Thank you so much Jenjoremy for fixing this up for me.

This weekend's chapter is coming out a day early as it's a special person's birthday. All send love to Ncsupnatfan. She's awesome and deserves all the good things. Happy Birthday hon xxx

Chapter Twenty-Two

When Dean woke, he was confused. He was lying on a bed with his cheek resting on a pillow and a blanket draped over him. He blinked and tried to clear his mind, but everything seemed vague, as if he had been sleeping a lifetime. The window was filled with light, and he wondered how long he'd been out.

When he sat up and looked around, he realized he wasn't in his own bedroom; he was in Sam's, and he was alone.

He rubbed a hand over his face and tried to feel his way though the confusion to his last memories. They came at him in a rush of understanding, and he groaned. Sam in the lake. The pen in his hand as he wrote the suicide note. Sam's pleading face as Dean pointed the gun at him, needing him to do it. Castiel taking the gun. Bobby's face, his anger. Sam's defeat as the gun was taken from him, as Dean's plan failed. Castiel's words: "I will not let you do this because of me."

Dean didn't even care that Castiel apparently knew who he was now. His mind was completely filled with Sam. It was supposed to be over. Sam was going to be free and Dean at peace, having finally given Sam what he needed. Now Dean had lost his mind, too. He was never going to be able to save Sam. There was no other reason for him to be seeing Bobby. The strain of everything that had happened to them had broken him at last. It was finally too much for him. They were both ruined now.

He knew he needed to find Sam, to make sure he was okay under what was Castiel's probably shoddy care. He stood and walked to the door. It was closed, and he was worried it was locked, but when he turned the handle it opened. He went into the hall and checked the other two bedrooms, but they were both empty. He carried on down the stairs and only then heard Castiel's voice. It wasn't the one he wanted and needed to hear, and it was saying words that were all wrong.

"Look at me, Sam. I need you to look and see me, please. Just–"

It cut off as Dean came down the stairs, and when Dean reached the first floor, he saw Castiel watching him guardedly. He definitely knew the truth. It was written all over his guilty face.

"I'm sorry, Dean," he said.

Dean looked past him to Sam. He was staring blankly into the empty fireplace. He seemed oblivious to Castiel's presence and Dean's arrival.

"It is Lucifer?" Dean asked, surprised that his voice was even.

"I don't think so. He has been like this since he woke up," Castiel said regretfully. "He never seemed to come back fully. I can't reach him."

"Why would you?" Dean asked, crossing the room and sitting down beside Sam. "He's not going to come back for you. He needs me."

Castiel nodded his agreement, not that Dean cared; his focus was on Sam.

"Sammy," he said, touching his arm. "Look at me, man. I'm here."

Sam blinked but that was the only change. The movement was a reflex and that was all.

"Sam?" Dean waited hopefully for a response and when there was none he picked up Sam's hand and dug his fingernail into the nailbed of Sam's index finger. Sam didn't shy away from the pain, pull his hand back or even flinch in reaction. He just sat unmoving. He was really gone. He'd given up. He wasn't the only one. Dean had given up everything, including his own mind.

With a shaky breath, he set Sam's hand back in his lap and turned to Castiel, his indifference to the angel becoming anger. "Are you happy now?"

"No!" Castiel said, sounding horrified. "I never wanted this."

"You do remember then, what you did to him?"

"I remember it all. I know what I did to you, to Sam, and to the world. I am so sorry."

Dean shook his head briskly. Castiel had no idea what it meant to be sorry. "You think that matters? Sam was sorry after Lilith, but you didn't give him an inch of forgiveness. You blamed him and you made sure he knew it. You called him the abomination. What you did was worse. Sam thought he was saving the world."

"So did I," Castiel interrupted.

"Maybe. But Sam didn't purposefully tear anyone apart to do it. You knew what you were doing when you ripped the wall down. You knew what it would do to him. You made a choice to hurt him. You were family. We would have done anything for you, but you ran off with a demon. You didn't learn from Sam's mistakes. You used them and the consequences to break him instead."

"I am so sorry."

Dean was growing angrier by the moment. Castiel said the word like it meant something. It was too late for apologies.

"Sorry means nothing. Look at him. See what you have done to him. He's gone now. I don't know if he's locked in there with Lucifer or if he's just given up completely, but either way he's not here with me." Dean shook his head bitterly. "How long have you known? How long have you been pretending? Lying to us again?"

Castiel looked unabashed. "Since the demon at the cabin. When I killed it, I remembered it all. It was suddenly there in my mind. I am so–"

Dean held up a hand to silence him. "It's just words, Castiel. Sam needs more than words."

"I have been trying. I have tried to bring him back so many times. He's just not there to me. There is nothing I can do for him anymore."

