Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.

"Sam, look at me," Dean said.

He had his arm stretched to cover half the distance to Sam's head, but he hesitated. Forcing Sam to look at him didn't seem like the best plan at that moment, especially when he had no idea why Sam insisted he should have stayed dead, despite being very much alive.

Everything had gone smoothly for once, hadn't it?

Ingrid's warning rang in his ears, set on repeat by his brain. Keep Sam calm. Keep Sam happy.

Keep Sam alive.

"It's okay this time. No deals. Nothing," Dean said. "Just some angels finally repaying a favor to us."

Sam stayed silent, and Dean didn't mind his mother leaving the room to give them some space. She had just as much right to be there and to help Sam, but some things he had to do by himself. Some things were between him and Sam, the way they'd been for decades.

"Seriously, Sammy. Everything's fine."

While Sam faced away from him, Dean could see the frown on his face and the minuscule shrug of his shoulder.

"If you're tired, I can just let you sleep for now."

Sam nodded. Barely, but more than enough for Dean to see.

Dean left the room, his hands balled into such tight fists, he felt his nails bite into the flesh of his hand. But he went without argument, because Sam needed to be kept calm and happy so his soul would remain properly attached to his body.

Once he was out of danger, Dean thought as he closed the door to Sam's room behind him, then Dean would throttle him for being a moron and scaring him so much over the past weeks. For still scaring him with his current attitude and apparent unwillingness to be alive, despite the fact that there were no deals made. No one was dying in his place. Not now. Not a year from now.

Dean wandered into the kitchen to grab himself a beer, only to find his mother hovering over a steaming pot on the stove, her short hair still somehow long enough to tie back. He swallowed back the sudden rush of resentment towards Mary that crawled up his throat.

This was her fault. Sam's condition was because of her. If she hadn't been so hasty to end her life in their place, if she hadn't been so willing to leave them again, then Sam would be okay. He wouldn't be shutting Dean out. He wouldn't have spent the past weeks haunting Dean and begging him to let him die and stay dead.

Mary looked over her shoulder and gave Dean a small smile. "I thought that Sam might want some tomato and rice soup. It always made me feel better when my mom made it for me," she said. "It used to make you feel better when you were little, too."

Dean grabbed the beer he originally came for from the fridge, popped it open, and sat down at the table before he bothered to respond. "Why do you keep doing this to us?"

He stopped himself from saying either 'Mom' or 'Mary' at the end of his question. He wasn't sure which one she was to them, not since the first time she left in search of some space.

"Doing what?"

"You keep coming into our lives and playing the part of a mother," Dean said, "but then you're gone again, leaving us behind."

"Dean, I just needed some space. I never meant to hurt you or Sam."

Dean snorted a bitter laugh and shook his head. "Well, great job so far there."

They worked fine as a team to preserve Sam's body, but now Sam's soul was back in it and he wasn't as okay as he should be. He'd been on his way to vengeful (probably too close for Dean's comfort), and now he might still not make it through their mother's mistake.

She left them once. She almost left them when Billie made an offer after Asa's wake (he could see that she truly thought about it, he knew the look). She tried to leave them again on the bridge when Billie wanted a Winchester.

While Dean wanted to believe in her promise that she wanted to try to be a better mother to them, the number of times she left kept him hesitant. Now that Sam was more-or-less alive, what would stop her from falling back into the same pattern?

"What do you want me to say, Dean? That I'm sorry I left? Because I'm not," she said. "I blinked and thirty-three years passed by without me. I needed the time on my own to sort my thoughts and adjust to that."

Dean knew that she wasn't sorry for leaving them, but hearing her say it out loud felt different. She was confirming that she didn't regret leaving behind her own children. It felt like an abandonment and a betrayal.

Didn't she have any idea what their lives had been like because of her? Did she have any idea what they went through in order to kill the demon who burned her on the ceiling?

"I don't want you to say anything," Dean said. "I can handle you leaving. I have before. I won't say that it didn't hurt, but I've been through a lot of shit in my life. The point is that Sam doesn't need that right now. You heard Ingrid's warning."

"I get it, Dean. I told you that I was going to be better to you boys now. Be the mother that I should've been all along. I'm not going back on that."

"Okay," Dean said.

Mary tried a few times to start some lighthearted conversations, the kind they shared while helping out Sam as a team, but Dean didn't have it in him.

He couldn't stop thinking about Sam asking why Dean didn't follow Sam's request to let him go, or the night on the bridge that started it all.

Dean checked on Sam every hour, then every half hour, but Sam always pretended to be asleep. He kept the routine up for about half a day before he took up residence in the chair beside Sam's bed.

"We both know that you aren't asleep, Sammy."

Sam cracked open his eyes and looked at Dean.

"Was that so hard?"

