Sum: There were a few times they bounced off each other but kept up their whirl to no end. They'd just rebound and dance right past each other as if to continue on to oblivion.


September 16, 2015

"Go! Go! Go!" Mom laughs, as Dean takes off with the football. She placed Sam in John's arms.

"You cheat." Dad accused when his eldest reached the far end of the yard.

"No one said I couldn't play dirty." Mom grinned innocently.

Sam squealed, jerking the ballcap from his father's head.

"Don't think you weren't part of this," Dad jokes. He looks up as Dean trots back to them, football still in hand. "What do you think Dean? Think Sammy's ready to throw around a pigskin?"

Dean shakes his head as he giggles. "No, Dad."

"We'll give him a few more years,"

The next night the house was swallowed in flames.

He stared at the wood of the front door. Somehow he had gotten here, he didn't exactly know how, but he had. From the hospital to his mother's grave, to here.

The person who opened the door rubbed at his blue eyes. "Why are you- Dean?" He stopped in his tracks.

Dean didn't say a word. All of a sudden he was able to smell himself. He still reeked of smoke and ash. He shouldn't have come here. He shouldn't ruin Cas's night - or morning. But the other man was already standing in front of him, pulling him inside.

"What happened Dean? What's wrong?"

Dean said nothing, couldn't say anything.

"Do you have anybody? Someone, I should call?"

He found his voice, "don't got anybody. Not anymore." The response was automatic, mechanic even.

Castiel deflated.

How did he find a man like this? How could Castiel still be this great, and stick around Dean?

Would he leave too? Just like almost everyone else had?

Dean clung to him unashamedly. He just needed this one thing to stay. To kindle into a flame that would continue to burn. That would always keep burning. One thing to light his life and not disappear. He needed to catch the flame.

Angels are watching over you.

Maybe he knew an angel. He certainly had an idea. One that could set fire to his entire world, pull him from the darkness he was in. Pull him from the hell he had sunk into.

Angels are watching over you, Dean.

He could almost hear her voice or at least swore he could. Though, really, all he was hearing that annoying beeping. Dean's nose was flooded with the sharp tang of antiseptic. Groggily he knew where he was. Hospital.

There was the stick of a needle in the crease of his left elbow. Still a pulsing on his right shoulder. No uncomfortable sliding of a cannula under his nose, thankfully. As he surfaced more, the blackness was interrupted by an onslaught of light. The back of his eyelids took on more of a pinkish red hue.

When Dean was finally able to pry his lids open, the first thing he noticed was his brother.

Sam hunched in the cheap hospital chair. An unopened book lay in his lap. He was either asleep or staring blankly at the cover. Dean was given an answer when Sam glanced up a moment later.

He let out a massive breath. "Dammit, Dean. You're going to get yourself killed one of these days if you keep this up." Sam set his head in his hands. "First you go missing, then after I find you, you drop to the floor seizing." He started massaging his temples. "Dehydration, infection, low blood pressure…" Sam listed. "They had to dig a fucking bullet from your arm. Along with whatever had lodged in thereafter."

He ran his fingers through his long mane. His look becoming distant, as if he was seeing another time, rather than the present. "I can still hear the fucking heart monitor. How it went crazy as I had to watch you jerk helplessly on the bed."

But hadn't the eldest Winchester collapsed on the floor of the Roadhouse? Dean was certain of it. He shakily remembered Ellen's voice yelling for an ambulance.

The Roadhouse… the night out.

The gunshots. "Adam?" Dean rasped. "Cain?"

Sam's puppy dog eyes lifted again. "Cain… Cain's gone, Dean."

"Colette?" He felt the weight. The blow of another body landing on top of his, crushing him. Stickiness of the blood as it slipped past his fingers. "Adam?"

"Yeah, Jody and Bobby have talked to her." The second question stayed unanswered.

Anything else that could have been said was interrupted. "It's a lot better to see you up and talking." Michael grinned from the doorway. "How are you doing, Dean?"

"Uh…" He really didn't know.

Michael went through the motions, checking stats and temperature. "Temps finally down, I think we have this infection handled. Should be able to go home by the end of the day." When the doc grabbed Dean's arm, the patient hissed. "Oh yes. This was packed full of dust, dirt, hell, there were a few rocks too." Doc stood back, jotting things down. "It may have been for the best. There was enough evidence in your arm to put that Walker boy away for a very long time. That agent sticking in town suspected he was working with that Alastair Nomed man."

Dean stayed silent. There were a few other things that he'd like to discuss with his brother. One being that he had seen their mother - which was impossible since she'd been dead for 30 years. He waited until Michael left the room.

"You said something yesterday," Sam was the first to speak.

"Yeah," Dean rubbed the back of his neck.

"What did I lie about, Dean?"

"I thought I saw Mom…"

Both brothers looked at one another confused.

Dean looked away from his sibling. He needed to tell him sometime.

