Welcome back! I wanted to get this done sooner, but it grew longer than anticipated, and my brain decided I needed to write a story for the finale anniversary which also got longer than anticipated, so here we are finally! Thank you all so much for your wonderful feedback and interest in a continuation (for those of you satisfied with one chapter, I also thank you for reading and letting me know that and feel free to ignore this update :) ). I had ideas for a second chapter and you guys pushed me to write it, so here it is, I hope you enjoy!

Like chapter 1, I own nothing. There's also a tiny bit (a few lines, not a major part of the chapter) of non-graphic discussion/thoughts/more feelings than anything about what happened between Toni and Sam just as a heads up if anyone isn't comfortable with that stuff.

Sam wasn't sure how much sleep he really got. There was a difference, after all, between an exhaustion and medication-induced unconscious state and real restorative rest. He woke up not feeling rested, but also hadn't had any nightmares, so he'd take the win. He was surprised to find that Dean was still sleeping in the chair next to him, their hands still intertwined next to Sam's leg.

As he watched his brother, the last twinges of doubt of the reality of the situation melted away like ice crystals against the advancing sun. Dean's hand was warm and stable in his own, as Dean always was. Sam could see the freckles on his cheeks, the way the sun split between his hair. His breaths were deep and even despite the uncomfortable position.

Hallucinations could be detailed, but they didn't have the overwhelming sensation of rightness that Sam felt before him.

He sighed in relief and almost immediately winced at the pain that sparked in his side. He could probably add cracked ribs to his list of injuries. The pain meds had worn off overnight and as he woke up fully, his injuries began to make themselves known. Still, all that discomfort was nothing compared to the pain of losing Dean. Again. It wasn't like cutting off a limb, losing him. No. It was like losing the most inherent part of himself, the largest cog in his machine. The other gears just didn't spin right without Dean there.

They'd even had a proper goodbye this time. How often had that happened? Sam had been grateful for it in the moment, but in the hours that followed, his mind was overrun with things he could have said better or ways he maybe could have avoided the situation. Something he could have done to avoid losing his brother again due to forces beyond his control.

But now it was done. Dean was here, safe and sound.

And mom.

Luckily he didn't have to think about that too much because Dean began to stir, groaning at what were probably some very stiff and sore muscles. Sam couldn't help but smile at the sight. Dean, alive, not blown to atoms or stuck in the Empty where Sam could never reach him.

Here.

"Mornin' sunshine," Dean said, voice gruff, and smirked at him. He squeezed Sam's hand once and Sam squeezed back before Dean pulled his arm back and shook it out. Sam missed the physical tether immediately. "How are you feeling?"

"Alright," Sam said simply. It wasn't a total lie, really. His wounds hurt and his ribs ached and his head was pounding, but he'd dealt with it all before. As long as Dean was back, he'd be able to deal with it again. Dean, of course, saw right through it, just like Sam knew he wound.

His eyebrow quirked up in a 'really? I'm calling you on your crap' movement and he pulled his phone out of his pocket. "I'll let Cas know we're up and about so he can mojo you and we can get this show on the road."

Sam nodded along with the plan. Dean got Sam another bottle of water and after a few minutes of waiting, there was a knock at the door. Dean answered it and let Cas and Mary into the room. Cas looked at Dean almost apologetically, but Dean dismissed it with a quick shake of his head.

Mary was at Sam's side before Cas had stepped past the first bed. Sam had to blink a few times just to make sure he was seeing her correctly. She had a few scrapes and a black eye to contend with, but other than that, she looked just as she had in all the photographs they'd cherished for the decades she'd been gone.

Seeing her standing before him, worrying over him in three dimensions, was whiplash in its purest form.

"How are you?" she asked quietly, nothing but worry and care in her words.

"I'm alright, mom, really." His voice caught a little in the middle and he tried to cover it up by clearing his throat after. She wasn't a hallucination or a past version of herself. She was here, now, talking and listening to him. "Cas, are you okay?"

