"1,000 hits to the head."

A/N: Okay I have a few theories that I wanna put out there BEFORE they get Kripked (or not)... They are: I believe that Lucifer and Satan are NOT the same being because when the angels and demons speak of Lucifer they call him Lucifer and Satan is spoken of by angels, demons and horsemen (Not Sam, Dean, Bobby or human characters as it's common for people to confuse Satan with Lucifer) it's as if Satan is a different being aside from Lucifer... Also according to real research Satanael or Satan (Yes the supposedly fallen angel that tempted Job) is supposedly female (According to SOME.. REAL research Gabriel is also supposedly female, but hey..to each their own.. But isn't a new angel supposed to be popping up soon? A girl angel named "Naomi" or something like that? AND there IS rumors that Gabriel is comming back).. I've had an inkling for some time that Crowley is REALLY Satan (Hey Raphael A MALE angel used a woman as a vessel) (Season 7 episode 1 Crowley says "A girl's gotta try." and in Season 5 episode 20 "The devil you know." (Satan is considered a "devil" or "Prince of Hell.") Crowley (Self proclaimed "King" of the Crossroads later the self proclaimed "King" of Hell) says "I've been selling sin to Saints for centuries." and isn't selling sin what Satan supposedly does? Hmmm..) (So it's possible that "Crowley" is just a vessel... Also explains why "Crowley" is still alive.. Maybe there was NEVER REALLY any bones to burn as "Crowley" is a vessel so "Crowley's" body has NEVER died) .. Just a theory! But if it get's revealed that Crowley is REALLY Satan then remember I pegged it first! .. I think Dean killed (Or believes he killed) Cas while they were in Purgatory for whatever reason.. I just have a hunch and I also think Dean's friendship with Benny the vamp will come back to "bite him" (Definitely pun intended) in the end, much the same Sam's alliance with Ruby did Sam.. So with those theories in mind.. Here's the next chapter..

ALSO one quick note on time frame.. There's a part in the Chapter where I go back in time... Since it's been a year since Dean and Cas disappeared to Purgatory and that Episode aired May 18, 2012 and since "Repo man" had a flashback to four years ago (or was it three?) one can assume that Supernatural Season 7 was taking place in 2010-2011 instead of 2011-2012 and Season 8 is catching us up to 2012-2013 so the year gap is covered.. Does that make sense?.. LOL I tried.. ANYWAY since the Season 7 Finale AIRED May 18, 2012 I'M making the assumption that it was really taking place in 2011 or that we jumped ahead and Season 8 is taking place in the future.. Either way May-Oct has only 5 months in between so if Dean really has been gone a year then it's really closer to a year and a half.. So the timeline is this.. Sam and Dean seperated a year ago in "The Mentalist." (I'm hoping this gets Kripked) Sam hit the dog and met Amelia during the week and a half he and Dean were seperated then he went back to hunting with Dean and 7 months later Dean disappeared to Purgatory.. And now its been a year-a year and a half since Dean disappeared (which if I did the math right then 8 months ago for Sam would've been roughly 4-8 months after Dean disappeared in which time Sam went and reconnected with Amelia but he first spent that 3-8 months that aren't accounted for in a psyche ward..(I honestly do my best to explain how Sam spent ALL of his time away from Dean so please bear with it.) And I'm sorry if the timeline throws you for a loop!

Dean paced agitatedly and Kevin sat bouncing his legs nervously as the minutes ticked by on the clock in the hospital waiting room. It had been an hour since the Emergency Room personel had wheeled Sam through the doors that barred admittance to anyone but hospital personel and the patient that was in need of life saving treatment.

The words of one of the E.R. nurses still stuck in Dean's mind, the way the nurse had yelled out to get a O.R. prepped and a nuerosurgeon STAT before she'd started shouting "Tell the nuerosurgeon we're dealing with a trauma induced Hemorrhagic Stroke here!.. We have no time to spare this man's bleeding into his brain!" Then like that the voice of the nurse had faded with the closing of the metal doors and a mountain of paperwork was shoved into Dean's hands before the overheard words of the nurse had, had a chance to really register. BUT those words were registering now and Dean was feeling more and more guilty by the second...

