Disclaimer: I have even less in the way of material goods than I did a month ago, so I'm even less likely to own anything.

Characters: Sam and Dean Winchester, Niko and Cal Leandros, and Robin Goodfellow, who is probably very badly portrayed.

Setting: Post-"The Man Who Knew Too Much" and sequel to Luck Be a Lady and Luck Be a Devil. You probably won't really understand this one unless you read at least one of those.

Warnings: Spoilers for "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and references to two of my previous stories, Bonds of Blood and Where They'll Always Take You In. You don't really have to read those last two to understand this, though.

Chapter 1

"You can run on for a long time…run on for a long time…run on for a long time…sooner or later God'll cut you down…sooner or later God'll cut you down…"

"Dean, do you seriously have to keep playing this song? You don't even listen to Johnny Cash. That was Dad's thing, remember?"

Dean glanced at his brother, who, for once, was looking back at him. "Yeah, well, it seems more applicable lately."

"Yeah, that's not morbid," Sam said, rolling his eyes.

"Tell me I'm wrong and I won't play it anymore," Dean challenged.

Sam opened his mouth, then closed it again, shaking his head with a sigh as Dean pointedly turned up the volume on the radio.

"Go tell that long tongue liar…go and tell that midnight rider…tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter…tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down…tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down…"

XXX

It had been two weeks since Dean had started playing that song at least twice a day. Two weeks since the Winchester boys had lost one of the only friends they had left. Two weeks since they'd basically gone on the run even though running seemed completely pointless.

Two weeks since Dean had lost two-thirds of his little brother.

And it had been a fairly hellish two weeks, too. They spent most of their time in motels even scummier than the ones they were used to, or in crap diners, or in the car. They obviously couldn't hunt, not with the danger they were in constantly, not with Sam the way he was now.

Dean spent most of that time glancing over his shoulder, certain every moment that he would hear the distinctive but indescribable sound that used to precede Cas's appearances, or that one of those times he looked over his shoulder he would find himself looking into the now-cold eyes of his once-best friend.

And Sam—well, what he was going through right now put all of Dean's problems to shame.

XXX

"I can't believe you seriously want to ignore this."

Dean glared at the man sitting on the bed across from him—who wasn't his brother, he reminded himself firmly—and said flatly, "Sam will get it when I tell him."

Not-Sam shoved his hair back, obviously wishing he had a way to keep it out of his face, Dean having thrown out all his hair products months ago. "I'm still Sam."

It was an argument they'd been having on and off for a week now, ever since they'd figured out the consequences of Sam's wall coming down. Well, maybe argument was too strong a word, since it implied that both parties cared about the outcome.

"No, you're not. You're…like…Anti-Sam." And I definitely didn't miss you when you were gone.

Anti-Sam didn't look hurt or angry. He just shrugged and said, "Fine. I'll do this hunt on my own."

"No, you won't," Dean said, still without inflection, barely glancing up from the magazine he'd been reading when Anti-Sam started this ridiculous conversation in the first place. I have sedatives and I'm not afraid to use them. And even if you don't have any scruples whatsoever right now and wouldn't think twice about breaking one of my legs or something, I can still take you.

Anti-Sam shrugged. "Okay, whatever. But you do realize that innocent people are dying, don't you?"

"Don't even try it. We both know you don't care about saving anyone. You're just bored. You want to get your kill on, which is not an option, since neither of us have any idea how long you'll stick around. For all we know you'll change into the real Sam or the other-other Sam in the middle of a fight. That could easily get all three of you killed and I'm not gonna risk that."

"Dean."

Dean's gaze shot up from the magazine, instantly recognizing the change in his brother's voice. "Sam!" he said with a relieved grin. "You okay?"

Sam shrugged. "As okay as I can be, I guess. Not-Sam?"

"Actually, I renamed him. He's Anti-Sam now. And I guess the catatonic/screaming one can be Other Sam."

He was relieved to see Sam smile, but as he'd expected, the smile faded quickly. "I'm getting really tired of this."

Dean sighed heavily. "Me, too, Sammy. Me, too."

