Well, Sam and all his talk of 'doing fine,' and 'I know my way around in here,' regarding his brain scramble? Yeah, that was out the window. He'd gotten the flu. Simple, non-monster, non-Leviathan, nothing-to-do-with-demons flu. And, his control over whatever, the hallucinations where Lucifer was his conjoined twin, was gone.

It had slipped away slowly, and Sam (as usual) had kept saying he was 'fine.' He kept pressing his hands together in a kind of weird ritual that he seemed to have some expectation of working. After two days of fever and literal hand-wringing, he'd finally looked up at Dean with his sad, puppy-just-died eyes and said, "It's not working."

No, duh. But, Dean bit anyway. "What's not working?"

"Keeping track of what's real, being able to fade Lucifer out. It's not working." He looked around their '70's hunting lodge room, tiny badger heads on the wall, or whatever they were. Did Sam think the badgers were going to help? He was staring off at one of them, when he clenched his jaw and ground out, "You shut up."

Dean sighed, but looked over anyway. Nope. Nothing there but a dusty badger with his beady glass eyes. "Sam, what's Lucifer saying?"

Sam looked back at him, looked confused. "What?"

Dean pointed over to the badger Sam had just told to shut up.

Sam still looked lost.

Dean soldiered on. "Sam, why did you tell the badger to shut up?"

Sam took one more moment to figure out what Dean was asking and then, the bitch actually smiled at him. Like Dean was the one who was touched in the head. "Dean, I'm crazy, but not that crazy. Lucifer was petting the badger…he said…well, never mind. Do you have a knife?"

Dean rolled his eyes. Was Sam getting stupider as well as crazy? "Yes, Sam. I have a knife. I have several knives, which I thought you might have known, seeing as…never mind. Yes. I have a knife. Why?"

Sam held out his hand. "Give it to me."

Dean's heart gave a little lurch. "Ah, no, I don't think that's a good idea."

Sam gritted his teeth and waved his hand around. "Dean, just give me a damn knife. I don't care which one."

Dean tried to understand what in the world a feverish, Lucifer-hallucinating Sam would need with a knife. Nothing came to him. "Sam, how about you take another dose of Tylenol, and we leave the knives alone."

Sam actually looked hurt that Dean wasn't giving him what he'd asked for. He rolled over to the side of the bed away from where Dean was sitting, threw the covers off and lurched to his feet. He tilted right into the wall next to the bed, but spun off the contact like a pinball and propelled himself across the room to the weapons bag. Dean got up and joined him. "Seriously, Sam. What the hell do you need a knife for?"

Sam rummaged around murmuring something about, 'should have thought of this sooner…' He picked up Dean's bowie knife, secure in its scabbard. He unsnapped the catch, pulled the knife out and sliced it across his palm.

Dean was grabbing it away from him before it could do more than make a one-inch gash, but it was long enough to have blood welling and pouring over Sam's hand.

Now Dean was mad and scared and freaked and he reverted to his default, yelling. "What the fuck was that? Jesus!" He threw the knife into the bag, grabbed Sam's arm and pulled him toward the bathroom. Sam was still weak, and he crashed into Dean like a damn tree trunk. Dean didn't fall, but he stumbled pretty heavily. He led Sam in to the small plaid-wallpapered bathroom, pushed him to sit on the closed toilet and shoved a towel onto his cut up hand. Sam pulled his hand away and pressed the thumb of his other hand into the cut. Blood welled immediately, poured down his arm. Dean had an image of this happening before, but he was a little pre-occupied trying to stem his panic that his brother had just cut through his hand in his delirium. Because this whole Lucifer situation wasn't screwed up enough? He grabbed Sam's arm, hard, and pressed the towel back onto the cut. He looked down at his brother, expecting to see tears or anger or despair or something.

Instead, Sam looked relaxed for the first time in two days. Sam, the crazy bastard, was looking around the small room, smiling. And, Dean? Was totally lost.

He plunged the hand under the faucet, turned on the cold water. Sam hissed slightly, but didn't fight him. Dean dried the wound off, held it under the light. It was deep, but small. Probably didn't need to stitch it if Sam let him wrap it up tight. Dean pulled the med kit over from where it sat under the sink. He kept hold of Sam's arm, Sam was pressing the towel to the wound now. Somehow, his cutting open his hand had made Sam all peachy keen. Great. It had freaked the hell out of Dean.

