The next morning, I'm all rested up and eating a chocolate muffin (god, how I missed these things) when Sam stumbles in, smelling strongly of alcohol and a late evening.

Dean and I don't say anything, just watch silently as he sits down on the edge of the bed and places his head in his hands. I can tell Dean's noticed how much I've tensed up because of Sam's presence, because his eyes are fixated on me.

Dean clears his throat uncomfortably. "Eva was just telling me how she got out of hell."

"Yeah?" Sam asks, not even hiding his complete lack of interest. He's definitely hung over. His head is probably killing him right now.

"Turns out she was busted out by one of our old friends," Dean continues.

"Mmhmm."

"You remember Meg?"

Sam looks up at Dean, groggy but attentive now. "Meg?"

I sigh and say, "Yeah, she helped me out. It's complicated."

"We've got time." Sam is watching me warily, as if I'm going to come at him with a knife again. It's not a sure thing that I won't, actually. No, Sam is an ally, I remind myself tiredly in an attempt to get the thought out of my head.

I let out a huff of exasperation. "Well, she found me a few days ago. In earth time, I mean. The short version is she freed me and snuck me out through Purgatory and then through a portal back into earth. Humans-only portal," I clarify. "No monsters can get out.

"But she told me that I had to find you guys right away. There's something big going down - with Bela. Remember those hearts she was collecting? She used them in a spell to open Lucifer's cage. But not enough for the angels to escape. Meg didn't clarify on why Bela opened it, but…" I shrug. "Now something's out of the cage and Bela is trying to get something for a new client."

Sam lets out a noise of disbelief. "She's still doing that? Even after dying and coming back as a demon? I thought she would've at least gone on to bigger and better things."

"Apparently. But this is an important thing. Meg didn't know what it was, but this client is pretty big, I guess. So Bela's willing to go pretty far to get it. Meg told me she hasn't done much yet, but she has big plans."

Sam ponders what I've said for a few moments. "But what got out of the cage?"

"I was wondering the same thing," Dean said.

"There wasn't much in it. As far as we know, it was just Lucifer and Michael and their vessels. And I'm here, so that means…"

"Crap," Dean says, running a hand down his face tiredly. "Adam."

"Crap," Sam says, a similar expression of disbelief on his face.

"Who?" I demand.

"Our brother," Dean says.

"You have a brother?" I ask incredulously. "And you haven't mentioned this now because…?"

There's an awkward silence.

"Well," Dean says with a casual shrug, with as much dismissiveness as he can muster. "We got a little sidetracked. It happens."

I let out a noise of disgust. "You forgot about your fucking brother?"

"Half-brother," Sam corrects.

"You went to the trouble to get Sam out of hell but not your other brother," I say disbelievingly.

"Technically, it was Cas that got Sam out of hell," Dean says defensively. "And Death gave me the option between getting Sam's soul back, or Adam's, and it's not a surprise who I chose."

"And then you just forgot about him?" I ask, eyebrows raised. "You two are fucking unbelievable. You left your brother locked up with the two angriest and most powerful angels in creation for… how long? Two years? Three? And now a demon has just released him, for who knows what reason."

"Come on, it's not like we could have seen that coming," Sam says.

"You left him locked up for years!" I snap, causing Sam to wince. I'd almost forgotten about his hangover. "Is that what you did with me? Just left me to rot? I guess that's what you do with everyone besides each other, right? You say family has to look out for each other but you couldn't even bother to look into the imprisonment of your own brother!"

"We would never leave you in hell without looking for a way out of it, Eva," Sam says, voice shaking a little bit. "We were searching for a way to get you back from the second you died."

I turn away, jaw clenched. "Well, you sure did a good job helping me out," I grumble sarcastically.

"Eva," Sam pleads.

I stand up and toss my empty muffin wrapper on the table. "I'm going out," I tell them, not even looking at them.

"Eva," Sam says again, standing up and putting a hand lightly on my arm.

I jerk away instinctively, spinning around and staring at him with wide eyes as my heart races far past its normal speed. I hold up a hand to keep him distanced from me as I back up, trying not to tremble in nervousness. "Don't."

"I'm sorry, I forgot—"

Scowling at him, I turn and stride towards the motel room's door, careful to make sure he's not following me. I turn and give them one last contemptuous look before slipping out the door and slamming it shut behind me.

You don't matter to them. They left you in hell. The persistent voice in the back of my mind pesters me as I sit on top of the roof of a nearby diner with my legs hanging over the edge, tossing pebbles at the ground. It's six in the morning so hardly anybody is out to start with, but it's also all alone a quarter mile from any other building out on this lonely road.

I hear a slight sound of gravel crunching and whip around.

It's Dean, standing about ten feet away. He holds his hands up in surrender when he sees the furious look I'm giving him.

"I just came to talk," he said.

