-Summary: It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU

-Chapter Warnings: Now we're really getting started. Boys are back on the road, the Apocalypse is rearing, Dean-o's back to swearing, and Sam is not so stupid.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The Road So Far (this Time Around)

Chapter 9

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Sam threw the last of their bags in the trunk before he slid into the passenger seat of the Impala and closed the door. Dean was already settled in the driver's seat, the engine purring as she warmed up and fought off the incoming chill of the northeastern November weather. It wasn't cold yet, not for Kansas born boys who had experienced winter in almost every state, but it was getting down there.

He held his hands in front of the heater more out of pleasure than necessity. It was unusual for Dean to not have put the car in gear and got a move on, half the time before Sam even got the door fully closed. At least, that's how it had been before he left for Stanford. Who knew with this new Dean.

"Are we waiting on something?" the younger Winchester asked mostly in jest, but when Dean didn't immediately snark back, he glanced to the driver's side with a more serious expression.

"What do you wanna do, Sammy?"

The question, which seemed a complete non-sequitur to everything that had happened in the last five days, had Sam truly baffled. "With what? And it's Sam."

Dean shrugged. "Your life."

The brunette gave a shake of his head, still not following. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about what you want to do, Sam. Do you want to go back to school? Become a lawyer? Dress in green tights and be a literal walking ad for the Jolly Green Giant! Whatever you want; you name it, and I'll get you there."

Brown eyes widened, but his heavy, sasquatch brow furled over them quickly. "Dean, I can't do any of those things," and honestly the last one didn't deserve recognition, "Yellow Eyes said I had to keep hunting. I don't have a clue why or what the hell he wants me for, but if it's the only way to keep Jess safe, then that's what I'm going to do. So…"

He gestured to the windshield and the world beyond in part question and part impatience.

His brother watched him with soft eyes. Softer than he'd seen them in a long time. "Is that what you want? Because if it isn't – if you want to go back to school, we'll figure out a way."

"Dean…." Sam dropped his shoulders and with it came the weight and exhaustion he'd been valiantly hiding. "I don't know what I want. I don't know anything anymore."

It was the truth. He had never wanted to be a hunter, had done everything he could to escape the life. And for a while, he had been happy. Really happy. But that was gone now, and returning to college, to the pursuit of law and a white picket fence with a pretty wife and two point five kids and an expensive car….it seemed cheap. Fake. Hollow as the aching pit in his chest.

He raised his head, jaw clenched but chin firm. "I know I want to keep Jess safe. I need to keep her safe. If hunting is the requirement, then let's go. Let's find a hunt."

"Alright then."

Despite knowing that was the answer the kid would give, Dean had to ask. He had promised to change things this time around, and that meant giving Sam the choice. He wished he could have kept him out of it completely, but Dean was starting to realize that changing the future would not be as simple as deciding who participated in it or not. Destiny wasn't going to be any easier to derail this time around, even if they were tearing up the tracks five years earlier.

So he put the car into gear and turned towards the highway. As they left Boston behind them, he told his brother about a nice little Wendigo hunt he'd caught wind of in Colorado that was calling the Winchester name.

-o-o-o-

"The thing that killed mom was a demon."

Dean looked over at Sam, who had been quiet for last hour or so. The older Winchester wasn't quite sure how to respond to that, or where it was coming from. They'd known Yellow Eyes was a demon for almost a week now – it had been pretty obvious since Brady. Even so, Dean suddenly got the impression he was walking into a mine field.

"Uh….yeah."

"Did you know?" Sam was angry, already rearing up for the answer he most suspected. "Did Dad know?"

Dean's hands tightened on the steering wheel as he thought of all the things John Winchester had kept from his sons. Azazel, his pursuit of the bastard, the truth about Sammy, the deal for Dean's life.

The last words he ever said to his oldest son. A son he had raised to do one thing and one thing only: protect Sammy.

Had John Winchester known all along? Or at least suspected that it had never been about Mary?

If he'd had let his boys help instead of giving them the runaround, would things have gone differently? Dean didn't know, but he wasn't planning on finding out. He and Sam were keeping as far away from their father as they could this time around. At least until Dean worked the whole thing out and stopped what was coming.

"If he did, he kept it to himself."

