*Adele voice* Hello, it's me. This is a short AU scenario/exploration that takes place near the beginning of season 4. I'm not looking to extend it at this point...kind of thought I was done writing SPN, but apparently there was an extra round in the chamber. Enjoy!

Discordant

Dean knows that Hell is real the same way he knows the sky is real despite its intangibility. It's not something he thinks about actively, but then it rains. And when it rains, he can't quite separate the fat droplets from the pavement they're hitting. Finds it difficult to really see anything else. Hell's rain is perhaps as predictable as real rain, except Dean doesn't have access to the satellites or the Doppler radar that would help him understand the patterns, so it catches him off guard most times and he has to fall away inside his mind. Has to sleep and do his best not to dream.

And then a switch flips. A lever turns.

Most mornings that sky he doesn't actively think about, the real one, matches the blue uncertainty in Dean's head, the dull and cloudless wandering of musings that don't quite connect the way he knows they should. Dean had only smoked weed a couple times and he'd never liked it, and this reminds him of that: a strange, disconcerting distance between himself and his own thoughts. They run and he can't catch them. They hover and he can't jump to meet them.

"The nightmares seem better now. Have they been better lately?" Sam asks, and Dean nods because that part, at least, is true. Lately his snatches of sleep drift into hours of true rest. He's still foggy when he wakes, always, but he thinks that's probably just a side effect of forty years in Hell. Imagines just about everything he's been feeling and doing and thinking lately can be chalked up to that one little thing.

Every once in a while there will be little flashes of tearing skin and insides pulled out, but they come to him like whispers instead of the screams they used to be.

Sometimes when he's holding a gun, Dean forgets how to aim it. It's not a worrying thing because it never lasts long enough to cause more than a moment's hesitation, and Dean's such a quick shot that this really just means he's hovering at above-average speed on the trigger instead of insanely-above-average. It still stuns the ghosts, still kills the werewolves, still paralyzes the vampires with an arrow of Dead Man's Blood even if it's a second late. Sam doesn't notice the difference, so it can't be a real problem.

Sometimes when he's driving, he feels his Baby shift beneath him without familiarity, like she's forgotten how to mold to him and his hands and the pressure of his foot against the pedal. He never stalls out of course, and he doesn't overcompensate on the brakes or swerve along the roadside or anything that dramatic. This is more subtle than that, a guitar slightly out of tune. Anyone who isn't a musician wouldn't notice the difference. Sam doesn't notice the difference.

Sometimes when Dean looks at Sam, his little brother is a stranger. Just for moments, half-seconds at a time. This is the worrying thing. The thing that still wrestles Dean's sleep with uneasiness, even now that Hell is a faded, muted background noise. And he doesn't think Hell should've gone away so quickly. He doesn't miss it. He couldn't say that. But there is something terrifying in not being able to hold onto it, in knowing that it happened but feeling most days that it happened to someone else, a story he'd read about and only in snatches. Who is he without it? How does Dean Winchester move through the world without the weight of his past latched to his ankles, dragging him slowly back down to the place he's crawled out from?

"Are you okay?" Sam asks.

It must be the fourteenth time he's asked in two days. Dean's not exaggerating. He's found that tallying up little details can help him keep a grasp on the day as time and sunlight move past him with terrifying regularity. The motel is rustic in a way that could be cool, but isn't. They're researching, Dean thinks, both spread out on their beds like when they were children and Dad would leave them alone, but he can't really remember what the names and dates and places on his computer screen are supposed to be telling him. He used to be good at weaving together all the pieces and making a clear picture of the monster that needed killing, but it's getting harder and harder to remember how. Too much undoing. Dean slaps his hands over his cheeks. Is it afternoon? He doesn't know. A different question comes to him, as if he'd been thinking it all along. Maybe he had been.

"Your dog's name. Flagstaff, when you ran away. What was it?"

"Dean-?" Sam shifts on his bed. Sets down the papers in front of him and focuses all of his attention on his brother. Sometimes Dean likes being paid attention to. Now, he squirms beneath the scrutiny. There are holes in the ceiling of their room, tiny patterned dots that are meant to be part of the decoration. But they're holes. Just empty spaces.

"What was it?" Dean asks again.

"Bones."

