When they came back to Sam and Ruby's house, the dog was overly excited to see Dean's catch. "Hey! Enough!" Sam called out as the hound encircled Dean, panting hard as his tail wagged with anticipation.

"Sorry, buddy," said Dean. He held the fish high and away from the Dog's face. "This one ain't for you."

"Well, we usually give him the insides," Sam explained. "The ones with no bones, at least."

"Yeah, okay. Sure."

"There's a place to prepare meat out back. Do you want me to show you?"

"Sounds good."

Sam went ahead and rounded the house, but Cas, standing stiffly, tugged on Dean's arm and whispered, "Tell him, please."

"Right, right, I will," Dean muttered, nodding quickly. "Go ahead and take the little one inside."

Cas made a sound of approval and disappeared to seek out Ruby and her kids. Dean, fish in hand, followed Sam to the space around the back. They had a few stone slabs and a work area set up for cutting and prepping meat. Sam pointed and Dean put the fish down on one of the tables. He was given a knife and began to work.

"Can I help?" asked Sam.

"Uhh, yeah," Dean said slowly. He had whacked off the head of the fish and was working to get the spine out. "You can take this half, and also you can listen to what I have to tell you."

"What?" Sam asked, straightening up. His eyes widened in response to being surprised. He carefully took the other half of the fish and looked at Dean cautiously.

"I, uh," Dean began, completely unsure of how to go about this, "Gotta tell you something. Important. 'Bout you and me."

"We're…related, aren't we?"

Dean froze and nearly dropped the knife. He felt a tingle down his spine. Should he laugh or be intimidated?

"Is that what you're going to tell me?" Sam asked, relatively calmly. "We're related?"

"You knew?" Dean asked in a quiet voice, looking at the other man now. He stared into his hazel eyes with disbelief. "Did King Ash tell you?"

"Um, no," said Sam with a soft laugh. "I had a feeling, that's all. When Cas first showed up I considered how strange it was that the first human to wander into Arkhmoor since my mother happened to enter and lay just one egg. Again, like my mother. That really piqued my curiosity and I wondered about it the entire time after Cas left. I thought that maybe he and I were related, but he had also mentioned that his missing mate was a hunter. That is was really got me interested. His mate was a hunter and he had just one egg. In Arkhmoor.

"Cas had a perilous journey ahead of him and I was certain he wouldn't make it. But apparently he did. He found his mate, which that alone is miraculous, but then he comes back to the fairy's forest and has another egg to lay! I knew that you and I shared something somewhere…do you know the relation?"

Dean, speechless, chuckle out of his nose, wet his lips and took a stronger stance on the ground. Bracing himself, he muttered, "You're my brother."

"Brother? Ha…ha!..." Sam laughed with surprise. His little gasps popped out of his open mouth, but his eyes soon filled with tears. "My brother. You're my brother! My brother! I have family!"

"Yeah," said Dean, "We are brothers…and our mom? Dad? They were the king and queen of Lawrence."

"What?! The big city?!"

"Yeah."

"S-so…oh, my Chuck. Then you're the…the ki—the…the ki—"

"The rightful king of Lawrence, yeah."

Dean was used to explaining his theoretical lineage by now, and the entire revelation was decently plain to him. He could act casual about it even though Sam was unable to contain his emotions. The taller, younger man had tears running down his cheeks and his hands trembled.

"Th-that's amazing!" Sam gasped. "Then…then why are you here? Shouldn't you be in Lawrence? Shouldn't you be king?"

Dean pressed his lips together. Though he acted more composed than his brother, his insides were knotting up with responsibility.

"It's complicated," he muttered, "But for now, I gotta go on my 'valiant quest' to slay Lord Azazel."

"Then I'm coming with you, without a doubt," Sam stated proudly. He nodded and sniffed. "You're my older brother and you're going on this adventure, and I am going to be by your side."

"I…I dunno, Sam. Let me think about it."

"Well, okay." Sam looked down and chuckled softly. "I still can't believe it. Can't believe you're my brother."

With the initial shock and excitement of the secret revealed passing, the brothers went back to preparing the fish. Dean pulled a couple of extra bones out of the meat and wiped them off on the table, smiling to himself. Sam nudged him with his elbow. "What's Lawrence like?"

"UH. Big? Different? Really different."

"How so?" asked Sam.

"For starters, they don't poop in the ground."

"Wha?"

"They don't poop in the ground. Instead there's these rooms with boxes that have holes you sit on. You shit and piss in them and the holes carry them away to the river."

"Seriously? That's incredible!"

"Yeah, you bathe in there, too. And it all goes out the same place. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess."

"It must be clean!"

"It is, actually. But the food? Food is fuckin' weird!"

Sam chuckled. "How?"

"It's like Metatron said; you take gold and change it into little round things, then you use the round things to exchange for food."

"Interesting."

"People do your cooking for you."

"Huh!" Sam was impressed. "It sounds—nice!"

"I dunno if nice is the best word. Different. Weird. Awkward."

"Did they cook well?"

Dean shrugged. "The food we had was pretty good, yeah. I didn't know what half of it was, but it was okay. I just prefer to catch my own."

Sam hummed to himself as he pushed some entrails into a scrap bucket. His mind was buzzing with ideas of the city. "Does everyone live like that?"

