keep a half smile on his face. "What's up with you?" Dean asked him after a moment. "You're not acting like Sam."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you're being awfully..."

"Awfully what?" Sam asked when he trailed off.

"I don't know. Blasé?"

Did they teach you that word in college? Sam wanted to say, but it wasn't worth it. Instead, he shrugged and said, "Guess I'm just relaxed."

"You're relaxed?"

"Yeah, I am." For now.

"But—you're Sam," Dean protested with furrowed eyebrows. "You're never relaxed. How can you be relaxed now? In a hospital. With—with me, here, like this. After all that's-"

Sam shook his head suddenly, quickly, needing him to stop. "No, not now. Please." It surprised him how much effort it took to keep his voice steady. "I'm not ready for that yet." He let his head fall back, sinking into the pillow. Exhaustion crept through his muscles, and he had to struggle to keep his eyelids open.

Dean stared at him for a long time before he nodded stiltedly. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Right now, you need to go back to sleep." He grinned suddenly, the same grin he used whenever he was about to say something stupid. "Hey, you think if I told them my arms hurt, they'll give me some of that stuff they're shooting you up with?" Sam was rolling his eyes before he even finished, but he felt a relieved smile tugging at his lips.

Dean stood up then, but it took Sam a moment to realize he was reaching for the thin bed sheet Sam had pushed aside when he'd first woken up. Dean's hands fumbled with the edges, his movements hesitant and uncertain as he dug around for the corners.

"I already told you, I'm good," Sam said as Dean drew the sheet up to his chest.

"You're exhausted," Dean told him firmly.

"I'm not going to sleep."

Dean stared into his eyes then as if he could command Sam's attention just by looking at him. "Sam, I'll be here when you wake up. All right? Just go to sleep."

Sam calmly looked back at him. "You first," he replied.

"Huh?"

"I'm not going to sleep until you do."

Dean frowned. "Is that what this is about?"

"Yep," Sam replied simply. "You need it just as much as I do."

He saw Dean roll his eyes, "Dude, I'm fine. You're the one in the hospital."

"Actually, now that I think about it-I'm fine too. In fact, I think I'll go take a run around the block, just for the hell of it...Really get the blood pumping, you know?" He even moved to push himself up, but he didn't get very far before Dean's arm shot out, stopping him with a hand on his chest.

"All right, all right, I get it. Jeez." He plopped back down on the chair and shot Sam a harmless glare as Sam settled triumphantly back into the bed.

"I'll ask for a cot," Sam offered. "Maybe they could-" But Dean stopped him.

"Nah, I'm good right here," he said. He lifted himself up and started scooting his chair backwards until it sat a few inches from the wall. Then, settling back into the chair, he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned his head back until it rested against the sky-colored paint. "See?" he said in demonstration, letting his eyes slide close.

Sam wanted to tell him he would sleep better if he'd only let them bring in a cot, but his mouth didn't want to bother with moving. So instead he lay there and watched his brother, propped up against the wall. If Dean wanted to be stubborn, that was fine with Sam. He wouldn't be the one waking up with a crick in the neck.

After a moment, one of Dean's eyes popped open. "I told you," Sam immediately said, ready for it. "I'm not falling asleep until you do." Dean grumbled something under his breath and closed his eye.

Sam watched him as he waited, thoughts from the day swirling around him in a murky, unreadable mess. His shoulder throbbed dully, and he was eager to sink into consciousness. But, in the stillness of the hospital room, far from the shifter, far from the basement where Dean had been handcuffed, Sam couldn't take his eyes off of his brother.

"I didn't even know your favorite color," Sam said suddenly.

"Yeah, I know," Dean complained without opening his eyes, his voice indignant and hurt. "What kind of sister are you?"

Sam smiled and sank back in the bed. It didn't take long for Dean to fall asleep, only a few minutes passing before his breath finally evened out. Satisfied, Sam closed his eyes and let the rhythm of his soft snores lull him to sleep. He was out in less time than it took Dean.

