Here we go, back for another chapter. Once again, I can't say how grateful I am that so many of you have returned to see this through. Thanks so much. As always, reviews feed the process. You guys are all awesome.

The early morning success was short lived when, fearing that five hours away was still too close for comfort, the boys made the decision to get back out on the road that morning instead of waiting another day. Dean was still clearly weak, yet it really didn't matter if he was weak in some hotel bed or if he was weak in the passenger seat of the car. So Sam commandeered a couple extra hotel pillows and used them to prop his brother up on the right side so that he wasn't so uncomfortable this time around.

The foot drop and wrist drop the therapist had warned them about seemed to be attacking in full force, and Sam gathered the bootie and the wrist brace from the trunk, forcing Dean to wear them despite his arguments that they were ugly and totally 'uncool.'

"You think this is any better?" Sam had shot back, gesturing toward Dean's right hand and the awkward curl it had to it as the spastic muscles pulled it tight against his chest. "We've got to find time to do some real exercises with your arm and leg, Dean. It's important for your recovery."

Dean sighed, feeling very helpless at the moment. "Mmmmorrrre i-immmmp-p-ort-t-tant t-t-to llllleavvve. P-poooolice are clllllosssse. I fffffeel."

Pursing his lips, Sam nodded his agreement. Dean was absolutely right – jail time right now would only be detrimental to his brother's health. There would be no time for therapy, no time to focus on recovery, and worse yet, no way to protect himself from anybody looking to make trouble. It couldn't happen.

So they hit the road, pulling out without bothering to officially check out of the motel, and continued heading west. There really was no specific destination, nowhere that really called to them. Dean had flat out refused to let Sam call any of their hunter friends, declaring that he didn't want them to feel sorry for him, so the idea of actually holing up at one of their homes was out of the question.

Then there was the little issue of cash money. After their failings the night before, Sam was loath to bring up the subject. He knew Dean would blame himself, and would likely insist on trying again somewhere down the road, but Sam couldn't bear to see the same look of helpless despair that had encumbered his brother's face when he'd been refused by the pool hustlers. It was too much to endure twice, and he was determined to fix this problem without involving Dean this time.

His plan was a simple one – at least for a Winchester – but it still made his insides churn with dread and regret, and if it wasn't for Dean he would never have considered it in a million years. But Dean needed help, he needed safety, and for that they needed cash. Sam wasn't about to drag his brother back into another bar, and that really left them only one other option. Flat out thievery.

They stopped at a diner for lunch around noon. Dean insisted that he needed the exercise, so Sam retrieved the leg immobilizer from the back seat and patiently supported his brother's weight as he took nearly fifteen minutes to shuffle step his way from the car into the diner, listing and swaying drunkenly by the time they made it through the door. By now, Sam had already begun to question his plan, realizing that a speedy get-a-way was hardly an option right now. But then again, what self-respecting citizen would suspect some kid who could barely stand even with the help of a walker. From the stares they were receiving and the hasty retreats of patrons and waitresses to get out of Dean's way, Sam figured no one had even noticed him. Dean was the center of attention; Sam was practically invisible.

Sam led Dean to the first available booth and slowly eased him in before folding the walker and stuffing it under the table. He waited nervously for Dean to tilt to the side, as he tended to do when exhaustion won out, but his brother was playing it stubborn right now. Somehow, he was managing to remain upright.

Sliding into the booth across from Dean, Sam was already on the lookout for the tools to implement step two of his plan - step one being to simply enter a crowded eatery - and his eyes darted back and forth nervously throughout the room until Dean put a stop to that with a look of annoyance.

"Sorry," Sam breathed, diverting his attention back to his brother just as a waitress approached their table. She was young and pretty, slender, with honey brown hair and sparkling blue eyes, and a smile that would light up the room. Sam saw Dean grin at her as she approached, watched him try to sit up a little straighter in the booth, and then saw his face fall a bit as she flashed him a nervous glance before fixing her attention on Sam.

"Hey there, boys. I'm Sheila, I'll be you're waitress for the day. What can I start you off with to drink?" She laid menus down in front of them and placed the backs of her hands on her hips, waiting patiently for the reply.

"I'm just gonna have some water. Coke for you, Dean?" Sam answered, looking over to Dean to get his order. No matter how determined his brother had composed himself to be with his recovery, Sam still knew Dean wouldn't be willing to talk in public more than he had to.

Dean nodded once, head bowed to avoid eye contact with the waitress. He cringed as Sam repeated himself to the waitress, 'he'll have a coke,' hating the fact that Sam could speak the words so easily, hating that Sam had to speak for him at all.

"Thanks, boys," Sheila replied, nodding to the menus. "I'll go get those drinks for you, and I'll be back to get your order as soon as you're ready."

Sam immediately pushed the menu towards Dean, opening the laminated booklet automatically. "What do you want to eat?"

