"No." Dean grabbed his head with both hands, forcing Sam to look him in the eye. "No, Sam. You didn't try to kill me."
"I remember." Sam said, his nose clogged and he was feeling close to tears. He tried to shake his head but Dean held it firmly in place.
"That wasn't you." Dean stated with a hard look in his eyes, clearly believing in Sam's innocence. "You were possessed. It was the demon who tried to kill me. Not you, Sam. Never you."
Sam forced himself to nod to that but the images swirling in his mind drew a different picture.
"Here, boy." Bobby spoke up, bringing a bottle of beer in his line of view. Sam had almost forgotten that they weren't alone. "This should help you calm down."
With a shaky hand he accepted the bottle but he was grateful for the break. For a moment he just held it in his hand but he felt Bobby's gaze on him so he finally took a sip just to satisfy the man.
Some of the tension he hadn't even realized had been there melted away when Bobby relaxed in his chair, enjoying his own beer.
"Do I want to know how I ended up possessed?" He asked because he really didn't know. Chances were good that the memory would come back on its own at some point but right now he was left with fragments out of context and he just couldn't make sense out of them.
"You went out for food and didn't come back." Dean said with a sigh. "You were gone for a week. She toyed with us. She's gone now."
That was a very clipped version of the story but Dean wasn't up for telling more, he could tell. The gone for a week part alone sent chills down Sam's spine. He didn't dare to imagine how he would feel with Dean just disappearing on him.
For a moment they sat in silence, all of them lost in their own thoughts.
"Hey, Bobby." Dean finally said, a bit too cheerful, desperate to change the topic. "Remember when Dad dumped us here that one summer because I broke my leg?"
To that Bobby groaned. "Once you figured out how to use the crutches to swing you became a menace." He turned towards Sam. "One time he almost broke his neck when he tried to fall-swing down the stairs with only one contact."
"It almost worked." Dean protested.
Sam tried to picture it. Dean on the stairs, aiming for the middle with his crutches and hoping to land on his good foot at the bottom.
"You're insane, you know that, right?" Was all he could say to that.
"Don't get me started on who stood next to him, cheering him on." Bobby grumbled with a pointed look at Sam but with a fond smile on his lips.
Sam ducked his head to that, even if he didn't remember the incident, he felt ashamed for his younger self.
Sam knew what Dean was doing here, trying to trigger his memory without putting pressure on him. So Sam just leaned back and listened to Dean and Bobby talking about the past. It seemed like they had a lot of fun during their stays at Bobby's and over the next few hours Sam got an idea of why Dean had spoken so fondly of the other man.
"I don't know about you, man." Dean finally said and set his empty bottle aside. "But I'm beat. Time to turn in."
Sam's eyes had been dropping for a while now but he didn't want to go upstairs alone. It was silly, he knew that, but this house was unfamiliar and he didn't want to be all by himself in a room he didn't know.
If it had been a motel room he would have been in bed an hour ago but he was supposed to know this house, the guest room had been theirs since they had been kids, and for some reason that made it impossible for Sam to go upstairs alone.
"Yeah, me too." He agreed and then stood and stretched, body stiff from sitting for too long. He was really looking forward to stretch out in a bed. They said good night to Bobby and turned around to leave. Dean bumped him comradely in the shoulder but with enough force to make him stumble sideways.
"Dean." He shouted in surprise but then hurried to follow his grinning brother upstairs. Only on the stairs Sam realized that Dean's push had sent him right under the devil's trap.
"You did that on purpose." Sam said when they were lying in their bed with the lights out but their eyes still open. Over the last few minutes Sam had thought about that move and the implications behind it.
"Had to make sure." Was Dean's answer. Of course he knew what Sam was referring to.
"You thought I could be possessed?"
"Not very likely, you still have the tatt." Sam heard Dean turning in his bed and in the dim light he could see his brother facing him from the other side of the room. "But better safe than sorry."
"What if I was possessed?"
"You would have been stuck in the trap." Sam could hear the shrug in his voice. "Then we would have exorcized it."
"Easy as that?" Sam had accepted the supernatural as a part of his life but it was still strange to hear Dean talking about it as if being possessed was no big deal.
"We did it before." There was something in his voice, telling Sam that it wasn't as easy as Dean tried to make it look.
The fell silent and after a while Sam drifted off to sleep.
He dreamed but in the morning he couldn't really say what he'd dreamed about. Fragments out of context but he remembered smoke and a blond girl smiling at him.
