THEN:

Dean couldn't quite believe what he was hearing his little brother saying. "What part of 'vampires' don't you understand, Sam? If it's supernatural, we kill it, end of story. That's our job," he insisted, almost pleading, not understanding why he had to explain this to Sam. They had been doing this all their lives.

"No, Dean, that is not our job," Sam said. "Our job is hunting evil; and if these things aren't killing people, they're not evil!"

Dean felt his temper rise. "Of course they're killing people, that's what they do. They're all the same, Sam. They're not human, okay? We have to exterminate every last one of them."

"No, Dean, I don't think so, all right? Not this time."

Man, he and Sam'd had some really weird disagreements over the years but he had never seen this one coming. "Gordon's been on those vamps for a year, man, he knows."

"Gordon?" The skepticism in Sam's voice was hard to take.

"Yes," Dean answered shortly.

"You're taking his word for it?"

Sam didn't say 'over your own brother's' but it was there just the same.

Dean lifted his chin. He hardly ever hated Sam for his height, but right at the moment he did. Being able to look his 'little' brother squarely in the collar bone sucked sometimes.

"That's right," he said, tightly.

Sam got that look in his eyes, like he was trying to be patient. "Ellen says he's bad news."

Incredulous, Dean demanded, "You called Ellen?"

Sam nodded, looking oh-so-reasonable.

"And I'm supposed to listen to her?" Dean asked, "We barely know her, Sam, no thanks, I'll go with Gordon."

"Right," Sam drawled. "'Cause Gordon's such an old friend. You don't think I can see what this is?"

"What are you talking about?" Because so help him, if Sam was going to psychoanalyze him, Dean was going to throttle him.

"He's a substitute for Dad, isn't he? A poor one."

And there it was, the pysch stuff. "Shut up, Sam," Dean growled.

Sam pushed on anyway, relentless, looking at Dean with pity. "He's not even close, Dean; not on his best day."

"You know what? I'm not even going to talk about this," Dean snapped.

Sam ignored him. "You know, you slap on this big fake smile but I can see right through it. Because I know how you feel, Dean. Dad's dead. And he left a hole, and it hurts so bad you can't take it, but you can't just fill up that hole with whoever you want to. It's an insult to his memory."

Dean wanted to walk away. He did. "Okay," he said, fed up, starting to turn away.

But then he whirled back around, taking advantage of the momentum, fist balled and taking aim before he even knew it. He punched Sam in the jaw, hard, hard enough to snap Sam's head around.

Sam staggered but recovered quickly, touching his knuckles to the bruise on his jaw. He stood back up, slowly and Dean braced for the return punch.

But it didn't come. Sam, damn him….. Sam just said, all too softly, in an echo of what he had said to John all those years ago,"

"You can hit me all you want. It won't change anything.

(0)

Now:

Dean woke up abruptly, uncertain for a moment if he'd been traveling through time for a moment or if he had been dreaming, reliving a hard memory.

The hospital was quiet, not entirely dark but lights dimmed for the night. He took a moment to make sure his dream/memory hadn't set off his heart monitor. He didn't need a bunch of nurses running in here right now.

It had been unsettling and Dean took some time to lie back on the pillow and recover from it.

Sam had been right that time. Sam was almost always right. He had really good instincts. He'd learned to listen and take in his surroundings in the backseat of the Impala. He'd learned to read people and he was good at it. He was so far outside the box he didn't know a box existed, always 5 steps ahead of Dean even on Dean's best days.

It had made him jug headed and stubborn as all hell, impossible to deal with when he was wrong because he was so often right.

He looked up into the dark and said, quietly, "Raethaniel? If you can hear me, I'd like to talk. It's about Sam."

He wasn't sure if it would work but a moment later Raeth was sitting in the chair by the bed.

"Hello, Dean. Shouldn't you be sleeping?" She asked.

"Yeah," he sat up, raised his knees and linked his arms around them. "But I had a dream and-"

He paused and she filled in the blanks. "About Sam?"

"Yeah," he scratched his fingers through his already disheveled hair. "Not really a dream. I was remembering something that happened a long time ago."

"Is it still relevant?"

"Well, only in that my brother is still one stubborn bastard when he wants to be."

"And this is relevant because?" She let the sentence trail off, watching him carefully. Her expression was hidden by the night shadows.

"He scared the crap out of me," Dean admitted, "when he went after Alastair, the way he did it. Sam and I are both hunters, both raised in the life. But Sam never takes any satisfaction in it. He's efficient and he does what he has to do and he's stone cold about it. But the way he went after Alastair, it was cold but it was … I don't know, vicious. That's not Sam."

"I can talk to him again," she offered. "About Ruby."

Dean snorted. "I've talked to him. Now I want to beat him until I've knocked some sense into him."

"What is stopping you?"

Dean's sigh sounded more like a muffled growl. "It won't work. He'd just let me beat him and then get up, dust himself off and walk away. He's got the highest level of pain tolerance I've ever seen in a human being." He paused and his eyes got a faraway look, part remniscing, part astonished admiration. "I remember this one time, Sam was about 8 or 9 I guess. He fell out of a tree, on my watch of course. I swear he did stuff like that to me on purpose. Anyway, he dislocated his shoulder. I wanted to take him to the hospital but it was a pretty long way off and all we had was a bike. So he let me pop it back in and I know that had to hurt. It had to hurt like a son-of-"

He broke off with an apologetic glance, remembering he was talking to an angel. "Well, I've dislocated my shoulder a few times since then and it hurts; and he was a kid. But he hardly made a sound. His just gritted his teeth together and squeezed his eyes shut and then we put some ice on it and I gave him some Tylenol. Two hours later I looked out the window and he was climbing the same damned tree. I almost ran out the door yelling at him to get down but there was something in his face. He was so determined to do it. So I let him and he climbed as high as he could and then he climbed down and we never talked about it again. I'm telling you, he'd break his leg and look me straight in the face and say he was fine."

"So you are saying that pain isn't going to stop Sam from doing something he believes is the correct thing for him to do and he won't back down from a challenge just because he suffers setbacks?" Raeth guessed.

"No he won't," Dean said. "I love my brother. I'd do just about anything for him. But I can't let him keep doing this. It's already changing him."

"He loves you too," Raeth whispered softly, "and more importantly he trusts you, far more than he does me."

Dean looked miserable. His brother's trust was the one thing he hoped never to lose and the one thing he was going to have to risk if he was going to help him. He kind of missed the days when Sam had looked up to him, thought Dean was Superman and Batman all rolled up into one. Those days hadn't lasted all that long but they had been pretty sweet now that Dean thought back to them.

"Raeth," Dean said, "You said that you can't interfere with his free will?"

"That's right," she acknowledged.

"But I can?"

"I couldn't stop you," she told him.

"Couldn't or wouldn't?" Dean demanded.

The look she gave him was frank and direct, unnerving in their sheltered little room. "Both."

He nodded satisfied and relaxed back onto the pillow for the first time since he had woken up from the dream.

"What are you going to do, Dean?" She asked.

"For the moment, nothing," he answered, "Just get him out of here, hit the road, find a hunt to keep him occupied if I'm lucky. After that….." His voice trailed off and he let out a deep sigh, "After that I'll do whatever I have to do to keep my brother alive."

"Just like always," Raethaniel remarked cryptically.

But Dean nodded. "Yep. Just like always."

(0)