A/N: I hope I have improved this story and made it better. NC

Chapter 1

Dean stuffed the last shirts into his duffel before doing one more glance around the room that had been his home for more than a year now. He sighed thinking he was going to miss his memory foam bed and actually having a room of his own, his own personal space to do with as he pleased. The last item he picked up was a worn, ragged edged picture of his Mom. "Hey Mom," he whispered, smiling sadly as he placed it back in his wallet where he had carried it all these years.

He picked up the two duffel bags, looked back one more time before quietly closing the door. He walked down the hall and around the corner to the end room, pausing, laying his palm on the door and bowed his head wishing he could see him one last time. After the "baring of souls" they had, Dean tried to make it work, but he couldn't pretend anymore, he was leaving. Sam didn't need him anymore; in fact he didn't want to have anything to do with him. He finally quit kidding himself that they could work out their differences, he knew now it was just a pipe dream that was not going to happen. Even Kevin's ghost telling them to get over it, didn't seem to effect Sam's actions. He was still cold, heartless, and unforgiving toward him and Dean was through trying to make it work. He was tired of walking around on egg shells, not knowing from one day to the next if words would even be spoken between them. All this was taking a toil on him, more than he wanted to admit. He rubbed the mark on his right arm as it seemed to grow warm for a moment. He frowned pulling his shirt down over it, trying not to think about what he had done.

He had tried to explain why he did what he did, but Sam wasn't listening. He had his opinion and reasoning and that was it, nothing else mattered to him. How could he not see Dean had let the angel possess him to save him? Dean's whole life revolved around protecting Sam, everything was for Sam. He had given up more for Sam than he ever knew, of course, Dean would never tell him this. He didn't do it for selfish reasons; he did it out of love for his baby brother. A love that could never be broken, no matter how much they fought and disagreed with each other. There would be a part of him that would always love his baby brother, even if he didn't feel the same way. But Sam's words had cut so deep, deeper than anything else he did in the past ever had; it cut down to his very soul. His soul had been sliced and diced and put through a meat grinder, leaving an ache he didn't think could ever be repaired. Dean didn't think he could pick himself up and continue on this time, he couldn't take it any more.

Blinking the tears back, Dean turned and made his way toward the garage and his Baby. He paused for a moment to leave his phone by some books on the work table and tucked a note under Sam's computer with two words on it "Good-bye Sam." He walked out of the bunker, to the garage and threw his bags into the trunk. One last thing he did before he left was to remove the tracking device he had put in the Impala so Sam couldn't track him. He popped the hood and reached in disconnecting the device and left it on the work bench. He slid behind the wheel relaxing into the seat as his body adjusted and running his hand lovingly over the wheel. He rolled out of the garage and headed toward town for one quick stop before disappearing. He needed cash so he couldn't be tracked. If he wanted to disappear, he had to fly under the radar and cover his tracks well and that was one thing he was good at was becoming a ghost, losing himself in the mist of humanity.

Sam woke early, as usual and began his routine, quick run, shower, breakfast and research. There were still things that had not been searched in the bunker and his thirst for knowledge was unquenchable. He paused as he walked by his brother's door, wondering if they would go through another day of ignoring each other, trying to tip toe around each other without acknowledging the other. He knew he had hurt his brother, more than he had intended, but Dean had made him so mad. Dean could be so stubborn at times it infuriated him. He was trying to make him understand his feelings and that was one thing Dean was good at hiding. Sam had gone through life having decisions about his life made by someone else. It was like he had no say so about his life. He was tired of it; he was an adult and wanted to be treated as one. Yes, he had made mistakes, but he had tried to make amends for them. He wanted to be the one who decided his fate, not some demon, not some angel and not his big brother. He was trying to be honest and get him to be honest too. Sam swallowed hard and headed out to run and get some of his spent up energy out.

