Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to Eric Kripke and the CW. I make no profit from this story.
Notes: Set in Season One, between "Provenance" and "Dead Man's Blood." The first draft of this was written before "In My Time of Dying," so I guess the treatment of ghosts is now slightly AU.

Wayward Son

It started out like a normal job. Sam found an article about people in New Mexico who were waking up with whole lives of false memories. They argued for a bit about whether it was their kind of thing, then headed south because nothing better was going down. On the way, they continued arguing, this time about what it might be. Dean was pretty sure that Dad had mentioned running into a witch who could mess with people's memories, but there was nothing in the journal. Sam had noticed that all the incidents had happened within forty miles of a ruined Pueblo, so he was dredging up info on local gods and spirits.

"I'm just saying, Kokopelli is a trickster god, which might explain why nobody's actually been hurt."

"Thought he was a fertility god."

"Well, that too."

"So . . . maybe he'll know where we can pick up some hot chicks."

"I dunno, man, you might want to be careful. According to Ho-Chunk mythology, he had a detachable--"

"Oh, God."

"--and he would leave it in rivers for the girls who bathed there."

"Bad thoughts, Sammy. Bad thoughts."

"All I'm saying is, it might be catching."

"Smartass."

So they asked for some interviews to help with their dissertations in clinical psychology. None of the victims had been to the pueblo or encountered any Indian artifacts in the past month, but three of them said they'd seen "ball lightning" shortly before everything started, and two admitted that there had been a shadowy figure standing by. The others swore they hadn't seen anything unusual, but Dean was pretty sure they were lying.

"So . . . maybe it's not an Indian god," Sam said as they walked back to the car.

"Well, since this Kokopelli dude comes out for girls, we could always send you down to the river to check."

Sam glowered at him. "Very funny."

Dean was still laughing when he glanced across the street and saw the shadowy figure and the ball of light coming right now. Before he had even finished recognizing it, he was already shoving Sam aside. Then the light slammed into him. He didn't black out, but the world went fuzzy for a moment. When things cleared up, he was sprawled on the sidewalk with Sam kneeling over him.

"Dean. Dean? Oh, God. Dean." He fumbled at Dean's neck for a pulse, and Dean swatted his hand away, then sat up.

"I'm fine. Didn't even hurt."

Sam made a strangled noise, and his mouth twisted. Dean wondered what was up with him and then realized--oh God--the thing had got him. It had gotten into his head, screwed his memories, and anything could be wrong. Dad could have died yesterday, and he wouldn't know.

"Are you sure it's him?"

Dean looked up and saw Sarah standing over them, clutching a shotgun. Even in the middle of a complete meltdown, his brain automatically evaluated her grip and stance. She was new to this, but she had been practicing a lot, and she had probably shot the hell out of a few things already.

"So . . . I'm missing the part where you joined up with us," he said. Why was Sam flinching at everything he said? Then he noticed that Sam was wearing his leather jacket, which was just all kinds of wrong. Unless it was really Sam's leather jacket.

This had got to be the worst hunt ever.

"Christo," Sarah announced.

Dean rolled his eyes, though he had to admit it showed good instincts. "Look, no brimstone." He raised his hands and got to his feet slowly, Sarah's shotgun still trained on him. "Obviously this thing took some of my memories, so let's have more explaining and less staring, and then we can go kick its ass." And somewhere in the middle of that sentence it occurred to him that what if Sammy wasn't really his brother?

Sam shook his head. "It's Dean. I'm sure. I know." His voice had the same quiet certainty as in Lawrence.

Sarah didn't lower the gun or look away from Dean. "This thing is changing people's memories. Not resurrecting the dead."

"Feeling kind of out of the loop here, guys. And do you really need to point that gun at me?"

Sam flinched again. Great. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"Driving into this town without Sarah, talking to the victims, saving your ungrateful ass. But obviously I'm having issues in the memory department, so want to me up to speed?"

Sarah looked from him to Sam, then let out annoyed sigh. "You died five months ago."