"Do I know any blond girls?" He asked when Dean came back from the bathroom to get dressed. The way his brother froze half-bent over his beg with a t-shirt in his hand it was clear that the answer to the question was yes.
"Who is she?" Sam asked when Dean failed to answer. His brother was stalling by putting the shirt on.
"Jessica." He finally said but still with his back towards Sam. "She was your girlfriend."
Dean had told him about her before. Now the lingering smell of smoke made more sense. He hadn't known that he'd been close enough to smell the smoke, though.
"She was beautiful." He felt a vague pang of sadness when he brought her face back to his mind.
"Yes, she was." Dean sat down on his bed. "You loved her."
"Tell me more about her."
"I only met her once." Dean admitted. "She was fierce, strong-minded." A sad smile ghosted over his lips. "Had to be if she put up with you."
"She was my girlfriend, how come you only met her once?" That didn't make sense. He and Dean were inseparable, hell, he hadn't felt comfortable going to bed alone.
This was an uncomfortable topic, Sam could tell and for a moment he thought Dean would back out. But then he took a deep breath and started talking.
"You left for Stanford." He said. "Dad wasn't happy, told you to never come back. So you didn't."
"I would never leave you." The words were out of his mouth in a heartbeat. A quick, sure response which made it true.
"You were done hunting." Dean said with a hard tone in his voice. "You wanted a clean cut."
Sam shook his head, this wasn't right. He couldn't remember any of this but it didn't feel right.
"You're my brother, why would I want to leave you?"
"I was with Dad. I was still hunting." Dean gave him a half-shrug. "I was part of the life you wanted so desperately to get away from. And you were happy. You had your girlfriend, you were becoming a lawyer, you had a good life." His voice was flat now.
"It's not a good life without you." Sam said quietly.
The look Dean gave him now cut deep into Sam's soul. Emotions flashed over his brother's face but before Sam could identify them, they were gone.
"I didn't know you but I followed you out of the hospital." Sam reminded him. "I feel nervous every time you're out of my sight."
"Because I'm the only person you know."
"That's the point, I didn't know you." Sam emphasized the words, hoping Dean would understand. "But I still trusted you. You left such a huge impact that I still trusted you even if I couldn't remember you."
Dean didn't speak for a moment, clearly uncomfortable with the situation. Then he stood up and rubbed his hands.
"Do you smell coffee? I smell coffee." And with that he was out of the door.
Sam bit back a laugh but he was pretty sure that Dean got he message and that was all that counted. Slower he followed his brother downstairs where indeed a fresh pot of coffee waited for them.
Over breakfast they discussed what they wanted to do with the day. The plan was to hang out here but Sam wasn't sure what to do with his free time.
Dean wanted to use the chance for a bit of maintenance work on his car, something Sam had found out wasn't his thing, which left Sam on his own.
On one hand he was grateful that Dean wasn't constantly hovering over him but he still felt a bit like an intruder in this house even if Bobby insisted that he was not.
"Do whatever you like." Bobby told him with an inviting gesture towards the study. "Just leave my notes alone, I'm working on something there."
Sam nodded to that but he wouldn't have touched the other man's notes anyway. He wouldn't like somebody going through his stuff either.
Sam helped Bobby with the dishes, for some reason Dean wasn't in sight anymore at that point, and after that they settled in the study. Bobby returned to his work and Sam took his time roaming the shelves. For now he just wanted to get a feeling for what Bobby was reading. You can tell a lot about people by the books they read and what he found here told him that he would really like Bobby.
"You loved this when you were a kid." Sam hadn't notice Bobby coming over with a book in his hand. The book was worn and dog-eared and it had gotten wet at some point and when Sam took it he almost feared it would fall apart in his hands.
"Anne of Green Gables?" He read the title with a frown but Bobby just shrugged with a knowing smile.
With nothing else to do he gave the book a try. He made himself comfortable on the couch and after the first page he knew that he'd read this before. He couldn't tell what would happen next in the book but it felt familiar, like coming home. And soon it dawned on him why he'd like this book so much as a kid. A simple, normal life with ordinary problems. He didn't know much about his own childhood but it had been the opposite of normal, that much he knew.
So when Bobby later announced that he wanted to drive into town for a supply run Sam declined his offer to join him. He was content with just sitting here with his book.
Bobby left and Dean was still outside working on his car so Sam was alone when the vision hit.