Title: Carry On

Author: The Forgotten Scribe

Rating: T

Pairings: None, although it could be read as Wincest if you want to see it that way. (Totally cool with me.)

Description: This is my headcanon explanation for why Sam didn't look for Dean when he was in Purgatory. I personally thought that the whole Sam-hits-a-dog-and-falls-in-love arc was, by far, the weakest part of Season 8, and that his motivation for abandoning Dean didn't make any sense character-wise. This is how I chose to justify it.

Warnings: Trigger warning for self-harm (specifically cutting) and attempted suicide. Also, if you're one of the few fans who actually liked the Sam/Amelia pairing, you probably won't be pleased by my treatment of it here.

Spoilers: Seasons 1-8.

CARRY ON

At first, it was like taking a shotgun blast to the chest.

Watching Dean and Castiel disappear literally right in front of him, whisked off to God-knows-where and leaving nothing behind, not a single clue…

It was the worst-case scenario, the outcome Sam had barely let himself imagine when they'd come after Dick Roman for what they both hoped would be the last time. His brother, gone, and no way Sam knew of getting him back.

He barely even noticed when Crowley disappeared with Kevin. Everything else had abruptly ceased to matter. Sam stood there for what felt like hours, arms hanging limply at his sides, just staring and staring and staring at the empty room.

If he waited long enough, maybe Dean would just pop back into existence. He'd shake his head and swear, with that rakish grin on his face, and say something like, well, Sam, looks like we ganked that son of a bitch once and for all. Time for a good old-fashioned Winchester victory celebration, eh Sammy?

But nothing happened. The only sound in the room was Sam's own ragged breathing and pounding heartbeat. No Dick Roman, no Crowley, no Castiel, and no Dean.

What had Crowley said, just before he vanished? That Sam was completely and truly alone? The thought was too white-hot to touch, the notion that Crowley might be right. That this was it. He was finally on his own.

The long series of losses that had led him here… his mother, Jessica, his father, Bobby… it had all culminated in one final blow. Castiel and Dean, the last people on earth who mattered to him, were gone. His brother and his brother's angel. There was nobody now, absolutely no one left.

I'll bring him back. Sam didn't know when the thought first entered his head, but once it did it stuck there, flashing at him over and over again like a flickering neon sign. Find a way to bring him back. There has to be a way. There's always a way.

But somehow… he knew he couldn't fool himself. Not this time. And if he cared to think about it, he never had been able to save Dean, had he? When his brother had gone to hell, Sam had tried everything to bring him back, and in the end all his efforts were useless. It had taken Heaven itself to do what Sam couldn't. And that time Sam had known exactly where Dean was. Now he had no clue, no leads, no Bobby to call and ask for help, no angels or demons to bargain with.

This was it. The end of the line. The entire world was as bare and empty as this room, with no answers and no way to find his brother. It was over.

Hours later, after he slid robotically into the driver's seat of the Impala, drove without thinking to the nearest motel, booked himself a room with two single beds out of sheer habit, and locked himself in the bathroom, Sam realized that he was wrong.

This wasn't the end, and Dean wasn't gone forever, because this wasn't really happening.

It was all in his head, a nightmare of his own design. Or, rather, Lucifer's.

Ever since that mental hospital where he had nearly died, where Cas had taken on the burden and death sentence of Sam's insanity, Sam had suspected deep down that it wasn't really over. He never got off that easy, not ever. It couldn't simply be a matter of transferring his madness to somebody else; that was too quick and painless to make any sense.

And for it to be Cas of all people, Castiel, who was supposed to be dead and had made a miraculous comeback just in time to save Sam's life… It smelled far too much like a deus ex machina.

So if Castiel had never really saved him, and was in fact still dead like he was supposed to be, that meant everything Sam remembered since the psych ward was just a dream, an extended vision that Lucifer had crafted for his own amusement. Lucifer not appearing to him anymore, Dean's assurances that Sam was all right now, that Cas had cured him…

It was all just part of Lucifer's game.

Which meant that Sam was still lying in that psych ward, sick in the head and maybe dying, and none of this had ever really happened. Dean was still alive somewhere on the outside, probably frantically searching for a way to cure Sam of his insanity. That meant Cas was still dead, yes, which was terrible of course, but outweighed by the fact that Dean was alive.

