Disclaimer: see previous chapters.

Many thanks to airen, JazzyIrish, Insane Troll Logic, friendly, SilverKitsune1, carocali, red121, sasha2002, bally2cute, November'sGuest, Nana56, moosiemaggie, sugarquill4ron, PissedOffEskimo, Lisette, Annibal, PadfootObsessed329, buffyaddict, roxy071288, MistyEyes and Harrigan for their lovely reviews. YOu are all so very kind to take the time to let me know what you think of this story. hugs for everyone

Well, this was originally going to be the last chapter, but then Dean rambled on for 7000 words and only got me through about five per cent of the plot I'd been planning, so, um, it's not. And I have a sneaking suspicion the next one won't be, either. Oh, Dean, you do ramble so. We'll get there in the end, though!

----

There was a heavy thud behind him, and Dean did turn now, because he had heard the sound of six-foot-four of Sam Winchester hitting the ground often enough to recognise it instantly. Sam was twitching, and for a horrible moment Dean thought it was a seizure again, and his brain was screaming not now not again can't do this can't help them both when Sam started doing the vacant stare thing and Dean realised it was another vision. Another one. Christ.

And if it was another vision so soon after the last, what did that mean? Was it another vision of his Sam? Did that mean something had changed? Jesus Christ, when did the visions ever take this long anyway?

And then Sam came out of it, pupils blown, blinking and gasping, and the words he whispered made Dean feel like he was falling from a great height.

"You're too late," he said. "You're going to be too late."

----

But for the Grace, Chapter Eleven

It was only a minute, less than a minute, that Dean stood stunned, but it felt like too long, too long. It seemed like a million thoughts ran through his head in that time, but only one of them made sense. No. He wasn't going to be too late.

"Finish the job," he said, and he hit a kind of plateau where there were so many goddamn emotions dancing the freakin fandango in his guts that it was like he didn't feel anything any more. "Get off the floor and finish the job, Sam. Now."

Sam stared up at him like he didn't understand what Dean was saying, like he was waiting for a translation into freakin psychic drunk language or something, and that was fucking not happening, because there wasn't time to hesitate now, not now when there was even a chance that he might be too late (too late).

"Now, Sam," he snapped, and Sam scrambled to his feet with a wince, but didn't make a move towards the paintbrush.

"Dean..." he started.

"What, you waiting for an invitation from the Queen?" Dean asked. "Paint the fucking pattern."

"Dean," Sam said again, and Dean stared at him, not comprehending what the hell he could be thinking of standing there not doing anything. "No," said Sam.

It happened before Dean was really aware of what he was doing, but he couldn't really say that if he'd had time to think about it he would have acted any differently, because Sam was just standing, just standing, what the hell, and wasn't it him who had said the words too late? At any rate, the gun was in his hand and pointing at Sam before he had time to take it back, and Sam was frozen, staring like he'd never seen a freakin .45 before (which wasn't so far from the truth, but Dean was in no fit goddamn state to deal with the crazy somersaults his brain tended to do when he tried to separate the two Sams properly, because the whole 'alternate version of your brother' thing made Dallas look like freakin Teletubbies). "Sam, finish the job, or so help me, I'll..."

"You'll what?" Sam asked, never taking his eyes off the gun. "You'll shoot me? We're back to that again, are we?" And Dean knew he was right, of course. What the hell was he going to do, shoot one Sam to save another? It struck him for a moment that that was exactly what he was planning to do, abandon this Sam to his fate because there was no other way to rescue his own Sam, but that was a thought he let go of without regret, because right now the only thing that was important was that this gun-pointing was just as much empty bluffing as it had been back in that parking lot in Palo Alto a week and a lifetime ago, only now he didn't even have the fact that Sam didn't remember him to shield him any more, everything had been stripped away, and even Sam's glance was enough to make him bleed.

"I need you to help me," he said, and the words hurt more than just his bruised throat.

Sam nodded slowly. "I am helping you, Dean. But you've got to listen to me."

"There's no time," Dean said, feeling like ever heartbeat was another step towards the edge of some invisible precipice (and he was in no hurry to pull a Thelma and Louise, especially since he didn't really think a headscarf was a good look for him).

"There's time," said Sam, and held out his hand for the gun. "Just listen."

Crippled with a tangle of fear, confusion and nausea, Dean sank down onto the bed and listened.

----

"They're demons," said Sam. "Black eyes, same as the guy back at the mansion. There's at least two of them, but there might have been more. It wasn't... clear." He rubbed his forehead, like recalling the vision was making his head hurt, which, given the fun pain bonanza that seemed to come as a free gift with most of Sam's whacked-out psychic episodes, it probably was.

