-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: Oh boy, here we go! Solid T rating for this chapter due to graphic descriptions of violence, gore, and death. Get ready for that cliffhanger, ladies and gents :D Oh, and Happy New Year :)

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The Road So Far (this Time Around)

Chapter 27

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

The Winchesters camped out in the Impala that night, parked on the curb across the street and two houses down from the Millers. Sam and Dean had spent the afternoon catching up on the sleep they'd missed driving through the night, fairly confident nothing would happen since Sam's vision of Jim Miller dying in his garage had definitely shown a nighttime attack. So there they were, stuck watching the quiet house through the late hours of the night for signs of movement in the garage in case Max went through with his murderous plan.

Jim Miller came home at 11:15 in his two door sedan, Michigan license plate a dead match for Sam's death premonition. The Winchesters watched, tense, as Mr. Miller climbed out of his car, made his way towards the door to the house, and pressed the button for the garage door to close.

Sam and Dean waited with another held breath as the light flickered off and everything remained perfectly calm. Dean turned the engine over and the Impala crept forward until they were across the street from the Miller house. He turned off the car, the smooth rumbling falling silent in the still night.

They couldn't hear an engine running from the garage, heard no screams for help or any disturbance of any kind, really. Dean shared a look with Sam, and the two settled in to make sure that didn't change for the rest of the night.

-o-o-o-

When the sun peaked over the first house at six thirty, Dean let out a jaw-splitting yawn. He reached for the keys, ready to call it and go find some sanctuary in flat pillows and stained motel sheets. "Think we're good?"

Sam was still watching the house, a gnawing deep in his stomach causing him to question the obvious. Jim Miller hadn't died in the garage overnight. There'd been no commotion in the house whatsoever, and Sam's vision had definitely taken place at night. Still, the hunter couldn't shake the firmly planted dread.

But, to be honest, he'd had had that pit in his stomach since Dean told him the apocalypse was well on its way and they were the main stars.

"Yeah," he finally answered, pulling his gaze away from the house with some difficulty. He settled in into the leather seat, forcing himself not to look back. "Yeah, let's go get some sleep."

Dean hummed happily in agreement, put Baby into gear, and pulled away from the Miller house.

-o-o-o-

Sam woke from blood and cries for help to Dean shaking him almost desperately.

"Sammy! Wake up!"

The younger Winchester shot upright in the motel bed, lungs heaving and sweat pooling along the planes of his body. Disoriented, he snatched at his brother's chest, Dean already holding on to Sam's shoulder with his casted left arm, unbroken limb grabbing the younger man's forearm to shake him awake.

"Dean?"

His brother let out a sigh of relief, but the tension didn't leave his body as he took a step away from the bed. Sam let him go, releasing his fistful of Dean's shirt.

"Yeah," Dean breathed out, scrubbing a hand through his short hair as he stared at his heaving, wide-eyed brother. "Well that's not a good sign."

Sam shook his head, memories he'd carry with him for months to come flashing across his eyelids again. So much blood. The younger Winchester kicked away the tangled sheets and swung his legs over the bed. "We gotta go. We gotta go right now."

"Right." Dean nodded, already grabbing his jeans and working his legs into them as he half-hopped towards the dresser and the keys to the Impala.

-o-o-o-

"You gonna tell me what you saw?" his brother finally asked as they raced through midday traffic of south town Sagginaw, back towards the Millers.

Sam clenched his jaw, staring straight ahead. "Just drive faster."

Dean complied, the engine rumbling with approval as he navigated suburban streets at very illegal speeds.

-o-o-o-

The Impala screeched to a halt outside the Miller house, leaving tire treads right up to the curb. Sam was out of the car before Dean had the engine off, and his older brother followed immediately after him. The two raced for the front door, Sam pounding on the wood as soon as he was within reach.

"Max! Mr. Miller?" Sam continued beating the door long past the point where it was obvious no one was going to answer. Dean finally pushed his younger brother to the side and delivered a swift kick to the wood, splintering the edge of the door and taking the lock with it.

The two brothers rushed into the Miller house. Sam took the lead, no hesitation in his run as he headed straight for the kitchen. Dean drew up short as soon as they skidded onto the tile. He didn't catch the sound that made it past his throat as he threw the back of his hand over his mouth and turned away from the site that greeted them.

"Jesus!" Dean slid his eyes shut against the horrific image, hand cupping over his mouth.

Shoulders slumped, Sam stared at the two bodies poised exactly as he had seen in his sleep. Mr. and Mrs. Miller both lay on the floor, pools of blood surrounding their still warm bodies. Alice Miller was face up on the tiles, the only identifiable part left of her was her blonde hair, haloed out around a swollen face, purpled and split in so many places she looked more like flayed meat than a human being. Jim Miller was collapsed half on his side, knife sticking out of his throat, buried to the hilt with his own hand still wrapped around the handle.

Sam finally turned away when he saw the bloodied, broken skin of Jim's knuckles wrapped around the blade and knew it had been those hands that inflicted the damage to his wife's body.