Cas came up behind Mary and nodded. "I'll be alright to heal both you and your mother. She insisted on coming to see how you were and how the healing itself takes place," he offered by way of explanation.

Sam smiled just a little. "Thanks."

Cas moved around Mary and pressed two fingers to Sam's forehead. Immediately, a sense of warmth and repair rushed through his body. No matter how many times it happened, he'd never quite get used to it, how his body fused itself back together with the help of something so extraordinarily foreign. Sam took in a deep breath and relished in the fact that he could do so without wincing. When he opened his eyes, Mary was staring wide-eyed back at him.

"His injuries are healed," Cas said and took a step back from the bed to more properly face Mary. "As I said, there isn't much to it."

Mary looked between Cas and Sam. After having spent so many years with an angel by their side, they had become almost accustomed to the healings. Mary had no such experience.

"Cas knows what he's doing, mom, trust me," Dean said as he came up to the foot of the bed. His eyes were fixed on Sam, making sure that he was indeed okay.

Mary eventually nodded and allowed Cas to heal her, eliciting only a quiet 'wow' once it was done. She inspected her knuckles to find the skin unbroken and looked back to Sam with an unmarred face.

Exactly like the photographs. She hadn't aged a day, making her technically younger than them. They'd lived more life than her—by almost a decade in Dean's case—and that wasn't including the extra mileage on their souls from their experiences. Sam's head began to hurt just at the thought and he decided to stow it for later.

"Alright." Dean clapped his hands together. "Road trip time, let's get a move on." Mary followed Cas out of the room as Dean came next to the bed and offered Sam a hand up.

He didn't need it, but he took it anyway.

The room spun just a bit. Dean's hand steadied his other shoulder as he leveled his gaze with Sam's to make sure he wasn't about to pass out.

"Just tired," Sam said honestly. He'd been through plenty of angelic healings before, and while they fixed the injuries themselves, they never touched the bone-deep exhaustion. Nothing but time and sleep could fix that.

Dean patted his shoulder and released his hand. "Got about three hours left, you could take a solid nap."

Sam just shrugged and made for the door. As soon as he lay eyes on the Impala, he stopped in his tracks. "What happened?" He turned around to look at Dean. There was a circular dent on the rear passenger side of the trunk, probably over a foot across.

"We were…intercepted trying to get to you," Cas said by way of explanation, which didn't clear much up.

"Another one of those British d-bags," Dean muttered as he came up behind Sam with their duffels slung over his shoulder. "And she was arrogant too, maybe that comes with the accent…" he trailed off. As Sam turned to see why, he noticed Mary determinedly looking at the pavement instead of her sons or the car. Sam was no doubt missing a good chunk of the story. But it would come with time, a time when he wasn't so tired.

"Anyways," Dean said and cleared his throat, "gives me an excuse to work on her, so maybe it ain't all bad." He smiled a little at Mary and went to finish packing up the car.

After a short conversation with his mother and a pointed, non-verbal look from Dean confirming that Sam was in fact okay, the three of them headed off in the Impala while Cas followed behind in his truck.

Dean kept the music on low and there wasn't much by way of talking, which Sam appreciated. He wasn't ready, not quite yet. But seeing his mom out of his peripheral vision, watching her watching him, was some kind of strange comfort he didn't realize he'd been missing all those years.

They stopped for gas an hour in and Dean tossed his jacket over for Sam to use as a pillow. That wasn't a strange comfort at all, and it warmed his heart just the same.

Once they were back in the bunker, Mary split off with Cas, who promised to show her how to order take-out online, as it was a necessary skill for living in the twenty-first century. Sam and Dean continued down the hallway towards the bedrooms and paused momentarily at Sam's door.

"Hey, I uh," Dean started and pursed his lips, "cleaned the sheets, just, you know, in case it would help. Military corners you could bounce a nickel off, the whole nine. So if you wanna face plant into your mattress, go on ahead."