Dean shrugged, non-committal.

"You've got to eat something, Dean. You're the one who keeps talking about putting everything you have into your therapy. Food's the first step."

The glare Dean shot at Sam was enough to shut him up, clearly telling him to chill out without having to say the words. I know Sam. I just don't know what I want. Give me a minute to read.

Arms held up in surrender, Sam leaned back against his seat and opened his own menu,

scanning it quickly for his own meal as he kept one eye on Dean. It didn't take long for him to decide on a lunch, and he closed his menu with a snap just as Dean spun his own around, pointing at the chicken fingers and fries meal. Immediately, Sam knew it was chosen only because it would be easy to eat; Dean never chose chicken over beef if he had the choice. But Sam said nothing, merely nodding at his brother before summoning the waitress back to their table.

She returned, once again glancing awkwardly at Dean – looking without looking, before settling her attention on Sam. "D'you know what you want?"

Sam ordered for the both of them, saving Dean the embarrassment of having to stammer through, and the waitress the hassle of having to listen, and then watched her retreat from the table as he forced the sadness from his expression. It killed him to see Dean so vulnerable and out of control, to see the change in reaction that women now had toward his brother. This girl hadn't even heard him speak yet, had only seen him make his slow, awkward progression into the diner, and that was enough to turn her off. It was a normal reaction, but he wanted to throttle her all the same. He wanted to yell and scream and make her see that Dean was still the same gorgeous ladies man he had always been, that the inside still worked perfectly fine, and that the outside would soon catch up. But Dean wouldn't want him to do that; he would be more pissed off that he'd had to go through his baby brother to master a hook-up than he would be just to let it slide.

Soon though, his attention had wandered to the other patrons in the diner as he reminded himself once again that Dean could only get better if they were able to stop for a while. And they could only stop if they had cash. His brother's well-being was completely in his hands.

The means to his plan finally presented itself when he and Dean were more than halfway through their meal. Sam's heart sped up as he realized this was it, now or never, and he inched his way to the edge of the bench.

"Gotta go take a leak," Sam explained when Dean shot Sam a questioning glance. "You alright here by yourself for a few minutes?"

Dipping another fry into the puddle of ketchup, Dean nodded. "D-d-donnnn't nnnneeeed a b-bab-by sssssitter.

Sam smirked and stood the rest of the way out of the bench, hiding his shaking hands behind his back as he did so. He turned his back on Dean and headed towards the bathroom.

John Winchester had taught his boys just about everything there was to know about surviving in this world. He taught them about the presence of supernatural entities and how to kill them, when most of the world was blissfully ignorant to their presence. He taught them how to identify thousands of different kinds of weapons, their uses, and how to load and unload fifty seven different kinds of guns before either one was old enough to drive a car. He had them speaking five different dead languages fluently, and some thirty others enough to get by, before they were out of highschool. He taught them the art of lying, how to get into or out of any and all situations that came their way, before Sammy had started kindergarten. Both boys were so adept at lying that half the time they no longer knew what was a lie and what was the truth coming out of their mouths. And because hunting evil was not a paying gig, he had taught them every possible 'dishonest' way to attain cash without getting caught.

So it was without difficulty that Sam managed to snag the checkbook out of the unsuspecting woman's purse as it hung unsupervised from the wood strip that separated two back to back benches. But just because he could do it easily didn't mean Sam enjoyed blatantly stealing someone's checkbook, and moreover, it didn't mean he would ever forgive himself for doing so.

Sam's moral compass had always pointed a truer north than either Dean's or his father's, and it was only from reminding himself just how much Dean needed to have a chance to heal that he managed to keep the lunch he had just ingested from finding its way back up when he made it to the bathroom. Credit card scams were one thing - and he didn't like pulling those off either - but at least he didn't have a face to connect as the victim.

As he flipped to the back of the stack of checks, tearing the last three from the book, all he could see was the unsuspecting innocense of the woman he had just taken the checkbook from. He had to force Dean's face into the mix, focus on the struggle he was enduring simply because he had taken one too many knocks to the head in an effort to protect the rest of the world from learning of the evil that surrounded them. This woman may have never encountered true evil, and she still might never see it, and she had Dean to thank for that.

Pulling out his own wallet, Sam slipped the three stolen checks in beside his remaining cash. His eyes lingered on the name and the address in the upper left hand corner and he found himself promising to send a repayment of cash just as soon as Dean was better. It was his form of making a deal, as many believers did with the higher entities. Sam had always believed in a higher power, but it was hard to rely on him/her/it to fix one singular problem when he knew of the multitude of larger issues that said entity never managed to touch. But it didn't hurt to try; make a promise of repayment to someone he was about to wrong in exchange for his brother's well being; what was the worst that could come of asking?

