Disclaimer: Absolutley nada to my name...except my car, but that's not in this story.

Author's Note: I hope this isn't playing out too slowly for you...I tend to build stories more than some. And occasionally that can lead to a lot of talky-talky. So if it seems somehow forced or boring or whatever, just let me know. Until then...read!

"So she's gonna be okay?" he asks, his words running right over the top of Sam's rehearsed repetition of the doctor's prognosis.

"Yeah, yeah," he responds, turning off the medical jargon that even he didn't really understand. "Three or four days and they'll release her."

"Good, good." Pale yellow and sickly green tiles dance around Dean's feet as he continues his frantic pace, still too hopped up on adrenaline to keep still. He made record time, blowing far beyond any and all posted speed limits, weaving wildly in and out of the early day traffic.

"I don't know," Sam starts, "how she'll be, you know, mentally. I mean, dude…she killed her fiancé."

"Asshole," he mumbles, a relatively involuntary reaction to the mention of Ben.

"Dean, it wasn't him."

"Right."

"No, I mean…he would never…there was something…"

Dean whips around and glares at his brother. Making excuses, for something like this? But as much as he never liked Ben, never trusted him – though he wasn't sure why – even he had to admit that something very odd had happened. And besides, the guy was Sam's friend, no matter how ridiculous that now seemed, he knew his little brother cared about him. Of course he'd try to justify this. Somehow.

So he drops the sneer, which takes some doing, and tries to focus on the more important issues at hand. "How's your leg?" He indicates the knee brace with a nod.

"Fine. No big deal. Just hyperextended," he says with a shrug.

"Shouldn't you be on crutches or something?"

"Don't need them."

The corner of Dean's mouth perks into a sly smile as he ducks his head. "Couldn't find any tall enough for you, could they, Jolly Green?"

"Ha ha," he smarts back, already turning to hobble down the hall.

"Hey, it's nothing to be ashamed of. This is a hospital. They're probably used to seeing all sorts of bizarre medical oddities."

He stops short, causing Dean to nearly crash into him. "I am not an oddity," he says through tight lips.

"Whatever you say, Stretch."

He shakes his head in disdain, lumbers on a few more feet, and stops in front of an open door, making a an overdone sweeping hand gesture to guide Dean in. "She looks like shit," Dean utters absently, shuffling over to his sister's bed. Then, glancing back up at Sam and his broken swollen nose, he adds with a grin, "almost as bad as you."

"She can probably hear you. They have her pretty pumped up on pain meds, so she's been kind of in and out. But I don't think she's really sleeping."

Dean leans in closer, as if investigating, peering at Tessa's face. "I'm not," she grumbles, unexpectedly enough to give him a jolt, make him jump back in surprise. She doesn't open her eyes, but her lips curl into a small smile just the same, somehow realizing she managed to scare him.

"Jerk," he mumbles, eyes darting between the identical, clearly amused, expressions on his siblings' faces.

"The good news," Sam says, ignoring his brother as he awkwardly lowers himself into a chair, "is that the cops shouldn't be bugging us. They seem to think it was pretty straightforward. Self defense from domestic violence."

Dean searches the room briefly and finds another chair for himself, pulls up next to the bed opposite Sam. "And we don't think that's what happened?" he asks in the most diplomatic way he can muster.

"Okay," Sam wrinkles his brows and leans into his hands, typical thinking position. "Well, every vision I've had has been connected to the demon."

"Which we killed."

"Or thought we did."

"So it's still alive, still out there?"

"Maybe, I don't know."

Tessa stirs and speaks, words gooey and worn, eyes still shut. "All connected."

"What?" Dean asks, leaning closer.

"All of you," she says in a duh manner. "You're all connected. Like dots," she finishes with a giggle.

"O-kay. Whatever you say, Loopy."

"No," Sam says, sitting upright. "No, she's right. Me and Ben, and all the others…like us. We're connected, maybe even without the demon."

"Okay," he drawls, deep and interested. "So you had a vision of Ben killing Tess because you're somehow still connected to Ben? Or…were."

"Yeah, maybe. I mean, we talked about it before, Ben and I, about how our…talents or whatever, didn't really go away after the demon died."

"Wait, what?" Tessa asks, eyes popping open as she turns and struggles to sit up.

Dean takes a hold of her shoulder and pushes her back down, keeps her in place, all the while staring at Sam with an expression that mirrors his sister's words. "I thought you said you haven't had visions since then?" he asks, a little too accusingly.

Suddenly nervous, Sam falters in his response. "I – I haven't. Not really."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means, I haven't had any visions, not…full blown ones. Just some dreams. And, you know, a couple of times, I sort of…moved stuff."

"Spoon bender," Tess shoots out amid giggles as she falls back against the pillow Dean's been struggling to hold her down to. Then, just as soon as she seems to relax, "Wait, what about Ben?"

Sam and Dean share a look over their sister, an embarrassed yet amused one that quickly turns into – for Dean anyway – an answer the question glare.

"He said he was still…communicating."

"With demons?"

"Well, yeah," Sam responds hesitantly, looking on as his brother's posture stiffens, face hardens. It was always harder for Dean, to trust Ben, or anyone like him really. Sam always figured the only reason he didn't jump to the conclusion that he was somehow evil, that his visions and abilities were meant only for horrible, unnatural things, was because he was his brother. But Ben wasn't family. He didn't know him like he knew Sam. And in all fairness, communicating with demons? That is a talent people should probably be leery of.