Towel drying his hair, Sam listened carefully to the silence that enveloped him. Usually Dean was up by now and at least had coffee made, but he didn't smell anything. Making his way to the kitchen he saw the cold coffee pot. Shrugging his shoulders, he grabbed the can of coffee and started a pot. Checking the fridge for breakfast food, he found yogurt and an apple. He grabbed a spoon and headed to the table to wait for the coffee. He looked toward the bedrooms, but saw no sign of Dean yet. He frowned wondering what he was doing that he hadn't come out yet. He at least came out for his morning coffee even if he did take it back to his room to drink.

After visiting the ATM and filling the Impala, Dean headed west out-of-town, with no set destination. It was hours before the sun would be up and he wanted to be miles away from Kansas before Sam found out he was gone, if he even looked or cared. He popped in a cassette and music flooded the car. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, nodding his head to the song. He tried to do anything to take his mind off Sam's words that just wanted to keep bouncing around in his head making him relive their conservation that broke him.

Sam looked up from the book he was reading and glanced at the clock noticing it was just after noon. That was why his stomach was beginning to rumble. He bit his lower lip wondering why he hadn't seen Dean yet, he never slept this late unless he was sick or they were out all night on a job and didn't get in until early morning. One: they had not been on a job since finding Kevin's mom and that was nearly a week ago. Two: he wasn't sick yesterday and showed no signs of getting sick. Three: he was being Dean, stubborn and hardheaded, par for the course. If he didn't want to see or talk to him fine, two could play at that game, Sam decided as he went back to reading.

The miles ticked off as Dean continued north-west. He only stopped for gas, grabbing waters and junk food before hitting the road again. He had driven for nearly sixteen hours and his body was telling him to stop. His eyes felt like permanent grit had found a home and his shoulders ached beyond being tired. There was the beginning of a dull throb building up in his temples that he knew was only going to get worse if he didn't stop to let his body have some needed rest.

Sam threw a sandwich together for late lunch/early dinner meal, as he let his emotions get the better of him. He was starting to get pissed off that Dean didn't even bother coming out of his room all day. Now that he really thought about it, he had not heard him going to the bathroom either. Something was off and if he hadn't been so angry, he would have sensed it sooner. The atmosphere in the bunker was different, something was different. He laid his half eaten sandwich down and walked toward the bedrooms stopping at Dean's door and knocking. He waited and knocked again, but still didn't get a response.

"Dean, hey man you ok?" Sam called as he opened the door. He found his bed made, but his brother was not in sight. "Dean!" he called down the hall, hearing only his echo coming back to him. Turning back around and giving his brother's room another look, he noticed there seemed to be things missing. He began to pull out drawers and saw clothes gone and his duffel bags were missing. Checking one last thing, he found the picture of their Mom gone too. "Damnit!" he growled running toward the garage to see the Impala was not parked in its usual spot. He ran his fingers through his too long hair and stomped back to the main room. He was fuming that Dean didn't have the guts to tell him he was leaving. He took the coward's way out, slinking away in the night. This was not like him, his brother never backed away from anything.

================================================================It was getting harder and harder to keep his eyes open, even the coffee was not helping.

Dean knew he was going to have to stop soon before he wrecked. He was trying to decide if he should find a pull off or spent money on a hotel room. Weighting options, he decided on hotel this time, there would probably be plenty of times in the future he would have to sleep in the car, but tonight, he needed rest and a long, hot shower.

Looking on the desk, Sam finally found his cell and speed dialed Dean's number getting ready to lay into him. He listened to it begin to ring and realized he could hear it near by. Glancing around behind him, he found it lying beside some books Dean had been reading. Madly tossing his phone on the table, Sam grabbed his computer and opened it up noticing a sheet of paper folded under it with his name on it. He picked up the paper and slowly opened it reading the two words written in Dean's bold handwriting, "Good-bye Sam." The paper floated to the floor as Sam's body stiffened and his eyes widened in shock. Dean had not only left the bunker, but had left him. Sam had not seen that coming, sure they were on the outs, but he never thought Dean would disappear. He dropped into a chair and rubbed his hand over his face as he let everything sink in. His brother was gone, he was alone again.

