It should have gone without saying that a deeply-ingrained habit for both Winchester brothers was that of pretending all was going perfectly well when, in fact, it was decidedly not. Sam was actually rather surprised that Dean had so quickly accepted his reassurances about how he was doing; after all these years, and all the times either of them had been "just fine" right up until they were dead or dying, he would have thought Dean would have been a bit more skeptical. Maybe he was just getting better at acting.

Not that he was going to complain. The last thing he needed was for Dean to freak out and go full Mother Hen on his ass over what was just exhaustion, some bruising, maybe a cracked rib or two, a big lump on the back of his head…

Okay, so it sounded bad when he laid it all out like that. But he was doing better than a lot of the guys out there, and he was definitely doing better than those guys had thought he would do.

"Looking strong, newbie!" one guy called now, coming up from behind him through the woods. Sam saved his breath instead of replying, waving an acknowledging hand instead. He was trudging along at this point, so the guy was able to easily pass him and disappear among the trees ahead. Sam didn't even consider trying to catch up.

His ribs were aching from his first big fall, coming down Zipline hill near the end of the first loop. His foot had caught a root, and there was absolutely no way to stop himself from tumbling the rest of the way down the steep slope, sliding the last few feet directly into a gnarly patch of saw briars. Extricating himself from the vicious briars had almost taken his mind off the pains throughout the rest of his body, but they were revisiting him now, throbbing with each footfall.

Been through worse, he tried to console himself, before realizing that the thought wasn't exactly encouraging. After all, he'd literally died. "Worse" was a way more relative concept for him than it was for most people.

He was a little less than halfway through the second loop when the sun went down again. He knew he was moving slower now, and he was really not looking forward to covering the remaining miles by headlamp and flashlight. Falling the way he did had made him nervous; at the same time, he knew he didn't have so much of a time cushion that he could afford to go too slowly. If only there were other runners around now, to help take his mind off his fears. With such a small group, and taking attrition into account, Sam found himself running alone, with only his thoughts for company, more often than he had imagined.

His thoughts were not good company to have.

So he tried singing to himself instead, classic rock tunes that Dean had impressed into his subconscious mind through countless miles of driving, or random pop songs that were just annoying enough to have made their way permanently into his memory. He even found himself murmuring lyrics from that student-written high school musical about their lives. "John and Mary, husband and wife…" A near-hysterical grin cracked his face, and he wondered whether "runner's high" could actually include delirium.

He had no idea how he made it down Zipline this time. He had no recollection of actually doing so. Probably not good.

Coming back into camp this time, he was almost taken aback by the abrupt wash of light and loud noise. Somebody was banging a cowbell, and Sam felt like covering his ears in defense. He handed over the sheaf of pages, suddenly unsure whether he had found all ten or not; Laz counted them and nodded, so he guessed he must have. Then Dean was suddenly next to him, grinning and chattering as he pulled on his arm, and Sam was having trouble processing what his brother was saying.

"I'm good!" he said, trying to smile and hoping that what he was saying was the correct and appropriate answer to anything Dean might have said. Dean frowned slightly, but nodded and patted his back, so Sam supposed he was doing a decent job covering up his disorientation. He was fine, after all; he was just tired. Maybe he had enough time for a brief nap - just a half-hour before heading back out…

"Sammy!" He felt hands gripping the sides of his head, and his eyes snapped open to see Dean staring into his face, eyes full of worry.

"I'm good, I'm good!" he said. "Sorry, just nodded off. Been almost twenty-four hours now - I'm just a bit tired. Think I could lie down in the car, have you wake me in twenty?" He didn't wait for an answer, or for anything else Dean might have to say, before pulling open the back door of the Impala and collapsing face-first into the backseat.


Dean was practically vibrating, shifting from foot to foot in agitated concern as he watched Sam head off into his third loop. The difference between Sam's appearance following the second loop completion, compared to the first, had been huge; instead of grinning in triumph, this time Sam was almost in zombie mode, eyes glassy with exhaustion. There were rips in his pants, showing the old-fashioned, tight-fitting pants he'd worn underneath to protect him from the thorns and briars. Sam had found them in a bunker storeroom, and they were far removed from the modern, technical fabric most of the runners were wearing to protect their legs, but...well, they had no proof that the pants were imbued with any supernatural properties, though the tiny sigils embroidered into the waistband were sort of suspicious. Whether it was wool woven "like they just don't make these days," or something less ordinary, Sam's legs were a lot less bloodied than Dean might have expected. He had made up for that on his arms and face, as well as a patch of his back visible when his shirt rode up during his brief nap.

