NOW

Sam leaned against a tree. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see Dean on the floor, and Adam's cries rang in his ears. John's face. His stomach lurched again, threatening to send him dry-heaving for another five minutes.

Pathetic, the creature said, it had been quiet for a long time, flickering in the same spot, deep shadows clouding its face despite the light of dawn breaking through the trees. Weak. You haven't changed at all.

"Stop it," Sam said weakly.

To his surprise, it didn't say anything else. It was as still as an image in a photograph, but it flickered unsteadily, all the time. He took a deep breath and straightened. He wasn't dead yet, he reminded himself, the scene in the bathroom hadn't happened. Not to him, anyway. Not to his Dean, or his Adam, or their father. "What are you?"

Outcast, it said. It is what all creatures and their makers call me. The name chose me, and in time I embraced it.

That didn't answer anything, but playing twenty questions with a monster was probably not a good idea anyway. Sam knew he should be running, but he had nowhere to run to. "What do you want? Why are you doing this?"

I brought your brothers back because their world was going to die. I gave you a second chance out of deference to their pain, but you wasted it again. Why did I take you away and show you the pain you caused? Because when I kill you, I want you to know how much you will suffer. What do I want? I want you to beg for your life Samuel Winchester.

###

NINE YEARS AGO

John didn't talk about Sam, after the middle Winchester punched a bullet through his skull. It was the silence that finally got to Dean, the ragged, septic hole in their family. It ate away at them all, even Adam who didn't really understand what happened. It was like he had somehow erased the memory of that day from his mind, like the blood and the hysterical SamSamSam was just… gone.

For a while Dean thinks Adam has forgotten about their brother completely. It feels like he's the only one who thinks about Sam, the only one who remembers a time when there were four of them, not three. Every day he feels an empty space where Sam should be.

He can't ask Adam about what his youngest brother is thinking. Adam spends all of his time shadowing Bobby in the yard, or reading in the front room while the hunter is away. He's stronger than the rest of them, he's a small kid, but he helps John up the steps to his room when the older man is too drunk to move by himself. He leaves sandwiches for Dean to find outside his room, or on the workbench when Dean is working on the junkers.

It worries Dean that Adam hasn't asked any questions. It seems like Sam never existed to him, and his guardians have always been half-crazy with grief, an involuntary defense his child-brain had cooked up in a hurry. Any word might break that spell. Any mention of their missing brother, of the gun, and the extra duffel could destroy the illusion. Dean wasn't about to do it.

Adam hasn't cried since that night, and Dean knows. He sleeps lightly these days, and he can't help but strain his ears to hear Adam's gentle snores on the other side of the room. How could Adam sleep when Sam had just disappeared from their lives? How could he sleep without worrying that Dean might now do the same?

Because it's crossed Dean's mind a few times, fleeting, horrifying scenarios and justifications. He has nightmares that cross into night-time hallucinations and back into nightmares that he takes his gun and follows Sam. He dreams that he's hunting and his finger hesitates too long on the trigger. It's terrifying how much he wants the thing of claws and darkness to rip into him. He wants Sam back so much, the guilt and longing make him physically sick.

For weeks Dean wakes up in Bobby's spare room after only two or three hours of fitful sleep, running through the checklist of where his brothers are, and where his father has gone, how much food they have, what they should be doing to get to school on time. It's ingrained too deep, too much a part of who he is.

He wanted so badly to scream and cry and break the world, but he had Adam to look after. He had his father to hate, and he had s many unanswered questions he felt like he was hunting blind. There were no rules to this monster. Werewolves—Silver. Revenant—silver. Wendigo—fire. Ghost—salt and iron. Mother killed by demon - Revenge. These were all simple equations, facts of his life.

But his brother had shot himself in the head. Sam had blown his brains out in a locked room, with his family a dozen steps away. Where was the logic in that?

The first time Bobby took Adam and left Dean and his father alone in the scrapyard, Dean had found his father at the kitchen table, staring at a half-drunk beer.

He doesn't remember exactly what he said. It's messy noise in his head, all jumbled words and phrases he can't imagine himself ever voicing to his father.

How could you—

Where were you—

Why didn't you—

John takes it all passively, staring straight ahead. Only the constant twitch in his jaw tells Dean his father is listening, but it's not enough.