"And you're saying they just took Sam? They didn't hurt him?"

Sam shook his head. "He was still totally out of it, but they just wheeled him out of there."

"Did you see where they took him?" asked Dean.

"No," Sam said, "but... I know there's no way you'd find him before..."

"Before what?" Dean asked, though he wasn't sure he really wanted to know.

Sam looked away. "I don't know."

"OK, well," Dean stood up, "we... Sam and me... we've stopped these visions from coming true before, so we just gotta hurry." He was already cursing himself for having wasted this much time, though really, since the only other option had been shooting his brother, the whole cursing bit was kind of pointless, but then, pointless cursing was pretty much the best kind.

"Dean, you don't understand," Sam said.

"Well, then tell me for Christ's sake," Dean said, because he was sick of this stalling and definitely sick of being reminded of how much about this whole gig he didn't understand.

"It's you," said Sam. "It's you going back that... triggers it. They know you're back, and that's why they take Sam."

Dean stood very still, feeling like if he moved anything it might fall off (and amputation had definitely never been on his list of things to experience before he died). "What?"

"I saw you arrive back," Sam said, "and it was like they were, I don't know, listening. And then they took him."

"But," Dean wasn't sure how to process this new piece of information, but he sure as hell knew where his thoughts were leading him, and it wasn't to the goddamn funfair, "you can't... I mean... does that mean I can't... ever?"

Oh yeah, Dean was coherent as all hell, and he sounded like a total moron, but dignity was pretty much out the window right now. He waited, waited for Sam to tell him he was wrong, that he'd thought it wrong, but he couldn't work out how he could think it any other way, and Sam wasn't saying anything, was just staring at him with this weird expression on his face which Dean would have said was hope if he didn't know better, but he did know, and he felt his knees lock as he tried desperately to keep from falling down.

And then Sam looked down and away, and the thing that might have been hope was replaced with something that was definitely closer to resignation, and Sam said, "No. That's not what it means, Dean."

Dean felt every muscle in his body sag simultaneously in relief, and he stumbled forward and crumpled onto the bed. Sam was still watching him with this weird expression, but Dean figured Sam could pull any face he cared to if he had a plan that meant Dean could go back. "How?" he asked, feeling suddenly limp as fucking McDonald's lettuce (and by the way, how did they manage to get the lettuce so freakin limp in that joint? It was like a goddamn artform), so utterly drained that he couldn't even manage another word.

"When you came here," Sam said slowly, like he was still thinking things through, "you woke up in the same motel room you went to sleep in, right?"

Dean thought back to that night. He hadn't the slightest idea where he'd been when he went to sleep (except that he thought there was a pretty high likelihood that he'd passed out while he was still at the bar), but he had, at least, woken up in the same town he'd gone to sleep in. Probably. "Uh... yeah."

"Right, so," Sam said, "we can assume that the spell or whatever it is moves you dimensionally, but not spatially. So when you go back, you should end up in the same place in the... other reality that you left from in this one."

"OK..." Dean said, still not sure how this was going to help, even though Sam was looking at him like he should have jumped up and yelled freakin eureka by now (yeah, that look. Dean would have said that he hadn't missed it, except in the most private places in his mind he thought that maybe there wasn't anything about his little brother that he didn't miss right now).

Sam huffed impatiently (yeah, Dean missed that too, God help him) and said, "I saw the name of the hospital, Dean. All we've got to do is find it, get you inside, and do the spell there. That way, you'll arrive back right next to Sam."

Dean imagined transferring realities, grabbing his psychically-crippled, quite possibly insane six-foot-four brother and battling off a couple of demons to break his way out of a mental institution. Well, yeah, OK. He could do that.

He could do that. He could do it, and it wouldn't be too late, and goddamn if that wasn't the best news Dean had had in what felt like a very fucking long time. "All right," he said, aware suddenly that he was half-lying on the bed like a freakin loser, like he wasn't even in control of his own body (and OK, yeah, maybe he wasn't, but that didn't mean it had to be totally obvious like he wasn't in control of not being in control or his body or whatever), and straightened, stood up, started pacing, because pacing was manly, right? Pacing was action, pacing helped him think, and God, he really needed to think, because he was only going to get one shot at this, and he had to get it right.

"What's the name?" he asked, but Sam was already heading for the laptop, skirting the detritus of the half-finished spell that lay across the floor like some crazy magic piñata had burst and strewn freakishly random hoodoo crap all over the goddamn place. Freakin piñatas, Dean had always thought there was something not right about them, because really, the most efficient way to get at the candy would be to shoot the fuckers, not beat them with sticks, and teaching kids bad habits was not something Dean condoned (well, some bad habits, anyway).

