Title: Remaining Unawakened
Characters/Pairings: Sam & Dean, Cas, misc. minor characters mentioned
Genre: H/C, Humor
Rating: T (PG-13)
Word Count: 6309
Warnings/Spoilers: S9 & S10 spoilers in general, particularly 10.14, The Executioner's Song
Summary: Team Free Will, version 2.0 – one ex-Blade junkie, one angelic dropout with borrowed Grace to his name, and Mr. Animal Whisperer over there. Good thing the world already knows they've done more with far less.
A/N: Written for ohsam's five-year anniversary challenge, for this prompt by killabeez: There is no way to get rid of the Mark, but Sam figures out a spell/ritual that allows him to share the burden, which makes it bearable for Dean. (Maybe it's because he's psychic that he's able to do this?) Unfortunately, it also causes Sam to feel everyone else's anger/fear/guilt/rage/grief (any negative emotions) amplified, so he has a really hard time being around anyone else, even casually. He becomes a virtual recluse, only able to tolerate Dean's company because of the bond they share. Maybe they stay in the bunker and Sam almost never goes out? Maybe they move someplace remote, like a little farm far away from everyone else.

When Sam's isolation and withdrawal become serious, Dean starts bringing home strays to keep Sam company. First a dog, but when he sees how much it helps, maybe more dogs, or a horse, a hedgehog, a pair of kittens—whatever strikes your fancy.

A/N2: I am nearly finished with a new Sherlock fic, written for someone who donated to the GoFundMe campaign I mentioned in a previous post (for friends of mine back closer to the holidays), but as I hit writers block on it in a bad way recently and I just can't get it right I took a short break into a different fandom in the hopes that churning out something that demanded a short time constraint would jar loose the words that I need to come out. This is the result.

This is an extremely busy time of year for me and I just started a brand new job entailing getting up at 4am, but this prompt grabbed my attention and I really wanted to try it – so I hope it's something like what you were looking for!

"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened."
- Anatole France

Dean first starts suspecting when he weasels the First Blade out of Cas's possession for the (quite justified) purpose of dispatching what now appears to have been an extremely pissed-off angel-chimera hybrid.

Apparently, Cain's weapon is a far better choice than an angel blade, if said hybrid is midway between smiting you and changing into heaven knows what in order to eat your remains.

He tosses the Blade back into Cas's outstretched hand with no more reluctance than if it had been the keys to that gods-awful pimp car the angel insists on still driving (Dean still doesn't know how he hasn't been picked up by the cops yet, as Cas has yet to understand the fine art of forging license plates).

"Tell your people to keep it in their pants from now on, will ya?"

Cas's eyes roll heaven-ward in righteous vexation, informing Dean that he did understand that reference, and he saunters back toward the parking lot, smirk well-hidden in the gathering twilight.

He expects Sam to be waiting in the car, emo and nervous as he had been before Dean and Cas had taken off after the monster, but what he doesn't expect is to reach the parking lot in time to hear what sounds like the argument of the century erupting from the direction of his Baby, complete with a string of insults in terms colorful enough to peel paint.

All that, because…some dude was apparently talking too loudly into his cell phone outside?

Seriously, he's lucky Mom's in heaven, because otherwise she'd for sure come back to haunt him if she knew he was the one to teach Sam those words.

-o-

"He pissed me off. Some people need to concentrate while hacking security feeds," Sam only snarls, a very tense half hour later.

Dean eyes him warily, and wisely keeps his mouth shut until they're safely across the Kansas border.

The next Episode of Weirdness happens in a Walgreens, of all places (they've come up in the world and can actually afford things right now, courtesy of a brilliant redhead who thankfully doesn't bear grudges against either of them and can hack their credit scores).

They never split up in stores unless they're in an emergency rush, an unspoken rule put into place sometime after the hundredth time or so that something supernatural attacked or kidnapped one of them in broad daylight. And so, they meander through the shelves at a leisurely pace, Dean tossing things into the basket seemingly at random and Sam, the anal freak, actually using the Walgreens app to check their list.

"You clipping tampon coupons on there, Samantha?" he drawls, tossing a jumbo-sized bottle of Tylenol into the basket.

Eyes still glued on the screen, Sam deftly maneuvers around a light pole and at the same time removes the package of Oreos Dean had stealthily stashed in the basket as well.