When Bobby and Adam came back, his kitchen had been torn apart, glass littered the floor. Two of the wooden chairs had been reduced to kindling, even the short curtains over the sink had been torn down, one side of the rod still attached to the wall, the other resting in a dent it had made in the sink.

And John sat untouched, with the same blank look on his face.

"Dean?" Bobby asked cautiously.

"Sorry, Bobby," Dean said, and his voice was coarse and hollow. "I'll fix it."

After that, John took him out on his hunting trips, but just leaves him a few counties over with a therapist in Montana who knows about the life. She doesn't like John very much, but that suits Dean fine. He'll follow his father's orders in front of a machine gun, but he doesn't like to look at the man anymore.

She tried to get him to talk, and Dean didn't know why he kept coming, because he never spoke to her. He didn't play any of the games she set out for him, or read any of the books, or watch any of the movies. He listened to her talk, because it distracted him from his fear for a while.

They didn't tell Adam. It was part of that delicate balance that could tip at any moment and break the only Winchester who still seemed to be going strong. It didn't last long anyway because of course the therapist got knifed in the back with a strange silver stake. John took note of the method, but the lore didn't turn up anything on what kind of monster she might have been.

"I'll find someone else," John said after they'd salted and burned her, just in case.

Dean shook his head, watching the linen catch. "No," he said bleakly. "It wasn't working."

John's never been one to doubt Dean. And he never believed in talking anyway. He just nods, and is maybe relieved he doesn't have to drive to Montana one a week.

She had talked a lot about 'moving on' and 'letting go'. In between the long stretches of silence while she waited for him to speak, she talked a lot about healing and forgiveness.

Dean didn't want anything to do with that.

###

NOW

"You're going to kill me? How is that going to change anything?"

If nothing else, I'll enjoy it.

"Do you know about me?" Sam asked, forcing the words out as he stood up. "About what the yellow-eyed demon did? And Lucifer?"

Of course.

"Then why did you try to stop me? You said you wanted save the world, and my brothers. If I'm alive, I'll destroy it all! I'll hurt people, I'll… I'll kill Dean."

You'd have to say yes, first. Lucifer can't possess you without permission.

Sam snorted before he could stop himself. Tears were stinging his eyes and nose. He was hysterical and trapped. "You think I'll say no? After all this? Isn't it proof enough of what I am? You were right! I'm weak and everyone knows it."

Dean broke the first seal on Lucifer's cage, Outcast said calmly. You alone are not responsible. As for saying yes to Lucifer, didn't you wonder where you would go? Before this you didn't think much about Heaven or hell. You didn't believe in it at all, despite everything you've seen. But now? Knowing that there is one, don't you wonder where you were? Why Lucifer's followers didn't resurrect you right here, right now, to begin preparations?

"I—" Sam swallowed.

They needed a Winchester on the racks of hell. A righteous man, kin to Abel and Cain. Thousands of years of breeding to produce the brothers who could be vessels for Lucifer and Michael. Alive or dead, you are of interest.

"Hell?" Sam said. "I was—I'm in hell?"

You spent five hundred years in hell, and the best and brightest of their torturers tore you apart and put you back together, and tried to break you every day, but you refused the reigns. No matter how they tried, what pain they inflicted, you never said yes.

"Five hundred years?" Sam whispered. His skin crawled.

Time is different in hell, time is different everywhere. They built you a very special level of hell, all to yourself, and the reward for making you break was freedom from the pit.

The blue creature paused. I think I will take you there.

"To hell?"

Sam was already backing away, but Outcast was supernaturally fast, in the blink of an eye, it was standing a few inches away and his arm whipped out and closed over his elbow. To hell. It said.

###

Two Years ago (Adam)

Dean's got one hundred and twenty two days left before his deal comes up short. Adam celebrates by drinking with a false ID. He doesn't know what else to do. It didn't help. It just made everything worse, but it was the only coping mechanism that was tried and true by the hunter's less than scientific method. He was drunk by the time Dean found him there. He's surprised Dean found him at all, this is that last place he'd expect to find himself.

The thought makes him want to laugh, but at the sight of his older brother's face, he realized it's really the last thing he wants to do.

"What are you doing here?" Dean asks him, his voice tight and unhappy.

"Trying not to think about my brother killing himself."

