I am SO sorry this is so late! I went on vacation with some friends and then had to deal with some family stuff and didn't have time to write, but I do now (finally)! First of all, I'd like to apologize to sylvia37 – I promise, I AM working on your prompt, which is technically before this one, but I am suffering some serious writer's block. I WILL get it out before this time next week but I thought in the meantime I'd get out the next one since it's been FOREVER. So, this prompt is courtesy of Miuda22: "Season 8, Sam is injured on a hunt. While he is looking after him back at the bunker, Dean ponders why Sam doesn't have any personal items in his bedroom, when he looks deeper he finds mementos of his childhood in a drawer, photos between the pages of a book, an old phone with an old voice mail message on it and finds a certain amulet hidden inside a secret compartment." I was so excited about this prompt as this is something I'd wanted to write about anyway, so thank you! I will say that I changed part of your prompt a little because I felt I was getting very repetitive but I hope everyone enjoys this chapter, and thank you all for the positive feedback you've been giving me as well as the fabulous prompts! I've decided to extend the deadline for prompts until the 3rd of August because this is such a late update and for people just finding this story, so if you haven't submitted one yet you've still got ten days!

P.S – at the time I'm getting around to posting this it is lateeeee and I am SO TIRED but I wanted to get this up tonight soooooo, I'm going to ask forgiveness for any grammatical/spelling errors. I have no beta, so I get the cred for all.

Give a little time to me,

or burn this out.

We'll play hide and seek,

to turn this around

-Give Me Love, Ed Sheeran

"Alright, take it easy," Dean muttered as Sam hissed at the sting of the disinfectant in his wound. The two had been hunting a poltergeist who had almost managed to impale Sam on an old saw in the garage of the house it was in, but Dean had expelled it from the house before the blade could do anything more than hurt like a bitch and mean a lot of stitches for a fairly deep cut. Thankfully the hunt had been less than an hour from the bunker so, for the first time in what felt like ever, Dean had been able to take care of Sam in a clean and well-stocked environment with everything he needed and without having to worry about his bleeding little brother catching tetanus.

Putting the bottle of antiseptic on Sam's nightstand, Dean gave him a couple of pills to take and a glass of water. Sam tried to shake his head at the medication, never wanting to take it unless absolutely necessary after the Lucifer hallucinations because of the way it made him foggy and out of control, but Dean wasn't accepting that.

"Oh no, little brother, you're taking it whether you do it under your own steam or if I have to force them down your throat," Dean warned, smirking when Sam grumbled and took the pills from his hand and downed them with the water.

Soon enough the pills kicked in and Sam was out, in a deep sleep that Dean knew he'd be in for at least twelve hours. Remaining where he was on Sam's bed, he took the time to look around his brother's room for the first time, having been somewhat occupied when he'd first come earlier that evening.

Even though they'd been living in the bunker for at least two months now, the walls in Sam's room were still completely bare. While Dean had a few things decorating his room, like the vintage Led Zeppelin Vinyl records hanging on his wall, a few of his favorite weapons hung up and a some photos, Sam's room looked entirely uninhabited with the exception of a few shirts on top of the dresser and shoes by the door.

Dean frowned, standing up and looking around. While he had been making his room his own, hadn't Sam been doing the same? A cold thought struck Dean – what exactly did Sam have to show that it was his room? With the hunting lifestyle, and especially with John as a father, the only belongings that came everywhere were essentials – clothing, weapons, first aid kits; anything unnecessary had been left behind in various motel rooms across the country. Everything Sam had ever owned had either been hand-me-downs from Dean, cheap clothes from department stores and thrift stores – did he have anything to show for his life rather than just his existence?

"There's gotta be something," Dean muttered, unbelieving that his brother didn't have a single thing that could be categorized as 'personal', refusing to believe that Sam had nothing that made him Sam in his room, had nothing to show his interests or as a souvenir from something. The thought caused a fissure in Dean's heart, and so with that he moved over to the dresser on the wall opposite of the bed and, with a look back at the sleeping man over his shoulder, he pulled open the first drawer.

Finding nothing but clothes, belts and crap like gum and tissue packs in every drawer in the dresser Dean frowned and moved on to the desk that he had helped Sam move into the room. It had previously been in one of the many rooms filled with books but Sam had taken a liking to it and so Dean had suggested putting it in the empty space by the window, which they had.