Dean took in a couple of deep breaths. He kept his voice calm, reasonable, worked some disinfectant into the wound. "Sam, I am going to need you to explain to me just what the hell that was all about, or I am going to tie you up until this fever breaks, swear to God."

And, Sam, because he knew Dean, knew how to totally disarm him and make him go from angry, pissed off, kick ass hunter, to…ball-of-mush older brother, leaned his head in until it rested against Dean's chest. He sort of let out a sigh and turned his head so he was resting more comfortably against Dean, and closed his eyes. "M'sorry, Dean."

The bitch. How could Dean stay mad now? Dean rolled his eyes, but he still put his hand on Sam's shaggy, fever-sweaty head and gave it a little rub. "Ok. You're sorry. Now, what the hell?"

Sam sighed again, just stayed where he was, eyes still closed. "I had to make him go 'way. He kept doing things…to you. And…sayin' stuff. I just needed a break. M'so tired…"

Dean was now rubbing slow circles in Sam's back, hardly even aware of it. "How does slicing open your hand help you get rid of him?"

Sam's weight was resting more and more against Dean. Was he actually falling asleep? "You taught me, remember?"

Dean tried to think what Sam meant. Oh, Jesus. The cut on his hand. In the warehouse. 'I'm real. This is real. There's a difference. It feels different.' And he'd grabbed Sam's hand and pushed his thumb at Sam's stitches. 'I know something about hell, and this feels different.' Sam had been better after that, and Dean hadn't really thought about why. And it came to him. Pain in hell had a totally different vibe than pain here, in reality. Hell-pain was bigger, it seemed to encompass you, not just where they were ripping at you, but, it burned all the way through your soul, your spirit, whatever it was they had down there to play with. The direct, straightforward pain that a body felt here, was different, clearer, more pinpointed and precise. Had that been how Sam was coping with his hallucinations? He was causing himself pain, so he could stay rooted in the here and now and not be taken in by Lucifer's one-man travelling show?

Dean leaned Sam away from him. Finished tending to the slice in his hand. "Ok. All taped up. Time for bed. Again."

Sam blinked his eyes and looked confused until he looked up and saw Dean. He gave a small smile. "Hey."

Dean couldn't help it, he smiled back. "Hey, yourself. Come on, back to bed. No more knives, just meds and sleep, okay?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah. M'really tired." He didn't get up, and his eyelids started to do the long-blinking thing that Dean knew meant sleep was about 30 seconds away.

He pulled up on Sam's shoulders. "Come on, Sammy."

Dean got him dosed up and back under the covers. Sam slept, and Dean cracked open a beer, and sat at the table, doing a half-assed job of looking for their next case. He was doing searches for the weird and mysterious, but he was thinking about Sam. 'You taught me…' And, he didn't quite remember it like that, he'd just wanted the freakin' Lucifer hallucinations to stop. But, he hadn't meant for it to be something he taught Sam. God. How long had this been going on?

Dean suddenly had a very bad feeling. He got up and went back to the bed where Sam was sleeping. He sat down next to his brother and unbuttoned the sleeve of Sam's shirt. He rolled it up slowly, making sure Sam wasn't going to wake up.

Well, shit.

There, along his forearm, were cuts, mostly healed, that told the story of how Sam was 'coping' so well with his scrambled brain.

Dean didn't know whether to cry, throw-up, or get drunk. Oh, Sammy. This is how you were coping? This was you wanting me to let you be? 'Look after yourself, Dean. I'm okay. I'm dealing.' Dean just rubbed his hands over his face. What was one more stone added to the massive mountain of guilt that sat in his gut? Sat on his heart? God damn it.

Sam spoke softly, "Hey. What's wrong?"

Dean opened his eyes, let his hands drop from his face. "Nothing. How you feeling?"

Sam sighed. "Better." He stared at Dean a long moment. "Can I just say something?"

Dean didn't like this already. This was Sam's sincere, I-am-your-brother-and-I-care-about-you tone. He sighed, pulled Sam's sleeve down gently. "Can I stop you?"

Sam just kept looking at him, steady, serious. "It's been bugging me since the Osiris thing."

Dean actually flinched away at that. "Sam, can we not? I really don't-"

Sam grabbed on to Dean's wrist, and for a guy who was stumbling and weak from a fever, he had a pretty iron-clad grip. "Just, can you not feel guilty about this? Please? You couldn't have known. I kept it from you, plain and simple. Because it was working, and I knew you'd think it was creepy. This isn't on you, okay?"

