Disclaimer: Not mine in no way, shape or form... Would be very happy and very rich...

This was my second fan fiction attempt, and I'm told it's a bit confusing to start with. Don't worry, all will become clear...

I've never split it into chapters before, so sorry if they're a bit uneven... Got to keep those cliffhangers in there...

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Sam Winchester could smell burning.

It was an acrid smell – not wood, not electrical – something else.

He opened his eyes on an unfamiliar ceiling, a crackling, popping sound reaching his ears as if very far away.

He looked around him; a child's bedroom. Not just a child's bedroom: a little boy's bedroom. Crayons fought for floor space with toy cars and green plastic army men, and drawings of space rockets and fire engines jostled with Star Wars posters for supremacy on the walls.

Sam was sure he'd been here before. But the room had been different somehow. As if it had belonged to a different little boy, maybe.

Sam sat up. He could hear a man's voice. Yelling. Distraught. Terrified.

The smell of smoke was becoming stronger, almost overpowering him, and he could see an ominous orange-yellow light flickering under the bedroom door.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, but they weren't long enough to reach the floor. He jumped down, his feet touching carpet that was warmer than it should have been, too hot on his bare feet.

He walked slowly towards the door, afraid of what he would find on the other side, having to push forward as if struggling through water. He reached for the door handle, which was hot to the touch.

His hand looked so small.

Opening the door, he saw black smoke filling up the hallway outside, smelt that acrid smell once more and almost retched.

It was the smell of burning flesh.

Turning to his left, he could see the hallway lit unnaturally orange and black, and again, it seemed strangely familiar. There were different pictures on the walls from the last time he was here; a dark haired man and a pretty blonde woman; a little boy with a smiling baby on his knee.

Jenny's pictures had gone.

Yes! Sam remembered now, remembered when he'd been here. This was Jenny's house.

No wait. This was his house.

As Sam stared at the pictures on the walls, he became aware of movement to his left. A tall man came rushing out of the room down the hall, arms full of what Sam thought were blankets.

Sam looked up at him, and he seemed impossibly tall. He was running towards him, fire behind him, snaking across the ceiling from the room he'd just left. The man looked anguished. Horrified.

"Dad?"

The man bent down, holding out the blankets in trembling arms. "Take your brother outside as fast as you can!" he ordered, thrusting his burden into Sam's arms. The blankets felt warm, and when Sam looked down, he realised he was holding a screaming baby.

He looked back up at his father, rooted to the spot, fear and confusion numbing his legs and his brain.

"Now Dean, go!" the man yelled, already turning to run back into Sarry's room. No. Not Sarry's room. The nursery. Sam's room.

Sam looked down at the baby. He'd stopped crying and his eyes had closed. He seemed very pale in the orange light.

Turning, he ran as fast as he could, down the landing, down the stairs, out onto the front lawn.

He turned to look back at the house, flames visible through the nursery window. He looked back down at the baby in his arms, wanting to comfort him, to tell him everything would be OK.

But the baby wasn't moving and his lips were blue.

"Dad – "

His father was there then, lifting him and the baby into his strong arms. "I gotcha," he said, carrying them away just as the window blew out overhead and glass rained down over the spot where Sam had just been standing.

Dad carried him over to the car, a big black Chevy with a shiny hood, where he put him down before carefully taking the baby from his arms. The car felt cold to Sam as he sat there on the hood, looking down at the silent baby.

"He's not breathing," he heard himself say in a child's terrified voice. "Daddy, he's not breathing!"

Dad didn't look at him, but bent low over the baby.

Sam wasn't sure what to do.

Then he heard people yelling, neighbours coming out of their houses in their nightclothes, and finally he heard sirens.

Like some slowed down, drawn-out nightmare, he watched his father run towards the approaching ambulance, the baby cradled in his arms.

He seemed to be gone a long time.

A Police lady came and sat with him, put her arm around his shoulders. She spoke to him in soothing tones, but the only words Sam heard her say were, "Hi honey. My name's Bethany. What's yours?" He wasn't sure whether he answered her.

Then, after what seemed an eternity, his father emerged from the back of the ambulance, tears making stark white streaks down his smoke-blackened face.

For a moment, he just stood in front of Sam, looking at him, all light gone from his dark brown eyes. Finally, he reached out and pulled him into his arms, holding him so tightly he could barely breathe, sobbing silently onto his shoulder.

