A/N: So yeah, has anyone else ever had a story that you thought was going to be just a little short piece and then it just totally morphs into its own entity? I swear, I thought this was only going to be 4 parts. Sheesh – Sam and Dean just can't do anything the easy way, can they? LOL! Shout outs go to my wonderful friends cindy123, supernatfem76, Madebyme, godsdaughter77, MysteryMadchen, monkeymuse, Ash8, cutelildevil818, MidgeVS5, bhoney, and geminigrl11.

Justin's knees buckle and suddenly he isn't holding himself up anymore. Dean heaves to his feet, ready to catch him, but he's moving faster than his body's ready to allow; he ends up on his hands and knees, next to the kid's crumpled form.

Flames are licking at the ceiling, the roof above them groaning under the assault. When had the warehouse become an inferno? Dean coughs, smoke sharp and acerbic, and slaps at the kid's face. "Justin!" he shouts. "Justin! Come on, man. Wake up!"

The kid's eyes flicker beneath closed lids as he works to open them. "Come on, kid, come on!" Dean shakes him, vigorously now. "You gotta wake up!"

A crashing noise distracts him and then Dean's rolling, Justin's shirt clutched in both his fists as a hunk of burning roof slams down upon the spot where he and the kid had just been. The heat of the tarred sheet of flame is so close it steals his breath and Dean tucks the kid under his body, protecting him; a human shield.

Broken beams and flaming timbers are raining down all around them. Dean manages to roll off Justin just in time to stave off a staggering wave of dizziness, blood loss and heat and smoke inhalation making a nauseating combination.

And then she's there, a little girl, shaking Justin fearfully. Her big eyes are wide with terror, and her slight form looks so very small and fragile against the hot glow of the burning building. Dean squeezes his eyes shut; shakes his head. He can't decide between what the hell? and where'd she come from? and I'm going insane as her image blurs and diffuses around the edges. Damn his eyes.

She can't be real, he tells himself, blinking stupidly. I hit my head. There's no freaking way a little girl is in the middle of all this.

Dean lets his lids fall shut again, this time working to clear his muddled thoughts, but when he opens them, she's still there.

Justin's awake and he's talking. Talking to the little girl.

"G-go," he tells her.

"Jusin?" she utters, her little voice high, heartbroken, and so soft it barely reaches Dean's ears. "Jusin, I wanna say."

"T-take him. Plea…Go."

The little girl snuffles once, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. "Don' wanna go. I wanna say."

There are tears sparkling on her cheeks. A few more words are spoken, words that, this time, Dean can't hear, before the little blond head bends to plant a kiss on the kid's cheek. "Kay, Jusin. Kay."

Peace washes over Justin's struggling features. The pain is there, written all over his face and in the way his body quietly shakes, but a faint smile lifts the corners of his mouth. "T-told you…M-made it…made it r-right...l-love you, s-squirt..."

Then there's a little hand in his, and Dean's being tugged away from the fire, away from the bleeding boy.

Dean casts a frantic glance backward. He doesn't understand; the oddity of the little girl's arrival notwithstanding, he doesn't want to leave Justin here to die.

"Jim!" he screams, but the raging fire swallows his voice.

Dean's coughing, his oxygen reserve almost depleted, when the ceiling groans again. Instinct has him scooping the child up in his arms, folding his body around her as another chunk of flaming debris clatters to the floor inches from them.

Stinging sparks are raining down on them, but Dean's leather jacket should protect them for at least a few minutes. At least, until a lucky spark catches it on fire, too. They've got to get out of here. Fast.

He lifts his head, horrified to see that a mound of flaming rubble is now separating them from Justin.

He can see no way around it and it's getting harder to breathe when an impatient tug on his shirt pulls his attention back. Dean looks down, sees the impossibly small fingers clutching his collar and the little brows drawn over…over round brown eyes.

Justin's eyes, he realizes, and for the first time it registers just how light she is in his arms.

Her little mouth moves and the one word she utters is so soft he shouldn't have even heard it. But he does. And he understands.

"Sam."

An eerie, focused calm falls over him; Justin has two bullets in him, the flow of the ever-spreading pool that had once been his life's blood had slowed to a crawl even as Dean watched; perhaps it had stopped completely.

Justin risked his life to help him. Dean won't shame his sacrifice. He's alive, thanks to the kid, and possessing a new and fierce determination - he'll protect this little girl, find Sam, and get all three of them out.

Standing makes his head reel and he's still not sure if he can trust his legs, so he places the child gently on the floor next to him. She reaches for his hand again and Dean feels like a giant as his big fingers envelope hers.

"Where?" he asks.