Dean opened one of the top drawers slowly, although knowing it would take an explosion of superhero movie proportions to wake Sam up with that medication. However, unlike in the dresser this drawer wasn't empty – instead, it had little pieces of what Dean could only call crap at first glance. However, as he looked closer he felt his heart twinge as he realized what all of the items were. There was a little toy soldier from the set they'd had as kids, one of which was stuck in the ashtray in the Impala; the badge that said 'I'm 10 today!' that Dean had gotten him on one of those fancy birthday cards almost twenty years ago; the lighter Dean had thought he'd lost after the 4th of July fireworks in 1996. He picked up every souvenir and held them in his hand before gently putting them back in the drawer, ignoring the tightening of his throat as he was pulled into each memory. Closing the drawer when he'd finished going through the contents, he then opened the top drawer on the other side of the desk and couldn't help but smile when he saw what was laying in it. A beat-up copy of 'The Tales of Sherlock Holmes' by Arthur Conan Doyle – a book he had gotten for Sam in a specialty book store for his sixteenth birthday. Sam had been so excited when he'd unwrapped the gift, and although it had taken a large chunk of Dean's money for a few months to buy the illustrated copy the smile that had appeared on Sam's face and stayed for days had been worth it. He had no idea that Sam had kept the book all this time, and when he picked up the book and started skimming through it he was surprised to find something in the middle of it.

Wedged into the binding there were four photos stacked on top of each other. Gently removing them from between the pages, Dean thumbed through them and a smile grew on his face when he realized what they were. The photos had come from the box Jenny had given them from the basement of the house in Lawrence. Dean had assumed they'd all been lost along the way, with the exception of the one of him and his mom that was resting against his desk lamp in his room, but here it was clear Sam had saved some. There was a picture of Dean holding a newborn Sam the first time he had seen his baby brother in the hospital, sat in a chair on his dad's lap to make sure he had a grip on the baby; another similar picture in the pile was of Dean in Sam's crib, both boys sound asleep with Dean wrapped around his brother protectively – John had always joked about this when Sam complained about Dean being an over-protective mother hen. The next picture Dean looked at he put back almost immediately after – the smile on Jessica's face, even though he'd only met her once, brought a feeling of sadness for the innocent girl and Sam that he didn't want to face. Picking up the last picture somewhat warily, Dean turned it over and frowned. It was a picture of him and Sam, taken maybe 6 years ago, but he had no idea where it was or who had taken it. They weren't looking at the camera or each other, but with Sam's hair and the bright look in his eyes as well as the relaxed grin on Dean's own face, he knew it had to have been a moment before everything happened – before John died, before Dean's deal, before Lilith and the apocalypse.

Sighing, Dean stuck the pictures back into the book and put it back into the drawer, noticing as he did so another object shoved to the back of it. Reaching his hand in and pulling it out, he lifted up the cellphone that had to be at least 5 years old by looking at the style, a chunkier version of the Blackberry Sam had lost in Wyoming with Samuel Colt.

"Why the hell did he keep this," Dean muttered to himself as he held down the power button. He startled a little when the tone signaling the phone was on started and cursed, looking back at Sam before he left the room with the phone and stood further down the hallway. Leaning against the wall, he thumbed through the menu but found the phone completely wiped of everything – except for one voicemail message.

Dean hesitated for a moment about whether or not to listen to it, aware that Sam was entitled to his own privacy, but the date of the message struck him and with a cold jolt he realized why it seemed important – it was the night in the convent. Without thinking about it for another second Dean called the phone's voicemail and played the message.

"Message left May 6th 2009 at 19.20 from phone number 913-614-5867."

Dean vaguely recognized the number as one he'd had at around the same time, and suddenly remembered leaving Sam a message that night. Just as he was about to hang up, not particularly wanting to relive the message Sam had ignored, the recording started.

"Listen to me, you bloodsucking freak. Dad always said I'd either have to save you or kill you. Well, I'm giving you fair warning. I'm done trying to save you. You're a monster, Sam - a vampire. You're not you anymore. And there's no going back."

Silence over-took Dean in the moments following the end of the message and he remained frozen in position, back against the wall with the phone to his ear.