"Daddy?" he heard himself say. "Where's Mommy? Where's – "

"Dean," his father whispered in his ear, not loosening his hold on him. "It's OK. It's going to be OK. Mommy's had to go away, that's all. Some place better. Some place safer." He pulled back slightly, looking deep into Sam's eyes before adding, "And Sammy's gone with her."

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Sam sat up with a start, chest heaving as he tried to breathe, coughing as if his lungs were full of smoke and blinking hard as the room around him slowly swam into focus.

Motel room.

A tiny streak of light across the ceiling told him morning had only just begun to arrive, and a quick glance at the clock on the nightstand confirmed it was 5:57.

Although the clock on the cover of Dean's cell phone said it was 6:01.

Dean's cell phone.

"Dean!"

Sam yelled his brother's name so loud, Dean almost fell out of bed.

"What – Sam – what's – " his hand groped unconsciously under his pillow for the knife he always kept there.

Looking over at Sam sitting bolt upright in bed with sweat glistening on his brow and a spaced-out look on his face, Dean realised quickly that they weren't in any immediate danger, and dropped his head back onto his pillow.

Another freakin' nightmare.

"Dean, wake up!" Sam urged, jumping out of his bed and bounding over to Dean's.

Dean felt his brother tugging on his t-shirt, like he used to when they were kids and he'd had a bad dream and wanted his big brother's reassurance that there wasn't really a six-eyed monster under his bed. Of course, offering such reassurance had been Dean's job back then. Which was why Sam had always gone to Dean rather than their father whenever he'd had a bad dream; if he'd gone to Dad, the old man would have come back with a flashlight and a twelve gauge.

"Dean – wake – up!" Sam insisted again, half pulling his brother out of bed.

"Alright already, where's the fire?" Dean exclaimed, flipping onto his back and pushing himself upright. He glanced at the clock through bleary eyes, before looking up at Sam in the early morning darkness.

Sam bent down and turned on the bedside lamp, causing Dean to flinch like an actor in a bad 1950s vampire movie.

"That's a bad choice of words," Sam snapped, before realising that Dean hadn't seen what he had just seen… Well, technically, he supposed he had. Some of it anyway. Everything up to the part where –

"I died!" Sam burst out then, grabbing Dean by the shoulders and shaking him a little, just to get his attention.

A puzzled look fought with fatigue for control of Dean's face. "Sam," he said in a 'don't be so stupid at this time of morning' tone of voice. "You're standing right here in front of me, so I'm pretty sure you're not dead," he pointed out with a barely-suppressed yawn.

"No!" Sam said, kneeling down on the bed next to him. "In my dream. I watched me die!"

Dean squinted at him out of the corner of his eye.

Sam gesticulated wildly with his arms before attempting an explanation. "Well," he began, a puzzled look now etched onto his features. "I say 'I' watched me die. But actually 'I' wasn't 'I', I wasn't me. I was you and I watched me die!" He looked at Dean as if everything should make sense now.

Dean just looked back at him vacantly. Then, "OK, I need some coffee."

"No!" Sam grabbed Dean's shoulders again, holding him fast, forcing him to pay attention. "No. My dream. I was you, Dean! Oh my god. Dean, I was you. I – I was seeing out of your eyes…"

"Whatever you saw me do with Mrs Carraway in the back of her husband's pick-up truck was a total misunderstanding," Dean said quickly. "What's a fifteen-year-old kid to do – "

Sam cut him off, just as quickly. "No! I was in our house – I was in your room. The night of the fire, the night – " Sam stopped abruptly, suddenly acutely aware of the expression on his big brother's face. "The night Mom died…" he trailed off.

All thoughts of fatigue forgotten, Dean's eyes had become sharply focussed and he swallowed hard. "You were – " he choked off the rest of the sentence.

"I was you," Sam repeated, his voice softening.

Dean just looked at him. It took him a second to collect himself enough to ask the next question. "And what did you see?"

Sam didn't answer right away, choosing his words carefully. "The fire. Dad. I – you – carried me – Sam – outside."

Dean nodded slowly. "Yeah," he said, not meeting his younger brother's gaze. "I told you that part."

"No," Sam cut him off again, shaking his head. "No, Dean. No." He shook his brother again slightly, just to make him look at him. Dean was looking, but his eyes looked as if his head was someplace else. "Dean," Sam said, taking a deep breath. "I died. In my dream. I died. After the fire – in – in the ambulance."

Dean continued to stare at him.

"Dean, Dad said I'd had to go with Mom."