"'Dis way," she answers, and begins pulling him.

She leads him away from the fire, expertly navigating the warehouse, and Dean's moving faster, breathing harder as the anticipation builds, the taste of ash and smoke on his tongue reminding him why their speed is so crucial. It's disconcerting to think about how he's placing his life – and his brother's life – in the hands of this little child, but her sureness is not only difficult to doubt, but impossible to do so when they enter through a door that Dean knows he would have never found on his own.

It's dark inside, the firelight from outside casting an eerie spotlight on the figure sitting, no kneeling, on the floor at the far end of the otherwise empty room. Dean's heart lurches, caught between dread and outright panic.

"Sam," the little girl says soberly, letting go of his hand and pointing. "Sam has boo-boo. He no wake up. You fix it?"

Dean swallows, his throat dry from more than the heat and smoke, and nods down at her.

Dead to the world, Sam is slumping heavily forward. The restraints binding his arms behind his back to one of the building's supports are nothing but rope, but Dean can see where the weight they're supporting is causing them to sink into the skin of his brother's wrists.

The room moves too fast around him, the pounding too loud in his ears, and Dean half sprints, half stumbles to his injured sibling's side.

Dean had been expecting bad – Sam's a seasoned hunter, after all. There would have been no way freaking normal people could have held him if they hadn't surprised him. So yeah, Dean had been expecting bad, but he still can't help cringing at the sight of his brother.

Sam's a mess, colorful splotches of red, purple, and every shade in between decorating his normally clean-shaven features. His face is cut up, swollen, and as Dean watches, a viscous string of blood seeps from a split lip, dangling briefly before thinning enough to drip into the coagulated puddle on the concrete below.

It's too much to grasp, and yet not nearly enough as Dean drops to his knees next to him. Sam's breathing is ragged, fast, his pulse thudding heavily beneath Dean's pressing fingers, but it's his eyes Dean's so desperate to see. He's got to see his eyes. He's got to know Sam's all right, alive, and Sam has to see him, has to know that Dean's there.

Dean reaches out his hand, already bloodstained from the knife wound in his shoulder, both his vehemence and exertion leaving him shaky, almost sick with relief, to cup his brother's chin.

"Sam?" he keeps his voice low, not wanting to startle him, but needing him to open his eyes.

It's a relief when Sam jumps; well, not really jumps – twitches maybe, as it seems to be all he can manage at the moment. But the respite quickly fades; Dean still can't see his eyes. Sam's tousled brown hair is limp, soaked with a sweat that, even now, beads his forehead and slips down his face alongside the blood, and as Dean brushes a snarl of it away from his forehead, Sam reacts to his touch by jerking away from him.

Dean's fury is red-hot once again. Vallis had done this; he and his freaking little band of cronies had turned his world upside down, tried taking from him the only thing Dean has left, because of what – vengeance? Getting revenge on the guy who made sure he got what was coming to him in the first place?

He looks again at Sam, Sam who's still breathing hard, still fighting, and can't help but feel that, this time, Vallis really did get what was coming to him.

"Sam?" Dean says again, and watches as his brother works to open his eyes.

It takes a moment, and the familiar hazel orbs are glazed and unfocused when they crack open, but there's recognition there. Recognition and…and something else.

Relief? Gratitude? Love?

Whatever it is, the intensity of it fills his brother's throat when he speaks. "Dean." Just his name, and his voice is so raw it makes Dean's heart constrict in his chest, but it's enough.

"Come on, man," Dean answers, barely able to speak through the pulse in his throat. "I'm gonna get you outta here."

Dean makes quick work of the knots, catching his brother with his arm across the chest when Sam's own arms drop and he falls limply forward.

"Take it easy, take it easy, Sammy," Dean encourages as Sam's breathing hitches and dead muscles spasm.

"Sam? Bro, you with me?" And it's for his brother's comfort, not his own, when Dean holds him closer once Sam lets slip a pain-racked moan, no doubt feeling numb fingers and wrists and arms coming painfully back to life.

He waits a moment for Sam to catch his breath, tries to relieve the tension by throwing in a good jibe about ropes that Sam's nowhere near coherent enough to appreciate…

…or so he thinks.

"S-shut up, j-jerk."

It's enough to make Dean laugh, easy and rough, and in no way, shape, or form does that sound the least bit hysterical.

The first time he hears Dean's voice, he doesn't trust it. He doesn't want to hope, either. Reality is distorted, blurred; he doesn't know what's real, doesn't know what he's really experiencing and what he's hallucinating. He's tired and sore, tired of being tired and sore, and for the love of all things sacred, why can't they just leave him alone? So when he feels the touch, he instinctively recoils from it, wanting to stop the hurt before it even starts.