It took Sam a split second to realize what he was talking about. He hadn't been back in his room since Lucifer had taken it over. His room, of all places, because it had to be. And now here they were, both of them alive, and in-between looking for his missing little brother Dean had taken the time to wash the sheets to ease any reminders in Sam's mind of what had happened.

"Thank you," Sam whispered, voice cracking a bit as he did so.

Dean half smirked back at him. "Don't mention it, Sammy." He clapped his shoulder again. "Mom's ordering some food, half hour out probably. You good?"

Sam nodded in response, which Dean accepted as an answer for the time being and left him to his own devices. He was surprised to find that nothing else was off about his room, no papers out of place or books where they shouldn't be. He looked at the bed for a moment, appreciating the crisp corners, before he grabbed a change of clothes and headed for the shower room.

He did it more on instinct than anything. He tried to let his brain run on autopilot and not think about what he'd been through over the last forty-eight hours. But of course, the second the shower turned on, he tensed up.

You've been tortured by the devil himself. A shower, really? Get it together.

He chided himself and shook it off. Still, Sam checked that the water was actually warm before he got in. When he did so, he took the shortest shower possible. Just long enough to get the layers of sweat and dirt off of him. When he was done, he was still tense and exhausted, but at least he wasn't carrying the physical reminders around with him.

Sam wiped the condensation off the mirror and looked at himself. There were no traces of the cuts on his face, as expected. But there were still bags under his eyes. You're fine. You should be fine. The repaired bullet hole in his thigh seemed to ache with phantom pain. Sam squared his shoulders in the mirror, took a breath, and went to join his family for dinner.

Dinner went well. His conversation with mom seemed to go well. But when all was said and done, he was by himself on his bed, staring at the fan as the blades spun around and around in endless circles. He was still exhausted, but he couldn't sleep.

Not for the first time, he wished there was a window in the room. Some source of light so he could see the stars or the sunrise. Something. Anything that wasn't four walls and a cement floor. The lights were a comfortable, warm glow, but that wasn't enough. He went back to looking at the fan and tried to remember the fact that Dean was alive and his mom was alive and Cas was safe and Lucifer was gone and God and Amara were gone…

The blades kept spinning.

For a split second when he closed his eyes, he was met with a fan spinning, breaking up a devil's trap. With salt-coated iron walls and an old cot under his back. With a fictitious mother in a nightgown saying she was proud of him and that he had to go on without Dean if need be.

Sam got up and pulled the chain to stop the fan, heart hammering as he did so.

You're fine. You're fine. You're fine.

His mom was sleeping in the room next to him for the first time in thirty-three years. She could say she was proud of him in real life now, could tell that he and Dean were inseparable. She'd be able to say both in due time, of course, but that meant something. A physical showing of how far they'd come, some good the world had given them after all the bad. It could just be that simple. Right?

Then again, they didn't have a great track record when it came to good things lasting.

Sam hit the light switch a little harder than necessary and the room plunged into darkness. As his eyes adjusted, muted light from the hallway spilled in through the grates in the door, but save for that the room was dark. Sam lay down in bed, mashed his pillow into an acceptable shape, and tried counting his breaths to slow his racing heart.

All it did was build his frustration. He was exhausted. And yet his mind wouldn't shut the hell up. He flipped onto his other side, let out a sigh, and screwed his eyes shut. As if it would do any good. He tried focusing on tactile details instead. The soft pillow under his head, the springy mattress, the clean, crisp sheets.

Was it good for you?

Sam sat up immediately, taking long, steady breaths to avoid becoming sick just at the memory. Toni's voice rang in his head, mocking him for his discomfort. It was stupid, really. It hadn't even been real. Nothing had even happened.

But that didn't erase the horror of it or the fact that his body had once again been used against him or that she had taken such pride in what she had stripped from his mind.

Sam ran a hand through his hair and swallowed, trying to get himself under control.

Sleep wouldn't be happening. That was becoming abundantly more clear. All he was doing was spinning out of control, alone in the dark in his room. Maybe some tea would help. Or a book in the library. Probably a few books, since he wouldn't be sleeping.

