Covington, Indiana, July 2000.

The diner was small, crowded and redolent with the smells of bacon, sausage, eggs, pancakes, burgers and coffee. Sam pushed his food around his plate, his appetite gone.

Dean had been fine for about a day after he and Dad had finally reached Blue Earth from Flagstaff. He'd been a bit subdued, but mostly fine. Then slowly, gradually, he'd started to withdraw. Now, his brother wasn't talking at all, at least not to him. He seemed to be wary around Dad as well, but at least he would talk and listen to him.

Watching him furtively from under the hair that flopped over his forehead, Sam could see that Dean's appetite wasn't any better than his own. There was still a sausage and a pile of bacon to one side of the plate.

He knew that his brother wasn't sleeping much. He'd been woken the last few nights by the nightmares, Dean's voice muttering in the darkness, the sounds of the covers being thrown back or falling to the floor. It didn't take a genius to figure out what he was dreaming about, to know what was bothering him. But he wouldn't talk about it.

Knowing what the problem was didn't help. Even knowing, pretty much, what Dean was feeling about it didn't really help. There was nothing either of them could do to change what had happened. He'd needed to get out and he'd gone, and he hadn't thought of how Dean would react, hadn't thought of his brother's overwhelming sense of responsibility for him, hadn't thought about his father's orders or even considered how he would deal with Dean when he found out.

And that wasn't the worst bit, he thought now, glancing up at the pale, drawn face on the other table again. The worst bit was that Dean knew why he'd gone, he'd understood why he hadn't thought of them, but it had broken something, deep inside of his brother, to realise that he didn't mean the same to Sam, as Sam meant to him.

He ran his hand through his hair, pushing it back off his face and looked up.

"How long did Dad say he'd been on the side-trip?"

Dean kept his eyes on his plate. "He didn't."

"So, where are we meeting him again?" Sam tried again.

"Cut it out. You were there, you heard him." Dean stood abruptly and pulled his wallet out, tossing a couple of tens onto the table and grabbing his jacket. He was halfway out the diner when Sam caught up with him. The two of them were on their own. Their father was checking out another lead, but would meet them in Alabama in a couple of days' time. Sam strode out of the diner and down the street toward the Impala, watching his brother unlock it and get in, his face dark and closed.

Two days of silence between them, the rock music filling the car, right at the edge of bearable decibels. Two days of silence, sitting in motel rooms, the TV, if there was one, and if it was working, blaring away with no one really watching it. Two days of silence when they ate, Dean unable to look at him half the time, his face as shuttered as it was now, his eyes darkened with a pain that he couldn't or wouldn't let go.

Sam slid into the passenger seat and leaned back against the cool glass of the window. His whole life, from his earliest memories, his brother had looked after him, taken care of him, made sure he was fed, clean, dressed, rested, taught him to do … pretty much everything. Dean had stood between him and the creatures that had occasionally managed to find them when their father hadn't been around. He'd stood between him and their father when the rage had been spilling over and looking for something to bite. He'd been a constant, not always nice, not always friendly, but always there, and always, always at his back, someone to talk to, someone to listen, someone, sometimes, to cry with.

Even after all that time, Sam knew he still didn't really understand his brother. He knew the facts, he knew the habits and the tells and the expressions and the strengths and the weaknesses. But he didn't understand him. He didn't understand the unyielding loyalty to family. To Dad. He didn't understand the places in his brother where Dean had no armour at all, where he could be hurt so deeply that it would feel like a mortal wound. He'd seen him hurt, usually by Dad, rarely by the opposite sex, but he'd never really considered that anything could really get through the armour that his brother wore around him out of habit. And he hadn't known that that armour didn't exist for him.

He'd apologised and apologised and apologised, half a dozen times a day for weeks. It didn't help. After awhile Dean had told him to stop, had told him that he knew Sam hadn't meant it to turn out the way it had. And, in a drunken and overtired moment over a week ago, had told him that thing he'd always counted on, that Sam would do anything for him, as he would for his brother, had vanished the day he'd disappeared.