Amy had nodded encouragingly when she saw Dean's anxious face. "He's looking good!" she called, and when Dean raised both eyebrows in disbelief, she clarified, "He's still moving, and he's heading out again. In Barkley terms, that's damn good for this point." Dean decided, for the thousandth time, that runners were all dangerously, contagiously, insane.

Oh, this was a horribly idea. He had too many issues of his own to deal with seeing Sam like this, staggering and struggling like he had during the freaking Trials. He knew his brother needed him to be strong and supportive, so he'd tried his best to keep his jaw firmed into as genuine as grin as he could manage while pouring bottles of Gatorade down Sam's throat, along with pretzels and packets of what looked disgustingly like runny jelly but which claimed to be "fuel." (Earlier, Amy had handed Mike actual slices of cold, boiled potatoes liberally dipped in a bowl of salt, and Dean felt like vomiting just watching. Again, dangerously crazy people.)

When Sam was gone, though, Dean had nothing left to do but panic. It was now past two in the morning, but there was no way he was going to be able to sleep. Luckily, he knew somebody else who wouldn't be asleep, either. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, glancing around surreptitiously, and dialed.

"Hello, Dean," a comforting growl said into his ear.

"Cas," Dean said on an exhale, closing his eyes and tipping his head backward, trying to convince his neck muscles to unknot.

"You sound upset," Castiel said. "Is everything okay? Are you on a hunt?"

"No, not that. It's that running thing I told you about, the thing Sam's doing." Dean dearly wished Cas could have been there with him for this, just to keep him talked down, but now that his mojo was powered back up, Cas had been doing his best to clean up some of the messes and issues still lingering from Metatron's power grab and Amara's destruction. As one of the few angels remaining on earth at this point, he saw it as a personal duty. Cas still would likely have accompanied them to the race had Dean asked, but Dean had felt silly about doing so; after all, it was just running, not life or death.

"How is it going?" Cas asked. "Is Sam winning?" Always the most dedicated supporter of the Winchesters, Cas was steadfast in his belief that if Sam entered a competition, merely finishing was an assumption not worth mentioning. Dean rolled his eyes.

"He's not even halfway done, Cas, and…" He gulped. "I'd say I wish you were here, and I do, man, but it's maybe better that you aren't, or I'd probably be asking you to mojo him unconscious so I could drag his ass home."

"Why would you do that to him?" Cas gently scolded, sounding confused.

"Because he looks like hell! And I would know!" Dean scrubbed a hand over his face. "I don't know whether to hope he can keep going, or to wish he'd come to his senses and give up on this."

"Have faith in your brother." When Dean snorted, Cas repeated, "Have faith either way. He's a smart man, and it's just a foot race. He wouldn't deliberately injure himself out of misguided pride."

"Unlike some of us, right?"

"I'm unable to argue against that," chuckled Castiel. "I do wish I could be there to support you both."

"Yeah. Even if you had your wings, though, all I could tell you is that he's somewhere in the hills of Frozen Head State Park. Finding him would - "

" - be the work of five or ten minutes, Dean. I'm an angel, not a human forest ranger."

Dean laughed, though his chest still felt tight. "Well, maybe we can meet you back at the bunker when this is over, help me patch him up?"

"Of course, Dean."


"I shouldn't have gone back out," Sam said to himself. In the middle of the night, completely alone and exhausted, his internal monologues had become external ones without him noticing much. The old adage about it being okay to talk to yourself so long as you didn't talk back had also ceased to apply; he nodded in agreement with himself about the wisdom, or lack thereof, in his choice.

"No, this was stupid. Why am I doing this?"

"Because I didn't want to just give up. Not for no good reason, anyway."

He shrugged at his own reasoning, accepting it. One foot in front of the other, he trudged along. Only a few miles into this loop, he'd concluded that there was no way he could fathom doing two more after it. If he could finish this loop though, before three PM, he could claim a "Fun Run" finish. New goal in place, he just needed to keep moving forward, as well as stay coherent enough to gather the book pages to prove that he had.

