Dean reached forward and twisted the dial on the Impala's console, and the volume rose higher and higher. Sam let out a long huff and sucked his lips in between the rows of his teeth. His chin stuck out and his eyes started to roll – Dean refused to so much as glance over at the passenger seat, lest he acknowledge it, but it was all perfectly clear in his peripheral vision. The bitchface was forming.

"Yeah, that's real mature, Dean." Sam tried to project over the classic rock that vibrated the car's speakers.

"What's that?" Dean turned his head for a second and made a noncommittal gesture next to his left ear, injecting as much sarcasm into the motion as he could manage.

"I said…" In a move of utter defiance to the Rules of the Impala, Sam turned the volume back down. "I said real mature."

"I was protecting you. I couldn't… after everything, what was I supposed to do, let you die?"

"I don't know, just give me the choice. Give me some agency for once. Why do I feel like we never stop retreading the same ground? With my luck I feel like I'm going to grow old and die still believing some stupid lie you told me that you convinced yourself was for my own good."

"What would you have done, huh?" Dean's teeth pushed against one another, fingers white-knuckling the wheel. "If I had just left you there, with Death, what would you have done?"

Sam swallowed. "It doesn't matter."

Dean's arms bent in a turn, and the car obeyed, slowing around the bend before stopping by the glowing sign of the motel.

"Of course it matters. See this is why I have to look out for you, you'd go and get yourself…"

"Dean!" Sam stopped him. "What if that was what I wanted?"

"So now I'm stuck dragging around someone who doesn't even want to live, is that it? Life's not cushy enough for you, so you want to drop out, leave me behind to deal with the shit? Since when did we consider that an option, Sam?"

"I didn't say…"

"You did." Dean climbed out of the low seat and slammed the car door behind him. He endured a moment of regret and laid a hand on the roof as if to console the frame of the vehicle. "This has all been some big mistake to you, hasn't it? Joining back up with me, I mean. I remember what we saw in your memory, and now you basically tell me you'd die if somebody gave you the chance. Is that what family does?"

Sam took a long draw of the winter air and huffed it back out again. He watched the long footprints they made in the thin layer of dirty gray snow that dusted the parking lot.

He didn't want to stay at a motel, he wanted to get back to the bunker, where at least he'd had his own room – sleeping next to Dean was about the last thing he felt like doing tonight, but the job had gone on longer and harder than either of them had expected and they were too far out. Somehow, as it always would, everything had gotten twisted, gone wrong. Neither brother was really in any condition to drive, certainly not for the long hours it would take to get back.

They both clammed up; they were accustomed to keeping their business between them, keeping their silence from when they neared the door to the building until Sam pulled shut the yellowed door to their room.

Dean seethed. The smell of years of cigarette smoke came off the wallpaper and it felt sharp in his head. He went to hell for Sam and here Sam was basically telling him that if he'd been honest, he'd have just let Death come and take him away forever, just like that.

After everything they'd been through, after every sacrifice, every struggle, he would be alone in the world now but for that deceit. He'd never felt so furiously justified in his life, and couldn't help but imagine the pain and loss he might not have suffered if they had simply parted ways before, if he'd let Sam have what he apparently wanted all along, years ago.

"You know," Dean started, pulling his shirt over his head and making for the shower, "Maybe I'd be better off alone. Sometimes I wish…" He couldn't bring himself to say what he thought, so he finished, "I wish someone would just come and take you away." He closed the door behind him and started the water.

The room was quiet except for the sound of the water through the pipes in the wall. Sam perched gingerly on the bottom edge of the bed by the darkened window – Dean always slept closer to the door. Protecting him, Sam figured.

But it didn't come from the door, or the window. The rustle, so soft Sam could almost have thought he imagined it, came from behind him, accompanied by the smell of ozone like the air after lightning, and before he even had a chance to turn, the hand was on his shoulder.

"N…" He couldn't finish the word, he just grunted out the sound. "But you—" He broke away from the grab and stepped back carelessly, sending a light wooden dining chair toppling behind him.

Then the world melted and both of them were gone.

When the clatter of the chair penetrated the rush of the water, vibrated Dean's eardrums, and sent the alarm straight to his brain, he wasted no time. Life had taught him better. He did not step gingerly out of the tub, or dry off, or get dressed. He did not so much as grab a towel on his way past the shower curtain and out through the bathroom door.

"Sammy!" He called out as he exploded through the doorway.

The cold air of the room hit his skin and raised goosebumps along his arms and back.

Dean scanned the room.

Nothing moved.

He dripped on the stained carpet.

Sam was conspicuously absent, of course. Beyond that, there was no one and nothing out of the ordinary in the room that he could see. No matter how empty it seemed, however, Dean was hesitant to drop his guard. Visibility was hardly a barrier to entry for some of the dangerous things he could think of, even just off the top of his head.

He sidled toward his duffel, keeping his back to the wall.

"Sammy!?" He called out again, ears keen for a response that never came.

He didn't take his eyes off the room as he pulled on a pair of worn boxers with his left hand – leaving the right one free, just in case.

As no immediate threat presented itself, he retrieved a towel and, as he dried and dressed, visually pressed the room for more relevant details.

Sam's bag was still on the table – open. Sam's cell phone was next to it. Sam's shoes were less than a yard away, next to the bed, untied. As a final nail in the coffin of strangeness, the door was still locked and chained from the inside. Dean thought it safe to assume he hadn't stepped out of his own accord, or apparently even used the door at all. Something had gone amiss, and badly. That much was clear.

"Sammy!" He tried one last time, not sure why. More quietly, he asked the empty room, "Where'd you go?"

At the sound of tapping, he spun to face the door, but it wasn't coming from there. It was a low sound coming from the window, not a knocking really, not something that human hands or fingers would make. More like a hard rustle, or a flapping.

Dean crept closer to the sound. With no guile at all, he pulled back the heavy fabric curtain to find the source of the nose – an owl, pale against the dark night, lightly beating its wings and feet against the glass, clearly angling for entry. Dean sighed. Good idea or not, he didn't have much else to go on.

"Alright, alright, keep your pants on, Hedwig." Dean muttered as he unlatched the window lock and slid the panel to the side, allowing it entry. It came in with a burst of winter air that made Dean pull back in a wince. Light filled his vision and by the time he opened his eyes fully, his sight was full of sparkles – glitter exploding everywhere from where the owl should have been. He frowned.

When the shimmer-dust cleared, he wasn't faced with an owl at all.