"Dude, come on!"

"This is a medical supplies run, Dean."

"They give 'em to you after you donate blood!"

Sam's lips twitch, which is a victory, but not a big enough one that the cookies go back into the basket. Still, silver linings. Any day that Cain's words don't slither into the back of his mind, make his fingers itch with the phantom urge to wrap themselves around his little brother's neck – well. Those are the good days, and they're getting fewer and far between.

They approach the checkout counter, and are dismayed to see that while no one had been in line when they entered the drugstore, there's at least two people ahead of them, one of which is a mom with three small children (two of which are running around, screaming at the top of their hellish little lungs).

"Awesome," Dean mutters, scowling at the nearest store employee, who is stocking shelves nearby and blithely ignoring the growing line of customers. A flash of irritation soon starts creeping in a burning, searing line up his right arm. He clenches his fist, forces the rage back, dismayed that it can be triggered so easily, can so quickly turn from mere frustration into genuine, violent anger. It is dangerous – he is dangerous. And there are children around, which scares him even more.

As if in agreement with that assessment, the baby held in the woman's arms starts bawling, much to the poor mother's embarrassment. She shifts awkwardly, trying to soothe the infant with one arm and reaching out to corral the two remaining little monsters with the other. She looks exhausted, dark circles under her eyes, and moves as if only going through the motions.

Dean's seen the look far too often in this hopeless business, that of someone who doesn't have the options they deserve, and he hates it. He vaguely remembers her being the same customer he saw back at the prescription counter when they first came in; he had been dropping off one of their forged prescriptions for Vicodin, and had heard her at the next window picking up one for Latuda.

He feels a headache building behind his eyes in addition to the fire eating at his arm, and judging from how pale Sam's face is getting, he's already halfway to a migraine, and no wonder. Good thing they bought the extra strength pain pills.

The line moves, thankfully, leaving only the young family between them and the counter, and hopefully only minutes between them and freedom. The woman slides her credit card – only to have it be declined. She tries a second, and then a third – and by now, the cashier is looking at her with impatience mingled with disdain.

Dean's never been stupid enough to do drugs, but he knows the signs of someone who does – hell, even Sam was desperate enough to buy them off the street when he was so strung out on Lucifer-hallucinations he was dying from sleep deprivation. The only drugs the woman's buying are the prescription ones she needs to stay functional for her family, and the only things in that cart are basically diapers and bandaids.

She probably thinks he's hitting on her when he steps up and slides his (well, Mr. Jonathan C. Himmler's) own credit card, but in reality it never crossed his mind.

Weirdly enough, by the time she's decided he's not a pervert, thanked him, and left trying to hide her tears, he can barely feel the burning charge of the brand under his right sleeve anymore.

More weirdly enough, Sam is nowhere to be found when it's now their turn to pay.

-o-

"Dude, have you been crying?"

"What? No! It's allergy season, man. I told you I needed Allegra."

"…Which was still in the basket when you took off, Sam."

"…I just needed some air."

"Whiiiiich is less full of pollen than the inside of a sterilized drugstore?"

"…Shut up."

He should have figured it out, but didn't, when Sam started declining trips abroad. Letting Dean pick out organic produce at the Giant Eagle three towns over should have thrown up an immediate red flag, and he can't remember the last time Mr. OCD didn't want to come along when they were making new identification badges, to make sure the details were perfect.

But it's when Sheriff Jody Mills calls, and asks for them to swing by and ID what she thinks is a monster corpse, and Sam just shrugs and says he has work to do in the Bunker, that Dean will be fine by himself, that finally clues him in that Something Weird might be happening.

Sam is full of Weird, though, so he leaves the geek buried in whatever research has caught his eye this time and heads out to Sioux Falls, where he finds Jody neck-deep in yet more angel-monster hybrid trouble.

"What do you call these, nephilim?" Jody yells over one shoulder, as she lops off the head of the latest, what is apparently an angel-vampire hybrid. Dean spares a few seconds of admiration for the neat combination stab-and-chop.

"No, that's a half-angel, half-human!" The Mark sings with pleasure as it is freed for the first time in many weeks, craving bloodlust, despite the fact that he's using just a plain machete, not even the First Blade.

"Then what are these things!"

"An abomination," Castiel intones, from where he calmly slices through the neck of one of the monsters, long arch-angel blades wielded in each hand like a dorky trench-coated Jedi.

