Oooh first fic on the new account! I'm so excited! :) Hopefully this does the good name of Supernatural some justice, although I can never hope to compare to the other amazing authors in this fandom.

This takes place in season 1, sometime after Skin but before Scarecrow. Some limp/angst!Sam and bigbrother!Dean because I simply can't help myself. :) This switches from what's happening during the hunt to what Sam is thinking/feeling. Also, it's sort of a songfic to the song 'Die Hard the Hunter' by Def Leppard, which is an amazing classic rock song that Dean would almost definitely approve of. And... That is all. Enjoy. :)

Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or anything affiliated.

He remembers a time when everything was good.

He remembers when things used to be simple and easy for him. So brief, but as blissfully perfect as the universe could allow his life to be.

He remembers feeling happy and safe, and while he'd never once been able to be carefree he remembers not being so stressed all the time.

He remembers when, once upon a time, he didn't wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, her beautiful face still on his mind and her name still on his lips.

And above all else, he remembers when there was no pain in his life to hold him back, to consume every moment of his life, to slowly destroy him and constantly take his breath away.

But all he knows now is pain. Pain and loss and suffering.

And somehow, he can't help but think that that's all either of them are feeling these days.

They're on a case in Mississippi right now. It's a simple job, just salting and burning the bones of some poor girl who had been murdered by her fiancée a few decades ago. It's been incredibly easy from the moment they drove into town, and Sam is almost positive that they're going to have this hunt wrapped up by the end of the night. He knows that Dean feels the same way, but he also knows he's treating it like they're going in blind and it's one of the more dangerous cases they've worked. It's been like that on all of their most recent jobs; easy jobs that Dean insists require their complete and utter concentration. Sam sees what Dean is trying to do, and while at times it can get a little frustrating, he understands. After all, it's only been six months.

The sun is just beginning to set, and Sam is glad for it because he's ready to torch some bones, which are inconveniently in the dead center of the museum, as far from all the exits as possibly. But even then, it's shaping up to be a fairly simple night, and Sam is ready to be over with it. This town, with its damn humidity and constant, sweltering heat, is really starting to get to him, and he won't feel sorry when he's looking at it through the rearview mirrors of the Impala.

"Let's roll," Dean says, breaking the silence that they've been sitting in for the last few minutes. The museum will be closing in about ten minutes, and they need to get in the backdoor before it's locked by the lone security guard. After that, they'll have the place to themselves, and the rest of it will be a piece of cake. Salty, burned cake.

He's been throwing himself into the last few hunts with everything he's got, and he's pretty sure that the intensity he's bringing is starting to worry Dean. If he's honest with himself, it scares him too, but he knows that the alternative would probably end up with one, if not both of them, dead in some horrible, gory way, like other people before them. So he will continue to kill every supernatural thing that gets in his way, and he will do it the way his father taught him to all those years ago. It's his therapy, and he feels like he deserves it, after everything he's been through.

He's pretty sure that he's going to "deserve" it until he's killed the thing that took Jess from him. And then maybe, maybe if the universe is willing to be merciful and shine down on him, he'll be able to rest, because he's just so damn tired. But he can't give up yet.

He won't.

The museum is finally empty and Dean says a silent prayer of thanks, because it's not air conditioned and the climate is no better at night than it is during the day. He makes a mental note to make sure that their next hunt is somewhere cool and dry, because he'll be damned if he spends any time in a town like this in the near future.

Sam motions him forward as they walk out of the bathroom they've been hiding in. They don't bother trying to be quiet. There are no security cameras, which is perhaps one of the only things that Dean appreciates about the old building. They continue on, flashlights cutting through the darkness as they search for the bones of Anne Marie Vinlan.

It'd taken a while to find her body. Finding out that it was her ghost that was haunting the museum wasn't hard, because the only thing consistent in all of the witnesses' stories had been seeing her, and after that it was just a matter of doing a little research. She'd been killed back in 1957 by her fiancé, Joshua Vinlan. Stabbed seventeen times by his silver hunter's knife, to be exact, and then dumped in the woods behind what was supposed to be their home, and she wasn't found for another ten years. Joshua had been caught- Sam had tried to explain how they'd figured out that he'd done it, but he'd tuned out- and he'd been sentenced to a life in prison, where he was later killed in a riot.

Sam had found that out pretty quickly- and considering the fact that he almost never slept, that wasn't surprising. Unfortunately, it had taken them a while for them to figure out that all of the Vinlan's personal affects- which apparently included their bones- were on display at the museum. As the curator had put it, they were honoring what had once been a powerful family, and a few skeletons and a tale of murder were "bound to draw in the kids."

