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They’d been prepared for death pretty much their entire lives. They’d dealt it, dodged it, cleaned up after it, and stared it in the eye every morning. Sam had better hands-on practice than Dean... Nebraska came to mind, as did a hospital bed where Dean’s body had arched and flopped in jolts of useless electricity.

 

This movement was entirely different. When the wendigo’s claws caught Dean across the chest, it sent whiplash through the rest of him with its force, limbs convulsing once, hard. His body pinwheeled in the air, feet up over his head, shotgun flying from a lax hand, and then he fell sideways like a gymnast missing the dismount to crash in a heap.

 

Sam did not panic. This was... It was bad. Clearly bad, from the spray of blood that had burst into the air on impact and splattered the ground. This was fatal bad, but fortunately he was well-practiced. The adrenaline of the hunt, anger at Dean for breaking with their attack plan, fear... Everything locked down in an instant to make way for what needed to be done.

 

He shot the wendigo twice in the back with the flare gun, smooth and steady. It howled and stank as it burned; Sam didn’t spare it a sideways glance.

 

-o-

 

Fortunately the wendigo had been encroaching on a new housing development (or maybe that was the other way around). That was bad for all the people that had been snatched out of their back yards, but good for Sam. The hospital was less than twenty minutes away, a far cry from the long trek they’d made the last time they’d dealt with a wendigo. Dean had gotten hurt then too, come to think of it. Maybe they should steer clear of wendigos from now on.

 

Dean was dead in the back seat but Sam didn’t think too much of it. His own hands were cold and shaking as his mental clarity began to fade; he focused his eyes and entire mind on the road ahead, like he could summon the hospital to him.

 

-o-

 

They got Dean’s heart going again, but with far too many tubes. Sam had thought the post-semi-truck-crash hospital had been a nightmare, with plastic shoved down Dean’s throat and in his arms, but that was nothing compared to this. There were...Jesus, they had things going into his chest that they had to fucking stitch in and the oxygen bag was attached to his side, not his mouth.

 

Then they came out and said, “Brain dead.”

 

Fucking brain dead.

 

All the things that Sam had locked down the instant Dean had been hit came clawing back to life and they had to sedate him.

 

-o-

 

He called everyone he knew, cajoling, brow-beating, bargaining, stopping just short of threats. Okay, he did make one.

 

“Cyrani, if you don’t help me,” Sam gritted between his teeth, “I’m gonna find it a different way.” He listened to the soft, sharp intake of her breath and felt sick to his stomach. They both knew what he meant: dark magic, deals with the devil, that sort of thing. It wasn’t that far back to those crossroads.

 

He could do that for Dean. Dean would do it for him, no question, no hesitation. Then Sam remembered how Dean had been after Dad had gone down, the way their father’s sacrifice had burned at Dean, almost burned him to nothing.

 

Sam gripped the phone, shaking. No. Fuckin’ no. Dean wouldn’t survive it.

 

“There is something,” Cyrani answers slowly, unwillingly. “It calls the soul back to the body, but it only works if the body’s still alive.”

 

“He is,” Sam rushed in. “He’s still medically alive.”

 

She snorted harshly. “Western medicine calls people alive right up until you stick them in the ground. Real life ends a lot sooner, Sam. Dean’s body may still be alive, but… he may not be home.” Her Eastern-accented voice softened, tinny over the cell connection. “Even if you go through with this… you gotta be prepared that he may not come back.”

 

The burning thing in the pit of Sam’s stomach turned over, poking him. See? No good. Nothin’ you can do, kiddo. Sam crushed it ruthlessly and answered Cyrani with a steady voice. “He’ll come back. Dean’ll come back.”

 

The for me was silent. There had never been a time in Sam’s life that he ever doubted that: if he called, Dean would answer.

 

-o-

 

Dean didn’t answer. Not the first time and not the second time.

 

It took three tries and by then Sam had burned through most of the night shift, as well as his supplies. He sat at the foot of Dean’s bed not because the ritual demanded that position, but because after the first time, his legs wouldn’t hold him up. The hiss of ventilators and machine beeps went on with regularity; Sam found himself chanting in time to their beats. Practically his whole life had been spent moving in time to Dean.

 

When the machines broke rhythm, Sam did too, howling, “Oh, God,” before running out into the hall for a nurse. The night crew cast bewildered glances at the candles and herbs, the chalk marks on the ground; Sam was in no position to explain it to them and besides, they had a flailing, panic-eyed Dean Winchester to deal with. They deposited Sam in the hallway and he leaned there against the wall, eyes closed, rubbing at the bridge of his nose.

 

They’d need to get moving again, soon. Never mind the weirdo candles and such, he wasn’t sure the credit card he’d given them would hold up for much longer. He’d torn apart the room to find it in the first place; Dean always dealt with the money, kept track of how rubberized the cards got. They’d be okay, though, just needed to get moving. Dean was back, everything was fine. He’d handled it – again, for fuck’s sake – and now they’d skip outta this mountain town and hopefully never come back. Sam had never liked Colorado anyways.

 

From Dean’s room there came a high, thin keening, a sound of pain. Dean had always been a girl about needles, IVs, and anything else that went inside him – heh heh, snickered the Dean in Sam’s head – but this noise was different. This noise hurt.

 

Sam dodged around the corner and elbowed a nurse out of the way. Dean had his hands over his face, IV tube pulled tight, and he was making that awful keening noise through his fingers. He looked so small and pale that it shook Sam. “Dean,” he said loudly, grabbing his brother’s foot. “Dean, it’s okay. We’re okay.”

