-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: You guys ready? You better be. So very many things are about to happen! Prepare for swearing, some pretty angsty callbacks, and grenade launchers. (yep, you read that right)

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The Road So Far (This Time Around)

Chapter 19

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Dean woke to darkness.

Eternal, endless, empty.

Well duh, dumbass. Open your eyes.

He did, blinking several times before he realized that it was the same. Infinite black surrounded him, and it stretched on and on without change. There was solid ground beneath him. He tapped his fingertips against it as he stared up into nothingness. Smooth and hard, with no imperfections; an unnatural surface unlike anything he'd encountered before.

Surprisingly, his muscles didn't ache as he sat upwards and his bones didn't complain about the harsh solidity beneath him. Still, he could see nothing in the world but himself.

Dean wasn't much for the sciences, but he was pretty sure you needed light to see yourself. But there wasn't any, and there was his hand in front of his face, clear as day, sharply defined against a world of black. Look at that, there were even shadows stretched across the skin of his fingers. But if there was a source, he couldn't see it and it didn't touch anything else in this world.

Or there was nothing else to touch.

So this is it. He climbed to his feet and the shuffle of cloth and muted scuff of boots echoed around him. Amara won and this is life with the Darkness.

Dean was numbly alright with that. Which he shouldn't be, given he'd spent the last six months fighting with everything he was to change everything that would come.

Six months. The hunter looked around again, the first inklings of confusion and clarity warring with each other to fight through the numbness this blank world wrapped him in. I was in 2006 for six months.

Had it been a dream? Had all of it been a pleasant illusion crafted by Amara to keep him comfortable? It sounded like something she would do. He knew that joining her, dying, wouldn't hurt. That she would make it as painless as possible.

Only, it hadn't been painless, nor entirely pleasant. The last six months of struggling alone against Time and a plan written in stone had been, in a hell of a lot of ways, more painful than the first friggin' time around.

It was also a needlessly complicated illusion for Amara, who could have given him the bunker and Sam and Cas and he'd never have bothered waking up.

Alright, maybe Chuck then. 'Needlessly Complicated' was a friggin' tagline for his story-making paradigm.

If this wasn't some illusion suddenly cut short, he was out of ideas. It definitely wasn't heaven. He'd seen enough of that place to know. Same with Purgatory and Hell, loathe as he was to know those places equally well. So if he wasn't in the three big ones, this wasn't Amara, and God was probably involved…

Where the hell was he?

"Dean!"

The hunter spun at the new sound as it echoed around him. But there was no one. He couldn't tell if the blackness around him stretched ten feet or ten thousand.

"Dean, can you hear me?"

He turned more slowly this time. That was Sammy's voice calling out. If he was stuck in here too, maybe he'd have some answers. He was the smart one after all. "Sam?"

"Dean!"

The hunter turned and his brother was suddenly in front of him, despite having definitely not been there a second before. He stumbled back out of surprise, putting a couple feet between him and his kid brother. Jeez, what was this, a friggin' Fun House from Hell?

"What the hell, man?"

Sam was staring at him funny, brown eyes blown wide before they squinted together under a furled brow. His gaze dragged down slowly, then back up. Dean stared at him expectantly, but when his brother didn't answer he gave him an irritated look.

"Dude, my eyes are up here."

Sam immediately scoffed, rolling his eyes. Though he partially turned away, his gaze kept darting back to his brother, like he couldn't help it. Dean watched him through narrowed eyes, getting more than a little testy.

"What, I got something on my face?"

Sam dared hold his gaze a little longer before he finally turned away from his brother to survey the landscape, or lack thereof, surrounding them. "Let's just find dad."

Dean blinked. "Dad?"

The hesitancy in Sam's movements and the slight surprise on his face as he turned back to Dean triggered something in the older hunter. Dad. Dad was alive.

Dad was alive and….with the Darkness?