"Are you sure this thing didn't get you as well? 'Cause I think I would remember being dead. Or at least, you know, notice it afterwards."

"Sarah, he's not a ghost," Sam said. "Look, the important thing is, you're back. We can figure out how later."

"Dean!"

One moment they were bickering; the next Dean shoved him to the ground. Light crackled around him, and then he was gone. Sam surged to his feet just in time to see the shadow standing on the other side of the street.

Not the one.

The voice echoed in his brain, sexless and uninflected, but still with a terrible note of loss. Then it was gone, and Sam was alone in the twilight, his heartbeat thudding in his ears.

He grimly went through the motions of searching the area, but he knew that he wouldn't find Dean that way. There was a complete absence of Dean here that he could sense on a level he had never known he was feeling. He refused to think what that could mean.

Back in the motel, he went through the newspaper clippings again. This didn't make sense. None of the other people had disappeared. What would make the thing switch from changing people's memories to snatching them?

Where had it put his brother?

I'm right here, man. Where's Sarah?

"New York," Sam said absently, and then the penny dropped. He lunged for his shotgun and backed against the wall, scanning the room. He couldn't see anything more sinister than the six wooden pig plaques on the wall, but the cold prickle in the air was nauseatingly familiar.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

Sammy. Relax. It's me.

--that voice wasn't, couldn't be one he recognized--

With a flicker, Dean appeared at the other side of the room, hands held up placatingly. "Hey. I know you don't want to see me, but something's wrong. That thing took Sarah."

Sam could feel his hand shaking as he held the gun. This wasn't Dean. This couldn't be Dean, because Dean hadn't died an hour ago, between one breath and the next, gone before Sam had even noticed what happened.

"Dude. Do you even know who I am?"

And Sam lowered the gun, because he could ignore anything he saw and heard, but he couldn't shut off the little voice in the back of his head saying, This is Dean. This is my brother, and he is dead dead dead like Jessica and Mom.

"Oh, God," he breathed, barely hearing the clatter as his shotgun hit the floor. "What did it do to you?"

"Me? Nothing. I'm fine. But--"

"Fine?" Sam's voice was suddenly back and then some. "You're dead!"

"Not exactly news, Sammy. The point is, Sarah's gone and your brain is scrambled." He shrugged. "More than usual."

"My brain is scrambled? I'm not the one saying I'm 'fine' without a heartbeat!" He paused as a thought hit him with a dizzying rush of hope. "Hey, maybe--maybe this is, I don't know, like an out- of-body experience. I mean, this thing, it didn't hurt any of the other people. Maybe you're unconscious somewhere--what's the last thing you remember?"

Dean looked away. "It's over, okay? We just gotta find Sarah and get your memory back."

"The thing never touched me, Dean! Do you see it touch me?"

"Hey, I don't watch your dates." Then he sighed. "No, I didn't see it get you, but that has to be why you're all screwed in the head."

"And Sarah's in New York, so it couldn't get her, and anyway it doesn't take people . . ." Sam's voice trailed off.

"Unless it's replacing them," they both said at once.

And this had to be the craziest thing they'd ever encountered, but it made more sense than Dean being dead.

The motel was exactly the same as Dean remembered, except that there were wooden alligators on the wall instead of pigs. Sam dropped his gun on the bed, hauled out a duffel bag, and started packing. Dean sat down uneasily in one of the chairs, and Sarah stood by the door, mouth in a line, looking from one to another.

"We're leaving," said Sam. "In case this thing comes back for you." Light glinted off something hanging from his neck: Dean's amulet. Or was it really Sam's amulet? His stomach twisted at the thought that Dad had never given it to him when he was twelve with a gruff Don't take it off.

He looked down. The amulet was still hanging from his neck. Dean picked it up, rubbing his thumb against the tiny gold horns and thinking hard. Sarah was right, it didn't make sense for this thing to switch from changing memories to bringing back the dead. No one had ever found something capable of truly restoring life. And why would it bother duplicating his amulet?