 

Dean jerked away from his voice and touch, dropping his hands and staring at Sam with wide, tear-filled eyes. “What did you do, Sam?” he whispered, his voice scraped raw by the tubes. “Oh, God. Sam, what did you do?”

 

Sam stared back, stricken by the pain and… and anger in his brother’s face. Dean turned away with a moan and buried his face back in his hands, shoulders jerking as he sobbed – sobbed – like the world had come to an end.

 

The nurse Sam had elbowed apparently believed in backsies, because she nailed him in the side and shut the door behind him. Security escorted him from the building, reminding him about visiting hours and asking how he’d gotten into the ICU in the first place.

 

They’d be twitchy for the rest of the night, so Sam went back to the hotel he’d been staying at for a week. Apparently he’d guessed wrong with that credit card, because his and Dean’s stuff had been taken out of the room and set out in the parking lot beside the Impala. A fine, chilly drizzle had set in and Sam groaned, ducking his head against it as he heaved their sodden bags into the back of the Impala. Everything they owned was drenched, including, fuck, Sam’s laptop. Dad’s journal had survived, only by virtue of its leather cover and Dean’s obsessive devotion: Sam found it wrapped in about half of Dean’s clothes, and if that wasn’t a metaphor for what the hunt meant to Dean, then Sam didn’t know what was.

 

Sam drove back to the hospital and parked outside, then spent another two miserable, shivering hours trying to hang their damp belongings on the seats, from the rearview mirror, anywhere he could. By the time he finished it was nearly light, or would be if the cloud cover would let the sun through.

 

Sam sat behind the wheel, still pretty moist himself, and thought, He was just surprised, that’s all. I did the ritual right, and there wasn’t anything bad about it. Cyrani had assured him of that. Sam thought back to their conversation and suddenly remembered his threat to her. I’ll find it a different way – the crossroads, binding a Reaper, black magic. Jesus, Dean probably thought Sam had done one of those things. The last time he’d miraculously woken up in a hospital, their Dad had made a bargain with the yellow-eyed demon and fucking died twenty minutes later; no wonder Dean had been freaked out last night. He was probably still pretty frantic, thinking Sam had traded his life or soul.

 

Well, Sam could clear all of that right up in… a little more than forty minutes. No problem. He’d go in, explain to Dean that they weren’t gonna have hellhounds on their trail anytime soon, and they’d be back out on the road before anything that was chasing them decided to catch up. Cyrani had cautiously mentioned that the ritual might attract…attention from the spirit world, might draw things to Dean for a while afterwards, which was great seeing as how they already had the demon and all of his children to contend with

 

Sam checked his watch again.

 

-o-

 

The security guard and a couple nurses eyed Sam curiously when he walked in; there were still chalk marks on the floor of Dean’s room. Yeah, best be leaving pretty soon.

 

Dean met his gaze with flat, dull eyes. Sam took a breath and sat down, already talking. “So, I got the ritual from Cyrani. Some Eastern medicine thing…these monks, they used to practice having out-of-body experiences. One of ‘em would get in a coffin and seal it up until he suffocated. Then the others would stand around it and chant to keep the bad spirits away, and to call the dead guy back when the time was up.” Sam smiled, shrugged. “Dunno how they decided who got to go in the coffin. Draw straws? With us, I guess it’s whoever ducks slowest, huh?”

 

Dean took the explanation and dig without comment; his eyes still hadn’t lost their blankness, but Sam knew this look. He sighed and dropped the lighthearted act, leaned forward. “Dean. I didn’t make any freaky deals. I didn’t bargain for you, I didn’t sacrifice a goat’s head or whip out my guide to necromancy…”

 

That made Dean’s eyes go sharp. “You got a guide to necromancy?” he asked, his voice still pitched at a hoarse whisper.

 

Sam paused momentarily, feeling a shiver of relief pass through him, an automatic reaction to Dean’s voice that bordered on Pavlovian. “Kidding, Dean. Jeez, I’m not gonna bring you back as a zombie. And I didn’t trade my immortal soul for yours or anything.” He probably would have, but no need to admit that.

 

Dean’s eyes softened a bit, but still flicked away to the window. Sam shifted in his seat, uncertain: there was still an air of accusation in the room. “We, uh, we’d better get going, man. I dunno how long the credit card’s gonna hold out and we – ”

 

“You shouldn’t have brought me back, Sam,” Dean cut him off with the same harsh whisper. “I didn’t want you to.”

 

It hit Sam like a punch to all the right pressure points, drove all the breath out of him and made his limbs go weak. “What?”

 

Dean met his eyes and the anger was back. “I didn’t want to come back, Sam. You shouldn’t have made me. You didn’t – fuck – you didn’t have the right.” And now Dean was crying again, tears spilling over and slipping down his cheeks; Dean didn’t make any effort to hide or stop them and that was so wrong.

 

Sam felt numb, like it was his body in the ceremonial coffin. “We, uh – ” he choked. “We gotta go, Dean. It’s not safe here. We gotta keep moving.”

 

Dean tore his gaze away again and looked back out the window, shrugging reluctantly. Sam clambered awkwardly to his feet, his limbs coltish and stumbling. He sucked in a breath and locked down as much as he could. “Time to go, okay?” he murmured, gentle but firm.

 

Dean shrugged again and didn’t meet his brother’s eyes.

 

-o-

 

One advantage to their loss of a hotel room was the clean getaway: with everything already loaded into the car (still pretty damp), they simply hopped in and skipped town.

