Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.

A/N: Yes, I'm back from vacation. So, that's the good news. The bad news is that classes start up again soon and I have no idea how heavy my workload will end up being. I will continue to update as often as I can, especially once I finish Embracing the Monster and shift my full attention to Desolation. In the meantime, remember that reviews are food for the writer's soul! Thank you so much for the amazing amount of feedback. I appreciate it more than I can express in words.


The beeps from the heart monitor have Dean on the verge of going insane. John can tell him to be patient as many times as he likes, but that's one order Dean can't follow. Not this time.

Not when it's Sam's heart being monitored by those steady staccato beeps. Not when they're saying 'he's alive' like there's an alternative.

He hears nurses with their carts walk past the door to Sam's room, and every time his heart stops until they've well and truly passed by. What if it had been a doctor looking for them? What if they had come to say that they were mistaken in their assessment of Sam? That he isn't going to make it.

His frayed nerves have everything, no matter how innocuous, labeled as being a threat or the messenger of bad news.

Yet, when the nurse on duty does enter the room, she simply checks Sam's vitals, makes a note on the clipboard at the foot of his bed, and leaves to continue on with her route.

"Dean, he'll be fine. You heard the doctors," John says. He sits in the plastic chair with his hands clasped like it's no big deal. Like his son didn't nearly die just hours ago.

"Then, why hasn't he woken up yet?" Dean asks. "He doesn't look fine to me."

"He lost a lot of blood, Dean," John says. "He needs the rest. He'll be awake and back at it before you know it."

Sam's pale. He's a lot paler than he was earlier that day, before they went out on their hunt. Just a werewolf, John said. Routine and nothing new. Hell, with the number of werewolves and ghosts they've taken care of, they might as well be professionals (if he thinks about it, they kind of are).

But Sam's still young and inexperienced and werewolves are vicious, brutal creatures with razor-sharp claws and jaws strong enough to tear a man apart, especially when they feel threatened. And Dean wasn't watching as closely as he should have been.

The hunt was over as quickly as it started, but in the end, Sam was half-conscious on the grass alongside the werewolf (riddled with silver bullets, courtesy of Dean) and losing too much blood too quickly from gashes that Dean could only hope were from claws and not teeth. He'd lose it if Sam was bitten.

And now, for the first time, Sam's been seriously wounded and he's the one in the hospital bed, swathed in clinical white, instead of John or Dean.

Dean's not sure at which point he falls asleep, but he knows that he wakes up to his dad shaking his shoulder.

"Sammy's awake," he says, a tired smile gracing his face. "He'll be fine."

"What?"

"Sam's awake," Cas repeats. He says it slower. Enunciates it better.

Dean puts his boots on without realizing he's moved at all, and he's following Cas to the infirmary because his muscles have taken over since his brain is malfunctioning. One foot finds its way in front of the other, and the pattern continues until they stand in front of a set of stairs that Dean can't bring himself to climb. The stairs that lead into the infirmary.

Cas is three steps up when he notices that Dean's no longer following him. He looked over his shoulder and says, "Dean? Why'd you stop?"

"What am I doing here, Cas?" he asks.

The little boy that he used to drive himself insane worrying over is gone now. That man in the infirmary… he's a stranger. If he's awake and intact, he'll be just another mouth to feed. Another liability to deal with, because it's hard to know the after effects of being Lucifer's vessel. Well, beyond that they aren't good.

He's not someone Dean needs in his life anymore. Dean doesn't want him in his life anymore.

"You're here to see your brother," Cas says. He sounds as confused as Dean feels. "I told you that he's awake now."

"I know, but that doesn't mean I have to see him," Dean says. "I saw him in that abandoned city. I saw him in the quarantine cabin and when we first brought him here. What makes this time different?"

And he knows, somewhere deep within himself, exactly what makes this time different: proof of life. He isn't comatose, at least. The problem is that he's afraid he won't recognize Sam's eyes.

Or worse, he will.

Cas grabs a fistful of Dean's shirt and pulls him up the stairs to the door of the infirmary, not that Dean actively resists.

"He's awake this time," Cas says. "That's what's different. That's why you should be here."

It's then that Dean pulls away from Cas' grip. "I don't want to see him awake, because all I'll remember is that it's his fault I've had to watch the world deteriorate."

"He was not the sole cause of the Apocalypse, Dean," Cas says.

"Maybe not, but he sure as hell put the final nail in the coffin."

