Episode 904
"Repression Sessions"
Chapter One

The drive back to Kansas was twice as long as the drive out to Boston had been. Part because Dean was being careful of Sam's awesome new car sickness, developed in oh, say, the past several hours of laying across the back seat, half conscious. And part because the trip included a stop at some small-town ER to make sure Sam's cracked melon wasn't going to get worse.

Dean had read that each seizure increased the chances of another, and the one in Boston made three total of the grand mal variety, starting with the one that damn leviathan had caused by cracking him upside the head, and who knew whether the two petit mal flavored ones Dean had caught Sam out in counted, and who knew whether those had been the only seizures Sam had had or if they were just the ones Dean knew about.

Either way, the doc in charge wanted more information about Sam than Dean could give without sounding looney, and he wasn't about to push him toward the relevant contacts at Northern Indiana, not after FBI dudes had made it clear they knew that detail and could track them. Without enough information, the doctor insisted on some tests, and Sam being Sam, he asked about all of them.

Blood draws. MRI, but they'd have to get a referral to the hospital in the city about half an hour up the highway. Spinal tap, they could do that right here in the ER.

And as soon as the doctor left them for some paperwork, Sam slumped like he'd been working hard to keep himself upright and said, "Okay, we're out of here."

"What? Sam-"

"I just want to go home. Please."

But his face was pleading, way too intense for someone just eager to sweat in his own sheets, and Dean frowned. "What's up?"

"Nothing. I just-"

Dean watched him. Big guy, suddenly a fidgeting twelve year old. "Sammy."

"Our insurance won't scan."

"We're at the ER."

Sam looked at him, hands shoved under his thighs, knees together, feet tapping the doors to the cabinet under the examining table, one after the other in a pattern: duhduh dun duhduh dun. He shook his head. "Dean I can't-"

"What, afraid of needles suddenly?"

Sam looked away from him, mouth open, raw terror, shame. His feet froze in the air, mid-tap. Shit.

"Okay. Okay. We're out of here. Let's go."

So they left, bundled out of there fastlike, Sam trying not to lose his lunch, until they hit the car, Sam literally, and he let loose in the parking lot.

So that had been fun. And now they were still about eight hours from home.

"Sorry," Sam moaned from the back seat.

Dean kept his eyes on the road. "Stop apologizing."

"Sorry-" A sigh. Then, dejected, "...sorry."

Dean peered at Sam in the rear view, grinned. Sam was shaking his head at himself, rolling his eyes at himself. "You're fine, princess."

Sam smiled a little.

"Wanna do some questions?"

Sam took a deep breath, nodded, but he looked away when he did it, embarrassed. Dean's smile faded into half-something. Something he hoped looked understanding.

"What year is it?"

"2013."

"What's your name?"

"Sam Winchester."

"How old are you?" Dean watched him, flicked his eyes from the road back up to the mirror. Sam looked at him, and Dean remembered:

Two hundred and ten. Older than you.

You're okay, Sam. Just work it out.

Sam looked away from the mirror, into the space next to him. Dean snapped his fingers. Crap. "Thirty, you're thirty, Sam."

Sam looked back at him, nodded, licked his lips. "Yeah, yeah I know."

Close call. Dean didn't want to play questions anymore. Sam was with it enough for him to know his seizure crap was backburnered. That was the point, nothing else.

"I'm not actually thirty though, Dean."

Dean frowned.

Sam slid down into the seat, sideways like it was possible for him to spread out over the backseat even though he was like nine feet tall. He draped his forearm over his eyes. Sleep was in his words: "I'm thirty-one."

Thirty-one? Shit. Shit, Sammy's birthday. Was like two weeks ago. Shit.

Sam groaned, made the face, twisted over and reached for the door handle just as Dean pulled over to the side of the road for the third time since the hospital in Bumfuck, Nowhere.

Sam was half out of the car by the time Dean got the car into park and had turned in his seat to check on him, the words "Sammy, you're okay" on his tongue only to find himself face to face with Sam's skinny blue jeans ass in the air, his front half hanging out of the door. Poor kid hadn't even gotten out of the car before losing all the nothing in his stomach to the shoulder of the road.