 

Of course there was nothing simple about it. After his outburst in the hospital, Dean clammed up and didn’t say anything more than grunts. The wounds on his chest looked sore but clean; the doctors had pretty much repaired the wendigo-inflicted injuries. It was the prolonged lack of blood supply to the brain that they had been unable to fix and Sam watched his brother out of the corner of his eye, wondering if anything had changed, wondering if there was damage here that even magic couldn’t fix.

 

Wondering what Dean had meant when he said, I didn’t want to come back.

 

He hadn’t been in his right mind, that was all. Nothing to do with brain damage or some kind of death wish, just shock at suddenly being brought back around. It was all too familiar for both of them. Dean stared out at the scenery, didn’t respond to any of Sam’s fumbling attempt at conversation, but he was probably just… getting comfortable again. Sam would be patient. He’d had practice with this: after Nebraska, Dean had been unsteady for a week. And after Dad…

 

They drove for another six hours, winding their way up one side of the Rockies and down over the other until Sam’s eyes blurred and he remembered suddenly that he’d had about six hours of sleep in the last four days, running on the power of adrenaline and panicked fear.

 

A small foothills town afforded a ‘rustic’ lodge and Sam stumbled through getting a room, practically falling asleep on his feet at the counter. It was usually Dean that handled that part, too, and he took another wild guess at which card to use.

 

Dean stood outside and stared up at the moon, the sky, the stars that looked so close this far away from city lights. When Sam came back out of the front office, Dean turned to look at him in the dark. Sam couldn’t see his face, but just for a moment, the moonlight caught on moisture, silent tears.

 

Sam felt that same dizzy breathlessness that he had back at the hospital. Had he done it wrong? Had something gotten lost, some essential part of Dean? Had Dean been too far gone? He’d expected to feel relieved, but instead there was a whole new swirl of anxiety inside him.

 

“What room?” Dean asked, breaking the stillness.

 

Sam jumped and cleared his throat. “Twenty-three.”

 

Dean nodded once and headed down the long row of doors. Sam followed, his mind turning over and over.

 

Inside the room, Dean switched on a low lamp and stood between the beds, his head bowed. The corner of his shirt moved and Sam knew that Dean was lifting the fabric aside, looking at the wounds. He swallowed and averted his eyes, stuffing their haphazard duffle bags into corners before dragging out his laptop. “I killed the wendigo.”

 

“Huh?” Dean grunted without turning.

 

Sam straightened, holding the laptop between his hands. “The wendigo. I killed it after you – went down.”

 

Dean made a faint, disinterested noise in response and moved past Sam into the bathroom without looking at him. Sam sighed and sat down at the small table, switching on a lamp there. “Cyrani said that the ritual might have some aftereffects. Nothing big, but things might be drawn to you right now. She said that it’ll fade.” The laptop made a half-hearted attempt to start up, then died with a fizz; Sam groaned. “Fuck. The laptop’s dead.”

 

“You got a resurrection ritual for that, too?” Dean’s voice drifted out of the bathroom, and it was hard for Sam to tell if he was being sarcastic or not. The tone was off, sounded weird.

 

Sam tried for lighthearted again and answered, “Yeah, it’s called Microsoft. Man, I think this thing’s gone for good.” He closed the lid; they’d stop in the next major city, see if there was any way to save at least part of the computer. He got up and shuffled toward his duffel bag, intent on a shower and sleep, maybe not in that order.

 

When he looked in the bathroom, though, he froze. Dean stood in front of the mirror, his shirt dangling from one hand, staring at himself. At the wounds on his chest, so reminiscent of the cuts the yellow-eyed demon had sliced into him.

 

Thick, soundless tears rolled down Dean’s cheeks. He didn’t move, didn’t hitch his breath or cry out… just a continuous motion of water down each side of his face.

 

Sam moved to the doorway, then stopped, mouth working and hand hovering in midair, not sure what was allowed, what was okay. “Dean. You’re okay. C’mon, man, look at me.”

 

Dean obeyed and Sam got hit again with that edge of anger, but now it was mixed up with a whole lot of what looked like grief. Like loss and sorrow.

 

He gripped the edge of the door. “We’re okay. You’re better, we’re okay. We’re safe.”

 

Dean finally made a noise, drawing in a long, slow jag of breath. “No, Sam, we’re not safe and we’re definitely not fucking okay. I was – dead, okay? Not half-dead or mostly-dead, I was D-E-D dead.” He swiped at his face and looked back at the mirror. “I was gone, Sam. Checked out, and I was – I was…”

 

He trailed off, his eyes wide. They stared into the mirror and back through himself, a million miles away. Sam reached out and touched his shoulder, tentative, but Dean didn’t seem to notice at all.

 

“I can’t remember where,” Dean whispered. “It’s like it was there and now it’s not.” A shudder passed through him but that distant, blurred gaze didn’t waver. “I was done. Everything was gonna be okay.”

 

Sam licked his lips, shaking despite himself. “Dean,” he asked, hushed, “dude, are you talking about… Heaven, or something?”

 

Dean blinked and seemed to come back around a bit. “There weren’t little singing guys with wings and harps, if that’s what you’re thinking. At least… not that I… it wasn’t… I can’t…” He opened and closed his fists helplessly, face twisting in anguish. “Oh, God, it’s going away. I can feel it! It’s right fucking there and I can’t see it anymore!” He gestured in midair, hands open again, palms raised upward. Supplication, asking.

 

Sam couldn’t help it; he reached out and grabbed one of Dean’s hands, the closest one. He fully expected the move to earn him a smack or an elbow, or at least a verbal jab, Leggo, Grabby. Instead Dean’s arms clamped around him tight and sudden, dragging him in close. Sam gaped, raising awkward fingers to Dean’s back, feeling it shake.