OoOOoo

Sam woke first. Or at least, when he woke up, Dean was fast asleep. His brother had apparently shifted at one point though, because when Sam opened his eyes, he found himself staring at the top of Dean's head, resting against the mattress near Sam's elbow. His body was hunched forward now, one arm hanging in his lap and the other cradled around his head, and Sam almost woke him because he was leaving a small puddle of drool on Sam's sheets.

But he didn't. He waited until Dean awoke on his own, almost twenty minutes later. His head shifted first, slowly, and then he jerked and his green eyes popped open. It only took a second of searching before his eyes found Sam's, and once they did, he seemed to gather himself together and pushed himself up from the bed.

"I'm ready to talk," Sam told him.

Dean straightened and scrubbed his face with a low groan. Sam waited as his words sunk in, watching as Dean seemed to prepare himself. "Yeah...okay..." he muttered to himself, squaring his shoulder. Sam could almost hear him pray for a sudden ghost attack. Dean had always been more comfortable with hunting.

They lapsed into silence, regarding each other. Sam knew Dean was expecting him to speak first, but Sam made no move to start. It took Dean a moment to realize Sam was waiting for him—or maybe he'd just gotten too uncomfortable with the silent tension that stretched between them.

"I'm not going anywhere, you know," he said.

Sam nodded, slowly because his chest was still on fire. "Yeah, I know."

"You keep staring," Dean told him, looking unsettled by Sam's response. "You haven't stopped watching me since you first woke up."

Sam gave him a tight smile. "Beats looking at the wall, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, but man, you-"

Sam sighed and then he did look away. "It's just...It's weird, Dean," he said. "The last time I knew you as my brother, you were barely recovering from almost dying. Dad was gone, we were falling apart, and my last memory of you, you were in so much pain you could barely move."

He swallowed, feeling a headache coming on from the tense way he was pushing his eyebrows together. "And then...all of that was completely gone—missing—from...from me. But now suddenly here you are again, just as sudden as I lost you."

A moment passed before Dean answered. "Well, at least I'm back in top physical shape," he said wryly.

Sam shook his head and snorted. "Sure you are," he said, deciding not to bring up the scars he'd seen littering his brother's body, or the wounds still fresh on his arms. "But you're still screwed up. Just as screwed as I am."

As hard as his brother tried to suppress it, Sam still saw Dean flinch. He jerked a hand up to rub his face, as if trying to cover for it.

"Why did you come back, Sam?" he asked wearily, his voice sounding almost pained.

"For this. What we're doing right now."

"What, talking? We could have talked on the phone," Dean shot back. "Would have been helluva lot less dangerous. No deranged shifters, no gunshot wounds-"

"I think this goes beyond a phone call," Sam replied. "Don't know why you're complaining though—Saved your butt."

"I had a plan," Dean told him indignantly.

"The hell you did," Sam remarked, thinking of the envelopes that should still be in his pocket. He couldn't shake the image of Dean handcuffed to the pole, refusing to let Sam anywhere near him. "Why didn't you come with me back there in the basement? Even if I were the shapeshifter, at least you'd have the chance to fight."

Dean blinked and glanced briefly down at the floor. Wetting his lips, he looked back up at Sam. "If-If you had been anyone else, even Dad, I would have," he said. "But-" He broke off, shifting his stance. Sam wasn't sure if he'd ever seen Dean shuffle his feet in such an obvious sign of nervousness. He'd always been adept at hiding his anxiety, his uneasiness.

"I wanted it to really be you too much," Dean finally admitted. "I was scared that I would screw things up-that I would actually try to believe it was you. You saw it, that guy was sadistic, had a psychological fetish. I just-I didn't want to get to that point-even if I knew it wasn't you."

Maybe Sam could understand that. At least being handcuffed would have helped keep Dean grounded, the same way the gun in Jessica's hand shattered the illusion the shifter tried to force on Sam.

And he could understand the pain in facing the shifter. In St. Louis, it had been hell for Sam, hearing the things the shifter said coming from Dean's mouth. It hadn't even pretended to be Dean, only looked like him-but that was enough. It knew what to say, what nerves to strike. It knew how to bury him in guilt and shame.