"We took the Dream Root, remember?" Sam was staring at him full-on again, but the intrigue was replaced with confused worry as his brother seemed to have forgotten what they were doing here. Or where here was at all. "We're in Dad's head; we need to find him."

The man from the future blinked and it all slid back into place. This was a dream. The last six months hadn't been a dream. But this was a dream.

He looked around at the emptiness and balked. "What the hell. This is nothing like the first time."

Sam blinked at him. "First time?"

"That we took Dream Root."

The worry and something else – something vaguely like Bitchface #12 – filtered across his brother's features. He was still staring.

"This is the first time, Dean."

The man from the future stood there, staring at his brother. "What?"

"I've never taken Dream Root before this." The younger Winchester watched him as his concern morphed into something tighter – more controlled. "When did you?"

The hunter slammed his mouth shut so hard there was an audible clack. What the hell. He looked away from his brother as he realized what he'd said, and that suddenly he was having a much harder time clamping down the thoughts filtering through his mind. Specifically the last time they'd taken the root and swam around Bobby's head. Something that hadn't happened yet, and wouldn't for another several years.

It was like he had no ability to stop thinking about it. Worse, he wanted to blurt all of it out. With a hand slapped over his mouth, he immediately slammed a wall around everything labeled 'future' in his mind.

Sam was still staring at him when he turned back. Yeah, maybe not his most subtle slip up, but crap all if he was gonna have another chat about this while inside John Winchester's head.

"Let's go find Dad. We're on a time limit, right?"

"And he's back," Sam muttered under his breath, but it echoed in the cavernous emptiness around them. Dean gave him a funny look, but the younger Winchester just gestured ahead with his hand, and the two started through the emptiness in search of their father.

-o-o-o-

They'd only been walking for about five minutes when Dean really started looking around. After having made it through Bobby's nightmare of a head the first time they took Dream Root, he'd expected something pretty different than what they were seeing. The old house, old hunts, Mom maybe. Nightmares, or even dreams. But not….nothing.

"What the hell," he finally groused, throwing his arms out. "Why is dad's head…empty?"

Sam cast a cursory glance at their surroundings, but seemed less bothered by them. "He's hiding. Look around: no clues, no visuals. Nothing to show where he was before he went to sleep."

Dean glanced around again before giving his brother a glance. Sam shrugged. "He knew he was being hunted, that something was looking for him."

The older hunter let out a whistle. "Damn. Talk about control. Gotta hand it to the man."

His brother huffed a laugh. "Yeah, but how are we going to find him?"

Dean narrowed his eyes, spinning in a slow circle again. "Well, he's gotta be in here somewhere, right?" He surveyed the darkness around them, trying to think like John.

Beside him, Sam shrugged. "It's his head, so I'd assume so."

His older brother paused, almost tripping over his own feet as he looked at Sam. "It's his head," he repeated. Sam nodded, though he wasn't sure what revelation his brother had stumbled over. "This is John Winchester's head."

Again, his brother nodded, but had no clue where Dean was going with it.

"Dad's a hunter," he emphasized. "Sammy, he's hunting this thing as sure as it's hunting him."

Sam's eyes grew wider with understanding and he glanced around again. Right, like their Dad would take hiding laying down.

"Okay…but how does that help us find him?" The taller man straightened as it clicked and he fell in sync with his brother's plan. He sucked in a breath as he answered his own question, "We don't. We get the Baku to come to us."

"And Dad will follow." Dean was grinning. "Now….how do we get Chinese Frankenstein to play ball?"

Sam opened his mouth to fix his brother's grossly incorrect analogy, but dropped the subject when the answer to his question popped into his mind instead. "We populate the dream."

Green eyes looked to him beneath raised eyebrows. "What?"

"Bakus feed on dreams and nightmares. We need to give him something to eat." Sam closed his eyes, thinking hard. Even as Dean opened his mouth to ask how the hell they were supposed to do that, a soft voice broke the echoing darkness.

