A/N: This is my take on how I'd like to see Season 3 end. Its short I know, but if I'd put everything in it I wanted to Season 3 would be over before I was finished. Besides I like leaving things up to the individual imagination. Thanks for reading.

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End of the Line

May 17, 2008

The year had gone by so quickly. Despite the demons outnumbering the hunters and their allies, good had been the victor. Sam, Dean and Bobby with Ellen and a handful of other hunters had cleared the field, returning all but a handful of demons to hell; most of them in pieces. They had also taken care of whatever else they had run across in their hunts. Now the guys were once again hunting on their own, trailing the last escaped demon, and running out of time to break Dean's demon deal. The demon's trail led the guys back to the Devil's Gate in Wyoming, where everything had gone so wrong in the first place. Neither Winchester wanted to return to the place where all Hell had truly broken loose.

Two days earlier, early morning

Dean sat upright on the motel bed with a gasp. He heard them again. The hellhounds. They were coming for him; he knew it without a doubt. He had not quite forty hours left; he noted, glancing at his watch. He had started a countdown timer at sixty hours. Some morbid part of him wanted to know his time was up before he heard the howling. The countdown was active in his mind non stop now. He wiped the sweat from his brow and glanced to the other bed in the room. The one where his baby brother lay sleeping peacefully for the first time in nine days. It had been nine days since Dean's dreams had begun to interfere with Sam's sleep. He had managed to remain quiet this time as hellhounds had set upon him, tearing him to shreds. He had stifled his screams as the beasts, only he could see, ripped his soul from his body and flung it into the flames of hell.

He got up from the bed and stumbled shakily into the small bathroom, like he did every night. He closed the door before turning on the dim lighting. Dean couldn't bring himself to look in the mirror. He knew what he would see, a walking dead man. Dean backed away from the mirror and against the wall opposite the shower, slowly sliding down the wall to sit on the gray tile floor. Tears slid down his cheeks unchecked as the horrors of the dream; of what was about to happen to him; replayed themselves in slow motion behind his tightly closed eyelids.

"Make it stop." He whispered, a broken man. He put both palms to his eyes and pushed as hard as he could. Trying desperately to push away the graphic nightmare. Sobs wracked Dean's body; now slightly thinner as he'd found himself unable to eat hardly anything in the last three days. He just kept his hands pressed into his eyes, weeping. The cold from the tiles seeped into his bones.

No matter how cold he got, nothing could stop the heat of the hellfire he felt every night. When the tears subsided, he looked up, blinking away the blurriness and black spots that clouded his vision. It had grown daylight in the time since he had woken up. He quickly pulled himself together, standing and moving to the sink after he opened the bathroom door.

"Sammy'll be wakin' up soon." He muttered softly, not wanting his baby brother to see him losing it like this. He washed his face and looked in the mirror. He caught movement behind him. It was Sam, moving to stand in the doorway.

"I'm already awake, Dean. How long have you been in here this time?"

"Since 5:30."

"God. Why did you let me sleep?"

"I needed you to have some peace."

"Dean."

"No Sammy."

"You had the same nightmare again?"

"Yeah."

"We still have some time. I'm gonna find a way to get you out of this."

"There's no way, Sam."

"Yes there is. There has to be." Sam's eyes began to tear. He blinked harshly. "Come on. You need to sleep."

"Okay. Sammy?"

"Yeah?"

"You'll… you'll stay close?"

"I'm right here."

Dean allowed himself to be led back to his bed. Sam helped him lay down, and pulled the blankets up to his shoulders. Dean hadn't realized how cold he'd gotten. He curled up on his side, keeping Sam in his sights, and slowly began to warm up. A few minutes later he was sleeping.

Sam looked at Dean thoughtfully. It helped to stay where he could see me. I knew it would. "Get some rest." Sam headed to the laptop. He needed to do some research. He had to find a way to break Dean's pact. And they had one more demon to track. He found a series of demonic omens, very pronounced ones, and they made a clear trail. Straight to Wyoming and the Devil's Gate.

He left Dean sleep for as long as he could, allowing him to wake on his own.

Twelve hours later they had eaten and hit the road, hot on the trail of the last demon they had to take down. Sam drove for the first several hours, with Dean taking the wheel in Missouri.