I'm back. Many thanks to lovely reviewers EDJennie, ladysakura31, oooPENNYWISEooo, robby1925 & Idreamofivan. Y'all are why I'm still writing this thing :3

It's funny; Dean kind of assumed he'd be able to talk Sam out of his resolution to leave the next day. Maybe that says something about how passive Sam's become lately- or, Hell, maybe it says something about Dean. Who the fuck knows.

But Sam is implacable.

It's been so long since he insisted on something- really insisted- that Dean's forgotten how to wheedle. He hasn't forgotten how to argue, but neither of them need that right now. It's not that he's worried about what might happen if he himself flips out. He's not. The spell's gone, after all; there's nothing to worry about.

It's just better when they don't argue.

Somehow Sam manages to persuade Dean to steal some scrubs from a supply closet and casually abduct him out of there. Getting him into the wheelchair is the hardest part- trying to get Sam his feet wrenches on his stitches, and his face goes ashy-grey and he clutches at Dean's elbow. But it's smooth sailing, mostly. Sam doesn't try to protest when Dean puts him into the Impala's backseat, and Dean's grateful. They drive.

SPN SPN SPN

It's a long way back to Lebanon.

'It's fine, Dean,' Sam's voice comes from the backseat. It's disconcerting; Dean isn't used to Sam sitting back there like that. 'I can handle it. We don't have to stop.'

'Dude, you aren't seriously suggesting I drive for sixteen hours solid,' he says lightly. 'I know you can handle it. Give a guy a break.'

Sam goes silent. Touché.

'How are you,' says Dean after a while. 'Are you feeling okay?'

A sense of cautious surprise.

'A little sore,' Sam says tentatively. 'Uh- my throat hurts. But I- I'm good.'

Then: 'How are you feeling, Dean?'

He almost swerves off the road. 'Ha-ha, Sam.'

'Not joking.'

'Is this where you let me apologise, then?'

'No. Sorry.'

Dean lets out a heavy breath through his nose. Ahead of him, the road is spangled violet with rain-light, water tattooing against the dash. He's very tempted to push the issue; he reminds himself of Sam's condition. Then scoffs at himself. 'Condition'; it makes it sound like a terminal illness.

Sam's going to get better. As soon as the demons are locked away they can get back to normal. Sam's going to be fine.

'It isn't anything- it's not your fault,' says Sam, and Dean takes a second to connect the two threads of the conversation, because what about this isn't his fault? 'I just need time. To think.'

He keeps his voice moderate. 'Whatever you need.'

He pulls off at the Monkey Bizness Motel. The owner charges by the hour and doesn't blink when Dean asks for a room on the end. It's not til he gets back to the car that it occurs to him that Sam might not want to be in the same room as Dean.

Deciding not to ask just yet, he starts to unfold the wheelchair they took from out the back of the car. At the sound, Sam's head jerks up. 'What are you doing?

'Getting the wheelchair.'

'What? Dean- wait.' Sam tries to open the car door. 'Stop. I want to walk.'

'Are you kidding me?' Alright, so this is hardly out of character, but why does Sam have to do this now? When Dean would have to be sadistic to refuse to listen to him?

Wincing, Sam begins to extend his legs out of the car, and Dean makes up his mind. He goes to Sam and puts his hands under the other's armpits, ignoring the way Sam closes his eyes as if suppressing a shiver. Hauls him upright. They start off at an uneven walk towards the motel.

It's quiet, thank fuck, because Dean's brain hurts. The room isn't so bad, either. There seems to be some kind of jungle-theme going on (leopard-print curtains, parrot wall dividers, no appliances in sight) and there's a mysterious brown stain on the carpet. As he looks at it an image flashes out at him- Sam's blood, seeping out from under the chair like an accusation, and he wonders what the hell the police thought when they found that room.

Sam makes a small noise when he sees the stain. It could be distaste, or it could be for the same reasons as Dean. He ignores it, depositing Sam on the bed.

'Dean,' says Sam, voice low.

'Yeah, Sam?' He slings his duffel onto the other bed and sets about unpacking. He needs to clean the shotguns.

'I think we should talk about this.'

And, oh Christ, he knows just what that'll lead to. Screaming at each other like kids, Sam crying and Dean seperated by an impossible divide, the I hate yous and the I should never have come back to yous hanging thick between them. The what have you dones. The what have you done to mes (he can't answer). And the invitable parting of ways, maybe for the last time because now Dean's really screwed up, and this could be the last time he ever sees Sam and he can't do that, not tonight.

But Sam also has every right to hate Dean. To walk away.

'Yeah, Sammy, okay,' he finds himself saying. It comes out rougher than he thought. 'Just, uh- I need to go on a supply run, okay? Get some stuff.'

Sam shifts on the bed, wincing when it pulls on his stitches. 'Can't it wait?'