"Then, go back home," Cas says. "Hold onto your anger because you're too afraid to feel anything else. I brought you here because I remember a man who loved his brother so much, he sold his soul to save him. But maybe that man is as dead as you like to believe Sam is."

Cas turns his back towards Dean and enters the cabin.

A minute later, Dean follows.

The inside of the former-clinic is warm with candlelight at night, casting soft glows onto rooms that were once harshly bright with fluorescent lighting. He doesn't remember the last time he saw a building with lights that could be turned on with a switch.

It's not the best, but he found books meant for hobbyists on all sorts of topics at a library years ago and brought them back to the village. Candle making was among those books, and the villagers learned to create those and more things they once took for granted. Soap. Shampoo. They created gardens that grew and can now sustain the villagers well enough (with supplements from hunting, gathering, and salvaging). He found books about traditional medicine and herbs, which they use when they can get away with it in order to preserve what little modern medicine they still have.

They learned and adapted to their new world, but now he's leaning against the door frame of a small room that might have been an examination room when the building was still a clinic. He's standing on the border between the world he's grown to know, and a world with the man who was once his brother in it. The latter is a world that he's not certain he can adapt to, not anymore.

Sam is on a bed, and looks about the same as he did the last time that Dean saw him.

"I thought you said he's awake," Dean says.

Sam being awake always meant being in motion. Not still. Not… like this.

"His eyes are open," Cas says. "He's awake, but he hasn't said anything. He hasn't looked at anything in particular."

"So, he's not really there."

Which, in Dean's mind, is equal to him not being awake. He wants to go back to his cabin and tell Cas that he should only disturb him this late at night if it's something important, but Annette, who's stuck with the night shift at the infirmary that night, stops him from trying to leave.

"I think there's something you should see, Dean," she says. "I don't know how to explain it."

Annette motions for him to come over, and Dean steps into the room, closer to Sam. Close enough to see his eyes open, hazel and owlish as they roll in their sockets and sluggishly blink. Dean knows that he isn't seeing. His eyes are glazed over, and the right one isn't fully opened. With the burn scars surrounding that eye, Dean wonders if he'll ever be able to fully open it again. He wonders if he can still see properly out of it, or if there's been too much damage done.

"Shit, Sammy. That werewolf got you good," Dean says. "You had us pretty scared for a while."

Sam looks small when he's wrapped in hospital blankets, and he's almost as pale as the white sheets on the bed. IVs stand guard near the head of his bed, pumping painkillers and other fluids into his tiny, fragile body. His eyes, with their faraway look, find their way to focusing on his face, and Dean can see the haze that the drugs are creating. He sees the lack of clarity and understanding from Sam, and that scares him just a little bit, even if he knows that's to be expected with the heavy medication he's on.

He smiles, and Dean doesn't realize how much he needed to see such an insignificant gesture until that moment, when the tension that keeps his muscles rigid starts to fade away and he thinks, for the first time since they arrived at the hospital, that Sam will make it through this.

And he doesn't think that it's his words that Sam smiles at. He doesn't think that what he's saying is breaking through the fog of painkillers to reach Sam's mind. But the sound of his voice might be reaching him, letting him know that he's not alone.

He hopes that the sound is enough to give Sam a feeling of safety. Of reassurance that he'll be okay, because his big brother is going to take care of everything.

He misses half of what Annette is saying, and only tunes back in as she pulls the thin blankets down to uncover Sam's chest. His shirt's been removed, and bandages have been applied to places where he has cuts and open wounds.

The scarring that Dean's caught glimpses of grows worse as it gets closer to Sam's heart. The flesh there is discolored and raised. Inflamed. The burns paint his skin dark red, and in some places, purple, but the worst scar isn't a burn scar at all. It looks like a stab wound, a line of raised, twisted flesh.

Annette clears her throat. "I have no idea what could cause such a pattern of burns, but I do know one thing." She puts her hand over the stab wound and gently grazes her fingertips over its surface. "With a scar like this one, he shouldn't even be alive right now. This was made by a blade, and judging from the scar, it would've gone quite deep. Deep enough to pierce his heart."

"How's that possible?" Dean asks.

He sees the steady rise and fall of Sam's chest as he breaths. He sees the unfocused, but open, eyes languidly take in his surroundings, as if he can see them and comprehend that they're there. The man lying in front of him is a man who is very much alive.

Maybe it would be better if he wasn't, Dean thinks.