Dean turned back around in his seat, rolling his eyes. From behind him, he heard a pitiful voice say:

"Sorry..."

Cas greeted them at the car. Crowley greeted them just beyond the door. Kevin greeted them with microwave burritos and beer.

Sam smiled at all of them, smiled at all of them and nodded thanks and listened as Cas told more stories about his dreams and Crowley sat near to him, near to him and just watched him, or just closed his eyes, breathing. Dean had taken Kevin into the kitchen.

Sam was stranded with an ex-angel and this almost purified demon in the living room, trapped on the couch, and he felt suffocated, or maybe too hot, or maybe like he needed to go into the bathroom and sit under the shower to wash the vomit out of him, the black out of him, the red.

"We were lost in a wide forest," Cas said. "Light shining down through the trees to the ground, but it was nighttime. White light, like a spotlight. The trees created a maze that we had to fight through. And there was music. It sounded dangerous."

"Who's we?" Sam asked.

Cas tilted his head, like he hadn't thought about it. "I'm not sure. I thought it was you and me and Dean, but now I'm not so certain. In the dream, it felt very much like I knew them, like they were you, but now I don't think they looked like you at all. You were angels."

Sam frowned. "It's just your brain trying to sort through stuff that happened when you were awake."

"This is normal?"

"Yeah."

"Is this what it's like for you? What's happening to you now is all a dream, your brain trying to sort through what happened to you when you were awake, in the cage? Is this whole life just a dream for you, Sammy? Are you going to wake up soon? You've been asleep in this castle for so long, the mice miss you-" Cas stopped suddenly, leaned forward into Sam's space, took him by the shoulders and said, "Sam?" and Crowley said, "Moose? Are you all right?"

Sam blinked, gasped back into realtime. "Fine, I'm fine."

"Wanna do questions?" Dean said from the archway to the living room. He was frowning, backlit by the light from the warroom, and the line of him standing there was anger, disappointment, annoyance.

"No," Sam said. "I'm good."

"If that was a seizure, you should do questions," Kevin said, poking out from behind Dean.

Sam shook his head, embarrassment rising. "I'm good, really. Not a seizure thing." He felt warm. Really warm, over his head warm, and he couldn't breathe. Part of him observed from a distance: perpetually on the edge now, aren't you. You're going to get really tired. There's nothing to be afraid of. There's no one here who doesn't want you to be safe, even Crowley has some weird obsession with you. So knock it off. Knock it off.

Sam leaned down over his knees, just a little, just to manage the nausea, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the vertigo, and he tried to hold his breath because otherwise he'd drown, he'd breathe it all in and he'd drown in it, and when he opened his eyes again, long moments later, or maybe years later, or maybe seconds, it was because there was a heavy warm hand on the back of his neck, and the room was dark, and Cas and Crowley and Kevin were gone, and Dean was there.

"You're okay," he was saying, and it sounded like he'd been saying it over and over, rubbing the back of Sam's neck.

"This is such a problem," Sam said.

"A week, Sammy. Remember? She'll be here within the week. You just don't worry about anything. Act as batshit as you want, no one's going to rag on you for it, or they'll have to talk to me."

"You really think I'll make it, Dean? What if I-"

"Shh," Dean said, and sat on the couch and pulled Sam to him by the shoulder, heavy and warm arm across his back heavy and warm like gravity, density, real. "I got you. I'm watching out for you."

Sam closed his eyes, swallowed. He hoped it was true. Those moments in the hotel in Boston replayed themselves for him on a loop; he'd been ready to end it. Confused about who his real brother was. He still wasn't sure what he'd thought. Either he thought the Dean he saw was Lucifer and that's why he didn't think he was his brother, or the other thing. The far more frightening thing.

That he'd been fully convinced Lucifer was his brother, the thing that whispered to him for nearly two centuries that he loved him, between torments and agony, the cool touch the sweet voice murmuring I'm the only one who loves you, Sammy.

"Sammy?" The hand on his shoulder squeezed, shook him, just a little. "You still with me?"