Considering that that's been the odd man's idea to get attention, Dean was even more eager to get out of that town, because it was just downright weird to him.

There are a ton of random artifacts lying around, and although he doesn't know a thing about priceless artifacts, he's pretty sure that none of these fall under the category of "historically significant." It's taking all his willpower not to let all the smartass comments that are building inside him burst out, because he knows that he'll probably just get Sam's trademark Bitch Face. That is, if he even gets a response at all. The way Sam has been acting since they left Stanford, he can't be sure. Things have sure as hell gotten better, but…

He shakes the thought out of his head, reprimanding himself for getting distracted. He looks around and moves to join Sam in the next room, were he's waiting for Dean expectantly and… Dean squints, eyes straining in the darkness. Yep. He's getting the Bitch Face, in all bitchiness. He walks across the room, not slowly but obviously not fast enough for Sam's liking. "Any time you're ready, princess."

Dean just smirks at him. "You use that line on all your dates, Sammy? Because if you do, everything just started making a whole lot more sense." There's an eye roll, but as hard as Sam tries he just can't stop himself from cracking a smile as he blushes. Dean grins back at him impishly but quickens his face enough to appease Sam. He gets to the door… just in time for it to slam in his face.

With Sam on the other side.

He can still see her face every time he closes his eyes, and as much as he doesn't want to admit it to himself, he's secretly anticipating the day when he doesn't. He doesn't want to forget her- ever- but it's slowly killing him, to have to see her that way.

Dead.

Pinned to the ceiling.

On fire.

Because he knows that, somehow, it's his fault. He doesn't tell Dean this, of course. He'd probably kick his ass and then give him some awkward, "motivational" speech on how there's no way he can blame himself for what happened. He knows that he shouldn't blame himself for what happened- Jess wouldn't want him too- and maybe if his mother hadn't died the exact same way, right above his crib, he wouldn't. But she did, and he does, and so for now he's just going to have to try and accept everything, before he can even begin to convince himself that something else is going on. It's all he can do.

He doesn't have the strength to do anything more.

For a second he doesn't move, just stares at the door without comprehending. He's only spurred into action when he hears his brothers shouts on the other side, pounding on the metal door- and what kind of weird ass museum is this?- all too aware of what's going on. "Sam!"

The responding shout came back almost immediately. "Dean!" The elder Winchester allows himself relax ever so slightly when he hears his brother, unharmed, on the other side. This is good. Maybe Anne Marie is just trying to warn them for the moment. After all, she hasn't killed anyone without a witness so far, and ghosts don't change their MO. Maybe if they just asked really nicely…

Then the room is fifty degrees colder… and there's a hand on his shoulder.

He can still hear Sam shouting and banging on the door, but he doesn't pay any attention to his brother as he tenses. His grip on his shotgun tightens, but suddenly there's a hand their too, holding his wrist. It isn't painful, like spirits are sometimes when they're angry. In fact, it's disconcertingly gentle. "Wait," a voice whispers in his ear. "Listen." He turns around slowly, and isn't surprised to find the ghost of Anne Marie standing motionlessly behind him. He'd be lying if he said that he was unsurprised by the utter lack of murder in her eyes. She almost looks like she's pleading with him, and scared. Not of him, as far as he can tell, but definitely very scared.

Two things happen in the next moment.

First, Anne Marie takes his hand in hers and, eyes still imploring him, whispers, "You must stop him." And before he can ask her what she means by that, he realizes something else.

He can no longer hear Sam.

The pain has gotten easier, more dulled over the last month or so, and he supposes he should be grateful for that.

There are a lot of things he should be grateful for; like the fact that he even had a normal life, no matter how briefly it lasted; and then there's the fact that he's still alive, because he's pretty damn sure that if it weren't for his pure dumb luck and his brother, he'd have been long gone by now; and then, of course, there's Dean himself. Always Dean.

Dean has been his God given solace over the last six months, and when Sam says God given he means it in every sense of the word, because only Dean could have gotten him through everything and kept pace with Sam the way that he has. Sam hasn't told Dean this yet, but he's saved his life in more ways than just keeping him safe on hunts, because he knows that if Dean hadn't pulled him back into this life after Jessica, he would have died. He's not sure how he would have gone out; maybe he would have gone off and hunted on his own, or maybe he'd have been a little less heroic and simply drank himself to death. But no matter how things could have gone, he knows without a doubt that Dean is the reason that he's alive today. He's never told him that either, but Dean already knows; there's no doubt in that either.

