Aaaand we're back! Thanks for sticking through the posting break! If I ever do miss a week without a warning, just assume life got in the way, and I'll be back the following week. All of that said, let's get some resolution to that cliffhanger ;) Big thanks to Bjester74, DearHart, TXKimsonFan, Persephone Lupin, Celtic Knot, freetobescary, onanickle, and MaruHan for reviewing last chapter, and to everyone else for reading. Y'all make my writing world go round! Happy holidays everyone!

Second quick thing, if the angst here gets too much, I recently started up a happy oneshot series for the boys called Life in Color. There's only happy stuff there, and if you have any requests, send 'em in!

I still don't own Supernatural, that...hasn't changed to a degree that I'm aware of.

The only sound left in the room besides Dean's slight fiddling with the blanket and the beeping monitors was Sam's own breathing. Him, in hell? What was Dean talking about? That was years ago, they'd been over this…Sam looked up at him, forehead creased with confusion, and was met with a similar look from his brother.

They were both so terribly confused and lost, unable to convey what they needed to in order to make the other party simply understand. It was terrifying territory.

"Rock of Ages," Dean said quietly. It was so quiet Sam almost couldn't make it out, and whether that was from the memory of the pain of putting words together, he didn't know. Maybe it was both. "Lucifer. Lisa. Ben." They were all just disjointed words, but when Dean raised his eyes back to look at Sam, there was nothing but heartbreak in them. Heartbreak and loss and sadness and pain, so much so that he hadn't seen in his brother's gaze in so long.

He had never wanted to see hurt like that again in his brother's eyes. But he still wasn't quite grasping what Dean was getting at.

"You…" Dean trailed off again, a corner of his mouth pulling upwards in a pained smirk, his brother's go to facade for hiding whatever he was actually feeling, "either…not…you, or this…isn't real."

So either Sam wasn't Sam or the reality they were living wasn't real. So Dean was stuck in some sort of…Sam didn't even know.

He hadn't, however, brought up the fact that Sam was supposed to be possessed by Lucifer. So something in Sam's demeanor, or the fact that he had been by his brother's bedside for the past few weeks, or just the look on his face had assured Dean that he was talking to Sam and not an evil angel. But still, he wasn't quite sure how he could be talking to Sam, and Sam could read it all over his face.

"You're in a hole…in the ground…" the crappy attempt at a smirk faded from his face. His eyebrows pinched together ever so slightly and Sam saw it-the man who blamed himself, at least partially, for what had happened so many years ago.

Sam shook his head ever so slightly, wondering how he could even start to try and rectify this. "I'm here, Dean, promise you, all me," he tried, but he didn't exactly have a silver knife to prove his theory. Though, he did have a flask of holy water he kept in his jacket at all times, especially with all of them so open to attacks for the past few weeks.

He slowly moved his hand into his pocket, with Dean watching his every move, and pulled out the flash. "See?" he sprinkled a few drops onto his hand and raised it so that Dean could properly see. "Not a demon. No silver knife here though, it's a hospital, but I…I can get Cas to vouch, or…something," he tried and put the holy water away.

But it didn't seem to have helped. Dean was still eyeing him in the exact same way, and every glance Sam cast towards him hurt just a bit more. "There was a crash, Dean, do you remember that?"

He could see the gears turning in Dean's brain before he finally shook his head the little amount that he was able.

Sam pushed a hand through his hair, and when that didn't do enough, he pushed himself up from his chair, still shaking his head.

"So," he started as quietly as he could, "I'm supposed to be in hell, you were with Lisa and Ben, but something's totally off about this whole scenario?"

There was a single blink from Dean as he eyes Sam as cautiously as he had been before, but with more pain in his gaze.

"You don't remember anything else?"

And then there were the two blinks that followed that Sam had been absolutely dreading. He was sure his face must have fallen a great deal because Dean opened his mouth, either to explain or to say another word or to do something, but Sam was still shaking his head. Dean had forgotten the past what, seven years? No, no, no, that couldn't be possible, not by a long shot.

"Okay, I just, I need," he muttered quickly to himself, trying to figure out what in the hell he was supposed to do. Sam cast another look to Dean, and, pursing his lips, pulled the phone from his pocket and made his way out of the room.

The handle rattled slightly with his shaking hand as he opened it and stepped outside, nearly running into Marian on the way.

"Sam! Scared me there, sorry," she said and shook her head, but took one look at him and her slight smile faded away. "What's wrong? We didn't get a call at the station, everything alright?"

No, everything was not alright. Something was terribly wrong, and Sam couldn't (didn't want) to put it into words. "He, uh, he's awake," he said quietly, "he…he's remembering things that happened…seven years ago that we put behind us." Sam shifted the phone in his grasp and shook his head again, trying to get rid of the voices in his mind reminding him what the worst case scenario was.

Marian's soft touch on his shoulder brought him back down to earth and he looked at her through slightly wet eyes. "I'll ask him a few questions, we'll do a few tests, we'll get this sorted out, Sam, he'll be fine," she assured gently. Marian then looked over a few more things on her seemingly magic clipboard, and after a moment of waiting, she shook her head. "I'll see when we can get him in for things, but it may not be immediate."

"So you're saying…?" Sam trailed off, hoping that it meant no ill-effects for Dean.

"Just that it may be better if you went back to where you and your brother are staying for the rest of the day. Come in tomorrow, I'm sure we'll have something to update you on then. We also don't want to overwhelm him, especially if there is brain damage, which there may be with what you're describing." She said it very calmly, which helped, but only to a certain degree.