Standing in front of the bathroom sink, Sam let out a choked noise that was half gasp and half relieved laughter, and let his forehead rest against the cool mirror for a few moments.

Dean was alive. It was all a nightmare, a terrible dream, and his brother was still alive.

And it made sense, it really did, for Dean to disappear like this in his dream. Dean had always been the weak point in any of Lucifer's plots, all the way from the apocalypse to his presence in Sam's mind. Dean was the one who could snap Sam back to reality, show him the difference between dreams and what was real, keep him safe and sane. Even dream-Dean might have been able to eventually convince Sam that this wasn't real, which was why Lucifer had gotten him out of the way.

And it was the best way of hurting Sam, too, to take his brother away from him with no way of getting him back.

Dean might be Sam's greatest weakness, but he was also his strength.

"The jig is up, Lucifer," Sam told himself in the mirror, watching his own face contort into a crooked smile. "I know what this is. It's just another of your tricks. But it can't go on forever. Dean's going to find a way to fix me."

He waited, half-expecting Lucifer to appear in the bathroom with him, but minutes passed and nothing happened. Sam was still alone. But that, too, made sense. Lucifer wasn't done playing with him. He was going to milk this for all it was worth, try to sow doubt in Sam's broken mind.

"You tipped your hand, you know. Making Dean disappear. That was always your tactic, wasn't it? Trying to split us up. First with Ruby, then you and Michael and your one-true-vessel bullshit, and trying to convince me that he wasn't real. You can't keep playing the same trick and expect me to believe it every time. I'm not that stupid."

It briefly occurred to Sam that if anyone saw him here like this, talking to himself in a mirror, they would think he really was insane. The thought made him laugh out loud, the noise raspy and just a tad unhinged. Well, he was insane, and anyone who saw him doing this would just be another figment of his imagination, so it wouldn't matter anyway.

"That's okay. Come out or don't, I don't care. I can wait. If I've survived this long, then I can keep going until Dean finds a way to cure me."

Silence. But Sam refused to let himself doubt. No more doubt. After all they had gone through, it was time he finally started trusting his brother again. Dean wouldn't leave him. Dean would save him from this nightmare as soon as he found a way. All he had to do was wait and maintain his disbelief in the illusion; Dean would do the rest.

"Hear me, Lucifer? You're trapped in that cage and you can't hurt me anymore. Once Dean gets me out, everything will be all right."

He repeated it one more time, for himself this time, just so he could hear it again.

"Everything… will be all right."

Weeks passed. With increasing desperation, Sam did the math. If the dream had started when he was hospitalized, that meant that it had lasted for at least four months before they had gone after Dick Roman and Dean had vanished. Unless time flowed differently in the dream, Sam had been lying unconscious in a psych ward for over four months now. Why was it taking so long for Dean to find a cure?

Sam had continued to halfheartedly live out the dream, reasoning that he might as well keep himself occupied while he waited to wake up. He drove from motel to motel, visiting every state at least once. He spent most of his nights locked in a motel room, always booking a room with two beds, drinking Dean's favorite beer and watching football while cleaning Dean's guns. He didn't take any more jobs; neither the monsters nor the people who needed saving were real anyway, so why waste the effort? He kept his phones turned off for the same reasons; no point in talking to any fake people who might end up drawing him deeper into the illusion.

"Come on, Dean," he told an empty room almost every night. "You need me out there. Just find a damn cure already and get me the hell out of here."

What were the Leviathans doing in the real world? Maybe that was why Dean was taking so long; maybe he had put Sam's cure on hold until he finished dealing with the Leviathan threat. It wasn't like Dean, but losing Cas and Bobby and being on the verge of losing Sam had no doubt done a number on Dean's own mental stability. Sam felt terrible for leaving him out there all on his own, but at the same time he was jealous. At least Dean could visit him in the psych ward, or wherever he was now, and reassure himself that he still had a brother. In this bleak dream world, Sam had nothing, not even a fake Dean to drive the fake Impala and work fake cases together.

"This is boring," he said for Lucifer's benefit. The archangel had to be listening, anyway; this was for his entertainment, of course he had to be paying attention. "Same old thing every day. You know, if you brought Dean back, we'd both be more entertained."

