"Dude, this is gonna be great."

Sam Winchester rolled his eyes at his brother's enthusiasm and turned towards the window to hide his smile. He and Dean were currently on their way to a case that Bobby had sent them on—one that was taking them to Las Vegas, Nevada. The fact that Bobby had chosen to send them of all the hunters out there to a place like Vegas clued Sam in that the case was important, or there had to be no one else available. Because both Sam and Bobby had learned a long time ago that setting Dean loose in a town like Vegas was just asking for trouble. There was a reason the brothers only went there once a year.

He couldn't help but remind his brother, "You do remember we're going here for a case, right?"

The grin that Dean shot his way loosened some of the knot in Sam's stomach and lightened the weight on his shoulders just the slightest bit. "Course I do, Sammy! That don't mean we can't have a little bit of fun."

This was the most that Sam had seen his brother smile in a long, long time. Not that there'd really been anything to smile about lately. The two had only recently joined back together after their break apart and, though they'd ironed out some things on their last case, that didn't mean stuff was perfect between them. There were a lot of things that were still between them. Sam knew that his brother was still angry with him. Could he blame him? Letting the devil free wasn't exactly something that was easy to forgive. But they'd had their time apart and they'd both learned, they were better off together. Not just that, but their last case had showed them just how things between them needed to change.

Acknowledging where they'd done wrong didn't instantly make things better. It gave them a place to start from, though.

Unable to resist, the little brother inside of Sam had him slanting a look over at Dean and smirking ever so slightly. "Hopefully we don't run into any celebrities while we're out there." It was a subtle dig to their last case, when the leshii that they'd gone after had taken the form of Paris Hilton—and beat the crap out of Dean.

He should've known better. Dean didn't even blink before firing back "No kidding, dude. I don't think you could take getting beat up by another guy in a diaper."

Sam scowled and Dean gave a grin that was pure big-brother-pride at having scored one over his little brother. Satisfied with that, he brought their talk back around to the case. "So, run this by me again."

Only for a second did Sam hesitate. Then he shook his head and turned himself in his seat so he could better look at his brother as he spoke. "Bobby said there's a lot of weird stuff happening around here lately. Sick people mysteriously getting better, a rush of jackpot winners at the casinos. There are even reports of people waking up in the hospital suddenly 'healed'."

"Those sounds like good things." Dean pointed out.

"Things like this don't just happen, Dean. There's something going on here."

"Yeah, sure, of course there is. But since we do we hunt down the good stuff? I mean, healings, people living when they should've died—all that falls in the 'good' column in my books. Why are we hunting it down?"

Sam couldn't quite keep in the slightly derisive sound that he made. Rolling his eyes, he leaned back against the seat and arched his eyebrows at his brother. "Since when has anything this good come without a price tag? Ever?"

"True." Dean conceded. He tapped his fingers against the wheel for a moment. "So, what, we're thinking crossroads demon?"

It was the most logical thing. Sam couldn't think of anything else offhand that would be able to cause so much goodwill in one area like this. A demon going around making deals, however, did. "Seems our best bet."

"You do realize we can't save them from their deals, right?" The older Winchester snuck a look over at him, expression serious.

Sam winced. Yeah, he knew they couldn't save them. They'd learned that lesson the hard way. There was no way out of demon deals. That wasn't something he was likely to ever forget. "I know. But we can stop them before they make anymore." Besides which, there was a part of Sam that could admit that his brother had been right on their last case. Dean had said he'd wanted to take that last case, the one with the leshii, because he and Sam had a lot of work they needed to do to be able to start fixing their relationship and working as a team again. Putting on the training wheels, so to speak. At the time Sam had been a little offended by the idea. Now, after the way they'd worked together and the things they'd put out there in the open between them, maybe he was right.

He watched his brother tapping along to the music and smiling a little to himself, despite what they were going to do, and Sam couldn't help his own small smile. This case might be good for them.

One quick stop at the motel to drop off their things and change into their FBI suits and the two were heading out to go to the hospital that had recently become the home of so many miracles. In his research for this case, Sam had found three miraculous healings all centered around this one hospital. A twenty two year old woman who'd been in a coma for the past three months who'd suddenly woken up, without any troubles whatsoever. An eight year old boy whose leukemia hadn't just gone into remission—it was simply gone. And last, a thirty four year old woman whose brain tumor seemed to be shrinking more and more with each passing day, though no doctor could explain the why or how of it.

