Author Note: Here's another long-overdue tag. I've posted a couple of BUABS tags over the years, but not anything that really had a story to it. I've been mulling this one over for the past few months, but had a couple of epiphanies over the weekend.

I might be a little quiet over the next couple of months, as I hope to get a full first draft of my novel nailed down by the end of summer, but if I have any story ideas I HAVE to get written, I won't backburner them for too long.

We Gotta Get Out of this Place

Sam wanted to stay in Sioux Falls. He doesn't have to say so; Dean knows. Little brother's had a hell of a week, and could probably benefit from a friendly face and a familiar environment while he sorts through it all. They didn't have to cut out like they did – middle of the night, bruises still forming – even with the rising suspicion surrounding Steve Wandell's demise. If it came to it, Bobby would have vouched for them, without question. Among hunters, his word is a good as gold.

But Dean can't stay still, can't stay in one place even if that place is Bobby's. His home base. His safety net. He can't stop moving, can't allow himself to stop. Not yet. For the moment, everything about the past week is at arm's length. The worry, the wariness, the stress. The pain. His head and face are thrumming mutedly, and the hole in his shoulder aches in a distant way he knows won't last much longer and means to take full advantage of while he can. As soon as he stops, it will all come crashing down on him. On both of them.

"Where are we going?" Sam asks, shattering the silence.

Dean had joked and smiled, and made sure Sammy smiled back, but that was hours ago. He's treading water now, and it takes a dangerous amount of effort to respond. "I don't know," he says, appalled by the harsh rasp of his own voice.

It's the truth. He doesn't have a clue where they're going; he doesn't even know where the hell they are. He's been taking turns and exits at random, just aiming to drive until he feels he's gotten Sammy somewhere safe or until he no longer physically can. Whichever comes first. He has no idea how long it's been since they left Bobby's, but if the steadily increasing throb in his shoulder is any indication, it might be the latter.

He blinks, too long, his eyes struggling to open again. Dean realizes the Impala is drifting and overcorrects, yanks the wheel too sharply to the right. All of a sudden there might as well be a hot poker jammed clear through his shoulder. He clamps his teeth together to trap the groan threatening to push out of him, but his brother still catches it.

"Maybe we should pull off for the night," Sam suggests tentatively.

Dean's gaze slides sideways and he sees how stiffly his brother is sitting, hand clamped over the gauze on his forearm. He checks the gas and reluctantly nods. His shoulder is screaming now, and he can feel each and every pump of his heart in the pummeled side of his face.

Still, he drive past the next exit, and the one after that, and the one after that. He drives until the needle is hovering above "E" and Sam finally quietly says, "Dean."

"Yeah, Sammy." His voice is paper-thin, and his knuckles whiten around the steering wheel as he guides the Impala toward the next off-ramp. Here, in the car with Sammy, nothing else exists. Nothing else matters. But when they stop, the real world will catch up to them. The awful things that have happened, that Sam – not Sam – did, it's going to hit them both like a freight train.

He can't keep straight what he thinks his brother remembers and what he knows Sam doesn't. Yet. Wandell's murder, for sure; they'd fucking talked about it right in front of the kid. The gunshot that sent Dean tumbling into a frigid Minnesota lake, and there's no denying the blossoming contusions coloring the left side of his face, the ones that match his brother's knuckles. But Sammy was missing for a goddamn week. For seven of the longest, worst days of Dean's life, and they might never know everything that bitch did with him.

Seven days doesn't come close to matching Dad's record disappearance, but even when he went to find Sam at Stanford, Dean had never panicked like this. Never forgotten sleep, or food. He has to hand it to Meg; if she wanted him tortured, broken down and weak, then she knew exactly the way to do it.

A simple brick strip of doors with a flashing vacancy sign comes into view. "Up here on the right," Sam says, like Dean can't figure it out for himself.

But the streetlamps are dimming in a way he feels is more on him than the lights, so maybe the kid has a point. Dean pulls the Impala to a jerky stop outside the motel's office and turns the key to cut off the engine. He means to open the door, but instead slides down in the seat to lay his head back against the bench, pulling his left arm into his lap. Just for a second, just until the world stops spinning.

The passenger door opens with a long creak and panic flutters in his chest, at the thought of letting Sammy out of his sight, ever again. He straightens, too quickly, and a hum builds in his ears as spots dance in his vision.

