Dean knew, when he saw Sam's face.
He forced himself to ask anyway, just in case he was wrong.
"You got 'em out?"
"Only Bobby." Sam answered.
For a moment, Dean forgot all about the trials, the reason the whole Hell-by-way-of-Purgatory trip had even been necessary.
"What? I mean, that's fantastic about Bobby." He recovered, focusing on the successful completion of the hardest part of the mission, looked away, and tried to get his emotions in check.
"Dean, look … " Sam persisted. "Benny, uh ... He got us out. A bunch of vamps showed, and he used himself as bait. I get the feeling that even if that didn't happen, he didn't want to come back, you know? I'm sorry."
Dean nodded, and once again shifted the conversation back to Bobby, because Sam had not gotten the hint the first time.
They released Bobby's soul to Heaven, with minor disruptions in the process from Crowley and Naomi.
When Dean said they needed to detour through Louisiana on the way to check on Kevin, Sam looked at him oddly.
"I'm taking Benny home." Dean explained.
"Ok," Sam agreed, and that was the end of the conversation.
They arrived in Clayton late the next night. Sam had fallen into a fitful sleep with his head against the window after coughing up blood at least six times in the past two days.
Dean didn't wake him, just shut off the car while leaving the lights on and pointed toward the area where he was going to be working.
He paced off from the old windmill, although he could spot the place where the vegetation hadn't quite grown back, where the earth had been disturbed only a few months before.
He dug up the grave again, digging it a foot deeper this time so that wild animals wouldn't disturb the body he was about to put there.
Once the plot was ready, Dean returned to the car. After checking that Sam was still asleep but yet still breathing, he removed the blanket wrapped body from the trunk.
He lowered Benny's form into the ground, tossing the first inch of dirt on top by hand before taking up the shovel to finish the job. He packed the ground down as hard as possible, and found a few stones to place on top to keep scavengers away.
He returned to the Impala, opened the trunk, and retrieved the cross he had formed from a couple scraps of 2x4 found behind Home Depot last night. He used the handle of the shovel to hammer the homemade memorial into the ground at the head of the grave.
With the job completed, he stood back for a moment before whispering a farewell.
Dean turned and made his way back to the car, stowing the shovel in the trunk. He got behind the wheel, started the car, and backed away.
Sam pretended to wake up just about the time they reached the main road. Dean had known he was awake when he walked past on the way to get the cross. They'd spent too many years together not to know when the other was faking sleep.
Dean also knew that Sam realized this was something Dean had to do, and pretending to sleep through Benny's burial had saved them both from going through the motions of an awkward emotional scene.
"You okay?" Dean asked, as Sam yawned and stretched.
"Yeah, I'll live." Sam mumbled.
"I buried Benny," Dean informed him, as if Sam hadn't known. "But I didn't burn his bones. After he said he'd try to get you out of there, it just didn't seem right. I know you got no use for him, but … "
Sam shook his head. "No, no, no. You know what? I get it. I do. He's a ... he's a little different from what I thought. So, go ahead and leave the door open if you want."
"You sure?" Dean raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah. We both owe him." Sam stared out the windshield at the road ahead. "And I was wrong to ask you … "
"Sam," Dean spoke sharply in warning. "It's over and done. We're not going to talk about it."
Sam nodded.
"Now, we'd better get back and check on our prophet." Dean continued.
They drove through the night to Missouri, to find Kevin gone. They tried to call Garth, who didn't answer, and then decided to call it a night and find a motel, as Dean was barely functional by that point.
When Sam woke the next morning, Dean was sitting at the table with a book. He tossed it onto the dresser when he noticed Sam was awake.
"Just seeing if I could find anything in the lore." Dean muttered. "You believe the Gideons actually left Bibles in this dump?" He stood and crossed the room to grab a few things out of his duffle. "I'm gonna get a shower."
Sam frowned at the door for several minutes before retrieving the Bible Dean had thrown away. It was almost new, so it wasn't hard to find the only creased page and figure out what Dean had been reading.
The fifteenth chapter of the book of John.
It was months later before Sam was able to make his way to the abandoned farm in Louisiana alone. It took a few minutes to locate the grave, as he had kept his head down and his eyes mostly closed while pretending to sleep that night.
The wooden cross still stood, slightly crooked now where it had been loosened by a heavy rain.
"Thank you," he whispered to the monument.
There was only a nickname – Benny – rather than Benjamin Franklin Lafitte, and no dates, of course, because how would you list the dates for someone who technically lived twice?
Underneath the name, Sam had intended to carve a word and numbers, but they were already there.
John 15:13.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.