"I know," Dean said. "I knew that before. That's why I took the gun into his room. I was going to put us both out of our misery. You ruined that, and now you have ruined me, too. I'm crazy now! Are you happy?"

"You're not crazy, Dean. You were desperate. You could see no other choice, and you made a mistake. But it didn't work. You are both still alive."

"I'm not talking about that. Making that decision was the only sane thing I had left to do. What makes me crazy is that I saw Bobby!" He spat the words as an accusation, to shock him and make him see what he had done.

"So did I," Castiel said. "Bobby was there."

"What?" Dean asked blankly.

He looked at a spot past Dean's shoulder. "Ask him yourself."

Dean turned so fast his neck cricked. His eyes came to rest on his surrogate father and he sucked in a breath. He was really there.

"Bobby?" he asked in a breathy voice.

"About damn time you woke up," he said irritably. "We've got things to talk about."

"But you're dead," Dean said stupidly.

"Yes, and you're not. I think you maybe owe Cas some thanks for that, don't you?"

Dean just stared at him. He wasn't thanking Castiel for anything. He was the one that had done this to them. Had it not been for Castiel, he would never have been driven to that point in the first place. Sam would never have been so completely broken. Instead of giving unneeded thanks, he focused on Bobby, seeing what he had missed before.

"You're a ghost."

"Glad you haven't lost all your intelligence without me," Bobby said, satisfied. "Yes, I'm a ghost."

"How?"

"I stuck around."

"But you can't have. We burned your bones."

Bobby rolled his eyes. "I gave my reaper the slip. I figure I'm tethered to something you've got. Might be a good idea to work out what it is before you go anywhere; I don't want to be left behind."

Dean shook his head as he tried to make sense of his thoughts. How could Bobby be here and he not realize before?

"Why would you do that?" he asked. "Stay? You were done, Bobby."

"I wasn't done. Unless you've been keeping the kill a secret, Dick Roman is still out there and he needs to be dealt with. My work wasn't over. Neither is yours, a fact you seem to have forgotten lately. I'm here now though, you've finally got your head out of the sand and are seeing me, so we can get to work. "

Dean looked from Bobby to Sam who was still staring blankly into the empty fireplace. "Work?"

"Yes, Dean," Bobby said with a tone of forced patience. "That saving the world thing you used to care about. Now that you can see me we can plan. Obviously you're working alone with Sam the way he is right now, but I think you can still pull off enough Winchester magic to take care of it. You need to get to Annie and the others and see what they've got."

"Sam," he said slowly, only the mention of his brother reaching him. "How long has he been seeing you, Bobby?"

Bobby looked exasperated. "Does it matter?"

"It does to me."

"Since the accident. After I died, I spent some time trapped in the veil until I got strong enough to leave it. I was dragged around after you and Sam for a while, and then Sam had his accident and when he woke up he could see me. I think whatever happened to his brain opened him up somehow. He could see me and hear me, but I couldn't get through to him enough to have him explain it to you. That knock on the head really scrambled his eggs."

Dean's eyebrows rose to his hairline. "That knock on the head was a traumatic brain injury, Bobby. He was ill, Bobby; he still is."

"He's something," Bobby said, casting Sam a quick glance and then fixing his intense gaze on Dean. "So you've got to pick up the slack."

Dean couldn't believe how Bobby was acting, how callous he was being about Sam's plight. It was like he didn't even care. Like he didn't see what Sam was going through… An idea occurred to Dean, a hateful, horrible idea, and he looked at his old friend. "Sam has been seeing you all this time," he said. "It was always you?"

"Yes," Bobby said. "What's that got to do with anything?"

Dean closed his eyes for a moment, pushing down his anger to ask the question he needed answered. "So you told him about Jess?"

Bobby blew out an exasperated breath and Dean heard the unspoken answer. Bobby had done this to Sam. He remembered the horror of that moment in Alfie's office, as Sam begged an unseen Bobby to stop the words that were tearing him apart. The agony in Sam's eyes as he learned the truth and the way he had shut down after.

"Why would you do that?" he asked in a dangerous voice.

Bobby looked angry. "Why? Why do you think, Dean? He needed to know. The pair of you were living in a bubble with those folks, and you needed to snap out of it. Sam was the reason you were there, so I did what I could to get through to him. He was stuck on Jess, so I told him the truth. He needed a push and I gave it."

Dean couldn't believe what he was hearing. Bobby would never have been so cruel before, or so stupid. Sam's situation wasn't something you could 'snap out of'. He was ill, injured. It was ridiculous, and the Bobby Dean knew would have known that before.

He looked at Castiel and saw his brow was creased with confusion as he looked at Bobby, as if he was trying to see something more that his outward appearance.