But all Sam ever saw was a guy who was struggling with something just like he was. A gift, a destiny, a life, neither of them knew anything about. Yeah, maybe they were connected on some sort of supernatural, cosmic level. Anything's possible. But it was the shared freak status, the mutual fear of the unknown, fear of themselves, that had strengthened their bond.

Until he walked out Tessa, whom he claimed to love. And refused to return any of Sam's phone calls. And, essentially, fell completely off the radar, according to other people he knew. And then, of course, tried to kill both him and his sister.

Dean turns to Tess, whose eyes are now wide open, though glossed with an exhausted sheen, and asks, "He didn't tell you that? That he was still talking to them?" His tone is angry and disgusted, enough so that even she is put ill at ease. She simply shakes her head, no.

Turning to Sam, bitter glint still reflected in his eyes, he says, "What did he talk to them about? Did he say?"

"No. No, he didn't. It was just dreams mostly. He said he thought it was them, interrupting his dreams, messing with his mind." He turns to Tessa, barely able to make eye contact with her. "He didn't want you to worry," he offers as means of an explanation.

Dean ducks his head a bit to capture Sam's eyes. "He didn't want her to worry? What about you, Sam? Were you concerned at all about this? About your sister being alone with someone who has these…connections to demons?"

"It wasn't like that. They just talked to him, told him things."

"Like, kill your girlfriend?!" he shouts, jumping up and knocking the chair down behind him. "Could that have been what they were telling him, Sam?"

The two brothers lock eyes for a long moment, fear and anger emanating from one's, a newfound grief dripping from the other's. Neither brake the stare until a young nurse pops her head in and asks if everything's okay. And even then, even as Sam apologizes for the noise and Dean reaches down behind him to right the chair, even takes a seat in it once more, his gaze never leaves his little brother's face. Because, damn it, Sam, what were you thinking?

And Tessa must have a similar feeling, because when she turns and says, "What exactly did he say?" her mouth is tight and drawn, droopy eyes shot through with fire.

As much as he would like to simply drop his head and shrug – because that's what you do when you were wrong and everyone knows it – he straightens his posture and says, "I think they were telling him things, things he didn't want to hear." Because right now, there's no time for guilt or remorse. "The last time I talked to him he seemed kind of upset about it." And the only way to figure things out is to let others in. "Said they were…interrupting his thoughts." No matter how it might make him look. "I told him he was just being paranoid."

"Was he?" she asks, clearly hopeful, though for which response Sam was unsure.

"He didn't always know, couldn't always tell, what was them and what was just his conscience or inner monologue, or whatever. And I knew he was stressed, had been for awhile, so I just figured…yeah, I thought he was being paranoid." In a voice so low it's barely discernable, he chokes out, "I didn't know."

Tessa grabs his hand, forcing his eyes to flicker up to hers. "Tell me," she says, tight and measured, "exactly what he said."

His head inadvertently nods as he looks away. "He said that they wanted something. He thought they wanted something. But they couldn't get across what. That's why he wasn't even really sure if it was them, because normally he'd understand them so well. And this time it all seemed…garbled. Like something was lost in translation. He said that had never happened before."

"When was this?" Dean asks, still staring hard at his brother, all the while rubbing soothing lines up his sister's arm.

"A month ago, maybe. The last couple times I talked with him, over the last couple weeks or so, he seemed fine, even…cheery."

"Yeah," Tess adds, a confused look taking root on her face, "that's true, he did. It was weird. Like he went from being really stressed to happy-go-lucky overnight."

"I asked him about it. He just said it was over, or all cleared up. Something like that."

"What was he so stressed about?" Dean asks.

"House needed repairs. Wedding stuff. Work."

"What about work?"

Tessa wrinkles up her nose as though trying to recall. "There was a lot of it. Don't know why, never got to the bottom of it. But we were heading all over for exorcisms. And some of them were really weird too." Her eyes close as she stretches her head back into the pillow, grimacing at a pain somewhere before going on. "Usually it's pretty straightforward stuff. But they've been tougher lately, like the demons don't want to leave and fight tooth and nail to hang on. They're not usually that…tenacious."

"Did he ever talk to them, the demons that were possessing people?"

"No. No, he could only communicate with them when they were in their natural state. What'd he call it?" she asks herself, searching briefly in the back of her foggy mind for the answer.

But Sam comes up with it first. "Pure form."

"Yeah, that's it," she says with a sloppy snap of her fingers. "Yeah, but he started acting kind of funny around them, sometimes. Certain ones, the difficult cases, it was like he was…unfocused. I just figured, they were taking so long, he got antsy. Know I did."

"Maybe not," Dean offers, scooting to the edge of his chair. "Maybe he was getting weirded out because he was hearing things. Demon voices, I guess."

Sam looks at his sister, her eyes closed, face unresponsive, and assumes she's fallen into that drug-induced quasi-sleep again. "Yeah," he says halfheartedly, "maybe. If there was a reason for the possessions, outside of just wanting to mess with people and cause trouble, maybe the other demons were trying to let him know that. To keep him and Tess from exorcising them?"

Dean simply nods before falling back exhaustedly into his chair. Truth is, only one person knows what Ben heard, and he was dead. So how the hell were they supposed to figure this one out?

"Hey, Sammy," he says suddenly, breaking the silence. "Did you call Dad?"

"No," he responds, only now realizing his oversight.

"Maybe you should."

Yay, John! Oh, how I miss him.

Anywhoo, go ahead review, if you please. It would make my day.