"Hey," he said. "Maybe this thing isn't changing memories at all. Maybe it's switching people between, you know, alternate universes. Like on Star Trek."

Sam continued stuffing clothes into the duffel bag. "That's crazy."

Sarah's mouth quirked. "Sam, you hunt ghosts for a living." Inside, with the better lighting, Dean could see that she had four long scars on her cheek.

"Even if there were alternate universes--and there aren't--you're saying that this thing was switching people. You weren't here to switch."

"Sammy," Dean tried in a conciliatory tone.

Sam glared at him, and Dean was sure that this had to be another dimension, because his Sam had never looked so hard-edged and desperate, not even in that first week after Jessica died.

"I get that you don't like having your memories changed," he said. "There's a healer in Wichita that we could check out, I think he deals with stuff like that. But you've got to accept that this is real and we're leaving town tonight."

Dean was on his feet. "Since when do we leave without finishing the hunt?"

"Yeah, well, you're more important!"

"Good for me," said Dean. "I'm not leaving." Sam paused in his packing with a loud huff, and Dean decided to try for reasonable. "Look, even if I was dead and this thing brought me back, we can't assume it's okay. Like with the Reaper and--crap, that never happened here." He wondered if in this world Layla had gotten her miracle.

Except Sarah was looking haunted, so maybe not. "He's right. We have to find out what's going on. Besides--" She paused a moment. "We both know . . . there was someone."

Sam went absolutely still. "He was salted and burned, Sarah."

"So maybe it works differently on dead people. I don't know!" said Dean. "But it's more of a pattern than if this thing were mind-wiping people and then suddenly tried its hand at resurrection."

A thought hit him; he stepped towards Sam, rolling up his sleeve to show where the possessed scorpion had stung him last week. "Hey. I bet I didn't have that the last time you saw me."

Sam looked at him, and Dean hoped that his real brother never looked at him that way. Not like it was his own hands pinning him to the ceiling and cutting him open.

"It's the only explanation," Dean said

Sam dropped his gaze, shoulders slumping a little. "What do you want to do?"

"Swapping people between worlds, that has to take some pretty serious mojo, right? Something that powerful always has a physical focus. Bones or a black alta. We just need to find it and destroy it." Or exorcise it or answer three riddles or fetch the golden apples of the sun, but Dean was hoping this would be one of the salt-and-burn hunts.

"You said people were seeing the shadow in your world too," said Sarah. "What if there's a focus on that side as well? We can't destroy that."

"We don't need to," said Dean. "Sam will."

"There's always something to burn," said Dean.

Sam twitched. He still couldn't get used to having a ghost leaning against the motel wall. "The problem is finding it, especially since we still have no idea what this thing is."

"Have you plotted on a map where all the switches happened? Maybe there's a pattern."

Sam shook his head. "Only three people admitted to seeing it. That's not enough."

"Three people in your world." Dean crossed his arms and grinned.

"You remember?" Dean nodded, and Sam grabbed for a map. "Show me."

There was a lot of peering at tiny street names and using the phone book to find libraries and thrift stores, but eventually they had six dots marked on the map in a perfect hexagram.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Dean asked.

Sam nodded, and drew in the lines to find the center. "Philip Francis Memorial Park. At least we don't have to break-and-enter this time."

"Great, let's go." Dean straightened up.

"Even if we find whatever it's bound to, destroying it might not send you back,"
Sam said, picking up his shotgun.

Dean shook his head. "Ghosts stay where they're bound. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't keeping me."

Sam looked at him. If not for the occasional flicker and the chill in the air--and the silent, paranoid screaming of his mind--he would have thought this was his Dean, ready to get out in the night air and kick some ass.

"You seem awfully zen about being dead," he said, opening the shotgun.

"I'm kinda past the whole denial, anger stage of things."

Sam's hands slowed. Guess you're leaving town without me. Different words, same meaning; obviously it was a given in any universe that Dean would care about every life except his own, damn him.