Sam's lips turned up at the corners into a small smile, and Dean mentally marked a tally into his 'victory' category.

"Maybe," Sam said.

"How are you feeling?"

Sam closed his eyes, the way he did since they were kids and he was mentally accessing himself for injuries to tell Dean about. "Stiff," he said, his voice sounding as weak as he looked. "Like my body doesn't want to listen."

"You wanna maybe tell me what's going on in your head, then?" Dean asked.

"Nothing."

Dean found himself staring at a fifteen year old Sam, who had his head buried in a motel pillow after a rough day at school or a hunt gone wrong. Back when he started to feel too old to be running to Dean with his problems.

"I've known you long enough to tell when you're bullshitting me, Sam."

Sam's eyes flicked down, and Dean realized that he was staring at the amulet he still had hanging from his neck. It felt so natural to be wearing it again, he forgot it was there at all.

"You don't need to wear that anymore," Sam said.

"What?"

Sam looked away again, opting to stare at the ceiling. "I'm not attached to it anymore, so you don't need to wear it."

"I'm wearing it because I want to," Dean said.

"Why?"

"Because it's important to me," Dean said.

"Not anymore," Sam said. "It hasn't been in a long time."

He knew that talking about the amulet would come up eventually, but he didn't believe that it was that old sore spot that was fueling Sam's mood. It left him wondering what else they ignored over the years had built up to the breaking point in Sam. All of the moments when he knew they needed to talk about something, but he brushed them aside because he didn't want to deal with them (because he would rather bury himself in alcohol and women than deal with the issues between him and Sam) came to the front of his mind.

Starting with the moment he dropped the amulet in the trashcan in plain view of Sam.

"It's always been important to me," Dean said. "When I… I was angry, okay? But I never stopped regretting what I did. I know now that it was the angels dicking with us to play their game. But even then, I should have trusted you. I should have believed in you. There's a lot I should have done, and I'm sorry that I didn't."

Sam didn't look convinced, but he didn't look like he was condemning Dean for his past sins either.

He just looked defeated.

"You don't need me," Sam said. "You have Mom."

"You have Mom, too. And what the hell do you mean I don't need you? Don't you realize how much it destroyed me to have you die in my arms at Cold Oak? Or when you willingly fell into Lucifer's Cage to save the world? The time that I stopped you from closing the Gates of Hell in that shitty little church? How about the more recent ones, like when that werewolf shot you and Corbin choked you, or when I came back to the bunker and found your blood on the floor, but not you? Every single time, I was willing to trade myself for your life because I never figured out how to live without you. I'm still willing to trade my life for yours."

Sam didn't respond. Dean had just poured his heart out, but he had to continue with something, anything, to get through to Sam. "If you don't believe me now," Dean said, "stick around and let me prove it to you. We'll repair all the little tears in our relationship from over the years. Talk about all the things we should have years ago, but swept under the rug instead. Go back to really being brothers, not keeping secrets and fighting each other."

"You can have a relationship with Mom," Sam said, finally. "You've always wanted that. I'd ruin it. I'd get her killed again."

"Sammy, her death was never your fault. She made a deal, and Yellow Eyes would have gotten to you no matter what. Besides, she wants to prove to both of us that she won't leave again, that she'll be the mother we needed. But she can't do that if you're gone."

"Dean…"

"No, Sam, listen to me. Whatever you having going through that head of yours, whatever is making you think that your life is worthless, we'll work through it. We'll work through everything, but you have to give us the chance first. Please."

Dean wasn't a man who typically begged, but damn if he wouldn't beg to keep Sam around.

The silence that fell stayed between them for too long. Dean didn't have anything else to say, but if Sam didn't say something soon, he was going to lose what little was left of his mind.

"Okay," Sam said.

Sam moved like an old man, but he could move. Dean hovered over him, but after knowing Dean for thirty-three years, he expected as much.

The easy banter he remembered between Dean and Mary didn't seem quite as easy anymore, and it left Sam wondering what he missed. As he recovered, though, it returned a little more each day, the secret rift between them closing.

Only this time, it included him, too. He wasn't invisible to them anymore, he was a part of their little family. Mary slipped sometimes and treated them like they were far younger than they were, but Sam didn't mind it all that much. He suspected that Dean didn't either.

They had their real mother back.

They still had a lot of work left to repair the years upon years of tears in the relationship between them, but Sam believed Dean when he said they would get through it. They would go back to being real brothers again. No secrets. No demons. No angels or Apocalypses. Heaven and Hell could both go shove it for now. They were taking a break.

Every time he saw the amulet hanging from Dean's neck, he really believed they would get through it all.

They would be brothers.

Author's Note: And there you have it! Thank you to everyone who's supported this story, you have no idea how much it's meant to me. Since this is the final chapter, why not leave a review with your final thoughts?

Until next time!