And we're back! Thanks for waiting the extra week, hopefully this extra long chapter makes up for some of it. Vegascon was amazing and I've got tons of stories that I'd love to share if anyone wants ;) I do now have a picture of Jared with a Thor hammer and Jensen with a Captain America shield and let me tell you, it's epic. Anyways, post con blues are still a thing *boo back to normal life* so any feedback on this chapter would be massively appreciated. Thank you so much to Celtic Knot, TXKimsonFan, and onanickle for your previous reviews. You guys keep me writing :) With that, I hope you enjoy the chapter!

I own a few pictures, but not Supernatural itself.

Sam had always been an early riser. Especially recently, he had a reason to make sure things were alright before he continued about his day. Still in his sleep clothes, he padded down the hallway, stopping only briefly at Dean's barely cracked open door and dark room. Sam didn't bother opening it further in fear of waking Dean up when he definitely needed the rest.

Instead, Sam headed to make a pot of coffee, which always got Dean up. Just before the sun started to rise, Sam had the coffee done and was in the kitchen pouring out a few mugs, but still no Dean, which was a strange deviation from their somewhat reliable habits. Dean still liked to sleep more, but coffee did a good job at waking him up.

"Morning, Sam," Cas greeted as he walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table.

"Hey, Cas," Sam replied with an easy smile, going to grab a cereal box before he stopped himself and turned around. "Have you seen Dean this morning?"

Cas shook his head. "Is that cause for worry?"

Sam shrugged. "Not sure. I mean, he turned in early last night, and when he does he's usually up for coffee," he said, thinking out loud but he eventually shook his head. He was overthinking it, that was all.

"I was in one of the rooms last night, researching, but I didn't hear anything," Cas added.

That should have been a comfort, but there was something not quite right that was nagging at Sam. Still, he poured the cereal and got utensils out, maybe making a bit more noise than he should have, but Dean still didn't appear. In the few minutes it took him to finish breakfast and get caught up with Cas, he was getting worried.

"I'm gonna check, just make sure everything's alright," Sam eventually decided aloud. Maybe medications had knocked him out or something, but it still warranted a check. Cas nodded, remaining at his place at the table where he flipped through a newspaper as Sam made his way down the hall towards Dean's room.

He propped open Dean's door when he reached it, light flooding in as he did so. He didn't say anything at first, hoping the incoming light wouldn't wake his brother up immediately. But it didn't. That light revealed an unmade bed, but no Dean in it. No boots by the dresser either and no wallet next to the bed. Sam quickly turned on the room's lights to make sure he wasn't just seeing something. The light's revealed exactly what he thought he had seen, much to his dismay.

He continued to look around the room and even took a peek into the bathroom before he came back to the unmade bed, as if Dean had just gotten up, taken his boots and things and left. Sam's heart immediately sped up as he noticed the slip of white paper on Dean's pillow. Every single time Dean had left a note in recent years, it hadn't been good. It had told Sam to let him go or that he was giving up Baby…Sam didn't know if he could handle reading another note like that simply because of what must be coming afterwards. Notes always meant something worse was coming.

He walked over to the bed and with slightly shaking hands, picked up the folded piece of paper and opened it. Don't worry, Sammy, be back soon.

Of course, the first two words didn't stop Sam's worry at all. Soon? How soon was soon? Hours? Days? Dean just up and left in the middle of the night and just said he'd be back soon?

Sam pushed a hand through his hair and shook his head. Dean probably needed space, he got that, but he couldn't leave him to face the world by himself, not this time, not with everything else that was rattling around inside his brother's head.

He checked over the note again, as if there would be something on the back, but there wasn't. Then he was out of the room, taking a jog down to the garage, praying his brother had only gone for a walk and not for a drive.

When he flicked on the lights there, his chest tightened another few degrees. The spot where the Impala usually sat was barren with no sign that it had even been there in the first place.

"Damn it," Sam muttered under his breath and broke into a run back down to the kitchen. Cas stood up as Sam came in, note in hand, which he passed off to Cas. "Impala's gone. I don't know where, he just up and left. He's probably got a good few hour's head start."

Cas quickly read over the note with a scrunched brow, obviously worried by the sudden turn of events. "No idea as to where he would be headed?"

Sam thought for a moment before he shook his head. "No, none, he never mentioned anything…" he trailed off. "But he took his phone and there's a lojack on the Impala in case of emergencies, we can track those," Sam mentioned, heading back down the hallway into his room, with Cas close behind. Once he got there, he grabbed his phone and dialed Dean's number, not at all surprised when it went to voicemail. He tried again, with the same results, and tossed the phone back onto his bed in exasperation.