"Sam." The call, light with a smile and endless love, turned both brother's attention to the woman standing just behind them. She had a smurf's sleep shirt on and a pair of boxers she'd stolen from Sam one night and never given back. A small smile spread across flawless skin, dotted with freckles and marks Sam had spent more than a few nights memorizing as she slept beside him.

"Jess," he breathed out. Warmth filled his incorporeal body and the world around them suddenly exploded in color. Light pushed away the darkness in swirls of blue and white, wrapping around Jess and stretching away from the boys for a dozen feet or so. Dean traced the explosion of light and color to its edges, where it danced almost playfully with the jagged edges of the darkness that took on a smoke like appearance now that it had something to contrast against.

Damn, is this what being in his brother's head was like?

He looked back at Jess as the two college kids stood there smiling at each other like the dorks they both were. Dean finally cleared his throat, starting to feel awkward. Sam startled, looking over to him.

"Dude," he admonished, shooing him with his hand, "start bringing stuff in."

The older hunter stared at his brother like he was slightly crazy. As if he spent his evenings practicing dream summoning. Right.

Sam rolled his eyes. "What do you usually dream about?"

The question was one Dean knew he shouldn't contemplate the answer to. As immediately as Sam asked it, Dean tried to slam a mental hand down on the response his mind readily jumped to. But like telling someone not to think of pink elephants, there was no way he could catch his thoughts before they formed.

And it wasn't pink elephants that danced across the surface of his mind.

"Hey." The voice was soft and painfully, heart-achingly familiar. "You gonna sit down?"

Dean turned around to face Lisa Braeden, sitting on a picnic blanket spread over the colorless ground. She smiled up at him, a wine glass in hand, like she had years ago – years from now – in Bobby's head.

"Hi." He all but stumbled over the word even as his chest swelled. Green splashed out from the blanket, splattering the black like freshly spilled paint. It didn't completely banish the darkness like Sam and Jess had, instead the colors mixed and morphed until there were bright patches of green as fresh as grass and others deep and dark, writhing with pain and envy.

Dean didn't let it bother him. He knew this dream was as sad as it was happy.

"Dean!" A weight crashed into his legs and side, and he automatically brought his hand down to rest on Ben's head, wrapping the kid in a hug with his other arm. The boy was grinning up at him with the 100-watt Winchester grin, even if they both knew it wasn't his name. "You came back!"

"Yeah, kiddo," he croaked out, clearing his throat against the tightness there. His whole body thrummed with energy, but he valiantly ignored the swelling joy threatening to beat his heart right out of his chest.

When he looked down at the eleven year old boy wrapped around his waist, he nearly lost it. Fiery orange had spread out around them, pulsing with flickers of yellow that no darkness could possibly compete against and he knew, without a doubt, that this was his happiness.

A happiness he really couldn't watch a Baku devour. He had so little left, he was pretty sure it would be his undoing.

"Sorry, buddy," he whispered, squeezing Ben's shoulders in a half hug against his own body. "I love you, kiddo, but you're not real."

He closed his eyes against the flash of confusion and hurt in the kid's eyes, even as the weight against him disappeared like sand drifting on the wind. Lisa and the colors were gone when he opened his eyes. It was just Sam and Jess, standing in a sunburst of blues and whites. His brother was watching him, and though he clearly didn't know who the two people he just saw were, there was an understanding in his eyes that Dean wouldn't have expected from a Sam ten years younger than he knew.

Clearing his throat, Dean focused on not Lisa and not Ben, and instead watched as the dream populated with various people they'd saved on hunts, monsters they'd taken to the grave, even Bobby showed up, busy arguing with Rufus. The sight sparked a flare of warmth and amusement in him, but he absolutely refused to acknowledge the bursts of magenta and deep purple that pulsed beneath the older hunter and swirled outward. Too damn girly. He absolutely did not think pink when he thought about Bobby Singer.

