Dean could not claim to know what happiness was, but he did know what it wasn't. And it wasn't this.

There were moments; fantastic moments, beautiful moments. Lisa was wonderful – stupid enough to take him in – and Ben was as adorable as he remembered. He didn't miss hunting, and suburban life suited him in a lot of ways, even if he still reached for the handgun that wasn't under his pillow when he woke in the middle of the night. He worked in construction and drove Ben to school, but not in the Impala which was safely gathering dust in the garage.

But it was – all right, this normal life stuff. He'd just been through the end of the world, didn't he deserve a break?

But it wasn't happiness. His heart felt too small and the cavity of his chest felt too big. Sam was rotting in Hell, and he'd had enough. Just – enough.

Dean'd expected nightmares – of Sam beating his face to a pulp, of Sam falling back into the pit dragging Adam with him, of Sam saying breathlessly it's all right, I've got him. He didn't dream, though, not at all.

Three months into his life with Lisa, he woke to a figure cast in shadow standing over him. He yelled and scrambled under the pillow before the cool-warm hand settled over his mouth. "Dean," said Castiel's voice, and he thought he heard a strain there, "Please meet me downstairs. Lisa and Ben will not wake. We need to talk."

He opened his mouth to say that he was not going to put up with angel bullshit anymore, not even from Cas, but the angel was already gone in a rush of wings, and Dean decided that it was worth getting up to tell him.

So he wandered downstairs in pajama pants and bare feet, and found Castiel standing stiffly in the middle of the living room, in front of the window. "I'm not," Dean started to say, rubbing his eyes and frowning, but Castiel cut him off. He looked…guilty.

That didn't bode well.

"I am sorry, I must – I should not be telling you this."

Even better. Dean groaned. "Cas, I'm done. Okay? Done. I promised Sam-" Castiel winced, and Dean scowled.

"No, of course – I am not here to ask. I am here to – I promised, but I think it is best that I – break this promise. I hope you will forgive me."

"Cas, spit it out."

"Sam Winchester," Cas said, his voice flat like he was reciting some sentence well practiced, "has returned from Hell." And Dean felt his too-small heart stutter and stop.

"What?"

Castiel looked – helpless. And even more guilty. "He is on Earth, and – only your brother. Two months ago. I do not know where he is now. He requested that I say nothing to you and I said I would not, but it did not…feel right."

"Damn right it didn't," Dean snapped. "It shouldn't. Sam knows that." He didn't have to ask why. It was Sam who'd asked him to promise, and Sam'd never expected to come back. He probably thought it wasn't his place or something equally – stupid. Like it would ever not be his place to be with Dean. "Can't you find him?" He added. Castiel sighed.

"After we last…spoke. Somehow he has hidden himself from me."

"Then we'll just have to do this the old fashioned way," Dean said firmly, and Castiel paused, then nodded.

"I will search as well. If you like. I believe that Sam will be angry with me."

"He can be angry as much as he wants," Dean said, "You did the right thing."

~.~

Lisa looks disappointed but not surprised. She tells him to go. Ben is harder, full of questions and an expression painfully concerned and confused. "I lost my little brother," he tries to explain. "I just have to find him again. Then I'll be back."

Ben frowns so much he looks more like Sam at that age than Dean, and the thought makes a heartstring snap and curl up in his chest.

He takes the Impala because it seems like the right thing to do, and starts to follow Sam.

His brother's been busy, Dean realizes. Hunting, of course. Dean supposes he probably doesn't know how to do anything else anymore, and that's almost funny since that used to be Dean. Three states from Indiana in a Podunk town a motel owner finally recognizes Sam. "Yeah," he says, "I seen him. Paid in cash. Pretty old for such a young guy. Couple years older 'n you, I'd guess."

Dean winces.

A little more poking around and he works out that the town was dealing with a series of grave robberies. People were just starting to vanish. Both stopped on the day the motel owner told him Sam checked out. Two months cold, the trail, but he learns what kind of car Sam was driving, looks it up on the database online, and learns that it was dumped barely five miles out of town.

