A.N: This is my first Supernatural Fic, so it is, of course, accompanied by all sorts of fun variations of nervousness. Do me a favor and tell me what you think so I can stop obsessing about it?

Summery: Tag on for Nightmare; Sam thinks about that moment when the cabinet moved, and everything before and after it.

Disclaimer: If I owned Supernatural there would be nude scenes, lots of nude scenes. I'm talkn' fucking porno here, cuz' really, who can blame me?

A tenuous step towards sanity.

Dean can swear until he's blue in the face that I'm not like Matt; that I'll never be like him so long as he, Dean, is watching out for me. What was it he said?

"As long as I'm around nothing bad's gonna happen to you."

But I know he's afraid, and hell if I don't even blame him for it, I can tell by the way he moves, and the way he's just a little tenser than is strictly normal for Dean. Even now, as we drive away from that hokey-ass hunting lodge I feel him glancing at me, real quickly, out of the corner of his eye. I can't help but wonder if he's making sure that I'm okay or if he's reassuring himself that I haven't mutated into one of the monsters we hunt.

The car is dead silent as we go, not even the mindless noise of Metalica to break the strained quiet. I want to say something, anything, to get him talking because the silence only makes it harder to ignore the thoughts running through my head, and the last thing I want to do is drag all these bran-spanking-new issues into the light to examine; thinking about things has never ended well for me. And the silence makes it even clearer that everything is not okay.

There's nothing I can say, short of asking him flat-out if he thinks I'm a monster now, and I know what his answer to that would be.

"Don't be stupid, Sam, you're not a monster." Or some variation of that, probably one with lots of cuss words and a 'Sammy' or two.

So instead I'm forced to stew in my thoughts, my mind going over the events of the past few days over and over like a broken record; if records had pictures as well as sound. I can see and hear it all so perfectly, like I'm still there in that house and not on the road to god-doesn't-even-know-where. This whole case has just been too fucked up for words.

The thing that gets me most, though? The knowledge that I'm not as disturbed by those deaths as I should be, yeah, that freaks the fucking hell out of me. Jim, Roger, and Max all died needlessly, and I'm more worried about the knowledge that I pulled a fucking Jean Grey? What kind of horrible person does that make me?

Don't get me wrong, I'm sad for Alice, and I'm guilty over not being able to really help, but those emotions take a back seat to my fear; and that pleasant bit of information brings up a whole new set of problems that I just can't deal with right now, so I force myself to think about the only other thing I'm capable of thinking about right now, my new power. Round and round my thoughts go, over and over; there's that fucking record again.

I do this the whole time we drive, for hours until I fall asleep, and then for several more hours after I wake up from my usual nightmare about Jess, until I can barely remember what its like to think about anything else. This must be what addictions like; I abruptly decide to never do drugs, being addicted sucks.

I don't actually decide to do something until we pull into the parking lot of a motel that's only about half a shade less corny than the last one; and even then it's only a vague idea. But part of me, in the back of my mind, remembers my philosophy teacher at Stanford, Dr. McKenneth, saying that people fear what they cannot control. So, if I can control my power, I won't be afraid anymore right? Right. I hope.

We go through the routine of getting ready for bed: food, showers, change, playful and semi-witty banter, and then lights out. I wait until I'm damn sure that Dean is out, because how much would it suck if he caught me at this?

I get up and walk to Dean's duffle and dig through it until I find the spoon he held up earlier. Why the fuck my big brother is carrying a spoon around with him I have no idea, one of his many isocracies I guess.

I sit on the bed and for a moment I just stare at the utensil in my hand, I can't believe in doing this, how stupid can I get? But the fear is still there, nagging me, and I want to feel unafraid, more than anything else, even more than wanting to be normal.

I'm so fucking sick of being scared; it blows harder than being obsessed does. I concentrate hard on the spoon, focus everything I have on it; willing it to buckle beneath the pressure I'm putting on it. Nothing happens, except that my head starts to ache.

'What the hell? I did it easily enough at Max's!'

My mind drifts back to my time in that closet, to the desperate, agonizing fear I felt at the thought of losing Dean. The burning, all-consuming, self hatred that filled me at knowing that I was helpless to save him, just as I was with Mom and Jess. The grief, the guilt; old familiar friends now a thousand times stronger than they'd ever been before. In that moment I had reconfirmed what I already knew; I could survive without Jess, I could not survive without Dean.

The power of those emotions was still to overwhelming, I could feel them taking me over as my eyes returned to the spoon from witch they had strayed, and my subconscious did the rest. It was like a string within me had snapped; all those emotions seemed to surge forward out of my body to hit the spoon. In a second it was twisted beyond recognition, the only part of it that was untouched rested between my thumb and forefinger.

My heart soared and my smile was genuine, hope bloomed within me; it felt in that moment as if that bit of shrapnel was the first step back to sanity, or as close to it as we ever got. It was a desperate and tenuous step, but a step none the less, and a single step was better than standing still.

I almost cried from the relief of knowing that there was some control still left to me.

I had no time to think more, as the events of the past few days hit me with a vengeance, a sucker punch to my stomach. The now mutilated spoon fell between the nightstand and the bed as I crashed into oblivion. Not even hope and joy can defeat exhaustion. And a tenuous step back toward what my life had been before didn't seem able to ether.

No matter, I'd keep practicing in the morning, maybe get a few steps closer to the ultimate goal, even if they're small steps.

A.N: Sorry, I didn't know how to end it, so just…did, ya know? Tell what you think, yes? Yes. Goodbye until another day.