Sam looked away and tense silence reigned. His anger was lessoning, replaced with confusion and hurt born from something he didn't yet understand. Because truth was, even with Dean keeping something from him – and he could tell it was more than just one thing – he was still his big brother. He was still the kid that had raised him, the man that had come and gotten him every time he'd been lost, and more often than not when he didn't want to be found.

His brother who had saved Jess. Who was still sitting next to him, standing by him, despite everything this week had laid bare.

"The thing we've spent our whole life hunting…and now it's after me?"

Dean didn't answer, and Sam could see the tension in his shoulders. He had an answer, but he didn't want to say it. Dean always looked like that any time Dad took him aside to have a private conversation. A talk that Sam almost always knew was about responsibility. Was about him.

"Mom died in your nursery, Sammy." When his brother spoke, it was hesitant, and he didn't take his eyes off the road. He was trying to soften a blow that couldn't be softened. "I think it was always after you."

Sam grew a few shades pallor as realization hit him like a bucket of lead in his stomach. He had never- it had never- there was no reason before now to think that Yellow Eyes had killed their mom for any other reason than that was just what monsters did.

But now, now Sam couldn't breathe.

"It's my fault she died."

"No!" Dean shook his head firmly, voice absolute. He finally looked at his brother, his eyes fierce. "That's not what I said."

"It doesn't matter what you said, Dean! It is what it is. Mom died because I have a demon after me. Jess almost died because of me." Sam's eyes grew panicked and pained as realization only grew. "It's not going to stop. You, and Dad-"

"Can take care of ourselves."

Sam's hands were clenched against his thighs, and he hardly looked comforted by the thought. The car was silent outside of his heavy breathing and the Metallica track still filtering out of the speakers. When he spoke, there was panic in his voice that Dean rarely heard. A panic fueled entirely by the number of people Sam cared about that were going to fall into the path of this nightmare.

"What does it want from me?"

His older brother didn't know how to answer, so he didn't say anything at all.

-o-o-o-

They stopped for gas and road snacks outside of Scranton ("They don't serve salads at the Gas'N'Sip, you leaf-eating freak. Eat like a normal person!"). Dean wasn't thinking when he tossed Sam the keys over the hood as they filled up.

His younger brother stared at them, and then him, and then back at the keys. He finally settled an astonished look on Dean. "You're letting me drive?"

The man from the future blinked, realizing that in 2005 it was not a thing he'd do lightly. Even in 2016 it wasn't something he did 'lightly,' per se. He never liked anyone other than him behind Baby's wheel. But he trusted Sam with her.

When he thought about it, he recalled the first time he'd let the kid drive her, other than the occasional lesson when he was younger and the even rarer breakdown following a bout of puppy dog eyes before Stanford. He'd done it because the kid had been damn heartbroken over Jess and Dean needed to do something – anything – to get that cold, expressionless look off his face. Showing Sammy he trusted him to drive her had been it.

He supposed this time around wouldn't be all that different.

"Why not?" He smirked as his brother grinned and ran to the driver's side of the car like a friggin teacher's pet on the first day of school.

Nerd.

-o-o-o-

The second leg of their drive had passed mainly in silence, with the occasional banter started mostly by the older hunter in an effort to keep the younger from sinking too deep into dark thoughts. It was infinitely easier this time around. But now Sam was glancing sidelong at him, and Dean knew he wasn't going to enjoy the coming conversation. "That gun…

"The Colt?"

"How did you know about it? Was it a dream?"

"Nah." For once, Dean was ready. He had his story straight. He'd had almost fifty hours of flying and driving to figure out how to cover his ass this time. And if he felt bad lying to his brother, he reminded himself what the inside of a psychiatric hospital looked like. Because he'd been there, done that, and he was not eager to see where Sam placed time travel on the sanity scale.

"Dad told me. Daniel Elkins – a hunter buddy – had it. He used to be a mentor of sorts for dad. They had a falling out because he always thought Elkins had the gun, but never came clean about it."

"And dad wanted it because it can kill demons."

"Bingo."

"But how'd you know Elkins had it?"

Dean shrugged a shoulder. "Hunch. Dad was pretty sure. The man's never wrong."

He'd even rehearsed that line again and again until he almost believed it like 2005 Dean would have believed it.