Another falls at Dean's expert aim, then another; and Blade or no Blade, the Mark thrills with the high of bloodshed, running euphoric through his veins like a pure drug.

And then suddenly – like a candle being blown out – the exhilarated high disappears, vanishes like smoke in the wind, leaving only a sense of calm and peace behind.

What the hell?

So startled is he, that only Jody's quick reflexes save him from becoming vampangel chow; but he doesn't even look at her, only yanks up his sleeve with shocked haste, and stares at the brand on his arm – now dormant, barely even a pinkish scar, when it should be a raging inferno of inflamed tissue after such a battle.

Sammy, what have you done?

The door slamming back against the wall of the room Sam has appropriated as "his laboratory" is heavy enough to both snuff out the candles and startle the man in question, whose eyes shoot open wide as he flails somewhat ungracefully into a sitting position at the table.

Dean tries not to laugh, because even if he suspects Sam has done something really, really stupid – the idiot is still innocent enough to fall asleep over his dinner and a book, something he's been guilty of for the better part of three decades now, and it's still endearing.

"You're back," is Sam's brilliant observation.

Dean is at the table now, and beside the half-empty coffee cup he sees the remains of what looks like some sort of ritual he's never seen before; candle stubs, still smoking – a bowl of charred remains and what smells suspiciously like blood, and several symbols which he doesn't recognize.

"What the hell have you done," he whispers, afraid beyond words to hear the answer.

"Nothing like what you're afraid of," Sam sighs, leaning back in the chair. "I wasn't sure at the beginning if it would even work or not."

"Oh, it worked. The Mark conked out on me right smack in the middle of a bloodbath – angel-vamp almost took my head off," he retorts, with somewhat justified heat.

Sam has the grace to look worried. "I didn't realize the recharge effects were so drastic."

"The what."

Sam's eyebrows lift slightly. "You think tonight is the first time the power of the Mark has been siphoned off of you?"

"Damn it, Sam!"

Sam's eyes flash dangerously, a sudden burst of emotion that startles him in its intensity. "You don't get to be offended by this, Dean," his brother states thinly, jaw tight with tension. "you may be happy to sit back and wait for this thing to bow to your freaking martyr complex, but I am not. going. to lose you. again." The words hit him like so many staccato punches – is that what Sam really thinks he's doing, just giving up?

Doesn't he see that there's no other option? With Cain dead, there is no other solution. There is no way to remove the Mark, and he is destined to kill his brother.

They've tried this before, telling Destiny to go screw itself, when they were scheduled to become angelic vessels. It ended with his baby brother's soul locked in a cage-fight with two pissed-off archangels for over a century, and he still hasn't quite forgiven Cas for his incomplete rescue and deception afterwards.

Excuse him if he doesn't have much faith in their ability to stave off the inevitable, given that their track record has been total crap so far.

Sam must be more perceptive than angry, or else Dean isn't doing as good a job of hiding his hurt as he thought, because his brother sighs wearily, rubbing eyes that are dark-circled with exhaustion, and motions to the seat beside his.

"So get this," Sam says.

Dean is going to kill his little brother. Not right now, because after the last bringing-back-from-the-dead fiasco he's not chancing more ungrateful take-backs with their relationship on the tenuous last strands it is, but sometime soon. Wring his scrawny neck like a monster of the week, for pulling a stunt like this.

"You are way over-reacting, dude." Sam's amused drawl over the top of his Snapple bottle only serves to further infuriate him.

Dean pounds viciously at a steak with a meat tenderizer, the satisfying squish only vaguely assuaging the thirst for bloodshed that simmers in his veins. He ignores Sam's raised eyebrow, flips the steak over into the waiting seasonings with a dull thwap, and proceeds to pound out his frustration on the other side of the beef, in lieu of doing so to Sam's smug, idiotic head.

"Are you trying to make steak or taco meat?"

"Shut up."

"Dean, come on."

"I said shut up."

"Dean."

"Tapping the power of your friggin' soul, Sam! You of all people!"

Sam's eyes darken. "I of all people, what? Am too damaged? Dean, the Men of Letters have extremely specific instructions about blood magic. Souls have power, and they can recharge with the proper instruction; Henry Winchester used his to time-travel, and that was just one of many spells in the archives that's safe to use on blood relatives. I'm not an idiot."

