AN: Last one :) Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed.

Epilogue

"Hey," Sam sat straight when his brother entered the room. Dean had a grim look on his face and seemed to have lost the ability to smile since Bobby left. "What's up?"

"Bobby's-" Dean gestured back, but didn't know how to end the statement.

Sam seemed to instinctively blame himself, if the subjugated posture was anything to go by. "Is he ok?"

Dean looked at him in mild annoyance before he moved to sit on the bed. "I think he might've known Stella a little better than he let on," His voice was rough and tired to his own ears.

Sam nodded with a touch of sadness.

Dean sighed and decided a change in subject was in order. "How 'bout you? How do you feel?" He gestured vaguely in Sam's direction and tried to look inconspicuous as he stared.

"Better," Sam inhaled deeply to prove his point and flexed his fingers a bit. "Sore as hell," His voice was low and words were drawn out. Melancholic almost. "And you?"

"Better now that I know the witch's gone," The longer Dean gazed at his brother in the soft sunlight, the sadder he seemed. Perhaps he'd done something wrong somewhere. Not asked enough questions. Not asked the right ones.

"Yeah."

Because he'd come to understand his little brother better the past two years. Come to realize things about the kid he thought he knew through and through that had honestly floored him. For better or worse.

The sun made slow progress across the floor as both brothers sat across from each other. Both, wrestling with emotions and questions, but neither one sure how to voice them. Dean twirled the ring on his finger and wondered how bad the summer alone had been for his brother compared to his own ordeal. He glanced up and saw deep lines in Sam's skin he hadn't noticed before. The kid looked old. Older than Dean. "How you holdin' up, Sam?" He voice lightened to appear less demanding. A feat he mentally patted himself on the back for, considering the level of his exhaustion at that point.

Sam responded to it by sighing again and shrugging his shoulders in the same movement. Not looking up. Not volunteering anything. There had been a time when Sam wouldn't shut up. More and more Dean found himself wishing for those days back, wanting to scream to fill the void left behind. "I mean, about everything lately," he elaborated when he didn't seem inclined to answer.

They crossed glances for a long five-second count before Sam looked down, refusing to meet Dean's eyes again.

"I'll understand, Sam," Dean kept his eyes on the young man before him. "You know I will," The last words were a plea. Please.

"Why should I waste time talking about it?" Sam still seemed so endlessly sad. "It won't change anything," So small and fragile. He'd seemed back on track moments before, right after Hephzibah was exorcised, but now he looked like he was at the end of a losing battle. The sight made something slightly panicky squirm inside Dean. Guess the attempt at humor before was just relief.

"It did for me," Then his brother looked up. Met Dean's eyes, dead on. "More than you know, man," He looked away, but noticed with satisfaction he held his brother's attention. He leaned down with slow movements and pulled something out of his boot. "I know you probably feel a bit skittish about me right now," It was a folded photograph. "But I need you to know, it wasn't me who hurt you," He made an aborted attempt to gesture to Sam's bruises, gently holding the small photograph.

Sam swallowed, and Dean saw the first sliver of genuine emotion in months. Years. He held out the crumbled photo and Sam took it. Slowly. Insecurely. With a slight tremor. And Dean noticed the weak twitch as he was reaching out. It'd be a while before his brother could feel completely comfortable around him again.

Dean knew the feeling, but had honestly never wanted his brother to know.

Sam unfolded the photo and his eyes changed. Not the emotionless ones Dean had seen since reuniting, but old ones. Full of so much fear and sadness that it damn near drowned you looking at them. "Why do you have this?" Sam whispered as he gestured with the photo and looked up at his brother.

Dean sighed at the desolate look on his brother's face. "Because I thought one day you might need it," If this didn't rouse Sam, just a little bit, from his post-trauma induced funk nothing would.

A tear slipped down his face. It hit the wrinkled picture with a soft pop. A light sob tore from his throat and with a frustrated heave, he shook the photo.

