Thanks to everyone that read and reviewed the last chapter. I really love hearing your thoughts. I don't have a beta for this story, so any mistakes are my own.

CoM x

Chapter Three

Sam could feel Dean's eyes on him as he sat curled against the window in the idling car, but he didn't open his eyes. To do that, to look at Dean, would be to see the shadow of his future in Dean's creased brow and sad eyes. This was exactly why he hadn't wanted Dean to know. He wanted his brother, his pissy, interfering, disappointed at times brother to be with him. Now Dean knew the truth, that had all gone out of the window to be replaced by this person that looked at Sam as if he might drop dead at any minute. Sam wanted normal, but this was anything but.

As if to illustrate Sam's frustration, Dean spoke, "Sam, we're here. You need to wake up." It was the gentle voice and light touch on his arm that bothered Sam. The old Dean would have slapped his arm and cranked up the stereo to wake him. Sam would have given almost anything to go back twenty-four hours to the moment he had let it slip that he was out of time. Or would he? He had always intended to tell Dean the truth. He wanted him to be prepared when the time came. But he had thought he could wait a little longer before it came to that. He could have had a little more normal.

Sam opened his eyes slowly, letting them adjust to the streetlight outside the car.

"You feeling okay?" Dean asked solicitously.

Sam hid a groan with effort—it would convince Dean that he was a delicate flower—and nodded. "I'm fine. Just a little tired."

He looked out of the window and realized where he was. It was the Ranch Rooms, where Sam had lived for a while before he had been admitted to the hospital. It was strange to be back where it had all started. He wondered if Everett still worked the desk. He wondered if his father, Hank, was still alive. He'd developed a friendship with the family after he'd discovered Hank was also sick.

He swung open the car door and climbed out, stretching the kinks in his back earned from a day on the road.

Dean was tossing the car keys from hand to hand. "I'll go get us a room."

"I'll do it," Sam said.

"You sure?"

"Dude, it's like twenty feet to the office. Besides, I know this place."

"In that case, I'll come with."

Sighing to himself, Sam walked up to the motel office and swung open the door. Everett was behind the counter, reading a book. He looked up as they came in and when he caught sight of Sam he jumped to his feet.

"Sam!"

Sam grinned. "Hey, Everett."

Everett stepped around the counter with a hand outstretched. "Man, it's good to see you."

"You too." Sam shook his hand. "How's your dad?" Everett looked down at the floor and Sam cursed quietly. "I'm so sorry."

"Yeah." Everett rubbed at the back of his neck. "A couple of months ago. The cancer beat him before he could beat it I guess."

Sam heard Dean's quick indrawn breath and he didn't need to look around to know that Dean's face would reflect his horror. Losing Hank was a blow to Sam, but he wasn't shocked. Preparing to die yourself gave you a greater acceptance on other's deaths. Hank had been on borrowed time when Sam'd last seen him, and to his credit, he'd known it.

"So, how are you doing?" Everett asked. "What happened to you? Amelia came here looking for you. She was in a real mess."

Sam ducked his head guiltily. He knew he had done the right thing, leaving Amelia as he had, but he shouldn't have left town without letting her know what was happening.

"I had to get out of town for a while," he said.

"But you're back now, right?" Everett asked.

Dean cleared his throat loudly and Sam turned. "Sorry. Everett, this is my brother, Dean. We're going to be in town for a couple of days, so do you have a room?"

"Yeah, sure." Everett went back behind the counter and grabbed a key from the back wall. "Room twelve is free. That be okay?"

"That'll be fine," Sam said, rooting through his wallet for some cash. He didn't want to sting Everett and his mom with a fake credit card.

When he tried to hand over the bills, Everett shook his head. "We don't want your money here, Sam. The room's yours as long as you want it."

Sam smiled. "Thanks, man. We should only be here a couple of days at the most."

Everett raised his hands. "As long as you need."

Sam nodded his thanks and he and Dean said their goodbyes and went back to the car to collect their belongings. Sam unlocked the door and looked around the room. Apart from the fact it had two beds instead of a double, it was identical to the room he had occupied when he was here with its yellow walls and tan couch against the wall.

"Nice place," Dean said, dropping the bags down onto the couch. "You stayed here before then."

Sam nodded. "After I left the hospital."

"What happened to the kid's dad?"

Sam dropped down onto the couch and raked a hand through his hair. "He had cancer, colon, and it was pretty far gone by the time they found it. He hit it with everything he had, but I guess it wasn't enough."