"And what about side effects, Sam, huh?" Dean tosses the steak into a nearby dish, splashing marinade all over the counter, and turns to face his brother. "You can't tell me there's not consequences for draining the effects of the Mark of Cain off of me using the power of your freakin' soul!"

Sam rolls his eyes, tosses the empty Snapple bottle into the recycling bin he'd insisted Dean purchase and place beside their trash can in the kitchen. Only Dean has known this idiot for as long as he's been alive; he can tell by the nervous tension around Sam's eyes that he's not as at ease with this as he seems.

"It's nothing I can't handle, Dean."

"That is so not what I asked."

"Dude, I asked Cas about it, okay? He said it's normal, but there's nothing we can do about it. So…we deal, right?"

"It being…"

Sam fidgets for a moment with the nearby dishtowel Dean had set aside to catch spills, sighing. "I'm not quite sure, honestly, Dean," he finally admits, glancing up from under a flop of shaggy hair. "I think, maybe because of my former psychic abilities? – for whatever reason, the power I'm using to perform the spell is somehow throwing my mind open to other influences while it's working to drain away the power of the Mark over you."

Dean frowns, seats himself at the table across from his brother so he has complete attention. "Meaning?"

"Whenever the Mark starts to affect you, it triggers the spell," Sam explains matter-of-factly. "Meaning it starts to siphon off the effects, the high you get from killing, and the desire for bloodshed that feeds that euphoria."

"Using the power of your soul to do it."

"It takes a day every ten days or so to recharge and start the spell over, but there's no immediate danger, Dean," Sam reassures him, not very successfully. "We just need to plan hunts accordingly, now that you know."

"Fantastic."

Sam rolls his eyes tolerantly. "Anyway. What I'm a little concerned about, is that when the spell is triggered, I suddenly find myself picking up…I guess you could call it psychic or empathic connections around me. Unpleasant ones," he specifies ruefully.

Dean raises an eyebrow. "Just unpleasant ones?" he asks cautiously.

Sam nods, hesitant. "I start feeling every negative emotion around me, as if it were actually starting in my own head. It's the weirdest, most disturbing thing, Dean."

No kidding. "So…when I become affected by the Mark, the spell starts working…and, what, it like, throws open your psychic front door to every negative emotion everyone around you is feeling?"

Sam looks at him oddly. "Exactly, yeah."

Dean frowns. "That why you've become a hermit lately?"

"Um."

"That's a yes," Dean mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose. "So, these last few weeks, all these times you've been acting weird…"

"The drugstore, yeah," Sam murmurs, eyes faraway. "The woman in front of us. She was…she had just lost her husband. Afghanistan, I'm assuming, I heard her telling someone earlier in the pharmacy the kids were Army brats. She was buying anti-depressants for a reason, Dean. It was just too much, I couldn't take the – the pain, the grief, was just so sharp, I couldn't understand why I was suddenly feeling it so much. I had to get out of there."

Dean has the grace to blush. "The little brats were getting on my nerves," he mutters gracelessly.

Sam snickers. "Dude, overreaction much?"

"They were horrible!"

"And that triggered the Mark? Geez, Dean!"

"I know," he replies, sobering. "It scared me too, how quickly it can be triggered. I gotta get it under control - but Sammy, not like this. You shouldn't have done this."

Sam reaches over, taps a gentle finger on his sleeve. "And you shouldn't have done this," he replies quietly. "But we've both driven each other to extreme measures in the last year, haven't we?"

Point taken.

"Besides," Sam says, shrugging. "How bad can it really get?"

It gets pretty bad.

Dean should have seen it coming, given that the universe is out to screw them over every chance it gets, but he honestly thought Sam's crazy-ass plan was actually working. While he still battles the Mark on a daily basis, anything from some idiot cutting him off on the freeway to enjoying emptying more bullets than necessary into an already dead corpse – he's living with it, and learning to control it, rather than be controlled by it.

He'd forgotten what hope actually felt like.

Sam's happier than he's seen him in years, so much that it's almost sad, that it takes the kid basically bargaining away part of his own soul in order to help his brother battle an uncontrollable addiction to make him feel he's finally succeeded in life. God, they are so screwed up it's not even funny.