Dead end.

People everywhere he goes, following Sam, say the same things. Old. Tired. One friendly old woman who was having trouble with a poltergeist says more. "Talked to me a bit, afterwards. Got a bit of glass in him from my cabinet, told him I'd call the hospital and he just about flipped his lid – sewed it up himself, bless me, right in my kitchen. Dental floss and warm water and just about nothing else – talked to me while he did it, to distract himself, he said. Poor boy." She clicked her tongue and pushed a cup at Dean. "More tea?"

Oh, Sammy. He ignored the tea and took a moment to breathe before asking. "What'd you talk about?"

"Well, I asked where he'd been, to be able to do that kind of thing, if he'd been in the service. He said – I think he said 'yeah, you could say that,' and I asked where and he said 'Hell.' So then I asked where his family was and he said he didn't have much, just an older brother, and that he wasn't around, that he didn't want to bother him."

Dean shifted uncomfortably. The woman's eyes were shrewd as she stared at him. "And I said that was rubbish, and he shook his head and that's when he finished his stitches and just said 'thank you, ma'am' and up and left without saying nothing more. Didn't even give me the chance to tell him what I thought of a big brother who'd leave him hanging like that."

Dean cleared his throat and said, "I thought he was dead." The old woman's expression of scolding melted away and she leaned forward, reaching out her hands and squeezing Dean's.

"Oh, dear…I'm sorry. War does terrible things to young men. You're looking for him, then? I hope you find him. Or he finds you."

"Me too," Dean said, and left before he could start getting weepy.

Sam was like a hurricane, cutting a swathe of complete lack of supernatural activity through his wake, leaving stories of exorcised demons and banished ghosts and a few dead shapeshifters here and there too. Dean would have been proud, but he could see the pattern in the bodies, of desperation, a need to fill permanent emptiness with anything there was.

He found some hunters who'd met Sam – met him and left him alive, thank God – and they looked at Dean with awe he didn't understand until one of them asked to shake his hand and whispered, "He told us you'd retired. Wouldn't blame you. Icing the Devil, man, that deserves retirement if anything does," and all Dean had been able to ask was, "Who?"

"Your brother," they said, and Dean wasn't surprised at all. He wanted to tell them that they had it wrong, that Sam had killed the Devil (or as good as anyone could) and saved the world, but they would just think it was modesty. Seemed sometimes like Sam could deflect compliments when he wasn't even there.

In the end, it was pure chance that he saw the car Sam'd been driving – for a few months now, that was helpful – parked on the side of the road. He followed the dirt path down and found a broken down house, too quiet. No crashes, no sounds of a fight or a struggle or a shovel biting into earth to dig up a skeleton.

Dean picked up his handgun, checked the ammo, and crept up to the front door. Still silence, and he stepped inside, looked left and then right.

His first impression was that they were all wrong; his brother didn't look older. He looked so much younger. His second was that there was blood glistening all down his front and that was so wrong, so wrong.

He dropped the gun and to his knees, pressing his hands over the deep slashes that some damn ghost or creature had left on his little brother. Sam's eyes were closed, and Dean felt more than heard the words spilling out of his mouth, shh, hold still, it's all right. He called 911, one hand pressed trying to cover Sam's chest and belly in five fingers. Please, he said, and hurry.

"Dean?" said Sam's voice.

He wanted to be angry. He wanted to be anything but this. He dropped the cell phone, still talking, saying stupid things as he tried to keep the blood inside his brother's body, and why did this always happen to them?

"Dean," said Sam again, a sigh, and his eyes were dragging closed.

"Stay with me," he said, desperately, "Stay with me." He could hear the sirens, but they weren't coming fast enough. "Help's coming. Just hold on."

Hand on the muscle over Sam's ribs, trying to keep it all together, himself and his little brother – he could be glad that he could feel his heartbeat so close to the surface. (And it was Sam's heartbeat, it was, it wasn't just the pulse of Dean's own shriveled heart beating way down in his hand.

Please, let that be true.)