Something's wrong, and he can feel it the moment the door slams behind him. The room feels like it's about ten degrees, and the hairs on the back of his neck are standing straight up. Even as he shouts for Dean, his brother is silent, but it doesn't sound like there's a struggle or anything, so he's not sure what to think. Maybe Anne Marie has already gotten to him, or something else entirely is going on, but something doesn't feel right.

And when he's suddenly flying across the room and slamming into the wall, he starts to understand why.

He gasps as his body collides painfully with the hard wood and he falls none too gently to the floor. He can hear Dean shouting again, and a pounding at the door, but all of that is lost on him as he goes airborne again. He crashes into a glass display case, and even as he makes contact with the ground he's already being thrown once more, this time hitting the ceiling and falling all fifteen feet to the ground.

He's not sure how the fall doesn't kill him. At any rate, it knocks all the air from his lungs and his vision wavers dangerously. He can feel blood running down his body from the dozens of cuts the glass has left, and as hard as he's trying to push himself off the ground, his body just doesn't seem to want to cooperate. It doesn't matter anyway, for in the next second he's hurtling across the room, and even as the door suddenly flies open, his head slams into the wall and all he knows is darkness.

It's Anne Marie who gets the door open for him, and the moment she does Dean is leaping into the room, looking around wildly. He sees Sam for a brief moment as he collapses in a boneless heap on the floor, but before he can run to him Anne Marie is tugging desperately on his arm. "This way!" she whispers, and without waiting for him to respond she pulls him across the room with a supernatural strength, stopping in front of a glass display case that has been shattered. Dean can see little splatters of blood, and he feels a little sick when he realizes whose it is. I'm gonna kill that son of a bitch…

But to do that he needs to burn Joshua Vinlan's bones, or whatever artifact it might be that's keeping him tied to the earth, and currently they're scattered all around the room, because as luck would have it, the display case that Sam had used to cushion his fall had been the one containing all of the Vinlan's old things. Damn it.

He turns to Anne Marie desperately, feeling his heart rate accelerate as Joshua materializes next to Sam. "What do I burn?" She looks at him with wide, pained eyes and shakes her head slowly, pale, blond curls swinging. She doesn't know. He can see Sam rising slowly out of the corner of his eye, but he knows that it's not of his own choice; in fact, he doubts that Sam is even conscious enough to stand if he wants to, and that makes Dean even more desperate.

"There is no time," Anne Marie whispers, and his heart is beating so loud in his ears that he almost doesn't hear her. He looks at her in confusion for a moment, taking in her resignation, then nods. He wastes no time in dousing the room with salt and lighter fluid, even as he sees Joshua release Sam and move towards him. "I don't think so, bitch," Dean growls as he lights a match and let it fall.

He doesn't want to open his eyes. He can feel the heat around him, hear Dean shouting at him, but he's so tired. He hears a roar of pain and anger that must be the spirit of Joshua Vinlan going up in flames, but he doesn't want to move. Dean can carry him out, just this once…

"Sam," a voice whispers in his ear, one that definitely isn't Dean's. "Sam, wake up." His eyes open ever so slightly, enough that he can see a blurred outline in front of him. A cold hand cups his face gently, and the voice whispers more. "Sam, you need to get out of here. Dean can't carry you. Sam, get up sweetheart."

He opens his eyes another crack, enough to see who's speaking to him, and his heart nearly stops. He knows it's not her; the clothes are too old, the hair's too short, and her nose is too pointed, but in this one moment all he can see is her.

Jessica.

And then Dean is there, pulling him to his feet as the room burns around them, and suddenly this is all too familiar, all too painful. "No," he whispers as he gets to his feet. Dean tugs him towards the door, the only exit to the room, but Sam doesn't make it easy for him. "No, wait Dean, we can still save her!"

That only makes Dean tug him harder, and even though he's too weak to really fight back, Sam struggles. "Close your eyes, Sammy," Dean murmurs, and Sam can hear the pain that this is causing him. But he can't, he can't lose her again…

It's too late, though. For in the next moment, Anne Marie is burning. Sam doesn't know what of hers is burning- there are so many different things in the room that it could be- but her body is slowly disappearing into the flames. She doesn't scream; she doesn't even look afraid, and she holds his gaze. "No!" Sam struggles harder even as Dean pulls him through the doorway and into the next room. "No!"