XXX

Dean (and Sam, when he was there) was getting increasingly desperate to do something—hell, anything—to get out of this mess. Not that they would be able to get out of it entirely—the stuff with Cas was almost certain to end only when either he or the Winchesters were dead—but if Sam could just be himself, fully and completely, again, well, Dean for one would be fine with that.

Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be anything to be done. Bobby was working on it, deep in his books and grouchy on the phone, but he hadn't found anything yet. Sam spent a good deal of the time at the library or the computer, but Anti-Sam wasn't remotely interested in researching the problem and Other Sam was frankly useless. Dean had even gone behind Sam's back trying to get hold of Death, but he wasn't really all that surprised when it didn't work.

The only good thing to be said about any of this was that at least Sam wasn't getting worse or anything. It wasn't as if his "Sam" periods were becoming fewer and his "other" periods more numerous. He would just change at random—or sometimes if some sort of trigger occurred, like Dean turned off all the lights in the motel room or something—and if that sucked, well, at least he didn't appear to be slipping any further away.

Still, theirs wasn't any kind of life. Things were worse than they'd been in…well, possibly ever. The Winchesters been through their fair share, but they'd never really been forced into this kind of…stasis. They'd never been stuck doing nothing but running away, and they were both surprised by how much they hated it.

So it was no surprise that the second Dean got an idea, he latched onto it with both hands, even though he had no clue where the thought came from and even though it was most likely an absolutely terrible one.

XXX

"We're here."

Dean threw the car in park as he spoke and glanced over at his brother. He didn't really expect Sam to answer, considering that Other Sam had popped up about six hours ago, and sure enough, Other Sam was still there when he looked, staring blankly out the windshield.

Damn.

Dean pushed aside his disappointment and turned off the car, stuffing the keys into his pocket. Other Sam didn't move as he opened the door and climbed out to head to the passenger's side. "Okay, Other Sam," he said, since he was never quite sure what Other Sam heard and what he didn't. "We're just gonna get you out of the car, and you're not gonna punch me when I touch you today, right?" He decided to take Other Sam's complete lack of response as a "yes" and reached out to place a gentle hand on Other Sam's shoulder, bracing himself in case a fist came flying out of nowhere like it sometimes did in moments like these. Other Sam seemed fairly calm today, though, and allowed Dean to touch him without issue.

"Thataboy," Dean muttered, pretty much to himself, as he dragged Sam up out of the car.

Other Sam was usually pretty good about walking on his own once he was upright. There were only a couple of (very memorable) occasions when Dean had let go of him and he'd just kind of sunk to the ground and sat there. Both times he'd reacted violently to all Dean's attempts to get him back on his feet, and Dean had ended up having to sit beside him on the ground—once for only about thirty minutes, the other time for almost three hours—for Other Sam to leave and Sam to take his place.

Luckily, today was not one of those days. Other Sam walked calmly beside him as he made his way to his destination, stood at the door, and knocked firmly, hoping like hell that they wouldn't have to turn right back around and search somewhere else. But today seemed to be his lucky day—ha—and the door opened before long to reveal a decidedly familiar scowl.

"Seriously, how the hell do you keep finding us?"

"Yeah, nice to see you, too, Cal," Dean replied. "Can we come in?"

Cal leaned against the doorway and crossed his arms. "Thought you said you weren't coming back again," he said, gaze drifting lazily from Dean to Other Sam. "Then again, I guess things were pretty different when you decided that," he added, apparently unsurprised.

"Nice, kid. You been taking some lessons in unflappability from your brother or something?" Dean asked irritably. "And for God's sake, can we please come in before Other Sam here decides he doesn't want to stand up anymore?"

"Cal, stop being yourself and let them in, please."

Cal glared over his shoulder. "You take the fun out of everything, Nik."

"You're the one who insisted on telling them we're related. No doubt that's what keeps inspiring them to come find us. Let them in."

Cal rolled his eyes, but stepped aside without further protest to let Dean and Other Sam into the apartment. Dean cautiously put a hand on Other Sam's shoulder to steer him onto the couch, then turned to look at what basically amounted to his last hope.

