The rocks shook and the caves groaned, revengeful children against gun bearers.

Dean thought that sometimes things didn't quite make sense, like when bones had feelings. Bones were to make his legs walk into gas stations all over the states and run through the greasy claws of sadness that always wanted to grab him away. They weren't supposed to ache and hurt.

The pain made his arm a vague length that couldn't be measured. He felt it everywhere and somewhere, but didn't know where exactly nature had been twisted. Sam would probably be his willing doctor and end up diagnosing a sprain. He did that sometimes, in his calm firm voice.

Sammy cared. Sam sometimes squinted at him that said 'why Dean, why'.

Sam. The thought of his brother was a shot of adrenaline. He had to get up and rescue him.

There was sticky gum in his eyes and if eyes had taste-buds, this wouldn't be bubblegum flavored. After a moment he realised it was blood. Sam would say stitches and click his tongue, and Dean would think his blood was metallic tinged sour-sweet.

He grappled for his gun. This was his worst hunt in the history of the universe. He was failing Sam in all kinds of ways and all he ever wanted to do was get the kid back to his research kingdom scratch free. That was never going to happen, seeing as his brother was probably dead now. They were all going to die, but in a cave?

That was wrong. There should be some dignity even in the death of a hunter.

'Sam?' he croaked, 'Sammy!'

The worst silences are always the loudest.

The only motion seemed to come from inside the cave. There was something that kept swatting at the stone, making it rattle. He could imagine it slashing his brother with its teeth, ribbons of plaid shirt scattered. He'd have to go down.

The climb was uneventful but painful, his left arm yelping when he reached an awkward hold. His first steps on ground crunched over thin white twigs that looked suspiciously like bones. Further in, it was all so dark, it made him dizzy. Dean didn't like dark spaces, they were claustrophobic and crackling, as if the color thinned out the air.

He breathed in, out and ventured deeper. The swatting had quietened.

Dean remembered that the creature was a cousin of the lizard and that the tail could be alive, but it could be dead because there wasn't any evil grunting. Sam could've gotten his wish and killed it all by himself, unless he'd been killed too.

'Sam?' he whispered. Sniffed.

Something trembled, twitched. He held the gun tighter and felt the imprint of patterned mettle on his palms.

'Dean!' it was an exclamation once born within a child, still lasting. He could interpret it. Sam always seemed so young when he said his name, something of a plea, something of a warning. The way Sam said it somehow got through his heart.

He felt lukewarm cave air swift through him and a murderous tail's final swipe. Blood spluttered that could be read by cavemen as 'the sign of a battle'. A weapon fired, twice.

'Whiplash' he spat.

'What happened?' Dean asks, once Sam sits next to him like it's a picnic. They could chew on the stick bones for starters.

'I think it was drawn to your flu' Sam begins, 'because it went straight for you.'

'I don't have flu' he interrupts angrily, like saying it would take it away.

'Everyone in this forest can hear you sniffing' Sam shrugs, 'it knocked you down and you didn't get up. I waited. So I had to save myself all by myself.'

'Didn't mean it,' Dean mumbles, wishing he could blame fate instead of himself, but it always feels like his fault 'it hits fierce.' Dean picked up a rock and flicked it at the massive tail. It looked the way it was supposed to, like the sketch in the journal. 'It doesn't even have shark teeth or the claws of a griffin. Does it change or something?'

'What are you talking about? It looks exactly like the one we hunted back when I was sixteen. Wait, were you hallucinating?'

'I wasn't anything,' Dean snaps, feeling a sort of spicy panic 'continue, caveman.'

'I shot it a few times, but of course it wouldn't die, because it only dies by silver bullets,' Sam looks at him balefully, 'so when it had decided that you were mostly done for, it went back. I'm creeping up to it, when I remember I have my silver knife. Any kind of silver might work. It feels like the thing you would do, be resourceful, so I throw it at its heart and it hisses.''

'Then it turns around and you shoot it in the eye.'

'Yes, one in each, and it just falls, rolls up,' Sam grins, like he's talking about a good movie 'but then its tail gets violent.'

'You shouldn't have followed it Sammy. You might've been killed,' Dean says worriedly, like it's still going to happen.

'I'm alive' Sam clasps Dean's arm gratefully. Maybe they both would've died years ago –given up- if it weren't to live for each other. Dean's distracted for a moment. His arm shudders and sends flickering signals to his brain.

The good thing about an absorbing trouble is that it shuts off other symptoms. Now Sam's here, the monster's dead and his head will throb, throb again. The hallucinations were not a very bright sign. Dean knows it, doesn't want Sam to know it too.

'I wasn't afraid of the tail, more that it would make a rock cascade crush me,' Sam continues, 'but you had your silver knife. So I either had to grab my knife back or wait for you.'

'So I saved your life,' Dean smirks or a weak effort of it that makes it look suspect, 'if I hadn't been smashed against this wall and my knife fly across the room to you, then you'd be the late Sam Spelunker.'

Sam snorts. Dean sees the cave walls getting closer and closer, claws closing up around him.

