I gravel at your feet at the length of time it's taken for me to update this. I haven't even got a big excuse... just a whole lot of little ones that all worked together. Life is rather mad right now!

Thanks so much to everyone who's reviewed so far, and particularly those who I can't thank in person! Your comments are GREATLY appreciated!

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The sand was hot enough to hurt through the knees of his jeans. He'd gone down hard, almost falling in his haste, hands reaching for his brother before the rest of his body caught up.

"Sam?"

Sam was on his side, head tilted down. One forearm, scarlet and blistered, hid his face.

"Sammy!" Dean's hands were rough, ungentle as he gripped one slumped shoulder and pulled. Sam flopped onto his back, ragdoll limp. His arm slid loosely away from his face. His eyes were shut; Dean had half-expected them to be open in sightless accusation. He wasn't sure if that would have been worse.

"Sam... Sam, talk to me... wake up..." His fingers groped for a pulse, quivered against Sam's neck. "Sammy!"

Don't be dead please don't be dead you can't be dead...

"Don't do this to me, Sam, don't you dare do this..."

And there it was. Hard, so that he couldn't understand how he hadn't felt it before, and rapid. Too rapid. But it was a heartbeat.

The gritty dust was making his eyes burn.

He grasped hold of his brother, hauled him up until Sam was slumped against him, heavy and lax in unconsciousness. One hand cupped the back of Sam's neck where his head tipped over Dean's arm and pulled him forward so his face pressed against Dean's shirt.

"Okay... okay... I gotcha, Sammy... you're gonna be fine... I gotcha now..." He was muttering aloud, but if the reassurances weren't for his brother there was no-one else around to hear them. There was no-one else around to catch Dean Winchester out in a massive chick-flick moment.

Sam's face was an angry, unnatural red, and burning hot against his palm. Short, shallow breaths rasped from cracked lips. His arms were hanging, trailing on the ground, and Dean pulled them up so that they weren't touching the hot sand. Where Sam's t-shirt hadn't protected him the sun had been unmerciful on unacclimatised skin.

Awkwardly, one arm still hugging Sam against him, he reached for the bottle of water he'd brought. It lay on its side in the sand where he'd dropped it in his rush to reach his brother, and he caught it up and wrestled it open with his teeth. Sam wasn't sweating, and he'd been out in this heat without water all day. He had to be badly dehydrated.

"Okay, here you go... here you go, Sammy..." He tilted the bottle carefully so that a thin trickle dribbled into Sam's mouth. Sam was unconscious; Dean didn't know if he'd be able to swallow anything, and he didn't want him to breathe the water in. It would be Winchester luck to drown in the middle of Death Valley.

The harsh breathing hitched. A quiver ran through the lax body, and for a moment Dean almost panicked as Sam choked, water spilling from the side of his mouth. But his throat muscles were working; Dean heard the wet gurgle as he swallowed, and he knew that at least some of the liquid had gone down the right way.

The shaggy head stirred against his chest, and he saw Sam's jaw tilt a little, mouth opening. Even in unconsciousness Sam had been aware of the relief of the water, of the wetness on parched skin, and now he reached for it instinctively. Desperately. One shallow breath splintered into a moan, deep in his throat.

The dust was getting into Dean's eyes again.

"It's okay... it's okay... here you go..." He held the bottle to Sam's mouth again. It was a bizarre déjà vu, a forgotten familiarity of twenty-something years when a small Dean would hold a smaller Sammy in just this way.

"Drink up, Sammy..."

Little chubby hands waving, clutching at the bottle... a soft cherub mouth sucking eagerly... dark eyes intent on the child's face above him...

Baby Sammy had been tinier, but perhaps not more helpless than adult Sam right now.

Less water spilled this time. Dean's eyes slid to the streaks down the side of Sam's face where blood had leaked. The actual wound was hidden, by hair stiff with sand and dried blood, so that he couldn't gauge its seriousness. Head wounds always bled like a bitch, but that Sam had apparently been confused enough to wander off into the wilderness suggested a concussion.