Dean might not have known a whole lot about medical terms or the things those terms described, but he did know what the words "Trauma induced", "stroke" and "bleeding into brain." meant and knowing that he was partly, if not mostly, the cause of the "trauma induced" part made him feel sick to his stomach.

Kevin couldn't help but fidget while he sat waiting for news on Sam. Kevin remembered that at first he had been so very angry at Sam for having been abandoned, but then he realised that Sam hadn't gotten him into this mess and that both Sam and Dean had still tried to protect him even though he could've brought even more complications and risks to their lives. Then Sam had wound up losing what was left of his family as a reward for his efforts.. It was suddenly no wonder to Kevin why Sam had just STOPPED and veered onto a new course of life because if he hadn't gone on in the healthiest way he'd known how then Sam may have ended up losing his mind, which was fragile at best, according to some things he'd overheard demons jesting about. The demons had joked how they weren't worried about Sam showing up as Sam had turned into a useless mess of crazy a few times in the past and all it'd taken was being separated from Dean or a few hallucinations, nightmares and flashbacks of his time in The Cage to do the trick so Sam wouldn't have been considered a threat even if he had come. And according to what Kevin had witnessed with HIS OWN EYES Sam was stronger than the demons had given him credit for, BUT Sam was still visibly shattered mentally, emotionally and spiritualy after a year of believing he'd PERMANENTLY lost the only family he'd had left, only to have that person come back on high horse of self rightious hypocrisy to start spewing out venomous hate filled words of anger and accusation. Kevin just couldn't understand why Dean couldn't have seen that Sam being not only still alive, but healthy and somewhat mentally stable was a miracle compared to the condition Sam could've wound up in if not for Sam's ability to attempt for heathily going through the grieving process instead of going off the deep end in any of the MANY ways he possibly could have.

What Kevin didn't know was that Sam hadn't spent his whole year in a "healthy" state of grief, in fact Sam HAD been as bad as the demons had joked about until he'd wound up in an E.R. for alcohol poisoning as well as an overdose of prescription pain and sleep medicines.. But it hadn't been because Sam had tried to commit suicide, it had been because only mere minutes after Crowley disappeared with Kevin that Sam started seeing Lucifer again and Sam had started trying to force the hallucinations out of his mind with pain at first.. Which the E.R. staff had, had a field day with Sam's self inflicted injuries, blood alcohol level and positive tests for a pharmacy of pain and sleep medicines in Sam's system..

Soon Sam was locked in a psyche ward, but Sam had gotten lucky, he'd wound up with a compassionate, trust worthy doctor who had preferred that Sam only call her by her first name Naomi as it made it feel more like they were old friends instead of mere acquaintances.

Sam had ended up trusting Naomi enough to confess that he was hallucinating and Naomi hadn't judged him or jumped to diagnose him as "just crazy", she hadn't even asked what the hallucinations were of, she'd merely told Sam that sometimes soldiers come away from their many battles with more than just physical wounds and then she'd given Sam a knowing look and said "And you ARE a soldier that's been through the thick of MANY tough battles aren't you?" All Sam could do was nod, it'd been the closest to right, anyone had ever been, without pegging the nail directly on the head, that Sam had ever seen or heard.