He still didn't understand it, really. Nothing had changed. He was the same person he'd always been. He didn't know how his taking off could have caused that break in Dean. There'd been times when his brother had walked out, driven out by frustration or pain or anger when the tension between the three of them had gotten too much. It was usually just an overnight thing, and he'd be back in the morning, maybe nursing a black eye or moving a bit stiffly with bruised ribs for a day or two, whatever frustration or anger he'd been feeling vented with a double dose of alcohol and a fight. He'd never actually packed up and left them, Sam had to admit.

He turned around, looking at his brother, mouth opening to say something, and Dean, seeing the half-formed movement in the corner of his eye, reached over to the stereo, his finger and thumb finding the volume control unerringly, twisting it hard to the right. Zeppelin filled the car, drowning out whatever Sam might have been about to say, pounding at their eardrums, making the windows hum in resonance with the insistent beat.

Sam looked at his brother's profile, outlined against the farmland they drove through, for a long moment, then turned away, resting his temple against the window, and staring out at the scenery.

It took Dean a little over ten hours to make the drive down to Alabama. They stopped twice for fuel and coffee and food. Sam realised the futility of trying to talk when the volume went back up to full after both stops, as soon as they hit the highway. He slept most of the way after the second time.

"Dad's case notes." Dean tossed the file at him and turned away, sitting down on the couch with another pile of files, notes and photocopies and photographs. He took the lid off his beer, drank a mouthful and set it down beside the papers on the low table, and started to read.

Sam looked at the beer and sighed. He got up and got one for himself, then opened the file and began to look through it, pretending that the heavy silence in the room was how they always worked.

After three hours, he had four pages of notes, a page of questions that needed to be followed up, a tension headache and his feelings had slowly mutated from wanting to make things right to a rising indignation that he was being punished for being who he was.

"You know, this isn't fair." He looked at Dean. His brother lifted his gaze from the pages he was reading and slowly turned to look at him. He should have recognised the warning in the half-lidded eyes, the ever-so-slight lift of one brow.

"I didn't change, Dean. I'm still who I was." Sam ignored Dean's silence. "You and Dad, you knew how important graduation was to me, you just didn't care."

Dean picked up the beer and tipped it up, swallowing the last mouthful, nodding. "So it's our fault you broke all our protocols, packed your bag and ran off like a little kid, Sam?"

He had the grace to look away, a line of red rising up his neck at the rebuke. "You've known for a long time that I don't want this life, Dean."

"Yeah. I know that." Dean looked back at the notes in front of him. "I didn't think you'd ditch us. Didn't think you'd be such an asshole that you'd just take off, no note, no explanation, just gone." He looked back at his brother, eyes narrowed and jaw tense. "Didn't think you'd leave me holding the bag, when you knew how freaked Dad has been about sticking together."

Sam stared back at him, chin raised defiantly. "If I told you that I wanted out you would have locked the friggin' door and not let me out of the house."

Dean nodded. "Yeah, I would have."

"So what choice did you leave me?"

His brother laughed, a short, humourless bark. "You just don't get it, do you?"

The accusation stung. He did get it. He'd gotten it years ago. His father wanted revenge for the death of his wife. His brother idolised the man and was happy to become a younger version, without any thought of what that meant. He got it.

"I want a normal life, Dean. I want to be with normal people."

His brother's head snapped around at that, eyes dark and narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean, Sam?"

"It means that I'm not like you and Dad, and I don't want to be." Sam knew where to aim, for maximum damage. He saw an emotion cross Dean's face, too fast to decipher.

Dean stood up and walked to the door, grabbing his jacket from the hook and yanking it on.

"Where are you going?" Sam looked at him, seeing the stiffness in his movements.

"Out." Dean opened the door, walked out and slammed it shut. Sam looked at the keys still sitting on the cupboard next to the door.

At one a.m., he started to get worried. By two-thirty, he was pacing up and down the room, wondering if he should go looking for Dean. The fact that he'd left the car behind meant he'd gone to get drunk, Sam thought, but the bars around here would have closed long ago. His brother was predictable in many ways. He didn't stay the night when he went looking for a girl. He was always back, well before dawn. If not a girl, then what?