 

Against his shoulder, Dean sobbed like everything he’d ever had, ever loved, was dying around him. “It’s fading, Sam. It’s leaving me. It was everything and nothing and it’s fucking gone.”

 

-o-

 

Sam called Cyrani about it and got an audible shrug over the phone. “I told you these things were tricky, Sam. If he was that far gone, then you’re lucky that he came back at all.”

 

Lucky. Somehow Sam doubted that the definition of lucky included Dean waking at all hours of the night to pace around the motel room, stare at himself in the bathroom mirror, or sit at the table scribbling on motel stationary. When Sam poked through the crumpled-up papers the next morning, he couldn’t make heads or tails of it: whole paragraphs had been scrawled out, jumbled words written in the margins, and anything he could read didn’t make sense, anyway. Distance and there was nothing inside of me and moving stillness. What the hell did that even mean?

 

Lucky did not include waking the next morning to find Dean gone; Sam ran straight out of the room in his boxers, heart pounding, convinced something had come back to claim Dean or something. The Impala was gone too, though, so unless Dean really was bound to that car beyond death itself (something Sam had always suspected but never proven), then the reason for his disappearance was far more earthly. Still, it cut under Sam’s skin, made him feel quietly frantic. He ducked back into the room, avoiding the giggles of several teenagers, got dressed, and sat down to wait.

 

After a bit, he got up and started packing; they’d been here for two days and they should get moving on if Cyrani’s warnings were right and things might be coming out of the woodwork. He’d left the door open and when the Impala’s growl drifted in, Sam dropped his bag right on the bed and went to the door, forcing himself not to run.

 

A door closed and Dean came walking towards the room, his head bowed and his hands shoved deep in his pockets. His face when he raised it was troubled; when he saw Sam, it changed into something hard to read… weary, maybe, hesitant, cautious.

 

Well, at least that was better than the anger Sam had seen in his eyes at first. “Where you been?” he inquired, leaning against the doorway and putting his hands in his own pockets, mirroring Dean’s stance out of habit.

 

“Church.” Dean shrugged and smiled halfway, his only acknowledgment of how strange that sounded.

 

“Which, ah, which church?”

 

“A few.” He walked past Sam into the room as he spoke, and grunted at the signs of incomplete packing; he started gathering up his things automatically. “There was a Lutheran joint, some LDS, Catholic… hey, you think we can head to the West Coast? I wanna check out whatever they got. It’s pretty much all Christian around here.”

 

Sam gaped at him. “You… wanna find a religion?”

 

“What? Oh, no, man, hell no. I mean, probably not.” Dean scowled and chucked a rolled-up shirt into his bag. “From what I’ve heard so far, nobody’s got it right. I’m pretty sure I’d know it if I heard it again.”

 

Sam’s heart sank. “Dean, please tell me you’re not going to start a religious war.”

 

“Dude, chill. Though, whew, man, those Lutherans: they do not like having their beliefs challenged. So don’t be surprised if we get a Bible thrown through the window wrapped around a brick.”

 

Sam barked with surprised laughter, relieved to hear a freaking joke, even a lame one. Dean cut a small smile back.

 

Which, of course, was the cue for a wraith to blast through the door and lunge right at Dean. Which was… different, and all kinds of special. Normally, if the weird shit made automatic lunges they went for Sam, specifically his throat.

 

Even more special was Dean’s reaction, which noticeably didn’t include either panic or evasive maneuvers.

 

-o-

 

They turned around and drove west. Sam spent the first half hour shouting himself hoarse; Dean took it silently, sullen, until Sam’s voice started to rasp. “Are you done?”

 

“NO, I’m not fucking done,” Sam gritted out. “I thought we’d gotten past this, but maybe I was wrong? Huh? You still running around with a death wish there, Dean? Wendigo didn’t do the trick, so you stand there and let a wraith take a swipe at you?” Fuck. He could not deal with this. He could not deal with this again.

 

“I shot it, didn’t I? And no, I do not have a death wish, Sam,” Dean snapped back. “What are you even worried about, anyway? If I died, you’d just drag me back, right?”

 

Sam’s mouth snapped shut like a trap. He stared out at the highway ahead as it hurtled toward and passed under them in an endless stream of pavement.

 

Beside him, Dean coughed a sudden laugh, turning away toward the window. “And here I thought I was the one so afraid of being left behind.”

 

Sam looked over and Dean turned back, met his eyes. “What… what the hell does that mean?”

 

Dean’s gaze met his dead-on, unflinching. “I was always so terrified that you’d leave me, y’know that? My whole life… I’ve always been so scared that I wasn’t enough.”

 

They didn’t… say things like this. Never. There’s more, though, of course there’s more. Sam’s skin crawled.

 

“I haven’t got a death wish, Sam. It’s a little late for that; I had one for years and years, hated myself for being so fuckin’ easy for everyone to leave.” He sighed heavily. “Look, I get that you’re freaked, okay? And it’s not like… I don’t care or something, it’s just that it’s hard. It’s hard remembering that this,” he gestures at the car, the world passing them by, Sam, “is supposed to be important. I mean, I know what’s out there, man. And it’s so much fucking bigger and – and deeper than any of this. How’s this supposed to mean anything when I know what comes next?”

 

Sam gripped the wheel tight.