The second time he hears Dean, really hears his voice, Sam still doesn't know what to believe. But God, does he want to hope. And Dean's voice is there, calling to him, anxious and desperate and in pain, and if there's a chance Dean's really there, he's got to open his eyes.

He's vague on the details of what follows next, but then the pressure on his wrists eases before disappearing completely and with nothing to hold him up, Sam's falling, slumping limply forward onto something warm and solid and, decidedly, not concrete.

Familiar arms weave around him then and instinctively he grabs onto them. There's no strength behind his grasp and there's fire in his upper body where there hadn't been before, but his brother's warm, there, and for the life of him Sam can't help the small sounds of pain that escape as he shakes. Sensation is coming back with a searing vengeance, but Sam forces himself to focus, the words being uttered close to his ear a focal point, sounding a lot like "take it easy" and, most importantly, "Sammy".

Heart and throat full of a thousand different emotions, Sam latches onto the nickname, and the voice when it asks him a question.

He knows he needs to answer, knows Dean will be going out of his mind waiting for him, but all that escapes his lips is an embarrassing noise halfway between a moan and a sob. His voice is also appallingly weak, the raspy "Shut up, jerk," he manages to stutter after a trademark Dean-Winchester-tension-buster not quite loud enough and slurred together like he's drunk.

But his brother laughs, gruff and deeper than usual, and the sound of it is music to his soul.

Laughter gone, Dean's hand is warm on the back of his neck and it pulls Sam down until his forehead is resting in the crook of his brother's shoulder. "Damn, it's good to see you, Sammy," he breathes into Sam's hair.

And it is. But as much as he wants to sit here with Sam until the kid's ready to move, they can't afford it.

Maneuvering himself so that he's positioned under his brother's arm, Dean shakes him. "Sam? You with me?"

Sam blinks at him, unfocused eyes searching him out. "'D-n? Y-you okay?" he asks.

And hell, if Dean doesn't want to crack up laughing at that. It's too morbid to be funny, that Sam's beat up, ready to face plant, freaking bleeding, and he's worried about his brother. The same brother responsible for getting him into this mess in the first place.

No, it's too morbid to laugh. Instead, Dean throws Sam's arm over his shoulder and wraps his own around the youngest Winchester's waist.

"I'm fine. We just gotta make a quick getaway is all. You think you can help me out here?"

Sam's eyes blink faster at that, his forehead creases, and Dean can tell he's trying to pull himself together. Ever the soldier.

Dean gives it to the count of three, then he's lifting, grunting under Sam's weight, and by the time they're both standing, Dean realizes she's gone.

What the…?

At first, all Dean can feel is confusion. Where'd she go? She was just here…

…wasn't she?

Dean searches the room, but it's empty, no sound except for Sam's ragged breathing, and Dean feels the slow, bitter crawl of apprehension inching down his spine.

He doesn't have a name, but he calls out into the emptiness anyway.

No good. The little girl's not there. Dean opens his mouth, the steady stream of obscenities not helping matters any, but she's gone and he lost her and how the heck had she run off without him hearing her anyway?

There's no way something so helpless and little can survive out in that inferno, and the realization is almost crushing: He's failed, he's let down Justin, killed the kid's only family after he died to make sure Dean could save his.

It's ironic, really. From the very beginning, from the first gut-wrenching moment when Dean had realized his brother was missing, Dean had had one thought pounding through his head. It had carved itself into his brain, weighted down his chest, freaking engraved itself along every limb of his body. One thought had kept him going, one goal to achieve or die trying: Finding Sam.

Sam had been taken. Dean could not – would not – rest until he'd found him. He'd sacrifice his own life for his, do anything, go through anyone, kill whoever got in his way, it didn't matter – he'd sworn it to Sam, to himself, that he would find his brother.

But it hadn't been some deserving gangster wannabe to die at Dean's hands in his personal quest. No, life had a sense of humor. Dean had to go and kill a freaking little girl.

Yeah, ironic just doesn't even begin to cover it.

All these thought processes occur in the second it takes his eyes to do a final sweep of the empty space. She's just not there.

Dean locks his jaw, tightens his grip on his brother. He can't afford to dwell on his failure. Sam's struggling to stay on his feet, leaning heavily into him, and Dean knows they've got to get moving. The youngest Winchester looks on the verge of passing out; Dean can already tell by his drooping head and harsh panting that Sam's strength won't last much longer.

It's a chore to get the door open one-handed, and the rush of heat and the sting of eye-smarting smoke that hits them in the face once it's open is sign enough that the danger has spread to their location.