"Sam, before we go after him, are you sure he wants to be found?"

Sam shook his head. "Obviously not, but we can't let him be out there by himself right now, there's too much that could happen," he said. He grabbed his laptop and handed it to Cas. "Remember the trackers I showed you? Get those up and running, I'll meet you in the library."

Cas, thankfully, saw that the younger Winchester would not be budging on his position, and didn't put up any more of a fight. A few minutes later, Sam had changed and grabbed a spare set of keys to one of the backup cars and met Cas in the library.

The angel had the Impala's and Dean's phone trackers set up when Sam got there. His phone was also on the table, as he had been trying to reach Dean as well.

"Any luck?" Sam asked, leaning over the back of the chair. Sure enough, there was a dot on the screen that was steadily moving.

"It says that he has been heading east for approximately the past three hours. Is there a specific destination that you could recognize?" Cas asked, looking up from the screen at Sam.

He studied it for a moment before he nodded. It was a long shot, but due east and slightly south meant Lawrence, at least he hoped. What Dean would be going to Lawrence for though, he had no idea. "Yeah, it looks like he's heading to Lawrence."

"Your home town? Why?"

Sam shrugged his shoulders and went to put on his jacket. "No idea, but I'm taking one of the other cars and I'll follow."

"I should come with you," Cas started, but Sam shook his head.

"No, Cas, you need to stay here. I need you to call me when he stops or if he takes a detour, alright? And call him every few minutes. Maybe he'll get fed up enough to actually pick up," Sam muttered. After seeing that the angel agreed to the plan, he nodded once more and started off for the garage, leaving Cas in the library with the computer.

He tried calling Dean again as he made his way to the car, and again it went to voicemail. After a string of curses floated through his mind, Sam finally reached the car and started off in the direction of Lawrence. He went a bit faster than the speed limits allowed, but only because he knew his brother was probably doing the same thing and he had to reach him before anything happened. Hopefully there was a logical reason, but as Sam kept driving, he was less and less sure.

His phone finally rang an hour later and Sam hurriedly picked it up. While it wasn't Dean, it was Cas, and that meant news. "Hey, Cas. Tell me you've got something," Sam said, putting the phone on speaker.

There was some slight rustling on the other end before Cas responded. "Both trackers have stopped in the same location, just outside of Lawrence," he supplied.

"Got a specific spot? How far out?"

A pause came before the answer. "There is a specific spot," Cas started, leaving Sam to wait for the other half of the sentence. "He went back to Stull Cemetery."

Those two words had Sam's grip on the steering wheel tighten immediately. He had been thinking Lawrence as in their old house if anything…but not that horrible place. "And you're sure that's where he is, Cas, absolutely positive?"

"I would not mistake this location, Sam," the angel replied, his tone conveying just how sure about it he really was.

Sam let out a sigh and shook his head ever so slightly. "Thanks, Cas," he eventually got out. "Call if anything changes, I'll let you know if anything develops on my end."

"Of course, Sam. Bring him back." With that, the ends disconnected, and Sam was again left by himself.

There was no way in hell he was coming back without Dean. He pushed the car a bit harder, but even at its top speed, it would take at least three hours to get to Dean, provided the weather held up at its current barely above freezing temperature. Why his brother had gone to Stull of all places, Sam had no idea. But that combined with the note Dean had left combined to form a pit in Sam's stomach, somewhat akin to the one he had jumped into all those years ago.

Dean was half surprised to find that the old boneyard was still more or less standing when he drove up. The years hadn't washed away the tombstones or the few wooden structures that littered the area. It looked just as Dean remembered from a few months ago in his own head.

He eventually parked and turned off the Impala and stared out the window, not doing anything else. He had planned on heading here, and now…here he was. He could have gone to Lawrence, but he didn't need those added painful memories. He could have gone to Lisa and Ben's house, but he didn't know who lived there anymore, and they wouldn't remember him anyways. Bobby's house, if it was still standing, was out of the question.

Dean had narrowed down his options and by process of elimination, Stull was the last solid location that had meant anything concrete to him. It was awful and horrible and was the site of the literal almost apocalypse, but it was the last place that still made sense to his muddled brain. He knew everything that had happened in painstaking detail. Everything that let up to it, during it, and everything that followed up until the amnesia clicked in.

Sam, Lucifer, Michael, and Adam had all been gone. Cas went back to heaven. Bobby went back to his house. Those were the concrete facts that he knew. He could lean on them. There weren't any strange memory flashes or worries that going around a corner would trigger the fact that he had been a demon for a time.