"You don't seem that surprised," Dean observed.

"I'm not. I'm upset, Hank was a good man and he left a family behind, but I'm not surprised. We both knew what was coming for us; we just didn't know which one of us would go first."

Dean shook his head, muttering to himself. Sam would once have tried to decipher Dean's mood and try to fix it, but he knew now there was no need. Dean was thinking that Sam was wrong to talk about his death so calmly. Dean didn't understand though. Sam didn't want his last emotion to be fear.

Sam was up first in the morning. Dean was sitting on his bed with his chin touching his chest. Sam guessed he had tried to stay up—probably to keep an eye on Sam—but sleep had caught him anyway.

He crept out of bed and jotted down a note, telling Dean where he was going. Letting himself out of the motel he took a deep breath of the clean, morning air and smiled. It was going to be a scorcher; his favorite kind of day.

When he got back to the motel, laden with a breakfast burger for Dean and pancakes for himself, he found Dean pacing up and down the room, clearly agitated. As Sam entered, Dean spun on his heel and glared at him.

"Where the hell have you been?" he said loudly.

Sam held up the platters of breakfast as explanation. "I left a note."

"Dammit, Sam. You can't just leave like that. Something could have happened to you!"

Sam sighed and set the food down on the counter. "I can still make it to the diner. If something had happened, someone would have called. Your number is my emergency contact."

Dean huffed. "Which would have been a great comfort when I got the call to tell me you dropped dead in the middle of the street."

"I'm not just going to drop dead one day, Dean. It's a process, and I am merely at the start of that. You can take your eyes off me for more than a minute and I'll still be fine."

"I've been reading up," Dean said. "You could die without warning. Tumors cause bleeds and things."

"And you could die crossing the street but that doesn't make me stop you jaywalking."

"It's not the same thing, and you know it!"

Sam sat down at the table and raked a hand through his hair. He hated this. It was almost a tangible thing, Dean's fear, and Sam didn't want that. "You've got to let me live, Dean, or all this is for nothing. I can't spend the rest of my days in bed waiting for death. I won't. I am going to live as much as I can while I can, and that means you're going to have to loosen the reins a little. You can trust me to know what's best for me."

"Apparently, I can't," Dean snapped. "If you knew what was best for you, you would still be in hospital right now, having the treatment. I came back and you let it just…" He slapped a hand against the wall. "Dammit, Sam!"

Sam massaged his temples. He had a headache developing. He didn't think it was going to be a bad one, not one that left him prone in bed, but dealing with Dean's temper wasn't helping.

Dean immediately looked contrite. "You okay?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah. I just have a headache." He crossed the room and rooted through his duffel for his meds. Shaking one out into his palm, he walked to the counter and poured himself a glass of water. He knocked it back in one swallow and then turned to face Dean, who looked like he would like to take a hammer to his own head in return for retracting Sam's pain.

"I'm fine, Dean," he said, forcing a smile. "Now, eat your breakfast so we can go see Amelia."

Dean threw himself into a chair at the table and unwrapped his burger. "You haven't told me much about this Amelia. What's the deal there?"

Sam sat opposite him and drew his own package of pancakes across the table. Letting his mind drift back over the months, he finally explained Amelia. "It was about a month after you disappeared. I got it into my head that Crowley was the key to getting you back, so I was tracing demons and trying to make them talk. There were demon signs here in Kermit, so I made the trip. I'd been having headaches for a while, but I figured it was just a side-effect of the stress I was under—hunting the Leviathans, losing you and Cas. I was in a diner, just like any other day on the road, and I had a seizure. Amelia was the one that took care of me. I was taken in to a hospital, I was pretty out of it, and they did an MRI. That's when they found the cancer. From there things moved fast. They started the treatment, and I seemed to get sick overnight."

"And Amelia…?"

Sam smiled. "I guess she felt bad for me. That was how it started at least. She came by the hospital every day after work, and we became good friends. We had something in common; she'd lost someone, too. I was a distraction from her own problems. We became good friends. Then, when it was time to leave the hospital, she let me move in with her. She took care of me while I was having the treatment."

"So, you were friends? When did that become something more?

"it didn't, not really. We were just two lost souls clinging together. I was in no state to pursue any kind of relationship, and she was still grieving. I loved her, I still do, but not in the way I loved Jess. Amelia saved me, and for that I will always be grateful, but I couldn't offer her what she really needed."