Sam nodded, blinked. Dean was looking at him in worry. Sam sensed he'd spaced again.

"Wanna go lay down for a while?"

Sam shook his head.

"Come on, you're dead on your feet. Let's go."

Sam shook his head again.

"Why not?"

"My room's. Uh. Nevermind."

Dean narrowed his eyes at Sam. "What's wrong with your room?"

"Nothing, nevermind."

"Sam-!"

"It's a cave, it's a pit, it's a trap- God, fuck, sorry." Sam closed his eyes and focused on breathing.

"Shit. Okay. Listen, there's a little meeting room off the balcony. Has a window, private bathroom, the works. I'm gonna make that up for you. You just chill out here, okay?"

"You don't have to do that Dean-"

"I know."

"I mean it. I can handle sleeping in my own room."

"Too late. I'm already picturing curtains and a matching New Kids On The Block bedspread." Dean withdrew. Patted his knee and stood.

"Dean," Sam said before he could get too far away.

"There's no use arguin' man-"

"How much have you told Kevin?"

Dean shook his head. "Just the seizure thing, I swear. I gotta go shopping and stuff. If I'm not here, someone needs to know what to do."

Sam nodded, swallowed. "You should tell him - about the ... You know. He's the only one who doesn't know."

"You can say the word, Sam. Say whatever you want. Don't worry about me. But are you sure?"

Sam shrugged. "He's our prophet. He should know. And I'm... not exactly fighting fit, right? This isn't normal. He knows something's going on that isn't trials stuff, and he was standing right there when Death was talking about how... uh. How much time I have. If I was him, I'd be going crazy not knowing."

Dean smiled a pained bad-joke smile. "Phrasing?"

Sam laughed. "You know what I mean."

"You heard me," Dean said, working the wrench. "A birthday party. Two weeks from now, after this psychic shrink has psychically shrunk Sam's head. I don't think he can take a surprise right now."

Kevin raised a brow, gathered the bolts from the floor as Dean dropped them. "You think one therapy session is going to fix that?"

Dean shrugged, wiped his brow. "I'll make a judgement call. If it means I have to tell him about it five minutes before we walk into the room and you all yell surprise, so be it."

Kevin frowned. "Okay... Assuming it goes down like you want, how are you going to pull off a surprise party? You're practically joined at the hip."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Come on, it'll be fun. God knows we could use fun around here. He'll never expect it."

"How old is he?"

"Thirty-one, apparently." Dean got to his feet and surveyed their work.

Kevin shrugged. "I was close. I guessed either twelve or fifty-four, so." They both turned as Cas and Crowley came back into Sam's room. Crowley dusted off his hands and held them out.

"Mattress and boxspring moved. What's next? Use and abuse me, darlings. I promise I don't mind."

Dean was leaning over to pick up his beer from the dresser, and he pointed with the bottle at the pile of parts he and Kevin had dismantled, metal frame and rich wooden head and footboards. "Don't scratch it."

"Aye aye, Capitan. Dressers too?"

Dean looked back at the matching dressers. A few books littered the top of the shorter one; the taller one hosted Sam's duffel bag. "There's nothing in them. We can leave 'em for now. But take the nightstand. I think there's already a lamp up there."

A couple of hours later, Dean stood with Sam in the converted conference room off the balcony, the only bedroom in the place so far that had real windows. It also had glass french doors though, so the next order of business was going to be to cover them up somehow, or even replace them with real doors. For now, Dean had tacked a couple of sheets up behind each glass panel so that Sam could have some privacy. The bed took the place of the conference table in that room, which got moved into the library for the time being. Sam's duffel bag went into a supply closet, and his toothbrush and stuff got shifted into the private bathroom. Good hard work, good simple effort he could put toward making his little brother feel better, even a little.

Best room in the house now, but it looked completely bare, unlived in. No different from the room Sam had been living in since they'd found the bunker, actually, and Dean put that on the list of crap to talk to Sam about once his head was fixed.