Annette shrugs. She tries to smooth back the hairs that've escaped from her ponytail, but they find their way back in front of her face almost immediately. "I wish I knew, but I don't have those answers. If we knew what happened to him, then maybe."

"He hasn't spoken or anything," Dean says. He doesn't ask it as a question, because he already knows the answer.

"No. Which makes it difficult to tell how much damage was done beyond what we can see."

Dean looks at Cas, who shakes his head and glances over at Annette.

Dean nods, message received. Cas knows something, but it's not something he wants to share around others.

Sam's eyes slip shut again, and Dean lets out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. This all feels wrong, unnatural (even if part of it does feel more natural than breathing). He hopes that he might wake up in the morning and find that it's all been a dream. He'll go back to just being the leader of Camp Chitaqua, and he'll do it without complaints because that's a job he knows. It's a job he understands.

He doesn't know how to deal with a Sam who said 'yes'. A Sam who's come back after years, scarred and angel-free. A Sam who has mysterious scars that signal he should be dead, but he isn't.

And he knows that he should care more. He promised years ago that he would look after Sam. He made that promise again and again. But when he looks at Sam, the emotions are so mixed that he wouldn't know where to begin sorting them.

He hates Sam, but never fully. He spreads that hate to Lucifer and himself, as well. He spreads it to the angels and demons who played them to send the world into their form of paradise.

He's angry, but that's a default reaction for him most days now. He's angry at Sam for his choices. He's angry at himself for letting Sam walking away, and then for not trying to contact him after he more-or-less told him to fuck off and choose a hemisphere. He's angry at Heaven and Hell for deciding to kick off their party by throwing the world into chaos. He's angry at God (if he exists) for letting them.

He's just so angry at everything. At the unfairness of everything.

But there are smaller parts of him that don't feel so much negativity. They're smothered so deeply within that he's not sure he can reach them anymore, but they hold a touch of happiness and relief. Sam is still his brother, and seeing him alive will always take away some of Dean's worries. It's too ingrained in him to stop it now.

And, if he digs even deeper, there might be a touch of love that he still holds for Sam. The same love that drove him to sell his soul. The love that he can only give his family, and Sam is the only family (by blood) he has left.

Those positive feelings scare him, and he smothers them back inside himself.

"You staying here, Cas?" he asks.

"If I don't, will you?"

Dean doesn't answer. He looks at Cas evenly, but he doesn't give any verbal response.

Cas sighs, then nods. "Yes, I'll be staying."

Dean returns the nod, then turns and leaves the infirmary.

His cabin isn't far from the infirmary, and he finds himself back where he started the night in no time. The box he left on the table is still there, the one with the amulet that Sam gave him so long ago that once meant something hiding within it, but he picks it up and shoves it under his bed. Out of sight, out of mind.

For now.


His dreams are mercifully blank, and Cas doesn't bother him again throughout the night. But morning comes too quickly and he has to get up and face his reality.

Not for the first time, but for the first time in a long time, he wishes his dad was there. He wants his father's input. His father's idea as to what the hell he's supposed to do with Sam lying in the infirmary in a village he was never supposed to be in. He wants his father's orders to guide him again.

But all he hears is his father's voice repeating that one order again and again. Watch out for Sammy.

He gets out of bed and grabs whatever he has available to eat on his way to the infirmary. He's not going for the sake of seeing Sam, he tells himself. He's going because he needs to talk to Cas and find out what he couldn't say with Annette there.

He doesn't knock or announce himself when he walks in; he's never felt the need to.

He knows which room is Sam's, and he knows that Cas will still be there because he has the idea in his head that one of them has to be constantly babysitting him, and Dean isn't stepping up to the role.

Sam is still on the bed. David sits in one chair, and Cas in another. He supposes that Sam is lucky no one else is in the infirmary currently. He gets all of the attention from David and Annette as they take turns watching him.

"Hey, Dean," David greets.

"Hey, do you think I could have a minute to talk to Cas?" Dean asks.

"Yeah, sure," David says. He gets up from his chair. "I'll just head out and grab some breakfast. I didn't get the chance to eat earlier."

David leaves without questioning, and Dean imagines that he's just happy Dean finally came by to see the patient, even if that's not the main reason he's there. Then, he wonders how much David knows. If Cas told him that Sam is Dean's brother (but he knows that Cas wouldn't do that without talking to Dean first).

He waits until he's sure that David is out of earshot before looking at Cas. "So, what was it that you didn't want to say in front of anyone else?" he asks.

