Walking the Wire

by theprofiler

Dean had been gone for years, but at the same time it was like he had never left. He had to leave under wicked circumstances only to have return in even worse ones – dealing with a deal made decades ago and a woman who he was denying his love for. What could possibly go wrong?

Prologue

It had been dark and rainy the night he was forced to leave the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was hoping that for once they would have been able to catch a bit of a break, maybe create some sort of roots on the off chance that things would completely go to hell, but that didn't seem to be how the Winchesters were designed to live.

Instead he was on the road just a little past one in the morning with Sam in the passenger seat rambling on about some of the signs that Ash had picked up on.

He was barely even listening, but instead thinking about who and what he had left behind. Dean was always caught in a world of "what ifs," but this one hurt something fierce. He could only pray that he would be allowed to return one day.

"Dude?" Sam paused his verbal thoughts when it appeared that his older brother was in his own little world. "Are you okay?"

"What?" He asked quickly and only a tad bit defensively. "I was listening to what you were saying."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his brother shake his head causing that long mane of his, that he had been begging for him to cut for months now, to sway. "What was the last thing I just said?"

"Uh, you know, something about a lightning storm across Kanas? And farms not being able to produce anything?"

There was a chuckle to his right before anything else came out. "Not even close, man." He could feel Sam's eye boring into him while he was most likely trying to figure out where his mind had been wondering to. "What's going on over there?"

"None of your business."

"Uh-huh," Sam stated slowly, turning his attention back to the road and the darkness that seemed to be wrapped all around them. With a sly smirk, he spoke the words that Dean needed to hear. "I'm sure she will still be there."

Resisting the urge to close his eyes and bang his head against the steering wheel because his brother could read him better than anyone else in his life. He could only guess that was what happened when people literally spent every waking moment of their lives together for the last decade or so with each other.

Instead, Dean let out a low sigh and spoke quietly, hoping his brother wouldn't be able to hear him, "I hope so."