His brother freezes with one leg out of the car, reaches out a hand and presses firmly against Dean's right shoulder. The contact grounds him somewhat, clears his buzzing head enough to recognize the worry in Sam's voice.

"Whoa, Dean. Hey, man, I'm just gonna go inside and get a room, okay?" Sam looks pale, almost ghostly in the darkness, the neon red of the motel's sign reflecting in his large eyes.

The open car door is allowing a chill into the car, and Dean shivers violently. He opens his mouth to protest, struggling to sit up further, but his brother pins him against the seatback with an apologetic wince.

"I get it, Dean, but there's no way in hell you're walking in there without someone calling the cops." Sam's eyebrows fold, face twitching. "I'll be quick, I promise." He turns to look out the windshield, nods. "And you can see inside from here. Have eyes on me the entire time, okay?"

Dean knows his brother is right; he's a damn mess, and has long-since run dry the well of adrenaline. He's running on whatever is left after the fumes burn off, exhausted, dehydrated, and a couple pints low. He bobs his chin, sags against the seat.

Sam squeezes his shoulder, smiles. "Okay. Sit tight."

Then he's gone, leaving behind a gaping, canyon-wide sense of loss that Dean can feel all the way to his soul. Heart pounding, he watches Sam through the streaked picture window, sluggishly tracks his brother's movements as he walks to the counter.

His gaze drifts to the rearview, and he winces at the shadowed face reflected there. He looks awful. Like he was shot off a pier into dirty, freezing water. Like he didn't raise a hand to fight back as the demon wearing his brother's face whaled on him.

He must doze off – just for a second – because the next thing Dean knows Sam is jostling his arm, shaking him awake. He clumsily jerks away from the unexpected contact, knocks his left shoulder into the door. A sheet of white goes up over his vision, and he forgets to breathe through the agony exploding in the mess of a bullet hole.

"Shit! Dean, it's just me." Sam holds up his hands, looking white-faced and terrified. "Just me."

Dean slumps against the door, heart thudding painfully and shoulder aching fiercely. He's just about done, limbs feeling like putty, vision blurry and dim.

"Can you make it to the room?" Sam asks, quietly and with careful deliberation.

He doesn't answer either way right off the bat. Licks his lips and makes a fist with the ice-cold fingers of his left hand, thinks vaguely about the last time he had anything to eat or drink that wasn't whiskey. "How far?" he finally croaks.

His brother seems discouraged, shoulders falling. "A few doors down."

Dean grits his teeth determinedly and fumbles for the door with numb fingers. "I got it."

Dean allows Bobby to get close enough to pull open his bloody jacket and button-down, and Sam turns in his own chair in time to spot torn, red-soaked gauze taped to his pale skin. His brother's fingers are curled around the edge of the desktop, knuckles white. He catches Sam staring and shoves up straighter, bats clumsily at Bobby's prying hands.

"It's fine, Bobby." Dean's words slur a little around the gash in his lip, and despite his protestations, he remains hunched in very obvious pain.

A shot rings out, echoes off the boathouse, followed by footsteps clomping to the edge of the dock.

The water below is dark and still, and he smiles.

Bobby easily deflects Dean's uncoordinated attempts to push him away. He peels up the edge of the gauze and tsks over the mess beneath, asks who butchered the hole before the demon got to it. He says "the demon" but his gaze slides to Sam.

There's no blame in his eyes, but that doesn't keep Sam from feeling like shit, knowing his is the face Dean remembers pulling that trigger. Leaving him for dead. Delivering punch after vicious punch. There's no rationalizing that away. Not any of it.

"Jo," Dean grits, paling further beneath blooming bruises.

I can be more to you, Jo.

God. Sam swallows roughly, trying not to be sick. Jo.

He grips her arm with bruising force, amused by the fear in her eyes.

"Should've had someone who's done this before," Bobby admonishes, face lined and serious as he studies the wound. "She did a number on you, kid."

Sam doesn't deserve this, everyone ignoring him, covering for him. "Bobby, don't," he says, pressing harder on the gauze against the burn on his arm. Neither of the others even acts like they hear him.

One of the phone rings from the kitchen, and Bobby turns his head toward the sound.

"Seriously, Bobby, I'm okay." Dean jerks his chin, lines of pain deepening around his eyes from the motion. "Go."

The older man nods reluctantly, nudges the icepack on the desktop against Dean's fingers as he leaves the room. It looks as though it takes monumental effort for his brother to lift the pack to the thrashed, rapidly swelling side of his face.

