Little more angsty Dean with Lisa, just so that she's at least clued in to what is going on, and then we will start to move on from that, for now!

And, thank you all for the reviews. 49 for 4 chapters is like wow and has really help to cheer me up even as I do my damnest to depress the hell out of you all with my angsty!Dean. Seriously, thank you. I do cherish each and every one. (((you guys))))

Now that I've buttered you all up, question…..I have two ways to take this story. Route one isn't all sunshine and roses for the guys but Route two….well route two will make what Sam did seem like a walk in the park as far as being cruel to poor Dean goes. Evil muse is feeling really EVIL! I'm not sure that I really want to be as bad as to go there with this but, I'm handing it to you guys. If you review, just add a little 1 or 2 in front and we'll see where I take it from there. Cryptic much? lol

Lisa was almost on the verge of getting Ben up out his bed to go see where Dean was when she heard the front door open and close quietly and the sound of his footsteps on the stairs. With one quick look at the clock, telling her it was three in the morning, she shuffled under the covers and feint sleep.

She heard him move around quietly in the bathroom and then the bed dipped as he slid under the covers behind her, a soft press of lips to the back of her neck before his hand came to rest on her stomach and he gently moved in closer. There was a hitch in his breath as he settled down and she could feel the soft warmth of his tears on the skin of her shoulder. Not wanting to let him know that she was awake, she stole herself to keep her own breath steady and even and let him vent quietly behind her.

Lisa lay there until Dean's breathing finally evened out into that of sleep. Only then did she roll round, draping her arm across his chest and letting her fingers work their way over to rest on his hip. She looked up, took in his pale, tear stained face and sighed.

She didn't remember falling asleep, didn't know how long she had been under when she felt him start to stir beside her. Pulling her arm back she sat up, recognising the signs on his face, understanding what the beads of sweat that appeared there meant.

"So much for no more dreams," she muttered quietly as she pushed back from him and scrambled off the edge of the bed.

It was as if he sensed that she was no longer there as his movements became wilder and he started to jerk in his sleep.

"Dean!" Lisa moved round to his side of the bed, close but not too close. She had learned the hard way not to rouse him within hitting distance. She done it only once and her face had borne the mark for a week, his face the guilt for longer. That's how she'd got him to take the damned pills in the first place. "Dean!" Trying again to reach him she risked a step closer only to fall back abruptly as he screamed.

"NO!" He sat up, eyes opened and wild, unfocused on anything.

"Dean!," she called again, trying to keep the panic inside and out of her voice as he tried to free himself from the bed, legs tangling in the sheets. He went down hard, head connecting with the table as he did.

"Mom?" Ben's voice caused her to turn. "Is everything alright? I heard a shout." Her son was standing in the doorway, eyes wide as he watched Dean pin himself to the side of the bed. "What wrong with him?"

"Ben, Dean's having a nightmare, I just need to get him to wake up and it'll be fine. Can you go back to bed baby? I'll come in when I've got him settled." Behind her she could hear Dean mumbling about not leaving, could hear him starting to sob.

Ben stepped into the room not away and it broke Lisa's calm. Her need to get him out so that she could see to Dean overrode her concern at upsetting him further. "Ben! Just go to your room! Now!," she snapped.

He turned and fled and she was already going over the damage control she would need to do there as she turned back to Dean. Moving as close as she dared, she knelt on the floor in front of him. "It's okay, it's okay, I'm here," she whispered softly, surprised when the words seemed to register somewhere deep inside him and he turned to look at her. Still lost somewhere other than the room he reached for her and she let him pull her in, fingers gripping her vest top. "I'm here," he said repeating her words, his voice barely loud enough to register as he did. "I'm not going to leave you." His grip tightened. "I'm not going to leave you."

Lisa moved in further to his embrace, pulled his head down onto her shoulder. "It's okay Dean," she comforted. "It's going to be okay. I've got you."

The words again seemed to affect him as he tensed in her hands, making her brace herself for whatever he might be about to do. This dream, whatever it was, wasn't one that he'd had before, she was sure of that. It wasn't as bad yet somehow she felt that for him it was worse.

"Sam?" The sound of his voice so broken and unsure finally sprung the tears from her own eyes.

"No. It's Lisa Dean. It's Lisa." She started to rock him gently, wanting to soothe away the hurt that she could almost feel herself.

Finally he spoke again. "I told him I wouldn't leave him," he stated quietly against her skin, obviously awake but still vulnerable from the dream, the vestiges of it still clinging to him. "I told him I wouldn't leave." Dean was crying now too, really crying and she knew that holding him was all she could do to ease him through the pain. "I did though," he sobbed. "I just got up and got in the car and I left him there. Maybe I did deserve him to punished me for that."

"Punish you?" Lisa's skin started to crawl. "Dean, you're not making sense here. Why would Sam punish you? Didn't you do what he wanted you to? It was his decision Dean, remember? Not yours."

"I watched and did nothing as my brother threw himself in the pit and then I just left him down there. How could I have done that? What kind of brother does that make me?" Not sure he was actually talking to her she pushed off him to make eye contact. Brushing a hand over his hair and the bruise that was already darkening above his eye she wondered how they'd somehow managed to step back four months in the space that it had taken him to try to fight himself awake.

"You did it because that was what he wanted. You promised him Dean that you wouldn't go after him. That's why you left. It's why you're here. Why would Sam want to punish you for doing what he asked, for keeping your promise? It's doesn't make sense."

"Why didn't he tell me then? Even if he was angry with me, why didn't he let me know?"

Lisa was as lost in Dean's head as he was now. "Didn't tell you what Dean?"