Dean rolled his eyes. "Yeah, sure Sam. I live ten feet away from you, and still didn't notice the whole 'butchering as pain control' method you had going. Oh, wait, that I actually taught you, apparently. So, why would I feel bad about that, right?" He went to stand up, meant to pull free of Sam's grip.

But, Sam wasn't having it. He gripped tighter and pulled Dean back down. His voice remained calm, tired, soft. "You do that, and I don't quite get why." Dean sighed, tried to pry Sam's fingers off. Sam's grip remained pretty damn firm, thank you. Sam just kept talking. "You didn't do this. You didn't do any of this. You didn't put Lucifer in my head, or even make me go to hell in the first place. That was my choice. Unfortunately, it had some sucky consequences."

Dean scoffed. "You think?"

Sam kept with the soft voice, and the sincere eyes. "You can't take all it on you, Dean. None of the messed up shit that has happened to us was because of you. That's why the whole Osiris thing pissed me off. You didn't hurt Jess, or Jo…or Bobby. They got tangled up with evil and evil got them. And there's no turning back the clock, no way to be smarter or faster or take road B instead of road A. And I get that that is hard to live with. But, Dean, unlike me, you never chose wrong. You never did something deliberate or purposeful to get anybody hurt, ever. So, don't do that, okay? Don't take on that stuff like it was your fault." Sam's grip finally started to ease, and his eyes did a long blink. "Because all I've ever seen is you doing your damnedest to protect other people, to protect me. And, I know it feels like we lose a lot of battles. Hell, we do lose a lot of battles…and, God knows, we lose a lot of people. And that sucks. But, none of it is on you. I just, I want you to get that, man."

Dean shook his head, kept his gaze on the badgers that looked down on them from the walls. "Sam, you're not the only one who's made mistakes, okay? I've led a lot of people in the wrong fuckin' direction, gotten-"

Sam squeezed his wrist, but more gently this time. "Dean. Listen to yourself. You've led. People look to you when they've got nothing but one horrible choice or another. And you step up and do what you think is right. Most of the time, it is right and people who would've been decimated are able to walk away. You seem to forget about that. Yeah, sometimes, no matter how smart or brave or whatever, the choices are fucked, and evil wins. But, that doesn't mean you did anything wrong. It just means that evil won." Sam let go, finally, and pulled the blankets closer, keeping his eyes on Dean even as they struggled to stay open. "You never give up, and just, God, you keep fighting even when it seems like all is lost. Even when all is lost. Pretty much the definition of a hero, don't you think?" Then, his eyes closed and his breathing evened out.

Dean sat there, as Sam drifted into sleep and felt…humbled. Sam, battling all the crazy in his mind, cutting himself to cause enough pain to keep Lucifer from taking over, and he was giving Dean a pep talk?

Dean tried to hear it. He probably did take too much responsibility for all the horrible things that had happened in their lives. Deep down he knew he didn't have the power to re-route fate, that he couldn't single-handedly conquer evil and make everything okay for everyone he cared about, or even strangers he barely knew.

But, something inside him wanted to. He wanted to be the guy that saved the day, that made the evil go away. And, because of that, he'd probably always feel like he fell short. 'All I've ever seen is you doing your damnedest to protect other people, protect me.'

Dean sighed, pulled the covers higher on Sammy's shoulders, felt his forehead. The fever was down. Good. He stood up, stretched out his back, started to clean up a little. He had to admit, he did feel lighter, somehow. Sam and his earnest 'it's not your fault' talk had actually penetrated a bit. Dean did feel guilty, about, God, so much. But, Sam with his soft words and bruising grip had actually made him feel…appreciated, he supposed. That didn't erase the battles lost, or the people killed. Dean would never fully relinquish the responsibility he felt when he wasn't able to stop horrible things from happening to good people. But, the fact that his little brother thought he'd fought a good fight? That felt pretty damn good.

Dean turned off the lights and climbed into bed. Tomorrow would be soon enough to re-engage in the battles – find what he needed to decimate Dick friggin' Roman, bring the Leviathans down, make sure Sam didn't go fully off the rails. Tonight he pressed into his pillow and had to fight a smile.

Sam thought he was a 'hero.' Sweet.

The End