He was gonna be lucky if he could look the man in the eye when they woke back up. Fucking dream walking, man.

The colors that spread from beneath the others he summoned were dimmed, dull and flickering like they weren't really sure they could take on the darkness they fought against. But Dean didn't feel like he'd be crushed and never recover if the Baku managed to gobble up a couple blotchy memories riddled with as much pain as goodness.

"Alright, that's outta be enough," he muttered and looked back to his brother, who was doing something similar. None of his brother's projections blasted radiant light and color quite like Jess did, and Dean was honestly happy he'd picked up on that.

He was pretty sure his brother didn't want to see friends or family feed a supernatural beasty any more than Dean wanted Lisa or Braeden served up for dessert.

"Do we just wait?" Sam's hand was in Jess's, but Dean got the feeling she would be gone before the action came down on their heads. Until then, he could practically see the warmth and purpose filling his brother and realized just how badly Sam had needed this, needed to see her, to be with her.

He wondered if the kid dreamt of Jess often. Or if he dreaded it, for the very reason that he'd once dreamt her death and it had almost come true. He wondered if Sam closed his eyes every night and prayed not to have visions of the woman he loved.

Something moved along the edges of the darkness, and both brothers tensed. Sam pushed Jess behind him protectively. The hunters scanned the edges of their projections, where the colors curled against the darkness that pushed and pulsed. They couldn't see the beast, as the Baku kept just enough in the edges of the blackness to remain concealed.

Sam thought he saw a flash of tusk and an amber eye as the thing circled them.

"Well, guess it worked," Dean muttered, right before his dream people closest to the edges of the darkness suddenly blurred. Parts of their incorporeal forms whisked away, like smoke drawn into a vacuum.

Dean let out a gasp, staggering a step forward. Although the dream projections were far away, the hunter felt the tug of their disappearance, the pull of the Baku as it fed on his memories. It pulled at his body and made his chest feel oddly tight. Heavy.

A bright, red light suddenly filled the space like a flare in the darkness of an ocean.

Thunder cracked across the space and Dean started, eyes shooting up to the firework bursting in a shower of red sparkles between them and the Baku. The projections of his dreams suddenly stilled, turning their gazes as one towards the burst of light, and a couple even oohed and awed at the show.

There was a hiss from the darkness and the tugging in his body released its hold as the Baku retreated from the bright light and thunderous explosion that followed. The edges of his projects settled back in place, dimmer than before but still present.

Sam grabbed at his shoulder to help study him, and Dean gave him the standard 'I'm okay' hunter's nod.

"Good news: firework theory was true," Sam huffed out, eyes straining on the darkness around them.

"Yay for us," Dean breathed out, straightening. He felt infinitely better now that parts of his mind weren't being forcefully torn from him. The Baku was still out there, pacing. They could hear the soft pad of his paws and the drag of his tail across the emptiness. This time, it would approach more carefully. "Hope you got some more of those ready."

Beside him, Sam stood grim but determined. They just had to hold out long enough for John to find them. Luckily, ammo came for free in dreamland.

"Alright," Dean kept turning a slow circle, eyes training for the next attack. "We got him here. What was step two?"

Sam huffed a laugh, fists clenching and wishing he was armed.

A weight fell into his hand, so suddenly that he would have dropped it if not for the comforting feel of the machete handle. Surprised, he lifted the long blade to his face, observing the razor edge and glint of unnatural light along steel.

"Huh." Sam raised his eyes at his brother, who shrugged and closed his eyes in an attempt to summon a weapon of his own.

Sam caught the flash of movement seconds before the Baku leapt from the darkness. "Dean, move!"

He dove for his brother, bodily tackling him across the side and taking both of them to the ground hard. The air drove from his lungs and he heard Dean groan beneath him. The younger hunter didn't waste any time, rolling over to the side and scrambling to his knees.