"Was it your heart?" he asked quietly, imagining what it would have been like without the Reader, watching Dean die a little bit each day. Then tried not to.

"Huh? No. Hunt. Y'know, drew the short straw and everything." Dean was looking away, his voice casual. "Are we going to kill this thing or what?"

It was hard enough prying truth out of his own Dean. Sam decided he was never going to succeed with someone else's, and finished putting the shotgun back together.

Sam announced that he was going to make the other victims admit where they'd seen the shadow, snarled Stay here at Dean when he asked if he needed help, and stalked out of the room looking like a six-foot-five lost puppy with rabies.

Sarah watched him go with a frustrated look, though Dean was pretty sure she was also still admiring his ass. Then she turned to him and said, "So did you ever find a way to handle him when he was in this mood?"

"Don't think I ever saw him in quite that mood," said Dean.

Her shoulders slumped. "Yeah."

"So . . . how'd you two meet? Since in my world we didn't run into you till a week ago."

She smiled at him like they had just been introduced at a cocktail party. "Car accident. He fell asleep at the wheel and rear-ended me. I found out later that he'd been sleeping three hours a night for the past week." She paused. "It wasn't long after you died."

"So, no haunted painting?"

She looked away. "That happened later. It killed my father and one of my friends."

Damn. That explained why she was hunting. "Sorry."

She shrugged. "After that, I didn't want to spend my life wondering if the next thing I sold was going to be haunted, so I came along with Sam."

"And he let you?"

"I told him that if he didn't let me come with him, I'd start hunting on my own." She smiled. "Also, my credit cards are legal."

"Heh, Sammy's got a sugar mama." Sarah raised her eyebrows. "So what did you mean about there being someone to switch?"

She seemed to consider her answer for a few moments. "My first real hunt was a Rawhead, about a month after we left New York. I was just supposed to get the kids out to safety, but I went back in after Sam. It cornered me and I was so scared, I didn't notice that we were both standing in water."

"You got electrocuted."

She nodded, smiling ruefully. "Yeah. And while I was in the hospital, I kept seeing this guy by my bed, telling me that it would be okay, Sam would take care of me. And that I looked hot in a hospital gown. Sam said I was just dreaming, that it was impossible because you were cremated. But I never saw a picture of you until after."

Dean didn't need any proof to believe her. Ghosts always vanished when you burnt the body, but Sam was flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, and there was no law in any world that was going to keep him from protecting his little brother.

"Also," Sarah added, "the TV keeps getting stuck on Godzilla marathons. So I think we're definitely haunted."

Sam stalked back into the room a couple hours later and yanked a map out of his bag.

"I got three more to tell me where they saw it," he said, staring at the map.

Sarah looked from one of them to the other. "I . . . think I need to get something from the vending machine."

"You think we can locate it from that?" Dean asked as the door closed.

Sam paused, lips tightening. "Even if we do . . . destroying it might not send you back."

"Sure it will," Dean said. trying not to think of what would happen if it didn't.

"You could stay here."

"Sam." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "You know I'm not him, right?"

Sam stared blankly at the air above the map, shoulders hunched. "Yeah."

And damn it, he had seen that look on Sam far too often, especially in the first weeks after Stanford.

His voice rose in frustration. "You know it's not your fault?"

Sam's voice was low, resentful. "You weren't there. How the hell would you know?"

"I know it's a dangerous gig. I know that when I go, it's gonna be 'cause my luck ran out, not 'cause you did something wrong."

Sam laughed bitterly. "I guess Dad never sent you to Rockford."

Dean froze, his chest twinging in remembered pain. "Ellicott."

"Or maybe your Sam was smart enough not to answer a fake phone call and get brainwashed by a psycho doctor. You want to know why I think it's my fault? Because I shot your face full of rock salt. And then I found your gun and loaded it up and put the whole clip through your skull." He shook his head. "At least you weren't awake for that part."

"You burned that bastard's bones afterwards, didn't you?"