The Leandros brothers hadn't changed much since Dean last saw them. Then again, he had only met them twice, so he guessed he didn't really have much for comparison. He only hoped they still had that whole "solve problems without breaking a sweat or asking too many questions" thing going on.

Niko was standing in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, holding a glass in his hand, one eyebrow raised as he looked at Sam—his version of shock, probably. "What happened to him being dead?" he asked Dean, gesturing at Other Sam with the hand that held the glass.

"Long story. Not going into it. Maybe after."

"After…what?" Cal asked, not sounding terribly interested.

"After you help me get Sam back."

The room was dead silent for about five seconds. Then Cal said to his brother in an audible whisper, "You want to tell him or should I?"

Dean tried to hold his irritation in check, reminding himself that he couldn't afford to offend anyone here right now. "Yeah, about that. I guess intros would come in handy here. Cal, Niko, meet Other Sam. Other Sam…probably has no idea we're even in New York, so never mind."

Other Sam proved the point by failing to react to the sound of his name, his surroundings, or the fact that his long-undiscovered half-brother was in the room with him.

"As you can see," Dean went on gloomily, "Sam isn't exactly…Sam…right now. Actually, he has multiple personalities. That's one of them. I named him Other Sam. He's actually the more pleasant of the two new personalities. The other one is Anti-Sam, and he's...well, I didn't miss him while he was gone."

But Cal and Niko didn't need to know about those hellish months when Sam first returned to him from the cage, and Dean wasn't going to continue this conversation any longer than he had to. He moved on quickly, ignoring the way the Leandros brothers glanced at each other, clearly having noticed that he'd omitted a few things.

"Long story short, Sam spent some time in Hell. His body got pulled back out after a few months, but unfortunately his soul didn't come along for the ride. Instead his soul spent over a year of our time—and probably at least a century in Hell-time—getting tortured down there. And when he came back all the way he repressed all the memories—" With a little help, but we are not going into that. "—but then they all came back at once, really, really suddenly, and he became…this. And I don't know how to help him. I can't take him to a hospital, or I'd probably never see him again, and besides…"

He trailed off, unsure how to phrase the problem. On the one hand, even he had too much of a conscience to lie about this part. But on the other hand…

Well, the other hand didn't really matter, did it? He had to tell them, whether or not it caused them to send him away.

"Okay, the truth is, Sam and I are in deep shit," he said simply. "Someone might be coming for us. Someone really, really dangerous. And if he catches up to us…" He shrugged. "Well, we're toast and that's that. And I can't promise you guys will be safe. Actually, you'll probably be just as dead as we are if he shows up here. That's another reason I don't want to take Sam to a hospital. I don't want to endanger anyone any more than I have to. So I can't go to normal people for help, which makes you guys pretty much the only hope I have, and…that's it."

Niko and Cal hadn't attempted to interrupt him as he rambled on, and they didn't say anything now, either. After a moment Cal took a few steps forward to kneel in front of Other Sam and stare at him. Niko watched his brother's actions, and though Dean couldn't quite figure out the expression on the older brother's face, he felt like he was intruding all the same.

"He really remembers everything?" Cal asked, sounding oddly troubled. "Like…everything?"

"Well, he isn't really in a position to tell me, but my guess would be that he remembers every damn second," Dean said, more harshly than intended.

Cal didn't seem to notice, though. He just turned to Niko and said abruptly, "I think we should call Robin."

Niko nodded and disappeared into the kitchen without a word.

"Robin?" Dean asked, trying to keep any accusation out of his voice. "Who the hell is Robin? Can Sam and I trust him?" Normally he would think of a better way of asking, but his patience was frayed almost to the breaking point.

"If we were talking about trusting one of his stories, or trusting him not to steal your wallet, or trusting him not to have sex with your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your car or a hole in your wall…then no, not as far as you could throw him," Cal said without missing a beat. "But for the really important stuff…yeah, absolutely."

That wasn't exactly reassuring. "And…is this really important? To him, I mean?"

