A/N: Y'all are going to kill me. But maybe before you do, go listen to the song below. It literally screams Sam Winchester and fits this story so perfectly. I can't even say happy reading this time…

Go rest high on that mountain,
'Cause, son, your work on Earth is done.
"Go Rest High on That Mountain" –Vince Gill

Dean woke up with sweat covering every inch of his body, his heart racing but his mind unable to grasp what the dream had been about. Sam, obviously. But someone else – or something else – had been at the edges. He thought at first the dream was what had waken him but then the phone on his bedside table rang shrilly in his left ear. His fingers were already reaching for it when the tone cut of mid-ring. He waited in the darkness, paralyzed, heart pounding.

This was it. He could feel it. Sam had died and Dean hadn't been there with him. He had been lying in his bed, his nice comfortable bed while his baby brother….

Sam had been in a coma for over thirty-six hours and Kat and the nurses had finally forced a sleep-deprived Dean to go home, telling him he couldn't see his brother again for a few hours.

"He won't even know you're gone," one of the nurses said. "I'll stay with him, okay?"

"He'll know," Dean insisted.

"I'll stay with him," the nurse repeated and Dean had turned his back and walked away.

God, he was going to be sick. He would have right then and there but the little bit of dignity left in him forced his legs over the side of the bed and he staggered out of the room, nearly collapsing under the weight of reality. Opening the door into the hallway, he almost ran into something, throwing himself back against the doorframe, one hand reaching absurdly for a gun he no longer carried.

"Dean?"

"Kat?" Her voice sounded clear enough, no tears. "I heard the phone…" He fumbled for the light switch inside the door to his room and found it, illuminating his sister-in-law in harsh light. She was fully dressed.

"It was the hospital. He's still alive." Dean's knees nearly buckled with relief. The crushing weight on his chest lessened but lingered, as if telling him it would be back. "But he went into cardiac arrest." She dipped her head, hair falling forward to hide her expression as her voice cracked.

Still, even after all these years, all these months of knowing what was coming, after watching him drift farther and farther away, the drive to protect Sam flooded Dean. Sam was hurt, Sam was sick, Sam was in trouble. And Dean couldn't breathe.

"We have to go," she said. She wasn't looking at him but at the front door, keys already in her hand.

"Yes," he mumbled. He ducked into the room to throw on pants and a jacket and then practically sprinted toward the front door, knowing Kat was already in the car. She had put herself in the passenger seat and from the way her hands were shaking, he was glad. Glad to have something to do, glad to grip his fingers around a steering wheel, a gas pedal beneath his foot. It was familiar territory and on the way to the hospital he thought of how many times he had raced to a hunt, how many hairpin turns the tires of the Impala had taken. This car – a silver SUV – was a clumsy giant compared to his baby but the desire to get somewhere as fast as he could was the same.

They pulled into the hospital twenty minutes later, making the now familiar trek through the various twists and turns of the sterile hallways and taking an elevator up to the oncology ward. He stopped outside his brother's room as Kat went forward to the nurses' station, seeking a doctor, information. Through the glass walls, Dean stared at the form on the bed.

Sam seemed to have shrunk since yesterday. His form once so tall and regal was merely a shell beneath the blankets. There were a couple new machines beeping by the bedside and his brother's skin had taken on a gray pallor. Dean could almost hear his brother's struggle to breathe as watched his chest rise erratically.

"Jesus, Sammy," he said under his breath. Behind him, he could hear Kat's voice speaking in hushed tones with Dr. Jones but he didn't even try to listen in. There was nothing new to hear anyway.

Kat's hand appeared on his shoulder and Dean turned, slightly shocked by the calm expression on her face. Perhaps she was still in denial. She was, after all, not as acquainted with death as Dean. Maybe it didn't frighten her as much as it did him. In that moment, he longed to live in the shadow of her ignorance, to un-know everything he knew about life.

"Dean, I just talked to Dr. Jones. He explained something to me." He just stared at her. The white-haired doctor was too sympathetic looking, his eyes too wide. Dean wanted to punch him, but instead he curled his hand into a fist inside his jacket pocket.

"What?" She looked hesitantly at the doctor but then plunged on, taking a deep breath as she did so.

"Sam had a massive heart attack. His heart – it's just working too hard – his whole body is. But he just keeps fighting."

"We managed to resuscitate him twice, Dean," Dr. Jones cut in. He said the words in a tone that bled comfort but all it did was make Dean nauseous. He can't believe he had liked this guy once. He curled his other fist. Kat seemed to sense his distress – amazingly – through her own.

"We think he's holding on," Kat said. "Dean, I've said goodbye to him, I've told him it's okay to go. It's not me he's waiting for."

Dean's heart groaned.

Sammy.

Without a word to either one of them, he walked into Sam's hospital room and shut the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the doctor put an arm around Kat's shoulder and lead her away.

The two brothers were alone again.

"Dammit, Sammy," Dean said, leaning against the door, gazing up at the white tiled ceiling in hopes to keep the tears at bay. They came anyway, pouring down his cheeks, burning his skin with salt. "You're not making this easy, you know?" He walked further into the room, placing one foot slowly in front of the other as if moving any faster would cause him to topple over. He sank into the bedside chair with the effort of a much older man.

"They think you're waiting for me. If only they knew you never waited for me for anything. You didn't wait when we were little and you ran ahead of me when we went to town. You didn't wait when we went on hunts, always putting yourself in danger without a thought. You didn't wait for me when you realized hunting wasn't the only thing there was in the world. I've always been so slow to catch up."

His head hung low and for the first time in all those years, Dean wished he still wore the amulet Sam had given him during Christmas when they children.

"But if you're waiting for me now, Sammy, I'm – God – I'm telling you it's okay to go ahead." His voice broke and the tears came with new meaning. "You're probably standing somewhere in this room aren't you, hiding from your reaper, huh? Or maybe you sweet-talked your way into staying some extra time. But that ain't the way, Sam."

Dean reached out and grabbed Sam's hand in his own, tracing the worn knuckles and the faded scars, marveling at the way his little brother's fingers were so much larger and longer than his own.

"You tell Mom and Dad I say hi, okay? And I'll keep watch of your little boy down here, I promise. He's going to grow up knowing how great his father was. I'm going to do right by you, Sammy. That's all I've ever wanted to do, you understand that?" The tears became too thick for Dean to continue speaking and all he could do was hold his brother's hand and cry, knowing this was the end. Of everything.

His whole body shook with grief.

"We had a good run, Sammy. But you can go to sleep now. I'll keep watch." Then, through the tears, Dean started humming a song, the same lullaby Mary had used to put her eldest child to bed. His voice rose and fell in the rhythm and as the humming turned into mumbled words, he felt a hand on his shoulder. When he turned to tell them to go away, no one was there. No one he could see. At the same moment, every machine in the room started going off and Dean knew.

It was over.

Sam Winchester was dead.

A/N: I know, I know. Do you know how many different ways I wrote this scene? I hope I did the boys of this 'verse justice. Remember that the story isn't quite over yet.