 

-o-

 

It was like a cork had been unplugged and it all came pouring out of Dean’s mouth unfiltered: he wasn’t afraid of anything, to hurt Sam or reveal every jagged, dirty piece of himself that he’d hid away for so long. When they stopped to eat, over the course of one meal Dean revealed that he’d finally forgiven their neighbor, Donny Something-or-Other, that had molested him for six months in Tulsa when he’d been five; that he knew for a fact their father had always thought Sam was somehow part of the reason Mary had been killed; that once this was all over, he was okay, now, with Sam going back to school. “Dude,” he said around a mouthful of fries, wiping his hands, “it’s what you want, right? I get that, you should do it. I mean, in the really long run it’s not gonna matter what you do, but we should make the most of it while we’re here, right?”

 

Sam ducked away to the bathroom, where he splashed water on his face and leaned unsteadily against the sink. On the whole, he kinda preferred a death wish.

 

Okay. They needed a plan. If you haven’t got a plan, then you’re dead in the water, kiddo. The wraith was obviously one of the things that Cyrani had warned about: things drawn to Dean and whatever spiritual residue he’d brought back from the pretty, shiny other side.

 

Fucking other side. Sam drove a hand through his hair, tugging at the tangles until his eyes watered. God, he really wanted Dean to stop talking about it all and wasn’t that just the picture of irony.

 

When Sam emerged from the bathroom, he stood beside the restroom and shivered, staring at his brother. He used to wonder, when he was little, how much of Dean’s love was fear: fear of being left alone. Before he’d even been able to multiply, he’d known that Dean had abandonment issues; he’d picked it apart a hundred times in those long, seemingly endless stretches of adolescent anguish when he’d questioned the very foundations of his life. In those hours of torment and self-doubt, he’d wondered whether Dean actually loved or cared about him all that much, or whether maybe a lot of Dean’s devotion had to do with bone-deep fear.

 

Fear that Dean now lacked. Great. Good for Dean.

 

Sam shivered again. Time to get moving: a wraith in a motel room was one thing, but a crowded restaurant was another matter entirely. His feelings could be sorted out later.

 

-o-

 

‘Later’ seemed to pass them by when they stopped for gas a few hours down the road and things started wandering out of the woods: black man-shaped holes in the world that clustered around Dean. Stock-still next to the Impala, Dean stared at them with wide, intent eyes; he only moved when Sam cried out in pain. One of the shapes had taken exception to Sam’s increasingly frantic efforts to get them away from Dean, and struck out at him with greedy, sucking tendrils. He dodged and they struck his shoulder… well, not so much struck as brushed, but the effect was worse than a couple of bullet holes: pain like a quick nuclear blast, with ground zero at his collarbone and the shockwaves dancing outward along the attached muscles and nerves.

 

Dean’s shout filled in the echoes of Sam’s cry; there were a couple of gunshots that Sam missed out on because his eyes were rolled back in his head and he was pretty sure that he convulsed a few times. Then the thing dropped him and Dean was crouched above, eyes on the convenience store and the five or six blurry faces watching them through the windows.

 

“Alrighty,” Dean said through gritted teeth, “now wait, waaaaaait… let’s pose for our glamour shot here…”

 

Sam shoved up at him with his right hand, breathing through his nose. “Fuck you, Dean. Cocksucker.”

 

Pain colored his tone and Dean looked down sharply, then blinked. His eyes went wide. “Jesus, Sammy. You’re hurt.”

 

No shit, dumbass, Sam wanted to yell, but there was suddenly so much of Dean, HIS Dean, in his brother’s eyes. It unlocked the thick knot in Sam’s chest, further aided by the super-careful way that Dean helped him up, cupping the back of his skull in one gentle palm. “M’okay,” Sam gasped, even as the movement sent bright stars of pain scattering across his eyes like a meteor shower.

 

“Yeah, right, tough guy. God, Sam.” There was blood on Dean’s hands and Sam blinked at it, more focused on the way Dean’s raspy monotone finally broke and went up an octave.

 

They pulled off to the side of the road a few miles down and Dean eased Sam’s shirt up over his head. The wounds in his shoulder looked like blunt trauma, already swollen up in a way that would bruise like hell in the morning. There were two centers where the force had broken skin and those ached like exposed nerves, hurt when the fucking breeze blew air across them.

 

The brief grace period ended. “Why the hell did you do that?” Dean snapped, his fingertips probing the wound’s edges.

 

 “Twenty things headed straight for you and you’re asking why I freaked out?”

 

“They were just curious! Funny, I thought you were the one who advocated shooting second and asking questions first.”

 

“Well it’s not like I could have asked them!”

 

“Why the hell not? Jesus, they all said they weren’t going to hurt us!”

 

Sam stared at him, but Dean bent to his task, preoccupied. Sam hadn’t heard any voices – good, evil, or otherwise – just silent black shapes.

 

-o-

 

John Winchester’s burning face loomed, yellow-eyed death glare. Sam thought, No, no, please no, not this. Part of his brain already knew it was a dream, started pulling free; that didn’t stop the other chunk of his dream-state mind from twisting in panic, writhing away from where his father stood above the bed.

 

Demon, John hissed.

 

No. No, please, anything but this.

 

Use your brain, Sammy. You’re a smart boy, aren’t you? That’s what you left us for, ‘cause you were so much smarter and better. So put it all together. Your mommy, your girlfriend, me, DEAN...you’re a black cloud. Disease.

 

Something sliced in the air and Sam felt his dream-guts tear open; they spilled out over his fumbling hands, and they were black, black, black.

 

No! No. I’m not. I didn’t mean to... He tried to shove the slippery intestines back inside himself but suddenly his hands were bound and he was against a wall. The demon’s children were here, crawling towards him across the floor. They’d get to him, he was bleeding and helpless, yanking at his chains while his guts flopped and wriggled, ALIVE.