Sam swallows uneasily. He feels like he should apologize, but also knows he's the only one who thinks it's necessary. Maybe it wasn't him who did that to Dean, but he felt it. He feels it.

Nice and slow. Like pulling the wings off an insect.

He's the one who couldn't drive the demon out on his own, who let her do those awful things. "By the way," he says carefully. "You really look like crap, Dean."

Sam finds himself holding his breath as his brother pulls his arm in tightly to his side and hauls himself out of the car. He's never doubted Dean's bullheadedness or resilience, but the human body is a fragile thing that can only take so much.

As though to punctuate the thought, he stumbles himself as he makes his way around to the trunk to grab their bags. He sticks a palm against the cool frame of the car and blinks roughly, raises his head to see Dean weaving a shaky course toward the sidewalk with his left arm tucked against his side like an injured wing. As Sam watches, his brother trips over the curb and lists dangerously to one side.

Shit, Dean.

Sam's mind is like a slurry pond, murky with dozens of surfacing disjointed images that have to be memories, terrified voices and screams, and remnants of the demon's emotions as she wreaked havoc from within his body. Sensations, like the foreign, smoky tang on his tongue, a stench of sulfur. Blood staining his fingertips.

I tried to wash it off.

He remembers sticking a gun in his brother's hands, pleading with him.

Here, you gotta do it.

Daring him.

He remembers now, Meg's utter hatred of Dean, the rage that kept her going in Hell. Her euphoric satisfaction at making him believe he was talking to Sam, that he'd found and recovered his missing brother. How she'd enjoyed seeing Dean hurt, seeing him bleed. And even more than that, making him bleed.

Sam's the one who had a demon riding shotgun for more than a week, but there's no question who came out of this ordeal with more damage done.

He hops onto the curb and offers support for his struggling brother, swallows roughly as Dean leans against him. There's an unspoken concession there that he doesn't currently have the capacity to fully comprehend, but he knows what it costs Dean to relinquish that control. Especially now. He knows what that means, and it scares the hell out of him.

He unlocks the door and steps aside, guides his brother inside. He doesn't immediately flip the light switch, wanting to keep the evidence out of sight for as long as possible, though he knows it does neither of them any good.

Dean staggers into the dark room and collapses onto the closest bed with a groan that makes it clear he's unlikely to be doing much moving of any kind without a hell of a lot of help.

The burn on Sam's arm hurts like a bitch, and his head is pounding dully, but fiercely. There are bruises on his knuckles that ache when he flexes his hand, a pain that radiates all the way into his chest when he thinks how his face was the one his brother saw as he took every rage-filled blow. None of it means a damn thing. Because Dean, sprawled stiffly atop the rumpled floral bedspread, smells like a dirty lake and looks like roadkill. The contusions on his shadowed face are dark and ugly, stretching from temple to jawline, and his features are tight with pain.

"Don't get comfortable yet, man," Sam warns. He remembers the gunshot vividly now. Dean's startled jerk, and the splash of his body hitting the surface of the lake. Like an out-of-body experience, which he supposes it was. He wants to forget it, to drive the image of a wounded, falling Dean out of his mind, to crawl into the other bed and sleep for about a week straight. He wants to wake up with all of this so far behind them it doesn't ever come up again, but he knows better. He owes his brother better.

"Sam," Dean says loudly, snapping him out of it. He's taken Sam's advice and propped himself up on his right elbow, but it's costing him, leaving him frighteningly pale as he struggles to remain upright. "We talked about this. Stop beating yourself up. You didn't do anything wrong."

"Look in a mirror, Dean."

His brother smirks tiredly, but the smile doesn't reach his eyes. "Honestly, I'd rather not. I just wanna get some sleep."

He needs more than sleep, but Sam comforts himself with the fact Bobby wouldn't have allowed them to leave if Dean needed more than motel room triage. But his brother needs water, painkillers and antibiotics. Knowing him, probably food, and yes, rest. There's no question he's lost a significant amount of blood, and while Sam might be a bit fuzzy on some of the details, he knows Dean's taken multiple blows to the head over the past several hours.

The pistol cracks against Dean's skull, the force of the blow spinning him where he stands and dropping him bonelessly to the grimy gray carpet.

Sam blinks and reels back, collides with the table under the window.

She'd hesitated, in that motel room, just for a moment. With Sam a frozen, helpless prisoner of his own body, Meg had let him think she was going to kill Dean then, down and defenseless.