Decision made, Sam left his room and made his way into the kitchen, squeezing his hands as he did so to get rid of some of the shakiness. When he got there, his attention was drawn to several empty beer bottles in the garbage can.

Maybe Dean wasn't handling everything as well as he'd been letting on. Not that Sam had been overly perceptive the last few hours anyways, but he doubted Dean would blame him.

Still, it shifted Sam's objective. He'd noticed on his way to the kitchen that Dean's room was empty. So instead of tea, he went in search of Dean.

He didn't have to search far. When he got to the map room, he could hear muffled voices coming from the garage. It was really just the one voice, Sam noted, when he got closer.

"C'mon, Baby, work with me," Dean was muttering and obviously trying to be quiet about it. He sounded strained, out of breath almost. Sam hurried up the steps to the garage and was met with somewhat of a familiar sight.

Dean was next to the Impala, pulling on what looked like a glorified suction cup. There was a sheen of sweat on his face and he'd shucked his flannel overskirt in favor of working in just his black undershirt and the only pair of sweatpants he owned. "Come on," he growled again and pulled harder but got nowhere.

"Need a hand?" Sam said by way of greeting.

Dean nearly jumped at that, but he covered well. When he turned around, there was more confusion on his face than surprise. "Sammy? Thought I put you to bed a few hours ago."

Had it really been hours? Had he been spinning that long?

"Couldn't sleep," Sam said simply.

"Clearly." Dean eyed him with a frown, displeased. "You're lookin' a little pale. Feel okay?" His frown deepened as he walked over and put the back of his hand to Sam's forehead.

Sam nodded and Dean dropped his hand. This was exactly what Cas's healings couldn't fix, and Sam knew Dean had an inkling that was the case. It didn't do anything to help the worry on Dean's face though. If anything, that made it worse. Dean was always better with something physical he could remedy. He'd take a werewolf gash over a mental dam breaking any day and Sam knew it. And while he was still Sam's lighthouse in the storm, that didn't mean it got any easier to see the light.

But it was there, miraculously returned from the cloud of darkness it had been thrust into. That was what mattered.

"How are the repairs coming?" Sam asked in lieu of asking why Dean himself wasn't sleeping. He knew the answer.

Dean looked at him, weighing the costs and benefits of letting his line of questioning drop in favor of answering Sam. Finally the deflection won out. "No cracks in the metal, just some paint scratches. But the dent is a pain and a half in the ass. Got some of it out, but she ain't giving me any more," he sighed.

"You want a hand?"

Dean gestured with a hand towards the car. "By all means," he invited.

Dean had indeed gotten almost half of the dent out, but the rest was still bent inwards and at a sharper angle. Wordlessly, they got on either side of the dent puller, looked at each other, and pulled. The metal groaned but didn't budge. Sam shifted his stance and pulled a little harder. Finally, with a subdued pop, the metal came back into place.

"Ha ha!" Dean exclaimed triumphantly and ran his hands over the metal. It wasn't perfect, but the minor imperfections that remained were something that Dean could at least work with. He raised his hand, expecting a high five. Sam smiled a little but didn't indulge him and instead got to work getting the dent puller off the car. "Too late for a celebration, I see. Fine, Baby and I can celebrate by ourselves."

Sam's smile grew at the mock hurt in Dean's voice, playing it up to make Sam feel better. When he got the device off, Dean had returned with two buckets of soapy water and sponges.

"You planning on getting any sleep tonight?" Dean asked, raising his eyebrow as he did so.

"Not really."

Dean sighed. "May as well put you to work then." He handed Sam a bucket, which he happily took. The truth of it was, he'd much rather give up a night of tossing and turning and letting his mind get the better of him in favor of fixing up the Impala with his brother. He also knew that while Dean wouldn't press the matter further, his worry wouldn't really abate until Sam clued him in at least a little to what was going on. Maybe in a little while. For now, they had a car to wash.