"Rosevale Psychiatric Hospital," Sam said, and he was tapping away already, the crappy motel lighting glinting on the sheen of sweat that always covered his face after a vision. "I just hope there's not too many of... OK, there's three, in New Jersey, Idaho, and California. I'll see if I can pull up some pictures."

"Right," Dean said. "What state are we in now?"

Sam gave him a disgusted look, like just because he had had a seizure that morning and had just suffered through two brain-crippling visions that somehow meant that Dean shouldn't expect him to be in charge of remembering shit. Screw that. Fucked-up alcoholic or not, the day Sam wasn't in charge of remembering shit was the day Dean started listening to freakin Radiohead (and, just to be clear on that one, that was never going to happen. Never.)

"Montana," Sam said. "Remember the big sign? And the mountains?"

"Yeah, whatever," Dean said, peering over Sam's shoulder. "You said it was raining, right?"

"Yeah," Sam said, scrolling through some page with a lot of text about depression or whatever.

"Well, it'll be Jersey, then," Dean said. "It always freakin rains in Jersey, every time we go."

"You've been to New Jersey?" Sam asked, clicking onto a new page, and goddamn if it wasn't the smiling zombies from the rehab leaflets again, fuckers sure got around.

"Yeah, a bunch of times," Dean said. "All sorts of poltergeist crap goes on up there for some reason. Why, you never been?" He stared at the smiling zombies for a bit longer, until he realised that Sam had stopped scrolling and was looking at him with this weird expression. "What?"

Sam looked hastily away. "Nothing," he said, and Dean felt a sudden unease ghost through his stomach, because lately Sam (this Sam) had been keeping a whole lot from him and he didn't like it, and if he wasn't careful secrets were going to get this Sam killed, and maybe his own Sam too. So he grabbed Sam's chin and forced him to look up.

"What?" he said, and this time he wasn't just asking.

Sam's face went mutinous, and Dean thought he was going to make some stupid snappy comeback, which would piss Dean off because sometimes he thought that this Sam was funnier than him, or at least more sarcastic, and that was not allowed, goddammit, but then Sam cut his eyes away again and sighed.

"I don't know," he said. "It's just... I feel like there's this whole life you've had without me and... I'd like to hear about it, you know?"

Dean let go of Sam's chin. He hadn't expected that. Revelations of further drug addiction, maybe, or that Sam was thinking of having a sex-change operation, or that his foster parents used to lock him in the cellar and feed him freakin rats or something – given the shit that Sam had come out with in the last week, none of those things would have surprised Dean, or at least, none of them would have surprised him as much as this little confession. "Sam..."

Sam looked sharply away, his face twisting bitterly. "Don't make a production out of it, Dean. It doesn't matter. There's no time, anyway."

No time. The week before, Dean had been desperate to try and shift reality back to how he remembered it, and later to move back to where he was supposed to be. And now that he actually had that in his grasp, there was no time. But that was always the way it went, because, as he'd been reminded far too freakin many times recently, irony was a bitch, and she really, really hated Winchesters.

"It's not the one in Jersey." Sam broke into his thoughts before they really had a chance to get going, and Dean could at least be grateful for that, because hopping aboard the glee train to emo land was really not his bag right now.

"Really?" he asked, leaning over Sam's shoulder again. "It always freakin rains in Jersey."

"Nope. The one in Jersey is concrete," Sam pointed at the screen, "we're looking for brick."

Dean sighed. "Well, I guess that's good. Jersey's a pretty long haul from here. What about the other two?"

"Not Idaho," Sam said. "I checked that first, since it's the closest."

"So, California, right?"

Sam shrugged. "Or maybe it's just not listed on the internet. Or..." he paused, like he was trying to decide whether to say what was on his mind. "It could have a different name in this reality, or maybe not even exist."

Dean bit his lip. That was freakin great. If the place was called something different, that meant they were looking for a red-brick building somewhere where it sometimes rains. Oh yeah, that was like looking for a showgirl in Vegas. "You got some kind of psychic compass or something? Maybe you could work out which direction it was in at least."

Sam shot him a look which said don't be an idiot, and that was pretty fair, because Dean knew that wasn't how the visions worked, knew it better than this Sam, since he'd been dealing with them for longer, but the idea that the thread of hope he'd been clinging to since Sam's post-vision pronouncement might be breaking was making him feel pretty much like he'd just run out of a burning building and into a goddamn quicksand swamp (kind of like that one in that movie with the giant flying dog where the kid loses his horse... Or whatever, obviously Dean had never really watched that movie,and he definitely hadn't cried).