But Sam, at least, never stopped fighting.

His whole life, he'd never seen Dean stopped fighting either, not ever, not as long as there was a monster of some sort running around. "That doesn't sound like you," he said after a moment. "Giving up like that." As he spoke, he studied his brother, wondering how much his brother had changed in the past year.

In St. Louis, Sam suddenly realized, his guilt had been small. He never really regretted going to Stanford, only that he had to leave his brother behind ... and yet, the shifter's words had still been nearly unbearable.

How would it have been if he'd carried around as much guilt as his brother now did?

Dean, though, seemed to have other concerns. "Yeah, well, at least I was smart enough to not jump in front of a freakin' bullet," he growled.

At first, Sam almost dismissed it as an obvious deflection, but then he saw that his brother was seriously upset. "I had to," Sam explained.

Dean shook his head and leaned forward. "Whatever the hell you thought you were doing, it wasn't worth it," he hissed.

"I saved her life."

"And you almost got yourself killed!"

Sam didn't hide his annoyance. "How many times in our long and illustrious career have we risked our lives to save people's lives?" he pointed out. "At least this time, you didn't erase my memory afterwards," he added, almost as an afterthought.

Dean stiffened and looked away, and Sam wondered if he should have saved that remark for later. But Dean eventually nodded to himself. "What?" Sam asked.

"Just-go on."

Sam realized he was waiting for him to continue, but he didn't know what to say. "You really thought I was trying to kill myself?" he finally asked. "During the goatman attack?" He'd been wondering that ever since he got his memories back, and he needed to straighten the jumbled pieces of the past just so he could start to make sense out of Dean's actions.

Dean seemed to be surprised by Sam's question, and he shrugged, his movements stilted and tense. "Maybe not trying-but you didn't care."

As much as he wanted to deny it, Sam wondered if there was a bit of truth in Dean's statement. It wasn't that he hadn't care, but he remembered feeling so hopeless back then that he almost gave up. "And I couldn't protect you," Dean continued gruffly, "and it scared me because I couldn't protect you and you didn't care. I mean, how could I trust you on your own when you didn't even care about protecting yourself?"

Sam didn't have an answer for that. "But the other night, back in the hotel when you were explaining...Why didn't you just tell me you thought you were saving my life?"

Dean's eyes, looking tired, rolled back to face Sam. "C'mon Sam, you know I don't make excuses," he said. "That wasn't the only reason I did what I did. I don't even think it was the main reason. And even if it was, Sam-would that have made it any easier to accept?"

Sam frowned and slowly shook his head. No, it wouldn't. But... "I just need to know—I'm trying to understand." He needed something, anything that let him know things could be fixed. His eyes started to sting, and he had to blink away the sudden moisture.

"What do you want me to say?" Dean cried angrily, almost desperately. He jumped to his feet, towering over Sam. "That I was hopped up on painkillers? That I'd gone temporarily insane? Hell, that I heard voices telling me to? Would any of that make you feel better?"

"Just tell me the truth," Sam asked in a voice so low he wasn't even sure Dean would hear him.

But Dean did. He ran a hand through his hair and started pacing the room. "What does that matter?" he railed. "It doesn't change anything! What does it matter that my chest hurt so bad I couldn't think straight? That I never stopped being scared since the moment that bastard threw me to the ceiling and no one was there?"

Dean, now at the foot of Sam's bed, spun around to face Sam. "Are you going to suddenly forgive me because I was chickenshit, scared that I would wake up one day and you wouldn't be there anymore? Because that's why I did it. That's why."

Sam looked back at him, feeling his chest restrict painfully. "I wasn't going to leave you."

"Yeah, you already said that yesterday—you know, when you were dying," Dean replied, his voice thin and bitter.

"It's still the truth."

Dean sighed and set a hand against Sam's bedrail. "Look, Sam, I know you believe that," he said, his expression dangerously calm all of the sudden. "But you were so damn miserable. The only reason you weren't already on your way was because of guilt. The only reason, and you know it."