It was a long list. Purgatory, Sam's year of living comfortably, the fact that he was possibly sipping a little demon blood (always demon blood, written in the stars for Sam, every Sam) to feel steady, the whole trying to die thing which had become more than just a sacrifice thing after the stunt in the motel room in Boston, and now, the fact that he had never actually moved into the bunker.

Or maybe it was all connected. Maybe Sam had never intended to live in the bunker. Maybe he had never intended to live. But he'd seemed so sincere at the Cassity ranch-

Whatever. They were going to talk it all out. Whether Sam said he wanted to or not, because it was a test and Dean was going to pass it goddammit.

"Dean," Sam said, looking around the room in wonder. "How did you do this? I only crashed for like an hour."

"Demon slave labor!" came Crowley's voice from down the stairs.

Dean yelled back through the open door: "Shut it." He turned back to Sam and shook his head, little smile. "An hour? Try three, dude. Plenty of time for demon dude down there to haul all your crap up two flights of stairs." He grinned wide. "So? What do you think?"

Sam smiled. "I like it."

"You like it? We just spent all afternoon-"

"I love it."

"That's better."

Sam grinned and walked further into the room, toward the windows, peering out to see what they overlooked. "Dean, you didn't have to-"

"Shut it. It's done. And you can stay in here, right? It's okay?" Dean watched Sam stand by the window, watched him close his eyes and breathe in slow, like he was testing whether the sun on his face was real. Sam had once been tan from it, had once been this golden child, when Dean was twenty and Sam was sixteen and his whole world revolved around keeping this brilliant bratty kid safe. When Dean had been so idealistic that he could see only the best things in Sam, Sam had been golden and Dean had been the keeper of the sun and that had been the best feeling in the world. Sam opened his eyes and looked at Dean, and Dean felt the sun there, like he could be the keeper of it again, maybe.

"Yeah. It's great, Dean. Thank you. Really."

Dean smiled. "Settle in. Finish your nap. I'll wake you for dinner."

"Okay. So you said you saw them in town?"

"I did," Cas confirmed. "I saw their faces, in the grocery store."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Yeah, you mentioned. You saw this guy too?" he said to Kevin.

"Yeah, but he just looked like a normal guy to me."

Dean made a little note in his journal. He definitely saw the draw of writing everything down now. Maybe it was just the effect of living in one place, having a home base. Maybe it was living amongst books and journals and binders full of things that had been written down, generations of people he was supposed to number among. To Sam, it came naturally, and maybe Dean took after their hunter mother more than the Men of Letters Winchester side of things, but still. It had started to feel natural, writing things down, checking them off, putting down questions he needed answers to.

God he felt ordered for once. Maybe he had more in common with his Sam-less self than he'd thought, all tidy and neat inside for once. A shudder ran through him. He didn't want to be a Sam-less version of himself, never again.

But uh, writing things down. That was okay.

"Of course he did," Cas said. "You didn't have my dream. But Dean it was very clear. This man was a member of the Federal BI. He was going to come and take you and Sam away and commit physical and mental harm-"

Dean shook his head, muttering Federal BI under his breath. "Okay. We'll go out on the town today, see if you can spot him or anyone else from this dream. Kevin-"

"I'm on it."

"He's sleeping. Don't wake him up."

"I know. I'll walk by his room and keep an ear open like every half hour or so?"

"Works for me. Grocery lists?"

Kevin shoved a piece of paper at him and Cas held up his own.

"Okay. We should be back in an hour or so. And Kevin?"

"Yeah?"

"No more picking fights with our pet demon, okay?"

"Who's picking fights?"

"You are. Knock it off."

Kevin rolled his eyes. "Yes sir."

Kevin knocked on the glass. Dean had tacked up enough bed linens to block out even the vague shape of anything in the room, but Kevin could see the afternoon light leaking in from around the makeshift blinds on the french doors.

No answer. He knocked again.

"One sec," Sam said, muffled behind the door.

Then he answered it, and his hair was huge and poofy and when Kevin looked past him into his room, it looked like he'd lost a fight with his sheets.

"Rough nap?"

Sam sighed. Shrugged. "No worse than usual."

"Can I come in?"

"Oh, sorry, course. Or we can go downstairs. I don't have a chair up here."