"Why?" he mumbled, more to himself than to the silence of a room where half its occupants were dead. He grabbed at the sides of his head, remembering the way Max had stood there and watched as Jim Miller was forced to beat his wife to death and then stab himself. Max had just watched. Watched like his stepmother had watched for twenty three years. Sam let out a feral cry, slamming his hand into the doorframe of the kitchen. "Why have these visions if we can't stop them? What's the point!"

Dean didn't answer, but his thoughts weren't far from his brother's. He could, after all, relate more now than ever before. Steeling himself, the man from the future turned back into the room and the results of his careless presence in this timeline.

"This isn't on you," he replied softly, though his voice was rough with anger and guilt. He stared at Alice Miller, dead and bloodied because of him. "I'm the one who pushed the kid."

Yeah, he had. Sam looked to his brother rather than the gruesome scene in front of them. Dean may have pushed the psychic in the worst direction he possibly could have, but he hadn't seen Max's face, watching his father murder his stepmom. Sam had. There was no talking anyone out of that.

"It's not on you either," he responded after a moment. Dean snorted, his opinion of that clear enough, but Sam pushed on, "The only one responsible for this is Max."

"Well, he'll be in the wind now." Dean glanced around at the blood splattered walls, the half-prepared meal lying untouched on the kitchen counter, the bloody shoe prints pressed into the carpet to leave a trail towards the back of the house. He took the scene in with a cop's eye. "Even with the murder/suicide look, the police will want to question him. If he knows what's good for him, he's long gone."

"The kicked in door and additional suspects will help his cause," Sam added quietly, looking pointedly down at their own booted feet. Dean may have managed not to enter the kitchen far enough to contaminate the scene, but he'd stepped through one of Max's bloody footprints on the way in and that would be enough for the cops to know there were multiple perpetrators.

"Damn it," Dean muttered, patting himself down. With his good arm, he pulled a handkerchief and then another from his back pocket. "We need to wipe down any place we might have left prints. That wall, front door…"

Sam held his hand out for the second handkerchief, but Dean had trailed off, staring at the blue and white fabric clenched in his hand. The younger Winchester raised a brow when his brother didn't move. "Dean?"

"I've done this before."

Sam frowned at the whispered words, hand still held out for the cloth. Sure, they'd had to wipe down evidence of their presence at dozens of crime scenes throughout their life (and yet Dean still thought they had a good childhood). Somehow, Sam doubted that's what his brother was talking about, though. "You mean the murders? I thought you said the stepmom lived the first time."

"No, I mean this." He shook his hand with the handkerchief in it, still staring at the fabric. Finally he lifted his gaze, first taking in his brother and then the room around them. Given the distant glint to his eye, though, Sam doubted it was the Miller house he was seeing. "We were…we were on a fire escape. Outside a window."

Sam looked around the house as well, not sure what his brother was seeing or even looking for. But he let him work through the deja vu, if that's what it was. Dean went rigid, whatever memory he was trying to access finally secured in his brain. He turned to his brother, eyes wide.

"The window was covered in blood."

"What?" Sam blinked, then blinked again as something twinged just behind his eyes. Dean was already moving through, darting forward to wipe down the wall Sam had slammed his palm into.

"Max didn't just kill his dad," his brother said as he hastily wiped at the wall. "He killed his uncle too!"

Sam tilted his head at the pressure behind his eyeball grew to encompass his temple. It didn't hurt, but it certainly wasn't a pleasant feeling either. Nor was it a good sign. He started moving, grabbing the second cloth from his brother and heading for the front door. If Max was going after someone else, then they had to go. Quickly. He stumbled on his way there, intent to wipe free of any evidence of their earlier pounding completely derailed as the pressure in his head flared, overriding his balance. He crashed into the living room wall.

"Sammy?" Dean was by his side in a second, steadying him with an arm to either shoulder. Sam sank to his knees, hand pressed to his temple as both the pressure and the Miller's living room were replaced with flashes of light and then instant clarity.

He was standing on the curb outside an apartment complex in the setting sunlight of dusk, gold lettering on the front door reading Saginam Manor. Sam frowned, turning first left and then right in the relatively quiet urban area. Whistling caught his attention, and the hunter turned to see a man emerge from around the building, twirling car keys on his finger. He strolled up to the door, entering a four digit code to enter the building. Four five two eight. The door beeped and the man – who Sam could only assume was Max Miller's uncle – slipped through the glass doors.

"Hey!" Sam took a step towards the man, but a flash of light blinded him and he covered his eyes with his forearm, stumbling back a step. As soon as his vision cleared, he turned around only to find himself in an apartment. He spun again as keys jingled in the door.

The same man stepped through the front entrance, turned the key and pulled them from the lock. He resumed his earlier whistle, tossing the keys into a bowl on an entrance table as he walked right past Sam like he wasn't even there.

"Hey."

Max's uncle shrugged out of his jacket, tossing it on the kitchenette table as he headed into the galley style kitchen. Frustrated, Sam followed after.