"Dean," Sam set his book on the chair beside him. "Mom is-"

"Yes, they're both fine. Thank you, Mick." Another conversation drifted in from the hallway.

He knew that voice. Dean sat up even more at the sound. He knew her. His fingers deftly found the IV as she stepped into the doorway, sliding her phone into her pocket. The moment he was no longer tied to the IV, Dean hoisted himself from the bed. His bare feet hit the freezing linoleum floor. He didn't feel it. Every single ounce of his attention was zoned in on the woman standing in the doorway of his hospital room. This undoubtedly was the same woman who had been at the Roadhouse. The same one he hadn't seen since he was four years old. In that cold November night when the house nearly burnt to the ground. Dean didn't know how she was here, but he honestly didn't give a damn.

He hesitated, gingerly reaching toward her shorter figure. "Are you- are you real?"

Mary Winchester looked up at her eldest son. The curl of her blonde hair brushing her shoulders. Her blue eyes sparkled as if she hadn't aged a day since her sons had last seen her. "Dean I-"

Dean cut her off by encasing her within his strong arms, pulling her into a mountain of a man. He rested his cheek on top of her head. He held onto her as if she'd be gone again if he let go. "Hi, Mom,"

If Mary felt the wet droplets that landed in her hair, she didn't acknowledge them. Dean was grateful for that. Just as he didn't mention the wet spots on the stark-white hospital shirt. When the two separated, Dean's hands lingered on his mother's shoulders.

Mom smiled brightly, "you boys grew up." She leaned over to glance at Sam past her eldest.

It was a quarter past twelve by the time they released Dean. He was getting restless. Michael would have preferred to keep the stubborn man longer, but knew he couldn't keep the Winchester down.

Sam and Mom walked ahead of him on their way out. Dean detoured to a different hallway, stopping at the closed door that kept him outside his baby brother's room. He observed through the small window next to the door. The room was dark, the only things lighting it was the screens surrounding Adam's bed. The younger man's eyelashes lay innocently against his pale cheeks. An oxygen mask obscured the rest of Adam's features. He had a hell of a recovery before him, right now he just needed sleep.

"Sometimes the body just needs to shut down before it can start up again. Give itself time to heal."

Dean has heard that somewhere before. Not sure where, but it was one of many seemingly insignificant things tucked into the back of his mind. His fingers mindlessly flipping Benny's quarter in his pocket.

For now, Adam was still breathing, still kicking. That was all that mattered.

"Dean?" His mother called from down the hall. "You coming?"

"Yeah, yeah. Just give me a second." Without hesitation, Dean opened the door. He pulled his wallet out and set a penny down on the bedside table. President Lincoln's profile faced the blank tile ceiling. Dean smoothed back some of Adam's hair.

"You did good, you did good." He had to use all his willpower to keep 'kid' out of the sentence. "I'll be here for whenever you wake up." Dean patted his shoulder.

"Alright, I have to ask." Sam declared after they had settled into a booth at the Roadhouse. Food was ordered, Ellen made sure to give Dean hell, and their mother had gone to the bathroom. Dean held his father's leather-bound journal, having grabbed it from the back of the Impala on a whim.

"The hell you goin' on about Sammy?" Dean was paging through the old battered thing, looking at the dusty photos inside.

"What were you talking about yesterday? You hadn't said a word and next thing I know you're telling me I lied."

Dean's green eyes flitted up to his brother across from him. There was a flash of panic. How much was he hiding? Dean groaned, rubbing his temple. All this behind-his-back parading was starting to give him a headache.

"Dean, what did you mean?"

"What you said about the apartment fire a couple years ago," Dean corrected himself, "several years ago."

"The?"

Dean nodded.

"What do you remember?"

He was starting to despise that line, "enough."

Sam gulped as Dean closed the journal.

"Enough to know that what you said was mostly bullshit."

"Not all of it,"

"Most of it. The important stuff."

"Dean I didn't-"

Dean held up a hand. "Amnesia or not, I know for a fact that I carried my best friend out of that fire." He could feel the weight across his shoulders, on top of his chest. "It was Benny who got Bobby and the Chief who brought out Dad."

Sam's shoulders slumped in defeat. "You really remember?"

Dean nodded. "Running into that inferno with Rufus at my heel before we separated. Dad went off alone, that was before the main office started pushing the two-in-two-out rule. Don't know how it happened, but he was on his own, or whoever was with him bailed. Paramedics tried resuscitation. He was just, he was just… gone."

There was a squeak from the tread of a shoe, Dean looked up to find their mother with wide eyes. They softened as they glazed over. "I always told him…" Mary looked away. "So, it was a fire?"

Sam opened his mouth, but it was Dean who answered. "Yes."

Mary sat down as she brushed back some of her shorter hair.

"He took what was supposed to be my first shift."

She buried her head in her hands. Dean wrapped a protective and comforting arm around his mother. She tucked her head underneath his chin. The brothers shared a look.