They worked in silence, the garage devoid of Dean's usual music given the late hour and the fact that they now had another bunker inhabitant that did in fact sleep. Once the car was thoroughly soaped-up and scrubbed clean, Dean hosed the Impala off and tossed a towel at Sam's face so they could begin the drying process.

Sam narrowly caught the towel, his attention more focused on the soapy water spinning down the garage drain. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Dean watching him. But again, Dean didn't press.

"I lost track of how long I watched the water go down the drain in the cellar," Sam started quietly. A group of small bubbles vanished under the metal grate. "It was cold. More annoying than anything, really, couldn't get a full breath in past it."

In his peripheral, Dean's knuckles went white around the towel.

Sam took a breath and let it out quickly in a half-laugh. "And freezing water didn't work so they figured hey, next best thing is a blowtorch. I guess torture isn't very subtle art to them, is it?" He finally looked up to Dean. His brother's jaw was clenched and the fury behind his eyes burned brighter than the blowtorch had.

"Sam…"

"Toni, she—" Sam cut himself off as his throat involuntarily closed around the words. He'd tried to rehearse it in his head, tried to put into words what had happened and how it made him feel. Used. Ashamed. But those didn't quite encapsulate the experience, now did they? Maybe words would never be able to. Sam swallowed the confession along with a knot of emotion. "And all that, none of it compares to Lucifer. To what he—"

Dean dropped his towel on Baby's hood and took a few steps towards Sam. Sam was wringing his own towel in his hands, picking at the frayed ends and twirling them together as if he could do the same to his thoughts.

"I'm fine. I should be fine," he amended with a note of uncertainty in his voice.

Dean shook his head. "No way in hell, Sammy. To either of those."

"But I've been through worse, I don't know why this is—"

"Hitting you so hard?" Dean finished. Sam nodded. "Sammy…look, I'm a hypocrite, whatever. But just because you've been through worse doesn't mean that what you've just dealt with means nothing, alright? And you got dealt a stacked deck, man, I mean it, I can't even…"

Sam didn't believe him. It was a cold shower, some amateur torture by his standards, and a hallucination. All of which were in the past. His injuries were healed, the Brits had turned tail, and their mom was back.

"Hey." Dean said it in the quiet yet forceful tone he used when he needed Sam to listen up and really pay attention.

Sam did, raising his eyes from the garage drain to look at his brother.

"Do you need me to make you a list of reasons why your giant brain is wrong?" Dean looked at him, eyebrows raised, expecting an answer. When Sam didn't give him one, he continued anyways, ticking off each reason on his fingers as he went. "Let's see. Lucifer was back, and in our home. We just dealt with a God-level apocalypse. You thought I was dead. You got kidnapped, and oh yeah, shot, tortured, and screwed with in a cellar for days, only to find your dead brother and mom staring you straight in the face. Those enough reasons for you?"

Sam looked at the nine outstretched fingers. Below him, bubbles and tufts of terrycloth mingled towards the sewer.

"You ain't ever been through this. So take a minute, take two. We'll figure it out and get back on track. Doesn't have to be today, or tomorrow, or next week. But eventually, we'll get there."

The collective 'we' in that made Sam's heart ache. Dean including himself in the progress to be made, acknowledging even in a small fashion that both of them needed to take some time to settle and regroup in the face of everything. That one little two letter word worked wonders on making him feel less alone.

"I don't know how to get there," Sam admitted quietly. Because Dean was right. This wasn't like anything he'd ever dealt with before. And now it wasn't just the two of them either, able to fix it on their own terms in the privacy of their bunker. They had mom now, who also needed help adjusting and who had questions and observations.

"I'll give you a hand then, hm?" Dean smirked just a little. "We'll help each other. World ain't ending anytime soon, we've got time. Hell, we've earned time. Alright?" He leveled his gaze with Sam's.

"Alright." Sam could take his hand in this, that was the kicker. For days, he'd prepared himself for the reality of Dean being dead yet again. He'd seen the sun go out and accepted that he'd have to deal with the grief of losing his big brother for good this time. But 'prepared' and 'accepted' were funny terms for the Winchesters where death was concerned.