It was just an old boneyard, and that was what it would remain for everyone outside of the little circle of hunters and an angel that had stopped the apocalypse.

Dean eventually got out of the car, phone in his pocket, not bothering to check how many missed calls he had now. He walked through some of the graveyard, taking in the silence and the fact that it was just him and him alone out there with his thoughts.

He stopped when he reached the somewhat circular portion of grass that remained dead after all these years. Dean didn't have to even think about why that portion of grass was dead. Opening up a portal must have done hell on the root systems in that area, anyways.

That patch signified the last time, in his linear history that he remembered, that he thought he'd ever see Sam. Not the still towering, slightly scruffy, more weight on his shoulders younger brother that was physically older than Dean felt. But the younger brother that didn't deserve everything the world threw at him, that only a few years back still had bangs. It was quite a change.

Slowly, Dean decided that standing was pointless, and while the ground was slightly wet, he didn't mind. He crossed his legs under him and sat down next to the dead patch of grass and began pulling at it with his fingers.

This was what he had wanted: a bit of time and some space to think things through. But what did he really need to think through? Acceptance? To what degree? A way to fix all of this? Yeah, like that was going to happen anytime soon.

Dean let out a half angry sigh and turned his head towards the cloudy sky above him, as if looking for answers. But God hadn't stepped in with the apocalypse, and unless that had become friends or something with the deity in recent years, Dean doubted the man upstairs would step in for something as seemingly simple as a Winchester losing his marbles.

He wasn't necessarily a man that was good at asking for help, and even less so on a strictly personal level. It wasn't like Sam and Cas didn't need help with this whole thing either, but unlike normal, he was fairly powerless to do much to help them while trying to help himself. He hated it.

"What am I supposed to do?" he quietly asked the dead grass in his fingers, as if it could answer him. He had to be patient and wait for his memories to come back, but even then it wasn't a complete guarantee. And it wasn't an immediate solution. Dean didn't do well with patience without a guarantee that it would pay off in totality at the end.

He kept toying with the grass until his fingers practically became numb from the cold weather, but he didn't feel it. He didn't stop when he heard the other car roll up. His eyes remained on the dead circle in front of him and he knew that his brother had come to drag him back to the land of the living.

Sam had followed the road, breaking a few speed limits as he did so, before he finally reached the cemetery and slowed down. It was late morning, but that didn't help much with the cold weather. He drove the back up car slowly through the broken gate and fought down the memories coming to his own mind.

Rock of Ages, Lucifer beating Dean to a pulp, the pit…Sam kept his eyes on the ground in front of him and shut off the car as soon as he saw the Impala. He didn't immediately see Dean, which was cause for worry, but there was no way Dean would leave the Impala too far away from himself. Sam called Cas to tell him the news before he got out of the car.

He opened his mouth to call for Dean, but promptly closed it, not knowing what sort of headspace his brother was in at the moment. Trying to calm down did nothing as he weaved around headstones, finally stopping in his tracks when he spotted his brother. Where he was and everything about his body language did a good job of almost breaking Sam's heart.

Dean was sitting cross-legged on the ground, almost like a child. His back was hunched over and his fingers were rolling something around in them, probably grass, but Sam couldn't really tell. He was on the outskirts of a dead patch of grass in the shape of a circle and after another second Sam realized that was where the pit had opened up.

In Dean's memory, this was the last place he had seen Sam. And then, Dean's leaving to come to Stull made just a bit more sense.

"God, Dean," Sam whispered under his breath, which puffed out in front of him. Dean had to be freezing, but he didn't move as Sam made his way over.

"Dean?" he asked quietly when he got close enough, reaching out a hand to just barely brush his brother's shoulder. Dean's hand stilled its movement, but his eyes still weren't totally focused, like he was deep in thought.

Sam got down to the same level as Dean, sitting down beside him in the dead grass, not wanting to tower over his older brother, whose larger than life persona didn't seem to want to fit into the form on the ground.

"What's goin' on, man?" Sam said a minute or so later when Dean still hadn't replied. He kept his eyes on Dean and watched as his gaze began to regain some sort of life.

"You found me," Dean eventually said in a gruff voice. It was a statement, he had expected Sam to find him, just maybe not so quickly.

"Of course, Dean. Can't let you go on a roadtrip without me," Sam replied, and tried for a smile. He was just glad that this time he had found Dean, there didn't seem to be an impending doom or physical danger. The silence returned, and while Sam was doing his best to be patient, he needed to know how bad off things were so he had some idea of how to fix them. He opened his mouth to ask again, but Dean beat him to it.

