A/N: The angst is strong with this chapter. Well, okay, the angst is strong with this story, but this chapter particularly.

"Dean?"

Dean froze, hand hovering over his key holder. For a moment he stood with his door half open and one foot almost off the ground, hearing the blood rush in his ears, and feeling like his head was about to explode. The moment passed and he dropped the keys. They clattered into the key holder and he inhaled sharply, rubbing his eyes. The pressure behind his eyes eased but didn't disappear. What the hell was that? "Yeah, it's me," he called, hoping his voice didn't shake, hoping whatever had just happened never happened again.

He heard the familiar creaks of the floorboards to one side of his bed, then a loud multi-part thump and a muffled cry of pain. "Dean!"

"Crazy son of a bitch…" Dean muttered, hurrying into the bedroom. The voice had been different, somehow; it was definitely Sam, but it sounded much less detached, almost sounded… younger. He opened the door to find 6'something of uncoordinated, freaking out Sam. He was struggling to untangle his legs from the covers and kept forgetting his shoulder was injured. "Sam, stop it! You're gonna—"

Sam looked up at him, hazel eyes wide and wet and unfocused. His hair was mussed and he cradled his arm against his chest, looking baffled and hurt. Then he moved it again and looked down at it in confusion as he whimpered loudly, a wordless sound like an injured animal.

Dean felt almost sick. Well, he's out of it. Fever? Pain pills? Concussion? Dammit, I'm not ready for this. The hell happened, you were fine at noon. "Sam, stop moving your shoulder. You got shot, remember?"

"Shot?" echoed Sam, looking up at him again. "Why?"

"I dunno." Dean knelt and untangled the miles of bony, non-resistent legs. "There you go." He reached over and put a hand on Sam's forehead. Before he even touched the skin he felt the heat. "Ah, dammit. You're burning up."

Sam leaned into his palm, tears escaping when he closed his eyes. "I'm sorry."

Dean paused, then slid his hand up to comb back the unruly bangs. "What for? C'mon, back into bed." He took Sam's good elbow, snagged a belt loop in the other hand, and pulled.

Sam sorted out his legs slowly, as if drunk, then sat down on the bed. He wavered a moment, then slumped over his knees and put his face in his good hand. "I'm sorry, Dean."

"What for?" Dean repeated. "Don't fall asleep, let me get your meds." He was across the room double checking dosages when Sam mumbled something. "What?"

"I said I shouldn't have come. Stupid. Shouldn't… It works, so… Why… If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Sam stared dully at the pills in Dean's hand, then looked up apologetically into Dean's face. "I'm sorry. It was stupid. And… selfish. I thought I was dead, so… I guess I kept thinking, one last time. Or maybe I just…"

"Dude." Dean offered the pills more emphatically. "Less talking, more swallowing."

"Okay." Sam grabbed clumsily at Dean's hand.

"Whoa, there. Serious coordination issues. New plan. Open your mouth." Sam obeyed and Dean tipped the medicine inside, following up with the glass of water. Sam made a bid for the glass but let his hand be pushed away without a fight. "Don't choke."

Sam swallowed with a little difficulty, then grabbed Dean's hand. "I'm really sorry, okay?"

"Okay," Dean said. Sam's fingers dug into his palm and he debated ending the weirdness or waiting until Sam was knocked out by the sleeping pill.

"I'll leave soon. I don't… It's working, so… But, go to school, okay? You're really smart." Sam blinked heavily, then again. "Really smart," he mumbled, his grip on Dean's hand loosening. He didn't seem to notice when Dean pulled his hand back. He lay back slowly. "Don't waste it. It doesn't… Don't worry about… You can be smart. It's okay. Okay?"

"Okey-dokey," Dean said, turning away and shaking out the blanket Sam had brought with him to the floor.

"Dad doesn't have to know."

Dean turned so fast the room tilted. "What?"

Sam was out.

The next few days were intolerable. Sam battled a fever that never got really dangerously high, but kept him in a dazed fog when conscious and in nightmares when not.

Dean didn't want to know what he was dreaming about. Sam would thrash and freeze by turns, or press his hands to his head, or writhe, arching his back and then collapsing again, crying out in pain from his shoulder, speaking sentences that were either fragmented English or that strange sleep language that sounds creepily like words but isn't.

"Come back!" he called frequently. "No, come back! Dean!"

He shouted for Dean a lot for someone he'd met a week ago. "Dean, help!" and "Dean, come back!" were among the most oft-spoken phrases. "Essoramous tea" was another favorite, as was "I'll fix it."