Then she'd asked herself, asked Sam, where's the fun in that?

He runs a trembling hand down his face, as though that will drag away these remembered fragments of his time with the demon. There's work to be done inside, things Sam won't be able to make right that he's going to have to deal with. Blood on his hands, if not his conscience. But first, there's Dean.

His brother has slumped back and closed his eyes, breathing in audible, ragged pants. He looks small and vulnerable and wounded, white-faced and clearly in pain, with his injured left arm draped loosely over his chest.

Sam takes advantage of his brother's closed eyes and springs into motion. He finally flips on the light in the room and goes straight to Dean's bag, drops it the tabletop and tugs back the zipper.

The light, or the sound, rouses Dean, who struggles to once more shove himself up on an elbow. When he realizes which bag Sam has his hands in, he frowns. "What the hell are you doing?"

"What did Bobby give you?" he asks as he rifles through the topmost layer of clothing, in a tone both foreign and familiar, patented John Winchester don't fuck with me right now. It's not much of a leap to assume the man would have discretely slipped something to Dean when he wasn't looking, wanting to help without giving Sam cause – or, more cause – to feel guilty. He finds nothing in his search, raises his gaze to his brother.

Dean rolls his eyes but scoots back against the headboard, wincing as he digs into the pocket of his jacket. He pulls out an amber pill bottle and tosses it bounce on the bedspread between them, then another. "Seriously, Sam, can we not make a big deal about this?"

He's completely on board with the not-a-big-deal-making, but he's also not about to let his brother succumb to a nasty infection because he's so damned determined not to allow Sam to feel bad about what's happened. He's concerned enough they've already missed the boat on that one, with the lake water and all. He steps closer to the lamp and studies the labels on the bottles. The name and address on the bottle of Vicodin give him pause, and he looks up questioningly.

"Parting gift from Jo," Dean explains, voice breathy and rough.

A chill drops down Sam's spine. He hadn't been there. Meg had left Dean in the water and hit the road for Sioux Falls, and a possibly concussed, woefully unqualified Jo had had to dig the slug out of his brother. God, Dean. "Okay." He swallows, knowing there isn't a chance in hell Dean's taken any of the pills yet. "Hang tight."

He goes into the small, dingy bathroom and flips the switch with a hollow click, unwraps a plastic cup from the counter and fills it from the tap. Sam catches sight of his reflection in the mirror and startles, sloshing water over his hand. He hardly recognizes himself, a ghostly pale stranger with dark smudges under his eyes.

He hits the exhaustion then, like striking a brick wall at sixty miles an hour, and actually staggers back from the counter. His vision swims and his ears ring as the floodgates open, just slightly. For a long moment, Sam is lost to surfacing memories and sensations.

I gotta face up to who I am.

Shoot me!

You ask me, he's in way over his head.

There's more – he knows there's so much more, too much to ever remember all of it, but what's happened to Dean is what hits him the hardest.

Whatever I do to you, it's nothing compared to what you do to yourself, is it?

Sam falls forward, smacks a palm against the edge of the basin and manages to keep his feet. God, Dean. He shakes his head, blinks roughly to clear his vision. He's gotta pull it together; he's no good to his brother like this. He knocks two of each pill into his palm and takes the water out to Dean, who's sprawled stiff and still, eyes closed.

"Dean." He repeats the call, louder, when he gets no response.

His brother finally grunts, eyelids fluttering, and Sam presses the tablets into his limp, chilly hand. "Come on, man. You need these."

Dean grumbles an incoherent response, but lifts his head enough to take the pills with a swallow of water. He starts to collapse back and Sam nudges his shoulder, encouraging him to roll to his good side. He complies with a long groan, and Sam tugs at the lapel of his brother's jacket, dragging it gingerly from his injured arm.

"Sam," he protests weakly, face mashed against the pillow. "Just leave it."

"Shut up, Dean."

"Bobby already – "

" – barely even looked at it, hours ago." Sam's heart lurches into his throat at the sight of the dried, fist-sized bloodstain on his brother's shirt. "Humor me."

Dean sighs in surrender. "Whatever."

Sam works quickly, though gently as possible, but still wrests a few unguarded, wounded sounds from his brother as he removes the old gauze from the bullet hole. The sight of it turns his stomach, but it's not just the wound, it's the emotion, the memory.

Dean's flailing fingers find his arm and tighten painfully as he blanches and swallows roughly.

