Jerry was still out cold by the time Dean hauled him out of the impala and tied him securely to a washed up wooden chair back at the old farmhouse. Sam retrieved his ritual items, handling the black vessel, presumably containing Asrael, carefully. He improvised a devil's trap with a sharpie and placed the vessel inside. Just in case.

Despite the fact that they were almost used to breach Hell, potentially flooding earth with it, Dean could see Sam's interest as he laid out Jerry's scattered supplies. He grinned behind his back, the massive geek.

Jerry chose that moment to come to. He groaned, moving sluggishly, until he tried to move his arms. Dean could almost see the realization that he was tied to a chair slam into him, and his head snapped up. He writhed against his bonds, head whipping around frantically, taking in his surroundings. His wide eyes snagged on Dean, half-sitting on the old table, watching him.

"No, no no no no! You can't - you have to - I have to finish it, please let me go!"

"You're like a broken record, pal," Dean told him dryly. "And it's going to take more than that to get anywhere but tied to that chair. So try singing us a different song, okay?"

"You don't understand," Jerry groaned, dropping his head back.

"We understand alright," Sam joined his brother. "We get that Charles Brandt made a crossroads deal and paid his due. We get that you stole the manuscripts and freaked out one conjure supplier trying to work a ritual to punch a hole into Hell and summon Charles' soul out. We know you summoned and trapped Asrael, the demon responsible for the deal, somehow displacing it from whoever it was possessing and using its soul as fuel."

Jerry had tilted his face down to stare wide-eyed at Sam. For once, he wasn't struggling and repeating over and over that they had to let him go, he had to finish, blah blah. Dean crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at their guest.

"We know the conjure supplier told you what could happen if you went through with this," Sam continued when Jerry stayed silent. "You were willing to break the dam on Hell, and didn't care how many people you killed or how many demons you let loose in the process. We know all we need to."

"No it - that guy, all that stuff he told me, it was all bullshit he was just trying to scare me," Jerry suddenly insisted. "How do you know all that anyway?"

Sam met Dean's eyes over Jerry's head, both brothers clearly on the same base - what the?

"You had to know that it was only a matter of time before hunters had your ass," Dean insisted back. He was testing the water … an uncomfortable idea was taking shape in the back of his head.

Jerry twisted his head, trying to look at Dean.

"Hunters? I'm not a goddamn dear, what the hell are you talking about?"

Sam was shaking his head at Dean, and he could almost hear his little brother's voice - unbelievable. Dean moved to stand by Sam, each adopting the defensive, bladed positions without noticing.

"So what, this is all a joke to you? You have absolutely no clue what you're doing, you're a fucking kid with an oija board, is that it?"

This was insane. The world had just potentially been flooded with hellspawn by one clueless asshole and an old book.

"No I - Look, I never even believed in any of this. I'm a lapsed Lutheran, I'm not into devils and demons and all that, I thought it was all bullshit until - untl I found out it wasn't. But I read everything I could about it, it wouldn't have gone wrong, I had it all worked out. I had to succeed."

Dean frowned. He'd never known anyone with multiple personalities, but that's how it was beginning to feel talking to this guy. One minute he was a jibbering idiot with absolutely no idea what he was talking about, the next a line of cold steel slipped into his tone, turning him into a different animal.

"Why. Why are you doing this? People die every day, didn't anyone ever tell you that's a natural part of life?" Dean asked, feeling massively hypocritical and attempting to stop his mind from wandering back to Cold Oak, so long ago. I couldn't deal with you dead. Couldn't do it.

In front of him, Jeremiah Brandt pulled in a breath and closed his eyes.

"Because all this is because of me. It's my fault."

There was a solid weight in his tone that Dean didn't like at all.

"Alright," he said, trying to keep his own trepidation out of his voice. He dragged a chair over and sat down facing Jerry. "Spill. How is this your fault? Woman? Bad decision? Debts you couldn't settle yourself, what? And what's Charles Brandt to you? I'm taking a wild shot in the dark and guessing family member."

Jeremiah Brandt looked up at him, and whatever Dean saw pooling in the backs of his eyes made his stomach drop. At that moment he knew Sam's geekazoid treasure-hunt of a job was about to turn into a hunt that was going to hurt.

Jerry's voice was rough with sorrow, the voice of Dean's worst nightmare.

"He's my brother."

Both Winchesters stared silently at Jeremiah Brandt. Dean could sense Sam dropping his arms from crossed over his chest to hang by his sides, a gesture of shock in his brother familiar to Dean. That inkling of some shared sympathy he had felt for Jeremiah back at his apartment saturated him now. So that's what this was all about - and Dean knew this story intimately. Jerry's brother had got himself hell-bound, and Jerry was willing to do anything it took to set him free.