He and Sam never talked about that night, it was too painful for either of them to think about – for Sam, it had been him beginning the apocalypse and betraying Dean in the worst way possible by choosing not only someone else but a demon over his own brother; for Dean, it had been the momentary realization that maybe his dad had been right and he had needed to save Sam from more than he had understood and the life-altering hurt and loss of trust in his younger brother who had been the only person he truly felt he could rely on.

Dean had always suspected that Ruby was poisoning Sam's mind with crap like the altered voicemail and he knew that that was probably one of the reasons Sam had ended up where he had been without Dean that night, but the hard evidence on the phone he was now holding in front of his face brought nothing but pure rage towards the angels and demons who had manipulated them into the situation they had ended up in, and the one that had cost Sam his soul and his sanity and had almost cost Dean his brother.

Trying to push down the feelings of anger and sorrow that the message had provoked, knowing there was no good stressing out about it now, Dean began to walk towards Sam's room once more to put the phone back when a sudden thought occurred to him.

Sam had kept the phone with the poisonous message – why? Almost five years later, why would Sam still have not only the phone but the voicemail too? Dean couldn't believe that after everything they had been through over the last few years there was the chance that Sam still might be listening to it, but it was the possibility that had him going into his own room with the phone in hand, placing it on his floor and smashing it with the hammer left on his desk from hanging up more records.

Walking back into Sam's room, Dean walked over to the desk drawer he had left open and closed it. As he moved to leave though, just as he was at the door a voice from behind startled him.

"Find everything you were looking for?" Sam asked quietly, looking at Dean with a mildly exasperated expression when he turned around.

"Um," Dean paused, struggling to come up with an excuse for snooping around but Sam saved him the effort.

"You owe me a new old phone," Sam said jokingly, wincing slightly as he adjusted his position on the bed. The moment of silence that followed was thick, and Sam sighed before he continued.

"I know it wasn't you," he said quietly, looking Dean in the eye as his brother pulled the chair from the desk over to beside the bed. Sitting down, Dean looked at Sam warily. Sam rolled his eyes. "I know you heard it, and I just wanted to say that you don't have to say anything. I kind of figured it out after the speech you gave me in the parking lot outside of the hospital. You weren't being cruel, you were just done and that wasn't what had come across in the message. I just, I guess I kept it as a warning or something? Just a reminder of what some things who seem like they want to help can do."

Dean nodded, relieved that he didn't have to have the conversation with Sam where he reassured him that he wasn't going to do him in in his sleep. He sat still for a moment, meeting Sam's gaze, before he placed his palms on his knees and stood up.

"Yell if you need anything," he said as he walked out.

"There was something I was going to wait to give you, but I figure now's as good a time as any," Sam said before he reached the door, stopping Dean in his tracks once again. Dean turned around and his brother gestured over towards the drawer the book and phone had been in, suggesting he should open it. Walking over to the desk and doing so, Sam then gave further instruction.

"In the back there should be a latch," he said in a quiet voice which an underlying nervous tone which immediately put Dean on edge.

Finding the latch, Dean pulled it and heard the click of something opening. Looking at the side of the open drawer, a part of the wood had fallen open, hanging on a hinge. Bending down, Dean put his fingers into the space and felt some kind of string in it. Getting hold of it he pulled the item out and was sure his heart had gone into a dysrythmic pattern with the sight of the bronze amulet charm on a black leather rope in his hand.

"I was going to wait until the third trial," Sam began, suddenly extremely interested in the blanket covering him, "y'know, just….just in case." When Dean turned back to face him, a look of utter astonishment on his face, he shrugged half-heartedly. "I couldn't leave it there.

Dean – for once in his life – was speechless. He knew it was just a stupid piece of jewelry, one which had honestly been more trouble than it had been worth with the weight of it coming up and hitting him in the mouth when he was being tossed by a vengeful spirit which, to be honest, happened on a far too frequent basis for his liking, but he couldn't stop the happiness spreading through him at the steady weight in his hand and before he thought about it anymore he was lifting it over his head and bringing it to rest on his chest again. He walked over to Sam and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Nothing," he said firmly, "is going to happen with the third trial. You are going to be fine because you're not allowed to be anything else and I'm not going to let you be anything else, capisce? And when this is all over and those sons of bitches are in a permanent time out, we're gonna have to get you some geek-boy posters or something for these walls."

Sam half-smiled as Dean lifted his hand and walked out, semi-closing the door behind him, and knew that everything would be okay. Dean would make sure it was.