Dean frowned. "I don't remember an ambulance," he muttered, thinking. "But there must have been. For – for Mom – what was left…" He couldn't finish the sentence and looked away. "I don't remember," was all he added.

But he did remember. And he didn't want to.

Sam nodded. "I know," he said, a little too enthusiastically. "I know. But in my dream – " It was Sam's turn to trail off. "Dean. What do you think it means?"

Dean looked at him for a second. "It means you had a bad dream," he said, swinging his legs out of bed and standing. He scratched his head and shrugged as if it didn't bother him. "I'm going to take a shower."

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"So. Where are we going again?" Sam asked awkwardly, confused by the fuzziness in his head. That nightmare – it had really fried some synapses. He couldn't stop re-running it, like some horrific old family movie, hearing his father telling him – telling Dean – that his baby brother was dead. The anguish in his voice was almost unbearable, and although Sam knew perfectly well that he hadn't died on that terrible November night, he couldn't help but wonder what had happened, what his father had told Dean. He glanced sideways at his older brother as he expertly guided Dad's old Chevy Impala off the motel forecourt.

Although Dean professed not to remember much about the night their Mom was taken from them, Sam was pretty sure he remembered a lot more than he let on. How does a father tell his four-year-old son that he's never going to see his Mommy again? How do you explain something like that to a child? And how would you process that information if you were that child?

Dean glanced sidelong at his kid brother with an exasperated sigh. "Sam, I thought it was me who had the short attention span?"

Sam shrugged noncommittally, still considering his brother wistfully.

Dean shifted uncomfortably under such close scrutiny. "What?" he demanded, finally. "I got something in my teeth or somethin'?"

Sam shook his head, eyes still on his brother. "No," he said, quietly. "I was just thinking."

Dean shifted again. "Well, I hope you're thinking about what you're gonna say at this interview."

Sam started, as if yanked out of some deep reverie. "Interview?" he echoed. "What – what interview?"

Dean rolled his eyes. "Jeez," he burst out, exasperated. "Some lawyer you're going to make. I ever get arrested for murder or somethin', remind me not to call you."

Sam just stared at him. Then, "What are you talking about?"

Dean pulled up at a red light, giving him the chance to look his kid brother over. There was a tiny twinge of concern in his eyes. "Boy," he said softly. "That nightmare really did a number on you, didn't it?"

Sam shrugged. "Yeah. Maybe."

Dean nodded, before explaining, "Your interview at Stanford Law School. Tomorrow. Remember?"

Sam frowned. "No – " he said, slowly. "I – I missed that interview. It was the day – " he trailed off, unable to voice the words 'the day Jessica died'.

It was Dean's turn to frown, and he almost missed the light changing to green, so concerned was he for his brother's state of mind. "No way," he burst out. "It's tomorrow. Trust me. Tattooed on my brain." He tapped at his temple before chuckling. "Besides, Jess would have my ass if you missed it!"

Sam froze. What had Dean just said? He'd misheard him. That was all…

For a second, Sam was too stunned to say a word. Then, very very slowly, he repeated what he thought Dean had just said. "Jess?"

Dean glanced quickly at his brother as he negotiated a bend. "What's with you today?" he asked. "You're acting like I'm a freakin' alien, Sam!"

Sam just stared at him. The dream. The dream where he'd died. Now Jess was…

"You spoke to her?"

Dean frowned. "Jess?" he clarified. "Sure I did. She only called, like, twenty times yesterday to remind me to get you back on time…"

"Dean," Sam was speaking very slowly and deliberately. "This is really important."

Dean looked at him, confusion in his eyes.

Sam took a deep breath. "Where have we just been?" he asked, expression completely neutral.

Dean's frown deepened. "OK, that's it." He pulled in to the side of the road, parking the Impala lopsidedly half on, half off the black top. Turning to face his brother, he demanded, "What is it?"

Sam was still staring at him as if he was speaking in tongues or something.

"Sammy?"

"Dean," Sam replied. "We've just been to Jericho, right? The Woman in White – ?"

Dean grimaced. "What the hell…? Sam, we just came back from Harvard. You had another interview there, remember? Jess asked me to drive you 'cause she thought you'd get all up tight and wind up in a ditch somewhere – "

"Jess asked you?" Sam faltered.

"Ye-ah," Dean said slowly. "You were there when she – "

"But you only ever met her the one time – "

Dean shook his head. "What are you talking about? I've known Jess – " he thought back. "Well, almost as long as you have!"