Cal turned away from Other Sam to look at him, and his expression softened slightly. "Look, if anyone can help you, he can, okay? I promise. If it's possible to get Sam back and kick these other guys out, Goodfellow'll get it done."

"Okay, but the thing is, Sam is incredibly vulnerable right now, and we're already in enough trouble as it is. So I'm gonna need a little more than that. What's he gonna do to my brother?"

He'd half expected a reply along the lines of, "You're the one begging for our help, remember?" The Cal he'd met years ago—even the one he'd met right after Sam had gone down—would almost definitely have said almost exactly that. So he was kind of surprised when the younger man answered him without so much as a sarcastic remark.

"Hypnotize him, probably. Figure out what's going on in Sam's head and…"

"Fix it?" Dean asked, sounding painfully—almost pathetically—hopeful.

"Or help him fix it himself."

"And that's not…you know…dangerous?"

"Hell, yes, it's dangerous," Cal said instantly. "And it'll be far from fun, for him, or you, or any of us. But if it saves your brother, do you really care?"

Dean was forced to admit that the kid had a point—they couldn't really hit a lower point without Sam actually dying, and…

Well, that just wasn't going to happen. Period. End of sentence. They'd both had enough of that for one lifetime, thank you very much.

"Robin's on his way, after a five-minute re-enactment of you when the alarm clock goes off in the morning," Niko said as he reappeared. "It seems I pulled him away from an…engagement with Ishiah."

"I don't even want to know," Cal said with a groan.

"Nevertheless, I suspect he'll tell you anyway. In full detail."

"Us, you mean," Cal said, sounding a little desperate. "He'll tell us in full detail."

"No," Niko replied. "Just you. I, you see, have the ability to block him out. You, on the other hand, couldn't tune out the sound of a TV on mute. I'm sure you wish you'd practiced meditation more now, don't you?"

Cal glared at him. "You suck."

During this loving exchange, Dean had moved to sit down cautiously next to Other Sam. "Excuse me," he said, the impatience in his tone warring with the politeness of his words, "but you mind telling me how far away this Robin guy is? 'Cause the longer we're here…"

"The more danger we're all in. Yeah, we got it. Care to elaborate on that, by the way?" Cal asked breezily, heading into the kitchen himself.

"Not really," Dean called after him. "But suffice it to say, if the guy who's after us shows up here, none of us have much of a chance."

"Speak for yourself," Cal said, tossing a beer across to him as he reappeared in the doorway. Dean caught it easily and twisted the cap off, taking a swig as Cal continued. "But it would be one hell of a demon to be able to take Nik." The words weren't bragging; it was clear that he was stating a simple fact.

Unfortunately, Dean had a fact to top that one. "It's not a demon," he said tersely. "It's a pissed-off angel with a God complex and the supernatural equivalent of an A-bomb inside him. And if your brother pokes him with a sword all he's gonna accomplish is blowing the bomb up. Sorry, man," he added, looking apologetically at Niko. "I don't know how much he cares about finding us, but I'm pretty sure that once he decides he doesn't want us to be alive anymore, he'll show up here about a second later. That said, I am not gonna let Sam die the way he is right now. So faster is really better."

Niko raised an eyebrow at Cal and said mildly, "Remember that it was your idea to help them."

"Yeah, well, I'm kind of regretting that right now," Cal said, rolling his eyes.

"No, you aren't," Niko said, and there was something in his voice that told Dean that he was saying far more than he seemed to be.

Cal still looked annoyed, but he looked at Other Sam and said quietly, "No, I'm not."

XXX

Robin Goodfellow was…not what Dean was expecting. Of course, he didn't really have any brain space to figure out what he had been expecting, but an—objectively speaking—incredibly good-looking guy with bright green eyes and a shattering lack of tact probably wasn't it.

Nevertheless, that was what he got. Robin came striding into the apartment without knocking, and before he even glanced at the Winchesters he looked at Niko and Cal and said, "You know, when I first met you two, I was actually happy. For you, I mean. It was perfectly clear that both of you—admittedly, one more than the other, but both to a certain extent—would find my influence incredibly beneficial. You were both clearly living in a state of complete sexual denial—"

"Hey!" Cal said. "Uncalled for!"