Then Sam said got it, and Dean let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding (which was weird, because holding his breath kind of made his ribs ache, but then, right now every freakin thing pretty much made his ribs ache, and Dean had other things to worry about, like whether his brother was being abducted by freakin demons while Dean was sitting on his ass in a motel room in another dimension, so he figured it was fair enough that he hadn't been giving his body his full attention).

"California," he said, leaning over to look at the picture on Sam's screen. The photo had been taken in full sunlight, but the old building still looked kind of like something out of a horror movie, like the architect had been briefed to build the freakiest-looking lunatic asylum he could, and Dean thought that only people whose families didn't give a shit about them would wind up in there, or maybe the ones that thought they were vampires or Marilyn Manson or whatever (were there crazy people who thought they were Marilyn Manson? More importantly, how could you tell the difference between crazy people who thought they were Marilyn Manson and crazy people who actually were Marilyn Manson?). It looked like the kind of place people were sent to be forgotten and die alone. (And Sam was in there, Sam.)

"California," Sam agreed, and closed the laptop.

"Let's get the hell out of Dodge," said Dean, relieved to find himself still clinging to that thread, and to have a goal again. California was many miles away, but if Sam was right, then there was time.

There was time.

----

Sam slept for the first few hours as they drove west and south, and Dean thought probably he ought to have been tired too, but he'd popped a couple of the extra strong painkillers he'd swiped from the drugstore, washed down with coffee and Red Bull, and he just felt wired and jumpy. Things had started happening too fast, like he was on some out of control fairground ride where the operator guy or whatever had just wandered off and let it spin faster and faster (and that was an ideal recipe for getting someone else's puke in your face, and Dean really didn't want to find out what the real-life equivalent of that part of the metaphor was).

About an hour before the sun rose, Sam woke up, scrubbing his face with his hands and blinking furiously. "Where are we?"

"Still in Montana, I think," Dean said. They hadn't passed a sign welcoming them to anywhere else, but Dean only had Sam's word for it that they'd been in Montana in the first place, and yeah, OK, there were mountains, but given that he'd been living in the freakin Twilight Zone for the last week, he wasn't taking anything for granted any more. For all he knew, they could be in freakin Albuquerque, and to be honest, that wouldn't be any weirder than some of the shit that kept going on.

Sam cleared his throat. "Want me to drive?"

Dean snorted. "Remember that whole alcohol problem, little brother?"

"Oh yeah, because I hear broken ribs and a concussion actually make your driving better," Sam retorted. "In fact, I hear they're gonna make them compulsory next year."

"Whatever, smartass," Dean said. "I've driven your ungrateful ass around with far worse, and I've never crashed once."

Sam didn't say anything to that, but Dean remembered their conversation the night before. Then, there had been no time. Now, they were on the road, with nothing but time. He shifted in his seat, and said (casually, like he was just passing the time), "there was this time when I was seventeen and we were in – Tennessee I think it was, it was freakin hot as hell anyway – when Dad got banged up in a troll hunt, and the damn thing was coming after us like it was the freakin energiser bunny or something, and I was driving with a broken arm, and you were shooting at it from the passenger seat and screaming like you were out of your freakin mind." He grinned at the memory. "I never knew you knew that many curses. It was pretty freakin cool."

Sam sort of ducked his head a little, and turned so he was facing slightly away from Dean. "Guess that's why they call it shotgun," he muttered.

Dean laughed. "That's what you said then, too," he said. "But that wasn't the worst. The worst was this time in Ohio..."

Dean kept talking, and Sam didn't look at him, but Dean could tell that he was listening. For the first time in a few days, he felt like maybe there was time.

----

Around midday, they crossed the state line into Idaho. Dean had stopped telling stories an hour or so earlier, and the car was quiet (well, except for AC/DC, but that wasn't noise so much as a soundtrack, right?) but it was a pretty comfortable kind of quiet, almost like everything was back the way it ought to be. Dean hummed along with Highway to Hell, and even his ribs seemed to have mostly given up aching, like they knew he wasn't going to pay any attention to them anyway.

"Hey," Sam said, "listen to this."

Dean rolled his eyes. Sam had been buried in the book of old prophecies again for the last half hour, and the last thing Dean needed now was another blast of portentous gibberish about crows and shields and freakin power tools or whatever. "Do I have to?"

Sam shot him a look. "You know, I never thought having a big brother would be such a pain in the ass."

Dean smirked. "Yeah, well, you're not exactly Mr. Sugar and Spice yourself, sparky."