Coma girl was gone, already back home with her family, so Sam and Dean split to talk to the remaining two. Dean took the little boy, Marshall Dryfus, while Sam went to speak with the tumor lady, Michelle Hughes.

The woman was sitting in her bed when Sam was escorted in. She was smiling brightly at him and the doctor who was leading him in here, green eyes warm inside a heart shaped face. Brown hair had been pulled back and braided down to dangle over one shoulder. If it hadn't been for the hospital gown she wore and the equipment she was hooked up to, she would've looked the picture of good health.

"Michelle." The doctor smiled at her as he moved up to her bed, immediately going to check her chart just like all doctors did when entering their patient's room. At the same time, he brought Sam forward so that they were right up by her bedside. "This here is FBI Agent Plant. He's hoping to speak with you if you're feeling up to it."

Sam pulled his badge out to show it to the woman, who was watching him with surprise. "Speak with me? About what?"

There was always that immediate worry in civilians when they were faced with an officer of some kind. Sam had seen it plenty of times before and, really, he understood. The instinctive response, no matter who you were, was to wonder what you'd done wrong. Usually after that came the worry that someone you loved had done something wrong, or been involved in something, or were hurt. It was just the normal cycle of fears that went through a person when they were unexpectedly faced with law enforcement. Sam put on his best smile and tried to reassure her with the only thing he'd been able to concoct on his way up here that might explain his presence. "I know it might seem strange, ma'am, but I just need to ask you a few questions, that's all. We've had some reports of someone going around offering a miracle cure-all to people that, uh, that seems to work great only to end up going very bad. Deadly, even."

Michelle looked stunned by his question. Her eyes went a little wide and her mouth dropped open ever so slightly in what Sam could see was honest surprise. "That's horrible!"

"It is. We're just looking to catch this man, so maybe, if you don't mind, I could ask you a few questions? Just to see if you've come into contact with this man at all during your stay here."

"Of course, of course. Please," She gestured with one hand towards the chair by her bed. "I don't remember seeing anyone like that, but I'll answer any questions that you have."

The doctor left them as Sam took the seat that Michelle had offered him. He settled himself down into his chair and pulled out the little notebook he kept inside his jacket pocket. "So, you're saying you haven't seen or spoken with anyone here who might've offered you some kind of miracle cure?"

The woman shook her head. A hint of a wry smile ghosted over her lips. "I haven't spoken with anyone who offered me any kind of cure at all, real or special." One of her hands came up and she tapped at the side of her hair. "Brain tumor, inoperable. I wasn't here to get better, Agent Plant. The doctors don't put it bluntly but I knew the truth. I was here to die. They gave me no more than two weeks, tops. Now? Now, they're saying they could operate this weekend to take the rest out, but they might not even have to. It's still shrinking all on its own."

"And you didn't participate in some, experimental treatment or something like that?" Sam probed.

"Nope." Michelle's smile grew again and warmed into something that held just a hint of awe in it. It took years off her, making her face both younger and prettier, chasing away the lines that stress had left behind and giving Sam a glimpse of the woman she'd probably been before this disease had ruined her life—the woman it sounded like she was going to get the chance to be again.

Sam hadn't really expected to talk with these people and have them come right out and admit that they'd made some sort of demon deal. Still, he'd expected to see something in them, some signs of them lying to cover it up, or a general shiftiness when questioned about this. Instead, Michelle was sitting there calm and happy as can be, and the young hunter had the feeling that it was all honest. But if she hadn't made a deal—then what? "What do you think's responsible for your recovery, Ms. Hughes?"

The smile she wore grew wider and brighter. "I believe God answered my prayers."

"God?" Sam's eyebrows went up with surprise. God?

"Yes. I've prayed and I've prayed for help and I think He finally heard me and helped me. It's the only explanation for such a miracle. I believe God healed me."

Twenty minutes later Sam was still shaking his head as he walked back into the motel room. His brother followed behind him, carrying the bags of food they'd picked up on their way back here. "So, she seriously thought that God was responsible for her healing?" Dean said derisively as he came into the room. He kicked the door shut behind him and went over to the small wooden table, dropping the bags of food down. "Wow. If only she knew the truth, huh? God doesn't give a shit about her or anyone else in that hospital."

Meeting angels had brought a lot of questions into Sam's life and challenged quite a bit of his faith. However, he still carried enough in him to wince at Dean's words. To try and cover it up, he reached up to tug at the knot of his tie. The damn thing felt like it was choking him. "The point is, it doesn't really seem like she made any kind of deal at all. I pushed at it from all angles, Dean, and I got nothing."

