Sam's looking for something. He looks in his backpack. He looks in the car. He looks under the seats in the car. He looks in the trunk. He looks in the duffels in the trunk. He looks in his backpack again.

"Sam?" I ask finally because he isn't telling me what he's looking for, or even asking if I've seen it. We just pulled into the Valu-Plenty Motel after a long day of driving across Nebraska so if he isn't finding something here, now, one of us is in for a bad rest of the day.

"I – uh – just can't find my jacket." He says it without looking at me. He says it keeping his back to me while I look at the laminated sheet of nearby restaurants and he looks through his backpack. Again.

We haven't exactly been joined at the hip these past couple of months, since Lilith and Lucifer and hell's opening night. No, it was before that. Since we locked Sam in the panic room and made him go through withdrawal that sounded more agonizing than a hellhound attack. That drove the wedge all the way between us. Sam's hardly been able to look at me since.

"Your tan jacket?" I ask, though that couldn't be it. It was right there on top when I pulled my duffel out of the trunk.

"Uh – no. My – um – my hooded jacket."

SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN

The brightly lit thrift store was an abrupt contrast to the dark afternoon of early December outside. Sam blinked against the light and waited for Dean to find the way to men's coats. They'd never been in this store before, not that Sam could remember, but maybe Dean had because he seemed to know exactly where they were going. Sam followed along behind him.

Dean had been steadily building up Sam's supply of clothes. He'd lost almost everything in the fire but what was in his travel bag and Dean had been getting him everything he needed and then some ever since. Just a little at a time, like he knew a marathon shopping trip would overwhelm Sam. Just a couple shirts and a couple pairs of jeans here, a few t-shirts there. Boots and sneakers, socks and underwear wherever they found good ones that fit. And Dean was even more particular about the fit of Sam's clothes than Sam was right now.

"Here we go." Dean said. "Try this on."

There followed a good twenty minutes of Dean picking jackets and handing them to Sam to try on. Then Dean would ask, 'how does it feel?' and 'do you like it?' and when Sam never answered, he'd decide it wasn't good enough and move on to the next. Sam could hardly summon the energy to care. There was a mirror stuck onto the end of the row they were in, but he never bothered looking. Whatever Dean decided, whichever one he chose, it'd be fine. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

Thrift stores had been their main source of clothes their whole lives and continued to be even after Sam got to Stanford. 'Full Ride' didn't include much for extras, and even if it did, Sam never cared enough about clothes to go high end. All he cared about was that they fit his height and his shoulders and that was about all. He'd hesitated telling Jess where he shopped, but she loved the idea and would always go with him. She had better taste in clothes than he did and he'd leave his choices up to her choices and never regretted it.

Now Dean said he needed a warm jacket and Jessica was forty-one days dead and gone.

Just as Dean was about to hand him another jacket, Sam said, "I'm going to get a drink of water," and walked away.

SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN

The hooded jacket. The jacket that makes Sam look like a giant sized kid. The jacket that doesn't fit him good enough anymore. The jacket that he seems to wear whenever he's feeling lost.

The jacket that I'll drive back to Iowa to find if I have to.

"Where'd you see it last?"

"Um – I don't know. Maybe it was – it might've been –." He's still talking while not looking at me, and sounding like he does remember where he saw it last only he's afraid to tell me. So I drop the restaurant guide and walk close enough that he has to look at me. Only he turns more away so that he doesn't have to look at me.

"Sam?" I put my hand on his arm and some warning in my voice and he at least turns back to me, even if he won't make eye contact for more than a millisecond.

"Kearney. It was in the back seat in Kearney. Where we stopped at that grocery store. That's the last time I remember seeing it."

"All right, let's go." I grab my keys, I grab my jacket, I head for the door, the car, and Kearney. Sam stays right by his bed. "Sam?"

"Go where?" He asks, sounding like he really has no clue.

"Kearney."

That makes him look at me. His disbelief that I would do something nice for him, ever again, is what finally makes him look at me.

"Wha – no – I don't – it's okay. No. I – it's just a jacket. Right? There wasn't any money or ID or anything in it. Don't worry about it. I mean – it's like a two hour drive. That's too far. We just pulled in, we gotta get back on the road in the morning…"

How many excuses is he going to give me?

"Sam – let's go."

SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN

The hard plastic chair next to the water fountain was too inviting and Sam dumped himself onto the bright blue seat. Forty-one days. Tomorrow would be forty-two days. Six weeks since Jessica died. For their six week dating anniversary he'd bought her flowers and dinner and fake diamond earrings that looked real. For their six week living together anniversary, Jess had made dinner and cookies and love that still tingled him. And now there was nothing left of her, not even those fake diamond earrings.

"You comin' back over?" Dean asked, standing next to Sam suddenly. He had two more jackets in his hands.