His hand tightened around the railing, and the pressure seemed to shoot up his arm and into his shoulders. "It'd only be a matter of time before that wasn't enough anymore," he continued as his voice suddenly trembled. "And that's not how I wanted my brother beside me."

"So, what are you saying?" Sam asked, feeling impatient and out of control. "You were scared that I'd leave you, so you decided to make sure that happened?"

Dean closed his eyes briefly. "Dammit, Sam, I was scared you'd decide to leave me without looking back," he said. "I was scared because I knew you had to leave. And-I was scared that you wouldn't leave."

Sam looked at him sharply.

Dean met his gaze. "I needed you, Sam, but not as much as you needed out."

"Out?" Sam echoed cautiously, thinking he already knew the answer.

"Out of hunting! Out of our life!" Dean cried, throwing his hands into the air. "Dammit, Sam, I don't understand what you're doing here! I mean, if you're going to yell at me, just start already! Come on and give it to me!"

Sam was stunned for a moment by his outburst, and he wasn't sure how to respond. He'd meant to yell at Dean—the whole ride to Tulsa, he assumed there would be lots of yelling once he'd finally confronted his brother. But suddenly, lying there in bed, he didn't have the energy.

He turned to look out the window, but the vase of daisies obstructed his view. The flowers offered an improvement, he realized, seeing nothing past them but cloudy gray sky.

"Why did you come back, Sam?" Dean asked again, after Sam hadn't said anything.

Sam kept his eyes on the daisies as he considered his answer. "For this past year, I didn't know I hated hunting," he said.

"You can't hate what you didn't know existed," Dean remarked. "You were blissfully ignorant, at least until I pushed myself back into your life." Bitterness laced the latter part of his sentence.

Of course Dean missed the point. He'd always been good at that. Sam tore his gaze from the flowers and looked down at his lap.

"You made me forget everything, Dean. You know I can never excuse what you did," he told his older brother. Dean nodded in acceptance, not arguing. "But it helped me realize something."

"Yeah, what's that?" Dean asked tiredly.

"You've always told me how noble our job is, saving lives and fighting evil, and I couldn't exactly argue with that," Sam told him. "But I never really believed it. Or even really cared..."

Dean rolled his head, exasperated. "Aw, hell, Sam, you know I'm no saint," he complained roughly, scrubbing his jaw with a hand. "I just say crap like that to make myself feel better, you know, make what we do easier. To reassure myself that it's all worth it."

"But the thing it...it is."

Dean was silent for a moment. "Well, you're really making sense here. I practice some nasty voodoo on you, and you suddenly realize just how wonderful the supernatural really is."

Sam sighed and glared at him. Dean noticed, and with lips twitching, he lifted his hands and took a step backwards in a sign of surrender. Satisfied his brother would lay off the sarcasm, Sam relaxed and tried to explain. It took him a moment to figure out how to start.

"I know you were checking up on me," he said at last. "I saw you ... even though you were in the background, I saw you...and I couldn't look away."

Dean started, shooting Sam a confused look.

"I didn't know what it was, just something about the way you carried yourself, the look in your eyes, or—gah, I don't know," Sam broke off, shaking off his frustration. "But when I first met you—when I knew you as John—I started to realize what that something was." He paused and wet his lips.

"You know I love Rebecca, right?" he asked. Dean blinked and nodded uncertainly, obviously startled by the sudden change of subject. "Zach, too. I mean, they were just good friends at first, but —I was so lost, and they took me in, practically made me family. It meant so much to me."

As he listened to Sam speak, Dean came over to the wall and leaned back against it, keeping his face in a careful mask. Sam glanced at him out of the corner of his eye before continuing. "And they did all of this, even though Zach had just lost his girlfriend, and Becky was almost tortured to death. They were the last people to deserve the hell they'd gone through. And I kept thinking, what if things had gone differently, and they hadn't survived?"

Dean shook his head, lost. He let out a little puff of air, sounding like he was trying to speak but wasn't sure what to say. Sam went on before he had the chance. "Then you come along, and I find out you're the one who saved them."