"No, I mean. I kinda want to talk... alone."

Sam frowned, glanced into a corner of the room, but then he nodded. "Sure, come on."

Kevin lingered a moment in Sam's doorway. Sam had left the door open, but was already headed back to his bed. He threw out his little knitted blanket to remake his bed; Kevin smiled just a little. Cas was messy. Dean was disorganized. Sam was probably the neatest one of them, the most like Kevin preferred to be. You know. Before all the crazy had gotten dumped on his AP student life.

Sam sat on his bed near the headboard, folding his legs up; he'd left a huge amount of space at the foot of the bed for Kevin. It felt just a little like some slumber party, a little too intimate.

But Kevin had helped Dean take this bed apart, had put fresh sheets on it and found a nicer blanket in a supply closet, something he thought would be softer, warmer than the scratchy wool thing Sam had been using. And he'd been the one to take the old sheets away and put them in the ancient washing machine. He'd seen the faint traces of blood across Sam's pillowcase, smelled the salt of sweat on those sheets, and the laundry soap that said Sam changed these sheets every day when he was up to it.

Sitting on Sam's bed across from him was kinda small potatoes compared to that, but Sam didn't know anything about the sheets or the laundry or the blanket. And somehow, with Sam there, it was different. Sam was watching him, like he'd expected this visit.

Kevin swallowed, came in, sat where directed to. Looked around. Stalled.

"Kev? What's on your mind?"

Sam's voice was big and soft. Kevin had told Crowley that his demon imposters were too polite to be the real Sam and Dean, and he wasn't lying, but there was something else missing about them that Kevin hadn't been able to pinpoint. He thought, at least where Sam was concerned, it might have been this voice of his, this expression of complete humility in a moment when it mattered. Demon Sam could only dream of this kind of complete investment.

"I'm havin' a hard time," Kevin said.

Sam frowned, leaned forward. "With?"

Kevin closed his eyes. "Crowley," he said, and opened them and regretted saying anything, because Sam was obviously taking on guilt over it, and Kevin rushed to say, "Just, it's hard. With the things he's done, to me personally. But I'm cool, I'm cool. I know like, logically, I know what the situation is. I just. I can't-"

Sam was quiet. Looked at him in consideration. "How can I help?"

Kevin shrugged. "Maybe, if it's not too personal or whatever. You can talk me through what happened at the church?"

Sam took and released a big breath. Everything about the guy was big. He made a face like, wow, okay, here we go. "Like I said, I thought we did everything, I really did-"

"No. No that's not what I - I mean. With Crowley. He must have said something to make you trust him, make you forgive him."

Sam frowned. "That's not really..." He stopped, tried again. "I haven't forgiven him. I don't know how that will work. And that's not what this is, anyway. How can someone earn forgiveness if you don't even give them a chance to make amends?" Sam spoke like he was talking to someone else. "I want to give Crowley that chance because he asked for it. Because he was crying, because he asked me what he could possibly do to make up for what he's done." Sam shrugged. "I guess that desire was enough for me. But I can't tell you that it should be enough for you too."

"But I want you to." Kevin shrugged. "I'm at a loss here, dude. But I'm not leaving, and apparently neither is he, so I just want... I don't know. I want you to tell me why I should - how I can be okay with him."

Sam watched him, chewing on his lip in thought. "Maybe just talk to him. I don't know if it'll work. He's... well, he's Crowley. But I think he's sincere when he says he wants to somehow be forgiven. He was human once, you know? All I did was bring that human part of him back."

"But that human was a bad guy, if he went to hell," Kevin said.

"Likely. But we've all done crap, you know?"

"Not hell-worthy crap."

Sam narrowed his eyes at him, and Kevin raised his in concern. "What? I didn't do anything hell-worthy."

"No, I know," Sam said, sounding drifty. "I'm just saying, if there's no hope to be forgiven... what are any of us even doing here?"

Kevin frowned. Sam was looking off, toward the windows. He sounded a bit vague, maybe like he was about to fall asleep again, or space out like he'd been doing.

"Sam?"