About four miles in, the headlamp lighting his path flickered. In his state of near-delirium, it took several long moments for him to realize it was either a battery issue or damage from one of his falls, not ghost interference. "Well, that's bad," he muttered. Staring ahead into the trees, he estimated that there were maybe three major treacherous climbs and descents he'd need to make before the sun rose. Looking backward, it was clear that the distance he'd already covered would be no easier to retrace in pitch blackness.

"I'm screwed."

The light flickered again, sagging deeply before regaining a somewhat fainter glow.

"At least this would probably count as a good reason to stop," he said. "Maybe...maybe I'll just stay right here…"

"In the woods?"

Sam paused, thinking. "I didn't say that," he said. "Did I?"

"If you have to stop and think about it, it's really not a good sign," he heard a voice say. No, it definitely wasn't his own voice.

"Hallucinations," he said. "Okay."

"What? No." The voice sounded a little irritated, and Sam felt strangely sad about disappointing the figment of his own imagination.

Leaves crunched nearby, off to his side. Nervous to see what he might be hallucinating, Sam slowly turned his head. Leaning against a tree, regarding him thoughtfully, was…

"You're my hallucination?" He rubbed his eyes. "Well, you're not a hellhound, so it could be worse."

"Rarely have I been damned by such faint praise!" The shorter man grabbed his chest dramatically, feigning great insult. "Really, Samsquatch, a hellhound? In these woods? Even hellhounds have standards."

Sam giggled. Gabriel raised an eyebrow.

"Seriously, Sammy, what the hell? You look like you died about two weeks ago but you never got the memo to lie down."

"Yeah, well, you're dead, too." Sam wondered whether that made any sense to say. He was talking to the imaginary Gabriel now, which was probably worse than talking to himself. But if his brain was what had created Gabriel, then technically he still was talking to himself, so maybe he was still all right? He didn't know the rules about that.

"Obviously not dead," Gabriel said, smirking. "Did a pretty good job faking though, so I can't fault you for believing it. But...ta-dah!" He gestured at himself, then looked miffed when Sam just giggled again. When Sam swayed a little on his feet, Gabriel quickly added, "Maybe you should sit down, until you've processed that a bit?"

"Okay," Sam said obligingly, before all but falling to his knees in the dirt with a thud. Now he knew he was probably in deep trouble, taking actual suggestions from his hallucination. Even if he was the one inventing it, and therefore giving himself advice, there was definitely an extra level of weird here.

The headlamp flickered again, this time turning off for a full two seconds before buzzing quietly and rekindling. Fake-Gabriel pointed. "So, wandering the woods with faulty equipment? Thought you were the smart one." Stepping forward before Sam could react, the imaginary archangel reached out a finger and tapped the light. It suddenly glowed intensely, far brighter than it had done before. "There you go!"

Sam's jaw dropped open. For a moment, he entertained the idea that this wasn't a hallucination at all, that the dead archangel wasn't dead, that Gabriel was, in fact, here...in Tennessee...in the middle of his race…

"No, just a really good hallucination," he said.

Gabriel looked actually angry now. "Why would you think you're hallucinating, anyway?" he grumbled. "Weigh the evidence, kiddo! You can see me, hear me, feel me…" With the last, he reached out and pinched Sam's arm; Sam yelped and rubbed at it. "And it's not like I haven't faked my own death before! Why so reluctant to believe me this time? And you still haven't explained the hellhound business."

"I was expecting hellhounds," Sam explained, in what he thought was a fairly reasonable tone. "Or maybe wendigos. Or clowns."

"Clowns." Fake-Gabriel crossed his arms and stared skeptically.

Sam held out his arm, where he'd written "THE CLOWNS AREN'T REAL" in block letters with a Sharpie marker. It had seemed a sensible precaution at the time. Oddly, Fake-Gabriel didn't appear to think so.

"What the hell…" Drawing himself up tall, he scanned Sam's face, searching for some explanation. "You know, I keep an occasional eye on you guys, even from my hiding places, just for entertainment. Heard your brother on the phone with my brother, and it sounded intriguing enough that I just had to come see for myself, and may I just say, this is...I have no words." He threw up his hands. "Do you have any idea how dehydrated you are right now?"