At three, he grabbed the keys and his jacket and went out, locking the door behind him and going to the Impala. He started the engine and backed out carefully, turning onto the street, cruising slowly. Start with the nearest bar, and work his way out from there, he thought, chewing on his lip.

He turned into the alley, the headlights lighting up the tableau near the other end, the men frozen in its beams. The engine's deep notes echoed from the brick walls as he pulled up, and Sam saw Dean lift his head, recognising the sound.

Popping the glove box, Sam pulled out the Taurus it held, and turned off the engine, leaving the headlights on. Three men stood in front of him, one holding the collar of his brother's jacket, one standing behind the others, cradling an arm. The third one was beside Dean, leaning over him. Sam saw the man's knuckles were grazed and bloody, the red bright in the car's lights. He saw the short length of pipe the guy was holding, half-raised above his brother.

Dean was half-kneeling, one eye swollen shut, the other rolling around to try and see past the bright light. There was a split over his nose, which now sat to one side, blood covering his mouth and chin and shirt front. Another split over one cheek was also bleeding freely. The jawline under the other cheek was swelling, mottled as the bruising started to come out.

"Sam?" Dean's voice was hoarse and uneven. "That you?"

"Step away from him." Sam raised the Taurus, levelling the barrel at the man with the pipe.

"You must be the douche bag kid brother." The man grinned at his friend and jerked his thumb at Dean. "Told us all about you, he did."

Sam ignored the comment, flicking the safety off. "I said, step away."

The other man let go of his brother's jacket, and Dean slumped to the ground, leaning back against the dumpster behind him, his open eye vivid in the bright light from the car, standing out against the darkness of the bruises rising around it, the red of the blood that was under it.

"You remind him we don't like smart-mouthed punks here, kid." The man with the pipe backed away slowly. "Like to get their faces rearranged if they show up again."

The men kept backing for several yards, then turned and walked to the other end of the alley, disappearing into the darkness. Sam watched them go, waiting until he could no longer hear their footsteps before he put the safety back on and tucked the big gun into his jacket pocket. He walked toward Dean, and crouched in front of him.

"Douche bag, eh?"

Dean's eye rolled toward him. "You are a douche bag."

"Lucky for you I came looking." He gripped his brother's forearm, and pulled back, hauling him to his feet, lifting one arm over his shoulders. Dean hawked back and spat out a mouthful of blood, tilting his head back as he stumbled beside Sam to the car.

Leaning him against the rear door as he got the passenger door open, Sam shot a worried look at him as he eased his brother inside. He closed the door and went around to the driver's side. He'd have to take him to Emergency, he thought. The nose was broken, and he couldn't reset it himself, not without leaving it crooked. He didn't know what other injuries Dean had and he wasn't sure it was a good idea to ask.

"Family sticks together, Sammy."

"What do you think I'm doing here, Dean?" He looked over at him sourly. Putting the car in reverse, he twisted around to back out of the alley and onto the street, turning right for the hospital. The car's engine rumbled as he shifted up through the gears, glancing at the huddled form beside him, eyes closed now. He looked back at the road, making a right hand turn when he saw the sign for the Emergency room.

"You're all I've got, man."

The words were very soft, and Sam touched the brake, looking over at him, not sure that he heard them right.

"I'm still here, Dean. I'm still your brother."

There was no answer, and Sam drove on, pulling into the slot next to the ER bay and shutting off the car. He reached out and shook Dean's arm, realising that he'd passed out when he got no response.

Maybe that was a good thing, he thought nervously, his mind replaying his brother's words, hearing again the misery underlying them. Maybe he'd forget this for a while.

As the orderlies lifted his brother onto the gurney and Sam followed them into the ER, he wondered if he'd ever understand Dean. Or his father. He wasn't like them, trying to ignore the faint flush of guilt that twisted through him at the disloyalty of that thought. It wasn't something he could anything about. He just wanted something different.