Sam kept his interaction with the people in this dream world to a minimum. The only social contact he had was booking rooms, buying beer, ordering pizza, and cheating at pool. People gave him strange looks; some of them, mostly women, asked if he was all right. A friendly girl working the cash register at a convenience store in Salem offered to take him out for a drink and listen to his troubles. Sam turned her down, none-too-politely; that must be Lucifer's idea of a joke, or maybe even a peace offering, giving him a pretty girl to talk to and maybe spend the night with.

"I don't want some girl," Sam told the ceiling firmly as he lay on his back on the bed closest to the motel room door. He had laid out Dean's guns and clothes on the other bed; they made the room smell like him. "I'd like my brother back, if it's not too much trouble. Just until I wake up."

Lucifer didn't reply. He never did. But Sam knew he was there. He had to be. And one day, this sick game would be over, and Lucifer would really be gone for good.

By the time he hit the dog with the Impala, Sam was well and truly bored. It had been three months since dream-Dean and dream-Castiel had disappeared and he'd realized he was living a lie. In that time, he had slept in a different motel in a different state every night, filling his days with Dean's beer and Dean's music in an effort to keep himself grounded to the real world, talking to nobody.

Hitting the dog was the first new thing that had happened for a while. It even made him feel real shock and concern, for a while, at least until he remembered that the dog wasn't real and he had no reason to feel guilty about it. He still took the dog to a clinic, though, since he had nothing better to do, and he made a good show of acting upset. His lying abilities had really come a long way since the days when he'd struggled to tell grieving civilians some mundane story to explain their loss, stories without monsters or demons. Dean would be proud.

And when he met Amelia… well, he was bored enough by then to figure that hey, maybe he'd feel better if he hooked up with some dream-lady until Dean got his act together and threw him a lifeline. At least it would pass the time.

He went through all the motions, spinning his sob story and listening to hers, feigning empathy and eventually even affection. To be honest, most days he preferred the dog's company to Amelia's. At least he didn't have to pretend to like the dog.

And if he slipped up and fake-Amelia saw the cracks in his façade sometimes, little chinks that showed through to the numbness beneath, so what? It didn't matter. She wasn't real anyway.

Six months in, it all came to a head, and Sam snapped.

He didn't even know why. It was all just suddenly too much. He had been stuck in a nightmare for almost a full year now, Dean was clearly sitting on his hands and being absolutely useless out there, he had to keep up this stupid fake relationship with a fake veterinarian in a fake dream-world, and he suddenly couldn't take another minute of this.

He still had a scar on his hand, but it didn't hurt anymore, not even when he really dug his fingers in. Dean's stitches had healed too well. But the principle was the same; if pain had chased away the visions before, pain could do it again now. All Sam had to do was cause enough of it to break the nightmare, and then he could go back to the real world. Back to Dean.

So while Amelia was away at work, Sam locked himself in the bathroom of the apartment they shared now and took out one of Dean's old hunting knives. The edge was still sharp, he'd maintained every weapon Dean owned, kept the guns and knives clean and in working order. It would do just fine.

He started with his hand. Pressing the tip of the knife to the spot where the old scar began, between his thumb and forefinger, he increased pressure until the blade bit deep and blood began to well up. Dark droplets hit the bathroom tiles as he opened up the entire length of the scar, pausing when he was done to admire his work. Hot pain pulsed through his hand, but he knew somehow that it wasn't enough; he'd endured so much physical pain over his lifetime that it would take a lot more to snap him out of this vision.

Drip. There was a pool of blood forming on the bathroom floor, but Sam hardly noticed.

He put the knife to his wrist, remembering the times in his adolescence when he had considered doing this for very different reasons, and the one memorable instance where Dean had actually caught him with the knife in his hand. He had never actually done it, always pushing down the impulse at the last moment, and Dean's shouting and swearing had sealed the deal.

Don't tell me you need to hurt yourself to fix this, Dean had yelled, holding Sam's shoulders so tight his fingers had left bruises that didn't fade for weeks. You get beat up every time we go on a hunt. You think more pain is going to help? Don't be stupid, Sammy, and don't you even think about hurting yourself. Ever.

