Now:

Dean came to with an abrupt curse, clutching his head, three minutes after Sam sealed the door. He waited until Dean sat up before lighting the last candle in the setting of the Seal. "Welcome back. How do you feel?"

"Like shit. Dude, what happened…" Dean's voice trailed off as he looked around, eyes widening in comical disbelief. "What the hell is this?"

"Exactly." Sam looked around the small room, no bigger than a storage shed, and cocked an eyebrow at the ceiling and door. "Took me most of the year. Bobby and Ellen did a lot of the work, and a couple subcontractors. I think it turned out well, though."

Every single brick was inlaid with the Seal of Solomon, which was also inscribed on the ceiling and the floor. As well as the clay sealing the door shut.

"Sammy. Tell me that's not blood." Dean had staggered to his feet, and was now staring at the door and the small bowl in the center of the floor's Seal. "And hey, you drugged me! Not cool! Not cool at all!"

"You weren't going to cooperate, you can't be held accountable if I doped you, and yeah, it is blood. Mine." Sam took a breath. "It's in every brick of this place. I donated, man, I don't know. Maybe six pints or so over the year… stamped it into the bricks, built this place and now we're sealed in until this is finished. Nothing will get in and take our bodies while we're in here." He checked his watch, mostly to avoid Dean's eyes. "I know you were hearing the hounds before. I could see you looking around for them."

"You're not going to keep me safe from them by putting me inside a seal. We gotta walk out of it sometime. And I don't think Hell's gonna be happy if they have to burn this place before they take me away." Dean's jaw was starting to set, and Sam felt his own clench in response. "I'm getting outta here, Sam."

"No. If you're going to Hell, you're not going alone. Every defendant gets representation."

"Oh, no way—"

"—and I'm your lawyer, whether you want it or not." Sam took a breath, and began to recite in Latin. "//By the contract agreed to, I adjure the lords of Hell, to appear and negotiate with the souls standing here in a time outside of time—"//

"Sam! No! I'm not gonna let this happen!" Dean raised a boot to kick over the candles, and Sam grabbed him by the wrist, yanking him into the Seal.

"//--or rescind all claim. Now! //"

All of the candles went out at once. Gravity disappeared. So did the oxygen.

Sound was still there, a siren wailing of tornado proportions, and for a second Sam felt despair: he'd completely screwed it up, left them without options and now they were screwed forever and ever and—

"Welcome."

Oxygen and gravity both reasserted themselves with a slam that left Sam gasping, and clutching at his sanity and nerve. Dean's hand tightened in his, and that drove the last of his despair away in a rush. This had to work. It was the only possibility left.

They were standing on a gray and infinite plain. Actually, it looked like Kansas. Only the Kansas from the Wizard of Oz, all color and life leached out, storm clouds hovering on the horizon, and crows watching from a nearby split-rail fence. There was light here, but it was a diffuse and directionless light, creating no shadows, and no warmth. Sam could hear his heartbeat, too loud, irregular, thud thud-thud-thud, thud thud.

An instant later, he recognized the drums of the Master, and swallowed back bile at the memory. Your lord and master is watching from on high-- playing Track 3! Dean shivered, and hunched his shoulders, expression going stoic and detached. He didn't jerk his hand out of Sam's grip, yet he still felt Dean move away without taking a step.

Sam blinked, and tried to focus on the—being, in front of them. Vaguely human. Vaguely man-shaped. But the face wouldn't hold features any better than the landscape; impersonal and cold, with the angles fading into each other as the head tilted in what might have been consideration.

"Very few ever seek mercy from Hell by appearing early for the fulfillment of the contract's terms," the being said. Its voice sounded like Pastor Jim; kind, and caring. For a second, Pastor Jim's face was there, giving Dean and Sam a disappointed look. "They have more sense. What are you trying to accomplish, Sam?"

"We want to appeal the contract." Sam gulped, and jerked his chin up to look up to the demon now, standing taller than either of them, wearing Dad's face, eyes flickering like smoke. "It wasn't binding. And you've broken the terms."

"Sam, don't," Dean whispered, closing his eyes, turning his face to the demon. "Don't listen to him. He's not part of this, he doesn't speak for me—"

"If you reject his claim, then our business is concluded," the thing said in Dad's voice, condemning from on high.

That was a tactical mistake. "You piece of shit, you brought me back to life without asking me if I wanted to go! I am part of this whether he accepts me as his representative or not." Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw Dean flinch. "You tricked him. You brought me back just to get a grip on Dean's soul, and you were counting on a year of desperation to give you a full claim on it. You don't have one. You don't." Sam tightened his grip on Dean. "My brother is a good man. He didn't do a single thing this year that he could be damned for on his own. Or in his life. Faust v. Mephistopheles. Daniel Webster vs. Satan. One deal does not damnation make."