And then, after a few weeks of just chilling at home, running information and directing hunts remotely from the Bunker while the supernatural world apparently lies quiet for once, they catch wind of a possible rogue chupacabra near the Oklahoma border, and as no hunter is anywhere in the vicinity, they decide to go check it out for themselves.

They haven't even made it half a mile from the first rest stop before Dean reaches over to turn up the radio and finally sees that his brother, who has had noise-canceling headphones on since they got back in the car, is actually white-knuckling his iPad, eyes firmly closed.

He peeks at the iPad, and sees an anti-anxiety app running on the screen.

Okay, not good.

-o-

It gets worse.

He's not seen Sam look this bad since the days almost a decade ago when his visions were just starting, when he basically reverted into a miserable six-year-old and could only curl up on the bathroom floor or lumpy hotel mattress after puking his guts out, clinging to Dean's jeans leg with the hand not covering his eyes from the light and trying not to cry from sheer pain – just physical pain, then. Dean can't imagine the addition of emotional pain now to all that.

It's times like this he's grateful more than anything for the last few months – demon, Mark, and all; because while he would never, ever again make the same choices he did, at least his death and the consequences have united them once more, after Gadreel and Dean's own poor decisions split them apart so very effectively. He has his little brother back, and while he would gladly trade places with him or take Sam's pain away if he could, he's at least glad that Sam is comfortable with allowing himself to be taken care of a little.

Someone in the hotel must be in a bad way; from what Sam said before he went silent, he's guessing a depressive episode, bad enough that his brother's clammed up completely. Sam is now just curled up under the threadbare comforter on the furthest bed and staring blankly, sadly, at the nightstand.

Finally, when he sees a lonely tear trickle its way down Sam's face unimpeded, as if he doesn't even realize it, Dean groans silently, scrubbing both hands through his hair.

Sam doesn't even twitch when he kicks off his boots and squirrels onto the bed beside him, back propped against the pillows. His hand hovers nervously for a second before settling on gently moving Sam's weirdly not-short/not-long-either hair back behind his ears, so he can at least see if his attention is being rejected.

Sam doesn't even react to the gesture, which is almost worse than being brushed away.

He sighs, leaning back against the wall, eyes closed. "What are we gonna do with you, kiddo," he whispers into the silence.

Sam doesn't reply, though a few minutes later he feels a slight tug as cold fingers curl into the hem of his shirt.

-o-

Another hiker disappears while they're in timeout, and that's enough to spur Sam into action, sluggish though it may be. Dean's rarely been more proud of his brother's stupidly stubborn inner character and his refusal to allow Dean to go into a hunt alone if it really should require at least two experienced hunters (which a possibly rabid chupacabra most certainly does).

The hunt, however, is successful through sheer chance and Dean's unfortunately fortunate current ability to brutally destroy anything that gets in his path, because Sam is all but worthless as soon as they get into a woods filled with what his brother can only describe as "psychic connections with the dying" or some other freaky crap.

So it's a no to any future hunts while the idiot is tapping into the power of his soul to control Dean's demonic tattoo problem.

But all in all, they finish the job, and return to the town to let the local law enforcement know that the "FBI" has finished the cleanup and that they don't need to worry about the serial killer running loose in their woods anymore.

Dean leaves Sam waiting in the outer office, mumbling about one of the cops thinking too loudly about his ex-wife, and goes in to make his report. They learned long ago that a few extra minutes before skipping town were worth the trouble, in backwater places like this where any excitement was enough to draw attention to them for weeks afterwards.

He emerges twenty minutes later, and stops mid-stride, smiling at the sight in front of him. Sam, looking much less like death warmed over, is sitting in a long-legged heap on the floor of the outer office, a fat orange cat sprawled on its back in his lap, paws kneading the air contentedly as his brother scratches under its chin.

"Ready to blow this town, Dr. Dolittle?" he drawls, slapping Sam's shoulder as he passes towards the door.

His brother's cheeks turns a shade of Barbie pink and Sam scrambles after him, dislodging the cat, which meows plaintively after them before waddling back over to its patch of sunlight in front of the window. Judging by the amount of fur accumulated there, it is the animal's usual space around the rural police station.

"Dude, no." He points firmly at the trunk as Sam touches the door handle. "Lint roller, or you are walking back to Lawrence."

Sam rolls his eyes, but obediently goes to the back and rummages through the small carry-on carrying their "Fed suit necessities" for the required item.

