Angels don't dream. This is real.

Dean looked down at his hands, stained with blood from fingertips to elbows, a bloody knife clenched in one fist. He stood on a floor strewn with rotting flesh and pieces of bone, and made slick with blood and viscera. The air was stifling hot – permeated with the stench of decaying meat and the burning scent of sulfur. You got used to it after a while. You got used to the screams too, although this day they're muffled behind thick stone walls. He was given a private room for this one, a rare opportunity. Punishment in Hell wasn't usually done behind walls, but in a cavernous room filled with hundreds upon thousands of the damned, each strapped to their own rack, each with their own torturer. Unless you were special, you were gutted in public.

Once upon a time Dean had been special. Alistair had tortured him, and taught him, and when the time came for him to take up the knife himself, Dean proved himself a most excellent student. Now he was back, because he'd tried to save his brother again. This time he'd failed, and this time it was Sam who was special.

Dean raised his head to examine the man strapped to the bloody table before him. Standing slightly up-tilted, the rack made it easy for the erstwhile torturer. Blood ran downhill toward the victim's feet so it would not be in the way. Torso and limbs were easily accessible, and yet victim and torturer were nearly at eye level. It made for easy conversation. For some torturers, like Alistair, much of what they did was purely psychological. They liked playing mind games as much as they liked carving flesh.

Early on, Dean found he was much better at inducing physical pain than emotional distress. In this case the latter was easy. All he had to do was look his victim in the eye.

Dean. Please. Don't do this!

He remembered once, when his little brother was about four years old, watching television in their motel room. Their father was "at work" leaving Dean alone and in charge for only the third time ever. Dean had warmed up a can of Ravioli-Os on a hotplate for them to eat for supper. There was a good western movie on TV that night. He'd been distracted, and not watching Sammy as closely as he should have. The next thing he knew he'd heard a crash, the sound of breaking glass, and a child's anguished screams.

You were supposed to ask me for more, Sammy! You weren't supposed to get it yourself. You weren't supposed to get hurt!

It was a bad burn, all across Sam's chest, and he wouldn't stop crying. Dean had been afraid someone one would come and they would be in trouble. Questions would be asked, "Where's your father? Why are you by yourselves?" and they would be taken away from their father – all because Dean had screwed up.

Or – even worse – It might come – the thing that had killed their mother, and that scared Dean far worse than the threat of Children's Services.

He tried everything he knew to soothe the hurt. Nothing seemed to be able to get through to Sammy, for it had been his first major injury. He'd always been so overly protected by both his father and brother he was unable to comprehend the meaning of pain.

Shhh, Sammy it's okay. It's not that bad. You're okay….

But Sam only cried harder, and screamed louder if Dean even touched him.

Sam, please! Please be quiet!

In the end, frightened to the point of panic, Dean's mind finally snapped. He screamed for Sam to "SHUT UP," shook him -and when Sam howled even louder to protest this harsh treatment, Dean hauled off and slapped him across the face. The force of the blow knocked the smaller boy off his feet - he immediately crumpled to the floor as if he had been shot. Momentarily stunned, he did fall silent, but soon after that crawled off to hide behind his bed where he curled up into a little ball of misery and sobbed as if his heart were broken. Hurt feelings had overshadowed the pain of his burn. Dean was supposed to protect him, not ever, ever hurt him.

Don't hurt me. Don't hurt me anymore, Dean. Please!

Dean turned his head to the man on the rack. Blood stained his face like a mask save where tears had left white streaks across his cheeks. It oozed from dozens of gashes cut like tally marks all up and down his outstretched arms. Dean had made a cut for each of his own failures. Some were shallow, others he had cut deep enough to feel the blade scrape bone. Sam might have remembered that night long ago, or he might not, but Dean remembered. He remembered bursting into tears the moment his father crossed the threshold, telling John the story as if he himself had taken a hot iron to Sammy's chest, confessing to slapping him, confessing to hating himself for it.

He took a firmer grip on the knife. "I'm sorry," he said hoarsely. He laid his free hand upon the clean, white expanse of his brother's exposed belly. When he removed it the mark of his hand remained, etched in blood. Tears began to fall. He had no choice. Sam might have been the one on the rack, but this – this was Dean's Hell. "I'm sorry, Sammy."

I'm so, so sorry. I tried. I tried so hard to save you from this.

The knife bit deep into soft flesh, and Sam started to scream.

"Hey! Dean. Dean!"

He opened his eyes, but at first couldn't see. Groping blindly at the hand upon his wrist, he followed it up to an arm, and then a shoulder, closing his fingers around the softness of a worn cotton shirt. Sweat ran down his back. A cold chill made him shudder.

"It was just a nightmare. You're fine. You're safe."

A nightmare, how? Angels don't dream.

Dean blinked. His vision cleared, but he remained light-headed and sick to his stomach. He blinked a second time and saw Sam hovering over him. It was Sam, whole and well, and looking back at him with a worried expression. Beyond his brother's shoulder Dean could make out faded wallpaper surrounding dirty glass windows, and ragged, sun-bleached curtains. Part of what was making him feel queasy was the almost overwhelming smell of mothballs coming from the bed sheets tangled up around him.

They were not in Hell. They were in Bobby Singer's guest bedroom. Dean closed his eyes and let out a shuddering gasp of breath.

They were not in Hell.

"Dean? Are you with me?"

"Yeah," Dean said hoarsely, relieved to see the same scene when he opened his eyes again. He struggled to clear his head, figure out what had happened, what was still happening. His body felt slow and sluggish. "Something's wrong," he murmured.