================================================================The hotel was small and out-of-the-way, but it was clean. Dean paid for one night and made his way to the back, parking the Impala in front of room 17. He had asked for one away from other guest and on the ground floor. That wasn't much of a problem since it looked like there were only three other cars in the parking lot. It was going on nine pm when he tossed his bags on the floor and dropped on the queen size bed without even undressing. He finally let sleep overtake his bone weary body not even caring that he had missed dinner. Food he could get anytime; sleep, he had to squeeze in when he could.

Sam paced from room to room, as he sorted through what he knew. Dean had left the bunker early that morning, before he got up; he left his cell, he took out the tracking device from the Impala, he had used his card at an ATM in town to get cash and had vanished. How could he track him now? Which way would he even head? He had tried calling Garth, Mrs. Tran, and a few other hunters he knew, but no one had seen or heard from Dean.

Trying to think like Dean, Sam pulled out a map of the United States. He marked the bunker and began looking at the roads leading away from the area. 'I would drive as long as I could to put as much distance between me and the bunker,' Sam thought looking at the clock. It was going on ten pm, so he estimated Dean had probably been driving for around sixteen to eighteen hours, which means he could be over six hundred miles away by now. Six hundred miles could put him any place in the country. One of his biggest obstacles was going to be Dean; if he didn't want to be found, he knew every ruse in the book to stay hidden. Hell, he even invented some of them which were going to make it near impossible to track him.

Sam rubbed the grit from his eyes and made his way to the bathroom. He looked at his reflection in the mirror and frowned madly. 'He had driven his brother away', he yelled inside his head. This was all his fault, no one else. Was this what he really wanted, deep down inside, was that why he never really tried to make amends with Dean? Had he wanted him to leave, but was to much a coward to tell him or just leave himself? This place, it was a place to work, to do his research, to be a base of operations, but it had never felt like a home for him. He didn't even know what a real home was supposed to feel like. All he knew was moving from one rundown motel to another and living out of the Impala. The closest he got to having a home was with Amelia, when Dean had been trapped in Purgatory. That year felt like another lifetime ago, one he figured he would never experience again.

"I can't trust you anymore, not the way I thought I could. You say family like it's a cure-all; that it can change the fact that everything that has ever gone wrong between us has been because we're family." Dean dreamed as he tossed in his bed. All the words poured into his subconscious as he tried to fight them off. "You didn't save me for me, you did it for you. I was ready to die, I should have died. You didn't want to be alone."

"If the situation were reversed and I was dying, you would have done the same thing." he heard his voice say, not knowing the next words would feel like a kick in the gut and leave him speechless.

"No Dean, I wouldn't. Same circumstances, I wouldn't." the dream Sam said before walking away.

Dean jerked himself awake realizing the wetness he was feeling on his cheeks were tears. Tears he had not shed before now. He brushed them madly away and tried to reign in his emotions, stuffing them deep into the darkest recesses of his mind as he plopped back down. Damn, he needed a good nights sleep, he thought throwing an arm across his face. It had been weeks since he slept more than an hour at a time without some dark dream waking him. He wasn't sure how much longer his body would be able to endure this kind of treatment.

Sam tossed and turned in his bed as he tried to sleep, but all he could think about was where had his brother gone? He kept beating himself up over how he had treated him and to have let this rift between them get so wide. He was afraid it was getting so huge he wouldn't be able to cross it and mend things with Dean. 'Dean where are you?' he muttered switching to his other side. Somewhere between consciousness and the thin veil of sleep, where his inhibitions were at their lowest, Sam caught a glimpse of Dean in a hotel room with some sort of western theme. 'Dean went west,' Sam thought as he slipped one level deeper into sleep, but a sleep that wasn't without its demons.