"Nevertheless, that was the deal." The being looked like Bela now, smiling at Dean, who regarded her image with wary loathing, and an ache that Sam was sure had never been there before. "Dean? Do you want Sam to die?"

"No."

"Are you satisfied with the outcome of the deal?" the demon coaxed. The crows on the fence shifted, feathers rustling with the sound of knives being sharpened, in time with the drumbeat that was making Sam's head hurt. "Or do you want something else?"

"Yes. And no." Dean winced suddenly, and Sam was horrified to see blood seeping out of one eye. In the bleak nightmarescape, the trail of red was sickeningly bright. "I don't want—"

"You don't get to bargain for me, Dean." Sam clenched his fingers around Dean's wrist tight enough to cut off circulation. "You said you'd do it better. That means letting me die, someday. I don't want to live forever. I sure don't want to live if the price is you in Hell. You can't do this to me."

God damn his voice for almost breaking. The second he thought that, he wildly wondered if God could even hear them where they were.

Time to hit the final argument. "Double jeopardy. He can't go to Hell twice." Sam's voice strengthened. "And he already went once, and you returned him. He already fulfilled the freakin' contract."

The entire landscape shifted, whitened, enlarged… into a desert rimed with ice, the temperature dropping into frostbite territory. Sand shifted, clouds melted and reappeared, and the bleak lifelessness of the place shot more fear through Sam's veins. The demon's form solidified into the one last worn by Azazel, eyes livid gold. Sam didn't think it was Azazel, but seeing that bastard's face again at least made Dean stiffen his spine, his lips drawing back in a snarl as the demon spoke to them. "Special circumstances."

"Special—" Dean turned to look at Sam, really look at him, for the first time since they arrived. Then he looked around them, eyes widening, despair dropping away in surprise and outrage. Maybe it was his imagination, but Dean's face seemed to gain more color. "No. I was out! You let me out!"

Yes!

"You cheating double-crossing scumwads, I was here! And you let me go!"

"Dean." Insistent and insinuating now, the demon stepped closer. "Dean, do you want Sam to die?"

"You had your shot," Sam said, grinning fiercely. "And someone gave Dean parole. Time or God or whoever. He's not yours any more."

"Shut up, Sammy." The demon's hiss was Dean's voice, only magnified and intensified a thousand times, and for a second, the face was Dean's too. "You have no power here."

"And you have no power over me. Or him." Sam set his jaw. "It happened. That whole year happened. Dean remembers it now. You let him go. You don't get him twice. That wasn't just one month, that was one month in Hell, so—"

Dean interrupted, face twisted into a mask of rage. "I remember being here. And I remember knowing no one could come for me, and then getting out and forgetting a split-second later and that is it, I'm through, contract over."

The world exploded into blackness again, screams of a thousand crows, drums reverberating through skin down to bone, and then a howl of rage. "Surrender to us! You have no choice!"

And in the middle of it, Dean roared, "You heard my lawyer! It's over! I held up my end of the deal! You hold up yours!"

Sam tasted blood at the back of his throat, right before his last grip on awareness was snuffed out.

"…ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, fucking ow, ow, ow, ow…"

"Ow." Sam opened his eyes. Every molecule in his body weighed ten thousand pounds. His eyelids were boulders. Staring up at the Seal of Solomon on the ceiling was too much work, so he closed his eyes again. "Ow."

"Sam?"

"Mmmm. Yeah."

A long pause. "Did we just win?"

"Think so."

Another long pause. "Oh, shit."

The sound of Dean vomiting cut through Sam's misery long enough for him to mutter, "You okay?"

It took a while, but he could hear Dean finally start breathing again, and a muttered, "I remember."

The ice pick punching a hole through Sam's brain didn't let him consider whether the next question was wise. "Remember… what?"

"All of it." Dean's voice was a ragged, thin grumble. "Apocalyptic year from… yeah, all the Tick-tocks and people dying and.. Hell." Sam opened his eyes, and tried to sit up, settling for rolling over to look at his brother. Dean was pushed up against the wall, tears running down his face. "Felt like forever." He laughed, a little hysterically. "Then it was over. And time started over, and …" He choked, took a breath. "Why did that work?"

"Hell only has the power you give it." Sam managed to raise himself to his elbows, and stare owlishly at his brother. "You didn't give it anything to work with, really, this year. Only thing holding you was the contract, and you fulfilled it." He gave up trying to remain upright, and faceplanted into the floor. "'M go sleep."

There was a lot he wanted to tell Dean, and ask him, and to point out that Dean had saved himself, by what he'd done all year, but it was going to have to wait until he was done being unconscious.

He managed to send a tiny prayer up to Heaven, thanksgiving and a feeling of gratitude and joy and disbelief, before he lost consciousness.