A/N: I apparently forgot to mention that this is set at the beginning of s3 (thank my friend T for reminding me). This chapter draws heavily on the first few episode of the season, which is why you'll notice a lot of canon stuff. Also thank T for promising to kick my ass if I don't update regularly. As I am not very obsessed with staying close to the original material, you might find some deviation from canon and quite a bit of OC-ness more and more as the story progresses. I guess that's why it's a fanfic and not the original thing. Enjoy and review so that I know just how much my writing sucks.

DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringement intended - all characters and concepts recognizable from intellectual work (mainly "Supernatural") belong to their owners. No profit is being made from this.

That night, Dean's dreams were fragmented and disorganized. He dreamt about his mom and his father, about little Sammy and their hunts. He slept fitfully, turning often and waking up for a few seconds several times during the night.

He knew Sam could tell he had a rough night by the bags under his eyes. Dean didn't speak of it and made as if he didn't notice his brother's inquisitive and highly concerned gaze, and eventually Sam subsided.

They stuck around for a few days more, just to make sure that the incident with the possession didn't repeat itself. When the caretaker told them, overjoyed, that none of the women in the house were having any more nightmares during their next visit, they shrugged and left Bobby's number behind. Dean figured it'd be better for Bobby to get late night calls from that... lady than it would be for him or his brother. Though, if the way he handled the woman was any indication, Sam might be better at this sort of thing than Dean had given him credit for. Maybe he really would be okay, on his own.

They left the boring little town behind them and drove to their next hunt, the incident all but forgotten.

-:-:-:-:-:-

In the next two weeks, they went from hunt to hunt in their usual way. Saving people, killing things. Dean evaded Sam's every attempt at talking about the deal he'd made. There was nothing for him to say. It didn't stop his brother from trying, though, and avoiding him became more and more difficult as time went by. Dean had more and more trouble escaping the sad, angry, and desperate look in Sam's eyes.

Seeing Lisa again, so many years after their last encounter, was a mixed package. On one hand, he remembered the fun they'd had together. On the other, he was now deathly afraid - ha - that Ben was his. And damn it all to Hell, he was in no position to be a father. He just had to trust that Lisa had not lied to him. It was easier to just let go.

Dean had been determined to live day-by-day, uncaring for the past and the pain it held. Nobody's said that was going to be easier, dammit. He had less than a year to live. Sam's worried looks reminded him of that often enough. His little brother thought him insensitive, uncaring about his approaching end, taken in by Dean's forced upbeat-ness. Ironically, that was all Dean could think of, laying on uncomfortable motel beds at night, listening to Sam's steady breaths. Yet, he was still fighting to move on, to forget. Don't dwell became a recurring thought. Pretend, forget.

The past didn't let itself be forgotten for long, though. Soon enough, it came knocking back. Dad and his secrets, indeed. Who'd have thought the man would've kept something permanent? The stuff inside the storage container was like a punch to the gut. Full of happy memories - he hadn't seen his first sawed-off shotgun in such a long time! - but also full of the secrets and the silences between their deceased father and them.

And he couldn't seem to stop dreaming! Every night, he would go to sleep in the motel room, and every night he would dream. Usually about Hell, and how he imagined it would be like. Sometimes, the dreams would turn slightly more pleasant, with the mother he barely remembered cast in the leading role. Dean was never sure whether the dreams were half-forgotten memories of better days or simply his mind's wishful conjurations.

He hated them.

With his life fading fast before his eyes, Dean was finding himself more emotional than he'd ever been, except perhaps as a little kid who didn't know any better. He'd thought John had beaten it out of him by the time he got to his teens. Apparently, the idea of dying sooner than expected - than hoped for - was enough to make him all emotional. Sam could easily see the desperation in his eyes, Dean was sure of it. He thought he was better at hiding his own emotions, godammit.

The thoughts kept repeating themselves over and over and over in his head until he couldn't take it anymore and he got up, got dressed once again, and left the room and Sam's entirely too silent presence for the distraction a local 24-hour bar could give him. Wash, rinse, repeat.

-:-:-:-:-:-

He was sitting in a hotel room, watching some late-night cartoon on the TV with Sammy sitting next to him on the other bed. The quiet in the room was interrupted regularly by the sounds of the cartoon and the cars periodically driving past the hotel they were in.

Dean was sure he had been thinking of something just then, but he'd lost his train of thought and couldn't pick it back up again. He knew he was supposed to feel safe, that this was the quietest it's been for the Winchester family in several weeks, but a sudden sense of urgency was quickly filling his mind. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Where was John?

"Sammy?" Dean asked - and started. His voice sounded wrong. That wasn't the voice he was accustomed to, though of course it was his. Why was he surprised? "Sam?" he repeated when his little brother didn't respond.

Sam kept on watching the cartoon, laughing quietly at the funny parts, not looking at Dean. Now, he was really starting to panic. What was wrong with his brother? Wasn't John supposed to be there with them? He started again. Why was he calling their Dad by his name? That was weird. He never did that.