"Desperate times," Sam muttered to himself, picturing how upset Dean would be if he could see him now. Well, if Dean had his act together, he would be cured by now and wouldn't have to resort to this.

The knife made a squelching noise as he slid it along the length of his forearm, opening up a long, deep wound that began to spill over immediately. Pain lanced up his arm all the way to his shoulder, and Sam actually let out a groan at how much it hurt, but it still wasn't enough. Nothing was changing.

Drip. Drip. The blood was a steady stream now. If this was the real world, Sam would be worried. But it wasn't, and hey, maybe dying here would snap him out of it anyway. He wasn't quite ready to resort to that just yet, but if it came to it…

He opened up another cut. His hand was starting to shake now; it was getting difficult to hold the blade steady. The world was starting to flicker at the edges; was that a good thing? Was it the illusion starting to break, or just his vision going fuzzy?

He hadn't felt so much pain since… well, not for a long time. Not since his hunting days. This should be working. Why wasn't it working?

The knife slipped from his trembling hand and fell to the floor, but Sam didn't hear it make a noise. He couldn't hear anything now but the blood rushing in his ears. The sight of the long, ugly wounds on his arm was starting to make him feel sick. He couldn't remember ever having bled quite this much. Dean would be furious that he had done this to himself. Dean…

"Sam!" The scream barely broke through the deafening sound of his own pulse beating in his ears. He realized that at some point he had fallen to the ground and one side of his face was sticky with his own blood. He saw, with the last flickering glimpses of his fading vision, brown hair.

Dean.

Suicide attempt. That's what they called it. Later, when he was allowed to go back to the apartment after the required twenty-four hours of observation and a referral to a professional psychiatrist, Amelia sat him down and begged him to talk about it. "I never knew it was this bad," she said through tears, as Sam stared at her. "I knew you missed your brother but I never knew… Oh God Sam, why didn't you tell me? Sam?"

"I'm sorry," he said neutrally.

"If I hadn't… Richard, across the hall. He heard the dog barking like mad and figured something was wrong. He called me at work. I came home and you were almost…"

Amelia shuddered like she'd brushed up against something rotten and disgusting.

"God, Sam, can't you tell me what's wrong? Can't you tell me what's going on with you? Don't you think I deserve that much?"

"I wasn't trying to kill myself," he said, deadpan.

It was true. Killing himself had been a possibility, sure, but he hadn't meant to let it go that far. All that cutting should have worked. It should have been enough to snap him out of it. Why hadn't it worked?

He should be home with Dean by now. Not here in this fake-home with his fake-girlfriend.

"Then what?"

Tears were dripping down Amelia's face now, smearing all her carefully applied eye makeup. It looked almost ridiculous to Sam. Even now, he couldn't really take her pain seriously.

"What else do you call that, Sam?" She gestured wildly at the thick bandages covering his hand and forearm, concealing the stitches beneath. "Don't you try to tell me that's normal, 'cause it's not. Sam—Sam, what are you doing?"

He was digging the fingernails of his good hand into the bandaging, biting his lip at the pain that welled up like blood, bitterly remembering the times when just rubbing his scar had been enough to keep the visions at bay. Amelia let out a choked gasp and tried to drag his hand away, but Sam resisted her.

"Why isn't it working?" he growled, pressing harder.

"What? What? Why isn't what working? Sam, stop!" Amelia was almost in hysterics now.

Sam pulled his hand away and stood up, nearly knocking over his chair. He backed away from Amelia, feeling the beginnings of panicked hyperventilation bubbling up in his stomach. "Oh God. It's real. It's all real. You're real."

"Of course I'm real! Sam, what are you talking about?"

"I…" He backed away further, staring at her in horror. "I have to… I just… I need some time."

He fled the room, ignoring her voice calling after him.

Six months. Dean had been gone for six months and Sam hadn't lifted a finger to find him. Everything, all of it, had been real. This wasn't some fever dream of Lucifer's creation. Sam wasn't lying in a psych ward somewhere, waiting on his big brother to wake him up. This was all him, all by himself, with no one to save him. And Dean was probably dead.

He'd been with Cas. And after all this time, if the two of them were still gone… Cas should have gotten them out by now. Whether they were in Heaven or Hell, Cas knew how to escape both places, and he would have taken Dean with him. But neither of them had come back. So they must be dead.