"How's the headache?" he calls out the window over the purr of the engine as she turns over.

"Fine," Sam shouts back, as the car rumbles into gear. He slams the trunk shut, and slides into place in the passenger seat, gesturing to his cat hair-free pants.

Dean pulls out into traffic, then glances over skeptically. "Really."

"Really, Dean."

"Mmhm. Because that desk sergeant eyeing you just broke up with his fiancée and has been a total wreck about it, according to the way oversharing local police chief."

"Really?" Sam asks absently, and reaches over to turn on the radio. "Huh. I didn't notice. Ooh, Aerosmith!"

Interesting…

Dean is experimenting (meaning, the first three have been hard as rocks and the fourth was still raw) with poached eggs, which are not as easy to do as cooking shows make it look (and Sam is gonna kill him when he figures out Dean is watching The Chew on his iPad in the kitchen without protecting the screen from stray food splatters), when he hears Sam's first high-pitched screech of surprise, indicating that his plan has met with success.

Grinning, he writes attempt #5 off as a miserable failure as well and decides screw it, just dumps the rest of the dozen into a bowl and mixes them for scrambling instead.

A jingling of tags and scrabbling of tiny claws in the corridor come just seconds before a blur of fur and drool slam into his legs, bouncing off into a cabinet before shaking its head, slightly dazed.

Dean rolls his eyes and bellows down the hallway. "Sam-my! Missing something?"

His brother shows up a minute later, still in flannel pajamas and sleep shirt, hair sticking up in every direction and rubbing sleep out of both eyes like the five-year-old Dean still sees once in a in moments like this.

Dean points with the egg beater. "Rule one, Sam. Not in my kitchen," he says, scowling.

"Dean?"

"Get the drool bucket out of my kitchen or you can make your own breakfast, Sam, I mean it."

"It's not mine – Dean, what – where did –"

The puppy in question decides this is apparently a good time to make a stealthy attempt at attacking the leather string bow on Sam's worn slipper.

Dean winces as the resulting crash jars loose several pots and utensils hanging on the vintage wall hooks, but there doesn't appear to be any blood or broken bones, so he leaves the mighty fallen to the tender mercies of a hyperactive rescue terrier.

-o-

"Rule two, Sam! No dogs in the car!"

"She has to have shots, Dean! The vet is ten miles away, that's too far for a walk!"

"I don't care if you have to put a basket on that friggin' mountain bike of yours like Ms. Gulch to take her, you're not puttin' a dog that gets carsick back in my Baby. She puked all the way back from the shelter when I got her!"

In the end, Dean gives in – not because he feels like changing The Rule, but because it's the first time in two months that Sam's voluntarily decided to go anywhere.

He's not sure where having a puppy translated to open season on rescuing animals, but he leaves for a hunt in Illinois with Charlie, and returns almost three weeks later to find that in his absence a certain nerdy angel thought it would be "beneficial to Sam's continued mental health" to supply his brother with a trio of orphaned kittens.

Just the thought of them makes him want to sneeze, even if Cas assures him that he has used his angelic powers to "remove all allergens from their hair and dander" and that any such urges are "entirely psychosomatic."

"Not okay, Cas!"

"But Dean!" Sam shoves a squalling bundle of gray fluff in his face. "He couldn't just leave them!"

"You could fit a whole circus troupe in that ugly-ass piece of crap you drive, why didn't you just keep them?" he asks sourly, swatting at the little furball in irritation.

Cas looks righteously offended, though at the derogations against his car or at his unwanted gifts Dean isn't quite sure.

"I find so much as one cat hair on my pillow, you are puppy chow, y'hear me?" he finally growls at the runtiest of the three, who is cowering in the corner of the blanket-lined box. "And furthermore –"

The other occupant of the box, a stocky black tom kitten, plants itself firmly in front of the runt and hisses at him, stabbing tiny but dangerously sharp claws into his pointing finger.

"Yeow!"

Sam practically melts, and Dean knows he's lost the battle before it's even begun.

"Dean-o! So this is gonna sound a little weird, man, but do ya know anybody who'd wanna take in a sliiiiightly traumatized but totally harmless Gila monster?"

Dean stares at the phone for a second, then half turns in his chair. "The hell is a heela monster, and how would Garth get a hold of one?"