Dean wasn't sure what to make of it all. It didn't happen every time, but every once in a while when Sam would call for him that weird almost-blackout thing would happen again. Everything would slow down as a bomb went off in the back of his brain, like a lightless explosion, and then he would come back to himself with the beginnings of a headache and no explanation for why.

Nor could he explain the way that Sam seemed to depend on him.

"Dean, come back!" he would call, and then, eyes still shut, thrash an arm out to grip a handful of blanket that he kept kicking off. "Come back, come back… No, no no, come back. Dean?"

And Dean would recover from another bomb going off in the back of his brain and say as calmly and rationally as he could manage, "I'm here, Sam, I didn't leave."

Early on the morning of the third day he finally came to the end of his rope and almost shouted, "Dammit, Sam, I didn't leave! Man up!"

Sam stiffened, then collapsed into tears, disappearing under the covers. "I did," he almost sobbed. "I did. I'm sorry."

"Oh, for f—" Dean rubbed his hands over his face, then leaned over to tug at the blanket. "Sam, calm down."

"I shouldn't… have left," Sam sobbed. "Oh God, why did I… And then it all went to hell again. I should have known. I shouldn't have left. God, Dean, I miss you so much."

Dean froze. "What did you say?"

"I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry. I left. It wasn't your fault." Sam emerged from the blankets, breath hitching, eyes and nose streaming. He sniffed deeply and wiped his sleeve over his face, whimpering when he jostled his shoulder. "Come back?" he pleaded, voice cracking. "Please come back, Dean. I miss you. God, I can't… I don't know… I'm trying, but… I can't, I can't, I can't." His voice broke completely on the last word, and he ground his teeth while he sobbed into the pillow. "I can't do it, I can't do it. I'm not strong enough, I can't do it alone. I miss you. I miss you. I can't do it alone."

Dean felt his head throbbing, felt like there was something he should be doing, but he couldn't think of it, couldn't think—

"I can't do it alone. I can't do it alone. Don't leave me alone. I'm not strong enough. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I can't do it alone, I'm not strong enough." He slammed a fist into the pillow, then turned his face away, choking on his sobs.

Dean felt as if his mind was separated from his body. While his mind took a hike he knelt on the edge of the bed and his hand reached out of its own accord and started to stroke Sam's hair. His fingers snagged as they carded through the mess of unwashed and unbrushed hair, but he didn't stop. It was calming, somehow, the repetitious movement soothing the howling black hole in his skull.

Sam seemed to appreciate it too, his wild sobs slowing and then devolving into half-hearted hiccups. He lay with his injured arm limply at his side and his other hand slowly relaxing around a white-knuckled handful of pillow.

Dean's hand deemed Sam's hair to be good enough and moved downward to massage his still-tense neck. He worked in little circles, pressing down with his fingertips firmly but gently. Once that was relaxed, he started working across the broad shoulders, extra careful where gauze was still taped to a healing shoulder. The tension relaxed, then returned as Sam started to shake.

"Sam?" It felt like someone else was using his voice.

Sam raised himself onto his good arm, weeping, lips pressed together as if to keep himself quiet. Without a word he turned to Dean and just looked at him for a long moment, hazel eyes tortured, confused… There was a sort of hunger in them, too. Not a physical hunger, easily solved with tomato-rice soup or toast; this looked like the hunger of a drowning man when he sees a boat. He shuffled forward awkwardly, still silent, then wrapped his arm around Dean's waist and pulled himself forward. He sat up, practically in Dean's lap, then leaned against him, head in the hollow of Dean's shoulder, curling his good arm across Dean's back to grab a fistful of shirt and cradling his other arm against his chest.

After a long moment, Dean's arms wrapped around Sam as if by themselves. At the touch Sam melted even further into him, sniffling. Warm teardrops fell onto Dean's arm and he shifted his grip until his hand was cupped around the back of Sam's head, fingers threading into his hair.

Sam stayed awake, silently weeping, long past when Dean thought he should have fallen asleep.

"We're brothers." The words were repeated almost robotically, like someone had taken over his voicebox.

Sam nodded wordlessly from the corner of the couch, only glancing up for microseconds before looking at his knees again.

Dean rubbed his hands over his face, feeling numb. "Well. That would explain the, uh, crying out in the night." Sam grimaced but nodded again. "And the startled look when you got here. And the, uh, familiarity." Anger started to glow warm in the pit of his stomach. "So, why the fake amnesia?"

