"Death doesn't discriminate between the sinners and the saints. It takes and it takes and it takes and we keep living anyway. We rise and we fall and we break and we make our mistakes and if there's a reason I'm still alive when everyone who loves me has died, I'm willing to wait for it."

Dean is happy.

He has Lisa and Ben. He has a job and a truck and a house. He has friends that greet him by name and he picks up Ben from school every day. Dean goes grocery shopping every Sunday and takes Lisa out to dinner. Dean teaches Ben how to fix cars and he helps Lisa remodel the house so she doesn't waste money on a contractor.

Dean is happy.

Except that Dean misses Sam. He misses Cas. He even misses Bobby because Bobby had all but stopped talking to him now, probably because he'd finally gotten tired of Dean. Dean had everything he'd ever dreamed of, he finally had his apple-pie life. So why couldn't he stop praying to Castiel every night? Why did he still, after a whole year, miss Sammy so much that it physically hurts?

Dean hasn't been happy for a long time.

He's restless. He wants to find a way to get Sam back. He wants Cas to answer his prayers. He wants to stop being so paranoid. Dean locks every door and window every night. Devil's traps are hidden under the brand new carpet that he installed. At least two in every room and another in every doorway. Dean and Lisa's room has four. Ben's has six.

When strange things start happening in their neighbourhood, screams, claw marks, Dean can't just leave it alone. Wildly hallucinating, Dean sees Azazel and, strangely enough, Sam, before fake-Sam knocks him out. When he wakes up, Dean can't decide whether or not he passed out or was actually knocked out. Sam appears and Dean can't breathe.

Sam reveals he's been back for a year. An entire year. Dean wants to be pissed. Hell, he is pissed. But he also realises that even Sam wouldn't leave him with no contact for an entire year. Yes, he did it for Stanford but that was different. That was school. That was to get away from Dad, not from Dean.

Something is wrong with his little brother and Dean will find out what it is.

In the meantime, however, he'll do everything he can to keep Sam, Lisa, and Ben safe. Even from his own relatives. His hunter relatives. His mother's hunter relatives. Dean still has to come to terms with the fact that his mother was a hunter. But Dean pushes that aside, for now, to help deal with the Djinn.

Sam wants him to come back to hunting and Dean is tempted to say yes. He's wanted this since his brother got trapped in the cage with Lucifer. Dean, however, has Lisa and Ben to think about. He can't just up and leave them. He loves Ben. He might even love Lisa. He can't just up and go and leave them alone and unprotected. Sure, Lisa's a badass woman, but she's nothing against a demon, or an angel, or anything else that might pop up looking for a fight. So Dean declines. He promises to stay in touch with Sam but wonders how long that will last. Sam is different. Dean knows that being in the cage with Lucifer and Michael, even for that short amount of time, has to have messed him up but this… Dean isn't sure but he won't let his little brother down. Not this time.

A/N: So, I finished this before I thought I would so you get this now. I don't have any more planned for this but if inspiration strikes, I'll add more. This story is also over on Archive Of Our Own under XxKariRyxX1 if you prefer that site.

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Live Long and Prosper,

-Karia