"Just…thinking," he slowly answered Sam's question. "Sorry 'bout runnin' out, I just needed some space." His tone was apologetic, even in his state he knew how worried he had probably made Sam. But his eyes didn't lift up to look at his brother.

Sam nodded at that. "Answer your phone next time?" he asked. It wasn't much to ask for, and it brought more peace of mind than a mad dash to the former site of the impending apocalypse.

Dean didn't reply, but he dropped the grass from his fingers and shifted, his gaze still on the circle.

"You know, this," he gestured weakly with one hand to the ground in front of them, "I never thought I'd see you again, Sammy." With that quiet admission, he finally lifted his pained gaze up to look at Sam. Sam, of course, knew, but it didn't make hearing the sentence from his brother's mouth any easier. "And that…that is one of the last things that makes sense to me. How screwed up is that?"

He tried for a laugh and a smile, but ended up just shaking his head. He didn't have to put on the bravado. Not when Sam had driven hours, probably knowing what he was going to find. But Dean was still trying to shelter him, in whatever small way possible, from the storm inside his mind, and Sam could tell that it was eating away at him.

"You jumped in, I went with Lisa and Ben, who don't even know I exist anymore, and the next thing I know, I'm in a hospital bed. You're older, Cas is older, Bobby's dead, I was a freaking demon, and that's just the tip of the iceberg I'm guessing," Dean's voice raised a bit in caliber and he took a breath to steady himself.

"I don't know what else is in here, Sam," his voice dropped down again as he vaguely pointed to his own head. The and I'm scared to find out was right beneath the surface and went unsaid, but Sam heard it all the same. "Other world ending events? Someone else we care about biting the bullet? Me? You?" he cut himself off at that.

"Dean," Sam said gently, trying to stop the tirade, but Dean's thoughts kept spilling out.

"What if I never remember any of it?"

The question sat like the elephant in the room that it had been the second Dean woke up from his coma. The big, giant, ugly what if was now spread out on the patch of dead grass beneath their feet.

"You will, Dean, the doctors all say you will, you just need to give it time."

"But what if? Sam, our lives are practically made of 'what if' scenarios going wrong. This could just be another to add to the list," Dean replied with a shake of his head. His shoulders sagged a bit further, as if changing their shape under the weight of the question that was finally out in the open. "What if I never get back seven years of memories? No context, no linear plot, just a flash here or there of a body on the floor."

"Hey," Sam stopped him form continuing any further with a hand on his knee. "That's absolutely, completely, and utterly the worst case scenario. It won't happen."

Dean opened his mouth again to protest, but Sam beat him to it. "If it does, which is a big if, then we deal. We make new memories. You'll have a blank spot, but we can work on filling it in with time. And yeah, a lot of it's bloody, but it's not all bad."

Dean's head turned up a bit at that, looking at his brother curiously.

"We will work through it, Dean. But this," Sam gestured to the air around them, "running off, leaving notes, not telling Cas and I what's going on, that doesn't help anyone. We need to help you on this Dean, you need to let us, that's the only way any of this gets better. It's okay to share the weight for a change."

Dean had gotten better with it over the years, granted it was to a degree, but Sam was still dealing with newly post-apocalypse Dean that had been carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. He didn't know how much Dean had shared with Lisa about their…situation, but he doubted it could have been very much. He needed to know that he had people to lean on that got it.

"Help me help you," he summed up. Dean's eyes drifted back to Sam's and it took a few seconds before he slowly nodded.

"Stone number one?" Dean asked, like Sam had mentioned a little while back.

The mention of that moment made Sam smile in the slightest. "Stone number one," he agreed.

They lapsed into silence again until Sam could see some of the tension lessen in Dean's shoulders and he sighed. The exhaustion was probably catching up with him, Sam noticed. He didn't know when his brother had woken up, or if he had slept at all, and how long he had been out in the cold. Sam stood up, knees cracking just a bit after having been seated for so long. Dean watched him get up, but made no movement to himself.

Sam stretched down a hand and after a moment, Dean grabbed it and Sam's forearm and together they hauled Dean up from the dead grass.

It was Sam's way of saying 'I've got you' and Dean's silent reply of 'I know'. They then slowly began to make their way back to the car, Sam sticking closer to his brother's side just in case, leaving the patch of dead grass and the elephant in the room behind them. The note had meant a storm was coming, but this was one that they could ride out together. It wasn't like they had any other choice.