Sam would have brought himself to nod, but he wasn't sure about it anymore. Instead, he quirked a small half smile to show he appreciated it, and Marian took her clipboard into the room with her and half closed the door behind her. Sam leaned back against the wall for a moment before he took a breath and pulled the phone out of his shaking hands. He dialed Cas' number and went to find the quickest way outside.

Cas picked up on the third ring, and was obviously distressed by the call. "Sam? Is everything alright? Is Dean okay?" he asked in quick succession.

"Yeah, he's…awake, he's…I don't know, Cas," Sam said quietly, and leaned back again on the closest wall he found once he was outside. "He…he thinks I'm still in hell. He mentioned Lisa and Ben and Rock of Ages and…I don't know." He kept repeating those three little words until Cas spoke up again.

"I'll be there in twenty minutes, Sam, is a nurse in with him right now?" Sam could hear some slight rustling on the other end of the line.

"Marian, she's asking questions, running some tests, all of that."

"Good, that's…good. I'm sure it's just aftereffects of the crash and the drugs, he should be back to normal fairly soon I'd imagine." Cas was doing his best to be reassuring, Sam could tell, but the slight bit of doubt in the usually immovable angel's voice told him otherwise. Upon not hearing a confirmation on the other end of the line, he asked a quiet "Sam?"

"Yeah, back to normal," Sam repeated quietly. Around his secluded phone call, nurses rushed to and from various other locations. Soft beeps of other monitors echoed down the halls along with the footsteps on tiled floors. There were voices, all hushed and muffled in tone, but still there, still surrounding everything, and there were so many -"any chance you could just pull around and I could meet you? She said it may be better to come back tomorrow, they should have more information by then."

"Of course, Sam. I'll see you in a few minutes then."

"Thanks, Cas," Sam repeated, as he had done tens of times over the past span of days. He couldn't say thanks enough, not really. There was another beat of silence before the line disconnected and Sam was left in the bustling hallway clutching a quiet phone.

When Sam met Cas, he was in a parking spot, the Impala humming as it sat there. The legos that Dean had stuck in the vent so long ago still slightly rattled as the heat fought to keep the cold off the metal beast. Would Dean forget about that too?

"Sam? How is he?" Cas asked once the hunter was inside and the door had closed, as if they hadn't already established how Dean was.

Sam sighed and leaned a bit more back against the seats. The seats, which, under a month ago, had been coated with his blood. If Dean didn't remember the crash, then he wouldn't be remembering that either.

"Cas…what if he forgot everything that happened after I went into the pit?"

The question was posed as quietly as Sam could manage, and his eyes were affixed to a certain spot on the Impala's dashboard for no apparent reason.

"Me, being alive, first off. The soulless stuff, Purgatory, the Mark, the Darkness…" Sam trailed off and shook his head, those being only a few of the major events that had come down on the brothers since that infamous "last day" in Stull Cemetery. Not even to mention the people they had lost. Bobby, gosh, how would Dean take that? He had barely taken it the first time, when he knew the context in and around what happened. Sam couldn't just drop it on him that yeah, another person they knew and loved was dead, and he didn't remember. Kevin, Charlie, people he didn't even know existed yet. Benny, Chuck, everything with Lucifer, the Trials, the angels falling…

Dean convincing him in an old church in the middle of the night to not take his own life to lock away the demons forever. His laughs echoing through the halls during a meeting with Charlie. Dean fixing up a gash on Sam's hand. Dean bringing him back down to earth time and time again with that very same injury. Him beating the Mark and being reminded that yes, Dean Winchester is a good person and a good brother. Hell, even Sully.

Would Dean lose all that? He couldn't lose all that. Dean was his stone number one, he had said so himself. And yeah, they wouldn't be starting over, but to build up from all of that…How would they-

"Sam, you need to calm down."

Cas' voice was soft, not alarming, but the look in his eyes when Sam finally raised his own betrayed that notion. The angel had placed a gentle hand on the younger brother's shoulder, trying to be comforting. In reality, he looked just as lost and confused as Sam probably did if he were to look in the mirror.

"How-" Sam started, unsure about how to even finish that question. "How are we gonna fix this, Cas? If it ends up being…amnesia," even the word hurt to say, "or something, it doesn't just get magically fixed. Sometimes the memories never come back, even with therapy and reminding and a whole slew of other things."

Cas eventually dropped his hand and shook his head in the slightest. "I'm not sure," he admitted in a voice that was only a bit louder than Sam's own. "But we will. Everything you two have faced, everything that we have faced, we have managed to make it right. I'm not sure where to begin, but we will begin, and we will end it, the same as always." Amid the look of confusion on Cas' face, there was a bit of determination that Sam was used to seeing. Even with him trying not to doubt and failing, Cas was trying for the both of them.

"What if it never gets better? How do we fill seven years of lost time?" Sam scrunched his eyebrows together.

"As Dean says," Cas began and threw the Impala into reverse before he carefully backed out and started maneuvering away from the hospital, "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. We'll wait for tomorrow and go from there."

"And the day after that and so on," Sam nodded ever so slightly. In the back of his mind, he wondered exactly how long the 'so on' would end up being. He prayed to a God that wasn't listening that for all of their sakes, they could catch half a break this time around. Ghosts, demons, Cain, the Darkness, they could all be beaten one way or another.

How could Sam even begin to go about beating the invisible demon that may be lurking around in his brother's head?