"They said that if you have a house there, you can cook on your own. But you gotta buy your meat! Buy soap, buy tools—buy everything!"

"But then you wouldn't have to make it or catch it. Imagine what else you could get done if you weren't busy making tools all day! I have to see this place. I might like it! I bet Ruby would, too. Were they fairies there?"

"No, seemed pretty unheard of. They had the big castle, though. Anything could be in there. They had this library place."

"A what?"

"A library. It's this building where they keep these book things in it."

"Book things, huh?" Sam asked, turning his head to look at Dean briefly.

"Books are like," Dean winced as he struggled to find the words, "A big stack of square leaves all tied together. People take dark liquid and put lines into them. The lines mean words."

Sam tried to fathom what Dean was explaining. His excitement was growing by the second! "Lines mean words?" He asked slowly, making sure he had heard Dean correctly.

"Yeah, yeah, like uhh…hm…" Dean looked around the table. "Oh, here."

He took a few small fish bones and arranged them on the surface in the shape of the W. Though he didn't know the meaning, it was a letter he had seen several times. Sam watched curiously. He had stopped prepping the fish all together.

"This makes a sound," said Dean. "If you look at it, you know that it makes a certain sound."

"This creates a noise?"

"Uh, no, like, you know that you can talk the noise it makes."

"Hmm…okay."

"Then you can take different ones and line 'em up, then they make words. You could take the right ones, line them up and you would know they mean 'Sam.' If you owned something, you would write those lines on it and anybody who could read them would know that it was yours, 'cause that group of line means 'Sam.'"

"That's amazing!" Sam suddenly gasped. "Incredible! They have leaves that had groups of lines on them? And they mean things?"

"Yep," Dean said with a nod. "They've got people that do it. The history of the city is put into lines and then into books. People read them and know about the history."

"I have no idea!" Sam said. "These lines…books? That's life changing, Dean! Now I have to see the city. I must learn how to do this!"

"It was a little weird," admitted Dean.

"Weird?! It's incredible! You could, theoretically, if Iunderstand this right—you could arrange lines that tell stories! You could tell the story of how we found out we were brothers! Then anybody who knew how to read lines could take that, er, bo-ook, and know the story, just as if someone had told it to them! But nobody did."

Dean had finished prepping the fish and was cutting the good meat into cubes, ready to be cooked. Sam was almost at the same point but his rambling had stalled his work.

"I guess so," Dean said flatly. "I didn't think it was all that cool. I was happier—"

He suddenly stopped talking. Sam leaned over to him. "What?"

Dean cleared his throat and kept slicing up the fish. He muttered, "I was happier in the Valley."

"That's where Cas came from, right?"

"Uh huh."

They said nothing more on the subject and took the good meat inside to be cooked. Ruby had a cauldron over the fireplace that was ready for the fish. Cas sat on a chair with the baby in his arms. He smiled when he saw Dean return, noticing Sam's excitement.

"Ruby!" Sam shouted happily. His toddlers ran over to him. "Wait until you hear what Dean told me!"

Dean got to hear his entire story retold now. He didn't mind. In fact, he liked to hear Sam be so excited. He was his brother, after all. Cas was happy, too. Dean took the baby for a bit and held him in his arms while they listened.

"And these books," Sam continued, "They have lines. And the lines mean words! The words can be said when you look at them."

"You want to go to the city, don't you?" Ruby chuckled. One of the boys was trying to climb up her leg.

"I do! I really do. And I think you'd like it, too."

"Hah. Maybe."

Dean had to interrupt them here. "Hold on," he said. "You don't want to go anywhere until I finish my business with Lord Azazel. The city might not be safe right now."

Sam's smile quickly faded. "Right," he said, then turned to Ruby. "Dean's going to kill the dark lord and I'm going with him."

The fairy was not happy about that. "What?!" She threw the spoon she had been stirring their stew with onto the ground. "You're leaving?! You're going over there?! That's too dangerous! Sam! I need you here!"

Sam went to Ruby's side and put his arms around her. He looked quite sincere. "No, you have to understand," he said.

Cas and Dean looked at each other and gave a silent nod that they should give them space to talk it out, so they left. They took their baby out front. Sam's dog followed them and watched from a distance.

"Is Sam really going with you?" Cas asked, closing the front door behind him. Sam and Ruby couldn't be heard from the outdoors.

"I told him I would think about it," said Dean. He still had the baby boy in his arms, who was looking up at him with big, slate-blue eyes.

"What do you think?"

"I still have time," Dean continued, "But I think I'll let him. I don't want him to, but he does. And I can't deny him what he thinks is right. If I had the chance to, I wouldn't have let you leave the Valley and go on by yourself to find me. But it was the right thing to do, after all." He smiled at Cas weakly.

"Noble, Dean. That's quite noble of you."

Dean laughed. "Shit, if I'm king…I gotta get used to making decisions—and quickly."

"Indeed."

"Here."

Dean handed the infant back to Cas, who took him with ease. Though his stomach was getting bigger and bigger, the baby could still fit in his arms comfortably. Dean touched Cas' side. "Just waiting on the fairies to finish their metal working," he said, "Then we'll be gone."