Dean heard the catch in Sam's breath at his side, and doubled his sympathy for his brother. Sam had been sitting exactly where Jerry was. His brother in Hell, his hope dwindling, every avenue a dead end. Jerry's utter desperation suddenly made an awful kind of sense.

"Tell us," Sam's voice said gently, and Dean wondered at how his little brother could go from a stone-cold hunter, a predator, to a soft-eyed sap in seconds. "Tell us how it happened."

Jeremiah took a deep breath, and began.

"You may not know it to look at me, but I'm a medical miracle. About six months ago, I got sick. I thought it was just some bug, maybe something I came across at work. It was just all the usual stuff - felt sick, puked a few times, couldn't keep anyting down so my weight started dropping, stomach ache. Sounds harmless, huh? But after it'd been going on for a few weeks, it started getting ridiculous and I was missing work, so went to the doctor. And it wasn't a bug. It was stage three pancreatic cancer. By the time I knew it was already too late, they told me. Charlie argued, asked why they wouldn't start me on chemo, or radiation treatment, or even some kind of medication that could treat it. He said there had to be something they could do. They told him it was already too late, that I wouldn't survive the treatment and die anyway. I was dying and that's all there was to it. They gave me roughly three months, and a discharge paper."

Jerry broke off, lowering his head as if bracing himself for the next part of his story. It was obvious to Dean that being diagnosed with terminal cancer was far from the worst thing that had happened to Jeremiah Brandt. He was soon proven right.

"Charlie and me kind of had a rough time growing up. Mother died when I was a baby, and it shoved dad into a bottle. He was angry at the world, at everything, and Charlie and me were the closest things to take that out on. He died from a drug overdose when I was seven, Charlie was thirteen. We went into foster after that, and it all got worse until Charlie took guardianship the day he turned eighteen. After a life like that - we never held onto relationships long, never had much schooing, so stayed blue-collar, y'know? After the diagnosis I stayed with Charlie, a hospice nurse came every day. But … with no treatment and an estimate of three months, things were only going to get worse until it was finally over. My brother was facing down three months of watching me die, until he eventually put me in the ground. Three months of watching the cancer eat through me, watch me waste away, watch when the pain finally hit, unable to do anything to help."

He swallowed, and Dean closed his eyes. He could think of absolutely nothing worse. God, if that had been Sam - Hell, far too recently it had been Sam, slowly dying from the scars he bore from Hell. Selfsame Hell Charles Brandt was suffering right now, and Jeremiah knew it. To watch his little brother slowly suffer and die like that - It was pure horror.

"Go on, Jerry," Sam encouraged, his voice soft, and Dean chanced a glance at him. His expression was twisted into profound pity. While Dean had been hit by the utter horror of that situation, it was obvious from Sam's expression that he felt only pity and sympathy for the Brandt brothers. Maybe that was a title card of what made them different.

"I uh …" it was obvious this was getting harder for Jerry to get through, and Dean silently willed him to go on, even if it could possibly get any worse.

"I think maybe it sent Charlie kind of nuts. First he started looking into all these experimental treatments, the kind of stuff you paid thousands for in some clinic in Mexico. He made call after call, to hospitals and transplant committees and alternative medicine practitioners. It was always the same. He told them what was wrong with me, and they told him nothing could be done. I guess he was running out of options, but as weeks went by, he called in faith healers and conjure men and even some woman who said she was a witch. He was willing to believe anything, if only it would save me. Then one day, I woke up and I was fine. Just fine. The pain was gone, I didn't feel sick at all, I felt stronger than I had ever felt and I was starving. Charlie was nowhere to be found, and he turned up a few hours later. The look on his face when he saw me … I'll never forget that look. He refused to believe it at first. He took me to a regional hospital, somewhere where they'd never heard of us, and made me get a medical. He slipped in that I had been unwell recently, citing some of the earlier symptoms of the cancer. The doctor said there was absolutely no traces of cancer in my body, blood tests had proven it. Charlie insisted they give me a CT to make absolutely sure, telling him that a family member had died that way. Still, no cancer. I was cured. It was then that Charlie started to look worried, and I got over myself long enough to ask what was wrong. He told me he had come across this crazy story in one of the books he'd been reading towards the end, when he was out of hope and had nothing else. Said he met some crazy guy who said he could save me, that was easy, but there was a price. And Charlie …"

"Asrael," Sam supplied, surreptitiously giving Jerry a break. "The demon in the jar. Your brother made a crossroads deal. His soul, for your life."