"Cas," he whispered to the bathroom mirror, just to be sure. He knew Amelia was outside the door, listening intently for anything that might sound like Sam trying to kill himself again, but he didn't care about her. He was still trying to come to grips with the fact that she was real at all, that this fake relationship they formed was actually a real thing. "Cas, please, wherever you are… If you're alive, please, just tell me."

There was nothing, no answer. In Sam's mind, there were two reasons why Cas wouldn't respond to a plea like that. One: he was dead, along with any chance Dean had of surviving wherever the hell he was. Two: Dean was dead, and Cas couldn't face Sam to tell him.

Like he did all those months ago, Sam leaned forward until his forehead was pressed against the cold mirror. But this time he wasn't relieved, happy that this was all a dream and he'd wake up soon; he was completely and utterly overwhelmed. He'd failed. He'd let Dean down, once and for all.

In the next few days, a thousand things flashed through Sam's head, a thousand ways of fixing this, making it better. Most of them revolved around somehow resurrecting Dean, either with a good old-fashioned demon deal or by pleading for the help of Heaven, probably in exchange for some gigantic favor to which Dean, if he were here, would be violently opposed. Others involved trying to contact Dean's spirit to tell if he were really dead, or to summon Death himself to bargain for Dean's life.

More and more often, Sam considered the pure blasphemy that was simply ending it all. Finishing what he'd started, albeit for different reasons.

He knew now that there was a Heaven and that Dean would be there. They'd ended up together the last time they died, so there was no reason they wouldn't be together if Sam died now. At least there was no more mystery in that department. This separation was only temporary; eternity would see him and his brother reunited, just the way it should be. They couldn't stay apart forever.

Dean would be majorly pissed off, of course. It would probably take him centuries to forgive him for breaking the promise that they'd made to each other, to live normal apple-pie lives if either of them died and left the other behind. Dean had kept that promise when Sam had thrown himself into the cage. If Sam couldn't keep the same promise, that was just more proof that he was weaker than Dean, especially when Dean's case had been even worse; he had been facing an eternity without Sam, a heaven without him in it, as opposed to a mere lifetime.

So it wasn't really even worth it to bring Dean back, was it? There was pretty much no way Sam could do it without forfeiting his own soul as well as a chance at eternity with Dean. All he had to do was stick it out through the next few decades, spend enough time being normal to fulfill the promise, and then he could see Dean again without all the drama he'd have to deal with if he killed himself right now.

That was what he told himself, anyway. It made sense. It was logical. It was the best solution. The only problem was that Sam didn't know if he was strong enough to see it through.

He'd already lived through six months without Dean. Those six months, on top of all the time they'd spent apart before—when Dean was in hell, when Sam was hunting on his own without a soul—didn't make things any easier. Time certainly hadn't cured him of this yawning, empty chasm that Dean left behind whenever he was gone. If anything, the longer this went on, the more keenly Sam felt his brother's absence.

He tried, he really did. The revelation that Amelia was real made him feel guiltier than he'd felt in a long time; he had lied to her, strung her along without any real feelings for her, while she had been completely genuine and sensitive to his suffering this entire time. She certainly thought this relationship was real; she'd had no idea that Sam was just pretending. How could she?

And as time went on, as Sam congratulated himself every night for making it through another day without Dean, he even started to feel real attachment to her. It was hard not to, with how sweet and forgiving she'd been about this whole thing, how concerned she was for his mental well-being. If Sam had been in her shoes, he probably would have fled the other way as fast as he could, but she stuck around. Of course, she didn't know just how far his apathy extended, but things were no doubt better that way.

He wasn't suicidal anymore. Not actively, anyway. Sure, he wouldn't be too cut up if he died in some way that couldn't possibly be construed as his fault, but he owed it to Dean to at least try to make it through this. Dean had made it through a whole year and had been prepared to stretch it even longer, at least from the looks of things. Sam had to prove that he could last just as long.

So he pet the dog. Kissed Amelia before she left for work in the morning. Cleaned the bathroom. Did the dishes. Kept all his knives safely hidden away and his phones turned off. Made friends with some local guys and went out for drinks on Saturday nights. He remembered all of the little things Dean had done during his normal year, all of the tiny details he'd carefully pieced together to create an ordinary life, and tried to copy each of those details.