Sam rolled his eyes. "OK, you remember the stuff about the sword being forged anew and brought forth under a shield?"

"Uh... I think I saw a really bad movie on the Sci-Fi Channel once..."

"Shut up. Anyway, it goes on to say, 'the sword will be the demons' bane, and the demons will not wield it, though they stretch out their hands towards it, for the shield will burn them like fire.'"

"Seriously," Dean interrupted, "why are we interested in this mumbo-jumbo crap? These guys have been dead for freakin ever, and prophecies are all a load of bullshit anyway."

Sam stared at him for so long that Dean started getting kind of nervous. Damn, that kid knew how to stare. "What?"

"You're telling me you don't believe in prophecies?"

Dean shot him an amused glance. "What, 'fire in the sky, the lion shall lie down with the lamb, be afraid, be very afraid', all that crap? Come on, Sam."

"Dean," Sam said slowly, "I have visions."

"Well, yeah, but..." Dean stopped. He wanted to say that's different, but it occurred to him that there was no real reason it should be. On the other hand, that made him pretty uneasy, because seeing things a few hours before they happened was one thing, but the idea of predestination, destiny, made him about as comfortable as a truck driver at a knitting circle. And anyway, even if some prophecies were vaguely accurate, this one that Sam was reading made about as much sense as goddamn Mulholland Drive (which, by the way, what the hell was that movie all about, anyway?).

Clearly, Sam didn't share his opinion. "'The sword and shield are immortal; they cannot be destroyed, though their mortal forms be damaged beyond repair. The demons will rage around the gates, they will reach out time and again, but the shield shall stay firm and the sword will stand against them until the day of reckoning is at hand.'"

"Yeah, yeah, Day of Reckoning, End of the World, yadda yadda," Dean complained. "Remind me why I gotta listen to this again?"

"I think..." Sam stared down at the book, then flipped back a page, "I don't know... maybe... This is kinda weird."

Dean glanced over. "You gonna tell me what the hell you're thinking in full sentences, or am I gonna have to beat it out of you?"

"You said you met another kid with powers, right? Whose mom died the same way as mine?"

"Yeah, right," Dean said, remembering Max. He hadn't told Sam the whole story about that one, but he figured he ought to know some of it, because if there was one other kid like him out there, there was probably more than one.

"What if..." Sam said. "'The tools are immortal but they are poured into mortal shape'... what if that's us, kids like Max and me?"

"What? What are you talking about?" Dean felt his hands tighten on the wheel. Destiny was bad enough, but destiny plus Sam was not a combination he was ready to deal with.

"It basically says that these 'tools' are incarnated as people," Sam continued, like he wasn't even listening (which probably he wasn't). "We know that demons are involved in these, uh, powers somehow, and the prophecy says they'll be in control of the tools that can be used as weapons, even though those tools could destroy them."

"What, and you think you might be one of those weapons? That's pretty far-fetched, Sam, even for you. Anyway, there's no demon controlling you."

"No, listen," Sam said, and dammit if Dean wouldn't be pretty happy never to have to listen to any of this crap again, "what if... what if the shield is you?"

OK, that was fucking it. Dean pulled over in a screech of tires, earning himself a blast on the horn from the guy behind (which he really gave about as much of a crap about as he did about Vladivostock's chances of winning the world championship in curling or whatever). "Sam, stop."

Sam looked kind of surprised. "Dean, what are you doing?"

"I don't want to hear this stuff," Dean said, turning the full force of his glare on Sam (not that that ever did any good, but you can't blame a guy for trying). "It's bullshit, you got me? Jesus, Sam, only you could go from crows and axes and full-blown fucking apocalypses to thinking that we're involved somehow."

"Dean," Sam started, but Dean was sick of this shit and he wasn't about to let Sam slow him down.

"No, listen. You know fuck all about demons, you didn't even know they existed until a week ago, which, let me just add, is a fucking joke since they killed everyone you ever cared about, and you've had one week away from your safe little law-school apple-pie existence and your bright future in suburbia and now you think you can read something like that and work out what it means? Christ, Sam, talk about an overinflated sense of your own importance."

Sam didn't move, but it seemed to Dean like he pulled back into himself, his face closing up, body stiffening slightly. If Dean hadn't been so pissed off, he might have regretted what he said, but he was pissed off, he was freakin enraged, because he just wanted to get this Sam back to his life and get his own Sam out of that freakin nuthouse, and here Sam was trying to make everything out to be more complicated than it really needed to be, just like always, God, why couldn't he just stop thinking sometimes?

"I'm failing out," Sam said, and Dean's train of thought derailed with the grace of a herd of drunken buffalo.

