"No!" Sam shouted, quickly crab-walking away from the adorable, evil little girl in front of him. "No! I would never hurt him. I certainly wouldn't kill him." Even the word tasted foul in his mouth.

"Wouldn't hurt him?" the child laughed. She began walking towards him, looking much more threatening than such a small child should. "How many times have you left him Sammy? How many times have you shot him?" With each accusation, she got closer and closer until Sam had backed himself against a tree and could not get away any further.

"What about all those times in high school that you pretended not to know him? You think he doesn't know about that? What about when you all but forgot him while in college?"

"I didn't!" Sam denied. "I would never... I could never forget..." He was shaking his head and had put his arms up in front of his face as if to block the charges against him.

"How many times did you forget his birthday? How many times did he forget yours? Never?"

"I was a child," he cried out. She was standing right in front of him now. He could feel it, though he refused to look up at her, refused to look at anything having closed his eyes with such force that they felt they would have to be pried open. "I was just a little kid when I forgot-"

"So was he! He was a child but Dean always remembered you. He was always there for you. Protected you. Loved you. And you let him die! He sacrificed his life for you and you just let him go!"

"No! I tried to stop it," Sam sobbed. "I tried to find a way out for him. I searched for a year and couldn't find anything. And then I tried to help him hide. Tried to keep him safe. But you found him... I died when he was dragged off... I died, too."

Only I had to stay here and pretend that I was still alive, if only on the outside.

"And I tried to find a way to bring him back after he was gone. I couldn't burn his body the way we did with Dad because I just kept hoping... kept wishing..."

And then he couldn't say any more. Sam was wiped out. Tears flowed from his eyes until there were no more tears left. He sat curled in on himself underneath that tree, sniffing through his runny nose, breathing jaggedly through his mouth. Every so often, his rounded back jerked with his hitching breath, until the spasms were fewer and further between.

Sam just sat in silence, trying to will his brain to just shut down. Just for a moment.

* * *

"Sam... Sammy?" the breathless voice of his older brother seeped into his head. Unfortunately, because of his emotional explosion, it felt like his brains were oozing out of his head at the same pace.

"Come on, Sammy. You gotta wake up man."

"'m'wake," Sam mumbled and slurred. He heard Dean let out a huge huffed breath and stand up – mostly likely turning away to compose his big, bad self, Sam thought. The idea would have brought a smile to his face, if his face hadn't hurt so much.

"'m'OK," he muttered, trying to reassure his older brother as he slowly moved to sit up against the tree at his back. Then he froze. This was all too familiar.

"You sure you're OK there, Sammy?" Dean huffed out another breath. No it wasn't a huff... exactly.

Sam's eyes shot open, half expecting, half afraid of finding a twelve-year-old version of his brother in front of him. He really could not go through that whole ordeal again.

But, Dean – the Dean crouched down in front of him – was his Dean. His older brother... actually older brother.

"Sam?" Dean's smile faded into concern and Sam realized that the 'huff' he heard was more of a laugh than a sigh. However, his brother was now looking at him with worry.

"Sammy? I know you're tired, man, but talk to me. You're kinda freaking me out here kid," Dean told him with an anxious smile.

"Tired?" was all Sam could answer.

"Well, yeah," Dean said, dropping his dirt-crusted shovel, sitting down on the ground in front of Sam, and rolling his neck and shoulders. "I mean, I know you haven't been sleeping that great..."

That was true. Sam hadn't been sleeping well at all. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Dean being ripped apart by invisible hell hounds. The nightmares had been easing, but then when Dean reappeared, alive and whole, they came back with a vengeance. Sam wasn't sure why.

"You are OK, right?" Dean asked him.

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine," Sam gave, internally shuddering at having used the standard Winchester response. When Dean just looked at him, eyebrow slightly raised, he broke down. "I've been having nightmares."

"Nightmares?" Dean asked, sitting forward. "Like, vision-nightmares? Like you're getting your old psychic powers back?"

"No, not like that," Sam explained. "Just plain old, craptastic, horrible recurring-nightmares. Like I had after Jess..."

"You're dreaming of Jess again?" Dean asked softly.

"No. Not of Jess," Sam said pointedly, looking directly into his brother's eyes, willing Dean to just get it. Willing Dean to understand how painful it was to just watch someone you love dying in front of your eyes and not being able to do a thing about it. Whether that someone was a lover or the brother who always took care of you.

"Ah," Dean said, and for a moment Sam thought that was all he was going to say. "It's not easy to watch your brother die and not be able to save him. It's not easy to be so close and yet too far away, and have to hold him while the life leaves his eyes."