He expected it to get easier, but it never did. Just the opposite, actually; he didn't think about Dean less as the months went by, but more. He didn't know when, exactly, he made the decision to stop after a year, but one morning Sam woke up and started counting down the days.

A year. That was all he owed Dean to make things fair. And if Dean didn't like it, well, screw him. Wouldn't be the first time Sam had pissed his brother off, not by a long shot.

In the end, it was a relief when Amelia's husband turned out to be alive. That had really been Sam's only hang-up about the whole thing: the fact that he was leaving Amelia alone after basically using her as a crutch for almost a year, without even giving her any real explanation for why he couldn't do this anymore. At least now he knew that she would be happy with him gone, probably happier than they'd ever been together.

She was even keeping the dog. So no more loose ends. That was good.

Sam didn't make a big ordeal out of it. So he was going to kill himself. So what? Who was he supposed to say goodbye to, Crowley? No, the only people he cared about leaving behind were already waiting for him on the other side. Mom, Dad, Bobby, Jess, Dean… Castiel wouldn't be there, which was sad. Sam had no idea where angels went after they died. Did they just stop existing? That didn't really seem fair.

It all felt unreal. After all this time, all this fighting and all that pain, it was finally going to be over. Just him and everyone he had ever loved, together and happy for the rest of eternity. And this time Dean couldn't even yell at him for giving up, because all Sam had done was follow in his big brother's footsteps. Twenty-eight years of fighting, one year of rest, and now he was done.

There were only the little details left to figure out. How and where he would do it. He already knew when: the one-year anniversary of Dean's disappearance, right down to the day. After some consideration, he settled on Rufus's cabin. Nobody came up to that place, so it would take a long time before anyone found his body, if they ever did. By then Amelia would hopefully be so over him that she wouldn't have to be too sad about it.

It took him a while to decide how he would do it, but eventually the answer was clear. Dean's gun, his .45 Colt, the pistol Dean had wielded for so long that it still felt, to Sam, like a part of his brother. Sam couldn't remember whether it was the same gun that he had asked Dean to shoot him with, all those years ago, but that didn't matter. It would still feel like Dean was the one to finally put him out of his misery, and that was the important part. Dean would always be the only person Sam ever wanted to kill him.

So. One-year anniversary, Rufus's cabin, Dean's gun. He had his plan; now all that was left to do was to carry it out.

He didn't say goodbye to Amelia. She already knew he was leaving, anyway. It was a little bit cruel to go without making it clear to her that he was never coming back, ever, but if he told her the truth she would just be upset and try to talk him out of it. Hell, maybe she'd even get him sent back to the psych ward where he'd spent the night after his first "attempt." That would only delay him, not stop him, but he didn't want to miss his anniversary date.

The dog must have sensed that Sam had dark intentions; he licked Sam's hand as he left and let out a soft whine, as if pleading with him to stay. Sam stroked his soft head, trying to communicate a silent apology. You'll be all right now. Amelia will take care of you. She'll do a better job than I ever did, anyway.

He almost decided against taking the Impala. Dean would be pissed if Sam left his baby to rust in the wilderness with nobody to take care of her. But where was Sam supposed to take her? He couldn't leave her with Amelia; it would probably make Dean even angrier to have some random woman driving his baby.

No. The Impala was a hunter's car, always was and always would be. She and the Winchesters had been through everything together and it was only right that she saw this through to the end. Surely Dean would understand.

As he drove through the night down miles upon miles of long, moonlit highway, Sam felt at peace for the first time in a very long time. He put in Dean's favorite Led Zeppelin cassette, the one that had been played so many times he couldn't even read the label anymore, and hummed along as he drove.

The windows were open just a crack and, as long as Sam didn't look at the passenger seat, he could picture Dean sitting there, the wind tousling his short brown hair and the familiar lines of his face illuminated by moonlight and the occasional wash of light from passing cars. If Sam concentrated hard enough, he could even feel Dean's presence, that familiar shape beside him that he had known all his life.