"I want t'go back out to the car." Sam said. He could hear the pleading in his own voice. "I don't need anything. I don't want anything. I just want t'go back to the car."

"All right." Dean held the keys out to him. "I'll be out in a minute. No driving off anywhere, got it? No changing the radio station."

It was meant as a joke, it was meant as a jab that was meant as an oblique 'You okay? I'm worried about you.' It was meant to provoke a smile and so Sam gave it his best shot but knew it wasn't as much a smile as it should've been.

"Yeah." He took the keys. "Thanks."

SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN

The distance from North Platte to Kearney is about a hundred miles. The distance between me and Sam is somewhere in the neighborhood of a million times that. It was always easy before to get things back to normal. If he was mad at me, I could joke him back to a good mood, or purposely piss him off more and more until it got to the point of being ridiculous and he'd laugh at himself or me. If he was mad about something else, I could get him to vent until he was exhausted. There was always some way I could make it better. Now – it's not that I don't want to try, I'm just kind of exhausted myself.

"Keep a look out along the road, in case it blew out the window." I tell Sam. "Remember that cup holder we had, one of the first ones we ever had and Dad was driving so fast it got sucked right out the window?"

"Yeah." He's either answering the cup holder question or letting me know he's keeping a look out for his jacket. I don't think the jacket went flying, we don't have the back windows down and one of us would've noticed something getting sucked out of the front windows. So Kearney it is.

It's about an hour and a half drive, even the way I drive, and nothing much else gets said for most of the way. And anything that does get said gets said by me. Sam just stares out the windshield as the I-80 flies by again and I wonder what I'm going to do if that jacket isn't laying in the parking lot of Bob's Superstore.

"You wanna pull off and get something to eat?" I ask.

"Whatever. I'm not hungry."

We keep driving.

It's just – I don't – I hate to – is it so wrong to feel so angry? Is it? Not angry that Sam chose 'bigger & stronger' over me, but that he chose it over us. All our lives, it's always been us. Even when he went to college, even if we weren't together, even when we weren't talking, I could tell myself that it was still us and that I could get him to come back any time I needed him. Then I come back from hell – from hell – and all I get is a 'nice to see you' before he turns around and runs off with a demon and leaves me standing there feeling –

Feeling like I wasn't part of us anymore, no matter how hard I tried. And that hurt worse than any hellhound ever could. And I can't help wondering if Sam is with me now only because he has nowhere else to go. That if he did have somewhere else, someone else, that side of the car would be empty and cold.

Where did my brother go? I don't even mean the little brother who used to follow me and copy me and annoy me and worship me. I mean my brother who could sit next to me and I could sit next to him and that was all we needed. No words. No explanations. No lies. We knew each other backwards and forwards so much we could start each other's sentences, let alone finish them.

But Sam sits next to me now like some hitchhiker I picked up and he's staring hard out the window like we're both waiting for the moment he can say, 'up here, you can let me off here' because the silence is too loud and serrated to endure.

And I hate that.

SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN

The inside of the car was cold and empty as Sam put himself into the passenger seat. The last time he'd spent this much time in the car, before he went to college, it'd been with Dad and Dean, and the car was never empty.

Tomorrow would be six weeks since Jess died. So tomorrow would be twenty-two years and six weeks since Mom died. So probably twenty-two years ago Sam was probably sitting in this exact car in nearly this exact spot, probably between Dean and Dad. He'd spent his whole life in this car. Even when he was at Stanford, whenever Sam thought of 'home', he thought of this car.

He'd never even had the chance to show Jessica the car. She would've loved it because he did. That's how she was. He wondered for the very first time if that's why she liked shopping at thrift stores, because it was important to him. Not that she was pretending, she wasn't that way. Despite the little Sam had ever really told Jess about his life, she realized that the things that were important to him were really important to him, and so she absorbed them into her own agenda of importance. That's just how she was.

Thinking of Jess put a lump in Sam's throat and tears in his eyes. She haunted his sleep and shimmered in the periphery of his wakefulness and it was all as fresh and as agonizing as it had been that first day without her. That pain just never stopped. If Dad had felt as bad when Mom died as Sam was feeling right now it was a miracle any of them survived.

Sam ran his hand over the seat. This had been Mom's car too. They at least still had that connection to her. Sam had nothing left of Jess but her voicemail on his cell phone and the one t-shirt she'd bought him that survived the fire. Mom had been in this car, probably driven this car. Maybe some part of her was still here.

SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN

Finally, Kearney is in sight. Sam hasn't said anything for thirty minutes and I haven't said anything for twenty. I'd say something if I thought I'd get an answer out of him. A more than one-syllable-if-that answer. Hell, I'd say something to make him ground zero pissed at me just to clear the air but I can't think of anything that would set him off because the Sam sitting next to me has no spark in him at all.

