-AN- Here I am. Once again. Honestly, I'm surprising even myself with these semi-regular updates. Thanks to everyone who is still reading and sticking with it. You are survivors.

-GNS-

Chapter 11:

"What do you mean?" Dean asked carefully, "how did you suspect this?"

Henry sighed heavily, dropping his head in his hands for a moment before glancing back over his shoulder to where Sam was sleeping, breaths heavy and pained but definitely alive. A part of Dean's attention was stuck on the sound of those breaths, even as he looked intently at the younger man across from him.

"You and Sam weren't—you've never been close. Not like, not like you and I, ya know?" Henry explained, "You always looked out for me, took care of me, made my dinners, walked me to school, made sure I was happy and healthy and—" Henry broke off in a weak chuckle, "and Sam didn't need that, not from you, not like I did. At least," Henry paused, staring down at his hands now plopped carelessly in his lap, picking at the skin at the edges of his fingernails, "at least I'd always thought that. He never seemed like—he never needed you."

Dean wanted to scoff at the ridiculousness of the statement, mind suddenly stuck on the image of the toddling two-year-old Sam would have been here, when their mother died, when their father inevitably fell off the wagon. His brother at that age had been rosy cheeked and innocent, a messy mop of chocolate curls and sticky, grabby hands always reaching for things just out of reach. That Sam couldn't even tie his own shoelaces.

Dean mourned that little boy and his easy, dimpled smiles more often than he wanted to admit. It seemed like now adays Dean couldn't even get Sam to look at him without some form of disdain.

Henry shrugged, "I always just thought, I guess I thought he could make it on his own, and he had dad for everything else. I didn't realize he never really had dad either, not until dad was gone and not much changed. Not until dad was gone and Sam still stuck around. I couldn't understand it. Sam obviously hated being stuck with us. I guess I just assumed he'd split."

Dean thought about his conversation with Sam before, the look in Sam's eyes when he'd asked if his Sam really mattered to him in his world. How Dean had insisted they were brothers and Sam hadn't seemed to know what that meant. Who would this Sam have had, if he'd gone and split after Dad's death? No one. Nothing. The realization felt sour in his stomach.

"And then," Henry chuckled but it sounded bitter, "and then the apocalypse crap started and it just didn't make sense. Not to me. The angles, demons, they were tugging us every which way but it was all lore, it was all prophecy, and none of it fit. You were Michael's vessel. The older brother. A righteous man. And that—I could understand that. But then Sam. He was a middle child. He followed Dad's orders. And maybe he had demon blood in him, sure, but that was all a part of the prophecy too. That was chosen for him. And I kept wondering—I wondered why it wasn't me. I thought it would make so much more sense if Lucifer's vessel was me."

Sam shifted on the bed with a tired groan, and both men turned to watch him for a moment. He settled after a few seconds, still dead to the world.

"Sure, but that—one messed up circumstance doesn't explain why you suspected that you shouldn't exist," Dean said.

Henry nodded, "It wasn't like that, really. It wasn't—it wasn't until we died that I realized maybe I'd been wrong about Sam all this time. Maybe he did need you too. Maybe—maybe he was supposed to have what you and I had all along. Maybe I was—was a thief. I mean, no wonder he resents me, right?"

"Woah, wait. Back up. When you died?" Dean asked.

Henry hummed in agreement. "We were staying in a room together once—had a pullout couch and it was right after… it wasn't long after Sam had let the devil out of the box. You had wanted—you wanted to keep an eye on him ya know? But these two hunters, they had heard about Sam and what he'd done, and they came in one day and shot us in our beds."

Dean thought about the months after Sam let the devil out of the cage, how he was always waiting for something to happen, for the other shoe to drop. Dean couldn't imagine what it must have been like for this Sam, who's brother didn't even really seem to like him all that much.

"Yeah," Dean sighed, "yeah that happened to us too. I just don't get how that would have clued you in to something like that."

"It was heaven," Henry told him.

Dean's brow furrowed, trying to pick out how a world full of mediocre memories would tip off Henry on something so monumental. Was there a memory that did it? Did the angles let something slip or—Some people share heavens, Ash's words trickled back to him in that moment, special cases, ya know?