A gasp tore from his throat as something else, something not of the world he was used to, pulled at every inch of his body. He caught himself on his hands as pieces were tugged forcefully away from his very being. Through bleary eyes, he saw the Baku, sucking at the ground several dozen feet away. The colors were melting together like paint, bleeding away to leave darkness once more as they were consumed in the greedy vacuum the beast presented.

Gunfire ripped through the air, the bullet cracking in its release.

The Baku let out a high pitch yelp, turning and baring its teeth in a roar, trunk flailing. The feline body crouched defensively before bounding into the darkness once more.

Dean, sitting upright on the swirled floor, glared at the thing from the sight-line of his ivory-inlaid .45 caliber handgun gripped tightly in a rock-steady hand. So he wasn't a natural at manifesting shit in dreamland, but he pulled through when it counted.

"You okay, Sammy?"

Sam rubbed at his arms, relieved at the solidity of his body beneath his palms. The pull of the Baku's influence had made him feel as incorporeal as smoke, and for a moment he'd irrationally feared he would wisp away into nothingness.

"Yeah, I'm good. About that step two?"

The two hunters climbed to their feet. Dean glanced around them. Half the colors had disappeared, and what was left of their projections congregated around them almost nervously. They moved restlessly, and many of them were so dim they were hardly there at all.

Okay, so baiting the thing had worked. Now how the hell did they kill something that couldn't be killed before it ate them?

"Erm…." Dean glanced at the feeding fest they had offered up around them. Right, time for plan B. "Run."

They took off in a random direction, leaving their projections behind to fade out without their presence to sustain them.

When the wall slammed into existence right in front of them, Dean managed not to crash face first into it with the graceful flair of flying limbs and skidding feet. Beside him, Sam caught himself on the smooth tiles, slamming his full weight into the catch, but managing not to break his face on the very solid wall.

"What the hell?" The taller of the two glanced up the black and white wall only to find a stone ceiling above them. He spun around at the fully enclosed room they suddenly found themselves in. Tile walls and stone pillars surrounded them. A metal staircase led to a second story lined with iron-work railings.

Old machinery, looking like something out of a bad sci-fi film from the fifties lined the walls. Panels dotted with blinking lights and various meters filled half the available wall space, and Sam could see more equipment in the neighboring room. There was a table in the center of this room, lit from beneath the surface and lined with chairs. A couple notepads and books laid open on the surface, which looked like a world map.

"Is the Baku doing this?" he asked as he moved to the table cautiously. The rest of the room opened up into another, that one raised several steps higher and hosting shelves of books and wooden study tables, like a library. There were other hallways branching off of either room, and Sam was both relieved at the number of possible exists and concerned about the numerous entry points for the beast to attack them from. "I don't recognize this place."

"I do." Dean was staring at the achingly familiar details of the bunker and ignoring the homesickness that curled in his chest. Fucking dreamland. "The baku didn't do this. I think I did."

He'd wanted shelter and someplace safe to regroup. Guess he'd gotten a version of it, at least.

The younger of the two stared questioningly, but Dean shook his head. Instead, he moved for the hallway just off the stairwell that Sam had avoided due to it being tucked away in a far darker part of the room and perfect for an ambush from the Baku. "Come on, this place is a labyrinth. And it's well armed."

Sam followed after into a long hallway with square-arched intersections and high-tiled walls. All of the doors along the hallway they entered were closed and the couple that he tried were solidly locked. Nice, heavy wood structures all labeled with a number and a different set of symbols inlaid within a circle of gold. "What is this place?"

"It's a bunker," Dean answered tightly and Sam's head snapped forward to stare at his brother's back.

Like the bunker you didn't mean to talk about on the Wendigo hunt?

"It was built to ward off supernatural baddies. And it's got a shit-ton of information and supplies."