Sam was quiet for a moment, giving his brother the stink eye that he was starting to catalogue as Bitchface #12 ("What is going on with you?" which was really "I know you're lying to me, future boy" without proper context).

"Dad never struck me as the sharing type."

Ha! Sammy thought he could trip him up, but Dean was on his game today. Now he had a list, and this time he was armed with forethought. Besides. It wasn't really lying. Dad had told them, just in another life.

"Beer and a bad hunt, Sammy." He grinned at his brother. "Goes a long way with the old man."

"It's Sam."

"Right."

The car fell silent again.

"How'd you get it from him?" Sam was staring out the windshield with a furled brow. Kid was gonna get wrinkles if he kept that up (which Dean knew he wouldn't, at least not in the next ten years, but seriously, Sasquatch, lighten up.) "If it really can kill anything, that's a powerful weapon."

The younger hunter's words trailed off as realization dawned across his face. He turned his most scandalized bitchface (#10, which was basically just "Dean!") on his brother, staring at him. "What did you do?"

"Come on, Sam," he balked, "it's not like I went Liam Neeson on some old hunter with my 'very particular set of skills.'" Sam raised an eyebrow, so he rolled his eyes. "I talked to him."

And he actually had. Sure, there was a threat or two mixed in with the rest of the words, but truth was he'd talked that gun out of Elkin's safe for the second time.

"Right."

"It's true! Bitch."

"Jerk. How'd you know about Crowley?" Sam didn't miss a beat, though he went for a surprisingly nonchalant tone this time as he pulled out his phone and started typing away.

Dean might not know it, but Sam wasn't missing a thing and he'd started a list of his own. Most recently added was the reference to a relatively low-key actor for Dean's usual choice of TV and movie watching. Schindler's List wasn't exactly the older Winchester's genre of choice when it came to pay-per-view.

There was that stint as a Jedi, but the nerd in Sam didn't talk about Episode I.

The limited wifi he got on his phone was telling him Neeson had starred in that Batman reboot that came out last summer. That wasn't only up Dean's alley, it pretty much encompassed the whole damn block, so it was enough to garner a movie reference. Sam hadn't seen it, so he couldn't say one way or the other.

Maybe the drama actor was breaking into action. Weirder things had happened.

He tucked his phone back in his jacket pocket. "King of the Crossroad's a pretty heavy hitter to just summon out of the blue."

Dean winced. Because now he was going to straight up lie, and he was going to do it using the Sam-given justification he really wasn't comfortable abusing.

"That was a dream. Not a good one either, the smarmy bastard."

Brown eyes turned to him, slightly wide. He hadn't been expecting an honest answer, considering most of what came out of Dean's mouth these days was utter crap and they both knew it.

"Really?" He straightened up in the passenger seat. "What was it like? The ones with…." He cut off, looking away from those dreams that still taunted him nightly. "The ones I had back at Stanford. They were…really vivid. They felt completely real, but I had a hell of a headache each time."

Dean nodded, having expected that. "Mine aren't vivid. They play out more like….step by step instructions. Hunting by numbers, heh. Don't get a headache, though."

His brother was watching him like a hawk: gullible puppy dog eyes but a suspicious pair of eyebrows. Dean hoped he was buying it. He'd worked his ass off pre-planning this. And he was really more of the 'shoot first, shoot last, deal with it once everyone was dead' kinda guy.

He thought he was pulling a pretty good act. It sounded natural, or at least it had when he'd rehearsed it over and over again on his way back from Manning.

The problem with all of this, and which had taken damn near the entire drive to talk himself into, was that he had been trying to lie less to Sammy. Ever since the Gadreel ordeal, he'd promised no more lies, no matter what. He'd even managed to be somewhat forthright about the mark and his connection with Amara.

He glanced at Sam, who was watching him with a curious frown. Of course, this wasn't the brother he'd lied to (and been lied to) over and over again for almost a decade of cyclical cause and effect. This was before all that. And, if he could do what he was thinking about doing, maybe those lies would never be necessary in the first place.

Besides, desperate times and all that. You'd think coming from the future would qualify as a special exception.

"Does your chest hurt?"

"Huh?" The older hunter took his eyes off the road long enough to give his brother a confused look.

"You rub at it at a lot."

"No, I don't."