It's the wrong thing to say, but he can't bring himself to care anymore.

Dean's hands press down on the bar and Adam clarifies with a sigh. "I mean you, dickhead."

"I'm not killing myself," Dean growled, motioning the bartender over. "Can I get a whiskey? Double. Neat."

It's supplied in short order and Dean hunches over the tumbler as if afraid someone is going to snatch it out of his hands. "I'm not killing myself," he said again. His voice lower.

"You're not saving yourself either," Adam said. "Four months Dean. That's four months I have left to see how much you don't care about your own life. Your own soul. You don't wanna be saved, I can see that. I know that, but I can't understand it. Sam-"

"I'm not Sam," Dean snapped. "Don't ever say that"

Adam shook his head. "I wasn't going to," he said quietly. "But what's wrong with you?"

"Nothing," Dean said. He tried to smile. "I'm fine, just enjoying what I have left."

"I don't want to do this without you," Adam says, his voice barely above a 's surprised that Dean hears it, and jerks reflexively as his brother's hand closed over his arm.

"Don't you dare," Dean said harshly, voice gruff with emotions that neither of them share anymore. Not unless they're both drunk, or on their way.

"It's true," Adam said vehemently, his mouth is numb from and he's feeling reckless in a way he never has before. "What do you think I'm going to do?"

"You find Bobby," Dean said. "And you keep going. You go for as long as you can. I don't care if you stop hunting. I don't care if you find someone else to hunt with. You keep going."

###

It was Dean's nightmare. He knew it was, because he's taken the dreamroot and he's going to gank that Freddy Kruger wannabe, and then he's going to sleep for a week, damn the time he's got left. If he's going to hell in four months, he's going well rested with a belly full of the best damn cheeseburgers in these United States.

But he recognizes the motel room with a jolt—the table where he had raced Adam and John. The bedspread with stripes of yellow and green. It's the motel room where he lost Sam. He's not sure when it stopped being a dream, but when the gunshot echoes out, he's breaking his shoulder against the door. Maybe he can save Sam this time, maybe he can—

"Sam!"

The door broke open and his mouth was already open to scream Sam's name again because he could see the body in the tub, and all the blood he thought he could forget.

But it was Adam there. Head thrown back, gun caught on his trigger finger, eyes half-open and already glazed over with death. He closed his eyes, ignoring the speed of his heart and the scream that wants to tear out his throat. Because Adam wouldn't. Didn't. Couldn't. He knows that. Sam is long dead, a precious memory, but a memory all the same.

What he doesn't expect is to turn away and be confronted by his own face. "Hey Dean," it says.

He took a step back, grasping onto this new thread of dream logic. "Well aren't you a handsome son of a gun," he rallied with a smile.

"We need to talk," the doppelganger said.

Dean nodded and began to walk in a circle, as did his dream self. They're walking in the same direction, circling like territorial dogs. "I get it. I get it. I'm my own worst nightmare, is that it? Kinda like the Superman III junkyard scene? A little mano y mano with myself?"

Dream Dean's face didn't twitch an inch towards anger or amusement. "Joke all you want, but you can't lie to me. I know the truth."

Dean stopped, they had changed places now and he was standing by a small writing desk, the only light in the room coming from the small lamp on top of it. He wasn't sure if he liked this new development. What was he supposed to do here?

"I see how dead you are inside. How worthless you feel. I know how you look into a mirror… and hate what you see."

Forcing a smile onto his face, Dean shook his head. "Sorry, pal. It's not gonna work. You're not real."

Dream Dean cocked his head to the side. It was eerie how tired he looked when he wasn't smiling. Dean felt off-balance. He was supposed to be in control here. He was in control here.

The hallucination wasn't helping at all. "Sure I am," dream Dean said. "I'm you."

"I don't think so. 'Cause see, this is my siesta. Not yours."

He raised his left hand. "All I gotta do is snap my fingers and you go bye-bye.

Dream Dean was staring at him intently, it was kind of freaking him out, so he snapped his fingers. The little click echoes around the hotel room. The smile faded from his face. Nothing happened. He snapped again, but his evil twin just watched him. He snapped three more times before he let his hand fall. He never realized before just how well his own face could communicate I-told-you-so without words.

"I'm not going anywhere, and neither are you."

The door slammed shut behind them both, and locked with a definitive series of clicks.