Dean dipped his head, feeling suddenly self-conscious. He knew where those words came from. It was exactly the deal he had made for Sam. For his little brother, when Sam's body was cooling in front of him and he had screwed up his one job, failed everyone he had ever loved. He hated this.

Jerry nodded. "I thought it was all bullshit, I mean spontaneous remission happens right? Usually not when people are as far gone as I was, but medical miracles happen and no one can explain it. How could one guy I had never even met cure me because Charlie agreed to sell him his soul? It was nuts, it was the stress of losing me talking. Charlie didn't look so sure. By then it was getting late, and I remember I said we should both just get some sleep and we'd talk about it in the morning. But that night … that night I woke up to this … noise. At first I didn't know what it was, but then I realized it was someone screaming. I never imagined a man could make that kind of noise. My first thought was to make sure Charlie was okay, but when I got to his bedroom and opened the door … God I was already too late."

"Son of a bitch," Dean whispered. "He didn't even give Charlie the ten years."

It was getting eerie how similar the Brandt brothers' story was to their own. Oh he knew how Charlie had felt. He remembered vividly what it was like to be torn apart by hellhounds, his brother unable to stop them. This job had just done a complete one-eighty on him.

Jerry shook his head. "That … thing, told me it offered Charlie a straight trade, his soul for my life, no rainchecks. And Charlie took it."

He squeezed his eyes closed and continued tightly, deliberately.

"They said it was an animal attack. But I was three rooms away, and whatever killed him didn't come for me. The doors were locked, there was no sign of an animal. I didn't see an animal when I opened that door, or hear anything, until I heard Charlie, screaming."

A single tear slipped down Jerry's face, and he dipped his chin.

Something in Dean's chest twisted, and he looked at Sam. His brother was sitting too, hands loosely laced between his knees, his head low. Something about the posture looked like respect, and Dean knew their own past was flooding Sam too. Though his brother was usually a mystery to Dean, he tried to see this from Sam's perspective, only partially to keep himself from falling into his own memories. Jerry was in a very similar position to where Sam had been, and the insight might prove useful at understanding and predicting Jerry.

Dying, either by illness as Jerry had done, or murdered as Sam had been. Only to wake up fine again, and realize your big brother had made a incomprehensible decision - to sacrifice his soul for your life. Trying and failing to stop it, and knowing he was suffering in Hell the longer you failed to save him. To feel like it was all your fault, as Jerry had said.

Dean looked back at Jerry, who was systematically breathing slowly and deeply as if walking the edge of falling apart.

Sam's hand on his shoulder surprised Dean. Sam tilted his head in the opposite direction from Jerry, and stood up. Dean followed him.

Sam turned to half-face him, crossing his arms, voice low.

"What're we going to do?"

"I dunno," Dean said heavily, shaking his head, looking back at Jerry sadly. "I guess all we can do is what that conjure guy was going to. Destroy the ritual elements, banish Asrael if we can't kill him in soul-form, let Jerry go, hoping he can't recreate the ritual without those. That manuscript was there, right? Maybe without that and without the demon who damned Charlie, it can't be done."

He looked up at Sam when his brother's silence stretched past natural.

Sam was watching him with a strangely worried expression.

"What?" Dean asked.

"I don't know, Dean. I mean we have been exactly where this guy is. Where his brother is. We know what this is like, man. We were thinking Jeremiah Brandt was some kind of witch, right? That he was evil. Look at him, Dean. That's not evil. And from what he said about Charles, he wasn't a bad guy. He was the kind of guy who would sacrifice himself for his family. "

"What are you getting at, Sam?"

"Maybe … maybe what you said to the conjure guy was backwards. Maybe we should help him, not stop him."

Dean stared at him. "Have you gone completely nuts? Again?"

Sam pursed his lips. "I know it sounds crazy -"

"That's because it is crazy, Sam," Dean replied roughly, fighting against the rising tide inside him that agreed with Sam with every instinct he had. "You said it yourself, ripping open Hell would be like opening the devil's gate again, like raising Lucifer, like starting the apocalypse. Flooding the world with demons, killing shitloads of innocent people, any of this coming back to you?"

"Dean, just listen -"

"No," Dean snapped, turning away from Sam before he lost his resolve. "No, we can't do this, no matter how much we want to. What happened to Jerry and his brother is horrible, but that's life, Sam. What good ever came out of us doing exactly what they did? What we're even thinking about doing? Gabriel was right, man. It's all blood and pain, all of it."

Sam said nothing, and Dean paced in a loose circle, one hand at his hip, the other rubbing distractedly at his mouth. He finally turned back to look at Sam, who rolled his eyes up to his brother's face.