"I don't want to talk," I snap.

Dean comes and sits down next to me anyway. I'm struck with a sudden urge to push him off the roof.

"You haven't been yourself since you got back, Eva. I'm worried about you."

I sigh heavily. "Can we not talk about this now? I'm not really up for a heart to heart at the moment."

"What happened to you in hell that changed you so much?" Dean asks, watching me closely.

I'm still stubbornly focusing on the ground below. "Aren't you always the one who's against chick flick moments? I'm sensing a little hypocrisy here."

"I'm serious, Eva," he says. I can still feel his eyes on me.

I take a deep breath and close my eyes. I count to ten before opening them and turning to look at Dean. "I was naive, once. And then I got smart, realized how to act to receive as little damage as possible. And then you and Sam lulled me into a false sense of security. Hell opened my eyes again, Dean."

He stays silent, but he's still watching me. His gaze is getting a little too intense, so my eyes flick back to the road.

"I learned a long time ago, and I should've remembered, that you can't trust anybody. And you can't get close to anybody. Because if they don't betray you themselves, they will end up hurting you in the end. You know, before I went to hell, I thought I was in love with Sam. But that just ended up being a liability. They actually had something to use against me down there."

Dean doesn't say anything and the seconds pass slowly. I can't stand not knowing what he's thinking so I look up at him.

He's hiding whatever he's thinking really well. All I see is his regular firm expression observing me carefully.

He finally breaks the long silence before I do. "I've been in this life a lot longer than you have, and I can tell you that's the wrong way to think." He pauses, and I'm about to interrupt when he continues, "If you go too long with nothing to hold on to, you're going to get lost. And when you have no one to keep going for, to try for…" Dean shakes his head. "That's a thousand times worse than how you feel when you lose someone. I promise you."

I scowl and turn away from him.

"I don't think that's how it works," I say just loudly enough for him to hear my while I'm facing away from him.

Dean sighs in resignation. "Here," he says, tapping my arm to get my attention. He's holding out a flask.

"Thanks," I say warily, taking it from him, unscrewing the cap, and taking a few long glugs. The alcohol burns on the way down to my stomach and I cough from the disgusting taste. I take another sip.

"Thought you might need that," he says, nodding towards the flask.

"I do." I keep sipping from it, starting to feel a light buzz.

"You know, after you went downstairs…" Dean starts, but he cuts himself off.

"Yeah?" I ask tiredly. "Were you gonna finish that sentence."

"Nevermind," he says dismissively. "It doesn't matter."

"Just fucking tell me," I growl.

"Woah, touchy," he says, leaning back like I'm going to explode.

"I am not fucking touchy! You're just an asshole!" I tell him angrily.

His face cracks into a smile and he laughs.

I let out a noise of annoyance and twist my mouth into a grimace. I stand up and brush of my pants, tossing the mostly-empty flask down next to Dean before storming over to the side of the building I climbed up on, where there's a downspout going down to the ground.

I hear Dean scramble to his feet and follow me as I start climbing down.

"So where's Sam?" I call up at him as I reach the ground and hop down.

"Probably curled into a ball crying back in the motel room because of the way you're treating him," Dean says as he starts climbing down.

"It's not my fault," I say irritatedly.

"Sure it is," he says as steps onto the ground and turns to face me. "You can't help what helped in hell, but you can at least try to treat the guy a little better. He's sensitive."

"Yeah, well, I hate him. So he'll just have to deal." I start walking towards the front of the diner.

"You know that's not true," Dean says, hurrying to catch up with me.

"Mmhmm."

"Whatever it was in hell that you dealt with was not my brother," he says firmly.

"Yeah, it just doesn't seem that way." There's a pinch in my voice as I think back to the time before I'd gone to hell. The memories are tinged with blood now, from all the times I tried to hold onto them as an anchor when I was getting my skin peeled off or carved to pieces or burnt down to little more than a blackened skeleton. Just to be reset at the end of every day, of course.

But even with that stain on the memories, there's an irresistible desire to go back to how things used to be. It was so easy, splitting all of my burdens with another person. Having someone to look after, and someone to look after me.

"Are we going into the diner?" Dean says suddenly, interrupting my thoughts.

"Yeah," I say, like it's obvious. It should be. I mean, there's nowhere else to go, really.

"Why?"

"I'm hungry. That chocolate muffin barely tided me over on the way over here. It was a two-mile walk."

Just as we're about to round the corner to the front of the building, where the door is, there's the sound of a car, and the Impala pulls off the road and into the parking lot. It pulls to a stop in a spot and the purr of the engine cuts off before Sam climbs out.

"Fuck," I grumble as he notices us and starts walking over, keeping his eyes focused firmly on the ground, completely unable to meet mine.

"Great," Dean says, clapping me on the shoulder. "Now the three of us will have a time to talk."