 

Dean stood against the far wall, watching the whole thing with detached bemusement and smoking a cigarette. Dean! Sam screamed. Dean, don’t let them get me!

 

Dean took the butt away from his mouth and exhaled a long, slow black cloud. It swirled above his head into a halo. He grinned and winked, took another drag. Gotta fly, Sammy. Use your wings, it’s way easy. Even I could do that.

 

You haven’t got any wings, Sammy, the demon in John Winchester whispered against Sam’s ear as it drove cruel fingers into the cavity that had become Sam’s chest. Sam screamed, more from horror than the vague wash of dream-pain.

 

Dean, he cried again, but when he looked there was nothing but a black cloud where his brother had been.

 

He woke to a hand on his uninjured shoulder and almost took a swing, sleepy-fuzzy brain still convinced of wretched, crawling children. “Easy,” Dean said softly, catching his arm. “You awake?”

 

Sam sucked in a few hard breaths. The movement had jarred his left side, and his shoulder was one hot, angry mess of pain. “Crap. Yeah, I’m awake. I’m fine.”

 

Dean’s soft laugh sounded louder in the quiet room.  “Do I actually have to call bullshit anymore? Or can it just be automatic?” It was said sarcastically, but underneath there was a whole lot of worry and Sam felt another small, guilty stab of relief.

 

He rolled out of bed, away from Dean, and walked into the bathroom. “Gimme a minute.”

 

Behind him, Dean sighed but Sam didn’t give him a chance to question further; he shut the door quietly, flipping on the small light above the sink. His reflection looked sweaty and scared, and Sam swore under his breath as he recalled the nightmare’s details.

 

It wasn’t the first: he’d expected the ones about Dean dying again and Sam being helpless to stop it; less anticipated – and so much worse – were the ones in which he died while Dean stood by and did nothing.

 

-o-

 

Dean frowned at him during breakfast. “We need to talk about this, now.”

 

Sam took a long drink of his orange juice, mentally cursing the gods of irony: how many times had he said that to Dean over the course of their whole damn lives? “Look,” he said, putting his glass down. “There’s nothing to talk about, okay? We just gotta keep moving so weird shit doesn’t catch up to us, or the yellow-eyed demon. We’ll be fine.”

 

“Emotional avoidance is my shtick, Sammy.”

 

Was your shtick, Sam wanted to say. Maybe Dean had developed super powers, too, because he seemed to pick up on that. “I’ve changed,” he went on bluntly, voice back in a monotone. “And you don’t like it. It’s freaking you out.”

 

Sam fidgeted his legs underneath the table. “You’ll be fine. This’ll fade and then you’ll be okay.”

 

Dean was already shaking his head. “You keep saying that. You think I want to go back to the way I was? Terrified all the time?”

 

Sam stared. “All the time?”

 

“Always, Sammy.” Dean rubbed a hand over his face. “I may not remember exactly what’s out there, but I know enough to know that the way I was before? Was severely fucked. I get that now, okay? And I don’t… I don’t know how to make it easier for you. Everything here is just so – God, so messed up.”

 

Sam looked around the restaurant, picked at little flecks of food on the table. “Do you wish I’d never brought you back?” he asked in a voice that sounded small to his own ears.

 

Their waitress dropped a glass two tables down and it shattered on the floor. New customers came in. The lump of fear inside Sam’s chest changed to terror to horror to pain, growing until it felt like a cement block; he kept his gaze fixed on Dean’s plate, the eggs benedict, the hash browns. In his peripheral vision he could see Dean staring out the window, brow furrowed, a million miles away in his thoughts. Unreachable.

 

Dean took a breath and Sam cut him off, didn’t want to hear it. Couldn’t bear it. “We’d better get going. Not safe to stay in one place for too long.”

 

He was already up, moving for the door. The concrete block currently embedded in his lungs was awful to move and his shoulder felt like it had been washed in gasoline and dried with a match, but all that was far preferable to staying behind and listening to Dean tear apart the only life he had.

 

-o-

 

They headed out to the west coast, chasing Dean’s curiosity: he checked out a couple of Buddhist temples in San Francisco while Sam stayed back at the hotel room. Sam certainly wasn’t going to wander around the city, not if they had two sets of supernatural pursuers. At least Dean’s were only harmful half the time; Sam thought of the yellow-eyed demon and the Dean-shaped hole at his back, and laid a double line of salt across the closed door.

 

The ceiling stared back at him in the dark; he didn’t want to sleep without Dean to wake him.

 

He couldn’t… send Dean back. Even if there was a reversal, everything in him shied away from the thought. Whatever glorious thing Dean had discovered out there, Sam knew he wouldn’t survive the break and the blind selfishness of that made him shudder with self-loathing.

 

It had never been a question, before. Even at Stanford, it had been an option: at the bottom of his bag, the end of his rope, there was always Dean. He’d left home to be on his own, but he’d never actually been alone. It had never once occurred to him, even after leaving home and brutally severing ties, that Dean wouldn’t drop everything and race to wherever Sam was if Sam truly needed it.

 

Sam had never before realized the depths of his own hypocrisy.

 

He’d existed perpetually in Dean’s shadow, hemmed in and guarded. The center of the world for Dean – little brother, son, friend, ward, protégé, partner. And Sam had gotten used to it, gotten so that it was all he knew. It was completely, monstrously unfair – and yes, oh so very selfish – to expect that all-consuming love would never find its end.

 

Without it, he was hopelessly out of orbit, wobbling and plummeting.

