Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.

Dean stood in the motel's doorway, pausing before he left the room. He raised his right arm so slowly over the small trashcan, and his amulet dangled down from his hand.

It landed with a quiet clang, and Dean left without looking back.

Sam froze for a minute before his brain started functioning properly again. He fell to his knees in front of the trashcan and picked the amulet out, shoving it into his pocket.

He knew Dean was mad at him, mad at the memories of his that showed up in their shared Heaven, but he'd want the amulet back one day, right?

Sam would hold onto it until then. Just in case.

Just in case.

Sam watched Dean fall to his knees in front of the amulet like Sam had so many years ago. He wondered where it went after Dean took it out of his pocket when it started glowing in Chuck's presence.

He never it saw it after that, and never asked. But he wouldn't deny that he kept hoping it'd reappear around Dean's neck one day. A sign that he'd finally, finally been fully forgiven.

Dean looked around the room, putting his gun aside. He looked at the spot where Sam stood, and paused for a second. Sam almost believed that Dean saw him, but there was no indication beyond that that he might.

Mary knelt beside Dean and looked at the amulet as well. "What is it, Dean?" she asked.

Dean picked up the amulet and stared at it. "I think it's Sam," Dean said. "I think he's still here, and he's trying to get our attention."

"What does that have to do with it?" Mary asked, waving her hand at the amulet.

"Sammy gave this to me when he was eight," Dean said. "It was Christmas. Dad wasn't going to be back, and we both knew it, so Sam gave it to me instead."

Dean laughed a bit, but it sounded bitter and sad, and shook his head. "I wore it for years, and just never took it off."

"What made you finally take it off?" Mary asked.

Sam could tell she had more questions in the way she looked at the amulet. She probably wondered why John wasn't there for Christmas, or how Sam got the amulet to give Dean in the first place.

"I threw it away. Right in front of Sam, and I didn't even look back," Dean said.

"Why would you do that?"

Dean shrugged. "I was just so angry at the time, and the angels trying to make us hate each other didn't help. But I regretted it a lot. You can't imagine how much I regretted it in the years after."

Sam knelt beside them and tried to grab the amulet. His hand passed through it, but it swayed a bit and felt electric. He laughed a bit. Of course, that's what he would end up attached to.

"Sammy?" Dean asked. He glanced around the room again. "You still hanging around here?"

"I'm here," Sam said. He reached out and wrapped his hand around the amulet. Not far enough to completely pass through, but enough that the amulet started swaying.

"Did that just move?" Mary asked.

"Yeah." Dean cleared his throat. "Yeah, it did. Damn, it's good to hear from you, Sammy. I thought, well, you probably know what I thought."

Dean grinned and huffed out a short, choked laugh.

"Dean, he's a ghost," Mary said. "He's a ghost who just threw a wooden box across the room and shattered it."

"I'm gonna fix this, Mom," Dean said. He slipped the amulet over his head, and the little charm came to rest over his heart, the very place where it spent years before angels and the Heaven and Hell showdown.

Dean wasn't facing Mary, so he didn't see her watching him with wide eyes before they narrowed and her face shifted into that of a determined hunter. It was the same face Sam saw time and time again. On his dad. Dean. Other hunters they crossed paths with on cases. Hell, he saw it on himself in the mirror sometimes, when Dean was in Hell or when Dean had The Mark on his arm and was slowly deteriorating under its influence.

"Then, why are you putting it on?" she asked.

"I gotta keep it safe."

"Dean, Sam's a ghost," Mary said, carefully enunciating each syllable and speaking slowly.

"I know, Mom," Dean said. "I'm going to fix that."

"But you're putting that amulet on," she said again.

Dean turned to face her, then. Sam saw the pieces fall into place for him, the same pieces Sam gathered from watching Mary while Dean's back was towards her.

"Yeah, I am," he said. "Because if Sam's attached to anything, it's this, and we're going to bring him back."

Mary put her hand on Dean's shoulder. "Just give it to me, Dean," she said. "I'll take care of it."

Dean pulled away from her touch. "No! You're not touching it," he said.