"You weren't there with us, were you," Dean said.

Henry shook his head. "I didn't even realize I was dead until I woke back up gasping. Then when I figured the dream of you teaching me to drive wasn't really a dream I got to thinking about heaven, ya know? About what it all meant. And then—you went out one night, food run or something. Sam had been sullen, more than usual, and he'd been drinking too much. I thought it'd be better if I stuck with him, made sure he didn't get into any trouble. He was just about to conk out when he looked at me, glassy-eyed and said, he said that you didn't stop looking for me, when we were in there. I remember he scoffed, 'Dean's in heaven and it's still not enough for him.'"

Henry turned his head to look at Sam from over his shoulder, watching him breathe steadily in silence for a few moments, considering.

"We hadn't talked about it, ya know?" Henry explained, the words coming out slowly as if he was weighing each one. "None of us had said a word about what had happened, and I just thought it was because you didn't want to talk about being dead, or what you saw. But then I realized Sam was with you. That you were in heaven together and you knew something that I didn't. So I looked into it, and I started seeing these stories about—" Henry trailed off.

"Stories about soulmates," Dean finished.

"Yeah," Henry's shoulders sagged with the admission. "And that's when I realized. The lore, everything. It did make sense. I was the one who didn't fit. And maybe I had—maybe I'd taken that from Sam. Maybe that was supposed to be his. Is it? In your world? Is it—are you and him like you and I?"

Dean didn't know what to say. In all honesty, heaven felt more like a faraway dream than something that had actually happened. Until now, he had pretty much forgotten what Ash had said those years ago. It made sense, in an objective sort of way. Heaven and Hell had their plans, and they had to make them happen. Sam and Dean being a matched set of chess pieces was just one way to make sure the game got played. But Dean knew the question Henry was really asking.

If I wasn't here, would you like Sam better?

"That's not your fault," Dean said slowly.

"I didn't ask if it was my fault, Dean. I just gotta—what is it like, for the two of you?" Henry asked.

"It's always been me and him," Dean shrugged. It felt weird, talking about this. It always felt weird, trying to explain what being brothers meant to Dean. The word had always felt more like an oath than anything else. But then he thought about how he and Sam had been lately—the strain their relationship had felt since he'd gotten back from purgatory and…yeah. If brothers had been an oath, well Dean wasn't sure either of them had really kept it.

"Yeah?" Henry prompted.

Dean sighed, "I guess it wasn't exactly like you two. I mean—Sam and me, we had each other growing up and I looked out for him. He's my little brother, ya know? But he and Dad fought tooth and nail and I always had to be the peacemaker. Sam was always angry. Didn't want this life. Always thought there was something out there better for him. And there was. He's smart, coulda done anything, gone anywhere. At the time, though—at the time it felt a whole lot more like he was just abandoning us. He went to school, wanted to be a lawyer. I dragged him back in once Dad went missing and he's been stuck with me ever since. And I guess… a part of me is afraid he never really wanted to be here in the first place. That if I were gone he wouldn't even care. I had that sort of confirmed, recently. So, I wouldn't say things—they haven't been great between us."

"That doesn't really sound like Sam," Henry said. "I mean, despite everything, I don't even think this Sam would ever want you really gone."

"Yeah, well," Dean huffed. "Maybe this Sam needed me after all, but my Sam? He seemed to do just fine without me."

"Dean—"

"Look, what do you know about it? Nothing. So I'd appreciate it if you didn't try to talk to me as if you did," Dean told Henry harshly.

"Okay," Henry breathed, "sorry."

"I'm going to bed," Dean stated, flicking off the light, conversation over.

Dean listened to Henry sigh and shift on the other bed for a moment, before slowly standing. He crossed the room to the adjoining door and paused for a moment, inhaling as if preparing to speak. The silence hung in the air between them, but eventually Henry gave up, entering into Sam's room and closing the door softly behind himself.

Dean stared up at the ceiling for a while, listening to the heavy breaths of his unconscious brother in the bed next to him.