"You can't cry, cause you'll look broke down

But you're cryin anyway cause you're all broke down!"

("Family Affair" Sly and the Family Stone)

It had been nine hours of nothing but driving, and Dean was tired of it. As therapeutic was it was to just sit behind the wheel and pour his heart out to his baby, there was a point where he just needed someone to answer. He thought ruefully of the time Gabriel turned Sam into Baby, and that just highlighted the real issue: he missed his little brother.

Classic rock lost some of its allure when no one was constantly criticizing it.

Greasy food didn't taste half as good when he wasn't being reminded that he was eating a heart attack.

Even Disneyworld wasn't what it could have been, although that one didn't surprise him. Sammy had always been the one who was more interested in normal childhood things. Dean sighed into the oppressive silence. One of his biggest regrets was not giving Sammy a normal childhood. Forget that he was only four years older and completely incapable of doing anything more than what he had already done; if he'd known how soon he would lose his little brother, he would have done so much more.

Recognizing the growing lump in his throat, Dean quickly fought off the depressing thoughts before… Before what? Before Sam noticed? Before Lisa realized? Before Ben saw? Before Cas showed up? Before Dad called him a girl?

"It's just you and me, Baby," Dean whispered, the full weight of those words dawning on him for the first time. Suddenly, it was all too much. He pulled over to the side of the road, carefully easing Baby onto the least dirty section of the shoulder, and turned off the engine. As his last strands of control died with the hum of the car, tears began streaming down his face.

He was all alone, and it was all his fault.

Not-Sam had his own family now, and they took him to Disneyworld. Sure, it was on a hunt, and maybe he wasn't exactly himself, but he got what he'd wanted without Dean.

Cas was gone, and who knows? Maybe he was getting himself killed trying to keep other angels from hurting Dean.

And then there was Lisa.

He knew it was his fault, but he was just being honest. Women were confusing, family life was complicated, and parenting was stressful; hunting was straightforward and consistent. You find evil, and you kill it. Lisa had tried to change his mind, and she had really done everything she could, but he still couldn't get comfortable in the domestic lifestyle.

And then there was Dad. He traded his soul for Dean's. He went to Hell for Dean. He was still gone, and he always would be.

Dean shook as long-suppressed sobs wracked his body. Screw Lucifer, he thought. This was where it was always supposed to end up: Dean, alone, surrounded by his Baby and his regrets.

Then "Smoke on the Water" began playing, startling Dean out of his impromptu "feelings" session. Despite knowing that whoever it was couldn't see him, he wiped his eyes before answering the phone.

"Dean? What's going on?"

"Bobby?" Dean asked incredulously. "Bobby, it's so good to hear your voice!"

"I asked you a question, ya idjit. There's nothing to get all touchy-feely about! Now what's going on? Cas just showed up talking about Sam being alive but not complete and you being unstable and something I couldn't quite understand about a demon wearing a wig and a man in green."

"Demon? What demon?" Dean asked immediately.

"Hell if I know, boy. Something about an amputee, I think."

"Dammit!" Dean yelled, hitting the steering wheel. "Captain Hook's a frickin demon!"

There was a pause on the line.

"Bobby? You still there?" Dean asked.

"I'm going to ask you one more time, son. What. The living hell. Is going on?" Bobby asked, slowly and deliberately.

Dean took a deep breath. "It's kind of a long story, Bobby. You sure you want to hear it?"

Dean heard the older man heave an exaggerated sigh. "Would I have asked you if I didn't, boy? Get talking!"

Dean nodded. "Okay, so Lisa and I broke up."

"Stop right there," Bobby cut in. "Who dumped who? Because I swear to everything that's holy, if you ran out on that woman and your son, I will tear you a new one!"

Dean winced, knowing it was not an empty threat, and settled for humiliation over excruciating pain. "She broke it off, Bobby. We were at Disneyworld, and we had a fight, and she grabbed Ben and told me not to follow her."

"Disneyworld?" Bobby interjected again.

"Dammit, Bobby, do you want to hear the story or do you want to criticize my life choices?" Dean exclaimed.

Bobby huffed. "Well, sheesh! I didn't realize it was that time of the month again, little lady. You know how it works: you tell the whole story, and I tell you how stupid you're being. Now get talking!"

Dean rolled his eyes. "Yes, Disneyworld. Ben wanted to go, and I never got to take Sam, so I thought I'd do something right, try to make up for it, you know? But apparently even Disney magic isn't enough to counteract my inherent bad luck. So Peter Pan saw her leave me, and he came over and talked to me for a while and I ate some pie, and he offered me a job."

"Slow down, Dean, you aren't making any sense. The hell do you mean, 'Peter Pan came over'?"

"Disneyworld," Dean reiterated. "They have these people dress up as characters and take pictures with kids and stuff. I should probably get some more information on that, come to think of," he mentioned without thinking.

"Why? You're single now, so you want to know how available the nearest mermaid is?" Bobby asked sarcastically.