"You tried to 'snap him out' of a traumatic brain injury," Dean said. "Are you kidding me? He was ill, Bobby. He couldn't heal himself no matter what he was told or how hard he tried. It was a physical injury that needed time and care to heal. All you did was…" He shook his head as he drew what was supposed to be a calming breath. "You broke him! You stole the little peace he had from him. I was there. He begged you to stop, and you didn't. What were you thinking? Were you being intentionally cruel?"

"I was thinking there was work for him to do," Bobby said dismissively. "I thought he could handle it. If he knew what was at stake, what had happened, he would have at least told you to get on with what he couldn't. Sam wouldn't put himself before the rest of the world. I thought if he knew what was at stake, it would help. If he could have told you to go, this whole thing could have been taken care of. Dick Roman would have been killed already, and then you could have focused on helping Sam."

"He couldn't handle it," Dean said. "You ruined him."

"I see that now," Bobby said impatiently. "I thought he'd do better. It's not my fault he's like this."

"You did this to him!" Dean shouted. "You ruined him because of your own damn need for revenge."

"I did it for the world," Bobby argued.

"It's being taken care of! Annie and the others are working the problem. It's not down to us to save the world this time. It's our job to save each other!"

"There's more important things," Bobby said. "Annie is good, but she's not got what you and Sam have. Garth is an idiot, and Frank is one bad dinner away from taking off and leaving them to do it alone. They need you, Dean, and you know it."

That wasn't true though. It wasn't down to him and Sam. The others had more help than they'd ever had before. There was a lot of them working as a team. They would fix it while Dean did the right thing for Sam for a change. The Bobby he had known would have understood that. This ghost wasn't the real him. Bobby had loved Sam.

"Don't you care?" he asked. "Don't you see what you've done to Sam?"

"I'm not blind, Dean. I'm sorry for what's happened to him. But I can see past it to what needs to be done. Now, you need to take Sam back to those people you were living with and let them take care of him. You and I both know they'd be happy to do it. Then you and Cas can go team up with the others and save the damn world."

Dean shook his head. "I can't leave him, Bobby. He needs me."

Bobby threw up his hands. "Look at him, Dean. He doesn't need you. He needs professional help. You've been trying to take care of him since the wreck and look where it's led you. He's a wreck himself now, and the world is still ending. Put aside what you want and do what you should for a change. Sam's useless right now, I've accepted that he's going to have to take a knee, but you're not. They need you and you're going to do it for the rest of the world. Understand?"

"Useless…" How could Bobby be so cruel? He could see nothing past what he wanted and needed. He didn't see that Sam and Dean needed him, too. Bobby was a ghost; that was incredible. Dean wished he had peace, but the fact he was here should have been a comfort. They should have been working together to save Sam. Dean shouldn't have to be arguing for the right thing against the man that loved Sam like a son.

"Yes, useless," Bobby said. "I'm sorry for it. I regret my part in it, but I know what has to happen now. Sam isn't the priority anymore."

But he was. The one time Dean put the world before Sam, when he'd not stopped him taking the dive with Lucifer, it had been the worst mistake of his life. The world had been saved, but Sam had been ruined by it. Sam had to come first. The Leviathans were being taken care of. Sam needed Dean, now more than ever thanks to Bobby and what he had done. He couldn't handle this new Bobby on top of everything else. He should have stayed dead.

Dean stood up and walked to the fireplace. There was a set of fireplace tools on a rack there, and he picked up the iron poker.

Bobby laughed harshly. "You're not going to use that, Dean. I know you. And you know I'm right. Set Sam aside for once and focus on what matters."

Dean rushed at him and swung the poker though the air, swiping at Bobby and dispersing him like smoke. He disappeared and Dean lowered the poker, panting hard.

"Dean," Castiel said quietly.

Dean had no idea if he was going to attempt to comfort him or support Bobby's words, but he didn't want to hear it. He had suffered enough disappointment from his friends in the past twenty-four hours. He didn't want more.

He marched away without a word and up the stairs to the second floor. He went into his bedroom and grabbed his duffel from the dresser. He upended it on the bed and searched through the clothes. The hipflask was in a tangle of shirts, and he pulled it free. If Bobby was tethered to something of his, it was this. It had been a part of Bobby, which was why he had taken it in the first place. He had wanted to feel that his friend was close. Now he wanted him far away from himself and Sam.

He stamped down the stairs and through the living room, casting an order for Castiel to look after Sam over his shoulder as he passed.

When he got outside, he drew a breath of the fresh air and them marched across the yard to the dock. He walked to the very end and then stared out at the water that had almost stolen Sam from him. He drew back his arm and lobbed the flask into the water. It splashed as it landed and sank down, creating ripples that came all the way to the dock, lapping at the supports.

Bobby was gone. Dean had to take care of Sam now.

So… That was pretty brutal. This was not how Bobby was going to be in the outline. I think I was scared to make him this harsh as I love his character. It had to happen though. It was the only way it made sense in the end.

Until next time…

Clowns or Midgets xxx