A/N: Well here's chapter four, please, please, please tell me what you think!!! I had so much trouble with this one!!! Review and I'll give you the next one at the weekend.

Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with SPN except parts of the plot and James Miller.

***

Chapter Four.

At the second turning of the second stair,

I left them twisting, turning below;

There were no more faces and the stair was dark,

Damp and jagged, like an old man's mouth drivelling,

beyond repair,

Or the toothless gullet of an aged shark.

Ash-Wensday (III) T..

***

Three hours found Dean still lain out on Bobby's old beat-up sofa, his mind spinning over, whirring away into lonely question marks. He had missed so much it seemed.

His son.

Sammy's son.

Dean didn't know what to think about that, what not to, where to even start. And Sammy wasn't here and Dean could barely breath with that, could barely breath anyway with the injuries left by his time in hell and…

Dean was tired, just so fucking tired, felt like he hadn't slept in years and that was pretty much true.

His dreams chased each other though, six year old Sammy crying; "I'm not alright Dean, but neither are you." John burning on the ceiling where his mother should be, Dean in the cradle instead of Sam.

John dying, Sammy dying, over and over and over again.

When he woke again it was night still and Dean had no sense of time, had never regained it, and Bobby was there with Tynol and then he was trapped in the fire and the sin once more….

****

It took nearly two days before he felt he had slept enough. He rose around noon and the house was quiet, introspective. Bobby had disappeared off to town a couple of hours ago and there was no sign of the tempestuous James.

Dean felt strange in his own skin. Sort of streatched out and tied down along his nerv endings. He spasmed across his thought rhythm, not knowing where to begin to detangle his memories, emotions. There was to much for his brain to process, yet Dean knew that in order to deal with these things he needed to know yet more.

Needed to know more about the events of his absence; about the war that no longer seemed to exist and Lilith and where the hell James had come from and how he came to be considered Sam's son. Dean may not have been as good as his brother was at school but he could do maths just fine and there was no way the kid was actully Sam's no matter how much he looked like he was.

He paced, irritation fraying over bobby's scratched up floor-boards until the rumble of a familiar engine pierced his hearing and Dean dashed to the door so quickly it was almost violent.

The Impala.

Sam.

He grinned a wild grin as he yanked the door open. It must have been Sam who'd got him back after all, whatever the kid said. The kid didn't know Sam! Not like Dean did and his brother would do anything to get him back from hell.

Now he'd saved him, Sam was coming home and they could be together again.

Sam would not have let anyone else near the car, not after he'd lost Dean. The Impala, it was home, it was for family.

He burst out of the house, his mouth poised on the edge of an answered prayer, but god had not granted him mercy and the world crashed away from him.

James jumped from the driver's seat, long haired and slouching, checked shirt hanging open and wrinkled in the most awful parody Den had ever known. The kid ran his hand along the bonnet with a sigh as old as Dan felt, before, in sudden anger he slammed the door shut.

This brought Dean sharply back to the present "Hey!" he yelled, enraged. "What the hell do you think your doing to MY car!"

the kid spun to face him, caged fury, hands seizing- clench, unclench-he looked at Dean as though he'd never hated anyone more.

"It's not YOUR car, It's SAM's! And He left it with ME!"

Dean's temper split, a splinter down the middle "Well who the HELL do you think GAVE it to Sam?! And maybe if he'd known how you were going to treat her he would have thought twice about leaving it with you!"

They were slowly advancing on each other, all anger and emphasised angles and Dean didn't necessarily dislike the kid, especially if he was as important to Sam as he seemed but in that moment he hated the kid as much as James seemed to hate him; hated him because the kid hated him, and his head was messed up right now, and for the impala door.

For the fact that James was here and his brother was not and because he was pretty sure the kid had the exact same problem with.

The anger deflated out of Dean, leaving him shallow, empty. He wanted no part in this all of a sudden and he twisted away from the spitting teen.

"Jesus. Just be careful next time." He exhaled.

"FUCK YOU." The scream was impossibly loud and against all odds it seemed James had inherited something else off Sam, his lungs. "Just, just…Who the FUCK are YOU?! We were FINE! We were fine without you! HE was MEANT TO COME HOME!! IT PROMISED! IT WAS MEANT TO BE HIM, NOT YOU!!"

and for the second time in as many days, James took off with the slam of a door.

****

Bobby did not arrive home until after dark that night, his feet clattering across the floor and into the low lit living room. Dean waited for him, a half-drunk warm beer twisted in his hands. Bobby stopped at the sight of him; At the slump of Dean's shoulders and firm line of his jaw.

"Kinda hoped I might have another day or two." He told him tiredly.

Dean looked down to his hands then back to the elder hunter. "Sorry Bobby, we gotta do this now, tonight. I…I need to know. Everything."

Bobby sat beside him with a sigh, defeated. "Where would you like to start?"

"the kid." Dean replied. "How did he…why did Sammy…Just, what happened?"

Bobby shrugged off his coat. "Well you see…and I don't know everything mind, you see ya brother, he…Christ."