 

His chest felt tight and Sam rubbed at it absently, pulling his thoughts back and tiptoeing around the edges, trying to sneak past. If he could keep them moving… maybe the thing inside Dean would fade. And then what? Let him go back to being miserable and afraid? Jesus, no: he wasn’t a complete jackass, he wanted his brother to be happy. Had always wanted it, even when he was little. Before he’d even been able to read, he’d understood the monumental debt that he owed Dean. He hadn’t learned bow-hunting because their father showed him… that was the how, but not the why. He’d done it and all the other menial tasks to earn his brother’s smiles, to earn that debt of devotion.. He hadn’t understood until well into his teens that it would never, could never, be paid. He’d left home partly to escape the guilt of that.

 

It was a guilt not dissimilar to the one that plagued him now. Apparently he wasn’t satisfied with owning Dean’s life, he had to disrupt his death, too. Sam gritted his teeth and swiped angrily at his eyes, feeling tears leak down over his temples. The tightness in his chest grew.

 

-o-

 

When he woke up in the hospital the tightness had spread to his throat and there was a doctor above him, jabbing something down through his closed airways. Oxygen speared outward through his pain-hot organs and Sam’s body released its spasm.

 

-o-

 

The things back at the gas station had poisoned him, somehow. The wounds had gotten infected overnight and Sam’s heart had done the rest, pumping the slow-moving toxin through his bloodstream for a whole week. The room swam around him and he felt like his body was burning, burning, burning black. Black cloud, black Death, following him everywhere and he’d never be free, he’d never be safe.

 

When they let Dean in to see him, Sam howled, “You’re not him. I want him back.”

 

Dean stared at him, wide-eyed and dumb.

 

-o-

 

Dean busted him out of the hospital a couple of days later, turning the Impala east again. They were a regular tennis match, bouncing between east and west, the birth of the sun and its death.

 

At a gas station, Sam waited until Dean went inside to pay, then staggered out of the car. He stank of putrid sweat as poison oozed out of his pores. His limbs wobbled and his head swam, but Sam stumbled around to the driver’s side to climb behind the wheel. He gunned it.

 

Dean ran out in front of the car and not even drug and fever-induced panic could shake Sam’s instincts there; he threw on the brakes. The bumper connected hard enough with Dean’s legs that he stumbled backwards, but his gaze still bored into Sam, furious and terrified.

 

The fear was what caught at Sam, kept him still long enough for Dean to scramble for the passenger’s side. “What the fuck, Sam?” Dean bellowed, reaching across.

 

Sam floored the pedal again and Dean flopped backward against the seat. He almost slid sideways out the door, but managed to haul himself in and shut it up just as they hit the highway pavement, swerving and skidding.

 

“Sam.” Dean gripped the dashboard. “Stop the fucking car.”

 

“Don’t touch me,” Sam spat, flinching away from Dean’s hands. He could see the black cloud, hanging over Dean. Blinding, refracted light from the sun, but he wasn’t going to get fooled again. There was still fear in Dean’s eyes and something in Sam’s gut tightened in a pleased, unpleasant way. “I know you. You’re not him. Give him back.”

 

“Jesus fucking Christ, Sam, have you gone batshit? Stop – ”

 

“Dean protects me. Dean wouldn’t leave me.” Sam ran out of oxygen on the last two words, like the air had been sucked right out. The car swerved wildly.

 

Dean reached out and grabbed at the wheel, but Sam didn’t even bother glancing out the windshield, just kept his foot on the gas. “You keep dying,” Sam choked, heaving air into his battered lungs. “You were always so afraid, but I never left you. Never really left. You’re the one. You keep dying and I can’t…” He squeezed his eyes shut, not caring that they were well at well over 40 mph now and Dean was cursing a blue streak, yanking at Sam’s leg. “Everyone keeps dying.”

 

“Sam, we’re gonna fucking die if you don’t let go of the fucking gas pedal.”

 

A little hysterical bubble of laughter burst in Sam’s throat. “Oh, man. Should I aim for a phone pole? Maybe a bridge, yeah, a bridge. Then you can go back out there where it’s so much better, right, Dean?” The trees on either side of the road moved, raising waving arms to the sky and Sam imagined plowing into one. “I know that’s what you really want. You do, don’t fucking lie to me.”

 

Dean hauled off and kicked his leg, budging it free of the gas pedal. Yanked up on the emergency brake. The wheel spun and so did the car. Sam’s head connected solidly with the driver’s window and he blacked out.

 

-o-

 

Sam woke up shivering. The painkillers still coursed through him, but more than that, he was cold to the bone. The side of his head ached and when he raised numb-fuzzy fingers, there was a neat little bandage laid over his temple. His shoulder twinged and throbbed, and his stomach growled with hunger. Oh yeah. Being alive sure is fun.

 

Maybe Dean had it right.

 

He curled up into himself, balanced awkwardly on his hip and uninjured shoulder, and listened to the empty sounds of the room. Kept his eyes shut; he didn’t want to actually see if Dean’s duffel bag was gone, or worse, was still there along with a note. Gone back to the Great Beyond, don’t call ‘cause I won’t come.

 

A breeze blew across his bare toes; that got his attention. The door was wide fucking open, no salt line, nothing to protect him. Christ, any damn thing could walk in here and attack him. Sam rolled upright, ignoring the flurry of protesting muscles and firing synapses that all flashed ‘PAIN’ at his brain.

 

Dean sat outside, twisted around to look back at him. Sam gripped the door, frozen in the motion of slamming it shut in Dean’s face.

 

“I’m sorry,” Dean said thickly. “I’m… I shoulda looked at your shoulder. Sorry.”