He took another minute to splash some water on his face and calm his breathing before pushing through the swinging bathroom door to return the checkbook to the ladies purse and get back to Dean. Sam breathed a sigh of relief when the checkbook was safely back in the purse he'd taken it from, but they were far from out of the woods yet. He needed to get them out of there before the woman noticed anything was missing, and unless he could somehow miraculously convince Dean to let him get the wheelchair they had a good fifteen minutes to walk back to the car. Which meant they had to play it cool.

Sam slid back into the booth across from his brother, ignoring the questioning head cock Dean issued and instead reaching under the table to collect the walker. "You ready to go?" he asked, grabbing the bill from the table and sliding it in his back pocket.

When Dean nodded, Sam set the walker in front of the exit from the booth. "I'm just gonna go pay the bill. You get yourself to the edge here and I'll be right back to help you out, okay?"

Another brusk nod from his brother was the only response Sam received before he sprinted to the cash register to pay for their meal. When he returned Dean had managed to scoot himself to the edge of the booth, both feet centered between the walker and his working arm already grasping the grab handle on the top of the metal framework. He kept his head bowed, still fighting the necessity to admit needing help against his ingrained mentality to never show weakness, but Sam didn't care. He knew better than to push, and he grabbed ahold of Dean's numb right arm without comment, pulling Dean to his feet and waiting until he was steady enough to take some of his own weight.

"Alright, bro, that's it; nice and slow. Just take 'er easy." Sam's eyes darted nervously around the room as he shouldered half of Dean's weight from the diner, filtering through the hidden stares aimed in their direction in search of anything that might prove to be more worrisome. As he had expected, though, nobody seemed to be worried about their potential for being pick-pockets, only concerned that the listing young man clinging tightly to his brother and the walker might somehow be contagious. Only worried that whatever had befallen the poor sap making his way from the diner not happen to them.

As Dean made his slow progress through the door Sam made one final glance around the diner, finally noticing the woman whose checks he had just stolen staring blatantly at his brother as she talked to her companion. He could read her lips, could just make out the 'poor bastard, I'm so glad that's not me,' and suddenly found himself not so concerned about what he'd just done. He still didn't like the idea of all out stealing, but he was no longer concerned with returning the money he was about to take from her. Suddenly he felt vindicated; he knew that Dean would be vindicated.

xxxxxxxxxx

Sam drove another hour before he was ready to take the next step, still giving himself a pep talk even as he walked into the first convenience store. He had filled up the tank to the impala and quickly perused the food aisles, loading them up on the healthiest of the junk food in the place and a large bag of M&M's just for Dean, before finally feigning equanimity and approaching the counter.

He nodded to the teenage cashier, taking notice at the way the young girl ducked her head shyly and batted her eyelashes at him. He couldn't help the wave of guilt that immediately flowed through him as he realized he was about to use the school girl fantasy against the naive cashier, but swallowed down the knot in his throat as he set his purchases on the counter, leaning in to rest on his elbow as he winked at her.

"Can I get some cash back if I overwrite a check, sweetheart?"

The girl giggled, straightening her posture so that her chest stuck out farther, and bit her bottom lip. "I can give you up to a hundred dollars."

"That's perfect." Offering her his dimpled grin, Sam took out his check and made one final glance at the two names on the check, internalizing the husband's name. He waited for his total and added one hundred dollars to the total, scribbling 'Alexander Klause' on the signature line before handing her the stolen check. The girls shoulders slumped a bit when she saw that the name on the check was accompanied by the female's, but otherwise there was no reaction as she ran the check through the register and counted out five twenty's.

"Thanks a ton, sweetheart," Sam said in a thick drawl as he pocketed the cash and collected his bags. "You've been a big help." With one final wink, Sam turned on his heel and exited the store one hundred dollars richer.

Dean was asleep when Sam returned to the car, placing their bags in the backseat of the Impala and climbing into the driver's seat. It was for the best, as Sam suddenly found he couldn't make his hands stop shaking. He gripped the steering wheel as tight as he could and sucked in breath after deep breath, desperate to calm his frayed nerves before pulling back out onto the main drag. He had two more stops like that to make, and both needed to be soon before any chance of his fraudulent check scheme could come back to bite him in the ass.

The remaining two stops played out much the same as the first, minus the giddy cashier,

and Dean slept through both of those and an additional two hours beyond that, making Sam wonder whether to be relieved that Dean hadn't been awake enough to question him or to be concerned at the degree to which his hike to and from the diner earlier had drained him. Dean had never been a heavy sleeper; usually the slightest noise out of the ordinary had him bracing for a fight. But now he was dead to the world, in a very uncomfortable looking position with his head flopped at an almost hundred and eighty degree angle against his shoulder, his right hand pulled in tight against his chest, and the left elbow bunched behind his back in a vain attempt at supporting himself against the seat. The pillows had somehow all managed to slip from their support position and now lay in a heap on the floor.

