The first thing the young hunter saw when he opened the door was his old familiar face, sans Dean's trademark smirk. "Sammy, I'm sorry."
Sam's jaw dropped, his eyes growing wide. He couldn't remember ever hearing an apology from his older brother. "You're what?"
"I was a jerk," Dean shrugged, "but, I mean, come on, you had to have been sleeping with Jessica, right? You had to have been."
"As hard as it apparently is for you to believe, Dean," Sam grinned, walking past his brother and plopping down on the bed, "some people wait until after they get married. I know it must sound like an impossibility to you, but it does happen."
"That's funny. Really. No hard feelings?"
Sammy closed his eyes. "Sure, as long as there aren't any more hard feelings between you and Lily until we get this mess figured out."
Dean laid down on his own bed and chuckled, "Deal. So, you want to go after it again? Try to kill it?"
"After it tried to kill us, yeah. We can't live like this forever. I can't stand the way I look with short hair, it just doesn't feel right."
"Well, if we pull this off," Dean muttered, yawning, "you won't have to worry about it. With luck, everything will end up all right."
"Yeah, sure," Sam agreed, his eyelids growing heavy. He had just enough time to glance at the clock and realize he'd been driving around, avoiding returning to the room, for almost four hours before he drifted slowly off to sleep.
The shorter man ran through the shadows of the cemetery, jumping over grave markers as his long hair flew back slightly in the breeze, hitting him gently in the eyes. Cold sweat cascaded down his brow.
Up ahead, he could see the silhouette of his brother, a silhouette that had been his own until that long-ago fateful day.
He caught up to the other man, panting and looking over his shoulder as he tripped over a tombstone and went tumbling down onto the cold, unforgiving earth. Strong hands grabbed his arm and yanked him up.
Sam turned, still out of breath, to gaze up into his brother's eyes, eyes that had once been his. "You think it gave up?" he asked, scanning the graveyard.
Dean sighed, running a hand through the short brown hair that he had slowly and reluctantly come to call his own. "Wouldn't be the first time. Who'd you trip over?"
Sammy glanced down at the polished stone. "Alice Marie Carver. Sorry, hon."
His brother smirked, an expression that still seemed foreign on that face. "We'll catch up with it eventually. We'll kill it. Things'll get back to normal. Well, as normal as they can get when our family's involved. Come on, let's get back to the motel."
The two headed back into the shadows of the cemetery, suffering yet another temporary setback at the hands of the soul-sucker.