He freezes in the motion of affixing a fresh dressing. "You gonna hurl?"

"Hm," his brother grunts. "No."

"You sure? Because you look like you're gonna hurl." Sam wrinkles his nose, but the least he deserves is puke on his shoes.

"Sam."

"Okay," he relents, but waits a moment before continuing with the poking and prodding. "It's just…you really look like crap, Dean."

Dean huffs a sounds that might have been a laugh under other circumstances. "So I've heard. It's been a hell of a week."

"What do you remember?" Dean asks, forcing Sam into a chair. He swipes distractedly at the blood under his nose, and his left arm is pressed awkwardly to his side.

Sam feels like he should know why.

He remembers wrapping up their last salt and burn just before dawn, going for coffee while Dean was in the shower. Sucking in a deep lungful of fresh air as he stepped off a curb under overcast skies, rainwater collected in the potholes. And then –

- and then nothing.

A long stretch of nothing, before coming to here on the floor with a bloody, wide-eyed Dean at his side, looking at him like he hadn't been…like he'd…

A week?

"I don't…" Sam shakes his head, grits his teeth around a flare of pain in his own arm and hisses. "I don't know." He stares dumbly down at the spot, the raised edges of the strange symbol carved into his skin bisected by a harsh, wide burn. His knuckles are red, aching.

"Bobby?" Dean turns to the hunter with raised eyebrows, right hand hugging his limp left arm.

Bobby's been keeping to the perimeter of the room, a deliberate sort of distance that has Sam feeling guilty and ashamed. "Hard to say what will come back," he says, staring at his hands, avoiding eye contact with either of them. "Or when. Most people don't even survive a possession."

His brother pats his shoulder, and the motion of it nearly knocks him off-balance. "Good thing you're not most people, huh?" Dean says shakily.

"What's wrong with you?" he asks in return, frowning. And it's the stupidest fucking thing he's ever said. He happened to Dean. Obviously.

Dean doesn't even raise his gun, doesn't make a move to defend himself.

A shot rings out, echoes off the boathouse.

"I shot you," Sam breathes, head spinning as it comes back.

"Sammy, hey. Sam!" Dean barks, gripping his chin roughly, cupping his face with both hands. "Listen to me, because I'm only gonna say this one time. You didn't do anything to me, okay? To anyone." He smiles, tired and so full of genuine relief that Sam's throat aches.

Because beyond the dark blood and the blooming bruises coloring Dean's face, he can starkly see the hell his brother's been through, this past week that Sam can barely remember.

Dean claps his cheek lightly, and Sam nods. "Okay," he says, but he doesn't know how to mean it.

"Okay." His brother's hands drop away, and in the motion of straightening, something gets lost in translation. Dean wavers where he stands, face going scary white.

He starts to push out of his chair, meaning to catch his brother as he starts to go down, but Bobby beats him to it, grips Dean under his good arm and shoots Sam a look that pins him in his seat.

Sam settles on the edge of the mattress and stares down at his hands, at the crimson stain along the nailbed of his right thumb. He'd scrubbed until his fingers were puffy, red, and raw, but he can't get all of his brother's blood off his hands. It's sort of poetic, he supposes. "I think it was too easy," he says softly. "Being possessed."

Dean snorts humorlessly, lays his head against the headboard and hugs his left arm tighter. Now that he's been off his feet for a bit and the painkillers are settling in, some color is returning, but his complexion is nowhere near normal, or healthy. The bruises put there by Sam's hand are grotesque, berry-hued splotches darkening on his forehead, cheek, and jaw. He rotates his head to where Sam sits on the other bed, compensating for his swelling left eye. "That was easy?"

"Yeah." Sam nods stiffly, a muscle in his jaw jumping. He figures this is as good a time as any to have this conversation. His brother is clearly riding the last of his waning energy reserves, mind and tongue loose with the pain meds, and that means there's a decent chance he won't remember any of this in the morning. "I mean, I'm starving, and I could sleep for a week, but…I don't know. I don't feel…" His own adrenaline high is wearing off, and what Bobby and Dean had said has dug deep into his mind.

Most people don't even survive a possession.

Good thing you're not most people, huh?

Maybe they had a point, because Sam feels violated and used, but not…harmed. He doesn't feel brutalized by having a demon inside, for days, or even marginally tortured. Meg's possession didn't tear him apart, didn't leave him feeling raw and broken inside the way it probably should have. "Maybe it's because there's something about me," he says softly, gaze trained on the carpet. "Something…wrong. Something that – "

"Don't," Dean interjects, tone surprisingly firm and scary low.