Dean nods. Bones. Smooth and brittle beneath the surface. Just pull back the skin and there they are, waiting to be broken. It conjures something up, that name. A vague recollection of muted pain, and that's all it is. It should be sharper. It should hurt. He needs it to hurt so he can see where to go next. Needs to wade through it, but it's become smoke.

"Dean. Dude. What's wrong?" Same words, different meaning. Dean adds it to the tally board in his brain. Fifteen times in two days.

"Tired."

"Didn't you sleep? I didn't hear you having any nightmares. They're better, right? It really seems like they're better." Desperation in his tone. Dean wonders how often he'd kept his baby brother awake in those first few weeks, ugly noises clawing their way out from his throat, tainting the air.

"They're faded," Dean says, because he can't agree that it's better.

Sam runs a hand through his shaggy hair. "So you shouldn't be tired."

"Sorry. I'll let my brain know."

"I just mean-"

"Did we eat today?"

Sam blinks at him. "What?"

Dean realizes his mistake. He'd been thinking about it the way he's been thinking of most things lately- in little spurts of barely-remembered detail. There's maybe a vague picture of an omelette in front of him. Or was it waffles? He's sure he likes waffles better than omelettes. But maybe he'd been in the mood for something cheesy. Maybe he knew Sam would've scoffed at the lack of protein if he'd gone with the syrup-laden option. It's all conjecture. Did he finish breakfast? Did he start it? Is there something sitting inside of him now, breaking down inside the acid of his stomach, spinning itself into energy?

"I just mean I'm hungry," Dean says, and he thinks it's a good save. Sam's expression tells him it wasn't. Dean lives most of his life in direct relation to Sam's expressions- trying to make it so that his little brother's mouth twists up at the corners as often as possible, dimples splitting his cheeks. Big, happy eyes. A thing that's become more and more rare as the years have passed. Now, those eyes are crinkled with worry in a way that has become too familiar.

"We had breakfast like two hours ago."

Dean shrugs. "Okay, so I'm not allowed to be hungry or tired. Any other rules I should be aware of?"

"We have granola bars around here somewhere," Sam says, eyes darting for them like they're bound to simply materialize. But in the next moment he's picked up the papers on his bed and has gone back to researching like he'd never stopped, and Dean finds himself irrationally envious of the clarity with which Sam moves from one task to the next. Dean wonders if he used to be able to do the same before the cottony gauze of disconnection had settled over him and stayed, soft and enshrouding.

Dean stands up from the bed, feeling for the keys in his jacket pocket even as he finds it strange that he hadn't bothered to take it off once they'd gotten back to the room. Had he been cold? Too lazy? Had he wanted the feeling of an extra layer of insulation, a way to hold himself in and not spread apart? Or had he simply forgotten he'd ever ventured outside in the first place?

"Where are you going?" Sam asks when Dean's already at the door with it flung wide, letting in the chill.

"Food," is all Dean says before he leaves. Clicks the door shut softly so Sam doesn't think they're fighting and hops behind the wheel.

He surfaces a little later and it's to find himself driving, driving quickly along a two-lane highway with the blur of headlights coming from the other lane and that's strange because he's sure it had just been daylight only a moment ago. The car passes him and then the road is empty, just the pavement under him and no music on the radio. He thinks of pulling over and thinks of pulling over, but then he'd have to admit he doesn't know where he is. Better to drive and find a familiar sign, a way back to Sammy and the motel and the lost hours that mock him from the sudden darkness the way a hellhound had snarled just days and then hours and then seconds before Hell came to claim him.

His phone rings or maybe it's been ringing. He can't be sure. It's what allows him to finally pull over with just a little too much velocity, to tap just a little too hard on the brakes and not hesitate quite long enough before shifting into park. Just out of tune. He picks up his phone and Sam's voice is rough-edged and weary with anxiety.

"Dean! Where the hell are you, man?"

"Just driving," says Dean, except the last few letters get lost when he chokes on them. I don't know, his muddied mind screams. The road stretches and coils like wire inside the walls of an old house. His heart thumps a slippery beat like water has been retained inside his chest cavity and the valves keep opening and closing around the chill of it, searching for traction.

"Driving where?" It's been hours. I've been calling. Jesus, Dean, you can't just take off like that. You scared the shit outta me."

"Sorry," Dean says. Lately, he's usually sorry.

Sam huffs into the phone, solemn and so, so worried. "What the hell? Jesus, what the hell."

Yes, Dean thinks, Hell.