"Lots," Sam agreed, nodding. "That's why you're here."

"It...is?" Fake-Gabriel looked baffled. "Did you pray to me for help and I missed it?"

"No, I made you up because my brain needs water."

"Oh, for the love of...here." Gabriel abruptly extended a hand toward Sam's forehead. A flash of icy heat swept over Sam, making him jerk. "Have some water! Now do you believe me?"

Sam gaped like a fish. He suddenly felt much better - much, much better - and with the relief came terrifying clarity. "You're still here! You're actually here!"

"Bingo! Give the giant a prize!"

Sam scrambled to his feet. "Why are you here?" he managed to gasp, completely in shock.

"Well, that's gratitude. I told you, I'm here because you amuse me, and it would be unfortunate if I lost my Must-See-Winchester-TV to the backhills of Redneck-ville." Gabriel smirked. "Now, let's see about those ribs - I can tell that you've cracked a couple and bruised a few more…"

"No!"

Gabriel pulled back his hand in surprise at Sam's shout. "Ohhhh-kay, kiddo. Got some lingering trauma from trips to the doctor when you were a child? I promise, it won't hurt a bit, and you can even have a lollipop when I'm done."

"No, it's...it would be cheating." Sam grimaced when Gabriel barked a surprised laugh. "It's supposed to be a race, and I'm not supposed to have...help. No crewing - that means people helping me out here on the course. I shouldn't have let you un-dehydrate me, even." His head was still foggy from exhaustion and injury, even if he was no longer on the edge of desiccation, and he knew his skills at argument and persuasion were suffering. Gabriel just looked amused. "Nobody else has angelic help, so I shouldn't, either."

"Yeah, I challenge you to find me that rule in the handbook," Gabriel said, rolling his eyes. "I promise you, there have been more than a few Olympic medalists who had a little bit of supernatural assistance on the side, divine or diabolic. Some of the names might surprise you." Studying Sam's face, he sighed. "But they didn't have either your moral compass or your stubbornness, I'm guessing. Should have remembered your insistence on making things difficult for yourself just to prove a point. Some things never change."

Sam smiled weakly. "For what it's worth, I'm not really planning on going for the other fifty-some miles at this point." He stood back up, stumbling as his legs vehemently protested the effort. "Gonna cry 'uncle' at the end of this loop. All that remains to be seen is whether I can get there in…" He checked his watch and groaned. "...a little less than ten hours."

"Well, that's only sixteen miles!" Gabriel said brightly. "About thirty minutes a mile, which should be easy-peasy for you! Tell you what," he said when Sam just groaned louder. "I promise not to physically help you in any way, but I'll stick with you and keep you moving and motivated. How's that sound?"

"Knowing your methods of motivation, freaking hellish," Sam replied with a wince. "But effective, probably."

"'Hellish but effective'! That can be my new tagline!" Smiling broadly and stretching his arms over his head, Gabriel started off in the direction Sam had been heading. "You coming, Samwise?" Moving far less energetically, Sam followed.


"C'mon, Sam!" It was 2:45 PM, fifteen minutes before the time cut-off would end Sam's race. Dean was perched on a rock by the gate to the park; he'd forced himself to stop pacing and sit down after he'd noticed a few of the other support people pointing at him and whispering. He couldn't prevent his leg from jiggling up and down, though, or stop nervously cracking his knuckles. There had been many runners in the last twelve hours who had come back to the gate without having completed their loop, without all the required book pages, or simply without the energy or desire to continue on. Dean's confidence in his brother's abilities was sharply at war with his confidence in their family knack for finding new and exciting ways to get hurt.

Minutes passed. Only a few were left. The race director caught Dean's eye and fucking winked. Dean fought the urge to pull a weapon.

Then, in the last possible minute, Dean heard - singing? What the hell? "...take one down, pass it around, seventeen bottles of beer on the wall…" and Sam stumbled out of the treeline, nearly lurching as he made his way to the gate.

The director sighed with mock frustration. "Y'know, I could probably argue over whether you made it in time or not, depending on which watch I check," he said. "My own says you were probably past by a hair. But if you got all the pages, I'd most likely let you go on." He held out his hand questioningly.

