A/N: This story is dedicated to my friend's mother, who passed away last night. I love you, Miss Katherine. I hope I remembered to hug you. 3

It's sort of like a Bucket List.

That's what Sam tells you when you find him jotting down the names of every friend from Stanford that he can remember; which is a little jumbled these days, because Sam is a little jumbled these days, a real tosspot of real, vivid Hell and Highwater, which is a funny euphemism for Leviathans that you have coined and Sam goes along with.

But this time, it's you going along with things, because one morning you come into the motel with a box of donuts, and Sam has a sheet of paper with at least two dozens names on it and when you, the perfectly annoying Big Brother, bob and weave around Sam's shoulders asking, "Whatcha doing, whatcha doing, Sammy?", Sam tries to hide it then gives up.

It's a list of people, he explains. People he wants to see again. People he used to be friends with when his life was squared perfectly inside a white-picket fence. It's sort of like a Bucket List, which you call redundant because hasn't Sam died, what, half a dozen times already?

Har har, Sam says as he crumbles up the list, and you're right, it's stupid.

But you're between cases, you might even have a few weeks off because Bobby has told you strictly to lay low and wait for the tide to blow over after both of your homicidal doubles carved a path of mayhem and destruction across the old Winchester hunting grounds. And anyway, after the psychic debacle, you are beyond ready for a break. So, when Sam goes to bed, falling into it and he's out in seconds, out like a light, you stealthily lift the list from the trash.

Good ol' Sammy, analytical Sammy, all-your-ducks-in-a-row Sammy, has not only listed the people he used to consider his nearest and dearest, but he's also tracked them to their exact towns at present, which makes your life easier.

You wake Sam up early the next morning with coffee and a case. Sam rubs the sleepiness from his eyes and then perches, all long-limbs and long face, and rubs his palm with the thumb of his hand until his brain course-corrects and then he snaps out of it with what's the case?

"You'll see," You grin. And maybe because you're grinning, Sam lets it slide.

You take him to the first town of the first name on the list, and when he realizes where this is he smiles like a kid on Christmas morning. "Dude. Are you serious?"

Yep, you grin and nod. Yep, because you owe Sam, and yep, because he deserves it, and also Yep, because this is, in fact, Wisconsin, and Randall White does in fact live in this city. But Sam knew him as Randy 'The Big Cheese' White-Water-Rafter, back when he was at Stanford.

It becomes something of a game that the two of you play; Sam picks the people he wants to see the most, and he calls ahead and introduces himself as Sam Winchester. If they reply, politely but with confusion, "Sam, who?", Sam will apologize for their time and hang up. On the other hand, if they light up with a beatific, "Oh, wow, Sam," then it's okay, Sam looks at you to confirm and you nod, it's okay, and yes, you can both come over for dinner.

It becomes a tour of sorts through the life Sam might've had, free of broken Hell-walls and injured trust. These are people with a full education and degrees under their belts, people with wives and husbands, houses and sometimes, kids. Kids that sometime wrestle with Sam on the floor while you drink beer with the happily married couple and think, This could've been Sam's life. I wanted this for him.

You take him to Rochester to see Sarah Blake. She's Sarah Webster, now, a widow, and she wasn't on his Bucket List but you wanted to see her, anyway. Her husband died in a car crash; she says this into the side of Sam's neck when she hugs him and asks him where he's been.

Oh, kind of all over, he says.

It's an awkward dinner, but it's not a bad one.

That day you're driving away and Sam is on the phone with the next name on the list and you're thinking, things are looking up, and even if you're not happy then at least Sam is. When all of a sudden Sam goes from engaging and enthusiastic to a stone-cold, "She what?"

Your hands clamp tight around the steering wheel.

"I—when? How?" He stops and listens, then slowly starts to nod, and his mouth quivers and you think, here it comes, so you pull over and turn on the seat and wait for him to finish.

He dialogues with the person on the other end, for a minute, sliding the creased list toward you, and when you see the next name you can't understand his devastated expression, the way he says, "If there's anything I can do, man," Or the way he stops, nods, and then hangs up and drops the phone and drops his face into his hands.

"Sam." You shake his shoulder. "Hey, man, talk to me."

Becky's dead, he tells his palms.

"What?" You don't take your hand back.

Becky, he enunciates, she died. Three years ago.

Becky Rosen, you ask, The crazy groupie?

Sam shakes his head, no, and looks up at you with tears in his eyes, Becky Warren. Zach's sister.

"Oh." You say. And then, after the initial surprise wears off, though it's not even really surprise, because everyone dies, so why not a pretty blond girl who had everything to live for, "How?"

"Cancer." Sam says. "Aggressive. Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia."

That probably is, you think, about as bad as it sounds. You squeeze his shoulder. Sorry, bro. I know you two were tight back at Stanford.

Sam looks up at you, he looks lost, "I never called her like I promised."

You were in Hell, you want to say, You were busy. Saving the world. Saving the world so her brother could live in it. She'd understand.

But you know all too well the hidden weight of words unsaid.

So you do the very think you ought not to, and hold your tongue.

It isn't until that night that you see Sam break down.

Though, really, he breaks down when you're snatching a bare minimum of rest. You wake up to the sound of him floundering to consciousness as well, tossing off the covers, desperation in his eyes. You're out of your bed and on his in a second, sitting while you click on the bedside lamp, grabbing his arms, shaking him with, Sammy, Sammy! Calm down!

He's inconsolable. "How come—Dean? How come she had to—?"

You know what he mans, what he's been wrestling with since the fraught car ride to the nearest motel. If there is a God, and nowadays you really aren't sure the guy hasn't bought it, if there is a God then how come Becky, sweet, innocent Becky, is dead?

But you've tasted enough of Hell to know that it walks among the living and preys on the best. The proof of that sits before you, shuddering in the low lamplight, so much compassion in its eyes that it revives some of yours.

Because the world sucks, bro, you trace circles with your thumbs into his sleeves. It sucks out loud.

Sam stares at you, so lost, because there's no monster to fight, you can't take revenge against cancer. You can't hunt it, salt and burn it, destroy its remains. It dies with the body it ravaged, until it comes to fruition inside someone else. Maybe it'll be you, someday, your liver shot to hell from the drinking. Maybe it'll be Bobby, because God—or not—knows the man doesn't always eat right.

You don't even let yourself think of it coming for Sam.

"What was the last thing I said to her?" Sam asks, suddenly, and when you hesitate he presses in, "Dean? Did I tell her I cared about her? How much I cared? Did I hug her?"

Sam's well and truly scrambled, from bad dreams and sleepless nights and grief. You take a hold of his hand and press your thumb into the scar and feel him subside a little, and you say, Yeah, Sammy. Yeah, you hugged her.

Then Sam's head is on your shoulder, and he says, I can't do this anymore.

So you say, No more Bucket List.

And instead you both take flowers to Becky Warren's grave.