Naomi gave Sam a few prescriptions for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder along with a few prescriptions for an anti-hallucinaginic that was normally used for epilepsy patients as Sam had also confessed to past seizure like episodes and a few medications that covered pain, uncontrolled muscle spasms, hallucinations and depression that was normally used for patients that had Multiple Sclerosis as some scans that Naomi had ordered showed that Sam had some very worrying nerve damage in his spine as well as some very worrying scar tissue in Sam's brain and even a few small areas of very concerning brain death, that could cause Multiple Sclerosis or symptoms that were like those of Multiple Sclerosis if Sam went untreated. Once it was apparent that all the medications that Naomi had prescribed were working Naomi discharged Sam with a clean psyche evaluation as Sam was as healthy as he ever could be mentally for now, but Naomi warned Sam that, that might change and she made Sam swear to continue his meds and to seek help if his condition were to ever start deteriorating and she reminded Sam that it was a very real possibility that it could deteriote both physically and mentally so he'd need to watch out for things like muscle weakness, problems with coordination and making small movements, decreased attention span and difficulty with reasoning and solving problems and that he'd pretty much have to avoid any kind of head injury for the rest of his life. She also told Sam that he needed to find someone he could trust to help keep an eye out for things like mood swings, personality changes, trouble communicating, poor judgement, memory loss as well as other symptoms that Sam wouldn't be able to detect on his own and Sam had agreed as he knew exactly who he could turn to.

October 28, ONE YEAR AGO...

Sam had been so pissed that Dean had lied to him that he wasn't really paying attention when something darted in front of his car.. When he got out and realised he'd clipped a dog he felt horrible. Then he realised that despite the blood everywhere the dog was still alive so he rushed the animal straight to the nearest animal hospital and demanded a doctor...

The veterinarian had played on Sam's guilt and sense of chivalry to get him to agree to take the dog. So Sam spent everday going to the animal hospital to check on his new pet and by the third day he'd built quite the friendship with the animal hospital's doctor Amelia. Then one day Sam caught wind of a case and his bubble was popped. He knew he couldn't have a dog yet for a moment Sam had let himself believe he could have that small slice of normal. Grudgingly Sam told Amelia that there were complications that arose with taking the dog and he begged her as a friend to take the dog and he promised to come back and visit when he could..

EIGHT AND A HALF MONTHS AGO...

Sam knew he needed someone he could trust, someone he could consider a friend that had nothing to do with the dangerous life of a hunter and the only person he'd found to accept him as he was for the first time in a long time had been Amelia. He explained his problems to her and gave her the basic "civilian's version" story of his life of his life and being the compassionate person she was Amelia agreed to help him and a month later she and Sam had fallen in love.

Sam had got a part time job in the backroom of a Library to help with rent, bills and to pay for repairs to the Impala and every morning he'd wake up, get dressed, kiss Amelia, pet the dog then leave for work and it had went like that for another month until one day when Amelia held up a white stick with two pink lines and said the words that Sam had thought would change his life forever.. "You're going to be a dad."...

A/N: So.. Yeah.. How was it? *fidgets nervously*.. I couldn't really think of a way to get the events of Sam's year off of hunting into the story except for it to still be something that's unknown for Kevin and Dean.. Yet Sam wasn't really present to have a flashback.. so I worked with "What Kevin didn't know." which is also what Dean doesn't know.. Sam DID say he'd found something this past year that he hadn't had in a long time, I'm thinking acceptance, peace and hope yet Dean automatically jumped to "There was a girl wasn't there?" and Dean's mind automatically thought Sam had met her while he'd been in Purgatory.. I'm thinking Sam smelled like dog NOT the car or during the months they were together Sam and Amelia might've gone on outings and taken the dog.. I think Sam hasn't told Dean of his problem yet because .. Well a million reasons really but a few are Dean wasn't exactly receptive to Sam's announcement that he'd stopped hunting which segued into Dean getting all accusational on Sam. And didn't I mention that some of Sam's symptoms could be trouble communicating as well as poor judgement among other things?.. Boy I wonder how bad Dean's gonna feel later especially when he finds out that even though Sam's spine and brain injuries had only been recently discovered that Sam's actually been suffering from the onset of symptoms off and on for years.. Like how getting addicted to demon blood was seriously poor judgement and how when he'd killed Jake in such a cold blooded way it was like Sam had a completely different personality.. Hmm.. As far as Amelia goes.. No I'm not gonna kill her, she actually shows up later, unfortunately though she's not going to have a blossoming belly.. Just another thing for Dean to feel bad about when it comes to light.