"They're here, but I'm done," Sam said, and he collapsed forward onto the gate. Dean sprang forward to grab his shoulders. After Sam shoved the handful of papers over and Dean was leading him back to the car, supporting as much of Sam's weight as he could, they heard the sound of Taps echoing off-key through the woods.

"Sixteen bottles of beer on the wall…"

"Sam, you can have all the beer you want back home, but I'm going to need you to stop with the song now," Dean said, grunting as he shifted Sam onto the Impala's tailgate and knelt to pull off his frankly disgusting running shoes.

"Sorry," Sam said, eyelids fluttering. "Gabriel was singing it at me for the past hour, and it's kind of stuck in my head now."

Dean glanced up at his brother's face, looking for an indication that Sam was joking. "Gabriel?" he said. "Another runner?"

"No, the angel."

Oh. "Sam, you know that's...well, okay, if you were going to have a hallucination, I suppose it could be worse than a douchebag archangel," he said.

"Not a hallucination," Sam murmured.

"And all he did was sing, not anything violent or surreal or...wait, are you still hallucinating, dude?"

Sam shook his head. "Not hallucinating. He was really there, Dean."

"He's dead, Sam." Dean frantically rummaged in the trunk for a bottle of Gatorade. "They said being dehydrated would make you see stuff. Gabriel was not there." He shoved the bottle into Sam's hands.

"That's what I said, too," Sam said, frowning. "But he said he really was…"

"Which is exactly what you'd expect a hallucination to say."

"No, but he was! He rehydrated me with…" Sam wiggled his fingers at Dean's forehead. "And then he walked with me for the rest of the loop!"

"Singing 'One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall'?"

"'One Thousand', actually." Sam grimaced. "It was a long walk."

"And this is the rational behavior of a living angel? One who, the last time we saw him, was lying dead on the ground?" Sam shrugged. "Sam, no. He wasn't there. You're dehydrated and exhausted, so you cooked yourself up some company. I could question your tastes, but at least it wasn't a hellhound, I guess."

Sam barked a laugh, accidentally snorting the Gatorade he'd been drinking. "That's what I told him!"

"Yeah, all right," Dean sighed. He gently patted Sam on the back. "So you're going to lie down and sleep now. You had your fun, and your trippy, trippy mind journey, and now we're going to take a break from all the running. 'Kay?"

"'Kay."


"Loop 3, Number 4, Sam Winchester, thirty-six hours even." Sam read the race webpage, smiling faintly. Days later, he was still aching as though he'd been repeatedly tossed into piles of boulders by angry wendigos. After his initial collapse into unconsciousness following his exit from the race, he'd had difficulty sleeping at all, with intense muscle soreness making it difficult to rest well. He'd also had trouble eating, fighting through nausea, and the chafing...well, some things were better left undescribed.

"You couldn't have used a fake name, could you?" Dean grumbled. "Low profile, Sam. Familiar concept?"

"Not like there are any pictures, Dean. And anybody looking for me on the internet isn't going to care about race results, even if there were only one 'Sam Winchester' in the world."

"Yeah, sure."

Dean had been watching him like a hawk, ever since Sam had told him about Gabriel's miraculous Tennessee comeback. As the race endorphins faded and physical evidence of the event slowly disappeared from his body, Sam had begun to wonder whether he had, in fact, hallucinated the archangel. He couldn't remember when Gabriel had left his side at the end of the loop; one moment he had been warbling along happily, and in the next, he was just gone. The only real "proof" Sam had that he hadn't invented the whole thing was that when he'd handed in his final pages, his fingers and toes had lacked the strange, puffy appearance they'd been developing before Gabriel had appeared and zapped him full of fluids. Dean had insisted he must have been imagining that part, too.

And maybe he had. It was more likely, really.

He sighed to himself. "Ten bottles of beer on the wall," he sang quietly. He wondered how long the song was going to continue to ring through his brain. The tenacity of it was almost…uncanny. Sam frowned, thinking.

"Nah," he decided. He closed the browser window and opened a new search. In no time, he'd found enough evidence for a new hunt - nowhere near any woods, hills, or briar fields. "So, get this…"