Dean finally gave up on sleep and stumbled to the bathroom to try and wash some of the tiredness out of his body. He turned the hot on as hot as he could stand it before stepping into the spray. He sucked in a deep breath as the hotness beat tension and stress from his knotted shoulders. He let his head fall to his chest as the water worked at easing some of the fatigue he felt. He quickly washed his hair and lathered his body wanting to finish before running out of hot water. He stayed in the spray until the water began to cool. He toweled and slipped on clothes. Feeling almost human again, he wandered back to the room and started a pot of coffee.

Sam looked at the map again, finding the mark for the bunker and looking west of it. His dream showed western designs, he remembered that much, so Dean could have gone north-west or south-west. He traced the lines for the interstates, looking at each destination carefully. Sam closed his eyes and concentrated on his dream and his brother. He let his mind go blank and centered all his thoughts on Dean, reaching deep, looking for that connection that had always been there, but that he had not used in a long time. When had they drifted so far apart? It used to be so easy for them to connect when they were younger. He finally caught a glimpse of a road sign that read Interstate 25 North, but nothing else. It had been a long time since he had tried to connect with Dean like they had when they were kids, but he kept pressing, trying to see more. He shut everything else out, thinking solely about his brother. A glimpse of a gas station flashed, then a motel and finally just the open highway. So he figured he was probably somewhere in Wyoming, at least that was a start he decided, rubbing his head as a small, throbbing pain started to build in his temples.

Dean took another sip of the hot coffee as he scanned the local paper for anything unusual that might be a job. He knew he had to be careful what he hunted, since he had no backup now, but did it really matter? Nothing caught his eye, so he tossed it aside and pulled his laptop in front of him. He began to tap the keys pulling up search engines, to search the net. He blinked several times as a pinprick of an ache appeared behind his eyes and then it disappeared. He rubbed his eyes and stared back at the screen again, shaking it off as stress. He scrolled through several articles until one caught his attention. A body was found on the outskirts of a small town fifty miles away. There weren't many details, but it could be something worth checking out. He wrote down some details and logged out, closing the laptop and tossing it in his bag. He gathered up his things, giving the room one last look before walking out to the Impala. He checked a road atlas to decide the best route that would keep him off the more traveled roads and away from people. He figured the fewer he saw, the less likely he would run into someone he knew and word would get back to his brother.

Sam finished packing his bag and grabbed his computer bag, before leaving the bunker. He threw the bags in back of an older model blue Chevy Nova, then got behind the wheel and drove toward the interstate. Now that he had a direction, he was determined to find Dean before he did something stupid. He knew Dean and that scared him. He knew he wasn't in his right mind at the moment and could only picture the worse. He didn't want to lose his big brother, not with the unresolved issues still between them. He turned on the radio to escape the silence that surrounded him. Aloneness pushed in on him making him uncomfortable and depressed. This was not what he had wanted when he stood up to Dean. He didn't want them to be torn apart by it, only make him see how wrong he had been to let an angel possess him.

After changing clothes at a gas station, Dean drove to the small police station to gather information on the body found. It seemed strange doing this without Sam. He was always the one who could small talk the locals and get what they needed. He put on his best FBI face and steeled himself as he entered the lobby. Thirty minutes later, he had a copy of the police report and autopsy report in hand. Noticing it was getting close to dinner time, he decided to grab some take out, before getting a room at the local motel to go over the information he had obtained.

It was getting late when Sam had to make a pit stop. He was trying to decide how much further he could drive before stopping for the night. He figured with a little caffeine in him, he was good for several more hours. Catching up with his brother was top priority now. Hopefully his gut feeling was right and he was heading in the right direction. He would check online, once he stopped to see if there were any articles that might be a case that would attract his brother. If nothing else, Dean was going to hunt, it was so ingrained in his DNA; he would never give it up.

The police report wasn't much help. Dean tossed it aside and pick up the autopsy report and skimmed through it once and then re-read it more slowly a second time. Cause of death was listed as a wild animal attack, but no one could identify exactly what type of wild animal it was. In other words, the locals didn't have a clue, Dean thought deciding he would need to visit the morgue in the morning. He grabbed the remote and slouched on the bed trying to get comfortable as he started flipping through the channels. Finally finding a rerun of and old Clint Eastwood movie, he settled to watch without really watching. Before long, sleep sent him spiraling into a restless slumber.