"Now, wait," Dean rushed to protest. "You-"

Sam waved him off, and Dean fell silent. "Then you exorcised my room, and the very next day, you went right after the next hunt." Sam shook his head at the memory. "Just like that."

"So what? It was no big deal, Sam, you know that," Dean replied.

"Yeah, I know it's not a big deal," Sam quickly agreed, and Dean gave him an exasperated, then-what's-the-problem? kind of look. Sam leaned towards him earnestly. "But to Becky and Zach, and to that guy at the lighthouse, and to everyone else we've saved, it is a big deal."

Dean drew in a long, tired breath. "And you got the flowers to prove it, right?"

"Dammit, Dean!" Sam cried, his upper body lurching forward, and a wide-eyed Dean quickly muttered an apology.

"Look, you took away my memories," Sam went on, "And that was absolutely the wrong thing to do-by far the worst thing you have ever done, ever. But..."

Dean listened to Sam without moving, and sometimes Sam hated talking to Dean when he was like that. It made it harder to say things when Dean refused to give any reaction. Sam tried anyway, feeling a desperate need to explain the feelings rushing inside him. "Dean, it gave me a different perspective. I got to see what we do, without all that crap I grew up with, without the anger at Dad, and all the resentment."

Sam was forced to wait as Dean considered his words. "So, what, you liked what you saw? Is that what you're saying?" Dean asked him dubiously.

Sam nodded. "You were right, Dean, we save a lot of lives doing what we do. It is worth it."

Dean let out a dry bark of a laugh as he peeled himself from the wall. "Okay, so what does that mean? You gonna take off, start up a Sam chapter of the Winchester Hunting Association?"

Sam raised his eyebrows, but he didn't get a chance to respond.

"So you boys are hunters?" a new voice asked, and they both turned to see a middle-aged doctor walk into the room. They had to put their conversation on hold, and Sam had to admit, he was relieved for the break.

"Yeah, we are," Sam replied before Dean could.

The doctor nodded and smiled and made small talk before asking Sam questions about his health and well-being. Sam answered dutifully, eager to keep the check-up smooth and quick. The doctor seemed pleased with his progress, giving him bits of information Sam had mostly heard already during previous hospital visits.

As the doctor looked him over, Dean stood in the corner, quietly gazing out of the window. Sam glanced at him once but otherwise gave the doctor his full attention. He couldn't risk disrupting the delicate balance he'd forced his thoughts into.

The doctor soon slipped back out, but Dean didn't move from the window.

Sam studied him for a moment and realized his brother had aged much more than the year they'd been apart.

Watching him, Sam felt his mouth go dry. "Do you regret what you did?" he asked him.

Dean turned to him with a jerk. "Yes. Of course I do," he said thickly. As he moved, the light from the window framed his form and at first Sam couldn't see his face. But then he stepped away and came to Sam's side.

"But I don't regret the results," he admitted, looking down at Sam.

Stung, Sam's eyes flickered and he had to swallow before he could speak. "What do you mean?" he slowly asked, his voice hardening.

"Look, Sam, I know what I did was wrong. It wasn't fair to you, and I had no right," Dean said. "And I know you think you've rediscovered yourself, or hunting, or whatever, but Sam..." He ran a hand through his hair and then let his arm drop to the side. "You were actually happy."

Sam almost snorted, but he managed to stop himself. "How would you know?"

"I saw you," Dean replied. "At the bar. You were with friends, and you were laughing." His face twisted strangely, and his whole body seemed to sag before he let himself drop down into the chair. "I mean, dammit Sam, my whole life I've never heard you laugh like that."

Sam frowned, startled by Dean's words. He had to think back to that night he thought Dean was referring to, when Sam had found him outside throwing up—but that night hadn't been anything special. He thought of that night, and every other night he'd gone out with Becky and her friends, and it took him a while before he figured out what Dean meant.

"Dean, whenever I laughed with my friends..." he trailed off, trying to put his explanation into words. "I was mostly just laughing because I wanted to laugh. I needed to laugh. But it wasn't real, not exactly."