Sam felt like Dean was reading his mind. That was exactly it. That was exactly how it felt...

And his brother knew because Dean had gone through the same thing, having watched Sam get stabbed in the back.

And it all clicked. He had gone through his own stages of grief after finding out about Dean's deal. It wasn't textbook Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, but he hit almost all the main points. He was angry with Dean, then combined denial and bargaining when trying to find a solution to their problem, and finally hit anger again along with depression after Dean was gone. Problem was, he had never completely accepted it. Therefore, he had never found solace.

And, with Dean back, all the mixed up feelings came right back out. With anger at the forefront. The nightmares and subsequent lack of sleep didn't help either. And the guilt he felt – about not finding a way out of the deal, not being able to save Dean, not being able to liberate him from Hell, and everything else that went along with the situation – manifested itself as even more outrage.

But when he thought Dean was putting Sam's feelings into words, only to realize that they were also Dean's feelings about Sam, it was like things finally made sense again. Sam had never understood why Dean had made that deal, but in the aftermath of Dean's death, Sam realized that he was willing to make the same deal... in fact, willing to simply trade places with him to save his brother from the anguish of Hell.

And, Sam realizes, they both must know how Dad felt and why he made his deal for Dean. They weren't thinking about the pain of the ones left behind, but all the life they still had to live, all the good that they would do.

It still hurt, but... yeah...

"Hey Dean," Sam said after a moment.

"Yeah?"

"Why do you think that Dad only... I mean, if you were pulled back, why..."

"You know Sam," Dean said with a heavy sigh, "I don't know why I got the get-out-of-jail with your old body card and Dad only got the day pass as a spirit. But, I'd like to think that he got to move on and found Mom. I don't know if I believe that... but I'd like to think it."

After a few more moments of silence, a good strong breeze reminded the brothers that they were sitting in a graveyard in the middle of the night in late December. The fire that Dean had apparently ignited while Sam napped was nearly out, leaving them cold and in the dark.

"Who are you and what have you done with my brother?" Sam suddenly asked.

"Dude," Dean said, looking a little disgusted, "given my warm reception by both you and Bobby when I came back top-side, I don't think that's funny at all."

"No," Sam said with a grin, "I guess not. Sorry." Sam waited for the constipated look to vanish from his brother's face before continuing. "It's just... we just had a heart-to-heart talk. Granted, in a cemetery near a freshly dug grave and a still-burning corpse, but a heart-to-heart none-the-less."

"Yeah, well," Dean said, getting up and picking his shovel up again to refill the grave, "don't get used to it."

Sam smiled at Dean's back, picked up the clean shovel, and began to up scoop the loose dirt in alongside his brother.

"So," he said, "you really got all of this done yourself while I... slept? I mean, Marissa Jakobson... did she make an appearance?"

"No," Dean said with obvious confusion, looking over his shoulder at Sam. "You did the research yourself, dude. She only haunts her grave on Saturdays. It's still Sunday... well, I guess technically it's Monday, and you said she only haunted the apartment complex an hour before and two hours after school."

"No, no, I know that. I just thought..." Sam trailed off, then had another thought. "Did Ruby help at least?"

"Ruby?"

"Yeah, did she... she was never here, was she?"

"Not that I saw," Dean said. He stuck his shovel into the ground and then turned to face Sam fully. "Are you sure you're OK?"

"Man, I should be asking you that Dean." Because, when asked personal questions, Winchesters evade like no other. "You did all this work yourself while I got to sleep."

"Yeah," Dean said, picking up his shovel once more to help with the last few scoops, "and don't think you don't owe me for that. Big time."

"Yeah, about that," Sam started, picking up his duffel along with Dean's as they started back towards the Impala. "I was thinking that maybe we could take a little break. Maybe, I don't know, go and visit with Bobby for a little while... I mean, today's the 22nd. It'll take a day to get to Bobby's place. So, really, we'll only be technically taking a couple of days off." He knew he didn't need to sell the idea to Dean, but he was hoping this way would lead to less questions.

"Really?" Dean asked, his eyes lighting up like... well, like a kid's at Christmas.

And the childlike smile that graced his older brother's face made Sam grin to himself. Dean kept up a steady stream of chatter about when to hit the road, how Bobby will be so surprised (and in a good way this time), what they should get for their friend who was a second father to them, what to get for Bobby's new pup Bowdern, and on and on until they reached the motel and Sam finally shoved him into the bathroom to get the first shower. By the time Sam was finished, Dean was fast asleep in his bed, a peaceful look on his face – the first Sam had noticed since his brother's return.

And maybe, Sam thought, maybe he would be able to have a peaceful night as well.