Chapter Summary: After six months on the road together, it's becoming more and more obvious that Sam and Dean aren't driving in the same direction.

Dean

Sam just wants to go and find Dad so he can tick a box and be done with it. Dean also wants to find Dad, but he doesn't mind if it takes a little longer. For him, there's no box waiting to be ticked, just their old lives, him and Dad hunting while Sam's away at college.

It's not like hunting with Sam. It means marching behind his notoriously unreliable father who might just abandon him again any time. It means stupidly following Dad's orders, never receiving so much as an appreciative glance for a job well done, never mind a word. Because Dad's thoughts, if he has any, will inevitably trail to absent little Sammy or to their eternally absent mother, never even sweeping over the living, breathing boy who's faithfully trotting along five feet behind him.

Which is why hunting with Sam feels like a holiday to Dean. It's good. It's fun. And like all the people who're far away from their everyday lives and worries, be it surfing in Malibu or skiing in Salt Lake City, Dean wishes it would never come to an end.

But of course it does.

One moment, Sam is pointing a gun at him, raging on about how Dean is this horribly perfect son who's always following Dad's orders while Sam's the only one sensible and brave enough to question them. The next, the spell's been broken and Sam no longer wishes to murder him, but Dean learns that, all the same, this is exactly what Sam thinks.

Following this, Sam's convinced they should just go to California and search for Dad, instead of looking into the mysterious disappearances of several couples like he wants them to.

Dean, meanwhile, would prefer to make the detour over to Indiana to prolong this sweet honeymoon of saving people and hunting things with Sammy always at his side. It's never been so easy to follow his father's orders.

Even if Sammy resents him for it.

But that's not all he does.

Dean can't believe it. Sam's actually leaving. The selfish bastard.

For the past six months, Dean's been all wrapped up in Sam. But then in one swift, sharp move, Sam severs all the hundreds of ways in which they've become inseparably connected and steps away. Just like that. It seems impossible. And yet it's happening.

Even after Sam's started walking away, Dean still can't believe that he's serious.

"Hey, I'm taking off, I will leave your ass, you hear me?" He's trying to sound threatening, but he's aware it comes out almost pleading.

"That's what I want you to do."

And there they are, back to where they were six months ago. Dean's eyes are prickling. He blinks, gets back into the car and takes off, leaves Sammy standing on that dark and empty road, a lonesome figure equipped with nothing more than a backpack, which shrinks away into nothingness in the reflection of the car's interior mirror as Dean drives away.

Dean can barely see the road ahead. He suspects that's not just because of the nocturnal darkness enveloping him and the Impala. Thank God and the FSM he has an order to follow blindly.

Sam

He turns back once just as Impala fades from sight, seeing not the last flicker of taillights but that final incredulous look on Dean's face as he waited for Sam to chicken out and get back in the car like a good little soldier. Like Dean would have for Dad, like Sam would have for Dean many years ago. He turns and starts back down the road, dwelling not on what had just happened but instead on a decade-old memory.

There was that time when Sam was twelve and mad at the world and Dad had picked him up from school with the announcement that they were cutting town again. He'd thrown himself out of the car at a busy intersection while Dad waited for the light to change. Dean had long since graduated to sitting in the front seat with Dad and Sam had seen him lunge for his own door handle but the light was green and the car was already speeding away.

Sam stood on the corner with angry, panicked tears gathering behind his eyes.

Dean found him all of half an hour later, hiding in the stacks of the local library where he'd been spending most of his time recently, researching a school paper on the civil war. He sat on the floor with a book open on his knees, fomenting rebellion in his mind.

Despite the South's desire to call it a War Between the States, it was a civil war. Thousands of southerners fought for the Union, and thousands of northerners fought for the Confederacy — father against son, brother against brother, for the war divided families as well as states. To justify the mad things they were doing, both sides learned to live with paradox. Both armies sang a war song called 'Battle Cry of Freedom' to the same music, but with different words.

"Sammy." Dean stood at the end of the row, looking down at him. When he was sitting was the only time Dean got to look down at him anymore, Sam thought with a grim smile hidden in the turn of a page. Dean raised his voice and called to him again, ignoring a passing librarian who shushed him harshly.

"Go away, Dean."

Dean stalked towards him, reaching down to gather a handful of Sam's shirt and try to tug him up. "Get up, Sam. Dad gave me ten minutes to get you back to the car before he takes off."

Sam snorted, making himself as heavy as possible and turning another page, pretending to keep reading. "I don't care. I want him to go." Dad wouldn't leave without Dean, anyway.

"Sammy, we've got exactly no time for this. We have to be in Ohio before sundown to stop a massacre. Okay? We've got lives to save. Whatever issues you have to work out, you do it in the car while we drive."