'I mostly saved yours,' Sam nudges him. It's always been some kind of a game between them, a count of scores. Dean mostly wins. Sam can save the world, Dean will save Sam. The night is heavy now, and cold, his eyelids closing. He's caught, can't move.

'You okay?'

'Stop asking me that.'

The story seems too tight, suddenly.

'Let's get out of here,' Sam stands up too quickly and he's so far, far away, so tall, Dean doesn't understand him for a second.

'It's dark,' Dean says vaguely.

'I know' Sam sighs. He should've remembered Dean was sick, instead of wanting to tell him the tale right that moment. It was just that it felt sort of nice, Dean listening to him tell all the exciting bits for once. He still hadn't got to the part where Dean would say 'you did good Sammy'.

Praises are always worth collecting. Precious knick-knacks other kids hoarded, Sam and Dean remembered each others' words.

Sam yanks Dean up, a bit rougher than he intended, but he needs him out before he blanks out completely. Dean's hot and sticky behind his collar, the fever creeping up already. There's blood on Sam's fingers. Dean had seemed so aware that he didn't think he'd had a head injury.

'Why do you always insist you're fine?' Sam frowns, 'you didn't tell me your head's cut.'

'Double times,' Dean mumbles.

'You broke your arm?' Sam sounds exasperated, like Dean does it deliberately to annoy him.

'I don't think so. It doesn't matter.'

'Nothing does,' he rolls his eyes, 'only that you're a lot of muscle and I don't want to carry you.'

'And then you saved your brother. Again,' Dean monotones.

Outside, Sam mutters a lot. Dean would mind and feel sorry, but there's air and light and he can open his eyes. He sits for a moment, cross legged on the ground, with ants crawling up his arms and thinks how good it is not to be a bat.

Dean feels it before it blurs the skies. He holds a fist over his chest, his other hand on top.

'I saw it on the weather channel' Sam's there, guns slung all over him, 'figured a light summer rain wouldn't hurt.'

They've hunted in winter, falling ice slicing through their eyelashes and into their brains. They've been swamped in downpours and sloshed in sudden rivers. A light summer rain is actually wonderful.

It would be refreshing but now another imagined invisible storm, almost theatrical, threatens. A chest determined to be more dramatic than the clouds. Dean's coughing before his hair gets wet.

The guns click against each other. Sam rubs his brother's back.

'Imagine if rain was salty,' Dean wonders, 'because if it was, my cuts would sting.'

'It can't be. It would upset the equilibrium.'

Sam's always worried about equilibriums. Dean thinks about yellow boots and jumping in puddles so brashly, it soaks everyone when they've just lowered their umbrellas. The rain feels endless and rushed, jelly-like when it settles on his shoulders and then it sifts through his jacket, prickling into his skin.

'How are you?' Sam asks fervently, like the answer will change this time.

Dean's been saying okay, okay, stop asking, but it won't stop raining, and lies seem wet.

'Cold' he chews his lip. Random thoughts drop of leaves. It seems like there's so much rain, they could use a raft. He wants to visit the sea someday soon. If he lived two hundred years ago, he would've made a great pirate. There's gum in his eyes again. He wants to close them.

'Dean, you can't drift off, you have to stay awake,' Sam would've put his arm around his shoulder, but its quagmires and dripping branches, so they have to walk single file. It's a Winchester only war. As usual.

'I don't like it' Dean sighs, 'I don't like the rain.'

'I don't like it either,' Sam tugs on Dean's sleeve.

'Not that rain,' he insists, forgetting he shouldn't say this out loud 'the one inside my chest.'

'Don't say that,' Sam snaps, even though he doesn't want to. Dean rarely gets ill but when the fevers eventually erupt in his lungs, it isn't blankets and Gatorade. A hospital is the more logical conclusion.

'Don't be scared Sammy,' Dean's voice is somehow clear, all around the forest, holding up Sam's courage through the sludge, 'it'll be okay.'

'We're almost by the Impala. Hang on,' Sam replies gratefully, like Dean's told him some kind of secret spell. Dean has no idea why, but it almost always works. It's weird with Sam sometimes. He either trusts Dean with all his heart and or refuses to look at him, like he suddenly isn't a Winchester anymore.

They trudge. It rains.

'We need sun,' Sam kicks away another branch. Now he wishes Dean was ahead and clearing the path, 'careful, step this way, stupid falling trees.' Wait, there it is, their panther. It's waiting for them, a crouching predator. He'll never tell Dean, but sometimes the Impala seems almost real.

He's never going into that forest again.

'There's star wars behind my eyes,' Dean's almost incoherent now.

'How is it possible for you to get all kinds of sick in one day?' Sam mutters and yanks open the door, helps Dean inside. He tugs off Dean's boots, wrenches off the jacket. Dean does make some kind of argument to drive, which means he isn't that ill, or it's probably because he wants Sam to know he's mostly alright. He's always doing that.

It doesn't matter if there's cracks in his skull 'its' okay Sammy' makes it almost all better.

Sam switches on the car, glances at his brother and gulps. Dean's holding his knees, and the coughs swell, fall and sound like a half formed teenage band playing inside Dean's chest.

Sam catches a soft word, 'hurts.'

He feels it too.