Over the past year, the moments when he had been closest to happiness unfailingly occurred when he was sitting in the Impala, where Dean's presence was strongest. Now the fantasy that Dean was beside him served as his final comfort, enough to ease him along the passage to Heaven.

And it was stupid, and cheesy, and Dean would punch him if he knew, but listening to Stairway to Heaven on repeat for the last hundred miles of his journey just felt fitting, somehow.

There's a feeling I get when I look to the west, and my spirit is crying for leaving…

Tired. He was so tired. But he couldn't remember the last time he had felt this happy. The music, the drive, the thought of seeing Dean again… it was like going home. And just that was something new. He'd been on the run for his entire life, always moving forward, never having anyplace to go back to. And now he had something. Someone.

It was just amazing that it had taken Dean dying not once, but twice, for Sam to realize that he'd had a home all along. From the moment his brother had carried him from the burning wreckage of their mother's pyre, Dean had been his refuge, his safety, the core of his life. Sharing a heaven just proved what Sam had known all along: that no matter how many times they pulled apart, fate and eternity and time would just push them back together again. That was how it was meant to be, on earth as it was in heaven.

Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know…

And Sam was glad now that he hadn't tried to bring Dean back. If he had, by some miracle, managed to resurrect his brother, they would just have been thrown back into the same bloody chaos that had reigned for their entire lives. That was reality here on earth and there was no escaping it. As long as they were both alive, there would be no rest, no peace. They would fight and lie and betray each other over and over again and it would hurt every single time until they were both dead. That was the only way they would find peace.

It was better this way. So much better.

The piper's calling you to join him.

He was almost there.

He parked the Impala outside the cabin and, for a few moments, just sat there. He gave the steering wheel one last pat. "'Bye," he said without feeling too foolish about it. After all, the Impala had pretty much saved the world at least once. She deserved a proper farewell.

He didn't take much with him. Just Dean's gun and the demon-killing knife, in case any demons decided to show up at the last minute. Nothing was going to get in his way, not this time. Sam was pretty sure Crowley wouldn't have a problem with what he was about to do, but he didn't want to take any chances.

As he walked from the Impala to the cabin, the thought occurred to him that these were some of the last footsteps he would ever take on earth. It felt like déjà vu; he'd thought the same thing a few years before when he stepped away from Dean and the Impala to take that plunge into the cage.

This time was vastly different, though. Back then, he'd walked away from a life with his brother to spend eternity alone. Now things were the exact opposite; he was walking away from a life alone to spend an eternity with his brother. Thank God things had turned out this way, after all this time.

No more goodbyes. Just hello all over again, hello to everyone he had loved and lost, ever. It was the happiest ending Sam could imagine for himself. Better than picket fences, better than apple pie.

He quickened his footsteps.

He opened the door, and Dean was there.

His first thought, even as his brother shoved him to the ground with all of that familiar force, was that it was the quickest death he had ever experienced. He couldn't even remember pulling the trigger. Obviously Heaven had taken pity on him at last, and made his passage as swift as possible. Thank God for that.

Now, though… what was Dean doing? Holy water? Sam spluttered and coughed, completely bewildered. "What the—? I'm not a demon!"

Dean ignored him and Sam stared, too overcome by all sorts of conflicting feelings to put up much of a fight. After all this time, Dean was suddenly there. Sam didn't even have to wait around for him to show up. Ash was right; they must share a heaven, which meant… huh. Could you be soul mates with your own brother? That was a little strange. Sam decided he'd think about it another time, after he was done saying hello to…

Borax?

"Or a Leviathan," he spluttered. "What—"

Didn't Dean realize where they were? Surely there weren't demons or monsters in Heaven. Unless… maybe Dean didn't know he was dead. Was that how he had spent the last year? Wandering around Heaven completely alone, not even knowing that it was Heaven, or that he wasn't alive anymore? That was almost as bad as Sam believing that he'd been living a nightmare designed by Lucifer for six whole months. Well, at least he didn't have to feel too stupid about it now.

"Ah!" Dean was cutting him, with a silver knife. All right, this was really going too far.

"Or a shifter," Dean said roughly before Sam could say the same thing. "Good. My turn. Come on. Let's go."

Sam stared at the bottles Dean was offering him, taking a moment to register what Dean wanted. "I don't need to," he said, struggling against the urge to laugh. "I know it's you."