Sam pressed his hand against his forehead. "I'm dreaming," he muttered, desperately. "I'm still dreaming."

"Sam?" Dean looked really concerned now. Nightmares were one thing, but this… He put a gentle hand on Sam's shoulder. "Sam, tell me what's wrong."

Sam was shaking his head over and over, like he used to when he was really small and something had scared him. When he looked up at Dean, there were tears on his cheeks.

"Sam – ?"

"When I woke up this morning," Sam managed eventually. "After the dream I had where I died?" He met his brother's gaze cautiously. "I swear to God, Jessica was dead."

Dean didn't move for a second, sure he'd misunderstood what his brother had just said. "She – what?" he asked, uncertainly.

Sam was shaking all over. "Dean, Jess died. Seven months ago. The same way Mom died. We'd been to Jericho looking for Dad – "

That got Dean's attention. "Dad?" he echoed.

Sam nodded, rolling right over Dean's odd reaction. "And when I got home, Jess was – was on the ceiling. Burning. Like Mom. I – I never made the Stanford interview, Dean. I quit college to come with you. I – I – " he trailed off, shaking his head in disbelief, unable to form the words to express the thoughts swarming in his head.

Dean was silent again, before tentatively offering, "Maybe – maybe all that was just – just another nightmare."

"A nightmare?" Sam echoed. Oh my god. He felt like his world was collapsing around him. Everything he thought he knew – his life for the last seven months – everything that had happened to him. Jess. Dad. None of that was real? How could none of it be real?

He felt like someone had pulled a tablecloth out from underneath his entire world, and everything was lying in pieces on the floor. How could he have believed with such certainty that his memories were true? How could he believe they were false? He glanced wildly around the car, panic beginning to squeeze at his chest, claw at his brain. His eyes settled on his big brother, whose face was a mask of concern. Was Dean real? Was he sitting here with him, driving him to a big interview? Driving him home to Jess? What if this was the nightmare?

But a nightmare where Jessica was still alive.

How could that be the nightmare?

Suddenly, he knew what he had to do.

All doubt, all fear left him as he grabbed his cell phone and began scrolling feverishly through the phone book. Whichever Truth was real, he knew the number would be there. Even in the nightmare where Jess had died, he could never have deleted her number.

Pushing the button with trembling fingers, Sam lifted the cell to his ear. It rang twice before connecting.

"Hey, handsome!" he heard a voice say. "Hope that brother of yours has almost got you home!"

Sam nearly dropped the phone. "Jess?"

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Dean wasn't entirely sure what was wrong with his kid brother. And from the quick conversation he'd had with Jessica after she'd spoken to Sam, he didn't think she was either.

Jess was scared, and with good reason. It wasn't every day your boyfriend called and told you to get out of the house because something was coming to kill you.

All things considered, she'd taken it fairly well.

Dean had watched uneasily as Sam jumped out of the car, not entirely sure where he was going, the cell phone he'd thrown at him still in his hands.

"She wants to talk to you," was all Sam had said.

Dean had taken the phone, not sure what the hell to say to Jessica.

"Dean?"

"Yeah."

"What's wrong with him?"

"I don't know."

"He sounds crazy. Where have you guys been? What did you do to him?"

"I didn't do anything! He had a bad dream – "

"He's always having bad dreams!"

"Jess," Dean had stopped her short. "For now," he said, sighing. "Just do what Sam wants. Go stay with your Mom for a couple of days."

Jessica didn't answer right away, and Dean used the time to follow Sam's progress through the rear view mirror. He was popping the trunk. What was he looking for back there?

"Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"You'll bring him back safe, right?"

Dean hadn't taken his eyes off the mirror. "Yeah. I won't let anything bad happen to him. You know that."

Again Jessica didn't answer.

Dean heard a thud behind him, almost as if Sam was throwing stuff around in the trunk. "Listen, Jess," he said. "I gotta go. It's gonna be OK. Just go to your Mom's, OK?"

Another pause. "OK. Tell him I love him."

Dean nodded, even though he knew Jess had no way to see that. "Yeah. I will." He hung up, tossing the cell onto the seat next to him as he opened the driver's door and walked around the back of the car to where Sam was standing staring into the trunk.

"Sam – ?" he began, carefully. His brother had lifted the fake bottom of the trunk and was just staring at the cavity underneath, ashen-faced.

"There – there's nothing in here," he stammered, at last looking up at his brother.