Sam sighed, pulling over at the first safe location and reaching across Dean to try and make him more comfortable. He had gotten one pillow back under Dean's arm and another almost under his head when Dean finally woke up, blinking groggily as he tried to reorient himself to their surroundings.

"Wwwhere…arrrrrre wwwwe?" he slurred, seeing nothing but forest and two lane road in front of him.

"Michigan," Sam answered, sliding the pillow the rest of the way under his brother's head before Dean laid it back down again. "About twenty miles north of the Mackinaw Bridge. We're taking the scenic route."

Dean grimaced as he tried to sit up straighter in his seat. He was silent for close to a minute, taking in their surroundings as Sam nervously studied his pallid complexion. Color was slowly returning to his face, leading Sam to believe it was nothing more than a result of having been asleep for a while. When his brother finally seemed to be alright with their location he turned back to face Sam, mustering what little of his care-taker attitude he still possessed.

"T-t-tryinnnng t-t-o llllie lllllow?" He guessed.

Sam nodded. "Yeah. I called Bobby about—"

The murderous look Dean sent Sam's way immediately made Sam stop his current line of discussion to reassure him that Bobby knew nothing of Dean's current condition; only that the brother's had gotten themselves into a bit of trouble and needed to disappear for a bit.

"Bobby's got a friend with a hunting cabin up here in the U-P. Said no one will be using it for another two or three months at least, and that we're welcome to it. Just gotta clean up after ourselves, close the place up when we leave, yadda yadda you know the drill."

Dean nodded, his frantic heart beginning to slow down as he finally began to believe that Sam hadn't gone and blabbed his misfortune across the hunters' phone chain. He decided it might actually be nice to get away for a while, distance himself from prying eyes, escape from drooling head hunters, take the time he needed to really and truly heal.

"Hhhow fffar?"

"Another couple of hours still. You alright? Need a pit stop or anything?"

"Mmm' g-g-good. J-j-just t-tirrrred of sssssitting." Dean shifted awkwardly in his seat, ending up sliding further down against the door in his effort and he groaned, unable to contain his frustration.

Immediately, Sam was on the alert, reaching out to help a grudging Dean sit back up. Not for the first time, his heart ached for the simplicity of a life lost to his brother. He hated seeing Dean struggle with the things he used to take for granted, hated the fact that he had to force his assistance on a brother who wouldn't normally be caught dead asking for help of any kind, really hated the fact that Dean had to accept the assistance without complaint because he, too, knew it was inevitable.

Finally back into a comfortable position, Dean sighed and lowered his eyes, unwilling to look at Sam. It was his only defense, the only thing he still had to protect his pride. He couldn't say thanks, because 'Thank You' meant admitting needing the help in the first place, and as much as he knew he needed it couldn't say it out loud. And he knew Sam understood.

Silence once again enveloped the car, interrupted only by the rumble of the engine as Sam started the car and pulled back out onto the quiet road. Reaching out a hand, Sam patted Dean on the knee, the silent gesture enough to tell the older brother that it was alright to grieve in his own way, to heal in his own way. Whatever he needed, Sam would provide.

xxxxxxxxxx

Two and a half hours and multiple twists and turns down a winding one lane road in the middle of the forest had Sam pulling the car off the road into the gravel car park of the cabin Bobby had directed him to. He sighed, sliding both hands through his hair and resting the heels of his palms against his closed eyes for a minute, taking the opportunity to rest before waking his once again sleeping brother.

Sam was tired, exhausted actually, but he couldn't tell Dean that. He couldn't let his brother know that the stroke that came out of nowhere and ripped Dean's world apart was affecting him just as much. Couldn't tell him that he wasn't sure he had the strength to get him through this, and that he was beginning to think it was a mistake to pull him from the hospital, regardless of the presence of the law. Truth be told, they could have waited to escape after Dean had received the proper rehabilitation. He would have been kept under surveillance while he recovered, but would not have been taken from the hospital.

Ultimately, though, Sam knew he had done the right thing pulling Dean from the hospital. He was just scared, fearful that he couldn't be everything Dean needed him to be right now. It didn't matter how much Dean was willing to put into his rehabilitation if neither one of them knew how to work a proper rehab program. Which meant Sam wouldn't be getting any rest anytime soon. He had research to do; lots and lots of research. Because if Dean was going to get better Sam had to know how to help him.

Break time over, Sam finished the draw of his hands through his hair before reaching to the side and shaking Dean awake. "Hey, sleepy head, we're here," he said gently, waiting only long enough for Dean to stir before he climbed from the car to get his brother's door.

It was then that he noticed his mistake, their mistake. It was then that Sam realized the problem that came from not being able to tell Bobby of Dean's brain trauma, and he moaned out a soft 'shit,' before dropping his hands to the side, feeling defeat for his brother before Dean even knew of their latest obstacle.