Mom was back. They didn't know how or why, but this seemed to be the win they were waiting for.

September 24, 2015

Dean was going down the stairs when Sam made a beeline for the bathroom. He'd been staying over off and on since Dean said their mother could take the guest bedroom. Charlie had made arrangements elsewhere. Dean could only wonder what Jess thought of all of this. Hell, he still couldn't wrap his mind around it all.

Though the sound of his mother's voice caused him pause once he was on the ground floor. Dean took a few steps from the living room to peer into the kitchen. He was rolling up his sleeves having a few things planned for the day. Mary er- Mom was leaning against the counter, pancakes sizzling on the stove to near perfection.

"I know, and I'm sorry for not checking in when I was supposed to. It's just, you all still have tabs on me. There's also the point that I'm not as immersed in the program as I had to be back then." Mary -Mom- pinned the phone to her shoulder as she flipped breakfast.

There was an accented voice on the other line, but he couldn't make out the words.

"No, Mick. I'm with my boys. I haven't told them yet, but I'd like to. You know just as well as I do that the term Hunter isn't that well known."

Dean took another step forward. He mentally cursed the wood flooring as it creaked. He had always forgotten about that spot.

"Now you can tell them to calm down since I checked in. I should go, thanks." Mary sighed, tucking her phone away.

Dean stood quietly in his own kitchen. He was reminded of the fact that he practically let a stranger into his own home.

"How much of that did you hear?"

"Enough," he found himself saying this line too often.

Mary took a deep breath in. "Dean, you have to understand-"

"Understand what? There is nothing to understand unless you stop giving excuses and start explaining."

By this time Sam has made his way down the stairs. His button-up neatly tucked into his slacks. "What's going on?"

Dean crossed his arms, leaning against the jutting out wall. His jaw set, eyes sharp. "Mick, as in Mick Davies? Jackasses of Letters?"

Sam snapped to attention at this. His hand paused on the seat he had just pulled from under the table. "The one that came up to us during the road trip?"

Dean's gaze didn't waver from his mother. "The very one, Sammy. I suspect his 'partner' was tailing us back in Texas too."

Sam turned soft questioning eyes to their mother.

Mary shook her head, pulling up a stool from the island to sit down. "I'm a Hunter."

"What?" Sam questioned.

"The night of the fire, the one that should have killed me… I got out using the nursery window. Or rather, someone had pulled me out. Next thing I know I have Federal agents staring at me, saying I can't go home. The MoL is the federal branch that Mick and Ketch specialize in, they run the Hunters. The protection 'program' that I was entered into soon after the fire. They tried to keep me stationed in Kansas for the last ten, but before that, I was all over."

Dean stiffened. "So you've been running around with this little Brit book club for the last thirty years? And what, did they run you like a soldier?"

Sam tried to speak up, "Dean Dad-"

"That is different." Dean barked. "No birthday cards, New Years wishes. Oh, and God forbid sending a 'hey I'm alive! Hope you're doing fine!'"

"I am trying to play 30 years of catch-up! I had to miss a lot of your childhood, missed everything for Sam!"

"Nine years ago, the ratty old apartment fire. Hear about that? That one killed two firefighters. Almost three." Dean shifted. "The warehouse fire last year, hear about that one?"

"They aren't calling it an accident. They say it's arson."

Mom -Mary's- face fell. "Dean-"

"Guess you didn't." Dean pulled his boots on and grabbed a jacket. "Lock the door when you leave." His hand was on the doorknob when Mary spoke again.

"I am not just a mother, and you- you are not a child."

He let out a cold huff. "No, I never was."

The only response to that was the door clicking shut.

Dean waited for the nurse to finish up and walk out before he entered the room. He's done this every day for the past week.

Adam looked up, his fluffed hair sticking in one odd direction. He gave a lopsided grin complete with a nasal cannula. "Dude, I got all the hot chicks fawning all over me."

"Yeah, that tends to happen." Dean set the plastic bag down. There were wings designed around the logo of Sip of Heaven.

Adam flipped the penny in his hand, big doe eyes watching his older brother pull the foam cups out. "Did you really?"

Dean glanced up, "I did."

Adam took the first gulp of his favorite drink. He paused for a moment before spinning the penny on the small lap table the nurse had brought over for him. Dean set his cup down, placing the quarter on its side before flicking it too. He watched both coins rotate in near endless circles as he tried his own drink. Both cups held the same one.

The coins bounced off each other several times. The brothers would reset them again and again.

Most the time the quarter knocked the penny down. A few times the penny interrupted the quarter's rotation. Each time the coins were set back up. Continuing their infinite path of spinning as Dean leaned back in his chair, and lifted a cup of Milk and Cookies to his lips.

There were a few times they bounced off each other but kept up their whirl to no end. They'd just rebound and dance right past each other as if to continue on to oblivion.


There is...

ONE CHAPTER LEFT!

(of course, there will be an epilogue and an extra scene(s) chapter)