"Um, actually, not exactly. The job Peter Pan offered me was, uh, playing Captain Hook. He said I could help people, and you know I'm a sucker for people being saved," Dean rushed through, hoping that Bobby didn't need him to repeat that. Based on the silence from the other end, he guessed that the message got across loud and clear. "So after I signed the paper work, I was walking around a little bit, and I saw Sammy. He was with another family of hunters, and when he saw me, he didn't seem surprised or moved or anything. He said we could catch up later because they were hunting, and that was it. So I called Cas," Dean kept going until Bobby interrupted again.

"Hold up, hold up. Did you say your brother walked right past you, after having been away for months, and there wasn't any incredibly embarrassing brotherly scene that fit in perfectly at the 'happiest place on earth'?"

Dean nodded.

"Did you just nod, you idjit? You know I can't see you, boy!"

"Well, you seem to have gotten the idea alright regardless," Dean ventured to mention.

"Don't you get smart with me, boy! You said you called Cas?"

"Yeah, and he came. I yelled at him, he listened, we teleported to Lisa's, and then he left. Now I'm driving Baby back to Disneyworld where there's apparently a demon that I just got fired. Did I mention my inherently bad luck?" Dean asked drily.

"You watch your back, boy, ya hear?" Bobby warned. Dean agreed, and Bobby continued. "What did Cas say about Sam?"

"He said it's all his fault because he bit off more than he could chew, and then he pulled out puppy eyes, and I told him we'd figure something out," Dean answered in a carefully regulated monotone.

It wasn't lost on Bobby. "Gone a little soft where a certain angel is involved, have you?"

"What?" Dean answered, shocked. "What are you talking about?"

"If anyone else had laid a finger on Sam and he'd gotten hurt in the process, no amount of puppy eyes could have saved them from incineration," Bobby reminded him.

"But this is Cas," Dean answered, knowing he was just making it worse. "It's not his fault, and he was just trying to make it better for me. He was really sorry, Bobby. You should have seen him. I didn't know angels could get so upset!"

Bobby snorted, but refused to tell Dean why. If the idjit had to be blind as a bat, then there was nothing an old drunk could do to change that.

"I'll work on the Sam issue from here, okay? You take care of that demon and learn your lines. Capice?"

Dean rolled his eyes.

"Don't you roll your eyes at me, boy! It's not my fault you make god-awful career choices!"

Dean chuckled and hung up the phone. He took a deep breath. "I should have done that a long time ago, Baby," he told the Impala, starting her up again. "Let's find somewhere to get some rest and some food, huh?"

*****SPN*****

"Sam, you have to admit that this case is-"

"A complete waste of time because everyone here is a complete moron who thinks they can protect their children from demonic forces or just a regular asshole who doesn't care that lives are at stake?" Sam finished the older man's sentence smoothly.

Samuel Campbell looked at his grandson critically. "Do you care that lives are at stake, Sam?"

"Not in the slightest. All I 'care' about," he answered, using air quotes that would make Cas proud, "is putting another black-eye son of a bitch in the ground."

The Campbell patriarch nodded slowly. "I'm not entirely sure we're on the same page," he admitted.

"What, because you believe some bullshit theory that 'demons are humans too'? Because that's not real life. I don't care if you are my grandfather, neither of us are supposed to be here, so what does it matter what we do? They're twisted and perverted, and the only sense of satisfaction I get is from watching them burn. You should feel the same way."

"Don't tell me how to feel," Campbell warned, but Sam ignored him.

"Unless you're going to tell me that it actually makes you feel better to 'rescue' a human being. I mean, they're going to die anyway. They might as well do it before they have to deal with PTSD and years of suffering," Sam pointed out bluntly.

Campbell dropped his head into his hands. "Can we not do this right now?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, does the reality of the situation make you feel uncomfortable? Because if so, then maybe this isn't the life for you, and you should go back to the hell you came from. Everyone knows that we'd be better off without you, anyway. Your methods are outdated, and you show way too much mercy. You're not a hunter anymore, Grand pops. You might as well retire."

Samuel Campbell raised himself to his full height. "I have put up with a lot from you ever since I found you, Sam, but there are some lines that you do not cross. Monsters are monsters, son, and you kill them now the same way we did when your mom was just a baby. It's simple enough. You find the evil, and you kill it. Now you may be family, son, but if I start to sense a bit of evil from whatever you are, don't think for a minute that you're exempt from that rule. I'm not your pansy ass brother; I will put you back in hell, so you show me the respect I'm due."

"Yeah, well, on that note, I'm going to go get a drink and bang some hot chick. Let me know how much fun you have doing your whole 'respectable' thing back here, and we'll compare notes and see who really knows what they're talking about, huh?"

Campbell watched the door close behind his youngest grandson with a sigh before turning back to his research. The hunt for the demon in Disneyworld was getting them nowhere. People saw "strange things" all the time, lights flickering announced every villain, it seemed, and the constant traffic swept away any possible sulfuric traces. He was starting to wonder if having Sam's brother as an extra pair of eyes would help, but after whatever Sam was had brushed Dean off so abruptly, there was no way Dean would even consider meeting the rest of his family, much less working with them. In fact, Samuel realized, getting up to check on his security measures, the most likely scenario was Dean chasing them down, killing them for brainwashing his brother, and kidnapping Sam, who was a ticking time bomb from all Samuel could tell.

He sighed. Family always complicated things.

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Hailee