The two hunters shed their jackets and settled down opposite one another at the table. Sam brought his laptop with him and set it to the side so he could use it to research in a bit. For the moment, he pulled out the chicken wrap from the bag in front of him and started to unwrap it. Dean had grabbed his own burgers and was already digging in to one of them. With his typical show of fantastic manners, he spoke around the burger in his mouth, smirking when he saw Sam's disgusted look. "Yeah. I talked to the kid and his Mom both and didn't get any demon-y feel off them, either. An there's no Dad in the picture to have made a deal."

"It doesn't seem like anyone made any sort of deal." Sam said.

"Well what else could bring all this kind of stuff?"

"I don't know." And that was the kicker. Sam had no idea. He'd been trying to think about it and so far he wasn't really coming up with all that much. "Nothing I know of would want to spread goodwill. Unless…"

Dean arched an eyebrow at him when he stopped. "Unless what?"

For a brief second, Sam hesitated. This wouldn't go over all that well, he knew. And it really was farfetched. But, he had to throw it out there. "Maybe it's an angel." They were the only things he knew of that could heal like this and the only things that might want to help out a group of humans. Not likely, he knew, but possible.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Dude, you know as well as I do that angels don't give a crap about stuff like this."

"I know, I know. But what else is going to go around doing miraculous healings like this?"

Neither one of them had an answer for that.

They didn't get any kind of break in the case until the next morning. Sam was set up once more at the table with his laptop open in front of him, drinking some of the motel's crappy complimentary coffee while he waited for his brother to get back with breakfast. He'd just finished his cup when he came across a story that caught his interest. It was enough to have him sitting forward to read quickly through the article he found, plus the other articles that he found from there. "Huh." He muttered to himself at the same time that the door to their room opened.

Dean took one look at him and immediately asked "Find something?"

"I don't know." Sam murmured. Ignoring his brother, who was coming in and setting down their breakfast, he read through the rest of the story before he sat back in his seat, eyebrows raised. Well. This was just getting more and more odd. "So, get this. Apparently last night there was a car wreck. Three car pileup, one car almost completely totaled."

"Okay. Crappy, but, it happens." Dean said. He had slid down into the same seat he'd had last night while they'd eaten their dinner. The scene was a familiar one between them; seated at a motel table sharing a meal together, a laptop open between them and a case their topic of conversation. They'd done this in plenty of places throughout their lives. There was a hint of comfort to be found in that.

Lifting an eyebrow, the younger Winchester looked up from his laptop to meet Dean's gaze. "Every single person walked away without a scratch. Including the woman and three kids in the squashed car."

Surprise lit up Dean's face. "Damn."

"Yeah."

"Well that definitely rules out crossroads. There's no time to make a deal in a situation like that." Sighing, Dean shook his head and pulled out the breakfast sandwiches he'd gotten, passing two over to Sam. "Well, I'll see your crazy and raise you some more. Down at the McDonalds down the road I heard a couple people talking about anther lady who won at the casino last night. Apparently she bet like, ten bucks and walked away with a couple hundred thousand. And I heard some kid outside talking to each other about a fire a few days ago that apparently this whole family managed to get out of without a single burn between them."

It only took a little work on the laptop for Sam to find those stories. Both of them were true—he found the fire story easily enough on the local news site, and on another site he found a news story about the woman who had bet her last ten dollars, apparently all she had, in the hopes of turning it into enough money to support her family for the month and she'd managed to walk away with four hundred grand by the time the night was done.

Sam went over to his bag and pulled out the local map that he'd picked up yesterday. He'd already marked off the incidents they'd discovered yesterday. Adding in the recent ones and it was making an interesting picture. Sam made another mark on the map and then stood back. "Huh. Look at this."

Dean moved up beside him and leaned over the map that Sam had spread out on the bed, watching as Sam pointed out each spot he'd marked. "This is the hospital where all those people were magically 'healed'. Over here is the car wreck…"

"That everyone walked away from."

"Right. And these are the places where all those little 'wishes' keep coming true. All of it's located inside this two-mile radius."

Straightening up, Dean cocked his head at the pattern that Sam had put there. "So, we got a blast zone of weird, and inside, miracles come true?"

"Looks like." Sam agreed.

Dean tapped the space in the middle of it. "And what's the A-bomb at its center?"

"A hospital. Bennington Sanitarium."

The two brothers shared a look and Dean flashed him a grin. "Then I guess it's time to go visit the funny farm."