Sam's mouth flexed. "Yeah. And then I burned your bones and mixed the ashes with salt."

"Then you got the guy who killed me. It wasn't you doing it."

"I wasn't possessed, Dean, I wanted to kill you."

"You want to know why my gun wasn't loaded?" Dean asked quietly. "Because I thought you might be crazy, and if I had to threaten you there was no way I was doing it with a loaded gun. But also because I knew that Ellicott could get me, and I didn't want to have anything that could kill you." He shook his head. "It's just luck he got you first, man, in your world and mine. I'd have done the same thing."

"So why didn't you die?"

Dean cracked a grin. "My Sam has lousy aim."

The park could have been from any grubby neighborhood anywhere in the country: yellow-tinged grass scuffed down to dirt in places, a few dried-out oak trees, and a battered swing set whose rubber seats looked ready to fall off. Sam walked slowly towards the center, holding out the EMF meter. It didn't register anything besides the background hum of Dean's presence.

"It might not show up on that." Dean stepped a little closer, and the hum increased to a whine.

"Stay back, you're messing it up," Sam said, then glanced back at him. "Does your Sam even bother with the EMF any more?"

Dean rubbed the back of his neck. "He, uh, doesn't believe I'm there."

"Oh. Ouch." Sam paused, suddenly wondering what it was like, trapped in a shadow life with his only companion refusing to see or hear him. That had to be pretty close to Dean's definition of hell.

"I don't blame him." Dean shrugged. "I pretty near drove him crazy the first couple weeks, trying to talk to him. He got so little sleep he crashed the car."

"And you didn't kill him? You're getting soft." Sam took another step forward. "Have you tried writing on the walls or--"

The whine of the EMF meter kicked up to a high-pitched squeal. Sam stopped and poked his toe at the ground. It gave a little; pointing his flashlight down, he could see that it had been recently dug.

"Pay dirt," he said, and started shoveling.

It wasn't buried deep by their normal standards: barely two feet down, the shovel clanked against something hollow and metal, and Sam hauled out a dented cash box. There wasn't even a lock; he flipped it open and found a pair of tiny dolls plaited out of dried grass. No bones, no bowls of blood, no inverted crosses. He reached into his pocket for a lighter, wondering if it could really be this simple--

And he slammed to the ground, skin instantly numbed by the cold as the shadow coiled over him, eyeless and yet somehow seeing, reading him, phantom fingers closing inexorably around his throat even though he bucked against it, silent voice chanting, This is the one, this is the one the one one--

"Hey! Let go of my brother!"

Air rushed back into his chest as the feeling returned to his fingers, prickling-hot. Sam blinked and half-raised himself to see Dean wrestling with the shadow, fire running up his arms like the flames around their mother in Lawrence.

"Sammy! Can't keep this up forever!"

He lurched to a sitting position and grabbed the lighter. Hands shaking, he flicked it again and again until at last a flame sputtered to life and he shoved it down onto the dolls. The grass blackened and curled, more flames springing to life.

Light flashed across his vision, and there was a soft whump of air. When Sam could see again, both Dean and the shadow were gone. He stared at the scuffed grass, heart thudding in his ears. Had Dean been obliterated, destroying the shadow along with himself like their mother's ghost in Lawrence?

If there was nothing left to exchange, could his own brother still come back?

Then Dean flickered back into existence. Blood dripped down his face, as if he had forgotten to hide his death-wounds, but he was wearing his that-bastard's-freakin'-toast grin as he said, "You okay?"

Then light flared around him and he was gone.

They got to the park, they found the box, they burned the dolls. Nothing happened. They stared at each other over the dying flames; Sarah raised her eyebrows, Sam clenched his jaw, and Dean pursed his lips.

"Okay," he said after another few seconds. "I guess they haven't torched it yet on the other side."

Then the light smeared across his vision. When things cleared again, he was kneeling on the ground, wheezing for breath, with Sarah nowhere in sight and Sam gripping his shoulders. "Hey, Sammy, miss me?"