And yet, things seemed so set in stone this time, so cosmic and so much bigger than them, that Sam had been closer to preparing and accepting than he probably ever had been before. The emotional one-eighty that had been completed in under a week was probably what all the spinning was about, if he really thought about it.

He'd probably been thinking a few seconds too long because he watched as Dean's eyebrow quirked up in worried confusion. "Sammy?"

"Just…" Sam cleared his throat around the lump that had formed. "Glad you're here."

Dean smiled at him, bright as the sun itself. He tossed his towel onto the floor and in three steps enveloped Sam in a hug. His arms went around Sam's shoulders, a feat only accomplished by him standing on his toes, and Sam loved him all the more for it. It let him duck his head into his brother's shoulder, to really feel that he was larger than life.

Both his anchor and his lighthouse.

"Right back achya," Dean whispered in his ear and squeezed Sam a little tighter before patting him on the back and breaking away. He still kept a point of contact though, with his right hand on Sam's shoulder. There was a lightness to his face that the exhaustion couldn't touch, something content with the way things had worked out. It didn't disappear even as he glanced down at his watch.

Sam had no idea what time it was. But unlike the cellar, it didn't make him feel untethered. That was pretty impossible, after all, with Dean holding him in place. "Why don't you head on up the stairs and I'll meet you?" Dean suggested.

Sam didn't even ask why. He didn't care, not really. Baby was taken care of, as much as she could be for the day. Whatever Dean had in mind, Sam would agree to it, so long as he could keep him in sight.

When he nodded, Dean patted his shoulder and gently took the towel from Sam's hand. Sam watched him for just another moment before he left the garage, made his way back through the bunker, and up the stairs to the bunker's entrance. He opened the door as quietly as he could and stepped out to lean his forearms against the railing outside the door.

The sun was rising. Sam supposed he should have been worried about not getting any sleep, but that was what tomorrow was for. He took a breath and let it out slowly. There was a fine mist in the air, diffracting some of the warm orange sunlight spilling across the horizon. Not a cloud in the sky, though. It was shaping up to be a beautiful day.

Eventually, the door creaked open behind him and Dean joined him off to his right. "Here," he said quietly, not breaking the peaceful dawn.

Sam turned around to find Dean with a mug of coffee in one hand and a tea cup balanced over the mug's opening. Sam raised his eyebrows.

"Don't even," Dean warned and passed Sam his teacup. "I needed a hand to open the door, alright? I don't wanna hear it. Just be thankful I got you anything."

Sam smiled, knowing that Dean wouldn't have not gotten him anything, not in a million years. He took the teacup and blew on it, watching as the steam disappeared into the morning air.

"How much coffee did you fit in your mug?" he did ask before he took a sip. It was mint with just a touch of honey, how he liked it.

"About half a mug. You're welcome for the sacrifice," Dean muttered.

Sam huffed out a bit of a laugh and leaned his forearms back on the railing, content to hold the warm cup between his hands for now. Dean shifted to do the same, his shoulder pressed up against Sam's. There was a slight chill in the morning air, but the warmth all around him easily defeated it.

Unspoken confessions, questions, and worries still plagued Sam's mind. But they weren't quite as loud when they weren't rattling around inside four concrete walls. Here, they had space to breathe. Space to be said another time.

He glanced over at Dean, who was taking another sip of his coffee and looking out at the landscape. He no doubt had similar thoughts and worries in his own mind, but for now he seemed wholly at peace.

So Sam decided that was more than good enough for him. He took a long, deep breath in and out and watched the new day begin with his brother by his side.

Thank you all for reading! I don't know anything about cars, but I don't think a dent-puller would be recommended for a dent of that size on Baby. That being said, Dean said that he got her back to mint in the next episode, so something had to be done fairly quickly so...dent puller it is! Just don't read into it too closely ;)

Also it was criminal that we didn't get a brother hug in the episode, so here it is, I couldn't help myself.