AN: I don't even know where these ideas come from anymore. Anyway, this one's been stored up for a while and I was hesitant about publishing it, but I decided what the hell. Warnings for animal abuse and mental illness. Kinda dark for the most part.

Sometimes he hears voices when he is on the edge of sleep. Not words, or phrases, though: just syllables, or perhaps a bark of laughter. It is very hard to tell whether or not they are real; hard to convince himself that they are completely imagined.

He can shake them off, or forget them, or write them off to the very light stage of sleep he is experiencing at the time, and carry on driving from town to town, state to state, in pursuit of nothing whatsoever.

But when they start when he's awake, they become more of a problem: they become distracting, and they gain character, and body. They form words.

In Kermit, Texas, they cause him to come undone.

Sam can't sleep anymore. He's had this problem a few times before: usually when Lucifer himself has been on his back, whispering in his ear, or setting him on fire. Either that, or he was soulless. He knows that neither is true right now, because if he were soulless, he wouldn't feel the pain of losing Dean; if he were seeing Lucifer, then he wouldn't be hearing Dean.

He slips out of bed, feet planted on the floor. They seem far away, far removed; alien, as if they're not actually being controlled by him. He's heard about dissociative disorders before, but . . . He can't remember much about it right now. He can't bring himself to care. He pulls on a pair of jeans and a plaid shirt, in addition to his grey sleeping shirt and boxers. That will do.

He strides towards to open bathroom door, and pulls the flimsy chord, switching on the sickly bar light. He feels like he can feel his pupils contracting as he stares at it. It leaves a blue stain on his vision, and he elects to look away.

He looks in the mirror, and notices once the blue has cleared that someone has put smudges of charcoal beneath his eyes; that someone has painted his skin a wan, sweaty shade of whitish green.

In the mirror, he looks behind himself, and can see the glint of car keys on the bedside table of today's motel. He imagines Dean has just left the room, and has placed them there for safe keeping. He can even picture Dean's hand, laying them carefully down, as if they're fragile; made of porcelain as white as Sam's skin is right now.

He wonders idly what the time is . . . 2:18. The streets will be quiet. He hears a bark of laughter, and smiles. The imagined voice grounds him, but not to the real world: to one where Dean is watching him, and laughing at how angsty the concept of a walk at this hour is.

Vaguely, he remembers going for a walk at around this time around a year ago. He ended up in a locked ward. He hears another bark of laughter, and bites back his own, though he can feel his dimples emerging as he agrees:
"Yeah. I was a complete mess, wasn't I?"

Was.

He thinks about taking the car, but – no.
"You'd be mad if I totalled it," He muttered. He realises that Dean would also be mad if he totalled himself in a car accident, but his own welfare seemed like a distant, unimportant concept in comparison to that of their childhood home.

He realises that he can't even think the word Impala anymore: it's too synonymous with Dean. He wonders for a moment whether or not he's being haunted by Dean . . . It would explain the voice, and the brief glimpses in mirrors – and outside diner windows, and in the passenger seat – of his older brother. That would mean Dean was dead though. Which couldn't be right. Not again.

Before he even realised what he was doing, he'd slipped on his boots and was out of the door, taking the car keys with him. What if someone broke into the room, and took them?

He realised he'd also picked up a knife, but he didn't remember doing it. He guessed that, after 29 years of pretty much kill-or-be-killed – some of which he'd failed to survive – arming himself was completely ingrained into his psyche.

He was right, the streets were almost empty. He looked at his watch, and saw that it had been an hour already since he'd been looking at his own pallid expression in the mirror back at his room. Speaking of which . . . Where was he? He looked around, and realised that not only had he lost time; you've also got yourself –
"No I'm not. I'm not lost. I can find my way back,"
Sammy be careful.
"I'm trying," He gritted out.

A park: he was in a park, now. It ran parallel to the road, but the way he was heading, he was venturing deeper and deeper into the woods and the undergrowth. Brambles and twigs tried to pick at his skin, pulling at it, as if they were trying to rip away his calm exterior and show the whole world how truly fucked up he was underneath.

Sam had read about psychosis. But right now, that wasn't as important as scratching at his hand scar, to little effect at all. All it did was remind him of Dean, which just lead to –
What's that noise?

He froze, and looked around, pulling out his knife from where it was tucked, barely concealed, in his waistband. He was right – there had been, absolutely and unequivocally, a noise. The light breeze of the night blew gently across the trees, carding through the grass just like Dean's hand through his hair when he was young and sick and his hero was always right there, right with him –

But I'm still here, Sam. I'll always be with you. You've got no one else, remember?

He nodded to himself, but he was a little too distracted at that moment to realise that he was doing so: there was still the matter of the noise, and it hadn't been the wind.

He heard snuffling, rustling, panting –
Hellhound. Over there.

Sam's breathing hitched, and he felt his eyes widen and dry out in the wind, but he was powerless to try and calm himself down. A Hellhound, on his trail. Coming for him, just like it came for Dean. Come to bring him back to Hell; or maybe he never left . . . No, that wasn't –

Sammy!

Sam screamed, his voice drowned out by Dean's own, and he slashed into the darkness with the knife. He heard a yelp, and realised it wasn't dark at all; he'd just shut his eyes. When he opened them, he gasped:
He hadn't stabbed a Hellhound. He'd slashed a normal, regular dog, which was now lying on the floor, bleeding profusely from its leg, which was bent at an awkward angle.

Sam's own eyes filled with tears when he heard the dog's own whimpering cries.
"Oh God . . . I'm sorry, I didn't – I didn't mean to-" He tried apologising, but it still looked scared, and in pain, and completely lost and pitiful. It keened and howled, its icy blue eyes frantically swivelling all around, and back to him.
"Shh – shh, I'm sorry, I can't . . ." He pleaded with it, wondering where to touch it, how to stroke it to make if feel better. He bites his lip as he looks at the blood seeping out of its leg.

He remembers that the way he is crouched over the dog was the same way that he had crouched over Dean's body, his chest torn to ribbons, blood oozing from every inch of it and soaking both of them. Likewise, the dog's blood stained its otherwise grey, brown and white fur. Sam reached out to touch the soft fur, and it recoiled, trying to move away even though it was obviously in too much pain to do so.
"No, I don't want to – I won't hurt you again-" He soothed it, finally deciding upon stroking its back, and wondering what to do about its leg. He might have imagined the sign for the vet's office on his way to town. Even if he didn't, it was a long way to go, and how would he ever explain . . . This.

'Sorry, doctor, I was hallucinating my dead brother and I stabbed this dog because I thought it was a hound sent from Hell to collect my soul. If you could just patch him up . . .'

Then, it hit him. He'd been hallucinating. For the first time in weeks, he felt this clarity about his own mental state that could only be brought about but experiencing something so much worse; something more urgent, and more horrific, that would set him straight again.

He removed his plaid shirt, though it was a cold night, and wrapped it around the dog's leg, making calming noises all the while so as not to spook the animal again. He slipped his knife back into his waistband, realising for the first time that the sharp edge dug in when he walked; he simply hadn't noticed that before.

He heaved the dog up into his arms, and began his journey back to the motel. It didn't have a collar, and it was roaming around the woods in a public park at half three in the morning, so he supposed it was a stray. He could make up a story . . . If he drove into the surgery early enough into the morning that it was still dark, would they believe he'd driven through the night? Would they believe that his fatigue, rather than his mental state, had caused him to harm this animal?

Still stroking the dog's fur as he carried it whimpering and bleeding to a bed of towels and rags in the Impala, he hoped they'd believe that he merely hit it with a car.