"He's not going to stop, you know. Would you have stopped? No matter what? All we'd be doing is slowing him down, and who knows, in one year or ten years, maybe he finds another way. Something worse. The whole time, Charles Brandt is burning in Hell for nothing worse than loving his brother. Hell, if not for anything else, it's his brother, Dean. "

Dean stared at him, feeling defeat start to crawl up his back. Worse, it wasn't unwelcome. Sam was making sense after all, right? He often did. Even with the mountain of baggage between them, brother still stood for something.

"Just do nothing for a while, and give me some time to look over Jerry's ritual. That's all I'm asking right now, just gimme some time."

"Alright, fine," Dean replied. "This is nuts, but okay. I guess I go untie Jerry."

An hour later, a bemused Jerry's shoulder reset, a chow run made, and all the cobbled parts of the ritual studied, Sam rubbed his eyes and stretched his arms above his head. Dean glanced up at him from Jerry's edged handwriting. Had to hand it to the guy - for an amateur, he had done some solid research. He had worried they'd broken the guy when, much to Jerry's surprise, Dean had cut him free and said they weren't making any promises, but there might be a chance they could help him. Dean had vaguely advised him to put his head between his knees, as Jerry started to hyperventilate. After that, it had been a bit of Reality 101 for Jeremiah Brandt. He knew a little about demons and deals because the only thought in his head for four months had been freeing Charlie from Hell. He knew nothing more of the supernatural at all. He had no idea what a hunter was apart from guys in camo who shot deer in the woods, so Dean's explanation of how they could help him break his brother out of Hell was difficult to understand. But Jerry was now in Charlie's shoes - his brother was in trouble and he was running out of ideas. If these guys offered to help, he wasn't going to turn them down.

Dean blinked up at Sam. "Whatcha think?"

Sam blew out his breath, thumping his hands back onto the stolen manuscript. "Yeah, I think maybe it might have worked."

"And the … side effects?"

"Those too," Sam nodded.

"I made sure," Jerry repeated his argument. "The demon is one soul, just enough to make the connection to both Hell and Charlie, with just enough power to weaken the divide, not enough to cause the kind of damage you're talking about."

"It's just that you never know what something on the other side is going to do," Sam told him. "Demons are always desperate to crawl out. They saw a breach, even one small enough to call out one human soul, they could take advantage from the other side."

"So … what do we do?" Jerry asked.

"That, grasshopper, is the sixty-four thousand dollar question," Dean answered. "The rest of it's kosher, but that? That's going to be a problem. We can't be responsible for that kind of cockup."

He glanced at Sam, the thought bouncing between them - again.

"There must be something you can do," Jerry insisted, unknowingly quoting Charlie in a similar position.

"Alright," Sam pushed the text away. "The problem is, if we weaken the divide enough to summon Charlie's soul, we risk spilling the whole dam."

Dean and Jerry nodded at him.

"Then we need a way to contain anything that comes through, long enough to banish it back to the pit."

"You make it sound so easy," Dean said sarcastically.

"Can you even do something like that?" Jerry enquired, his expression one of studying roadkill.

"I remember something in the Letters library, something about Hell and its denizens I read after Abadon. Damn it, what was it?"

"Need a vessel or something," Dean said absently, his eyes on the black container trapping Asrael.

Sam shot him a look. "You're a goddamn genius."

"Careful Sammy, you start telling me that too often and it'll go to my head."

"No no, you don't get it," Sam insisted, shaking his hands at Dean and sounding a little too much like Jerry.

"It's been there in the devil's traps, in the binding sigils on the vessel, in those old curse boxes of dad's. All that stuff works on the same principle - binding magic, keeping evil at bay. You or me could walk right through a devil's trap, but a demon is helpless, even ten times more powerful than a human. And Charlie - well, he hasn't been there long enough yet. Plus the only reason he's there at all was because of his own sacrifice. Anything built to contain demons, Charlie could still pass right through. I think it'd work."

"You better be damn sure Sam," Dean warned, eyes narrowed. "Because if we make that breach and Hell spills out -"

"I know. It's a risk. But you have to remember, all that stuff was only ever a really strong possibility. It was never a guarantee. Just, you know, a really good reason not to do it."

He started shuffling through books and papers, and Dean shook his head at him.

"You know, you scare the shit out of me when you say stuff like that."

Dean was thinking of the broken half of a crystal ball they had found along with the belladonna at Jerry's apartment. He could see the similarity. It better damn well work, was all he could think about. He didn't think he could take opening that up on the world, not again. The guilt would eat him alive.

