Wow. 91 reviews. This is awesome!

Well, get ready for yet another chapter. Hope you're still enjoying everything :)

Dean sat in the chair, face stoic, mind racing. It had been a week. Seven days. It had been a mistake. A slip-up. Things should have changed already, should have gone back to the way they were before, with dad still acting tough and mad but not really meaning it. Not really feeling it.

It had been a week of anger and disappointment and fear. A week of avoiding his father but never quite outrunning that sinking feeling in his heart. He'd lashed out at Sammy twice, without meaning to, just because John had been in the room.

And then dad had yelled again, scolded his oldest for shouting. 'Like father, like son' didn't seem to apply.

Dean was getting sick of it, getting tired of it. He wasn't going to live like this anymore, feeling that constant pain, knowing that it was all his fault that his father was so angry and bitter and scared.

He pushed open the door to his father's bedroom and found the man sitting at his desk, bent over his journal, ripping out pages and crumpling them up and throwing them away. "Dad?"

"What?"

Dean jumped at the harshness of the words, the way his father's voice cracked, the way the room got suddenly cold. "Um, I just tucked Sammy in. He wants to say good-night to you."

"Tell him it'll be a minute."

"Um, sir?"

"What?"

"I was just wondering…I mean, you never said if you found it or not. You killed it, right? It's never gonna hurt anyone again."

John sighed and pushed his chair out. "It's gone, Dean," he muttered, standing up and towering over the nine-year-old, "but not because I killed it. It's gone because you let it get away." He walked to the door, brushing past the boy, disappointment radiating from him and filling his son, making the boy's heart stop.

"Dad?"

"It almost killed your brother," John hissed coldly, "and you let it get away." He walked from the room, closing the door behind him, purposely avoiding the desperate look in his son's eyes, the way they glazed over.

Dean's knees buckled the moment his father walked out, his heart pounding, breath hitching in his chest. It wasn't just anger anymore. It wasn't just disappointment. It was worse, stronger, colder. His father hated him.

He crawled over to the trashcan, began digging through it, pulling out everything his father had thrown away. It was everything John had dug up on shtrigas, everything he knew about the life-sucking witches, and he was throwing it away.

Clutching the papers to his chest, Dean shakily got to his feet and staggered from the room. He stumbled down the hallway to his own bedroom, still not sure whether or not he was glad that his father had put him and Sammy in separate rooms. He lurched inside and closed the door, leaning up against it and letting himself slide to the floor.

He looked at the papers in his hands, suddenly sure of what he had to do. He closed his eyes, that now-familiar disappointment and anger and hatred flooding over him. He blocked it out. He fought it, fought it as hard as he could.

He continued to fight it, struggling to get it out of his system, even as he went and placed his father's papers into his own journal, which had been a birthday gift from Sammy. He concentrated harder as he got into bed and slipped off to sleep, fought against every negative impulse that flooded his system.

It hurt. Hurt his body and his mind. It made him ache, made him wish he didn't have to do it. Made him wish he had another choice. But he didn't. So he fought. And sometime, in the middle of the night, he won.

o0o0o0o0o

Dean moaned and rolled over, not even bothering to sit up and look around. He knew where he was, knew it was a dream, knew he was safe. He pulled the covers back up to his chin and sighed, letting the warmth of the house flood back through him, letting it comfort him in a way that nothing else possibly could.

o0o0o0o0o

Sam sat at the kitchen table, his hands hooked around a coffee mug, eyes staring into the deep brown liquid without really seeing it. Safe. What did that even mean? Didn't Dean feel safe?

Sam chuckled. What the hell kind of question was that? It's hard to feel safe when you don't have any legit money, when you don't know where your next meal's going to come from, when the bed you're sleeping in has been used by countless other individuals. It's hard to feel safe when you hunt down nightmares for a living. Hard to feel safe when your father pins you to a wall and tells you that he doesn't love you.

Apparently, though, it's easy to feel safe when you don't even feel like yourself anymore. Oh, yes, very easy. Even easier when you embrace it.

The hunter sighed, still staring into his coffee. He could feel eyes on him, assumed it was Dean again, and didn't even look up. "What's up with you?" he asked, annoyed.

"Well, excuse me," a very un-Dean-like voice replied, "but I'm not the one sitting at a kitchen table at one in the morning staring at cold coffee."

Sam jumped, turning around to see Missouri standing in the doorway to the kitchen. "You're not Dean."

"No, thank goodness. He's sound asleep, like you should be."

Sammy shook his head. "Can't sleep."

The psychic sat down across from him. "Anything you want to talk about?"

"Dean."