"Like I said," dream Dean said, raising a sawed-off shotgun in his right hand. Where the hell did he get a shotgun? "We need to talk, I mean, you're going to hell and you won't lift a finger to stop it."

Dean started circling again. The door locked from the inside right? But there was no guarantee he could open it, and even if he could, where would he empty out to? He was clearly not in control, despite all this happening in his own damn head.

He walked and tried to think. The bathroom with Adam's fake corpse in it was stillopen, but there was no way in hell he was going in there.

"Talk about low self-esteem," dream Dean chuckled. "Then again, I guess it's not much of a life worth saving, now is it?"

"Wake up," Dean whispered to himself. "Come on, wake up."

"I mean, after all, you've got nothing outside of Adam."

Dean stopped in his tracks and his doppelganger did the same. He was by the door again, but he was rooted to the spot.

"You're nothing," his dream reminded him. "You're as mindless and obedient as an attack dog."

Dean smiled in denial even as he found himself hanging on its every word. "That's not true."

"No? What are the things that you want? What are the things that you dream? I mean, your car? Dad's. Your favorite leather jacket? Dad's. Your music? Dad's. Do you even have an original thought?"

Dean shook his head, wanting to scoff, but there were no words left. His throat was closed. Anything he said felt like loosing.

"You killed Sammy," it whispered spitefully. "Watch out for Sammy," it mocked. "Look out for your little brother, boy! You can still hear it, can't you? And look what you did, you let him down. You let him put that gun to his head, made him eat that bullet."

It tapped the shotgun against its head and Dean flinched. He didn't like to see a gun so close to his own head, even if it was on a nightmare's shoulders.

It smiled. "I can hear it," it said. "Clear as a bell."

Dean shook himself clear, forcing his smile wider. "Just shut up."

Dream Dean lowered the gun. "I mean, think about it…" it walked towards him, and Dean forced himself to stand his ground. "All John ever did was ask you to take care of them. He trained you, he bossed you around, kicked you to the curb when you slowed him down. He kept so many damn secrets because he knew you couldn't be trusted, that you failed to save Sam."

They were standing inches apart, and there was nothing but his own face in his field of vision. "Shut up. I mean it."

"Dad knew who you really were. A good soldier, and nothing else. Daddy's blunt little instrument. He didn't care whether you lived or died. He wished it was you," he jerked his head towards the bathroom where Adam's corpse was. "Every day after that, he wished you were the one that was gone. Adam too—you think he wouldn't trade you for Sam in a heartbeat?"

"Son of a bitch!" Dean pushed himself hard, knocking him into the wall above the desk. "My father was an obsessed bastard!"

The doppelganger tried to get up, but Dean kicked him down onto the desk again. He held the shotgun like a bat and hit him again before pinning him to the wall with it.

"All that crap he dumped on me, about protecting Sam! That was his crap. He's the one who couldn't protect his family. He—"

He stepped back and swung the weapon again, hitting dream Dean twice. "He's the one who let Mom die! He's the one who gave Sam the gun and told him he had to use it. He was the reason we were in that motel room!"

He pinned Dream Dean again. "He wasn't there for Sam. I always was! He wasn't fair! I didn't deserve what he put on me! Sam died on his watch. Sam wanted out and Dad wouldn't even talk about it. Adam knows why Sam died! It's not my fault!"

He backed away, the gun determinedly pointed at his own chest. "I didn't kill Sam. And I don't deserve to go to Hell!"

In the heat of the moment, not thinking about anything other than his own rage and desperation, he shot twice. He lowered the weapon to stare at his own blood-spattered corpse. He took a hesitant step forward, looking down at him when suddenly the doppelganger's eyes flickered open—completely black.

"You can't escape me, Dean. You're gonna die. And this? This is what you're gonna become!"

###

When he wakes up, he tells Adam. He knows its been weighing on his little brother, and it makes this twice as hard to talk about. "I don't want to go to hell."

Until he said it, he didn't know how much it would raise the stakes, but it did. Adam at least looks determined. He looks a lot more focused and happy than he has for months. Dean knows that even if they don't find a way out of this, Adam will be just fine. He'll keep going.


Oh sweet fanfiction, you call with such sweet sorrow. Honestly, who knows when I will come again. Only that I must.