He stood again outside the abandoned wreck of a farmhouse he and Sam had squatted in, tracking down Jerry. Funny, that his problems were now their own. Time constraint was eased between the three of them, and Sam had modified Jerry's ritual to cut out a lot of needless elements, but there would still be the cops and the fire department to avoid - this was looking like an arsonist on a spree, and they were bound to be watchful. He got the need for it. Fire was Hell's element, and the power of the blaze fed the ritual. They couldn't exactly burrow a hole in Hell over a lighter in a motel room. Still, the predictability of it made him edgy.

Sam was somewhere on the other side of the house, taking as little chances as he could. The place was ringed in a giant devil's trap, spray-painted onto the dead grass. Beyond it, Sam had laid the beacon points for Dean's "vessel," a binding force working by much of the same principles.

Jerry was with him, setting up the elements of his own ritual.

Dean looked at his feet. The black vessel containing Asrael looked oddly innocent for something with a demon inside it. It was unlikely the thing itself would be making an appearance, judging by the steps in Jerry's ritual. Beside it, the blood of Jerry's near-victim, the bones of Charles Brandt, a stock supply of the herb and salt mixture, the stolen manuscripts, a Latin exorcism, a tin of salt and a bottle of holy water, a silver knife and three containers of gasoline. The brass bowl stayed his eye - it was uncomfortably similar to the vessels used by demons in communication, and that was just a little too smart for a guy as green as Jerry. Sam had streamlined Jerry's ritual somewhat, both for time, and effectiveness. Both in rescuing Charlie, and in keeping the Hell tide back.

For a guy about to attempt a human rescue mission to Hell, all for the sake of two brothers who reminded him so much of he and Sam, Dean felt oddly empty. It never seemed to stop. He and Sam, Jerry and Charlie, who knew how many other times this story had played out? Gabriel's warning wouldn't leave him alone. Nothing good comes out of it. Just blood, and pain. Even the archangel had his chapter - murdered by his big brother. As if that wasn't enough, here he was again, letting Sam put himself on the line. The hellhounds had claimed Charles Brandt, as he'd already reasoned. There was still a chance it would come back for him. Still a chance to turn this around …

"Hey, you okay?"

Sam was suddenly at his side, his face softly illuminated by the moonlight. Damn for a giant moose he could move silently when he wanted to.

"What?" Dean feigned.

Sam was half-smiling, half frowning at him.

"You just looked a thousand miles away, is all."

Dean shook his head, hands deep in his pockets.

"I'm fine. Lets do this. Where's Jerry?"

Sam tipped his chin at the house.

"He's 'round the back, setting up. The house is the focus, our burr hole, so he's ringing everything else around it. Summoning Charlie on all sides. I think I got the trap and the vessel locked down pretty tight. If anything does slip out, it's going right back in."

Dean thought of Jerry's summoning, the part of the ritual focused on Charlie.

He had combined sigils for calling, summoning, reclaiming. Dean's heart involuntarily clenched when he noticed the late medieval European symbol for the bonds of family which Jerry had obviously added himself. The symbols were drawn on stones, reminding Dean of Sam. Jerry may not have known, but his own desperate energy spent hurling them into the fire of his brother's torment only added strength to his efforts. As for Hell, around the house was a ring of volatile powder Jerry had rigged himself. At thirteen points around the ring lay a candle and a sigil, ranging from opening doors, weakening bonds to thinning the veil and justice for the innocent. As each ignited, accompanied by the properties of Jerry's herb and salt mixture, each activated in succession. The powder circled inwards, to the house. The final frontier for their portal.

Sam slapped his shoulder.

"Come on, lets douse the place while he's busy."

They both took up a container of gasoline and headed inside, soaking everything within reach.

The house so liberally doused in gasoline that Dean could barely keep his eyes open for the fumes, he and Sam stumbled out to find Jerry standing where Dean had been, holding a candle. Coughing slightly from the gas, Dean nevertheless stopped on the sagging porch and stared at him. The light from the candle in his hands illuminated his face, and he was looking down at his brother's bones at his feet. That look … he looked like it was all finally catching up with him. Dean recognized Jerry's strategy the moment he'd understood about Charlie. The instinct that if he didn't think too hard, just kept going, kept pushing as hard as he could, one step and then the next, he could keep himself in one piece. If he stopped, even for a moment, and allowed reality to crash over him, he'd never get back up. And now here he stood, his brother's bones at his feet, and this was his reality. Now it would either work, and everything would be okay, or it wouldn't, and he looked as if he couldn't bear to think of what would happen next. Dean moved to curtail him before he sank too far.

"Okay, pawns in place," he said brightly when he reached Jerry. "Lets light this fire."