"I'm so sorry, Sam," Dean felt his eyes burn and ignored the tear that dripped from it at the sight of more slipping from Sam's. "I should've stopped it. Everything," Dean sighed miserably when Sam sobbed again. He seemed to shrink back, as if wanting to escape the close quarters. His own skin even. "But I didn't know that any of it would happen. I never know," If his voice broke a little, who the fuck cared.

Sam looked up through tearful eyes and wept.

Dean shook all over and was dangerously close to breaking point as well. "None- None of us did," He whispered into the floor with the weight of past regrets weighing him down. He doubted those would ever leave. It seemed the fewer Winchesters lived the greater their collective burden became. It struck him that he'd left Sam as the last man standing to carry that weight. Thinking he'd be alone till his ends of days while his brother rotted in Hell.

He raised a hand to his mouth and watched his brother stare at the picture. He was so lost in the guilt that it caught him off guard when his brother rose from the bed in a mighty heave. Instead of running from the room, Sam grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet, into a long overdue embrace.

Dean's hands shook as he reached for Sam's shirt and held on, their chins touching each other's shoulders. It felt good the way his brother's fingers were entwined in Dean's shirt as well. Not like the last time. Not like him clinging on and Sam barely tolerating the contact, or like they were hanging on for dear life.

No. It felt like reaching a hand to someone who needed closeness at that moment. It felt like needing a little more honesty in return and Dean realized this was all he ever should'a asked for. To be needed by someone. For someone to be there for him.

He let out a deep, trembling sigh of relief and closed his eyes, feeling Sam do the same. And little by little, they let go of whatever held them down – they relaxed – and Dean began to believe he wasn't so lost that there was no one left who could ever yank him back.

"I'm-m sorry," Sam whispered into his shoulder. He leaned back, but paused with his forehead on Dean's shoulder. His hands on Dean's arms. Dean's hands on Sam's. Locked.

When they finally did raise their heads, the look on Sam's face was one Dean easily recognized. A mirror image of his own and he felt relieved to see it. Relieved that his brother still felt. That somewhere, beneath the facades and walls, his brother was still there.

Different.

Bruised, but still breathing, and as long as he did everything could be fixed. So Dean smiled. Not sadly, and not for a second, but a brilliant smile that was easily picked up and mimicked by Sam.

Dean clapped his shoulder, leaned close to his ear and whispered. "Everythin's gonna be fine, Sammy."

And somewhere, somehow he believed him. Sam still had one person who would put everything on hold for him. Who would trust him despite what everybody else said. Unfolding the old picture, his gazed down at it. Dean's hands, still on his shoulders for comfort, and watching him like he used to.

The oldest, living Winchester spoke in a voice Sam only had vague recollections of from childhood. "I kept it because I knew one day you'd wanna think of her again," Clapping his shoulder, Dean pulled his bottom lip into his mouth. "And then you'd want that."

Sam looked up with a smile, tears still dripping from his eyes.

"And I trust you to tell me, when you feel comfortable, how you really feel."

Sam sniffed and wiped the teardrops off the paper. "And in the meantime?" He laughed through it when another sob forced its way out.

Dean chuckled, and earned one from his brother as well. He wiped a drop away from his brother's cheek. "In the meantime we've got work to do."

Sam folded the picture the way it already had been, and put it in his shirt pocket. He knew it was corny, but he breathed better when it was near his heart.

As Dean settled the bill with the motel, Sam sat on his bed. Elbows, resting on his knees in the warm room. The door open and sunlight streaming in. He smiled softly and marveled at the orange, brown and red colors on the carpet and how they danced in the afternoon sun.

He tapped his breast pocket and got up with determined steps. His brother was already waiting outside. Car idling. Their breaths created little clouds with every exhale, and their smiles were tired, but true. Cars were going by down the main road. Someone's kid laughing somewhere, and all those things had always been there, Sam realized. The laughter and the sunlight, but he had been so caught up that he'd never noticed just how nice it all was; wives, kids, dogs; the space and time to stop for a second, and he knew it wasn't just the picture of Jessica in his pocket that reminded him of it.

No. It was Dean. Fuck me, he thought with a grin into the sunlight, it was always Dean.

Finito.