But right now he was more concerned with ensuring his little brother didn't die of dehydration. His gaze returned to the bottle in his hand, and to the precious water that dripped onto the ground. Sam could hardly be blamed for spilling it, but Dean hated to see it wasted; into his mind came an image of the two bottles left in the car, and he knew they were woefully insufficient.

And then dusty eyelashes flickered, and he forgot the water.

"Sam? Sammy?"

It wasn't Dean.

It looked like Dean; sounded like him, too, the way he said "Sammy", with sharp urgency bleeding into fear.

But it had looked like Dean before. And it had been Dean's voice that had said that he didn't want Sam, that he was a pathetic brother and a useless companion, and that he was the one who should have died.

Those Deans had all gone, just when Sam was convinced they were really there; Dean had become something hideous and dead, and then had vanished. They hadn't been real. Or maybe they had been real, and something worse: Dean's spirit, and Dean was dead.

So no. This wasn't Dean.

He could feel the rub of cheap fabric against his cheek where it rested against not-Dean's chest. He could even hear not-Dean's heart thudding next to his ear, faster than normal, as if its owner was scared.

"Sammy!"

It was speaking again, and a hand was touching his face, his cheek and forehead, before pressing against his neck. His Dean wasn't into the touchy-feely sort of thing. His Dean didn't do hugging, or face-patting.

It couldn't be Dean. And he'd been disappointed so many times before.

But it felt real. The blissful wetness of water trickling over his swollen tongue... it tasted real.

And he wanted it to be real. More than anything, desperately, to the point of tears, if he'd had any, he wanted it to be real. He wanted to be with Dean, not to have to worry about his brother's fate, not to have to think about pain and thirst and fear. He wanted to be safe.

This was all going to disappear. Any moment now, he'd open his eyes and it would be gone, and he'd be left with the heat and the sun, to struggle to his feet and stagger across the sand until he collapsed again. And then some other Dean would arrive to torment him. He should fight it now, let it know that he knew it wasn't real and that he wasn't that easily fooled.

But he wanted it. And he was just too tired to resist it. Even if it vanished, for a few seconds it would feel real; for a few seconds he'd be in the safest place he could imagine.

He turned his head and buried his face against sweaty cotton-covered muscle.

Even from a distance Bobby could see the dust that eclipsed the Impala's customary shine, and he grinned wryly. He'd heard the exasperation in Dean's voice, even with the very poor connection, and that had been twenty-four hours previously; he'd undoubtedly be ready to murder someone by now.

Someone being Sam, probably, since there was nobody else around. At all. Bobby was not one to object to a little solitude, but this was overegging the pudding. Since he'd turned off the main road an hour previously, he'd passed no-one. He loved those boys as if they were his own, but what in hell had possessed them to drive this way? And with next to no gas? Grown men and fine hunters they might be, but they'd be getting a piece of his mind.

Once they were safely in some motel having drunk about a gallon of water each.

He'd somehow expected to see the two familiar silhouettes in the front seat, and for a moment he was disconcerted when he made out neither. The Impala looked lonely. It looked abandoned, with no apparent sign of life anywhere.

But then again, this wasn't exactly a hub of exciting activity. About the only thing the boys could do was sleep, and in this heat it was probably all they had energy for. Lying down, one in the front and one in the back, they wouldn't be visible from where he was. He stepped on the gas a little, and reached the other vehicle in a cloud of dust.

He paused briefly, frowning at the complete lack of response to his arrival from the direction of the Impala. The pickup was not exactly stealthy. Dean might sleep through the landing of a squadron of fighter jets, but Sam...

The hinges creaked as he pushed the door open, but he ignored them.

"Dean?" His boots crunched on the rocky sand. "Sam?" He had his hand raised to knock on the driver's window before he saw that the black car was empty.

Bobby's footsteps were a little quicker as he made his way round to the front.

There were no Winchesters sitting behind the car in its meagre shade.

"Dean!"

His shout drifted in the stifling air, and was swallowed. There was no answering call.