Beside him, Sam gasps, the sudden intake of hot smoke causing his abused lungs to break off in vicious coughing. "D-n…what…?"

The shelving units on both sides of them are burning out of control, turning their escape route into a tunnel of fire. From somewhere above them, glass shatters, probably a window, and Dean ducks, pulling his brother down and instinctively covering him to avoid flying shards.

It takes only a few seconds for Dean, still choking, to shrug out of his jacket. Covering both their heads with the worn leather for protection, Dean answers, "I'll explain later." And then they're running, staying low, boots crunching over splinters of broken glass as they plunge into a warehouse that had only minutes before been dark and quiet.

The next thing Dean knows is he's outside and someone's bending over him.

Jim, he realizes, and the knowledge that his friend made it out in tact relaxes him slightly. He knows he should ask Jim what happened, make sure he's all right, but he can't help it when "Where's Sam?" is the first thing out of his mouth.

He can't see Jim's face, but he can imagine it – the amused eyes, the tolerant smile, the shaking head – and he knows his friend understands. "He's fine, Dean. You got him out. Now quit talking."

Dean smiles back, or at least he thinks he does, and when his hand finds the torn huddle of clothing and skin next him he grasps at it – a solid presence, Sam. They did it.

He grays out to muttering voices and then hands are patting him down, Jim searching for injuries, and the involuntary hiss that escapes Dean's lips tells him that he's found the nasty surprise in his shoulder.

"Dean?" the Pastor's voice is calm, but urgent.

"Alive," he croaks back, coughing. When the fit subsides, the noise finally registers. Over the crackle of the burning building he can hear sirens, their faint howl in the distance and steadily approaching. Someone inside must have called for help; either that or maybe someone had noticed the blaze from one of the neighboring buildings. They had to get out of there, before their trouble really started.

"Jim?" Dean calls, pushing himself onto his elbows. The older man looks a bit charred on the edges, ash smudges on his face, hair rumpled, but it's the blood covering his front that has Dean fumbling to sit up. "Jim, what…?"

Jim grabs his shoulders, pushes him flat again. "It's okay. Dean, it's not mine."

Dean can't seem to make his mouth work. "We've…we've got to…Sam…outta here…got to…"

"…stay right here." Jim lays a restraining hand on his chest and finishes Dean's sentence for him.

"But…but I'm…"

"You're my nephew and we were looking for your kidnapped brother when we saw the fire. Just relax, I've got everything taken care of."

"But…?"

Jim's sigh is longsuffering. "Dean, we've got to stay. I think I could patch up your shoulder but Sam's hurt bad. He needs a hospital."

Grudgingly, Dean relents, collapsing back onto the ground and muttering a petulant comment about not playing fair. Jim knows Sam's always come first with Dean, and he obviously isn't afraid to exploit that. But Dean knows Jim's right, knows Sam's in a bad way and the fact that his own vision is pin wheeling to the point it's obvious he's lost a lot of blood doesn't help his case any.

He can't concentrate, so he doesn't even try cataloguing his own wounds, but something's bothering him, niggling insistently at the back of his mind. The blood on Jim's shirt – he said it wasn't his, but something happened. Something had to have happened. After the fire had been set, Jim was supposed to rendezvous with Dean, help him in the search for his brother. There would have been no way Jim wouldn't have come unless something had gone wrong.

"Jim?" he calls again.

"Hmmmm…" Jim sounds distracted.

"What happened?"

Jim huffs, annoyed, and says a word that's as close to a curse word as Dean's ever heard him say. "Found your friend's 'fire-starting' room," he explains, and Dean can only imagine what that means. "Did you know he had one? Because I sure didn't. Oh, and by the way, fire was a very bad idea."

"Yeah," Dean agrees, but his chuckle is stopped short by a sharp pain in his ribs. Bad idea, but somehow satisfying in the end. Just desserts or justice served or whatever it was they said.

Jim's still talking. "Set the fire like we planned, thinking I had enough time to get out and find you, but they got the drop on me. Knocked me out. There must have been some kind of explosion because when I woke up the fire was everywhere." Jim pauses and Dean hears a humorless humph. "Had me trapped. I didn't think I was gonna make it out."

Jim's voice trails off, but Dean can sense there's more to the story. He rolls onto his side, searching for his friend. "How'd you get out?"

It's silent for a moment, and then the Pastor's prominent, leonine features – all three sets of them – take shape in front of him once again. His forehead is creased, his brow drawn, and he looks…confused.

"What's the matter?" Dean demands. "How'd you make it out?"

Jim shakes his head, his own disbelief evident. "A little girl showed me."