"What?"

Sam turned his face away. "Of Stanford," he said. "They gave me some time off after Jess, but... They say if I fail this semester, I'm going to lose my scholarship."

Dean stared. "Sam, you've never failed anything in your life."

Sam laughed, fuck, it was that laugh that Dean hated again, and he realised he hadn't heard it for a day or two (and that was one thing he definitely hadn't missed). "Guess there's a first time for everything, right?"

"Jesus," Dean said, turning back to stare at the road in front of them. It was starting to rain, and cars flew past in the grey light, every one with a destination in mind, somewhere to go. "Jesus."

"Yeah, so." Sam shifted uncomfortably. "I guess I don't know anything about anything."

Dean chewed his lip. He remembered how hard Sam had worked those last two years at school, when they'd been moving every couple of months, and how determined he'd been when he finally told his family what he was planning, how he'd walked out without a second glance to make his new life, the one he'd been dreaming about since he was old enough to realise that he wasn't normal. "You're an idiot," he said.

Sam shrugged. "Guess so."

"No," Dean turned back to look at Sam now, "don't give me that crap. You're failing out because of the drinking? I mean, Christ, Sam, I really thought you would be smart enough not to ruin your life like that. What the hell happened to my genius brother, huh?"

Sam was silent for a long moment. Then he muttered, "He died in a fire."

"What?" Dean was pissed and confused enough already without having to deal with Sam's freakin mystery act into the bargain.

"It's not the drinking," Sam said. "I'm not failing because of that."

"Then what? What could make you just give up on your future? Because the Sam I know would never do that."

"Yeah?" Sam looked at him now, and for a moment it was completely obvious from his face that he hadn't intended to tell Dean this particular secret; the moment passed before Dean really had time to consider the implications of that, though, and the hard lines that didn't fit Sam's face returned. "Well, I'm not the Sam you know, remember? And to be honest, I'm pretty sick of you comparing me to him all the time, because I didn't get to have you, and maybe I'm less of a good person, but I didn't ask you to come here and shove that in my face. You haven't been my brother all my life, and you're freakin leaving as soon as you can find a way, so it's a little late to start now."

Dean sat back, stunned by the force of Sam's tirade. Had he really been comparing this Sam to his so often? He thought back over the last few days, and yeah, so, OK, maybe he had, because really he couldn't help that, it wasn't every day you met an alternate version of your brother, anyone would be comparing the two, right? But he was pretty sure he hadn't done it out loud (because OK, Dean was a pretty insensitive guy, and he was comfortable with that aspect of himself, because sensitivity was for girls and floppy-haired emo kids, but he wasn't that much of an asshole, at least most of the time), so where the hell had Sam picked up on it from?

"Sam..." he said, but Sam interrupted him (and he was pretty glad, because he really didn't have a plan for what he was going to say next, and he had a horrible feeling it was going to be yet another discussion about his feelings or whatever).

"No, Dean," Sam said, quieter now, calmer, but still with that edge of bitterness. "I'm not him. I can't be him."

There was a break in the traffic, but the rain was coming down harder now, beating on the windshield in a constant low rumble. It was still the middle of the day, but it felt like it was getting dark. Dean thought about what Sam had said: I didn't get to have you. Was that really all it was? All the differences between the two Sams, everything down to the simple fact that the Dean that belonged to this reality had been a freakin moron and gotten himself killed when he was supposed to live? It was pretty difficult to believe in a lot of ways, because it meant that Dean was pretty damn important (but in other ways, it was pretty easy to believe, because it meant that this messed-up life that Sam was living was pretty much Dean's fault). Whatever, in the end whether it was just Dean or something else as well didn't really matter at all, he supposed; the fact was, Sam was messed up, and it was Dean's job to fix it, like always. Which, in this case, pretty much seemed to involve talking about his feelings, and wasn't that a freakin kick in the head?

"I'm not asking you to be anyone else, Sam," Dean said, wondering how true that was, "but you can't just cash in your chips for no good reason. You got a life! My-" He stopped suddenly, because he'd been about to say my Sam would give his right arm for what you've got, and he realised two things at the same time, one of which was that he really was comparing the two Sams all the time, and the other of which was that he wasn't totally sure if that was true, because the more he learned about what this Sam had, the more he thought that you'd have to be freakin crazyto want to change places with him.

"I have a reason," Sam insisted.

"Yeah? Well tell me what the hell it is, then, or I'm hauling your ass back to Stanford right now, whether you want it or not."

