Thanks for the reviews. :) It helps me know I'm getting it right. Just a quick reminder there are season 2 spoilers in this part!

Two Days Earlier…

Dean barged into the tiny motel room as if he'd actually tried to kick the door in. The door snapped back, its recoil almost catching Sam as he followed behind his irate brother.

"Sonofabitch!" The elder hunter fumbled for the light switch in the dark, leaving a long bloody trail across the grimy wallpaper from a cut to his hand. Sam ignored his brother's cussing and quickly walked across the sparsely furnished room to flick on his bedside lamp. The thing's cover was so dusty it didn't illuminate the scene a great deal better, but at least the tirade of verbal abuse from the doorway ceased and the main light flickered before bathing them in a less than golden glow.

"Dean…"

"Dude, I killed the frickin' thing, didn't I? Does it really matter how?" The elder hunter glowered, but didn't offer up any further insight as to what had been going through his mind to make him attempt taking on a Sasquatch bare-handed.

Not that Sam needed any explanation. Dean wasn't himself – hadn't been for months, and it wasn't all about John's death. At first, Sam had thought their father's demise had been the trigger, but it hadn't been until recently in Oregon that he'd learned the full horror of what his brother had been forced to shoulder alone.

Just before his death, John had made a confession to Dean – a fact so frightening about Sam that their father had sworn the elder brother to secrecy. Whatever the undisclosed information was, it was eating Dean alive.

Of course, Dean being Dean, he had kept his promise to John, dangling the secret in front of Sam's nose, but not revealing what it was.

As they'd stood by Crater Lake that day, Sam had wanted to punch his brother for his stubbornness, but in the end all he'd done was turn his back to Dean, and for weeks, although they had still traveled together, the pair had rarely spoken.

They were beyond that stage now – barely. Sam had conceded that eventually Dean would crack and open up, and until then he'd try and be strong for his brother. Dean needed him; he needed someone to be his conscience, his reasoning until all this was over, just as much as Sam needed to know the truth.

"Want a beer?" The younger Winchester tried to lighten the mood, to deflect if from the obvious topic.

Dean shook his head wearily and flopped onto his bed, not even bothering to take off his jacket or clean the multitude of cuts and scratches he'd gathered while rolling through thicket with what felt a ten-ton ogre. "I just want to hit the hay. Long day already," he sighed, clicking off the light between their beds and then rolling onto his side, hand stuffed beneath the pillow.

Sam capped his bottle and took a swig of Coors before checking his watch. It was barely past midnight – early for Dean to even consider sleeping. Did that mean he was avoiding talking again? Was he so afraid Sam would work the secret from him like some carefully trained interrogator?

Sam shook his head and bounced onto his own bed, one hand behind his head, the other still cradling his beer. Taking another drink, he leaned back and watched his brother for awhile. Dean wasn't faking, he had truly fallen asleep the minute his head had hit the pillow, but from the grunts and slight whimpers that escaped his lips every few seconds, his slumber had not brought him peace.

The corridors were cold, empty, devoid of any human presence, and it scared him. Dean Winchester had faced every creature known and unknown to man and never faltered, and yet here, something was "off."

Brief flashes of memory told him he'd been hurt, both by the yellow-eyed demon and then a crash in the Impala, and yet, he felt no pain.

Dean swallowed hard and glanced down to the simple white t-shirt he was wearing. It was wrong, all wrong. He should be in a bed, hell, he should be in agony. Even now he could taste the bitter iron of his own blood in his mouth from the demon's attack, and yet…nothing, no agony anymore, no apparent injuries.

Dean shook himself and padded barefoot down the hallway to a room he instinctively knew was his. Pushing open the door he stopped dead, almost too literally, as he witnessed his own failing form hooked to every kind of hospital machine available.

It was all becoming clear now. He was dying, and at some point his soul had vacated its mere mortal shell. That didn't mean he had to give in, though, did it? Dean Winchester knew enough about the afterlife to at least have hope that if he fought hard enough he could get back. He wasn't dead yet, not by a long shot.

The thought comforted him, at least for a short time.

The scene shifted, hospital corridors whirling in a black and white maelstrom in his mind until Dean was standing before a girl – but not just any girl. He had trusted her, believed in her, and yet now she was confessing to be the very thing that would take his life. Tess was a reaper, and she was here for only one thing.

"It's your time to go Dean, and you're living on borrowed time already."