There was no sign of either Dean or Sam anywhere.

Bobby lifted his cap and wiped sweat from his hairline with the back of one hand. Then he hurled the cap to the ground.

"Dammit, Dean!"

He'd told them to sit tight. He'd told them not to wander off or do anything stupid.

This was monumentally stupid.

Bobby had no doubt about what had happened. He was later than he'd intended, later than he'd promised, what with the poltergeist, and then not being able to find the boys. They'd grown impatient – or in all likelihood, Dean had grown impatient – and decided to try to walk out.

If they had appeared at that moment he would have had no qualms about decking them both.

"Morons... stupid asses..."

Anger was a good disguise for fear.

After they'd felt his fist, there might have been some hugging. Because he was afraid now. He'd been uneasy since he'd taken Dean's call, and concerned when he'd discovered just how far off the main road they'd gone. But now he was acknowledging it for the first time. And he was just plain scared.

Dean and Sam were superb hunters, extremely capable at dispatching spirits and demons and what-have-you. But the desert? That was something else entirely. It was something they hadn't been trained to handle.

He bent to pick up his cap.

And paused.

Sam didn't seem to be really aware of what was happening. There'd been a momentary glimmer of something like recognition in the inflamed eyes, but they'd drifted shut almost immediately. The feeble tension in his muscles, though, told Dean he wasn't completely unconscious.

"Sammy?" His hand moved, palm against face and forehead. "Sam..."

A quiver ran over Sam's face that might have been pain or discomfort or something else that Dean couldn't identify, and his breathing stuttered. Then his head turned, a movement that was too deliberate to be the simple relaxation of fatigue, and he burrowed his face into Dean's t-shirt.

A breath caught in Dean's throat.

Toddler and child Sammy had sobbed nightmare fears into his big brother's pyjama top. Eleven-year-old Sammy had nestled against him like that while their father stitched up the bloody gashes left by a garou's claws. Fourteen-year-old Sam had clutched him, trembling arms gripping in terror and relief and face completely hidden in Dean's leather jacket, after being the captive of an Old One for more than a week. But not since then. Sam hadn't done that in years.

Dean didn't want to think about what he must have gone through to be doing it now.

He dropped his hand to Sam's jaw, fingers sliding around to chafe gently at the back of his neck. Limp strands of dark hair were gritty under his fingertips.

"It's okay, Sammy... it's okay... I gotcha now... I'm gonna take care of you now, you hear me? You're gonna be fine." He blinked fiercely.

Friggin' dust getting in my eyes...

Sam shivered against him, despite the heat of the fever that Dean could feel right through the fabric barrier. He didn't respond or give any sign that he could hear what Dean was saying.

"It's okay, Sam..."

It wasn't.

Sam needed water. He needed to be out of the heat and the sun.

They had water, and shelter, back at the car. And if both of them had been completely healthy, it might have been enough. But Sam was feverish, severely dehydrated, probably concussed. Deep down, where he couldn't lie even to himself, Dean knew he needed professional medical treatment. Two and a half bottles of tepid water and the black metal heat trap that was the Impala would be pathetically inadequate.

But there was no gas. There was no way out, no way of getting to a hospital. Until Bobby arrived, pathetically inadequate was all Dean had.

He reached for the almost empty bottle again, and turned Sam's face to give him more water. For a moment Sam resisted his efforts, but at the touch of the liquid on his skin he relaxed a little, and even managed to swallow some.

"Yeah, there you go... that's good, Sammy." Dean could see green slits where Sam's eyes were half-open again, although he had no idea of how conscious he was. "Sam? You with me? Sammy?"

Sam's eyes shifted lethargically. It wasn't much, but it was a response.

"We need to get back to the car, bro. You think you could walk if I helped you?" He hadn't expected an enthusiastic affirmation, and he didn't get one. He wasn't even sure why he'd spoken.

But his voice was the only distraction from the oppression of the environment and the exigency of their situation. It was the only sound that could drown out the increasingly harsh rasp of Sam's hurried breathing.