Sam looked at him, blinked at him drowsily.

"Okay, let's get you back to sleep," Kevin said. He slid off the bed and hovered in case Sam needed help or whatever, but Sam just hitched himself down on the bed enough to get his head onto the pillow where it lolled, and he was sprawled just everywhere on top of the blanket.

"You don't have to go. I'm fine," he mumbled.

Kevin laughed. "Yeah, right. Dean'll kill me if he thinks I'm keeping you up."

"Dean won't kill you."

"I wouldn't be so sure," Kevin said, and it was mostly a joke, but Sam didn't reply and it looked like he was already mostly asleep again. Kevin tugged on his arm to straighten it out so he didn't sleep on it wrong, and it probably didn't matter to Sam at all because as far as Kevin could tell, Sam was basically a walking symptoms list of chronic pain disorders. But straightening him out made Kevin feel better, made him feel useful, and whatever Dean said, and however Kevin felt about it, he was going to shift his priorities and try to find a pause button on the trials for Sam before anything else.

Not that this was all trials. Not that seizures and spacing out and panic attacks every few hours and losing time were trial things. Death had said that Sam didn't have a lot of time left, and whatever, maybe Sam didn't want to talk about whatever his problem was, maybe Kevin just wasn't important enough to be told. Whatever.

Kevin pulled the other side of the blanket up and over Sam where he lay, a Sam taco in a soft blanket shell - ugh, hungry. And he smoothed it down over Sam's chest, and he murmured, "Man, what's wrong with you?"

And Sam breathed through sleep, "I did something hell-worthy."

"Did he sleep?" Dean asked. He set down the groceries in the kitchen and started sorting through them. Cas put down his own grocery bags and started attempting to decipher Dean's sorting, and Dean rolled his eyes.

Kevin watched from the doorway. "Yeah. Woke up for a little bit, we chatted. He went back to sleep."

"Chatted?"

"Yeah. Chatted. I'm allowed to talk to him, okay? You can't keep him shut up away from everyone."

"I'm not - Whatever." Dean took a bunch of bananas out of Cas' hands and put them on the counter.

Cas frowned. He reached over toward where Dean had piled boxes of the protein bars Sam had asked for, bottles of vitamin water, some bland fruits, bottles of multi-vitamins - basically, Sam's pile of stuff Dean wasn't going to let anyone else touch. Anything overly processed seemed to upset his stomach, anything cooked sent him into a panic spiral. Dean had a menu plan worked out that would keep Sam's nutrition up without setting him off. He'd spent two hours on the internet with Kevin to put it together.

And now Cas had a box of the protein bars in his hand, and he was saying, "I'll take these up-"

And Dean swiped the box from his hand.

Cas frowned. "But it would be more convenient for Sam to have these nearby-"

"Yeah. I know. I'll take them."

"But-"

"You just stay clear of him for a while, okay?"

"Dean," Cas said, beseeching.

"And no friggin' praying, got it? You just stay out of his head-"

"Dean," Sam said, behind Kevin in the kitchen doorway. "It's okay. Okay? I mean. I understand why you're-"

"No. No Sam, you don't understand. You didn't have you watch your brother, just give up-"

"Yes I did." Sam's voice was hushed, face earnest. Kevin backed out of the way, but Sam didn't come closer, just shook his head. "I watched you give up. For a year, I watched you just... run toward death. Pretending everything was okay. Refusing to try to help yourself. I'm not saying you should just forgive me and forget about what happened in Boston, but just. Don't ever say that I don't understand." Sam held his hand out, and dumbfounded, Dean put the box of protein bars into it. "Thanks."

And then he was gone again.

Kevin broke the silence. "What happened in Boston?"

"Nothing," Dean growled, and he slammed out of the kitchen, not to find Sam, not to talk with him, just to get away. Maybe go for a drive.

But he found himself outside of Sam's new room anyway, just listening. There was nothing from the other side of the door. "Sam?" he said.

No answer.

"Sammy, I'm not gonna forget Boston, okay? But we're clean slated. No forgiveness needed."

Still no answer.