He scratched his chin with a grimace "After you… went down there, Sam fell apart a bit. Started to obsess over the hunts and Lilith and everything, the way your Papa used to, only worse. He wasn't looking after himself, not eating and sleeping and being careful the way he should have been. For a while, for a while I was real worried Dean I was gonna lose both of ya."

He sighed, age sweeping over his face for a moment and Dean was suddenly aware the Bobby was probably into his sixties by now.

"Then, must have been about half a year afta the deal came through, he took a job in Mississippi. I didn't hear from him in nearly month, and I'd been making him check in regular mind, every couple of days. Christ but I was worried, but right before I went afta him, he turned up, here, with the kid.

Never really told me why he had him, said that his Mama was an old friend of his, that there had been no one else to look after him. She'd died, ya see, whil he was in Missassipi. Was't connected to the case, or at least I don't think it was. I wonderned about it, still do, but in the end, I realised, it didn't matter why he had James."

Dean sent him an odd look "Why?"

"Because after he got James, Sam got some purpose back into his life. Something that wasn't hunting and killing. Something ta fight for." He caught the look on Dean's face "And I ain't saying that he weren't willing ta fight for you son, lord knows I ain't saying that. Ya brother never stopped looking for a way to save you. But you weren't here Dean. It wan't the same. Sam was responsible for James, had to look after him, which meant he had to look after himself somewhat so don't give me that look because I know, that you know what I mean."

"So James hunted with him." Dean stated, pointedly ignoring the commeant because of course he understood very well what the man meant.

Bobby shrugged "Well not at first, no. Sam wouldn't let him. Didn't want him forced inta the life like you two was by ya Papa- don't argue, ya know that's the truth Dean." He barked as Dean's moth opened in displeasure .

"Like I was saying, Sam didn't want him hunting too young, but the kid was determined and eventually after we'd shared some words, Sam let him. They was working together just over a year before…And well that's as much as I know. For the rest you'd have to ask Sam…Or James."

Dean grimaced at the very thought and took a large swig of beer "And Lilith, what happened there? There was pretty a war brewing when I left and neither you nor the kid have mentioned a thing since I got back."

"Down to ya brother. It all came to a head bout a year or so after you went to the pit. He drew Lilith out, part of what he was up to with that mass hunting thing he started after he lost you. He thought if he found Lilith he would be able to get you back, her being the one who held your contract after all. He slowed down after James came but he didn't stop and eventully…he got her."

"And?" Dean pressed.

Bobby looked down "again like, I don't know everything. I wasn't there." He told him guiltily "I wanted to be Dean, but Sam, he didn't tell anyone what he was up to, part from those involved. Didn't want anyone else to get hurt. Anyways from what I gathered afterwards, he trapped her in a devil trap, just outta Spencer. We had the colt back by then, nasty story that one, but anyways."

Bobby sighed a long drawn out exhale "Firstly Dean, ya gotta understand, this Demon plot, Lilith's plan, it was way bigger than we thought. Turns out Lilith had been braking these seals, these 66 seals and if she'd succeeded well…Lucifer would have been freed Dean."

Dean stopped breathing, his horror almost palpable in the evening air "Lucifer, as in Sa-."

Bobby cut him off with a nod "Exactly. And you can imagine what…Well by the time Sam caught up with her, she'd already broken forty odd. Ya need to know…you need to know where we stood Dean. You need to understand."

Dean's eyes focused in on his old friend's face, on the lines of horror and helplessness and shame. "Bobby." He asked quietly something slithering painfully through him. "What happened?"

Bobby looked away from him "Sam…he went in there for you, he tracked Lilith so he could get you back, it was his primary goal. But he also knew..He couldn't let her live, to break the last of those seals, he couldn't let her leave alive, not for anything."

Dean could see where this was going, could see with an awful clarity. Could see the decision he brother must have had to make. The right one, Dean knew, but one he himself would have been able to make he was not so sure. Could he have done the same, for sake of the whole world?

Bobby carried on, oblivious to Dean's thoughts.

"He was betrayed. One of the hunters working with him, was possessed. Sam shot the demon and it's host but not before it had help Lilith out of the circle. Sam hesitated…he hesitated for so long Dean, but in the end…"

"He killed her." Dean finished for him.

There was silence for a time, washing over the room in a soft kind of numbness. Dean didn't want to know anything else. Not then. He hadn't even wanted to know those things but he'd understood it was necessary, important.

But Dean wished he didn't know. That Sam had found someone else to hunt with, that the world had almost ended. That his salvation was the price for it not to.

And especially, that however much he would have despised himself, he would have done the same thing.

"He didn't stop." Bobby's voice came, impossibly loud through the hush. "He didn't ever stop, not even after everyone told him it was pointless with Lilith gone. I told you before Dean, Sam never stopped trying to save you."

Dean put down his empty beer bottle. A quite firm clunk on the wooden table. And looked at the other with a deturmand stare.

"I gotta find him Bobby."

TBC....

the plot thickens. Please tell me what you think!!

TAFATT