"—And even though you do appear to have learned something from me, clearly it was not enough, as you still have not learned the most important lesson."

"You know, in case you forgot, Nik and I aren't exactly living virginal lives these days," Cal said irritably. "And besides—"

"Ishiah was in California for days," Robin said, positively growling now. "That is plural. I was celibate for multiple days. In a row. This had better be good."

"Will you get a grip?" Cal snapped irritably. "Your dick could use the break anyway. And I'm sure Ishiah could, too, the poor bastard. And the sooner you get to work, the more likely we are to survive, okay?"

Robin raised an eyebrow. "Wow. Even by the special-ordered, extremely low bar I use to judge your temper, you are unusually cranky today." Then he seemed to think about it and added, "All right, that's not true. But you are cranky."

Cal clenched his teeth and was about to speak when Niko said in a slightly raised voice, "Robin, meet Dean and…Other Sam, who is the one we called you to help."

Robin looked from one Leandros brother to the other, then turned toward the couch. "Hmm. Well, as far as ruggedly handsome guests go, you could definitely do worse. But this one…" He took a step closer to the couch, his eyes fixed on Other Sam, and Dean shifted minutely closer to his brother, hand ready to reach for his gun. "What's wrong with him?"

"Short version—went to Hell, repressed it, came back with multiple personalities, and Dean here would like him to go back to being one guy. Oh, and the longer they're here the more likely a pissed off atomically powerful angel will show up and kill us all fast and bloody. So. Hop to."

Dean followed Cal's synopsis with a half-wave. "Pretty much what he said, only with more of a threat at the end. As in—"

"Don't bother articulating it," Robin cut him off. "I've heard enough big brother threats from Niko here. Granted, none of them were actually aimed at me—at least not recently—but I can guess what you're going to say." He took another step, saying as he did, "And you can stop casually reaching for whatever you have in your pants. I'm not going to hurt him, and you couldn't hurt me. So," he added, crouching down in front of Other Sam in much the same position as Cal had minutes before, "he has multiple personalities?"

"Uh…yeah. Three of them," Dean said. "This one's Other Sam. Of the two extras, he's…more pleasant, I guess. But I'm not too fond of either of them."

"Hmm…and when he's himself, he doesn't remember what goes on when he's one of the others?"

"Not even flashes. But I admit he hasn't really tried, and I haven't really wanted him to."

"Probably a good idea," Robin agreed absently, still staring at Other Sam. He was already completely different from the guy who'd come through the door, his manner somehow reminiscent of a doctor—one with a surprisingly good bedside manner. "Well, I'll do my best to help, but I have no way of knowing how tangled—or separate—things are in his head. We might be here awhile."

Cal sighed heavily. "I'll get more beer."

"I'll order dinner," Niko added.

"I should get some stuff in case C…the angel shows up," Dean said reluctantly.

"Don't bother," Cal said. "There's nothing you could get that we don't already have, trust me."

"Besides, it's probably better if you stay," Robin informed Dean. "Having you nearby might be…helpful."

"Well, I was just talking about going out to my car, but…okay. Sure. So…how does this go, anyway? What do I do?"

"You do nothing," Robin said. "If all goes well, Sam and I will be doing all the work. Still, best be ready. He might need to be…restrained."

Dean didn't like the sound of that, but he didn't get a chance to speak before Robin pulled a chair over in front of Other Sam, sat down, and stared at him intently.

"I know you're in there somewhere, Sam, and I want you to listen to me. That's all you have to do. Just listen…"

Author's Note: I was only intending for this to be a one-shot, but it got too long, so…multiple chapters it is. And as for why it took me so long to post…well…my laptop and wireless setup sort of floated away in a small flood, along with the notebook I wrote in and just about anything else important I owned. So. Yeah.

Also, I clearly cannot write Robin at all. He's way too witty for me. Oh, well. We must press on.