If he was angry, I would understand. I could deal. I locked him in against his will. I told him I never wanted to see him again. I got there too late to save him from hell's end-run. But he's not angry. He's broken. He's a shell sitting next to me and there's no deal I can make with anybody to bring him back to life this time. He's broken and I helped break him and as angry as I am at Sam for the choices he made, I'm a million times angrier at myself for the choices I didn't make and I can't say 'I'm sorry' because I don't think that would be enough.

Not enough for him and for sure not enough for me.

Bob's Superstore looms in front of us and for the first time in this trip, I can feel Sam shift next to me, no longer just staring out the window, but actually looking, trying to find his wayward jacket. I pull us into the spot we'd parked in before, just a few hours before, but there's no jacket around and I can feel Sam's slow collapse into himself.

"Why don't you have a look around? I'll go in and see if anybody turned it in."

"Yeah."

I get out first and faster and scout the ground and under cars as I head for the front doors of the store. One look back to the car shows me Sam standing at his open door, looking tired, looking unhappy, looking for that jacket. I see him shake his head and heave a sigh. I don't believe much in prayer, but please God let there be a Lost & Found in this store.

SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN

Sam had managed to fall into a light sleep when the driver's door opened and shut again quietly. Dean was back. Sam handed over the keys without lifting his head from his arm against the window. Dean took them but didn't turn the car on.

"Aren't we going?" Sam asked, still not lifting his head, hardly opening his eyes. He was so tired.

"In a minute…here."

That made Sam look over at Dean who was pulling the tags off of a brown jacket that Sam vaguely remembered trying on in the store. When the tags were off, Dean handed it over.

"Here. Put it on. It's supposed to be getting down to the Zeroes tonight."

Sam took it, but didn't put it on. He held it out a little to get a look at it. Brown, soft, zippered. With a hood of all things. Hooded jackets were right up there with footie pajamas.

"A hood?" He barely had the energy to ask it.

"Yeah. Keep your head warm…you don't like it?"

Dean asked that in the tone of voice that said he'd take it right back in if it wasn't exactly what Sam wanted. Sam knew that he'd spend the rest of this day and all of the next getting him just the right jacket, if that's what it took.

"It's perfect." Because after all the time and effort and scrutiny Dean put into the process, what jacket that he picked out wouldn't be perfect? "Thanks."

Instead of pulling it on, Sam pulled it over his shoulders and put his head on his arm again against the window and hoped he'd fall back to sleep as Dean started the car and headed them onto the main road. The jacket slipped a little and before Sam could move to slide it back, he felt Dean push it back and tuck it in between him and the seat to keep it in place.

SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN

Sam is back in the passenger seat, staring at the far wall of Bob's Superstore. He doesn't even look at me when I get back in the car.

"Here you go. Somebody turned it in a little while ago." I hold the jacket out and actually hear a little gasp when Sam finally sets his eyes on it. He takes it into his hands like he's afraid of touching it and stares at it like he can't believe it.

"Guess it's a little worse for wear." I tell him, pointing to the tire tread up one arm. "We can find a one hour dry cleaner -."

"No. No, I'll take care of it." He bundles it into his arms like nobody better try anything if they know what's good for them.

"Okay. Let's hit a drive-thru and get back on the road."

"Yeah. Okay."

We haven't driven very far when Sam says, "I didn't mean for you to have to drive all this way back." Not us, but you. Isn't there an 'us' left in there anywhere?

"You'd do the same for me."

He looks like I surprised him. Which surprises me.

"What?" I have to ask. "You wouldn't do it for me?"

"I would. I would. I just – I'm surprised you think so. After – after everything – after – thanks."

Is he thanking me for the jacket or for the trust? A little of both maybe.

"I didn't want to hear you whining all the way to Idaho that you lost your favorite jacket." I grumble. I'm thinking, 'C'mon Sam. C'mon and take the bait.'

I wait.

He does.

"Like I want to listen to you whine all the way past Idaho how you needed to buy me a new jacket." He finally answers and I want to celebrate, because where there is snark, there is life.

We stop at a red light that looks like it's going to be a long one at a five way intersection, and I reach over for his jacket. He pulls it away but I tug on it.

"C'mon, gimme."

He lets me take it and I shake it out and have a good look at it. Nothing wrong but the dusty tire tread so I scrub at it with my sleeve to get most of it off then fold it up and hand it back. Sam hugs it to himself again and even without having the jacket on, he looks like a giant sized kid.

"Thanks." He says again. He's even actually looking at me when he says it. "It was the first jacket you got me after I lost everything in the fire. I would've really hated to lose it."

It might be stretching, but I hear an 'us' in there.

"No problem, Sammy."

The End.