Dean peered into the trunk and shrugged. "There's a spare tyre," he pointed out. "Like you'd expect to find in a spare tyre cavity…"

Sam moved so fast, Dean wasn't nearly ready for him, his brother suddenly grabbing him by the shoulders and shoving him hard against the car. There was something wild in his eyes, and Dean wasn't sure whether it was desperation or madness.

"Sam – "

"Where are the weapons?" Sam demanded, still holding Dean pinned against the car. "I need to protect her. I need to kill the thing! Where are the weapons?"

Dean looked from Sam to the empty trunk and back again, old memories of what Dad used to keep hidden back there suddenly resurfacing. "W – weapons?" he stammered, more than a little thrown by his brother's aggressive behaviour. "You – you mean Dad's weapons?"

Sam nodded, frantically. "Of course I mean Dad's weapons!" he burst out. "Where are they? I need them! To protect her, to save her!"

Dean's frown deepened. "Sammy," he said, very very slowly, carefully placing what he hoped was a soothing hand on his brother's shoulder. "We haven't kept that kind of stuff in there since we stopped hunting – "

"Stopped – ?"

"After Dad died."

Sam froze, eyes locking with his brother's. "Dad – Dad's dead?" he could barely get the words out. Jess was alive. But Dad was dead.

Now Dean was really worried. "Sam – "

"When? How? How did he – "

"You know how – "

"Tell me!" Sam shook Dean hard, and for a split second the older brother thought the kid was going to hit him.

Play along, Dean thought to himself, trying to stay calm. Whatever's wrong, we can straighten it out…

"Sam," he said, carefully and deliberately. "It's been just you and me since you were thirteen, buddy."

Sam didn't seem to react to that. Then, "How did he die?"

Dean swallowed hard. "The thing that got Mom," he said, quietly. "He thought he had a line on it. But it got him first."

Sam just stared at him. "And we stopped hunting after that?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Just like you wanted."

Sam loosened his grip on his brother's shoulders and turned away.

Dean hesitated, before making a move towards him. "Sam – " he put a hand on Sam's arm, and his brother half turned back towards him. "We gotta get you back home, kiddo," he said gently. "I worked my ass off putting you through school, and I'm not going to let you screw that up 'cause of some stupid nightmare."

Sam met his gaze. "You? Work?" he echoed, his voice distant and unbelieving.

Dean looked hurt, but was glad of the distraction. "Hey, old man Jacobs said he might let me take over the autoshop in a couple of years, when he retires. I need you to be a hotshot lawyer making mega-bucks by then or no way will I be able to afford it!"

Sam smiled, weakly, and Dean started to relax a little. "I need to get back to Jess," was all the younger brother said.

Dean nodded. "Yeah."

"But first," Sam added. "I need your knife."

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Dean kept glancing sideways at Sam all the way back to California; something about the way the kid was gripping the knife made him uncomfortable.

Three times Sam had made him explain why he still kept it, still slept with it under his pillow. "Old habits die hard," he'd said, with a grin that didn't quite make it to his eyes. Just because they didn't hunt any more didn't mean nothing was hunting them.

Sam had listened to Dean's explanations with a head so full of white noise he could barely hear him. From what he had heard, their life after Dad died, while not a bed of roses, had been almost what Sam had always hoped for during those dark days of childhood when their Dad had dragged them from motel room to motel room, school to school, as he hunted god knows what and trained them to do the same. Dean had quit school, got a job, and given Sam the chance of the 'normal' life he'd always dreamed of. They'd stayed in one place, Sam had gone to one school, he'd made friends, got an education, gone to college and met Jessica.

No monsters, no ghosts, no hunting.

With a sudden twinge of extreme guilt, Sam realised he was almost glad his Dad had died.

Dean was still looking at him. He was probably the most scared Sam had ever seen him. And with all the stuff he'd seen Dean deal with, he knew that was pretty damn scared.

But had he actually seen Dean do the things, face the things, kill the things he remembered? Could he trust those memories? The last seven months of his life had seemed so real, he couldn't simply dismiss them as some incredibly intricate, vividly detailed nightmare. There was more to it than that. There had to be.

Dean's cell phone rang loudly, startling them both. Still eyeing Sam cautiously, as if he was afraid he might slit his throat if he turned away, Dean flipped open the cell, speaking in a measured tone of voice, as if everything was normal.

"Hey," he said. Sam heard a female voice on the other end, but somehow knew it wasn't Jessica. "Yeah," Dean continued. "We should be back soon." His eyes slid sideways to his brother. "Yeah, Sam's OK. He – he had a bad dream last night. Messed him up a little. Yeah. That was his idea. Jess called you?"