"Why did you let me think it was something more?"

"Because it was easier than telling the truth. I couldn't tell you I didn't look for you because I was in the hospital, so I pretended. It was easier to deal with you being angry with me. I didn't want to see that look in your eye that you've got now."

Dean sighed and raked a hand through his hair. "I wish you would have. I could have helped you."

Sam smiled sadly. "You really couldn't. I'm beyond help now, Dean."

Dean shook his head. "I don't believe that."

"You will soon enough." Sam knew that.

Dean drove them across town to Amelia's clinic, following Sam's directions. It was strange to see the familiar stores and houses again. Sam never thought he would be back here, least of all with Dean in tow.

As they pulled up outside the clinic, Sam took a deep breath. The simple white-brick building seemed steeped in foreboding to him now. He had spent hours here before, sitting with Amelia's dog Riot in the back room while she worked, but that was before everything changed.

Dean climbed out of the car and then peered in through the open door. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm coming."

He got out of the car and led Dean into the building. Roberta was working the desk and as she caught sight of Sam, she gasped. "Sam. You're… I mean…"

Sam knew what she was trying to say. He was alive. She had thought he was dead. If that was what she thought, that had to be what Amelia thought too. He felt a pang of guilt. He should have called Amelia to at least let her know what was happening. She hadn't needed to live with the weight of not knowing hanging over her for the past few months. She deserved better than that.

"Is she here?" Sam asked.

Roberta nodded. "She's free. You want me to tell her you're here or do you want to go through?"

"I'll go through."

With Dean following him, Sam stepped around the counter and opened the door into the treatment room.

Amelia was crouched in front of a cupboard, with a clipboard in hand. "Roberta," she said without turning, "can you add the iodine to the order? We're running low."

Sam cleared his throat and she straightened and turned. She paled as soon as she saw him, and the clipboard dropped out of her hand.

"Hello, Amelia," Sam said with a small smile.

She stepped forward as if in a trance, coming to stand in front of him. He hand rose, and Sam thought she was going to touch him, to assure herself he was real, but instead she slapped him hard across the cheek.

"Hey!" Dean shouted, starting forward.

Sam put a hand on his chest to hold him back. "It's okay, Dean."

"I thought you were dead!" she shouted. "I came to the hospital and they said you were gone! How could you do that to me? How could you just leave me like that?"

"I'm sorry," Sam said plaintively.

"You're sorry!" She laughed and Sam heard the tinge of hysteria in it. "I've been grieving for you for three months because I thought you were dead!"

"I'm sorry." Sam didn't seem able to think of anything else to say.

Amelia's eyes filled with tears and she reached up again, Sam braced himself for another slap, but she cupped his cheek instead. She blinked and the tears slipped down her cheeks. "I thought you were dead," she said softly.

"Not yet."

She gripped the collar of his shirt and attempted to shake him. Sam might be sick, but he was still strong enough to resist her paltry strength.

Sam pulled her against his chest and wrapped his arms around her and soothed her quietly. She sobbed against him, dampening his shirt with her tears.

After a long time, it seemed like an age to Sam, she pulled back and looked him in the eye. "What happened?"

Sam turned back to face Dean. "Amelia, this is Dean."

Amelia looked stunned. "I thought he was dead."

Sam huffed a laugh. If anyone should understand someone coming back from the dead, it was Amelia. "So was Don," he said.

"That's unbelievable," she said.

"Unbelievable or not, it's the truth," Dean said holding out a hand. "Dean Winchester. Nice to meet you."

Amelia stared at his hand for a moment in stunned silence, and then she took his and shook. "Nice to meet you, Dean. I've heard a lot about you."

"Yeah, you, too."

Amelia turned back to Sam and her hands came up to trace across the furrows on his brow. "I can't believe you're here."

Sam smiled. "I am."

"How bad is it?"

It felt strange to be asked that question again after all this time. It was their own code of gauging Sam's suffering. She would ask and he would endeavor to be honest.

"Not bad," he said. "Only a five."

"Five what?" Dean asked.

Amelia gave Sam an appraising look. "Why doesn't he…?"

"Dean's kinda playing catch-up," Sam admitted. "I only told him a couple of days ago."

"Why?" she asked with a steel edge to her tone.

Sam shrugged. "It's a long story."

She pushed back her hair from her face and blew out a breath. "In that case he's got a lot of catching up to do."