Sam opened his mouth angrily, then closed it again and looked down at his hands. The drumming of the rain was the only sound in the car for a minute, and then Sam said Jess, and Dean remembered that actually, his Sam had given up on his future, and Dean had been secretly glad, not that Sam had lost Jess of course, never that, but that Sam was back with him, had realised that his place was with his family and normal was just a fantasy, yeah, OK, maybe he'd been glad about that. But it wasn't true of course – Sam hadn't realised anything of the sort. Sam had lost Jess, and he'd given up. And Dean had been glad.

OK, so Dean's Sam had done that, and it couldn't be taken back now, but Sam had said only a few weeks ago back in Chicago that once they'd killed the demon, he would go back to school, so yeah, at first he'd given up on his future, but eventually he'd realised he still wanted it. And the whole thought of his Sam going back to school and abandoning Dean a second time made Dean's stomach twist with fear and anger and resentment, but this Sam could have that chance, this Sam wouldn't be abandoning anyone if he went after the future he wanted, and yeah, maybe that was because he didn't have anyone left to abandon, but at least he could turn that to his advantage a little. He was obviously kind of screwed up right now, though (yeah, which was pretty much like saying that Michael freakin Jackson was a little screwed up), so it was up to Dean to make sure he didn't drop the ball.

"Sam," he said (carefully, because he knew from bitter freakin experience that this particular subject could set Sam off like a freakin psychotic nuclear warhead), "you think Jess would want this for you? That she'd want you to give up your life? I mean, I know you're hurting, man, but you're still here, and eventually you're going to have to start living again."

Sam turned his head and stared at Dean, and his face was so totally blank that Dean couldn't tell what effect his words had had, or even if Sam had heard them at all. Dean had faced down things that would make Arnold freakin Schwarzenegger piss his goddam pants, but that look on his brother's face made him feel like he was breathing ice water. Then, without saying a word, Sam wrenched open the door of the Impala and stepped out into the rain.

Shit. Looked like whatever effect Dean's little speech had had on Sam, it hadn't been to fire up his goddamn ambition or whatever (unless he was planning on walking back to Stanford, which Dean supposed was possible but pretty freakin dumb, and if that really was Sam's plan then that probably meant that he wasn't going to get his scholarship back anyway, because he really was an idiot). Dean pulled open his own door, wishing that Sam didn't insist on having these scenes outside when it seemed like there was more water than air out there, and hurried after the retreating figure.

Sam was walking along the edge of the road, but the visibility was pretty damn close to zero, and it was kind of like being inside a coal cellar at night. A really freakin wet coal cellar. Every few seconds, headlights would loom up out of the rain and pass Sam too freakin close, but he didn't flinch or move to the side, just kept freakin walking like he actually had somewhere to go.

"Sam," Dean yelled, but the dim figure didn't stop or turn, and that might have been because he didn't want to or just because he couldn't hear a thing, and Dean had never really realised rain could be so goddamn loud. He started to run, because Sam's legs were about five miles long, and Dean was never going to catch up with him unless he put on some goddamn speed.

"Sam," he said again, grabbing hold of Sam's shoulder and pulling, and Sam turned to face him, fucking looming over him in that way that Dean really freakin hated (honestly, was it really so much to ask that his little brother actually be shorter than him? That's not unreasonable, right?).

"Leave me alone," he said, or yelled really, because that was pretty much the default method of conversation when you were in a goddamn monsoon or whatever.

"That's not gonna happen."

Sam glared down at him, and Dean was having kind of a hard time looking up because the rain kept falling in his goddamn eyes.

"Why the hell not?" Sam asked. "Why the hell won't you just let me get on with my life?"

"Because you're fucking it up, is why!" Dean was kind of getting into this whole yelling thing now. "You're pissing away the life you always wanted because of some stupid sense of guilt or whatever, and I'm not gonna freakin let it happen, because I may not have been around for you for the last twenty-two years, but I'm here now."

"What the hell would you know about what I've always wanted?" Sam screamed, and Dean was pretty sure that even the watery bombing raid that seemed to be going on didn't warrant that level of volume, but he was equally sure that he could go one louder.

"Because I know you, Sam! How many times do I have to freakin say it before it sinks into that goddamn skull of yours? I'm your brother!"

And that was when Sam grabbed him by the lapels and hauled him up so that they were face to face (well, OK, Sam was still slightly higher, the fucker, but it was a close-run thing). He was so close that Dean would have been able to feel his breath against his cheeks if it hadn't been for the narrow wall of water separating them.

"I'm not going to say this again," Sam said, and he wasn't yelling any more, but the message got through loud and clear. "I. Am not. Your Sam."