 

Sam let go of the door and stood swaying in the threshold. He registered the metaphor distantly, but really didn’t have the energy to examine it. He had only enough strength to get to his brother’s side, staggering out to slump down beside him.

 

And if that wasn’t a description of their entire lives, nothing was.

 

They sat with their knees drawn up and shoulders tipped toward one another, mirror images, the same and opposite. The pavement stretching out in front of them looked like the sea, waving and rippling; Sam closed his eyes and fought down the nausea, desperate to hold on to this moment, frightened that it might not come again.

 

Finally he screwed up every pebble of courage to ask, “Do you wish I hadn’t brought you back?”

 

He couldn’t see Dean’s face, it was lost in the sun. Sam bit his lip; the backs of his eyelids glowed red.

 

 “Sam,” Dean said quietly, “you almost killed us both today. You almost wrecked my car. So right now, you get to go first. What the fuck was that?”

 

Sam’s throat closed off, though from emotion rather than poison this time.

 

“I’m…” he finally gasped. “I’m a disease. I’m a curse. Everybody dies and I’ll never be safe.” When one of Dean’s hands shifted up to touch his shoulder, Sam jumped, but struggled on. “Y-you said that you’d always been scared. Well, me too, Dean. I’ve been scared as long as I can remember.” There was no way he could do this with Dean watching him. It hurt too much. He imagined he was sitting there alone, that Dean actually was dead and the hand on his arm was just memory, or a ghost.

 

“You were safe,” Sam whispered miserably to the empty air. “It was like, the one thing I could count on. I never knew where we were gonna be living in three months, I never knew when you or Dad were gonna get… ripped up by something, I don’t even know what I am anymore, Dean.” He sucked in a pained breath, felt his head throb in time to his heartbeat. “But… I knew that – that you’d… care more about me than anything else. That you’d put me first and I know how selfish that is.” Another gasping breath, this one hitching around the clenching pain underneath his sternum. No poison this time, or if there was, it came entirely from himself.

 

At length he turned his face to Dean without opening his eyes. “Your turn.”

 

Dean’s hand moved away, but a second later his shoulder connected with Sam’s, slow leaning that gave Sam time to right himself and lean back rather than be pushed over. Dean was the one thing that could flatten Sam, and the reverse had always been true as well.

 

If they both pushed, though, the stalemate held them up. Held them together, and Sam suddenly wished he hadn’t asked the question.

 

Dean was already answering. “I did, at first. I didn’t want to be here. I… Jesus, Sam, I wasn’t afraid. Can you imagine that? Like, all of this, everything, it was all just gone and everything was gonna be okay.”

 

Sam opened his eyes and looked out into the evening air; the night bugs had begun their chorus from the bushes that hedged the parking lot. “Wow,” he whispered, genuinely awed.

 

“Yeah.” Dean rocked against his shoulder, a little nudge. Sam nudged back, habit and practice. “It wasn’t like I stopped caring, Sam. I just forgot how to care. It’s still like… like everything’s a foreign language. I knew, just for a second, what comes after and that was all I had to know.”

 

It wasn’t an answer but Sam was so far beyond caring that it didn’t matter.

 

They sat until the light failed and Sam heard the first high drone of a mosquito around his ear. “Dude,” he said, a little too loudly and way too grateful for the excuse. “We’re gonna get chewed up.”

 

Dean huffed a laugh, low and tired. “Our luck, they’d all have the West Nile virus. That’d be perfect: the Winchesters survive demons, ghosts, poltergeists, and wendigos, only to be taken down by bloodsucking bugs.”

 

Getting upright meant breaking the contact and a bit of fear squirmed again in Sam’s chest, a little worm of uncertainty. He could take it, though, he’d keep it to himself. They’d both had about all the emotional breaking that either of them could handle; they could break down completely, but only one at a time. Simultaneous emotional fuck-uppery was really never a good idea.

 

Dean shut the door with a curse to ward off the insect pursuit, effectively cutting the light as well. Sam’s eyes were still sleep-oriented and he listened with a faint smile as Dean stumbled into one of the chairs.

 

He didn’t expect Dean to suddenly ask in the darkness, “If I go down again, are you gonna try to drag me back?”

 

Sam stilled. From the lack of further stumbling, Dean had, too. “If,” he said after a moment, painfully uncertain, for a moment, what he would say. Afraid to say it, to promise something that he wouldn’t have it in him to do. There were no atheists in the trenches. “If you want me to.”

 

Dean paused, but only for a second. “I wanna die for something, Sam. And considering that I’ve got pretty much nothing else, that means you.”

 

Some awful knot in Sam’s chest went lax all at once and he sat down hard on the edge of the bed, muscles quivering from the suddenness of their release. Dean must have heard it because he shuffled over and poked Sam’s shoulder. “If you do something like that to my car, though, then you’ll get to see the Great Beyond yourself, you little bitch.”

 

Sam laughed weakly, hoarse. Dean bumped Sam’s face blindly with the back of his hand and headed for the bathroom.

 

When he flicked on the bathroom light, Sam spoke up. “That’s a catch-22, y’know.”

 

“What?” There was light at Dean’s back, white and gold, but his face was turned to Sam.

 

“You only want to die if you’re dying to save me,” Sam explained, “but if you weren’t around, I wouldn’t make it. It’s a catch-22.”

 

Dean considered that, pursing his lips. “Well,” he said, and smiled. “I guess you’ve got your answer.”

 

He went inside and closed the door. Sam flopped back in the bed, his eyes squeezed shut. “Thank you,” he whispered to the ceiling. “Thank you.”

 

-o-

 

Sam slept for hours and hours, and though it was not entirely dreamless, he was not afraid to wake.