Dean seemed to study him. "But it kinda was, wasn't it?" he pointed out. "I mean, you never even laugh at my jokes. You just roll your eyes and groan."

Sam smiled then. "Dean, I roll my eyes and groan because you're my stupid older brother." Dean huffed with indignation, causing Sam's grin to widen before he turned more serious. "And I do too laugh when I'm with you," he went on. "And when I do, that's real. I don't need to laugh to tell myself I'm fitting in, or that I'm adjusting to life, I laugh because something was honestly funny."

"Oh, come on, Sam," Dean replied, sounding incredulous. "If that were true, you'd laugh every time you looked in the mirror and saw that stupid, shaggy haircut."

Just as he'd said, Sam rolled his eyes, although this time also threw his pillow at him. "You're such a jerk," he said.

Dean grinned and waggled his eyebrows. "Yep. Bet you're glad now, huh?"

"Glad about what?"

"That you didn't have to spend the past year with your big brother."

Sam's good mood instantly vanished. "Dean..." he warned.

"You were happier, weren't you," Dean pressed. stubbornly "You don't owe me anything, especially not now, so just admit it."

"Dean, even if I were-"

Dean held up a hand, cutting him off. "Don't worry, I won't take it as a sign of forgiveness or approval or anything like that. Just admit you were better off."

"No," Sam firmly replied.

He could tell Dean was growing frustrated by the way he lurched forward. "But-just look at yourself!" he exclaimed, gesturing with a wave of his arm.

Sam glanced down and raised his hands helplessly. "What?"

"You're a college graduate now. You can do whatever the hell you want!" Dean told him. "You have choices now, real, honest-to-God options."

Sam shrugged him off irritably, knowing Dean wouldn't let him get by without answering. "Okay, Dean, yes, it helps," he admitted with exasperation. "All right? Having a choice helps."

"See?" Dean cried in triumphant, shoving a finger into the air at Sam. "You got what you wanted! You're halfway to being a lawyer-to having that life you've always dreamed of!"

"That was before-" Sam started to argue, but Dean cut him off.

"Stop being stupid, Sam—just stop being so stubborn. Dammit, you earned this, you deserve to be finally happy! That's all I ever wanted for you!"

Sam stared mutely as Dean railed at him. He felt his jaw clench, and he swallowed forcefully. "No, Dean, you're wrong," he said, steeling his voice. Dean stopped and looked at him, his expression unprepared.

"I wasn't happier," Sam told him.

As his words sunk in, Dean's face suddenly became stricken. "Dammit Sam, you woke up from a nightmare crying!" he burst out.

Sam felt his breath catch, and the memory rushed at him out of control.

"You never cried from nightmares before," Dean went on with a force that pierced through Sam's chest. "Not even over Jessica."

Sam blinked rapidly, holding back the emotions rising recklessly inside him as he forced himself to think. No, he never did wake up crying over Jessica. He didn't cry when he had nightmares of Jessica before her death because he didn't believe they were true. He didn't cry over the nightmares after her death because he'd already mourned her. But he cried that night because he didn't want to mourn Dean as well.

With that realization, he looked back at his brother, keeping his breathing deep and slow. His shoulder was throbbing again and his chest was tight, and he felt like he had to be careful, or else he'd fall apart completely. Dean was watching him, silent and still in his chair, his face now impassive, unmoving.

"Did you like being alone?" Sam asked him.

Dean stiffened at Sam's sudden question, but he quickly composed himself. "That doesn't matter," he said, and his voice was rough but insistent.

"I hated being alone," Sam told him.

Dean's eyes shot towards him in an instant of wild panic.

And then without warning, his face crumpled as he suddenly lost whatever hold he had. And Sam watched, stunned, as his walls collapsed completely right before his eyes, and then Dean ducked from his gaze, his head dropping down with a jerk. His whole upper body curled over his lap, his back hunched and his head hanging almost limply from his shoulders. On the top of his thighs, his hands curled into tight fists, and they slowly came up to press against his eyes. And Sam couldn't see his face, but he could see his shoulders as they started to shake.

"Dean..." Sam said softly, startled to hear the tremble in his voice.