His brother huffed that particular scoff-slash-laugh that was both concern and disbelief. "Dude, you're doing it right now."

Dean looked down to find his hand absently kneading a small, repetitive pattern across his sternum. He frowned, simultaneously removing his hand as if burned, as well as hesitating like it physically hurt to pull away. Despite his brain demanding he rest his arm along the window, the hunter's fingers twitched to return to the warmth in his chest and he ended up fisting his fingers against the edge of the glass as he gritted his teeth.

Okay, maybe Sam had a point.

"Sometimes," he fessed up, though he'd never connected the ache in his chest with his 'dreams.' Probably because he wasn't freaking having psychic dreams to begin with.

It was just…. He wasn't used to the warmth. For the better half of a decade, Dean had walked around with a black hole in his chest, ever sucking, ever hungry, ever unfulfilled. He'd dealt with it and, like any chronic pain, it eventually regulated to something duller, to something that became normal.

Now he had a supernova in his chest.

That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it damn near felt like it to him. He was whole and he was happy. His brother had just broken up with the love of his life, was forcibly dragged back into hunting, and the apocalypse was still chugging ahead right on schedule. But Dean was happy. Happier than he'd been since Sam had run off to Stanford, almost fifteen years ago for him.

He'd forgotten what it was like to not be broken, in more ways than one.

The part of him that remembered, the part of him that was still a shattered, ruined soul just disguised in a new, fresh casing, didn't want to be an inch away from that happiness. It needed the contact, the assurance. To feel that warmth and wholeness and goodness and know that it was still there. That it wasn't going anywhere. That it was his, and it was him, and it always would be this time around.

His hand twitched against the window.

Sam accepted his bare-bones admission and didn't push.

-o-o-o-

"I don't know, Bobby." He shifted to push the cell phone against his ear with his shoulder as he pulled back the motel curtains and glanced at the empty parking lot. "It's like he's…older. Tired and bitter and trying to hide it. It's not like him."

Dean was on a food run while Sam started researching the missing hikers in Blackwater Ridge. His brother had cited the need for a ride with the windows down and the music up and no bitching co-pilot. Sam used the opportunity to have an over-due chat with Bobby.

They'd called him briefly outside of Boston to fill him in on the Moores, as well as give someone a heads-up that they were headed to Colorado on a hunt. He'd been damn surprised to hear Sam's continued hunting was a stipulation of the demon's deal (and boy, did the two boys catch hell for that: 'You summoned WHAT? You made a DEAL? You goddamn idjits!'). So Bobby had immediately hit the books and the national weather read outs with little to show for it, but a promise to keep digging. Hell was up to something, that was for sure, and someone had to do the legwork to figure out what.

"Four years is a long time, Sam. People change."

The hunter smiled bitterly down at the carpet as he let the curtains go. Like he hadn't thought of that a hundred times. "Some people, maybe: not Dean. Besides, the night he grabbed me from Stanford he was the same snarky ass I remember. And even if that was some weird exception, you've seen him over the last four years. Does he seem like Dean to you?"

He could picture Bobby pulling off his ball cap and scratching at his head. The accompanying sigh confirmed it. "Can't say he does," he huffed down the line. "You sure it's him?"

Sam laughed, but there was little humor in it. "I tried every test I know, Bobby. And he let me. Even recommended a few." Bobby scoffed and Sam chuckled. Yup, that sounded like Dean, despite everything. "I'm not saying it's not him, but either he's something we've never seen before or…"

"Or he's the real Dean."

Sam was quiet as he thought about which of those options he'd actually prefer. It should be an easy choice. If this wasn't Dean, than either his brother was tied and holed up somewhere only his imposter knew or he was dead. There was no way all of this could go down without his brother catching wind of someone impersonating him, not to mention all the demonic activity.

So, it should be an easy choice. But there was a tension to this Dean, a weight and responsibility that went beyond anything Sam had ever seen in his brother's eyes. If this really was him, then what the hell happened that night between Stanford and Jericho to change his brother so much? Dean always blamed himself for everything, always carried the weight of the job and their family and particularly Sam's safety. But this was a whole new level. It was like he was carrying the weight of the entire planet around, and refusing to share any of the load.

"He's different, Bobby. Sometimes he acts like his old self, and sometimes…It's like he's seen the end of the world."