Who else would be walking around my heaven?

"Damn it, Sammy!" As Sam watched in amusement, unable to contain his grin at the use of his old nickname, Dean splashed holy water and Borax over himself. Now that Sam was looking at him, really looking at him, he saw that Dean was filthy. His skin was so caked with dirt that he looked about ten shades darker than his normal skin tone, and he smelled like he hadn't showered for… well, a year. His clothes were ripped and worn, too—and hadn't he been wearing the exact same thing when he'd disappeared?

A tiny seed of doubt began to form in Sam's brain. This wasn't right.

He stood up slowly, just in time for Dean to hold out the knife. "Come on!"

"No!" Sam searched his brother's face, looking desperately for some sign that he was right, that they really were in Heaven. It didn't make sense for Dean to be this filthy. Cleanliness was next to godliness, right, even in Dean's version of heaven? Even if he didn't know he was in Heaven?

"Dean," he said with the beginnings of desperation. "Can I just say hello?"

Dean ignored him and rolled up his sleeve, wincing as he cut his own arm. And that wasn't right either. There was no pain in Heaven; Sam remembered that before. And now that he thought about it, Dean cutting his arm had hurt too.

"All right." At last, Dean smiled. A few minutes ago, it would have been the best sight of Sam's life. But now it was too late to make him feel any better. "Well… let's do this."

"I don't know whether to give you a hug or take a shower," Sam said, trying to buy time. From the way Dean laughed, his entire face creasing in ways that made it look as if he hadn't laughed for a long, long time, it must have been the funniest thing he'd heard in a while.

"Come here," he said in that rough tone of his, heavy and chafing with affection, and before Sam knew what was happening they were hugging.

And that's when he knew. It was like waking up from the best dream he'd ever had. Dean's filthiness, the pain of the knife cut, all of the hunter tests, not being able to remember shooting himself… This wasn't Heaven.

This was real. He had just stepped right back into the life he had thought he was going to leave behind forever. It wasn't over.

There was no way he could tell Dean the truth. What was he supposed to say?

Well, at first I thought it was all a dream, and that Lucifer was messing with my head again and all I had to do was wait for you to get me out. Then I almost killed myself trying to wake up and realized that it wasn't a dream, so I tried to live a normal life, but I gave up after a year and decided to kill myself properly so we could be together again. Everything was going to be great, we were going to be in Heaven together, but now we're not and everything isn't great and I wish you were actually dead so we could finally be happy. Oh, and in the meantime, I didn't look for you and I completely gave up on every responsibility I ever had, including the prophet of the Lord I was supposed to look after.

It was too insane. Dean would never believe him; he would think that Sam was just making up excuses for abandoning him.

And if by some miracle he did believe him, well, that would be even worse. Dean was Dean, after all, and he would be absolutely terrifying if he knew that Sam had been a hair's breadth away from taking his own life. He would become even more overprotective than he'd always been, if that was even possible, and probably put Sam on suicide watch or something stupid like that.

Of course, the alternative was awful too. Apparently Dean was capable of believing that Sam had just completely given up on him, hadn't even wanted to look for him. That hurt, it really did. But in the end it was really the only option.

Having an angry and disappointed Dean by his side was better than having no Dean at all, at least. As the weeks went by and Sam settled slowly back into their old patterns, he kept thinking back to the peace he'd felt driving the Impala to what he believed would be his happy ending.

He knew at last that there was no real reason to fear death, his or Dean's. They would have their happy ending eventually. All he had to do was make sure they both ended up in Heaven.

Sam could keep that secret knowledge safe, locked away in his heart until the day he needed it. That was his way of coping, through all of the arguments and lies and conflict. After all, no matter how much he hurt Dean and how much Dean hurt him, they would have an eternity to work things out.

And in the meantime, he could enjoy the little things. Drinking together, watching television, putting down monsters, doing research. Closing the gates of Hell, if that could be called "little."

As long as he was with his brother, things would turn out all right. That was how it had always been, how it was, and how it always would be. He might forget it, over and over again, and Dean might not know it, but that truth was always there.

Heaven waited for them, and there would be peace when they were done. So, for now… all they had to do was carry on.

THE END

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