"Don't you want to know how Sam is first?" Cas asks.

"I don't, but I suspect you're going to tell me anyway."

Cas glares at him, but there are lines and shadows under his eyes from exhaustion that take away any threat it might have had. "He's becoming increasingly restless, but not much more coherent. He favors his left side when he tries shifting, but I suppose that's to be expected with the severity and number of burns on his right side."

"And still no talking?" Dean asks.

"Not a sound," Cas says. "Not even a grunt."

Cas gets up from his chair and pulls the blanket from Sam's chest again, revealing the scars that look even worse in the daylight that streams through the windows.

"My first guess would be that he was stabbed with an angel blade," Cas says. "But look at the stab scar and its location. David says the blade looks like it entered at an angle from the left, and the burns are all on his right side. I don't know of any ordinary angel blade with that kind of power."

"You think the stab and the burns are related?"

Cas pauses for a moment and studies the scars on Sam's chest, deep in thought. Finally, he says, "I'd be surprised if they weren't."

"But we still don't know anything for sure."

Cas shakes his head. "I think the only way we'll find out the whole story is from Sam, and even then…"

When Cas lets his sentence drag into silence for too long, Dean asks, "What?"

"It's difficult to know how aware Sam was during his possession," he says. "Some angels block out the human soul completely. Lock them away inside themselves. Other angels might let the human watch and be aware."

"Does it hurt?" Dean asks. "Being an angel's vessel?"

"There are few fates that worse than being possessed by an angel," Cas says. "To be possessed by an archangel, to be possessed by Lucifer, I don't know how anyone could survive that."

Dean takes a seat in the chair that David had been using when he walked in before his legs give into their urge to stop supporting him. He tries to stifle any lingering feelings he has towards Sam, but hearing about angelic possession—along with the knowledge that Sam had spent so long with Lucifer in control of his body—brings out a sort of empathetic pain deep in his chest. He remembers how much Sam was affected by being possessed by Meg, who was a strong demon, but not even close to the level of a demon like Azazel. To step up from that to possession by The Devil? He's tempted to open the window, because the air suddenly feels stale. There's not enough of it in the room.

There's still a connection he doesn't understand tethering him to Sam, and he can't seem to break it. No matter how many times he tries to cut it with anger and hate and disappointment, it remains intact.

And he looks at Sam, who seems peaceful as he sleeps, unaware of the world around him for the moment. He wonders how much Sam knows and how much he understands.

He wonders why Sam said 'yes' to Lucifer in the first place. He had so much faith when they went separate ways that Sam would be okay on his own. So, what happened?

"You could probably use some sleep," Dean says.

"If I go, are you going to stay with Sam?"

Dean resists the urge to roll his eyes. What does it matter if one of them is with Sam at all times? David and Annette can do just fine looking after him without their additional hovering. But he keeps a straight face and says, "Yeah, I'll stay."

Because Cas, reconnecting to Heaven or not, is still mostly mortal and needs some rest. He tells himself that he's only doing this for Cas, not for Sam.

Cas studies him, looking for any sign of a lie, most likely. But he moves on and nods. "I'll be back later," he says.

Dean shrugs, but Cas has already turned his back and started walking away.


He's bored. He's really bored. It's been a few hours since Cas left to get some rest, and it's been years since Dean's had nothing to do except sit alone and watch someone who's soundly sleeping.

A few times, Sam shifts, but he quickly settles again, and each time Dean lets out a breath that he never meant to hold.

David returns in intervals to check up on Sam, always tossing a nervous glance towards Dean like he suspects his presence isn't fully welcomed. Then, he lingers for long enough that Dean knows he's going to say something.

And he does. He says, "You and Cas are really interested in this guy's recovery."

"Cas is. I'm here so he can get some rest," Dean says.

David looks at him, and Dean knows that he isn't buying it. He's been patient, but he wants his answers now. It might not have been his business the first time he asked about Dean's attitude towards Sam, but it becomes his business more and more each day they sit there and each day his patient remains unaware.

"I know I can't make you tell me anything, but if you know something about this man, I'd like to be let in on it. I'd like to understand what I'm dealing with here. It'd help."

"It wouldn't help," Dean says.

"If there's some big secret going on, I won't tell anybody," David says.

David looks as surprised as Dean feels when the words tumble from his mouth before he can think about them or stop them.

"He's my brother."


A/N: Please leave a review!