Sam wasn't surprised when Dean checked himself out of the hospital, AMA. It was probably only a few days sooner than his doctor would have recommended, but it was enough that Dean was still far from 100.

Sam watched with worry as Dean, brown paper bag full of medicine and post-discharge directions in hand, made his way oh too slowly across the hospital parking lot to the old Impala. When he opened the door he had to stifle a laugh, though, as the loud creak it made synchronized perfectly with Dean's movements to get into the passenger seat.

"What?" Dean asked, looking down at himself, after seeing the smirk on Sam's face.

"Nothing," Sam replied and closed the door, watching Dean, secretly hoping the creak and squeak and Dean's movements would align again. After the week they'd had, Sam would take any sort of humor he could get, even at Dean's expense.

Sam got into the driver's seat, shut his own creaky door, and looked at his brother. He could see how Dean was holding himself, doing his best to get comfortable and not move at the same time. He was about to suggest Dean take one of the pain pills he'd been prescribed when Dean held up his hand between them and ground out, "I'm fine, Sammy. Let's just get the hell outta here."

Sam sighed. They were apparently back to not talking again. He turned the key, the Impala roared to life, and they were on their way.

00000

Dean had fallen asleep about half an hour after they'd left the hospital, not that Sam had been surprised. Hell, he'd been relieved. It was a whole lot easier to drive and not have to worry about what to say, or, more importantly, what not to say, that way.

Sam was so frustrated at not being able to do anything for Dean. Not that he knew what he could do anyway. This was so different than any other time Dean had been injured.

Over the years they'd both had their visits in and out of hospitals and doctors' offices. They'd taken turns, along with their father, patching each other up, too. Dean was great at stitches, there being a few scars on Sam's body that Sam knew would be a lot more noticeable if anyone other than Dean or a plastic surgeon had done the sewing. Sam even remembered the time Dean had been thrown across the room by a nasty poltergeist, breaking his arm. Their dad had set the bone himself, Sam holding firmly onto Dean's upper arm as John had pulled on Dean's hand and wrist, straightening out the radius.

But this time… Sam could look at Dean's physical injuries. He'd seen the bruises on Dean's abdomen and back. The ones caused by the bar couple and the surgeons. He tried to think of them in a clinical way. He tried to lie to himself, using Dean's lie, that he'd just been in a bar fight. But he knew better. He knew it was more than that. He knew that it was more than money that they'd taken from Dean, more than his flesh that they'd injured, no matter what Dean said.

He thought back to his time with Jessica. It had been so easy to talk to her, their conversations about anything and everything, other than the family business, coming so naturally. She'd told him about her family, even so far as divulging her family secret – that her mother was an alcoholic and had neglected her and her brother. She'd never told anyone about her, until Sam, and he remembered her telling him how good it was to finally let it out, how by talking about it, it had been therapeutic. Sam had come so close to telling her about his not-so-idealic family life then… If only Dean would talk about what happened, how it would be so ther-…

He shook his head at his line of thinking. Dean and therapeutic in the same sentence… Yeah, right. When had Dean ever talked things out? Even when he'd been electrocuted, given less than a month to live, Dean had brushed it off, refused to take it seriously, refused to talk about his feelings. After they'd left the Roosevelt Asylum, Sam had wanted to talk about it, apologize, but Dean had wanted nothing to do with it. Just another day on the job; no emotions; no feelings necessary. No, Sam thought, smiling sadly, Dean had them – emotions and feelings – he just kept them inside. Unless, of course, it was anger, hate or anything that had to do with exacting revenge, killing demons or shooting anything evil.

Sam shoved a Metallica cassette into the tape deck. He didn't mind the music so much when it was by his choice. His choice. Sam rolled the words around in his head. His choice... Damn. Sam realized that there wasn't anything more he could say to Dean at this point. Some basic lessons he'd learned in one of those First Year Experience classes at Stanford finally came back to him. He vividly remembered the female campus police lieutenant that taught the class, and her words about rape and its victims. About their choice being taken away by their attackers, and how the first thing to do for them is to give back their freedom to choose... Sam hit his fist against the steering wheel. Why hadn't he remembered this a few days ago?

Dean had dealt with the world's evil for the past twenty-two years of his life, and those two at the bar were just two more on the long list of baddies. Maybe the best thing for him to do was to let Dean deal with this on his own, in his own way. By his own choosing.

A few hours later Sam pulled the car into the motel parking lot. Dean didn't even budge when he pulled to a stop in front of the place's office doors.

"Dean," Sam called, gently shaking his brother's shoulder. "Dean."

"Mmm… yeah, what?" Dean murmured, opening his eyes to look around.

"I'm beat. We're stopping for the night," Sam told him, pointing out the window to the motel's sign.

"Yeah, sure. Where are we?"

"Near the Pennsylvania border," Sam replied. "I'll be right back," he added, got out of the car and headed into the office.

Dean took the time to carefully stretch, getting himself ready to get out of the car. While he knew he could and should just drop the tough guy act he'd been giving Sam, knowing his brother, as always, had seen right through it, it wasn't easy. He was the big brother. He was the bad-assed demon, ghost and evil-thing hunter. He was an expert marksman, trained to be a weapon. Trained to… Dean stopped his train of thought then and shook his head, angry with himself. He'd let his guard down, ignored his training, and had paid the price. Sam thinks it's so much more, he thought, trying to make it into some life altering experience, something he'd need to 'talk' about. Yeah, like he'd wanted to talk about what had happened at the asylum? It was a lesson learned, albeit a hard one, and nothing more.

This was the same conversation he'd had in his head for the past five days…

Sam returned to the car and drove them to the other end of the parking lot.

"Room's on the second floor. Sorry," he told Dean with a shrug.

"I can deal," was Dean's only reply.

Sam handed Dean the key to the room. "Head on up. I'll grab the bags."

00000

Two weeks later, the Impala drove away from Binghamton, New York and headed west on Route 17.

It wasn't any different from any other ghost gig they'd handled over the years. They'd talked to the families in the haunted houses, barns, garages, or wherever. Found out the family histories, checked out the local legends at the libraries and historical societies… In the end they'd managed to salt and burn the bones of almost a dozen ghosts in and around the area, and come out unscathed. No different than any other gig. Except…

Except that when they returned to their motel room each night, they both stayed in. They both stayed up late watching bad infomercials and old black and white movies waiting for exhaustion to claim them.

There was no need to go hustle some money at a pool table. Dean had come up with enough fake or stolen credit cards to pay for their essentials: gas, food, lodging, salt and ammo being the top items on their grocery lists. Dean was subtle about it, but Sam didn't question his methods. For now he was just as content to stay out of the bars.

He wondered when that would change, though. If it would change. He wondered what they'd have to deal with, what horrible monster would need a good hangover to forget. Not that he was asking for that kind of trouble, he just knew that it was inevitable.

A day and two states later, inevitable called their name.

"Minnesota?" he asked Dean, looking at the map in front of him, half on the dash and half in his lap.

"Yeah, the coordinates are right on."

Sam looked at the coordinates they'd been sent, and again at the map, and nodded, seeing his error.

Four teens had disappeared from a small community. Then they'd been found, their dead, broken bodies mysteriously appearing in a small, public park exactly two days from their disappearance.