When Sam woke in the middle of the night, it wasn't with the terrified half-screams or pounding headaches that shook him from sleep regularly only seven months ago. Seven months gone; five months left. The thought alone was enough to give him insomnia. It crowded into his brain, settled into his chest like a solid weight so he couldn't breathe. He would lie awake all night watching Dean sleep. Sam was just thankful Dean didn't mock him for falling asleep in the car, leaned over in the seat just far enough to hear his brother singing under his breath to the cassette of the day and drumming lightly on the steering wheel. (That he was close enough to smell his brother, all leather and earth and sage, was something Sam would never admit to himself.)

Still, that wasn't what woke Sam this time. Something else was wrong, something more subtle. He opened his eyes slowly. The clock glowed 4:28, so he'd only been asleep (actually asleep, to his surprise) for a little under an hour. The back half of the motel room was overcast with the pale flickering light from the TV. The bathroom was an inky black hole beyond its white door. None of the shadows moved on their own or seemed out of place. Sam scanned slowly toward the television. It was all but muted; one of the local stations was doing a Twilight Zone marathon. Dean never could resist...

Dread replaced apprehension. Sam couldn't hear Dean snoring. Couldn't hear him breathing at all.

"Dean?" Sam said, sitting up and turning on the light in one fluid motion. The other bed was empty, covers rumpled and used. A towel, still damp, lay haphazardly at the foot as though the man had barely bothered to dry off before getting under the covers.

"Dean?" he said, louder this time. There was no hiding the panic in his voice. He could see Dean's leather jacket tossed over the back of the chair. The keys to the Impala were still on the table. A quick scan of the room revealed nothing out of place, no sign of struggle. Hell, even the salt lines by the door were still in place; Dean didn't just walk out.

Sam was on his feet in an instant. He felt under the pillow, found Dean's knife. He pushed the bathroom door the rest of the way open and hit the switch. Nothing.

His eyes burned and his throat closed. Five months left, and Dean was gone. And Sam had been asleep... No. Dean was taken. And not by whatever the cross-roads demon had called its boss. The red tape on that particular deal was air-tight.

He clenched his fists with a growing sense of determination. Sam would find whoever was responsible and make them regret it.

Whatever it took to get his brother back...

---

Consciousness was starting to creep up around Dean's brain. He knew something was wrong. Something was off, but he couldn't get past the drudge in his brain. As if that wasn't enough of a problem. He hadn't slept that heavily since he was a kid.

"Dean!"

Groggily his brain supplied that the voice was Sam. There was something wrong with that too. And the thumping upstairs. What the hell were they doing up there anyway? It wasn't anything sexual (he hoped, or else that was a whole new level of kinky even he didn't want to know about). Renovations, maybe, but it was pretty freakin' early for it.

He forced himself the rest of the way awake, and immediately regretted it. His head was throbbing madly. The spot on his back where the poltergeist had hit him last night with chunks of tombstone was amazingly sore too. And...was he on the floor? He couldn't understand why - he hadn't had more than a couple of beers last night.

"Dean!" Sam sounded urgent. Was shaking him even, hands gripped so tight on his shirt that...

... his hands. Were small. Sam's hands hadn't been small since he was sixteen, for Christ's sake. Dean opened his eyes (why was it still so hard?), and winced against light that was too bright. At least the racket upstairs had stopped.

Sammy looked like he had at eight or nine year old.

There was a tear in the shoulder of his shirt. A matching slash glistened red against Sam's pale skin. His knuckles and knees were scuffed pretty badly.

Dean felt guilt harden in the pit of his stomach --he'd been unconscious when Sam had needed him. "That cock-sucking, mother-fucking bastard son of a whore..." He might have gone on to use more colorful language. He might have elaborated on what he would do to whatever had messed with his brother.

But Dean had heard his own voice. It cracked. Then there was the way Sam's eyes widened in shock. The way his expression shifted from anxious uncertainty to outright fear. Finally noticing that they were in a different motel room, that Dad's bag of emergency ammo (the one they lost somewhere in the Nevada desert years ago) sat under the bed beside him, was just icing on the cake.

"Sorry," Dean said, backpedaling fast. This might be like that time with the djinn. Or it might not. He wasn't taking the risk. "It's just... my head..." He touched the back of his head. A large bump, maybe enough for a concussion. The knuckles on his right hand were split and stiff, and there was a bruise forming on his wrist that looked sort of like a disjointed hand-print. He hazarded a guess that his back would look similar to Sammy's shoulder.

The thumping started up again- at the door he realized, not upstairs. Loud and steady and more forcefully than before. Someone or something had been throwing themselves at it. Now there were two, at least. Dean started reaching for his gun before it occurred to him that it wouldn't be there.

He was only thirteen after all.