Sam's eyelids fluttered and twitched in his sleep, as his mind worked through some horror that it perceived to be real; and it was real, real enough to make his heart race and his breathing speed up as the dream took its course. He was lying awkwardly, on the floor of the library, near the doorway to the secret room. His head resting on a pile of books, his body had finally succumbed to exhaustion and his mind had shut it down, demanding some rest. However, with his nightmares so vivid and distressing, it did not look like his body, or his mind was going to be resting very well.

Another pile of books stood, stacked cautiously, just in front of Sam's face and his hands held a rather large tome that he had been reading before the mind ordered sabbatical. Over the last three days, Sam had been researching the quandary they now faced. How to save Hope from hell? When Dean had been in hell, Castiel had rescued him; of course, Castiel knew where Dean was, in the depths of hell, and he had a team of angels to back him up. Many of whom were lost in the ensuing battles. When Sam had been there, Castiel had tried again, with less back up this time, to pull him out of the cage; but that mission had failed terribly with Sam's soul left behind to endure a year of torture at the hands of Michael and Lucifer. The issue this time was twofold; one, Castiel did not know where Hope was, having failed repeatedly to locate her and two, there was no angelic swat team this time. Sam, therefore, was busy researching how to find Hope and how they may succeed in getting her out. Castiel having already exhausted the other option of walking in hells backdoor through the purgatory portal; no reapers were willing to take them there and, at any rate, they thought that Crowley had shut it down, after Sam's last trip through on his way to retrieve Bobby.

Suddenly, without warning, the tome that Sam had been holding fell from his hands; the slapping noise it made when it hit the floor of the bunker echoed around the room, rousing Sam from his sketchy sleep. He moaned and grimaced before opening his eyes slowly, only to close them abruptly when he found the light too bright.

"Love what you've done with the place."

Sam's eyes flew open again, as he turned his head in the direction of that voice, but all he could see was the pile of books stacked in front of him, "Dean?" he queried. The room was quiet, had he imagined the voice, the statement. Perhaps it was simply a remnant of his latest dream. Slowly, Sam staggered to his feet and as his eyes adjusted to the light; his brother's face came into focus, standing not three metres away from him. "Dean… It is you… So… What? Are you back?"

"Looks like…"

"For good?"

"If you'll have me."

Sam did not hesitate, he covered the three metres with three giant steps and grabbing the arm Dean had extended towards him, he pulled his brother in, embracing him, clapping him on the back, the smile on his face reaching from ear to ear. As the bear hug broke up, Sam stood back and looked his brother over, "Where the hell have you been, man?" Dean shook his head once and with a small smile, he let out a sigh. Undeterred by Dean's silence, Sam rushed on, "Hell, I thought you must have gone to a crossroads, to summon a demon and sell your soul to bring her back." This was Sam, confessing his greatest fear; the fear that Dean would try to save Hope the same way he had saved Sam all those years ago. "Yeah, well… I did" came the quietly spoken response.

"Well… what happened?" Sam asked cautiously, "They wouldn't play ball?"

"Nah man… I could not go through with it… I didn't summon the demon."

"Why not?"

"Because… I remembered… I remembered what it did to you. How you felt – when I did that to you… and, I could not go through with it… I could not do that, not to her. I guess you could say I finally learnt something from the past."

"And then what – where have you been all this time? You don't write… you don't call…" Unusual for Sam, he was trying to alleviate the heaviness that had descended over the room. He was afraid that Dean might walk again, if he somehow upset him, or pushed him too hard for information.

"When I decided I couldn't go through with it – I broke. Went on a two-week bender…" Dean's eyes glazed over as he recalled what little he could of this time, "I don't remember much… Drinking and… well… more drinking… Waking up in the gutter, more than once, bruised and bloody. I hated on everyone and everything. Looked for trouble. I wanted someone to punish me…" Sam inhaled sharply at Dean's last comment, but the look in Dean's eyes made him hold his tongue. "At some point, my body just decided it had had enough and I guess I collapsed, woke up three days later in a small hospital in the middle of nowhere… A John Doe… I got the hell out of dodge; took me half a day to find baby… and then, there I was, stone cold sober and finally forced to feel, rather than react to, what had happened…"

Dean walked over to an upturned chair and righted it. He carried it over to the table, which was also on its side and made to flip it over. Sam, realising what he was doing, moved over to help him. Together, they turned the table the right way up and put it back in its original position, in the library; Dean retrieved the chair and tucked it neatly into place. The library was still in a state of disarray, after the explosion that had occurred when Hope opened the doorway to the secret room. The boys had gone to the warehouse shortly after that, to help Jody, nobody had taken the time to clean up. "What about you? Did you just take some time out to grow that fuzz?" Dean asked his brother, referring to the beard Sam now sported. "Forget to pay the cleaner?" he added, gesturing to the mess that still lay around them.

A cocky smile, brushed across Sam's lips as he scoffed at his brother's remarks, shaking his head in mock disbelief, "Jerk."

"Bitch."

The pair shared a smile before they set about fixing up the chairs around the table. Once he had the last chair in, Dean sat down. Sam followed suit. "Castiel brought me back here, healed me up and waited. I was an ass. I refused to talk to him, to do anything really. He kept pushing me to continue the research into the strange murder-suicides we were working before…" Sam's voice faltered as he tried to say, before Hope was killed, "Well, you know… I just could not do it though. I did not want to. I was angry and just stormed off every time Cass tried to tell me something or ask me to keep on keeping on…" Sam sighed remembering how badly he had treated Castiel and the arguments the two had had, "I did do some hunting though…"

"Oh yeah, what?"

