He didn't have any dreams that night, when he finally crawled into bed. Only a feeling of a job well done clouded his consciousness as he fell into a deep, untroubled sleep.

He woke the next morning with the sun gleaming through the window and hitting the rifle that was leaning against the door, casting reflections around the room. He made to stretch out, and then he realised that there was someone sitting cross-legged at the end of his bed, the light playing in her hair making it shine like a halo.

"Jo." He said. "I never placed you as the early riser." Her expression didn't twitch as she contemplated him silently, as if he was another creature to be catalogued and filed away in the Harvelle Archive of Irrelevant Information. "Do I have something growing on my face?"

She raised an eyebrow. "I've got it." She suddenly announced triumphantly, springing to her feet, hands on her hips.

"Well, if you've got it, I've got it too." Sam rolled over and buried his head under his pillow.

That was when Jo threw a shoe at him.

"Hey!"

"You're a mess, Sam Winchester. The old Sam would be ashamed. Look at you, you'd rather be lolling around in bed than out there discovering something, cracking a code, saving the damsel in distress, or any of the other stuff you used to do. You're screwed up, and you're not trying to make it any better for yourself, either. This isn't like you."

"How would you know what I'm like?" Sam grumbled. At any other time, it may have been funny, even ironic; here he was in bed getting preached to by a blonde in boxers and a singlet. The kind of situation that his brother would never let him live down.

Jo saw the sudden crease of sadness in Sam's brow and threw the other shoe at him. "Damn it, Sam. Stop using Dean as an excuse!"

That time he sat up bolt upright, her words like an electric wire against his skin. "What did you say?"

"You heard what I said." Jo said in an even voice. "Each time we've met up in six years, it's been 'Dean said…' 'I can't because Dean…' 'I promised Dean…' You're the one telling me he's well and truly done for, but it's you that's not doing the letting go."

"But-"

"It looks like him, but it isn't." She said in a flat voice. "It's just another thing we have to hunt, and it's conveniently chosen to wear Dean's face hoping to soften you up, like the banshee did to the professor yesterday. Because you're afraid he might still be in there, it knows you're not going to hit hard enough, you're going to hold back. He's not coming back. Not this time."

Her voice grew softer. "Sam, I knew the old you. I went on my first proper hunt with the old you. The moral one. The courageous one. You've become a robot, eating and drinking and sleeping enough only to stay alive. All because of Dean. Do you really think he would have wanted you to start slowly killing yourself?"

Sam pulled the covers up again. He stared at his hands. They were coarse and scarred and wiry. Not what they used to be. "Maybe not." He said slowly. "But you're not always going to be there to tell me to pull myself together either." There was a slight bitter edge to his voice, as if he knew something she didn't.

"So you're sure of that." Jo raised an eyebrow. "Dear Sammy, who's so certain of everything. You have no idea how maddening it is to be with a guy who you swear knows more about tomorrow than you do, but I do know that what you see isn't always what's going to happen."

She stood and gathered her clothes. Turning, she tossed Sam his jeans. "Get up. Shower. Shave. Eat something. Then we can say goodbye to the professor. I'm not going anywhere yet, Sam, so you better get used to being told to pull yourself together."

Sam finally smiled at her retreating back. "You know you're turning into your mother, right?"

"There are worse things I could be turning into."

Saturday morning. Sam was about to knock on the office door when the professor called out.

"Sam. Jo. Come in." Professor Grace Devlin was leaning against her desk seemingly waiting for them to arrive. Sam had though that this was a woman not be messed with before, but now there was power in every line. There was something to be said about not denying who you were.

"How do you do that?" Jo asked. "How do you know whoever's there all the time?"

"Handy, no?" Grace said. "I always could. It'd drive my brothers mad. No matter what they were dressed up as or pretended to be, I could always see right through them. The more a person tries to hide, the more they stand out."

Sam nodded, understanding. "The more you block out the less of a person you become."

Jo narrowed her eyes. "This isn't turning into one of those 'you can lead a horse to water' moments, is it? You have to be lost to get to a place that can't be found."

Professor Devlin shook her head. "You'll get it one day, Joanna. And then you'll understand."

Jo blinked. "Understand what?"

"Anyway." Sam stuck his hands in his pockets and grinned at the professor, earning a stern glare. "We… we're packed, gonna hit the road again while it's still light. Just thought we'd stop by and say goodbye."

"For now." The professor said. "No goodbye is ever final."

And so the duo gathered what humble possessions they had, and blew out the gates of Leland Stanford Junior University, the Impala almost purring in delight at being once again out on the open road.

The windows were rolled down and the dry breeze ruffled their hair. Sam was once again in the driver's seat, Jo riding shotgun. "Did the Prof give you any divine insight, then? Any parting wisdom that will unlock the door to whatever?"

Sam smiled, and for the first time in a long time, there were no ghosts lurking behind his eyes. "Only what you said earlier. That I'm a mess and I need to sort myself out before I do something I'll regret."

"Oh, and Sam's going to take her advice because the big, powerful witch lady might turn him into a toad. Well, all great minds think alike, I guess. I might've even done the same thing if I could. Are you going to take our word for it?"

"I'm still thinking about it." He replied.

"Am I going to get an answer?"

"Hang around long enough and you just might."

Jo sank back into the leather interior, an arm along the back of the seat. She grinned. "There's nothing I like more than an open invitation." Reaching forward, she turned up the radio.

'I'm still alive

Must've been a miracle

It's been a hell of a ride

Destination still unknown

It's a fact of life

If you make one wrong move with a gun to your head

You better walk the line

Or you'll be left for dead.'

He stood over the cowering Underdemon, blood on his hands. Blood. He always had blood on his hands in some form or another, metaphorically or all too literally. Especially now he had been called into service for Mother.

"Now." He said, withdrawing his hand from the Underdemon's chest. The body flopped lifelessly to the ground. "Let that serve as a lesson to you all as to what happens to such a one who dares to stand against Mother."

The Underdemons goggled up at him. In the shadows, the green-eyed demon watched as his charge commanded the attention of each lesser creature in the cavern. Granted, he knew how to work a crowd. He knew the ways of the darkness.

And Cerberus the Demon wondered if Mother truly knew what she was doing, releasing the damned from Hell.

But still, Mother knows best.

'I'm a runaway train on a broken track

I'm the ticker on the bomb that you can't turn back

This time, that's right, I got away with it all and I'm still alive

Let the end of the world come tumbling down

I'll be the last man standing on the ground

As the dust clears look in my eyes

I'm still alive.'

The lyrics to MeatLoaf's 'Alive' aren't mine. Neither are Sam, Jo, Dean, or the Impala. I can claim ownership on Deacon Ridgeway, Carmen Lorenzo, Professor Devlin, the Green-eyed Demon, assorted victims and the banshee.

And so ends story arc one of 'Cursed'. Thanks to all that reviewed and all that read it without reviewing.

Sequel is Ghosts:

Sam has been shot. Jo is caught in the middle of a bank robbery. The culprit has already been dead for two weeks and people are mysteriously dying throughout the city.

But that's not the worst of it. When a demon begins to enter Sam's dreams, an old enemy from the brothers' past resurfaces to make a bargain with the hunters.

Help him and he would tell them how to get to Dean.