"Sam got back right away. He's been topside all the time. Do you think that was my punishment for leaving him? He must hate me to have let me think that…all that time…and he wasn't down there."

She wanted to hunt Dean's brother down at that moment and throw him back in the pit that it now seemed he'd barely scorched his feet in. "Have you seen him?"

He nodded. "Tonight. At the bar. He was waiting outside."

Taking a breath she asked calmly. "And what did he say was his reason for not telling you? Did he say he was punishing you? Did he say that he hated you?" She prayed silently that his answer wasn't going to be yes. Relief flooded her as he shook his head. "Then what reason did he give you?"

"He said that he didn't want me to have to hunt anymore, that he wanted us to have a chance."

"And you don't believe that? Doesn't that sound more like your brother than him wanting to punish and hurt you?," she asked treading on ice that she had no idea the thickness of.

There was a soft nod again. "If he doesn't hate me, then why? Why would he do something like that?

Lisa wrapped her arms around him again at that. "Maybe he just didn't think it through all the way. Didn't think about how it would make you feel."

He gave a gentle little snort at that, relaxed against her. Became more Dean like. "You so don't know my brother. All the guy does is think."

Lisa laughed a little laugh at that. "You do though Dean. Tell me, do you think this is something that he'd have done? That he would have deliberately tried to hurt you like that?"

"No," he said but his tone made her frowned.

"What is it?"

"What….," he paused, not sure that he wanted to say the words out loud in case he made them true.

"What?," she pushed.

"What if he came back wrong somehow? What if that's why he kept away, because he was scared I'd know?"

Lisa's frown deepened and she pulled away a little to see his face again. "Your friend, Bobby, wouldn't he know if Sam wasn't right? "Dean nodded. "Yet he still went to him?" She winced at the pained look those words caused, moved on quickly. "Did he seem wrong to you when you saw him tonight?"

"No. He didn't."

"Well then, stop worrying about it." Lisa pulled herself up and then pulled him up onto the edge of the bed. Her arms circled his neck and she let him rest his face against her stomach. "You need to get some sleep to be able to look at this right." She sorted the covers and pulled them down. "In!," she ordered.

He smiled at that, weak but still she'd take what she could get. "Yes, ma'am." He lay down and she pulled the covers over him.

"I need to go see to Ben, and then I'll be right back okay?"

Dean groaned. "Shit did I wake him? I'm sorry. I should go."

"Don't even think about it." Her hand on his chest stopped him as he tried to sit back up. Waiting until she was sure that he wasn't going to move she walked into the bathroom and rummaged in the cabinet until she found what she was looking for. Knocking two tablets from the bottle out into her hand she got some water and walked back over to him. "Take these. I kept some in there just in case you ran out." He took them and then settled back down again. "Just try to get some sleep," she asked. "It's fine Dean . Ben's probably gone back to sleep by now, I just want to check."

She waited until he closed his eyes with a sigh and then headed off to check on Ben, stopping at the door when she realised that he had, in fact, fallen back to sleep. She tried not to think about what that said about the amount of times Dean had woken them both from their sleep when he'd first arrived. "Tomorrow," she uttered quietly to her sleeping son. Instead of going back into the bedroom she headed downstairs, turning on the light and fishing Dean's phone from his pocket.

Finding the number she wanted she noted it down and then grabbed the house phone. He would see it as meddling, she knew that. He would be mad at her. Still, she'd worked too damned hard over the last month or two to piece Dean back together. Lisa knew the signs now, knew that Dean was going to crack if she didn't do something and do it fast. He was as much her family now as he was Sam's, and she was damned if she'd stand to the side and watch as his brother waltzed back in and, meaning to or not, ripped him apart all over again.

Fingers dialled the number quickly before she could change her mind, hoping she wasn't going to just be throwing oil on the already growing fire.

Bobby peeled his head off of the table and fumbled blindly for his phone. "What?," he grunted into it, wiping sleep from his eyes and yawning as he did.

"Is this Bobby?"

The female voice and the use of his first name, coupled with the earliness of the hour, threw him for a second and then it hit him.

"Lisa?"

She laughed, low and sweet and he smiled as she spoke. "Were you expecting me to call or do I take it that you don't get many females calling you at five in the morning?"

"Honey, I don't get females calling me period. How's my boy? I take it he's why you're calling?"

"He's worrying me."

"He seen Sam yet?"

"Earlier tonight. He turned up outside the bar."

"And?"

"Whatever happened upset him. It upset him a lot." She paused. "I thought that he be pleased, that it would make things easier for him but he seems to think that because Sam didn't tell him he was back that he's done something wrong. That's Sam's punishing him for leaving him behind."

Bobby laughed dryly. "Yeah that sounds like the way Dean would twist it."

"Twist it?"

"From it being that his brother is a stubborn mule who never listens to good advice to everything somehow being Dean's fault. It's an older brother thing, so I'm told. Me, I just think it's a Dean Winchester thing."

Bobby looked up as his door opened and his night just looked to get a whole lot worse. He sincerely hoped that Lisa's boy looked better than his. Somehow though he doubted it as Sam slumped in the chair and dropped his head into his hands.

Lisa was still talking. "I was wondering if you had Sam's number? If you can contact him at all?"

"Oh honey," the older hunter smiled down the phone at her, making Sam's head come up at the endearment," I can do a whole lot better than that."

Bobby stood up and crossed the room to Sam. "Someone here wants to talk to you," he said as he held out the phone. "Can you make sure that you listen this time."

Little note -

If you think you recognise the words that Lisa and Dean speak when he's sitting on the bedroom floor, they are almost word for word the speech between the brothers in the graveyard before and after Sam gets control over Lucifer. Thought it was an easy way to let you know what he was dreaming about. :)