I lied, there will be one more short chapter after this one. As always, reviews are love!

Sam's mind was an endless void of darkness, of nothing, of empty blackness. He couldn't see and he couldn't remember, not anything, not even pieces—no names or faces or...

Voices.

"Sam, open your eyes. Come on, dude, don't give up on me yet. Sam, please."

Sam knew that voice. It was the voice of comfort, of strength, of protection...of home.

Dean.

Sam cracked his eyes open, his vision blurry and unfocused. Dean, seeing no recognition in that gaze, found himself in an internal struggle between relief at seeing his brother awake and pain at seeing his brother not know who he was.

"Sam?" Dean swallowed. "Can you hear me?"

Sam's eyes widened and suddenly he lashed out, swinging his fist towards Dean's face. "Get the hell away from me!"

Dean had partially expected this, however, and ducked out of the way, grabbing Sam's arms as he made another swipe at Dean's jaw, nearly clipping him. "Sam! Sam, calm down, you know me! Sammy!"

Sam blinked and his vision cleared, focusing on his brother's face. "Dean?" His voice was small, as though he was six again, and elicited a painful tightening in Dean's throat.

Dean's hand tightened reflexively over Sam's wrist. "Yeah, who else would it be?"

Sam didn't answer for a minute. Everything felt so heavy. "Dean," he said. "I can't...remember anything."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean...it's all...black. I can't..." He swallowed and twisted his hand, grabbing onto the sleeve of Dean's jacket. "My memory. It's gone."

Dean stared at him wordlessly. "But you still..." He stopped, his jaw working. He still remembered Dean. Which meant there was still time.

Dean stood up. That girl's family had been his only hope, and they still were now. They had to be hiding something. That was the only option he had left.

He drove to their house, leaving Sam on the bed of the motel—hating himself for it—and made it there in half the time he had before. He pounded on the door, prepared pound the answer out of them if he had to, but the tired woman who answered the door broke his resolve. The pain in her eyes, the shadows beneath them, the drawn look to her face...and the boy who rounded the corner, clinging to his mother's waist.

Dean swallowed hard. "Please," he said. "I need your help."

SSS

"I need to know the truth about your daughter." Dean sat across from the woman in the dining room. "I know there's something you're not telling me, and..." Dean exhaled. "It's my brother. Finding out what happened to your daughter could save his life."

"I...I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about."

If there was one thing Dean was good at, it was spotting a lie. As she spoke the woman didn't meet his eyes, she stuttered, and she hesitated. Dean leaned forward slightly. "I know you've seen her," Dean said. She looked up, meeting his eyes, and Dean knew he'd hit the truth. "Please, tell me what happened to her."

Tears welled up in her eyes, but she began to speak. "We didn't have the money," she whispered. "When we found out about the tumor, we could have done chemo therapy, we could have done surgery, but...it was all too expensive, and we'd found out about the tumor so late...the chance that she would survive, in any case, was so low..." She wiped tears from her cheeks.

"So you let it just..."

"Yes." She shook her head. "My husband and I agreed. And we watched our little girl die."

Dean nodded. That was the truth he'd been looking for. But there was one more thing... "Where did you bury her?"

SSS

Dean managed to find the graveyard—and the girl's grave—before too long. The real torture began in digging up the coffin, which was taking far too long.

He wasn't surprised that this woman's daughter was the ghost they'd been looking for. The girl uncovered, Dean doused her with salt and accelerant, lit a match, and with a wry smile, set the girl's bones aflame.

Sam, meanwhile, was trapped in a kind of limbo, partially aware and partially not, and he felt the last shred of consciousness he had slipping away. He was wandering, out in the dim streets, searching for something, anything to hold onto, feeling like he was floating rather than walking, nothing feeling solid.

He felt so alone. Everything was so dark. He felt along the brick wall of a nearby building and paused in the middle of what seemed to be an alleyway, his breathing abnormally loud in his ears.

As he stood there, his vision blurring and tilting, struggling not to keel over, a man appeared before him with dirty blond hair and broad shoulders, looking angry. His figure was indistinct, hazy, and Sam had trouble focusing on it, but Sam was sure he was there, because he heard the man speak.

"Sam, what the hell are you doing?"

Sam blinked. He didn't know this person. "What?" he said, and if anything the man before him just looked more infuriated.

"You're giving up, Sam! How many times did I tell you not to give up? You're just letting yourself slip away. You gotta hold on, man."

Sam swallowed. He swayed on his feet. "I can't."

"Yes you can. And if you're too tired, if you think you're not strong enough, well tough. That's bullshit. You're strong enough to hold on, Sam."

"But what if I'm not?"

The man's forehead creased and he took a step towards Sam. "So what, you're just going to let yourself forget about everything we've been through?"

"I don't know you."

"Right, sure you don't. You don't know the guy who raised you, who protected you, who loved you practically since the day you were born. Sam, I can't get you out of this alone. You've got to remember who I am, and you've got to remember who you are."

"I don't know…I don't…" Sam pressed his hand against the cold brick wall. His vision seemed to stop tilting. "I'm a hunter."

"That's right," Dean said. "But you're more than that. You're my brother, Sammy. You'll always be my little brother. And I need you to remember that."

"But you're going to leave," Sam said, voice choked with emotion, not really knowing what he was saying. "You may have been there my whole life but—you'll be gone, and I'll be alone. So what if I let go now? I'm going to lose everything soon anyway!"

"And you think I'm willing to lose you? Like this?" The man raised his eyebrows. "If you won't hold on for yourself, do it for me. I didn't make that damn deal just to watch you give up. I don't care if I go to hell, Sammy, as long as you live. As long as you keep going, and have a life, and survive."

Sam blinked, stared hard at this unknown person, and slowly his vision began to sharpen, the man before him appearing with more clarity—the green eyes holding concern and certainty, the high cheekbones and the freckles adorning his nose—and suddenly a name rose into Sam's mind.

"Dean."

With that name came the rush of a thousand different memories—riding side-by-side in an old chevy '67, Dean teaching Sam how to shoot, how to kill, how to protect himself, hunting together, Dean defending his brother time after time against the evils of the world. Their lives. The Winchester brothers against the world.

Dean smiled, nodded, and Sam stumbled forward, tears of relief at his eyes. "Dean," he gasped again. "Dean, it's you, you're here."

"I'm here. I'm here, Sammy. I'll always be here."

Sam reached out for his brother, needing Dean as much as he had when he was young, needing him as a grounding force, as the one person who kept him safe, kept him alive.

But the moment Sam touched his brother, Dean was gone. Sam stopped, looked around, breathing fast, into the blackness that surrounded him like a chokehold. He swallowed, fear rising inside him in truth. "Dean!" He spun around in the dark alleyway, tears rising up and threatening to overflow. "Dean!"

Sam stumbled back against the wall behind him and slid down to sit on the cold ground, fisting his hands in his hair, gasping and shaking as he lost the last few pieces that kept him whole.