Into the phone he says "I didn't mean to be gone this long. I'm coming. I'm coming back now."

Dean hangs up and tries not to breathe too fast but the air inside the car is limited and suddenly suffocating and then he's outside of it, out in the grass on the side of the road and there's bile in his throat and not much else. He focuses on the pull of stomach muscles, the strain of it. Wishes there was more to the pain because now he vaguely recalls another level of pain, something beyond comprehension and so sharp and biting that it floods his nerves like fire, like venom and does he miss it? Does he long for it sometimes in the cold emptiness that's been left behind? He can't say no the way he could've just last week, or maybe last month. Another car passes and its headlights illuminate the sticky grass and Dean's hands, the way they're trembling just a little bit. He presses them into the grass, then digs below into the dirt, feeling the tangible certainty of it. There will always be dirt beneath grass. Truths held to be self-evident.

Dean gets back in the car.

He drives back to his brother and he puts the radio on but doesn't listen to it. It's a long, straight drive- he'd been on the same highway for miles and miles, apparently. He wonders where his body was heading when his mind wasn't there.

The motel looks slightly unfamiliar, as if he's looking at it through a different filter. The lighting is off, or maybe the paint color. He parks. Dean knows their room was next to the ice machine, he just isn't sure if he's remembering that detail from this motel or the one before it or the one before it. A string of certainties, of patterns unbroken (there is always dirt beneath the grass) but he's privy to the dust motes between the sunlight now- he can see it all breaking down inside itself. He sits frozen in the driver's seat, engine off and hands still on the wheel because there's nowhere to go. He doesn't know the room number.

But Sam heard the car. He comes. It's room eleven he strides out of, huffing and shoving a hand through his hair, and Dean knew it was room eleven. He would've guessed that if he'd had to. Of course he would've. He gets out and walks past Sam and into the room with its four walls and its rustic-but-not-in-a-good-way decor. Dean sits down on the bed nearest the door and he hears Sam come in behind him and close the door but he's looking up at the holes in the ceiling, the ones meant to be part of the design. They're just holes. Just empty spaces. Anything could be there in the gaps. Anything.

"Hey, Dean?" Sam says and asks at the same time. So many questions in the two words.

"I don't know what happened," Dean says. On the drive, he'd contemplated lying. On that long, flat road, he'd pictured how it would go. How Sam would poke and prod and wonder. How Dean would deflect and smile and sit with it all inside of him, all the scattered pieces of himself. And the lie would be enough, eventually. And then Dean would float away with it. He'd keep forgetting. He'd keep lying. He'd become all gaps, all empty spaces. There would be no ceiling.

Sam bites his lip. "What do you mean?"

"All the details are gone," Dean says, and suddenly finds it hard to say anything else. "I can't…" he cuts himself off, swallows the rest of the admission. Sam kneels in front of him by the bed. He hesitates, reaching for Dean like he might take his brother's hands in his. But instead he lets them fall back to his lap.

"What do you mean?" Sam asks again.

"I don't know, Sam. When I first got back- it was like everything was clear. Too clear. I was all exposed nerves. And then something happened and now it's all going hazy. Hell is hazy. It's like I was never there."

"That's good though, right?" Sam asks, and it sounds like he's pleading.

"It's other things too," Dean presses. "Little details and memories that are just...leaving me. I can't hold onto them, man. I'm...they're leaving." He can feel himself panicking. Saying it aloud beckons the reality closer, an inescapable thing, and suddenly he understands how real this is, how the lost time and the lost pieces of his life aren't just side effects of an unusually brutal forty years. How there's something deeper and darker and scarier happening inside his head. And the reason he knows this is because he's looking into his little brother's wide, terrified eyes and he's seeing more than fear. He sees guilt.

"What did you do to me?" Dean whispers, and it's without accusation. Just curiosity. Because it's clear now that Sam is the cause, even clearer that whatever's happening to him has all stemmed from his baby brother's best intentions. So evident in the slope of Sam's shoulders, in the lock of his watery gaze.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," Sam whispers back, and Dean lets out a swift, heavy exhale because he knew it, but now he knows it the way you can only know Death if you have sat across from him in a pizza parlor on the west side of Chicago while a storm was blowing through. "It was a spell. I was so careful." Once Sam starts talking, it seems like he can't stop.