He dreamed of Sam standing over him, as he lay dying, telling him no I won't save you. He moaned in his sleep and fought with the pillow as the dreamscape shifted to a darker and torturous time of when he was in Hell. His on screams tore him from sleep around 3 am. Sitting up and gasping for breath, he tried to figure out where he was. Then he remembered leaving the bunker, driving and finding a possible case. He drug himself out of bed and to the bathroom to splash some cold water on his face. After relieving himself and washing his hands, he laid back down to see if he could relax enough to try and get another few hours of sleep.

After three more hours of driving, Sam knew he needed to find a motel for the night. He could hardly hold his eyes open and wrapping the car around a telephone pole or tree was not going to help him find Dean. He found a motel and checked in for the night, planning on getting an early start the next morning. He tossed his bag on the bed, found his travel bag and headed for the bathroom.

Sam scooped up the remote and started channel surfing until he found some random program. He lowered the volume and made himself comfortable on the bed, letting the noise lull him to sleep. Sam's mind drifted in slumber as visions darkened his subconscious, pain, torture, and screaming woke him suddenly. He looked at the clock and saw it was 3 am. Whatever that dream was, it was like he was standing on the sidelines only observing. It was not something that he had experienced and this troubled him. Wiping his face and taking some deep breaths, he calmed enough to get back to sleep.

Dean pulled himself off the bed and stretched, trying to work the stiffness out of his body. He felt sluggish and wiped out. He needed coffee and some food, hoping that would make him feel better. Then he needed to check out the body at the morgue. With a plan in place, he quickly changed clothes so he could head for the diner and then on to the morgue. The sooner he figured out what was doing the killing, the sooner he could track it down and hopefully his plan would work.

The sun was just cresting the mountains when Sam rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom for a quick shower so he could get back on the road again. He planned on getting gas, something quick to eat and be out of there fast. He wanted to try and find Dean's trail before it got too cold. He knew it was going to be harder since he was using cash and would probably be covering his tracks very carefully. Sam was going to have to use all his training and skills to catch up with him.

The morgue was located in the basement of the hospital and Dean took the elevator down hoping there wouldn't be any gun ho staff on duty. Luck was with him, the assistant was the only one there and he seemed easy to intimidate.

"I'm here to see the John Doe body." he growled flipping out his badge.

"Er-r which one?" he asked nervously.

"Come again?"

"We have two now, another was brought in early this morning."

"Let me see both and can I get the report on the second one?"

"Coroner hasn't autopsied the body of the second victim yet." he replied, going to a wall of drawers and pulling one out and pointing to the table for the newest arrival.

"Thanks, I can take it from here."

Dean watched the guy leave and pulled down the sheet of the first victim. He noted his throat was ripped out along with his chest ripped open. There were bite marks up and down the arms and legs. He checked the other one and saw similar injuries. Both bodies were slashed much worse than any normal animal would do. He looked closely at the wounds, snapping pictures with his phone, before covering them and returning the one to its drawer. Making his way back to the elevator, he decided to head back to the motel and research a few possible ideas.

Sam tapped the keys on his lab top searching quickly through articles looking for anything his brother might think was a case and want to investigate. He centered his searches to the north-western part of the country, hoping to narrow down where to look. He speared another bite of salad and munched as an article caught his eye. 'Two gruesome deaths in less than a week have rocked the small town of Garrett, Wyoming. Officials have ruled the deaths to be the act of a wild animal attack and have park rangers and animal control scouring the area…' This was something his brother would want to check out, he was sure of it. Pulling out his map, he found the town was about six hours north of his location. His gut was telling him he was on the right track. He quickly downed the last of his tea, grabbed his computer and tossed some money on the table before heading for his car. With the map laid out in the passenger seat, he steered the car back to the interstate and toward Garrett, hoping he would find Dean and be able to convince him to come back.