Sam glared up at him finally, guilt burning in his chest. "You're just going to leave me in a motel room when we get there, anyway. At least here we have an apartment, why can't I just stay?Dad doesn't even want me along!"

"Well I do!" Dean burst out, angry and too-loud. He ran his hands through his hair, a leftover gesture from before he sheared his hair down short like Dad's. Sam had ducked away from the clippers Dad brandished at him when he finished with Dean, keeping his own hair stubbornly long. "Come on, Sammy, just… get up. Please."

Sam glared up at his brother until the same hard-faced librarian returned. "I'm going to have to ask you boys to leave."

Sam was up on his feet and apologizing without meaning to do it, falling silent mid-sentence when he caught sight of the disbelief on Dean's face as he looked between Sam and the librarian who'd succeeded where Dean had failed. Dean put his hand on Sam's shoulder and pushed him along in front of him, out of the stacks, towards the front door. Sam forgot that he was still holding What The War Made Us until they passed through the gates on either side of the door and the escaping book alarm began to sound.

"Oh for f…" Dean muttered a few choice words he only ever said out of Dad's earshot before grabbing Sam by the hand and breaking into a sprint.

The car was idling at the end of the block and the brothers tumbled into the back seat together. Dad shifted into gear and pulled out into traffic without a word or a second glance in the rearview mirror. He never commented on the episode, and Sam kept hold of that stolen library book for as long as he'd ever held on to anything in his life until it was pitched to make room for the crossbow Dad gave Sam on his fifteenth birthday.

o0o

Old memories can't hold his attention forever. The moon continues to rise, which is great he supposes because it's dark as hell out here and he's not going to be any use helping Dad if he knocks himself out running into a tree, but on the other hand as the night grows brighter it seems to illuminate all the other things he's trying to leave behind him. Dean's stupid face, pale in the moonlight, looking at him like he was the biggest waste of space imaginable. Goodbye, Sam.

That morning had been the first time he'd heard his father's voice in… God, could it really have been three years? After what Dean had said, that Dad would hang out around Stanford, keeping an eye on him, had it been stupid to assume that if he could just talk to Dad, he would get through to him, convince him to listen, to let them help? Sam kicks a rock and watches it skitter down the road in front of him, ignoring the slight pain in his toe. I would have done anything to protect you from that, Dad had said. So maybe Sam would have got through to him, made that connection he so desperately needed. But Dean had grabbed the phone away from him, taking charge for a second before buckling and submitting to Dad again. Just like always. Sam hadn't quite remembered what that felt like, hadn't seen that side of Dean since they got back together. But the experience is painfully familiar. Dean acting like he can do anything, like he's on Sam's side, and knuckling under the second it comes down to actually making a stand against Dad.

So now here they are. Dean jetting off to battle a scary couples-eating monster while Sam plods toward the man who won't even take their calls. But Sam doesn't need to question himself on this one. There is no question who's got the moral high ground, this time; Dad could have called anyone to look into the business in Indiana, and Sam has the same right to go after Jessica's killer as Dad does. He thinks that if he can get to Dad, if he can help him, Dad will figure out what Dean seems to willfully blind to. That Dad and Sam have something in common, now. They are both bound by a need for revenge.

He knows what Dean would say to that, if Dean had the guts for it. Dad lost his wife, Sammy, his kids' mom. Yeah, it sucks, but your little college girlfriend isn't exactly on a level with that. And then Sam would have to hit back with the facts that he'd been keeping to himself, planned to keep on keeping to himself. The way he'd taken to slowing down while passing by the jewelry counter at the mall, how he and Jess had agreed on Natalie and Anabelle for girls but couldn't come up with a single boy's name they both liked, then agreed they'd rather have daughters, anyway. Tons of them, Sam had laughed into the warm skin of Jessica's neck. A big flock of them. Jess had been a lonely only child, always longing for a sister.

It's cold for the second week in April and Sam tries to pick up his pace to keep warm, but his legs feel like lead beneath him. He has no idea how far back it was to the last town they passed through. So he hunches his shoulders against the ache of his heavy pack, and keeps walking.

There are reasons Sam keeps all this stuff about Jess to himself. For one thing, Dean wouldn't believe him. And Sam doesn't want to end up defending what Dean would call his domestic fairytale crap – doesn't think he could, not convincingly, when honestly the memory of what that all felt like is fading so quickly. Some days he feels like it's nothing but the guilt that keeps him going; the feeling of guilt was more real, more present, than love. But then there are flashes, moments so rare and precious he doesn't hold on to them too tightly for fear of squeezing them dry, having them crumble into dust in his clenched fists and scatter in the wind, lost forever. Like when Lori tried to kiss him and for just a moment he could smell Jessica, remember what it felt like having someone there to share everything with. A best friend and partner in a way Dean isn't. Can't, won't be.