Sam raises his eyes to find his brother staring hard at him, his gaze pained and pinched, but piercing.

Dean shakes his head, then winces and stills. He closes his eyes, sucks in a long breath. "Don't talk like that," he says finally. "The demon…she talked like that."

He frowns. "What are you…" But something about that sounds familiar, tugging at the back of his vulnerable, overtaxed mind. It comes back then, like a bucket of ice water dumped over his head.

Dean, it feels like no matter what I do, slowly but surely I'm – I'm just becoming…

What?

Who I'm meant to be.

"Sam?"

The dam is bursting, flooding his consciousness with visions of terrified faces and horrified screaming. It feels like waking from a trance, like those disjointed pieces that have been shuffling loosely in his mind are all finding their place. He remembers it all, every damn awful thing that demon did when she had him at her disposal.

"Sammy?"

Dean's voice triggers an avalanche in his head. He sees Bobby go flying across the study, hitting the wall and falling ragdoll-limp to the floorboards. Then Dean, crashing to the floor, clutching at his left shoulder.

He stalks closer, drops into a crouch and grabs a fistful of Dean's t-shirt. Hits him, hard.

And again.

And again.

He grips Dean's injured shoulder, locates the bullet wound, and digs his thumb into the hole. It seems more a reflexive reaction to the pain being inflicted when Dean reaches up and grips his arm. It's not an attack. It's pure defense.

It's adorable, and hilarious.

Sam blinks the images away but he can't shake the feelings; Meg's feelings, polluting his own. His ears ring faintly as the motel room comes back into view. Dean has gotten up from his sprawl on the bed and is standing over him, gripping both sides of his face. He looks ghostly pale, eyes wide and terrified.

"Sam?"

"I'm good," he says, swallowing roughly. "I'm good." And he is. He really is, all things considered. He meets Dean's worried gaze and frowns deeply. "Why didn't you fight back?"

His brother seems genuinely confused by the question. "What?"

"You didn't fight back, Dean. You didn't throw a single punch. You just…" Sam sucks in a sharp breath as he realizes Dean hadn't had a gun in hand on the pier, either. "Would you have let her kill you?"

"No," he says automatically, but it sounds hollow, rings false.

Sam leans back and scrubs both hands roughly over his face. "I need to get some sleep." He narrows his gaze as Dean straightens with a wince, once more hugging that bad arm close to his side. "So do you."

"I'll be fine," Dean replies, but he sways where he stands, and all that color he'd gotten back has drained right out.

Sam steers his brother back to his bed and gets him situated on his good side, tugs the comforter up. Dean sighs as he settles, but a deep crease appears between his eyebrows, a dead giveaway that he's in a good deal of pain.

Sam thought he'd hit the wall before, but that's nothing compared to the wave of exhaustion that washes over him now. He cracks his jaw on a yawn, staggering where he stands. Still, he stays by his brother's side until his breathing evens out, and he thinks about Dean not fighting back.

I can see it in your eyes, Dean. You're worthless. You couldn't save your dad, and deep down…you know that you can't save your brother. They'd have been better off without you.

Meg used him to go after Dean. Used him to torture his brother mentally and emotionally, before finally, physically.

I wanted to see if I could push you far enough to waste Sam.

But still, it hadn't been about him. Sam knows his brother. Knows that Dean pushed himself to the breaking point to find him, to save him, but she hadn't hurt Sam at all. He'd just been convenient. A means to a bloody end for his irrationally stubborn, self-sacrificial big brother. The same big brother who's been doing a shit job concealing the dark thoughts he's been harboring since Dad died. Who'd locked himself with his infected, likely dying brother and said "I'm tired, Sam."

So what, you're just going to give up? You're just gonna lay down and die?

If that's what she truly wanted, to push Dean far enough to kill Sam to save himself, then Meg didn't do her homework, and she never stood a chance.

There have been a handful moments in the past few months, in which his brother has scared the hell out of him. The crossroads demon, there in that clinic in Rivergrove.

Tonight.

It took a few months, but Sam finally has an answer to his question.

He hasn't said a word, hasn't even made a sound, but Dean, eyes closed, mutters, "I'll be fine, Sam."

Sam releases a long breath, pushes his hands through his hair as he sinks onto his own bed. "I know you will, man."

Our last hellatus, kids! *flails*