His voice is small. Scratchy. And he looks so fucking sick- skin white and blotchy, a hell of a black eye, skin around his other eye and his nose pink and sore. Lips cracked, hair tangled and greasy. A faint tremor running through his hands.

When he took down the manticore Sam seemed taller than God; now he's diminished somehow, folded into himself, and it hurts to think that Dean did that, that he broke that. It hurts that he touched one goddamned thing in the Bunker that he shouldn't have and now Sam knows what a monster he was in Hell. And Sam's been so strange lately. Not bad-strange, not aggressive or anything. But gentler with each passing day, as if his soul is growing like a sunflower to fill his body, leaving him naked-eyed and so strangely together, so strangely complete, as if his skin is tearing to let a kind of light bleed through.

Untouchable.

Shaking off the reverie. 'I'll be back before you know it.'

He doesn't look back when he leaves. If he did, he probably wouldn't be able to walk out the door.

SPN SPN SPN

The Impala has dried blood on the seats, and Dean fumbles around with a tissue and spit trying to clean it off. Even when it's gone, he's sure the stink remains, rank and crawling. Like a freshly butchered animal. He never minded the smell of blood before; Sam hated it, of course, but it made Dean feel- clean. Being elbow-deep in a kill can be weirdly purging. Like in Purgatory, where he'd felt nothing but alive- exhausting and terrifying and painfully right.

Getting out of the Impala, he enters a 24-hour grocery store. Feels like a there's a pane of glass between himself and the rest of the world, and God, he's tired. A woman knocks into him, and he only really notices when she apologises. The store is empty, the lighting bright and flat, and he wanders into the vegetable aisle. Where he and Sam were, only a few days before, before everything went to shit.

'Your stomach was a garbage disposal. And you loved pie,' and his little smile, turning half-away from Dean. 'Not a bad cook, though.'

Oh, Sam.

How? How the fuck had it happened? How the hell had his amnesiac self gone from increasingly fond of Sam- increasingly protective, even- to all-out raging psychopath mode? All he remembers after finding the video of the leviathan shoot-out is a wall of rage and betrayal and even a little sadness. When he'd laid eyes on Sam it had been like flipping a switch; regretful and horrified to Full Metal Jacket. And it wasn't just all his Hell baggage; he'd kept a lid on it for years, there was no reason for it to crop up again randomly like that.

Had the amnesia-curse thing had a few side-effects, then? Because there had been the memory-loss after the torture- and the old lady, the old lady saying still not over the side-effects, are we? and fuck has he figured this out? Has he figured it out?

He's standing in the vegetable aisle and his heart is pounding with animal panic. If he doesn't move he's going to go crazy. Dean starts to weave restlessly through the store, grabbing first-aid kits, a bag of apples, some salad shit, wholemeal bread because he's sick of Sam bitching about cholesterol. The idea of himself eating at the moment is ludicrous, though he feels all hollowed-out; he's never been less hungry, the image of Sam's carved-up body still before his eyes.

And as soon as he reaches the Impala he has to get back. To the motel, but also the bunker- there he can poke around, see if he's right and he's not an evil bastard after all and then if it was the spell, if it really was just a side-effect that led to Hell-Dean resurfacing, maybe, just maybe Sam won't leave. And if Sam stays-

He puts the pedal to the metal.

It's not a long drive. Ten minutes. All in all, Dean's probably been away less than half an hour. That's not long. Everything should be okay.

When he reaches the motel car park he can feel the silence humming against his skin, and it makes him shiver.

Collecting the groceries from the car. Med kit clutched between his teeth. He can barely fumble his key out of his pocket, he's got so many bags on his arms. Turning it in the lock, and nothing happens. The door's- open?

But he locked it.

He locked it.

Dean opens the door. The room is dark. The carefully-chosen bags of food slide to the floor. When he flicks on the light-switch the room is empty. He blinks, casting eyes over everything, as if Sam could have blended in with the wallpaper somehow. He pulls the covers back on a bed that's obviously empty. But it's still fine- Sam must be in the bathroom. Maybe he fell and tore his stitches and the thought should be terrifying, but at least that'd mean Sam was here and could be patched up.

When he opens the bathroom door it's empty. Dean double-checks the bathtub, yanking back the shower curtain. The window is closed.

Gone. He's gone.

The exhaustion and horror of the past few days swells. Dean is shipwrecked, cut adrift, no shining thread of Sam to follow home (no Sam to tease, to fight with, to bitch out for buying the wrong kind of beer). Despair rises in his throat in a consuming ache. No Sam to tell his new plan, and Dean won't see hope bloom in those gentle eyes, won't work the knots out of his hair with shampooey hands the way he was planning to when Sam let him, won't ever get to say how goddamn sorry he is, how terribly terribly sorry-

A wave of dizziness. He stumbles where he stands; God, it's been ages since he ate. Ages and ages. Or slept. Fucking fuck- the world's sort of fading in and out- this is bad. Really fucking bad.

Dean feels his knees buckle. Ratty motel carpet beneath his hands.