Sam pauses mid-sip, sets the coffee mug back down. "Gila, not hee-la; they're a lizard native to the Southwest and Mexico, and they're venomous, though not enough to kill a healthy adult human. They're also in near-threatened status as a species and so are protected by state law in Arizona at least. What's he doing with one?"

Dean scowls and puts the phone back to his ear. "Exactly what does traumatized but totally harmless mean, Garth?"

"Wellllll, ya see, apparently demons don't just possess humans, if they need somethin' smaller to git the job done…"

"Okay, so Sam Winchester can remember how many victims there were in every major murder case for the last century, but he can't remember to feed a frickin' betta fish twice a day."

"Shut up. Do you think we have to salt and burn it?"

"Nah. Feed it to one of the Stooges."

"I told you, we are not naming one of my kittens Larry!"

"You do understand you're like, two turtles away from qualifying for one of those hoarding shows on TLC, right?"

"You watch shows on TLC?"

Dean tosses his duffels into a corner on his way down the steps, glancing around as he keeps hold of the small carrier in his right hand. An irritated chittering from inside lets him know the occupant does not appreciate his less-than-expert handling.

Sam appears from the library just as he hits the bottom step, looking slightly on edge but better than Jody's call had made it sound. At his pointed look, Sam sighs, waves a hand in a wordless gesture of frustration.

"I'm guessing she called you," he mutters, heading back into the library without another word.

"Damn right she called me," he retorts. Sam slumps back into a chair at the table, laptop shoved off to one side. Moe, the all-black kitten (now a chunky little adolescent cat who apparently hates Dean with a passion), lifts his head from his paws on the bottom shelf of the nearby bookcase, flicks his ears back at Dean's intrusion, and then returns to his nap.

"Is it that bad, that you can't even have people around you here, anymore?"

"Apparently," Sam replies dryly.

"This is no way to live, Sam!"

"And you have an alternative suggestion that doesn't involve letting the Mark of Cain loose on the world and your own psyche again?"

"I don't want this for you, Sammy," he sighs, setting the crate on the table and sagging into the next chair.

Sam gives him a small but genuine smile. "It's not that bad, Dean."

"Not that bad? It's Jody, Sam. How negative an influence can she be on your psychic whatever-it-is?"

"It wasn't a big deal until something just – I don't know, she was talking to Alex on the phone and something must have just reminded her of her son, I'm guessing." Sam shrugs. "The grief, the guilt…it was just too much, and after so long not having to deal with it…I kind of freaked out on her."

"Yeah, I got that much, genius. You're telling me you're not even able to be around our friends anymore without chancing a breakdown. But these – animals, they help?"

"For some reason, yes." Sam grins, a little wickedly, and flicks a glance at Moe, who Dean would swear is smirking at them. "I don't know if it's because they annoy you so much, or because like Cas said, there's always been meant to be a special psychic connection between man and beast, set up since the very Creation in Genesis."

Dean lets that one slide, for now. Now if the fuzzball pees on his favorite flannel again, well, all bets are off.

"Anyway, I brought you something," he says, nudging the crate closer. "It's the most high-maintenance…thing they had at the shop in Topeka, so you two princesses can spend all that time together taking care of the thing."

Sam scowls at him, but peers into the crate with wide-eyed curiosity.

"And hopefully it'll calm you the heck down next time instead of freaking Jody out. You know to call me if it gets bad, don't go hide in your zoo or wherever it is you went!"

Sam has the goodness to look a little embarrassed, and nods. His eyes light up with a smile, and then he carefully removes the little rodent, cradling it in both large hands.

Dean tosses a book across the table. "Apparently they have to have all this special bedding and pellets and crap, so it's all in bags up at the top of the stairs. I ain't puttin' it all together for a glorified squirrel."

Sam cooes over the thing – It's a chinchilla, Dean, as the know-it-all is quick to inform him – like the girl he is for at least the next ten minutes, so Dean guesses it's a win at least.

Sam soon takes his new friend to the menagerie he's constructed somewhere in the depths of the Bunker – far away from Dean's bedroom, by demand – leaving his brother to contemplate their new standings and engage in a staring contest with an evil black kitten.

Interesting how tables turn, and roles reverse. One ex-Blade junkie, one angelic dropout with borrowed Grace to his name, and Mr. Animal Whisperer – Team Free Will, version 2.0.

So screw Destiny.

They have done more with far less.