"Because… we…" Sam massaged the bridge of his nose. Dean was about to interject when Sam finished in a rush, "Because it's way more complicated than it seems."

"More complicated?" Dean laughed harshly. Sam winced. "More complicated than you getting shot, than you almost crashing into my garage? More complicated than me wandering down the road, nothing but the shirt on my back— Are you the one who put that name on the back of my shirt? And hey, if we're brothers, why don't we have the same last name?"

"We do. It isn't Barrow or Parker." Sam smirked for a moment and then it disappeared as if it had never existed. "They're, uh, pseudonyms. Your first name is Dean, though. And mine is Sam. Our last name is Winchester."

"Well, that explains everything—"

Sam exhaled sharply and looked up, guilt taking a backseat to irritation. "I'm trying to figure out if I should explain at all. Like I said, it's complicated, and…" The guilt came back full force. "You've got a life here," he muttered. "It's… normal."

There was something about the way he said 'normal', something that implied disdain and jealousy, confusion and wonder. Like he hated it, maybe because he envied it. Like it was a foreign land he'd dreamed about and now stood within sight of, and doubted in the face of its reality.

"Now I'm not sure if I wanna know." 'Complicated,' pseudonyms, normalcy both a foreign concept and something to be desired… "Let me ask you something. The scars, are those from…?" Dean stopped, not sure what to theorize.

"They're from… what we—" Sam pulled up, corrected himself forcefully, "—what I do, yes. So's the tattoo."

"We're not in a cult or something—?"

Sam snorted, then as something sank in started to laugh. He laughed so hard tears came to his eyes. "Maybe," he wheezed. "Maybe we are. Maybe I am," he amended, laughter dying quickly. "Maybe it is. I never thought of it that way, but… yeah, I guess you could call it a cult." He snorted again, this time in derision. "In 'til you die. That is pretty cultish. So yeah," he ended, looking up at Dean with a strange expression on his face, "basically you've escaped a dangerous cult and the only price was your memory. Could have been a lot worse." He looked back down at his knees, suddenly morose. "Hell, even if you—" He cut himself off and cleared his throat.

Basically a cult. All right then. "Okay." Dean suddenly thought of tears, haunted fevered eyes, a repeated self-flagellation of 'I can't do it alone, I'm not strong enough, I miss you.' 'Come back.' 'I'm sorry.' "What were you so sorry for?"

Sam cringed, a full-bodied action, but his voice, if low, was steady enough when he said, "Your amnesia. I… I was responsible. I didn't do it," he added quickly, "but I wasn't there when it happened. If I'd been there…" He swallowed, resumed hollowly, "maybe I could have stopped it."

"Okay," Dean said again, less a statement of things how they were, more a verbal signal that information was being assimilated. The anger was glowing hotter. There were so many things he could sense Sam wasn't telling him, so many gaps in the story. But he was also keenly aware that— well, if they were brothers, that would make for a long story.

He wanted to hear it, though. He wanted to hear it so badly that for a moment he thought he might cry. He wanted to make coffee, sit in the other corner of the couch, and just listen to Sam relate it, unfold their own private mythos, talk about their parents, first jobs, whatever it was they did together, lay it out piece by piece in his quiet, measured voice. The hollowness in the pit of Dean's stomach, the sense of being different, of being the odd one out— everyone relays their favorite childhood food and an awkward silence falls when he enters the room. First kisses silently speculated upon in the dark, with no answers forthcoming. The restlessness in his bones when he stands on his front porch, awake before dawn for no earthly reason, feeling like there's somewhere he's supposed to be, something he's supposed to be doing —maybe some of it could be allayed in a couple of hours. Favorite childhood toy, where he was born, why when Sam had practically crawled into his lap it hadn't felt wrong or unusual or an invasion of privacy, it had felt weird but familiar, almost right, like joining two puzzle pieces. There were stories and explanations and years of memories in Sam's head, and he wanted to hear them all.

Sam had resumed staring at his knees, unconsciously picking at the pilled couch cushion. He looked almost sick, face drawn and lips pressed together. He reached up to scratch at the healing cut along his hairline, then stopped himself. "I think… I think I need more time. To, uh, figure this out. How much I should tell you." He rubbed the back of his neck, then bit at a thumbnail. He glanced up. "Tomorrow."

Dean swallowed his impatience. "Tomorrow."

A/N 2: If Barrow and Parker sound at all familiar, it might be because of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.