"He threw a wooden box, doesn't that scream to you that he might be on his way to becoming vengeful?" she asked. "I salted and burned my own parents. I did what I had to do, and if you can't do this, then I will do what's needed again. It's what's best for Sam."

Sam wished that he wasn't attached to anything. That he could leave and not have to listen to his mother's words or his brother's defenses against them. Even in death, he was tearing apart his family.

"You don't know what's best for Sam," Dean said. He had his hand wrapped around the amulet, like he was keeping it from her. It was the only way for him to protect Sam now. "You don't even know Sam."

"Dean…"

Whatever Mary wanted to say, Sam didn't find out. Dean pushed past her and out of his room, weaving through the labyrinth of the bunker's halls.

Sam trailed after him, pulled by an unrelenting invisible force. With each step, everything was drained of a bit more color. Muted and foreign. He wondered if that was normal for being a ghost, or if his mom was right and he was on his way to being vengeful. He still felt traces of the rage and frustration that allowed him to pick up the wooden box in the first place and throw it.

Dean called Cas several times, but they all went to voicemail, where Dean left threatening messages. He finally settled himself in one of the storage rooms, digging through the mess of papers, books, and strange objects kept in it.

"Don't worry, Sammy," Dean said. "I'm not gonna let anything happen to you. There's gotta be something here that we can use to get you all sorted out. What good are the Men of Letters if they can't get a ghost back in his body, right?"

"Dean," Sam said, like he would be heard.

Dean didn't stop or hesitate, he simply kept leafing through each shelf's contents, and moved on to the next one with a little more desperation when he found nothing useful on the previous one.

Sam saw the tears rimming Dean's eyes as he moved through more and more shelves. His hands started shaking and he nearly dropped most of the things he picked up.

Normally, the storage rooms had a musty smell to them. One comprised of old books, rotting wood, and candle wax burnt decades ago. But Sam didn't smell any of that. He didn't smell anything, or feel anything.

He watched Dean feel too much, and he was left to feel nothing. It wasn't fair.

It wasn't fair.

He was promised The Empty. He was promised the closest thing he would get to peace, not the torture of being trapped in The Veil.

An entire shelf fell out of one of the cabinets before he realized he'd done anything at all.

Dean stopped and stared at the mess now covering the floor.

"Sammy?" he asked. "C'mon, man. You gotta hold it together long enough for me to figure this out, okay? Get a handle on whatever it is you're losing here. It's not easy. I know. I get that. But you have to believe that I'm going to save you. Please, believe that. We can deal with everything else when you're breathing again."

Sam wanted to believe that, he really did, but it felt like he was always losing pieces of himself. Ever since the moment he appeared in Dean's room and far away from his own body, pieces of him started drifting away. Every step, every motion, every word. All of it took shed another piece away.

He wondered how long it would be before it was all gone. Before there was nothing left of him.

Dean started mumbling out reassurances and promises as he worked, sounding more like he was soothing six-year-old-Sam after a nightmare than talking to ghost-Sam, but maybe that wasn't far from the truth. Being a ghost was turning out to be a nightmare, after all.

So, he sat in the corner of the storage room, careful to not touch anything and keep his emotions as in check as he could. He felt as vulnerable as his child self after a nightmare, when all that kept him grounded was Dean's presence. Now, all that was keeping him here was an amulet hanging around Dean's neck.

As was the story of his life, his fate was completely in Dean's hands.

The amulet swung as Dean moved around the room. It looked the same around his neck as it always had, but it no longer meant the same thing. It didn't stand for Sam's trust and belief in Dean over their father. It didn't stand for their bond.

It was just the best way available to Dean for protecting Sam.

And Sam needed to find a way to tell Dean that it would be better for all of them if he salted and burned the amulet. If he ended all of this before it turned sour, but he had a feeling it already was.

Author's Note: For a Mary who wants to save her son without it ending in his death, check out Sons of the Morning. Here, she's a little more detached and letting her hunter side take over and, unfortunately, Sam and Dean are still practically strangers to her.

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