"Oh, honey, you're gonna have to be more specific or we could be up for hours."

"He said," Sam sighed, "he said he likes it here because…"

She smiled. "Because it feels safe."

"Yeah. That's what I don't get. I mean, am I missing something, or am I just not good enough for him anymore?"

"Funny," the psychic muttered, "he's been wondering the same thing about you."

"What?"

"This all happened for a reason, Sammy. He just wants to keep you safe and look out for you, and that's gonna be a little easier for him now."

"It's always been easy for him. It's what he does."

"There's more to it than that. You're dealing with your father's death, right? You're mourning, and it's getting better, right?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Is he?"

"Is he what? Mourning? No. Dean doesn't mourn. Not like other people."

She nodded. "He gets violent. He gets angry."

"He just doesn't know how to deal with it. He can't. He's gotta make sure I'm all right first, doesn't he?"

"Looks like you're not as clueless as your brother thinks you are."

Sammy grinned. "I'm gonna take that as a compliment." He turned back to his cold coffee, still feeling the other psychic's eyes on him. "So," he finally said, "this feeling of safety he's been picking up… he said there was more to it…"

"Warmth," Missouri nodded, "comfort, happiness. The whole nine yards. It's not just safety, Sam. It's love. I know it sounds clichéd, and it is, but it's the truth. It's the best protection from anything dark. I try to build it up inside my home, try to keep the place safe, and when someone like Dean comes along and picks up on it…"

"But why would that make him want to stay here? I mean, I… he knows that…"

"It's one thing to know something and another completely to experience it for yourself. He's spent so much time out in the cold world, he's desperate for warmth, and he'll get it anywhere he can now."

Sam hung his head, his bangs falling into his cup, and moaned.

"He'd like to get it from you, though," Missouri muttered, pushing her chair out and moving toward the doorway. "Don't stay up too late."

The young psychic pushed his cup away and lay his head in his hands, closing his eyes against a building headache. He loved his brother, he really did, but it was just hard to do anything but worry now. Things were spiraling. Dean was spiraling. And the headache just kept getting worse.

o0o0o0o

Yellow eyes glinted in the dim light of the room as Sam watched the demon grow closer, its mouth twisting into a smile. It was halfway across the room, halfway to Sam, who stood pinned to the wall across from his brother, when it stopped.

The demon spun around, stalking up to Dean, its smile widening. It focused on his pale skin, ran a finger down his chest, laughed as the older hunter's breath hitched in his throat. "It's so cold, isn't it?" the demon asked, moving in closer, "and there's no escape. Nothing but death."

Still gasping, Dean raised his eyes to look at it. He moaned, head falling back onto his chest.

"I want you to beg for it," the demon cooed, "beg for a release. Beg for your death, Winchester, and I might give it to you."

Dean coughed, his body shuddering, and opened his mouth to speak. "Please…"

"No," Sam shouted, fighting against the demon's hold, fighting to save his brother, "don't do it!"

"He doesn't love you," the creature taunted, "if he loved you, it wouldn't be so cold."

"Please," Dean continued, "just make it stop."

"My pleasure," the demon grinned, dropping its eyes before looking back at the defeated hunter. The scene that began to play out before Sam's eyes was one that he'd hoped he would never see again. Invisible claws ripping his brother apart, killing him, maiming him, wrecking him. And Dean just stood there, stuck to the wall, not even caring. Not even fighting. Not even begging.

Sam called his brother's name, heard his brother scream, and then his body was on fire. Long tendrils of pain burned along his chest, ripping him open. He looked down, fully expecting to see injuries like his brother's, long lines of blood being drawn across his chest. There was nothing there.

The demon screamed in pain, clutching at its host's chest and backing away from the battered empath. Its hold on the brothers diminished and both men were sent crashing to the floor. It didn't care, though, just kept screaming, kept holding its stomach.

As he looked up from his spot on the floor, watching the demon writhe in pain, Sam could have sworn he saw a triumphant grin on his dying brother's face.

o0o0o0o0o

"Sam! Sammy! Wake up, man, come on!" Strong hands. Strong hands shaking him, careful to keep his head from banging against the hardwood table. That was the first thing Sam noticed as he swam up out of the haze that his vision had left.

"Dean? What are you doing up?"

He opened his eyes in time to see Dean slump into a chair next to him. "Woke up with a killer headache and came down to get some aspirin," the elder explained, "found you passed out at the table." He shook his head slowly, rubbing his temples, "man, anyone ever tell you those vision headaches are a bitch?"

Sam grinned as his brother passed him a bottle of water and a couple of pills. "Welcome to my life."

Dean just nodded. "So, what did you see?"