If he talked he could pretend that he wasn't afraid.

"Okay, c'mon, Sammy..." He dragged one flaccid arm over his shoulder and gripped Sam's wrist. "I'm gonna pull you up, okay? We'll just go slowly." His arm tightened around his brother. "On three... one..."

On "two", he straightened, hauling Sam up with him.

With a sound that was somewhere between a groan and a whimper, Sam crumpled against him, suddenly completely limp. Dean cursed as the unexpected weight almost sent them both sprawling.

"Hey... hey! Sam!"

Sam's face had fallen onto his shoulder and he tipped it back. Eyes shut... mouth slack... this time Sam really was unconscious.

With more haste than elegance he lowered his brother back down.

"What the hell, Sam..." His fingers were rough with anxiety against the carotid pulse, and its frenetic pace was not much comfort. Was it the concussion... the dehydration... the fever...? Maybe Sam had fallen and damaged himself internally... or maybe there was bleeding on the brain as a result of the head injury? He pictured the Impala and the complete desolation of its setting, and swallowed hard as panic threatened.

"Okay. Okay." He couldn't think like that. Right now there was nothing he could do about any of those nightmare possibilities. He had to get Sam back to the Impala, and try to bring him round, and cool him down, and rehydrate him. As to the rest, he'd just have to wait until Bobby arrived.

And pray, to a God he didn't believe in, that that wouldn't be long.

The small red sphere that had been unidentifiable at a distance was absurdly incongruous when he realised what it was. It lay in his palm, warm and flecked with sand crystals, the white m proudly proclaiming its identity.

It announced "Dean Winchester was here" as clearly as if the words had been scrawled in the sand.

Bobby eyed it thoughtfully. His gaze went back to the ground, and the crease between his eyebrows deepened when he saw another m&m a short distance away, blue this time. Two steps took him to where it rested. He didn't pick this one up; he'd already seen the green blob of colour even further along, and now he could see the pattern.

In his long-ago childhood Bobby Singer had read fairy tales too.

"Okay, Hansel and Gretel," he muttered. This didn't really fit with his previous conclusion, that Dean and Sam had decided to walk out. But then again, he'd long since stopped being surprised when the Winchesters did the unexpected.

And at this point, their motives didn't interest him as much as the fact that he now had the means to track them. He returned to his truck, absently jiggling the m&m in his hand, and took two bottles of water from the back seat. After a judicious glance at the sky, he reached for a flashlight as well.

The m&m trail was not difficult to follow. The brightly-coloured chocolates stood out against the sand. He wondered how long it had been since they'd been dropped, and guessed it couldn't have been long; they would have been carried off by animals, or covered by sand, if they'd lain there for hours. He was surprised that they hadn't melted.

Entrusting their lives to m&m's… stupid idjits!

His shadow was long as he walked. The sun was far down on the horizon. He could still see clearly but he knew that wouldn't last: night was coming, and even with the weight of the flashlight in his hand anxiety skittered through him at the thought. Despite the lateness of the hour, the heat was still almost unbearable. The air shimmered, creating pools of water where none existed and warping the landscape. When he glanced behind him he could still see the blur of the cars, merged by distance into one.

At first startled sight he thought it was something supernatural. Top-heavy and bizarrely distorted, the figure wavered across the sand, features a vague blur. For one panicked moment he cursed himself for leaving all his weapons in the truck, for being out here completely unarmed. Then commonsense returned, and he began to run towards it.

One figure: in no possible way was that a good thing.

With closer proximity the single shape became a man, staggering under the burden of another slung over his shoulder. Lack of inches and long floppy hair told Bobby that Dean was the one on his feet, but the older Winchester's head was down, his arm clamped tightly around his brother's legs, and his face was hidden.

"Dean!"

That Dean had been completely unaware of Bobby's presence was evident by the way he shied violently at his voice. His head jerked back, eyes wide, and he would have overbalanced if Bobby had not caught hold of his arm.

"Bobby!" It came out as a gasp. "You... you scared the crap outta me!"