Borrowed time? What did that mean anyway? Whatever it meant, Dean knew it wasn't fair. He'd fought too hard, tried so much to save his family, his brother – mankind even.

"There's no such thing as an honorable death. My corpse is going to rot in the ground and my family is going to die. No, I'm not going with you. I don't care what you do."

"Well, like you said, there's always a choice. I can't make you go with me, but you're not getting back in your body, and that's just facts. So, yes, you can stay. You'll stay here for years, disembodied, scared, and over the decades it will probably drive you mad. Maybe you'll even get violent."

"What are you saying?"

"Dean, how do you think angry spirits are born? They can't let go and they can't move on, and you're about to become one. The same thing you hunt."

Could he? Would he? The thought was too much to take in. Maybe, just maybe it would be better to let go, to be free from the torment of the Winchester curse, but then, that left Sammy…

"It's time to put the pain behind you." Tessa was almost convincing – almost.

Defeat loomed in his voice, an acceptance that there were some things even a Winchester couldn't fight. "And go where?"

"Sorry, I can't give away the big punchline. Moment of truth, no changing your mind later. So what's it going to be?"

"What's it going to be…?"

"What's it going to be…?"

The question repeated over and over, demanding, taunting, beckoning, until Dean could take no more. The elder hunter screamed out, his heart pounding and his pulse racing until he realized it was over, he was alive, although perhaps not by God's will.

The accident in Missouri had been months ago, and even though he had had no memory of it until a few nights previously, so had his encounter with Tessa the reaper. She was gone now, and he was free. Or was he?

The remnants of the truth were finally coming back to haunt him, to plague his every moment of sleep, and now that he was seeing what his mind had pushed away, hidden even, it only made the pain of John's death that much harsher.

Dean knew his dad had died for his life long before the nightmares, but to hear the reaper's voice, to hear the demon's voice, it was just too much.

"Sonofabitch!"

Dean sat bolt upright in bed and heaved down two long gulps of air before even attempting to get his bearings. Beads of perspiration streamed down his face where he'd tossed and turned until his body could take no more, and the duvet he'd so longingly dived into earlier lay strewn on the floor in a crumpled, sweat drenched heap.

"Dean? You alright? Man, you look like…"

Sam's voice filtered from the small table in the front section of their room and Dean looked up to see his brother sitting with a coffee, laptop open and booted.

"It's nothing." Dean's lie was so transparent he didn't know why he'd even bothered offering it up, but then, there was no way he was telling Sammy about his little out of body experience.

Sam already knew half the details, but what he didn't know about Tessa wouldn't hurt him. The elder hunter wiped his brow with his forearm and winced as he looked at the tiny alarm beside his bed. It was 5 a.m. in the morning. "So, you wanna tell me why geekboy is up and researching at this ungodly hour?" The question was more of a deflection than anything, although it was easily apparent something had caught Sam's attention.

"I couldn't sleep," the younger hunter explained truthfully. "After you dozed off I switched on the TV and came across a documentary about Lawrence…"

At the mention of their home town, Dean felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle. Lawrence brought back bad memories, and somewhere deep inside it made his stomach churn at the thought of another encounter with the demon.

"Don't tell me, Missouri finally got her own psychic freak show?" It was a weak quip, but better than having to face the real possibility that Sam was onto something big.

"Nope, not Missouri…" Sam pushed up from his chair and poured his brother a black coffee. It wasn't easy to try and ignore the signs that Dean was on the verge of a breakdown. The mood swings, the tendency to be that little bit more violent or daring since their father's death, and now, the nightmares he refused to talk about. "Mothman sightings," he admitted, passing over the mug and waiting for the barrage of sarcastic comments he knew would come.

"Mothman?" Dean's face screwed into a look somewhere between despair and mockery, and he put a hand to his temple as if he were getting an Everest-sized headache. "Dude, those freakin' things are so not real! You know how long dad spent researching the Point Pleasant deal, and he found nothing. Nada, except a bunch of paranoid locals with too much time on their hands and a very nasty, but non-paranormal bridge collapse."

Sam nodded dolefully, but continued anyway. "I know, Dean, but this is different. This is Lawrence, the town where demons walk…" He let the sentence hang purposefully, knowing there was no need to push things further. Dean knew in his heart that Lawrence was special. As part of their "training" John had taught them early that it was just a stone's throw from Stull, a place where at certain times of year a "devils' gateway" allowed evil to pass over from the dark side.

The Winchesters had never been able to connect the place to their mom's death, though – not perhaps, until now.

Tbc...