I managed to crank out two chapters in two days! Figured I'd post this chapter right away. Thanks for the review from steelcandy on the last chapter, hope you all enjoy this one!

"I'm not sure I even want to read those," Dean admitted as he stared down the box of Chuck's unpublished manuscripts. "It's weird enough reading about myself, but things that might happen to us?" He let out a visible shudder. "There's just some things people shouldn't know."

"Maybe Charlie and I can skim through them," I offered. "If we split them between the two of us we could go through them by the afternoon," I said as I shuffled the papers around in the box. "There's not too much in here."

Charlie was leaning over my shoulder, her eyes squinting as she read the titles as each bound paper stack was shuffled in the box.

"Some of these look familiar," she said as she grabbed a bound stack of papers titled 'Bar Meeting' and examined the first few lines. "This one was posted online awhile back. It was the one I kept teasing Sam about."

I eyed the papers in her hand skeptically. "You mean the one you think is about me?"

Sam cleared his throat from across the room, the sound catching my attention. He shot me a quick, sheepish smile as he scratched the back of his neck awkwardly.

"Maybe you two should be the ones to go through them," Sam spoke. "I think there were some other books about the Knights of Hell in storage that we could continue sorting through. There might be something useful that could help us catch Abaddon off-guard."

Charlie shrugged beside me and mumbled out a "your loss" to the brothers. Neither one apparently felt that not reading Chuck's manuscripts was much of a loss as they disappeared into the backroom where the boxes of journals were kept. When Cas and the brothers were out of sight, Charlie handed me the 'Bar Meeting' manuscript she was still holding.

"Might not have anything useful in it, but you might want to read it," she said simply.

Hesitantly I accepted the pages from her and set them to the side. It wasn't a long story, it didn't even look to be ten pages in length, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to read it. While part of me was curious, part of me agreed with what Dean had said—there's just some things people shouldn't know. What if this chick mentioned was someone else, and what if Chuck was right and she and Sam were going to fall in love?

I shook the thoughts from my head. I could worry about that later, right now we needed to skim through the unpublished works in this box to find a way to cure Sam's illness.

"Here, it's going to take too long doing that," Charlie said as she grabbed the box I was sifting through and upended it on the table, spilling all the contents out in one large, messy pile. "Just grab one and dig in."

I let out a deep sigh as I settled into a chair. I wasn't sure what to expect when I read them. Part of me was afraid I'd come across something I didn't want to know. Knowing that the longer I sat there the longer it would take for us to finish the pile though, I reached my hand into the stack and grabbed the closest one on top. It was simply titled 'Rift' and I found myself confused the longer I stared at the single word.

It took me about ten minutes to read the first story and by the time I had finished I had understood the title. Apparently Chuck had documented a particularly nasty fight between the brothers, one where they were arguing about morality and what was really 'right' and what was really 'wrong.' In the story Sam appeared to be the one with a very strict moral compass, but Dean wasn't so black and white about whatever they had been arguing over. I had been admittedly a little disappointed with the lack of detail about the situation. With everything Charlie had told me, this argument could have been something that had already taken place for all I knew with how much the brothers apparently had argued lately. Granted, that was if I let myself believe that Chuck really was seeing the future well before it happened.

An hour and a half had passed since Charlie and I had begun reading the manuscripts. So far neither of us had found anything useful about Sam's illness and we were coming to the end of the pile.

I tossed the story I had been reading into the pile next to me of the others that I had already gone through. This was frustrating. So far Crowley's tip had seemed entirely a waste of our time. How was I going to tell the others that there was no cure for Sam in here?

I let out a long, frustrated groan and buried my face in my palms.

"There's nothing here," I complained. "All I've read about are a few hunts and some brotherly moments." I rubbed my aching eyes with the heels of my palms.

Charlie let out a slow exhale from across the table which confirmed her own frustration.

"There's still a few left," she said, though her tone betrayed any chance at optimism. "Maybe we should take a quick break and then get back to it with fresh eyes."

I nodded, feeling my mood sour a bit at the thought of an entire day wasted. If Sam's health was only continuing to decline until his mysterious illness eventually killed him, who knew how much time we had left to find a way to cure him. What if it was only a matter of weeks? So far we had nothing to go on.

Rising from the chair I had been sitting in for awhile now, I stretched my sore muscles and stifled a yawn. I glanced around the room and took in the gray cemented walls and the drab, artificial light.

"I think I'm going to take a walk. I could use the fresh air," I told Charlie.

Not waiting for her response, I headed out of the room without even bothering to grab a jacket.

It was bright outside and I had to squint for a minute until my eyes adjusted to the afternoon sun. The air wasn't too cold, I actually enjoyed the light, cool breeze against my bare skin. The chill seemed to wake me up a bit.

For the first time since I'd been here, I really let myself take in the surroundings outside of the bunker. Directly around the outside was just tall grass but off in the distance there were trees that carried on farther than my eyes could see. In the distance I could see the dark shape of a hawk circling above the treetops. The highway was over a mile away in the opposite direction, meaning the only sound outside was the soft rustling of the tall grass in the wind and the distant cry of birds.

I checked my pocket to make sure I had my phone before determinedly setting off towards the tree-line in the distance. Being suddenly surrounded by nature instead of sitting deep underground in the dark bunker had my mind quickly becoming clear.

Crowley had claimed he needed the brothers to help defeat Abaddon, so why would he give us a false lead? Unless he had been given bad information and didn't know. Or was there some other angle he was working that I just couldn't see?

A sound behind me caused me to jump in fright before whirling around only to spot Sam walking towards me, his long legs easily covering my tracks.

"Charlie told me you came out here," he told me with a soft smile when he finally caught up to me.

He reached out to grab my hand in one easy motion. His hand in mine felt natural, reassuring even. I smiled when he gave mine a gentle squeeze, as if he had heard my thoughts.

"I've always thought it was beautiful out here," Sam said breaking the silence as his eyes took in the sight before us. "Ever since we found this bunker months ago I would disappear to that hill over there," he pointed off in the distance to a slight incline where a boulder large enough to sit on adorned the top. "Sometimes I'd come out here if I had been stuck down there too long or if Dean and I got into an argument and I needed to get away for awhile." He paused and I turned to look at him as he stared transfixed at the hill in the distance. "Sometimes," he started, "I'd come out here when I couldn't find any leads on a case." He glanced down at me with a knowing look and I felt my stomach drop. "Crowley's never been the most helpful."

I bit my lip, unsure of what to say. I wanted to tell him to have hope, that he wasn't going to die and we had found a cure to save him, but we still hadn't. I felt a lump forming in my throat and I tried to swallow it back.

"There has to be a cure somewhere," I said finally.

I felt his hand give mine another gentle squeeze.

"I'm not going to give up yet. Crowley wouldn't have given us a bad tip on purpose," I said firmly. "That just doesn't make sense."

Sam remained quiet beside me. There was an expression on his face I couldn't quite place as he stared straight ahead.

"I've been coming to terms with it," he said gently.

"Don't," I said faintly. "Don't say that."

Sam shook his head gingerly, a strained smile on his lips as his gaze traveled to his shoes.

"I can't keep getting my hopes up for some miracle that might never happen," he admitted. "There might not be a way to fix me."

"Sam, don't—"

"Hey!"

The loud shout from behind us interrupted our conversation. We both turned around to see Dean sprinting towards us, something clutched in his hand. When he got closer I felt my heart accelerate and Sam's hand involuntarily tightened around mine.

Dean stopped just feet in front of us, a large smile lighting up his face. He was panting heavily as he triumphantly held up the pages in his hand for us to see.

The title on this one read 'Cure'.