Then, as suddenly as he'd picked him up, he dropped Dean again and took off running across the road, and Dean was surprised enough that he wasted a second just staring, which was long enough for Sam to disappear amongst the trees and for a fucking stream of cars with the worst timing ever to pull between them, so that by the time Dean had finished his little drooling idiot act and made it over the road, Sam was nowhere to be seen. That didn't stop Dean running around the woods yelling like a moron for a while, though (and Jesus, he was really beginning to hate woods, dark, sunny or rainy, they fucked everything up, give him a nice industrial wasteland any day and fuck the beauty of Mother freakin Nature), until finally he had to give up and go back to the car, soaked through, shivering, pissed off, and really fucking scared.

The rain started to ease off after an hour or two, and Dean put on the radio and the heat full blast. Sam would come back. Sam had run away from him what seemed like a hundred times in the last two weeks, and he had always come back (well, OK, there was that one time he had just sprained his ankle and Dean had hauled him back, and probably falling over didn't really count as the same thing as coming back of your own accord, but Dean wasn't about to split hairs right now). Sam had nowhere to go, no-one to help him (which was pretty pathetic, but it was a fact on Dean's side right now) and they were in the middle of fucking nowhere, which meant that finding a bar would be a tall order (although Dean figured that if Sam really wanted to, he could find one anyway, which meant that right now he was pretty much putting all his hopes in one basket (or however the hell that stupid saying goes), which was that the detox drugs were doing their job and, more importantly, that Sam felt like he had a reason to stop drinking now. It was a lame basket, especially given the conversation (or argument or fucking out-and-out screaming match or whatever) they'd just had, but Dean didn't have any other baskets right now, and by the way, this metaphor was getting really goddamn overextended). Whatever, the point was that Sam was pretty much guaranteed to come back. Of course, that didn't stop Dean from counting the goddamn seconds until he did.

Approximately nine thousand, two hundred and forty-five seconds later, the passenger door opened and Sam dropped into the seat.

Dean unclenched his fists carefully, counted to ten, and then looked over. Sam looked OK. Wet and dripping, but not beaten up, tired but not wasted (though Dean was all too aware of the fact that this Sam was pretty goddamn good at hiding his wastedness). "You OK?"

Sam nodded, closed his eyes for a moment, and then said, "Let's go."

Dean pulled out into the dying storm.

----

It was about an hour later when Dean reached out and turned the radio off. "So tell me," he said.

Sam looked round from where he had been staring out of the window. "Tell you what?"

"Tell me what it is you've always wanted," Dean said. So far he had fucked this conversation up pretty spectacularly, and he was pretty likely to do it again, too, but he had to have it anyway, no way he could just leave it there, and his current brilliant plan for stopping Sam from running away again involved the single genius step of not pulling over. Of course, eventually he was going to run out of gas, but he figured he could always go back to the handcuffs idea (because that worked so well last time).

Sam shifted, made a move like he was going to put the radio on again, and then turned suddenly back to the window. Dean waited. It was still at least ten hours to their destination, and he could afford to bide his time.

Finally, Sam cleared his throat. "A family," he said, and Dean almost drove into a fucking tree because that was pretty much the last thing he'd expected. That was what Dean wanted, not Sam. Sam wanted success, a career, normality. Sam had turned his back on his family.

"Jess was all I had, she was all I wanted," Sam continued. "I can't go back to that life, not with what I know now."

Great, thought Dean, because when Sam said not with what I know now, Dean heard not with what you told me. Yeah, once again, Dean Winchester had managed to royally screw things up.

"You could still have that," Dean said, but it sounded lame, it sounded like there's plenty more fish in the sea, which was the last thing that Dean wanted to say.

"You think?" Sam asked, still staring out at the landscape that was now darkening for real. "This demon, you say it killed my mom, my brother, my dad and my girlfriend. You think I can really start again like it doesn't even exist?"

Dean shifted uncomfortably. "It's not your fault, Sam."

"It doesn't matter whether it's my fault or not," Sam said. "The point is, I have to stop it. I have to try."

"But you're not ready for this. Fighting this stuff... you need to be trained, you need to know what you're doing, or you'll get yourself killed."

"Then I'll learn," Sam said, and he was facing front now, staring out at the road ahead, his jaw set.

Dean felt his hands tighten on the wheel. "Sam," he said, "I've seen what happens when you let revenge take over your life." Even saying the words felt like a betrayal of Dad, but Dean was rapidly running out of cards to play.

"Yeah," said Sam, "and I've seen what happens when you don't even have that much to keep you afloat."

Dean had no answer to that, and so all he could do was drive on into the growing twilight.