"Yeah, I noticed." Concern leached some of the customary gruffness from Bobby's voice. "What happened to Sam?"

Dean scrubbed his free hand over his face.

"He... uh... long story. He... he needs help, Bobby. It's heat stroke or something... he's dehydrated to hell."

"Heat stroke?" Bobby stared at him, fear and anger bubbling up within. "Dehydration? And I suppose that possibility didn't occur to you when you decided to walk out?"

Dean blinked.

"What?"

"It's not called Death Valley for nothing, you stupid moron! You left the car, went wandering off into the desert in the full heat of the sun – what did you expect would happen? You knew I was coming –"

Dean's mouth went tight, his nostrils flaring. He lifted his chin.

"You have no idea what happened. I said it was a long story, and maybe once you've pulled your head out of your ass I'll tell it to you, but right now Sam needs a hospital, so can we save the grand showdown for when he's okay?" Without waiting for a response he started walking again.

Bobby closed his eyes on one deep breath, and then followed.

"Dean."

Dean stopped, but didn't turn. Bobby held out one of the water bottles.

"Let me take Sam, okay?"

"I got him –"

"Yeah, and you look like you're about to fall over. Give him to me before I have to carry both of you out."

Dean looked for a moment as if he was going to refuse. Then his shoulders dropped, and he nodded.

"Okay. Okay." With the utmost care he slid Sam off his shoulder and onto the ground, going down on his knees beside him so that Sam was propped against him. Bobby dropped down awkwardly on Sam's other side, taking in the unnatural flush and hard, rapid breathing. Dean took the bottle from him, but instead of drinking the contents himself he let the water trickle into his brother's open mouth.

"What happened to his shoes?" For the first time Bobby noticed the bare feet.

From Dean's frown, it was obvious that he'd also overlooked Sam's lack of footwear.

"I don't know. I didn't know he wasn't wearing any." The frown deepened. "His feet..."

Bobby looked, and winced. Without speaking he lifted Sam's foot, tilting it so that Dean could see the mess of blood and blisters that was the sole.

Dean swallowed.

"Holy crap." His voice was a horrified whisper. "No wonder he couldn't stand... I'm sorry, Sammy. I should have noticed." His arm tightened, pulling his unconscious brother more securely against him.

"He fell, Bobby – back at the car. He hit his head. I was sleeping, and when I woke up he was gone. I couldn't find him... I didn't know where he was." His upper lip twitched, and he looked away quickly. "I didn't know... I couldn't just wait for you. I couldn't just leave him to wander around out here."

Bobby's gaze went sharply to his face, and down to Sam, and his eyes flickered. He nodded once.

"Let's get him back to the car." His voice was matter-of-fact.

The hand that gripped Dean's shoulder for a brief moment was not.

It was different.

He could feel it.

Still unbearably, oppressively hot. But there was air now, moving air, and water – or some kind of liquid – dripping over his face. It was actually pleasant.

But he could feel something vibrating. Under him. Through him. A dull roar thudded against his consciousness. And he was moving.

Something was moving him.

Panic, wild and unreasoning, flared through him. It had found him, the thing they were hunting; it had captured him, and now it was taking him somewhere, taking him away, to where it would kill him, and where no-one would ever find him.

Dean!

The fear clawed at him. Dean... he hadn't found him. He didn't know where he was. If the... thing... had found Sam, perhaps it had found Dean too, and perhaps Dean was injured, dying somewhere, and Sam was the only one who knew there was anything wrong.

He had to get away.

He had to escape and find Dean.

Dean needed him.

He had to get away!

He could see it now, right next to him. It looked human, but he knew better; how many hundreds of foul things out there masqueraded as human?

It hadn't noticed that he was awake. He had to make his move, get away while it was unprepared. He had to –

Its head turned.

Oh crap... oh crap... it had seen him, it was leaning towards him, talking, reaching for him, and he had to get away –

He had to get away!

His hands scrabbled at the barrier beside him. Then, suddenly, it gave way.

He hurled himself towards freedom.

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