Sam glanced over at him at the mention of Jessica.

Dean deliberately avoided his gaze, discomfort obvious in his body language. "Yeah. Yeah, it's OK. We'll straighten it all out when we get back. You – you'll be there, right?" There was a weird look on Dean's face, like the one Sam remembered from when he'd first told him and Dad he was leaving for Stanford. Except, he corrected himself, that had never happened. Dad was long gone by then, and Dean had moved with him when he went to college.

He shook his head, uncertain which set of memories to believe.

"OK," Dean was saying, a look of relief on his face. "I'll see you when we get back." Then he added, "Don't worry."

Clicking shut the phone, Dean turned to Sam. "Bethany," he explained, indicating the phone. "Jess called her. "We – " he paused, awkwardly. "We kind of had a fight before you and I set out on this little road trip," he explained, glancing away. "She said we were over and she was leaving."

Sam frowned. Bethany. The name seemed familiar, but he just couldn't picture her. "But you guys are OK now?" he asked, somehow knowing that Bethany was Dean's girlfriend.

Dean shrugged. "As OK as we ever are," he said, smiling awkwardly. Then, "She's worried about you."

Sam looked surprised. "I'm OK," he said, matter-of-factly. Noticing the look of concern that continued to haunt his brother's face, he added, "Really. I'm OK. But I need to get home. I need to make sure the house is clean, that Jess isn't in danger –"

"That it was all just a bad dream?" Dean finished for him.

Sam nodded. Exactly that. That the last ten years of his life were just a bad dream…

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It was dark by the time the Impala purred to a stop outside Sam's apartment. It was the same house, the same street he remembered, and as he led the way through the apartment door, he was relieved to realise his keys still fit the lock, and the paint was still peeling around the door handle.

He'd promised Jessica he'd paint it.

Glancing back at Dean, who followed uncertainly, reflexes dulled by ten years of normality, hunting days firmly in the dark, distant past, Sam gripped Dean's knife tightly, pushing open the door with a toe-curling squeak.

All was quiet inside.

Again glancing back to ensure Dean was following him, Sam stepped gingerly into the apartment, flipping on the light as he passed.

Nothing.

No ghosts. No six-eyed monsters. And, peeking into the bedroom, a furtive glance at the ceiling assured him, no Jessica.

He took a deep breath, turning to look back at his brother, who had his back to him, looking back into the living room, the way they'd just come.

"There's nothing here," Sam said, almost deflatedly, lowering the knife as his senses began to return to normal after their heightened state of agitation.

He heard Dean make a weird noise, almost like he was trying to say Sam's name.

"Dean?" Sam switched on the bedroom light. There was a dripping sound coming from somewhere, and when his eyes followed the direction of the noise, he noticed a few spots of something dark and viscous glistening at his brother's feet. "Dean?" he repeated, a bad, bad feeling starting to gnaw at his gut.

He reached out a hand towards his brother, who was turning to face him very slowly. The dripping sound was getting faster, and the spots at his feet were starting to turn into a pool.

Sam was almost afraid to look. It was blood. Deep down inside him, Sam knew it was blood, even before Dean had turned to reveal the ragged gash gaping from one side of his throat to the other. The look of surprise etched on his face seemed frozen there, as he again made that weird sound.

"S – S – "

Sam stared at him open-mouthed, some distant part of his brain still capable of rational thought telling him that Dean's vocal chords had probably been cut.

Then his older brother's knees started to buckle, blood dripping down and staining his grey t-shirt a vivid scarlet as he began to fall. Sam caught him, his own legs giving out in shock as he fell to the ground with his brother bleeding to death in his arms.

"No, no, no," Sam started to mutter. "No, not Dean. Not Jess for Dean. I can't – it's not – " There was water on his brother's face, mingling with the blood there, and Sam realised his own tears were splashing down onto Dean's clammy white skin, the heat draining from his body with the blood now pooling under Sam's knees.

He was looking up at something over Sam's shoulder, large eyes fixed and unblinking.

"Dean? Please!" Sam was sobbing. "Don't – you can't - !" but he stopped abruptly as he realised Dean was trying to tell him something. His expression had changed from stunned acceptance to abject terror. He tried to speak but couldn't, somehow managing to raise a weak arm in order to point at whatever it was he'd been looking at. The fear in his eyes deepened visibly, and Sam turned.

Then he knew only blackness.