Dean shook his head, refusing to look up. "I hated it, Sam," he admitted with a choke. "I hated what I did to you. I don't-I don't know how much further I could've gone."

"Dean, listen to me."

"I'm so sorry," Dean whispered, struggling between gasps. "I'm so, so sorry..."

"Just listen to me," Sam forced out. His own vision swam, but he managed to keep the tears from falling. And he knew Dean was listening to him, even as he wrestled with the silent sobs his shoulders couldn't seem to restrain. "Everything's going to be all right, Dean," Sam told him, wishing Dean would just look up.

"I'm not going to leave," Sam went on, and his voice finally cracked on him. "I need my big brother, okay?"

That's what he had to live for, and he hated that Dean hadn't been able to see that.

And then Dean did look up at him, his eyes red and wet and swollen, and Sam could see he was struggling to keep his face from crumpling again. Sam sucked in his breath, trying to ignore the pain in his shoulder and chest, deathly afraid he'd miss whatever Dean had to say.

"We really are screwed up, aren't we?" Dean asked.

Sam sagged, his shoulders dropping, and he let out the breath he'd been holding. "Well," he said after a moment, feeling a weak smile tugging at his lips. "General consensus does say we're freaks..."

And just like that, the tension seemed to break around them. Dean snorted wetly, and to Sam's relief, he returned his smile, even if it were only a shadow of Dean's usual smirk. "Well, some things you just can't help," he remarked.

Sam let out a laugh-a wet, shaky sound, but without a doubt a real laugh—and Dean, though he looked slightly stunned, quickly joined in.

It didn't last long, and as soon as it ended, Sam felt a wave of exhaustion flood in its place. He was drained, as tired as he'd ever felt, and that laugh took the last bit of strength he had. But even so, it sparked something inside him. After a year of searching, Sam realized he could finally be Sam again.

OoOOoo

Sam was soon released from the hospital, and the two Winchesters checked into a roadside motel a few miles outside of town. This time it was Sam who was brushing off his brother's help, and Dean was just as stubborn as Sam had been about helping anyway.

They waited for Sam to recover, and Dean remained painstakingly patient as Sam took his time easing back into his former life. They even took a long, slow drive all the way to California to visit the Warrens, at Dean's suggestion.

After a few days at Stanford, Sam found a werewolf sighting in Wyoming. Dean was immediately eager to start, practically bouncing on his heels as they packed up their things - but unlike before, there was a definite lack of desperation in his actions.

As they drove past the city limits, Dean looked over at Sam, hunched over in the passenger side as he studied the articles he'd printed from the Internet. Sam stopped reading, feeling his brother's eyes on him.

"So what about your white picket fence and two-and-a-half kids? Are you really giving that up?" Dean asked him.

Sam shrugged, leaning back against the long-familiar passenger seat. "Who says I have to?" he replied.

Dean cocked an eyebrow at him.

"The future's wide open, Dean," Sam explained easily. He was confident about the road stretching before them. If one day he decided to make hunting a part time gig, or even retire from it completely, he knew that unlike before, he'd make sure his brother was a part of his life in one way or another.

He turned to grin at his Dean. "Heck, who knows-maybe one day I'll find my Buffy."

Dean laughed. "Dude. You could never get a Buffy."

"Sure I could," Sam replied.

"No."

"I'm sorry, did you meet Jessica?"

"Yeah, and she was out of your league, too."

"Yeah, she was," Sam admitted. "But I still got her, didn't I?"

Dean didn't answer, but Sam saw the smile he tried to hide. Sam turned back to the printouts, but after a moment, he found Dean giving him another long look. "What?" Sam asked.

But his brother just shook his head. "Nothing," he said.

And though Sam couldn't read his exact expression, he thought he knew what Dean was thinking.

Things were finally starting to feel all right.

Ramifications from Dean's actions still lingered over them, issues still needed to be hammered out, and Sam knew it would only be a matter of time before they found themselves into another new mess ... that was their luck, their style even.

-But as they raced from the sun setting behind them, Sam wasn't worried.

The End.

***

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