They hit the end of the corridor and made a left down a secondary hallway that looked exactly like the first. If it weren't for the different numbers on the doors, Sam would have guessed they'd just made an Escher-like loop, which seemed more than possible in dreamland. But the new hall led to a staircase that descended deeper into the bunker. Dean took it without hesitation and they were deposited into another identical hallway. Just how big was this place?

"Where is it?" Sam asked cautiously. Other than 'likely underground' due to a lack of windows, there weren't a lot of clues. North America if the map upstairs was any indication. Most likely the States, since his brother didn't own a passport. The architecture wasn't telling, other than it was old and probably built in the fifties, as the machines upstairs suggested.

He could tell this was an off limit topic, but it wasn't like Dean could pretend he wasn't seeing what he was seeing. It might be wrong to abuse the fact it was easier to pull information from his cagey brother in dreamland, but at this point he no longer cared.

They wasn't going to be much of their brotherhood left if Dean kept up the secrets.

"It's gone." Dean's voice was tight, and Sam wondered what had happened that had bound his nomadic brother so tightly to a place. He could hear the ache in his voice and the anger behind those clenched teeth.

He really hadn't thought so much could happen in four years. In fact, he was starting to suspect it had been a lot longer for one of them.

Dean pushed open one of the many doors they were passing, all similar enough outside of their number that Sam had long ago gotten lost. The younger hunter pulled up short at the sight of a full blown armory within.

"Is that a shooting range?"

His brother laughed, beckoning Sam into the room with a sweeping arc of his arm. "Welcome to the bat cave, Sammy."

The lights above them suddenly flickered, the high pitch buzzing of electricity filling the air. A gasp broke the good mood, and Dean pressed a hand to his chest as he staggered against the open door.

"Dean?" Sam went to steady to him, even as his brother regained his balance.

"It's here."

Sam glanced into the armory at the assortment of weapons, some he hadn't even seen before. He gave a stoic nod. "Then let's figure out how to kill the damn thing."

An idea lit up his mind like a lightbulb and his eyes flashed at the memory of those walls lined with books. Dean was already moving into the room to gather up several blades and a gun that was nothing short of an elephant rifle.

"Dean, you said this place had information. Does it have books on supernatural creatures?"

His brother looked at him like he was crazy for a moment, before he caught on. It was almost comical to watch his face morph from confusion, to understanding, to optimism, and finally settling on the misery as the realization of what his brother's question entailed finally hit.

"We're being hunted by a dream eater in dad's head, and you want to read a book?"

Sam shrugged, a smile tugging at his lips despite the rather dire situation and the ticking countdown on this little mission of theirs. "We don't know how to kill it, and we've got to do that before we can rescue dad. So…"

"Ugh, fine!" Dean put the grenade launcher back on its designated shelf with more than a little disappointment (and Sam did a double take at the friggin grenade launcher)Instead, he grabbed two blades and a gun, tossing them to his brother who caught them expertly and tucked them into his waistline and boot top. "But you're doing the reading. I'm the lookout."

The younger hunter laughed as they headed back up the staircase and long hallway of rooms. Dean stumbled several times, each in tune with the flicker of lights. The last one accompanied a tremor that ran along the walls and shook dust from the ceiling.

"Do you really think it's a good idea to give him so much to feed on?" Sam whispered as they made it back into the first room, with the black and white tiles and iron-laid staircase.

"At least it's not chewing on us," Dean grumbled back, though he knew it wasn't completely true. Luckily, he had plenty of nightmares to throw at the thing to keep it busy.

As if on cue, the sconces around them flickered and then shut off completely. Dean lost his balance at a particularly harsh tug and caught himself on the wall. Emergency red light filled the bunker, painting it with the sickening color of danger and bad news. Unpleasant memories always came with that light.

"Dean?" Sam scanned the room around them for danger as he stood protectively in front of his unsteady brother. He drew up short when he spotted something new in the adjoining room. A body, unmoving on the floor that hadn't been there before. "Dean!"