Sam said it half joking, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth the dread that had settled in the bottom of his stomach for a week now roiled around uncomfortably.

"Maybe he has." Bobby's words only confirmed what he was already thinking. "Or something like it. He has those visions of his, and we don't exactly work in a future-friendly industry, kid."

The younger Winchester ran a hand through his hair, frustration warring with guilt and worry, and all of it gnawing at his gut. "Then why hasn't he told us, Bobby? If he's seen something bad and it's coming our way, we need to know."

"Hell, Sam, you know your brother. He's a damn martyr with a guilt complex taller than my house. If he's seen something and there ain't shit to be done…." Bobby trailed off with a sigh and sounded far more tired than his years. "He won't tell us. He'll fix it on his own, or die trying."

And that was it. That was exactly what had been eating at Sam but hadn't yet been put to words. He clenched his jaw, fingers threatening to break the plastic casing of his phone.

"Not this time. We make him to tell us. One way or another. I'm not letting some psychic vision dictate my future."

When Bobby didn't answer, which was an answer all itself, Sam straightened, mind made up and determination setting his shoulders straight and his spine rigid.

"I'm not letting Dean dictate it either."

-o-o-o-

Their first hunt together went pretty damn smooth, if you asked Dean. They even managed to save the asshole guide those kids hired. He'd kind of hoped he and Sam could get in and out of the woods before the sister-brother duo and their douchebag forest man decided on a rescue mission. Alas, they'd shown up the same damn day they had the first time around, something Dean couldn't recall in detail until he realized he was actually living it. Again.

Talk about Déjà vu. The Matrix had nothing on him.

The five of them walked out of the woods with the malnourished, traumatized brother on a stretcher between them. Among the rangers and the EMTs and a thankful family, Sam turned to him and freaking smiled. A job well done, four souls saved, two Wendigos burned straight to Purgatory, never to return.

"Maybe we should get some camping gear," Sam was saying as they entered the motel room, planning on collapsing on the crappy beds and thin blankets and sleeping like they hadn't slept in a week. Wendigos sucked. "Save money on hotels."

Dean fell face first on the bed, his answer muffled by the questionably stained pillow case (eh, he'd seen worse). He couldn't imagine voluntarily spending time out in the woods. Without internet, or coffee, or freaking TV. No thank you. He would take his motels with their questionable stains, crappy instant make, and never-working ice machines. And then they would go home and he could curl up happily in his room and appreciate four walls and a door more than he had in almost his whole adult.

"That's what the bunker's for, Sammy."

Shit.

"What?"

Shit, shit, shit.

Double. Friggin'. Crap. On. A. Friggin'. Cracker.

Now he ached for home. For his bedroom, and his weapon collection, and his war room, and his fully-stocked kitchen with actual home cooked food. His home that wasn't a home in this timeline. It was a sickening realization how much he missed it. The only home he'd ever had. A home that was locked up tighter than Fort Knox with a missing key that didn't exist at this current moment in time, and wouldn't until two thousand and fucking thirteen when it showed up with their paternal grandfather in tow.

Son of a bitch!

The only thing that kept him from rubbing at his sternum was his herculean-strength stubbornness. Well, that and he was currently lying on his chest with no plans of moving for the next nine hours.

"Sorry." He flopped his hand in the direction of his brother, praying the kid hadn't heard him right and that he could play off the whole whiney bitch nickname bit. "Sam."

"No, not that." The sasquatch titled his head to the side. "I mean, yeah that, but the other thing. What did you say?"

"I said shut your blasphemous mouth," he lied like his life depended on it, growling and lifting his head off the pillow to glare at his giant of a kid brother. "I'm riding the high of a successful hunt here, Sam. Don't ruin it with talk of freezing the family jewels off just to take a piss in the middle of the night. I'll keep my crap motel and it's equally crap indoor plumbing, thank you very much, you tree-hugging hippie."

Sam was watching him in amusement as he unpacked his bag and Dean declared his runaround a success. He collapsed back into the pillow with a sinfully delighted groan and set about achieving that goal of not moving for the next nine hours.

When his brother started snoring, Sam Winchester opened his laptop, pulled up a mislabeled document sent to himself from his phone, and wrote down 'bunker' next to 'Daniel Elkins' and 'Cass'.