Dean put his hand on the door handle, but he didn't turn it, didn't try it. If it was locked - If he found it locked, he knew he'd just break it down. Better to choose not to try it. He took his hand off the handle, stepped back. "Sammy, I'm just downstairs, okay?"

And he fled down the steps.

The week passed that way. Sam came out of his room often enough, interacted, laughed a little. Until something caught his eye that no one else could see. Dean was watching, counted the minutes of Sam pretending he was fine, continuing the conversation or watching the movie or doing the research. And then Sam excused himself, steadied himself on the railing to go up the stairs, and locked the door of his room.

He said he was resting. So Dean camped out outside his room. Nothing. No talking to someone who wasn't there, no high-pitched whine he could mistake for the ancient HVAC. But Sam wasn't sleeping, that was obvious when he came back downstairs.

And Dean didn't expect him to. Didn't pester him about it. Tried to minimize loud noises, surprises. The days ticked down through the week toward Death's not-so-magic magic cure, and as they went, Sam's condition deteriorated. The sleep deprivation on top of the trials crap sent him spiralling so much sooner than it had before, when all Sam had to deal with was Satan crooning terrible songs to him day and night.

So, Sam became a jittery zombie who heavy-breathed through his days and smiled hopelessly and on more than one occasion had tried to have some kind of mumbling heart to heart with Dean about the real possibility that Death's cure might come too late for him, or that Death might have found their research lacking afterall, or whatever, just don't be so upset, Dean, because I had a good life, okay, I got to save some people, I got to have the best brother ever, and if that's my legacy, then that's enough.

And then Dean would say something angry and biting because he just couldn't, okay, accept that Sam was so ready, even more zen-like about it than he had been the first time, locked up in a mental ward, and Sam would look at him like, okay, I deserved that, and then he'd stumble his way up the stairs and lock the door, and-

He said he was resting - Lucifer or Dean drove him there, stress and fatigue drove him there, to rest. But never to sleep. Sam and sleep, fucking written in the stars.

It had been at least six days. From the signs and symptoms Dean had memorized during Sam's last bout of critical sleeplessness, he sounded like he was a lot further down the line, at least mentally. He still had his fingernails and his stupid hair. He could still walk around. But he was having trouble remembering things, he said things like Wednesdays we build mouse houses out of the broken pieces and just looked at Dean like he was nuts for not understanding.

Thursdays they'd creak if we don't, he'd explain, patient. I have to save them. It's too heavy, but my bones are strong.

So, maybe nine days, crazy-wise. Maybe he had two left before his brain just gave out. Maybe.

When she came, Sam was downstairs with everyone, kicking Dean's butt at chess. Sam had a whole cheering section behind him. Dean even allowed Cas to stand within arm's length of Sam, because while it had been kind of a blip on the radar full of Death telling him all this crap about how Sam was basically destined to suffer, Dean hadn't forgotten. He just told himself that Cas had been a different person when he let Sam out of the panic room.

And that had to be that. Because if Dean examined it any further, he'd just be reminding himself why he was getting his ass handed to him by someone three inches away from braindead, that Lucifer was tormenting Sam because Cas had linchpinned that for them. In any universe, as soon as Cas found Sam, he dragged him into killing Lilith. Even when Sam was actively trying to resist, Cas hounded him. So yeah. No thinking about that. Just enjoy Sam slowly making his moves across the board, speaking gibberish, but still somehow brilliant at the game, although Dean was claiming he let him win, no question.

And then the knock came.

Had to be her, had to, please God, and Dean opened the door. She was cute, shorter than he'd pictured. Curling brown hair, expectant look. She carried a little bag over her shoulder, wore a little brown blazer, jeans. Not quite what Dean had expected.

"Dean, right?" she said. She had a little southerny accent. Yeah, cute.

"At your service. You're the shrink?"

"Uh... I'd prefer not to use that term."

"Yeah, yeah. Okay, come on. He's in here."

But Dean turned to gesture her in and smacked Sam in the chest as he walked up.

Sam stared.

"Hi Sam," she said.

Sam took a breath, blinked. Then he said:

"Amelia?"