Sam choked and pulled him into a hug. This one time, Dean decided to let him.

The lights in the motel room flickered and Sam sighed, no longer able to fight. "You can stop hiding, Dean."

For a moment there was silence; then his back prickled, and he jerked around to find Dean sitting behind him on the bed.

"Hey," said Dean with a cocky grin.

Sam couldn't breathe for a moment; the leather jacket was too hot and the amulet dragged at his neck. He felt like he was seven again and about to get in trouble for playing with his big brother's gun.

"Hey," he whispered.

"It's an improvement over the denial, anyway," said Dean. "Though I gotta say, little brother, I made that jacket look a lot sexier."

Sam ducked his head, snorting, and then while he was still safely looking down, said, "Dean--I'm sorry--"

"I know."

"--you've always been there for me and I, I shot you--

"Oh, God."

"--I didn't mean anything that I said--"

"Sam. Sammy!" Dean grabbed his shoulders--and God, it was wrong, that bad-reception flicker in his movement--and said, "It wasn't you, okay? It was that bastard Ellicott, and you toasted him."

The other Dean had said the same thing. Sam used to try to say it too, in the dreams where his reflection stared at him with bleeding eyes and said, Mom and Jess weren't enough, you had to kill your brother as well? It never helped; the blood still oozed down his face as he heard his own voice answer, mercilessly soft, It was your finger on the trigger, your hatred made you pull it. How long before you slit Sarah's pretty throat?

"I should have fought him harder."

"I should have ducked. We all make mistakes." There was no warmth in Dean's fingers, but the pressure was steady and strong as he gave Sam a gentle shake. "Look, man, it happened, it's over. Killing yourself isn't gonna make it any better."

"I know. I just . . . I'd give anything to get you back."

Dean released him. "Chill, Sammy. It's not like I'm, you know, gone or anything."

Sam stared. "Please don't tell me you're okay."

"Of course I'm not okay. You're driving my car. I'll have to haunt you forever to make sure she doesn't get hurt."

He shook his head. "I'm never going to get rid of you, am I?"

"Nope." Dean looked absurdly pleased with himself, and Sam thought he was going to break inside as he realized that his older brother had finally gotten his biggest wish. "So . . . when are you going to notice your sexy sidekick supergirl?"

"What?"

"Seriously. She's hot, she thinks you're hot, and her aim with a shotgun is pretty good. What are you waiting for?"

"A life expectancy greater than the next three months?"

"Man, with that attitude, you are never going to get a girlfriend."

"Well, maybe that's a lower priority than making sure she doesn't end up dead!" The last words ripped out of him.

"She's been following you around for five months. Don't you think the Curse of Sam would have struck already?"

It was so natural that he whacked at Dean's shoulder without thinking--but his hand passed through empty air and Dean was gone with the echo of a snicker. Sam waited, but he didn't reappear.

"Jerk," he muttered.

The door opened and Sarah peered in. "Is it okay . . ."

Sam rubbed his forehead. "Yeah, you can come in, he's gone again."

He watched her go to her bed and started folding her clothes. She no longer bothered trying to hide the daeva scars with makeup, but she still wore lip gloss.

"So are you going to say 'I told you so'?" he asked.

"I figured it was already pretty obvious." She paused and then said, "You know, when I was in that hospital . . . he kept saying, Don't worry. Sammy will take care of you."

Sam looked away.

"I don't think he ever blamed you," she said.

"I know," Sam whispered. Sometimes he thought it would be better if he had.

He could feel her watching him for another moment; then she crossed the room to get her suitcase out of the closet. He could hear her rattling something, and then she called, "Sam? Could you give me a hand? This is stuck."

"Yeah," he said, getting up. He went to the closet and leaned over her shoulder, reaching for the handle--

And the door slammed shut, throwing him against Sarah in a jumble of elbows and coat hangars. "Sam--"

"Sorry," he said, untangling himself from her and straightening up. He pounded against the door, but it didn't even budge.

"Dean, this isn't funny. Dean? Dean!"