"You were such a wreck, Dean. Such a wreck. You wouldn't eat. You'd just stare and stare at your food like you could see the bacteria growing on it or something. And the nights were so bad. I was worried you'd hurt yourself. You'd thrash and scream and there was nothing I could do except watch. There was just nothing I could do. And then, I mean you don't remember this, but there was this one night where you couldn't stop shaking. And I got you to come awake but it was like you'd been hit with this insane fever and all you could do was stare at me and you told me….you told me you wanted to die or go back. And I couldn't watch anymore. I couldn't do nothing."

Dean is nodding. He can feel his head bobbing slightly, just a tiny little movement.

"You're not gonna say anything?" Sam asks after a moment. He looks like he's bracing for a punch to the face. Like he might even be itching for it.

"Did Cas help?"

Sam scoffs. "No. No, Dean. This was all me."

"A spell?"

Sam swallows. "A combination of a few. I didn't know…" his expression crumples, caves in on itself. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

Dean rubs at his temples, as if trying to press and slide the slipping memories back into place. Sam blinks and ducks his chin to his chest, no longer making eye contact. They stay like that for a long moment, Sam kneeling on the carpet and Dean sitting on the lumpy motel mattress, caught inside a truth revealed like a spider's web. Quickly-formed and sticky and inescapable.

"Can you reverse it?" Dean finally asks when he can no longer not ask. Sam, as if waiting for the words, immediately unlocks from his pose, pushes back onto his feet and begins to pace the short length of the room. Dean watches him so that his eyes don't wander back to the blank nothings in the ceiling.

Finally, Sam faces his brother. "I don't want you to feel it all again."

Dean nods. He's afraid of how quickly he's forgotten how bad it all was. He knows he kept Sam awake with the nightmares. He knows Hell was Hell. Dean pictures his mind like a sponge, malleable and compliant. But eventually, when left out in the sunlight, the edges stiffen. Habits form and the mind congeals around the things it knows. Maybe his has already crystallized around a life untouched by Hell's memories. Maybe introducing them back into his system would be worse than the wolves in Yellowstone. Maybe they would feast too much and overtake his ecosystems entirely. He exhales.

"But you can undo it?"

Sam's eyes say that he knows how.

"You have to, then," Dean says, even though he isn't sure. His heartbeat quickens at only faint wisps of memory. Of tearing skin and flesh that breathes from the outside. He doesn't know if it's memory or just his imagination, a guess at what it could've been.

"Do you remember how bad it was?" Sam asks, projecting Dean's fears into the stale air. Sam is still standing in front of Dean's bed, shifting the weight from his toes to his heels, rocking like a sailboat in the wake of an approaching storm.

Dean doesn't answer the question. "I need it back, Sam."

Another question. Another good one. "What if you don't survive it?"

"One day I'll just keep driving," Dean says, suddenly gripped by the fear of that scenario. It feels more real than Hell. Approaching from the fog inside his mind: an inevitability. "I'll keep driving and I won't come back to myself. To you. I won't remember how."

"You won't forget me."

Sam says it like a challenge. Dean closes his eyes so he can answer with the truth. It only emerges as a whisper. "Sometimes I do. Just for a second. Sometimes I do."

He hears Sam's startled inhale. Doesn't open his eyes, but he knows Sam isn't rocking back and forth anymore. He's gone still. Dean has the words that will do the rest of the convincing. He just has to say them now.

"We need to both be here," Dean says. "Really be here. The world needs it."

"I don't give a shit about the world," Sam says, and he sounds like Sammy, the kid who'd turn his back on everything except Dean.

"Yes you do," says Dean. And he opens his eyes to meet Sam's and his stomach flips around itself. Because he sees the burning in his baby brother's pupils, the same fire that was in his own when Sam was dead in his arms and there was no choice that existed beyond bringing him back. But I'm asking for the same, Sammy, Dean realizes. I'm asking you to bring me back.

"Undo it," Dean says. And he means it.

Okay 2 things:

1. I'm very aware that this story completely ignores the fact that Sam was distant and a little cold towards Dean (for reasons that later became obvious) at the beginning of season 4. But it's AU so I suppose anything goes, right?

2. I actually started writing this story a long while ago but was inspired to finish it after watching the movie "Little Fish" which also deals with memory loss. If you're a sucker for the beautiful but heart-wrenching, I highly recommend it. It's only a 'pandemic movie' on the surface. Anyway, that's my TED talk.

Thank you for reading!