"Vampires…" Sam paused, waiting to see if Dean would have a comment, when he did not say anything Sam continued, "I went after anything that even looked like vampires, trying to find out anything about the one that trapped us…"

"And?"

"Nothing… I took out a couple of nests, hunted another one unsuccessfully, but nobody knew anything, and I am sure they were telling the truth by the time I got through with them. Then, Cass turns up five days ago, trying again to make me see reason; there was another murder-suicide, with sixteen dead and he wanted my help. Couple that with the event that happened a few weeks before that, we are looking at upwards of fifty people killed the same way now. I still could not face it though and I sent Cass away. He decided to find someone who would convince me that I needed to get back in the game. Someone who would be able to find you, and get through to you… Hope. Only, when he went to heaven to talk to her, she wasn't there."

"And he's sure about that?"

"Yeah. When he came back and told me, I did not believe him and I wanted to know for sure. So… I made him go back and find Ash. If there was anybody up there who I would believe, it was Ash. Ash tried every trick he knows and then some and finally, he came up with the same conclusion, Hope is not in heaven. Cass came back and told me, I rang you and…" Sam widened his arms out, gesturing to the room, "here we are. We don't know where she is in hell, just that she has to be there and… we have no idea how to get her out."

After a slight pause, Sam continued, "There's something else Dean."

"I'm listening." Dead said, alert to this new worried tone in Sam's voice.

"Yesterday, Castiel worked out why Hope's body is still… alive… if that's even the right term for it…"

"And?" there was an edge to Dean's voice; he wanted to know and at the same time, he was frightened of the answer. Would this tear him further apart; make everything unbearable again? He had only just reached a place where he could breathe again, and he was not looking forward to taking another swan dive.

"There is an angel trapped in her body."

"She was possessed by an angel…" Dean's deep voice resonated with a rising anger, which Sam was quick to quell, "No… No… Hope was not possessed, but there is an angel, trapped, in her body, like that is its prison or something. Cass can't tell who it is or communicate with it in any way. He thinks, though, that that is how Hope flew to the warehouse in the first place. That somehow she harnessed its powers and used them to get her to us."

"No. No way. If she was able to do that, she would have done it years ago when her life depended on it, when the hellhounds were killing everyone around her." Dean argued, not wanting to believe what Sam was saying.

"I said the same thing to Cass. Which is when he went back to the wards on the door of the secret room and on the books. Cass thinks the explosion of white light was somehow supposed to free the trapped angel. Only, it did not do a very good job, it merely knocked it about a bit, freeing it a little, maybe, and somehow Hope's desire to get to us, to save us from the trap, made it possible for her mind and the powers to connect so that she got what she wanted."

"So Hope's destiny wasn't really about Hope. Whoever set it all up, the secret room, the men of letters finding Hope and bringing her back here, that was all about freeing the angel and allowing it to possess Hope?"

"Yeah, looks like."

"Great… As if, those douchebags have not done enough to this family!" Dean exploded. He stood up; the chair scraped loudly across the floor as he roughly pushed it back. Anger was welling up with Dean and he struggled to control it. Dean paced away, towards the war room, clenching and releasing his fists as he did so. Sam watched on warily. When he reached the edge of the room, Dean stopped and raised his hands up, brushing them through his hair before he clasped them firmly behind his head. All the while, he was taking in deep even breaths. After a few minutes, and then shaking off the building tension, Dean turned back to face Sam.

"I went hunting too… After I got out of the hospital, it was too quiet, I couldn't just sit there." Dean admitted to Sam. "I wanted to come back here, but I… I just wasn't ready to face you, I guess or see Hope's body…" Dean sighed and started walking back towards the table where Sam still sat.

"I don't blame you…" Sam said, emphasising each work.

"I know." Dean breathed, "here," pointing to his head, "but not… here!" he finished, pointing to his heart.

"Dean…" Sam was lost for words; he always was when it came to Dean blaming himself, for something that had happened. Sam knew that Dean always thought everything bad, that happened, was his fault and usually there was no telling him any different. Instead, Sam took a different track, "Did you find anything? On your hunt?"

Slowly Dean nodded his head, he had walked back to the table and turning the chair around so that the back of it faced the table, he straddled the chair. "I found his bitch. The vamp that tried to kill us."

"Wait, what?" exclaimed Sam, his eyes wide with surprise, "What did she say?" he asked, questioning Dean with his eyes and his subtle hand gestures.

"She didn't know much, and… I'm sure she was telling the truth," Dean used Sam's explanation from earlier, "but, she said that a demon had approached him and given him the information he needed to lure in Jody. Sonofabitch had to make sure there were too many vamps for Jody so that she would call us in. Then, when he had us there, he was supposed to kill us. Only, prick got cute, that and Hope stuffed up his plans."

"Did she say who the demon was?"

"Nah, she didn't know squat. She was never there to see him and her mate did not drop any names or any other information for that matter. Dude did not even know the other vamps, in the nest. He just used them to set the scene." A look of disgust crossed Dean's face as he finished his story.

"So, what? You want to go after this demon? Even the score?" Sam asked.

Dean thought about it, he wanted revenge on the bastard that had set this whole mess up; the demon that had pulled the strings, too weak to do his own dirty work, but, they had another more pressing issue, finding Hope and freeing her from hell. "Nah…" Dean finally admitted, "Hope needs to be our priority. She has already been in hell too long. We need to get her out. That is the single most important thing right now. Saving Hope."