". . . some days I feel my grief will devour me. If I survive, I will be wounded beyond recognition. Save me from despair, pull me back from the jaws of depression and carry me safely through the rocky terrain of my grief." –Elizabeth M. Thompson

Chapter 1

He'd paused at the gas station on the edge of town. He'd spent the night at a nasty motel. He'd driven around the lake a couple times. He'd circled the block for more than an hour. Then he parked and turned off the Impala and sat.

He wasn't sure if he could take another breath, and he was even less convinced he could leave the car. If he did either, was he betraying Sam or following his wishes? That was the bone he was picking with himself.

The drive from Lawrence to Cicero could be made in barely 8 hours—far less than the 9 hours and 27 minutes Mapquest rendered—as Dean proved yesterday.

Last time he saw Lisa and Ben was when he thought he was tying up loose ends. Say goodbye to the ones he would have loved if his life had been one where loving people didn't equate with signing their death warrants.

It was the reason that every atom in his body and every ounce of intelligence he had was screaming that he shouldn't knock on Lisa's door. That he should go find a hole and bury himself in it. But Sam's words thudded constantly in his chest, rattled in his skull and he felt like he was falling through nothing.

The reason he'd come came down to this. If he was going to live without Sam, even for a day—if he was going to stay alive long enough to bring Sam back or die trying—he needed something to hold on to. As much as he loved Bobby, Bobby wasn't going to help him and Bobby had grief of his own to carry and Dean didn't want to hold the man back or be held back by him. And there was no one else left on this literally God-forsaken planet who'd ever offered Dean Winchester an anchor besides Lisa Braeden.

He tried not to let himself think about why she did it. It wasn't like he'd ever been around for more than a day or two at most, and he'd waited eight years before making a second appearance in her life. Their relationship consisted of a couple one-night stands and then him dropping in a laying the whole apocalypse-is-coming-by-the-way-you're-my-dream-girl speech on her.

It still made him shake his head that he managed to spit that out. It wasn't that he regretted it, and it felt bizarre to not regret something so unbelievably awkward and honest. Hell had changed a lot of things, and the level of honesty he could force himself to live with was one of them.

His thumbs eased along the steering wheel. They traced randomly and instinctively the rub-worn paths of its whorls, his eyes unfocused as they watched. It was just past dark now, but Lisa's porch light wasn't on. Maybe that's a sign.

Scrubbing at his eyes with his battered knuckles, he ignored the pain and gave a harsh chuckle. There are no true signs. Just fear and wishful thinking. "Team Free Will," he muttered.

Dean wasn't sorry they'd done things their own way. Sorry for a lot, sorry Sam was in the pit, not sorry they hadn't said "yes" until it was their plan and they were ready for it. What did I think was going to happen? He'd had a bad feeling.

And yet there comes a time when your future isn't just your own, and Bobby was right about Sam being a good hunter and a good man. Dean was the big brother, but he wasn't the only brother. Letting Sam make some decisions about how it was all going to go down had been long past due. But the bad feeling had still been appropriate. . . this had all ended up costing more than Dean had actually been okay with.

The reality of Sam being gone and of where he was—where they both were—tilted Dean's vision to a strange angle and he rested his head on the steering wheel again to curb the feeling of almost blacking out. His stomach roiled at the starkness of what he'd lost, and his skin hurt; he could feel the sting and heat of the Pit chains against it.

Stop it stop it stop it. Dean took several deep breaths before raising his head and opening his eyes. He wanted Sam. Or even Bobby or Cas. Someone who knew how to use snark or cluelessness knock him back into himself—to get him out of himself. But there was no one left. Which is why he was here.

If there was one thing, one single thing, that Dean Winchester needed with his whole soul, it was family. It always had been. His mother, his father, his brother—they were water and air and sunlight and he couldn't live without a connection. Home hadn't been a place since he was four years old. It had been John and Sam, Bobby and Ellen, the car which had become an actual entity to love and be loved by. Home meant not being alone and Dean felt utterly homeless.

But Lisa had offered once; more than once. And while he didn't want to make it sound like she was the bottom of the barrel, the better-than-nothing option, Dean didn't have anywhere else to go. All he could do was go and find out. If she meant it, if he even could mean it after all these years of darkness and pain. To find out if the change Sam had so desperately wanted from him and for him was even possible. Since I don't think I can believe . . .

Regardless of what happened next, losing Sam was exactly what he thought it would be. Worse than death, worse than Hell. And if he wasn't Sam Winchester's brother, he had no idea who he'd turn out to be. He didn't know if there had ever been more; if there was anything left.

He took another breath, pushed past the hitch in his throat that came halfway. He opened his eyes wide at the darkness to stop the damp that threatened at the corners. The he started the Impala and glanced in the rearview mirror as he backed out. The hollow eyes and the trembling jaw made him pause in alarm, foot on the brake for an instant. The words leapt starkly into his head like black ink on a pale page, thought at nearly the same instant.

That man is me. I don't know him.