And then she's simply… gone.

Sam doesn't fight Dean anymore. He simply allows himself to be dragged further away from the room, to the little side door that they snuck in through and out into the warm, humid night. He feels Dean lower him gently to the ground before he moves off to start the car, before coming back and carefully carrying Sam over to the passenger seat. Sam knows that it can't be easy for Dean, and he also knows that his own body should be hurting a lot right now.

But he doesn't feel a thing.

It's silent. Deathly silent. Dean is staring bullets into him, but he refuses to look up from the map that's spread open in front of him. He'd reacted badly in back at the museum; he had a just cause, he felt, but the fact of the matter was that it could have gotten them killed. Which means Dean won't be letting him off the hook this time, like he has been for the last few weeks. "Sam." No response. "Sam."

Dean doesn't wait for him to respond this time. "I don't care if you say anything right now, but you're sure as hell going to listen." There's a false bravado in his voice, and they both hear it. "I don't know what happened in there, but it nearly got us killed. It nearly got you killed, Sammy, and that is not okay. I know what this is about, and you know what, I get it, really I do, but…" His voice wavers as Sam finally meets his gaze. They're both trying not to show the other what's going on in their minds, and it shows.

"Man, you can't keep letting yourself feel guilty! I don't…" Dean trails off, and Sam can see that he's choosing his words carefully. "You can't keep living with this huge weight on your back, Sam. It is crushing you, and if something doesn't change it's going to bury you alive." His tone has become slightly desperate now, the way it does when he needs to fix something and can't do a damn thing about it. Sam releases a breath and silently pledges to show Dean a little less of his pain, because he knows just how helpless his brother is feeling right now.

God, does he know.

Dean has gone silent now, watching Sam expectantly, but the other brother is staring straight ahead, eyes down and mouth pressed into a hard line. "I don't care how you do it," Dean finally says. "Really and truly. I mean, if you need to go write some poetry or you need me to be your designated driver, then fine, I'm game. But you have to do something, and you have to do it before you get one of our asses killed." He adds the last part, for Sam's benefit as well as his own, because he hates it when he has to talk to Sam about things like this. And clearly Sam hates it as much as he does. "I've already told you, man, I'm-"

The argument is shot down before he's even finished. "Yeah, I know, you're fine. But the thing is, I've lived with you your entire life, and Sammy, this is not fine. As a matter of fact, this is about as far from fine as I've ever seen a person." And with all that they've seen, that is really saying something.

Dean sighs, running a hand through his hair in frustration. Sam, to his credit, doesn't say anything. "You can't just brood for the rest of your life, you know," he mutters, but one look at Sam and he's almost convinced that he intends to do just that.

There isn't anything left to be said, at least not aloud. They both know what the other wants to say anyway, and they're both too worn to argue anymore. And so they don't. Dean just wordlessly puts the Impala into gear and they pull out of the parking lot, on the hunt for a hunt again.

They haven't been on the road for more than two minutes before Dean puts in a Def Leppard cassette and turns it up as loud as he dares, because he'll be damned if he blows out his baby's speakers. Sam is almost grateful for it this time, because it means that Dean's dropping the subject, at least for the time being.

His thoughts stray to Jess before he can stop himself, and he sighs. Today isn't the day that her memory fades from his memory, and while he's glad that he hasn't forgotten her face yet, he wishes that he could go an hour without thinking of her. Someone had once told him that this is how love works, but he can't help but feel that this hurts too much to be real love. He'd felt love when she'd been alive; now, it's nothing but pain.

He's already done as much as he can at the moment to make it up to her. The only thing that's left is to kill the thing that killed her, but that's not enough.

Was it really so much to ask to have a normal? Did he really not deserve to grow old with someone, have a steady job and wife and kids? His father had always told him that there was no leaving the hunt. Dean had, too, but even then he's refused to believe it, because it wasn't fair.

Life isn't fair, he can hear a voice mocking him. You're a fool if you think otherwise. And as they drive, Sam realizes something. It doesn't hit him like he expected it to, but there's no way he can deny it anymore, and deep down… maybe he knows he's known it all along.

(Die Hard) You're caught in a trap
(Hunter) There's no lookin' back
(Die Hard) He's lost in the crowd
(Hunter) Die hard and proud

He was only kidding himself if he thought he could stay away from this life.

Well... angst is always fun, right? Hope y'all enjoyed. :) Please review!