Part of it, he realized sadly, was due to the fact Evan was gone. There was no other presence within the boy's body. It was Dean's and Dean's alone. He had risked sacrificing his son to save Sam, and it had indeed taken the ultimate toll upon Evan. He was dead, his soul gone from the plane of Earth, but – Dean hoped – now reunited with his mother in Heaven. Along with the grief came a sense of pride. The kid would have made a damn good Hunter. He'd died a hero.

This made him also realize something else. He looked at Sam with a sympathetic expression. "I'm sorry, Sammy, about Jacob."

Sam flinched. "Jacob?" He stood back, looking almost as pained as he had in Dean's nightmare. He hadn't known his son's name.

He didn't know the truth about Evan either, and in that moment Dean decided he never would. "Sam, the part that was your kid was already gone by the time we found him. It's not your fault."

Turning his head, as if he could ever hide tears from Dean's experienced eye, Sam nodded. "Yeah, I know. I felt it too." He cleared his throat and hastily changed the subject. "So…what happened? My abilities are gone, I'm alive when I should be dead - what the hell did you do?"

"I…"

Further realization dawned, memories of the moments just after Evan's soul left his body surged back up into Dean's mind, revealing what else was now wrong with him. It hadn't only been Evan's soul that left the building, but a part of Dean too, the part that had once taken an ordinary soul and made it an angel. Angels referred to it as their "grace." Like Sam's demon abilities, Dean's angelic grace was gone….

But not taken - bartered - in exchange for two new lives.

Dean's soul now resided in a body that shared the same genes as the original, and that was as close to complete resurrection as he was going to get. He was no longer an angel. He was a living, breathing human being once again, and despite all that they'd lost, he couldn't help feeling a strong surge of elation.

"I always wondered what it would be like to have an older brother," he murmured, turning his head to peek under the bandages encircling his upper arm and wrist. He hoped Sam had done the stitching; Sam had a lighter hand than Bobby. Bobby's stitches left ugly scars.

"You what?" Sam shook his head. "You're going to need to fill me in here, Dean. I woke up in a motel room in Missouri with you half dead and Castiel telling me we've got some avenging angels on our asses. Now he's gone AWOL and I don't know what the hell happened." He crossed his arms over his chest. "And don't forget I owe you some shit for screwing around with my egg basket, as if it weren't messed up enough at the time."

"That's incentive?" Dean asked.

"No, breakfast is incentive. You've been out for days and I know you're probably starving." He interrupted before Dean could get a word out. "And yeah, I know you've lost your halo. Angels don't sleep, and they don't have nightmares."

"They don't eat pancakes either."

Sam narrowed his eyes. "Don't push your luck," he growled.

"You want to know what happened or not?"

"Yes, dammit!"

"Then bring me pancakes."

Ultimately Sam relented, and after disappearing for a good hour, returned with the requested breakfast. Dean told him everything over a plate of blueberry pancakes with sausage on the side. He left out the story of a lonely girl he once found stranded in the desert, and the child of light she'd given him. If poor, doomed Jacob had been Lucifer's secret weapon, Evan had to have been God's.

And Dean loved his brother too much to find that very fair.

Sam stood on Bobby's porch, leaning on the railing and looking off across a yard littered with automobile carcasses. Beyond the towers of rusting junkers the sun had begun to fill the horizon. He'd just awakened from a sleep better than he'd experienced in years, and the simple act of raising his head off the pillow and taking a deep breath no longer caused him pain; or worse - triggered a seizure. He barely remembered a time when he'd felt so good.

But he couldn't forget how much his renewed health had cost. It had been the price of two lives – one barely begun, the other a wealth of untapped potential. Sam found it hard to forget that despite the circumstances, for a brief time he had been someone's father. He hadn't known the boy - Jacob - before he'd been corrupted, therefore Sam could only grieve for what could have been. He found it hurt just the same.

Their survival had also cost them one angel's grace, and a life of freedom. Castiel had given them the means to protect themselves, but they would always have to look over their shoulders. Dean had broken a multitude of Heaven's rules of conduct. With Lucifer safely and thoroughly contained, and the most recent threat eliminated, he was now at the top of the angels' most wanted list.

Dean himself didn't care. He was embracing his new life with gusto, anxious to get back on the road again and start kicking some monster ass. Only half joking, Sam had looked Evan's soft actor's body up one side and down again and told Dean he'd better start putting some more hours in at the gym first. Dean had returned this criticism with his own pointed look at Sam's hair. Healing had not erased the effects of five-years-worth of extraordinary stress.

"You're just jealous, old man."

"That's low, Dean."

"Sorry, Sammy, I'll get you some Grecian Formula for your birthday."

Sam had laughed despite himself. "Bite me, twerp."

Dean had gone on to mention something about no-longer believing in coincidence – but didn't elaborate. God, he said with insistence, had finally paid off a long-standing debt. Sam thought it amusing that despite a now overwhelming lack of grace, his brother remained devoted to a higher power. He himself still had doubts, finding it difficult to shake his old bitterness, but he also had a sneaking suspicion no angels would ever really catch up with them, regardless of Castiel's concerns.

Thinking about this, Sam let out a deep sigh. In the coming weeks it would become a sigh of exasperation brought on by his brother's antics. This morning, however, at the dawn of a new chapter in their lives, it was a sigh of contentment.

"I'm back," he murmured, but then quickly corrected himself with a faint smile. "No, we're back."

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow,
Don't be alarmed now,
It's just a spring clean for the May queen.
Yes, there are two paths you can go by but in the long run,
There's still time to change the road you're on.

"Stairway to Heaven" - Led Zeppelin