Leaving his older brother, he took off up the stairs and slid to a halt at the still form sprawled on the ground beside the long wooden table. Male. Young. Dressed in jeans, a white shirt and tan button up. No obvious wounds or blood. Fingers searched for a pulse before he turned the cold, lifeless body over.

He was just a kid, a couple years younger than Sam. Dark hair, Asian descent, and his eyes….

Sam bit back the bile that threatened to choke him, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth as he stared at the blown out holes that had once been the kid's eyes.

"Kevin…" Sam turned to his brother, standing at the top of the steps as he stared at the body with the eyes of someone who was seeing a ghost. A ghost whose death had been his fault, if the guilt eating at his expression was anything to go by.

"Dean?" Sam stood, taking a step back from the corpse and towards his clearly shaken brother. "It's the Baku. He's fueling your nightmare, giving himself more to eat. Fight it, Dean."

There was a crash in the room to their left and Sam drew his gun, eye trained on any movement. The sound of books hitting the ground in a clatter broke the tense silence a second time. The smell of gasoline was suddenly overwhelming in the windowless room and Sam gagged, pulling up his shirt to cover his nose even as he kept his weapon trained on the next room. He could hear desperate, gasping breaths coming from the room. Someone was injured, pretty gravely going by the wet gurgle of each breath.

He took a step towards the entrance, side stepping Kevin's body. Dean's wrist closed tightly around his, and Sam turned to him in surprise. He hadn't heard him move. In the red light, his brother's skin looked pale and sallow.

"Don't."

The younger of the two glanced at the room again, at the sound of those slow, wet breaths. He wondered if it was his brother lying in that room, struggling through what was probably a collapsed lung and gasoline fumes.

"Dean, we need those books." He twisted his wrist within his brother's grip so he could clamp his own hand around Dean's forearm. "Fight it."

The hunter took a shaky breath under his brother's challenging gaze, but ended up nodding hastily and closing his eyes. His face evened out in concentration, and the red lights suddenly shut off, switching almost seamlessly back to yellow-white. When he opened his eyes, Kevin's body was gone, and so was the smell of gasoline.

"Okay." Sam released his arm and started for the library. "Let's gank this thing."

Dean still tensed as he entered the room behind his brother. But the books were all tucked away in their proper shelves. The Stynes didn't litter the floor. And a beaten, broken Cas was nowhere to be seen.

He let out a shaky breath. Time to pull it together; they had a job to do.

Sam was pulling out books in rapid succession, scanning along the tombs. Dean left him to it. Even with more familiarity of the bunker than Sam, the kid could be blind and still better at research than he would ever be. Instead, Dean took up his post as watchdog, rifle raised and patrolling the three entrances that led to the library.

Movement to his left caught his eye and he trained in on the small doorway that led back to the dorms. He lifted the gun, trained on the dark corners of the hallway just past the stonework. Sam glanced up from the books, but ducked his head back down and doubled his scanning speed in case they were out of time.

Dean stepped slowly towards the hall, moving around the furniture and pillars with the ease of someone achingly familiar with his surroundings. He hadn't meant to summon the bunker around them, but he wasn't unhappy to see it. This was home turf, and he knew every nook and cranny of the incredibly well-armed labyrinth. No dream walker was taking him down in his own sanctuary.

The hunter whipped around the corner, gun raised only to find an empty hallway.

The click of a hammer cocking and the cold metal of a muzzle pressing to the base of his skull drew him up short. His fingers tightened around the trigger of his own gun, but the person behind him pressed harder into the back of his neck.

Since when did Baku carry guns, or was this another nightmare projection?

"Drop it."

He probably shouldn't have turned around. He probably should have done what the person demanded. In fact, he was lucky he didn't get a bullet in the face for such a stupid move. But he couldn't help it, surprise at the very familiar voice caused his body to turn before thought or survival instinct could stop him.

"Dad?"