Dean tried to get up and go to Sammy, to check the salt lining the windowsills, check the lock on the hotel room door, but he couldn't move. He couldn't even lift a finger. His head was oriented towards Sammy. He couldn't move to cry out or do anything else than watch his brother watch the cartoons with a calm Dean could only envy.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Dean could see a dark figure, standing in the left side of the room. There was something there in the room with them, and Dean couldn't move. It was watching them, watching Sammy, he suddenly realized with a start, and he couldn't do anything to fight it or warn his bother of the impending danger.

The figure started to move towards Sammy and Dean fought with all of his might to move and take the gun on the bed next to him and move and Sammy-

Dean woke up with a loud inhalation and a scream that died in his throat.

It had been a nightmare. Sammy - Sam - was safe, he wasn't six anymore, and Dean wasn't ten. They were safe, there was no dark figure, Dean could move. He could move. He stood up from the bed and took a few steps around the hotel room to make sure that he could. The dream wasn't real, that wasn't what had happened that day. They had watched cartoons all evening until John had come back, triumphant and earlier than expected, from a regular ghost hunt. They had gone to sleep after eating together, for once, around the rickety hotel table.

What was wrong with his head, for Dean to conjure something as shitty as a dark figure approaching his brother while he could do nothing to protect him?

It took him a few deep breaths and a few checks and re-checks of the handgun under his pillow before he could calm down enough to lay down. Sleep didn't come back to him the whole night. Dean was too afraid to close his eyes, so he kept them on Sam's back.

-:-:-:-:-:-

He dreamt again and again, every night for a week before Sam noticed and made him confess to the nightmares he'd been having. By that time, the circles under his eyes were more pronounced than Dean had ever seen them be and his paranoia was at an all-time high. The dark figure was always there, in every dream he had. Always there, always watching, always just at the periphery of his eyes, of his thoughts. Dean was no longer surprised to see it there in his dreams. At this point, he was surprised that it wasn't in his waking life.

Hell, they didn't have time for this. The demons were out, they had work to do. They were hunters, and their job was a very demanding one. Dean had no time to dwell on nightmares. That also meant he had more and trouble sitting still, nowadays, for fear suddenly of losing the ability to move.

He was never quite sure of whether what he was experiencing was a dream or reality until he woke up, sweaty and panicked, to a silent and safe - safe - hotel room, Sam by his side, the gun he never let go off for long anymore in his hand. Dean progressively got better at noticing the oddities in his thoughts and behavior during the dreams, but he could do nothing but sit still and watch as Sammy was threatened, he himself was threatened, his mom was threatened, or Bobby was. All by that same stupid dark figure.

They'd called Bobby, who was looking through his stuff to see if anything he had matched Dean's description. The oldest Winchester was quick to make the link between the dark figure he'd seen in that "haunted house" in the town on the outskirts of Chicago and the one he kept seeing in his nightmares. They were uncannily similar, as far as dark figures you could only see out of the corner of your eye for a few seconds went.

Bobby soon confirmed that he had nothing, though. Dean was reluctant to mention what he'd seen during that one hunt, but he had no choice when nothing else was turning up.

That's how he found himself tied to a chair in the middle of Bobby's junkyard, drenched in some kind of disgusting oil and with Sam chanting incomprehensible words in latin at him. Apparently, he was possessed. By what, they were unsure of: there were at least two possibilities, and this was the first of the three rituals they were going to try. Dean found performing exorcisms was much less pleasant when he was on the receiving end of one.

Nothing was happening, though. They were in the middle of the second ritual by the time Dean started feeling anything other than disgust at the ingredients Bobby was shoving at him and boredom at watching Sam's stupidly-serious face as he recited some more words. He started getting cold, which was explainable by the late-night chill in the air. It was only when he'd tried to scratch an itch on his left leg with his right one, and found himself unable to move, that he realized something was wrong. He couldn't move. Again.

Dean would've groaned had he been in possession of his vocal cords at that moment. Was this another nightmare? He couldn't seem to remember ever having been tied and exorcized by his brother before, though maybe his brain had moved on from half-forgotten memories to made-up scenarios to torture him with.

He tried to watch for the dark figure in his periphery, but the minutes passed and Dean still hadn't seen anything. Slowly, panic seized him. Something was wrong. Something was more wrong than usual. The dark figure should have been there by now, taunting him by approaching someone he cared about. Where was it?

Dean was left to panic within the confines of his own mind for a while more. He'd never realized how tight it was around there. His thoughts kept circling and circling and driving him absolutely mad. The dark figure wasn't approaching, something was wrong, think about something else, what are Sam and Bobby doing, why is nothing happening, why isn't the dark figure approaching, something is wrong, think about something else, dammit, what is going on...

Dean opened his mouth. It took him a second to realize - he'd opened his mouth! He could move again. He was about to cry out to Sam that something was wrong when his body moved and his mouth formed a word that wasn't his own.

"Sammy."

Something was very, very wrong.

A/N: Pardon the cliffhanger; I should be back with a new chapter within the next week. If not, T will surely kill me.