He hears the sound of an approaching truck and steps to the side of the road, shielding his eyes against headlights and lifting his hand. The driver doesn't even slow down.

"What the hell am I doing here?" Sam asks the night air, exhaustion and righteous anger burning in his chest, his breath rising in foggy puffs in front of his face, blurring his vision.

It's called being a good son, Dean's voice mocked him.

He turns to look back the way he'd come, throwing his arms wide and flinging the words after Dean, sending his anger to follow him down the road like a vengeful spirit. "What about being a good brother, Dean, huh?" He kicks at another rock, a much bigger one, and howls in rage and frustration as pain shoots up the length of his leg. Stumbling off the road he drops his pack and collapses onto the low fence running alongside the road.

His anger vanishing like morning mist, he unlaces his boot and inspects his toes. Nothing broken, thank God, though he'd walked far enough on broken toes before to know it wasn't that bad, certainly not the most pain he'd ever been in. He lets out a long, frosty breath, and hunches deeper into his jacket, waiting for the sun to rise.

Dean

Burkitsville, Indiana. The whole town's disgusting, a den of selfishness and lies. Dean is suddenly glad that Sam's not with him.

The anger, the hurt, the disappointment, all melt away, meaningless, and what remains is a strange sense of thankfulness for the good times they've had. It allows him to pick up his mobile and call Sammy, who's out there, on his own, somewhere on the way to California.

It's good to hear his brother's voice. It's good to hear he's doing okay. Not that Dean doubts it, not really. Occasionally, he just needs to remind himself that Sam's no longer the tiny, helpless baby that would die if Dean weren't there to carry him out of a cursed, burning house.

There's a lot that he wants to say, but he's lost for words. Emotions, apologies, all that… none of it has ever come to him easily. "Actually, uh – I want you to know…I mean, don't think…" Possibly, that might still have been an understatement.

"Yeah. I'm sorry, too." Bless Sammy. He knows how to talk where Dean can only stammer. And better still, he can even interpret Dean's incoherent stutters.

Dean braces himself and makes a new attempt at getting out all the words he'll regret having swallowed if he doesn't say them now. "Sam. You were right. You've got to do your own thing. You've got to live your own life."

"Are you serious?"

It's a little easier now, so Dean ploughs on. The words almost tumble out of his mouth, one after one, after having sat somewhere within his chest for ages, waiting to spring outside. "You've always known what you want. And you go after it. You stand up to Dad. And you always have. Hell, I wish I – anyway. I admire that about you. I'm proud of you, Sammy."

"I don't even know what to say." For once it's Sammy who's left speechless. And not because Dean actively tried to shut him up. Probably he should have said all that much sooner. Well. He's a selfish bastard too, isn't he?

Dean swallows. "Say you'll take care of yourself." He doesn't add, Especially when I won't be around anymore to do the job.

"I will."

Instead, he terminates the call with a small lie. After all the truths he's squeezed out of himself, one little lie seems to carry no weight. "Call me when you find Dad."

"Okay. Bye, Dean."

Dear, dear Sammy. Dean stares at the phone in his hand. It's a bit like that terrible day when Sam went off to Stanford, except that maybe this time Dean didn't say all the wrong things. At least this once they've had a proper goodbye. Thank fuck for that.

He pockets his phone and heads inside the library.

o0o

Suddenly, Sam's there. The fact that he came back is almost better than the escape from certain death, though that's pretty cool too. Dean doesn't need to be sliced to pieces by a possessed scarecrow if he can help it.

Maybe Sam will leave again, one day, but for now he's there, and, most importantly, on his own terms. Although those don't really seem to be all that different from Dean's, once you look at them.

"I still want to find Dad. And you're still a pain in the ass. But, Jess and Mom – they're both gone. Dad is God knows where. You and me. We're all that's left. So, if we're going to see this through, we're going to do it together."

Dean stares at him, afraid to say anything lest his heart, which seems to have dislocated itself and climbed up his throat, thrumming fast, should jump out of his mouth as soon as he opens it. He's not good at this thing. Being moved. Being happy.

So he stays silent for a second longer and then makes an exaggerated show of being close to tears that wouldn't be out of place in your average telenovela. "Hold me, Sam. That was beautiful."

He reaches for Sam's shoulder. Sam, who's not fooled for a second, bats his hand away. They both start laughing. And in the middle of Sam's ridiculously young, laughing face, there's an utterly generous, boundless display of understanding that makes Dean feel for the first time that they're not just driving away from their old lives, in a vain attempt to stop time, but towards something new and infinitely brighter.