"Hey!"

A shadow moved in his periphery and Sam spun around before he made it to the kitchen. Max. He was here. Sam moved into the hallway as Max's uncle pulled a beer from the fridge, cracking it with the bottle opener magnet off the side of the fridge. Sam glanced either way down the hall, keen eyes looking for any sign of Max.

"Hello, Uncle Roger."

The hunter spun around, only to find Max standing between him and the kitchen, his back to the hunter as he faced down his uncle. Roger, for his part, looked up from his beer with a hint of surprise on his face, quickly replaced by derision.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he groused to his nephew, taking a sip of his beer and moving to push past Max. The kid stood firm, however, and the beer suddenly shattered in Roger's hand.

"What the hell-" Roger hissed as he grabbed at his hand, a shard of green glass sticking out of his palm. "Son of a bitch!"

He ignored his nephew, moving instead for the sink. He froze, however, when the glass rattled on the floor. Roger stared down at it, a frown across his face which quickly morphed into horror as the shards lifted off the ground and aligned themselves to hover in front of his face between him and Max.

"What-"

"How does it feel?" Max stood, jaw shaking in anger and eyes furious in concentration and hatred. With clenched fists, he jerked his head to the side. Sam shouted out a warning, but no one reacted to him as a single piece of green glass flew forward like lighting.

Roger yelped, stumbling back and grabbing at his cheek and the fresh slice through his skin. He looked down at his hand, the blood dotting his fingertips, and then back at his nephew in renewed horror.

"Max…"

"I'm going to repay every bruise you ever gave me. Piece. By. Piece."

"Max, don't!" Sam tried to move forward, to stop him, but his arm went right through the kid. Nothing but a vision of something that hadn't happened yet.

"No, Max, wait, please!" Roger stumbled backward, back hitting the wall and kitchen window that led to the fire escape beyond. Another piece of glass flew forward and Roger lifted his arms in self-defense. He cried out as the glass sliced through the flesh of his forearm, far deeper than the first cut.

Max's eyes narrowed as his uncle looked back up at him in realization. The remaining glass pieces twitched, and Roger's eyes widened as they all moved towards him at once. Sam knew he was about to watch Roger Miller get cut to shreds.

Suddenly, the front door burst inward with a bang and, as one, Sam and Max spun towards the interruption.

"Sammy!"

Sam jerked back to the present, shooting forward so suddenly that Dean had to grab onto him to keep him from slamming straight into the side table by his head.

"We gotta go," he whispered hoarsely, vision still spinning.

"Yup," was all his brother said, already pulling the unsteady psychic to his feet and hauling him towards the front door. "You got an address?"

"Close enough to one," Sam muttered, hand pressed to his head. Dean stopped them just long enough to give the front door a messy wipe down with the handkerchief, and then the two were moving down the drive towards the haphazardly parked Impala.

-o-o-o-

Pushing the car as fast as they could in broad daylight, the brothers headed to the address listed under Saginam Manor Apartments in the Yellow Pages. Out of nowhere, the tension in the car having created a heavy silence between the two, Dean hit the steering wheel. Sam startled, turning to his brother as the older hunter let out a frustrated grunt.

"It doesn't make sense."

Sam snorted. "What part?"

"All of it!" Dean shook his head, hitting the steering wheel with the heel of his hand again. "This didn't happen last time."

"Yeah, but our presence here – you knowing what you know – would naturally change things." Sam tried to take the logical route, though he knew his brother was already well aware of what his presence would do. He'd been dealing with the reality of it for almost seven months now.

All Dean heard was Sam's nice way of avoiding the fact that he'd pushed the kid into brutally murdering his entire family.

"It's not just that," he argued back, eyes on the road as he swerved around a Volvo. "Cassie – the friend who called? We went last time. Helped her solve that case."

Yeah, Sam had kind of figured, given the details Dean had had on hand to pass on to Bobby. But he didn't exactly see how that figured into the situation with Max.

"How come, this time, she calls and we're already on our way to Max? You'd already seen him gas his dad."

The pre-law student frowned, starting to catch on to his brother's point. "Which happened first last time?"

Dean let out an annoyed growl deep in his throat. "I don't know, not for sure. But I think we wrapped the thing with Cassie first. Either way, they weren't on top of each other, not like this. I'd remember that."

Which made sense. Right now, they were separate memories for Dean, which made placing them in chronological order harder. If there had been overlap, Dean likely would be able to recall the thing that tied the memories together. But what could have changed?

"You think Cassie called later?" Sam asked, thoughts spinning with theoreticals and paradoxes. There was a reason people wrote entire papers on the concept of time and traveling through it.

"What would make her do that?" Dean countered, clenching his jaw. "Time travel ain't the clearest thing, but as I understand it, nothing should change that we don't change ourselves."

"So Cassie should have gone through the same actions at the same time," Sam reasoned out loud.

"Max too. At least until we got here."

Sam pursed his lips, mind racing. If both parties should have followed the same path before Dean and Sam interacted with them, then something else, another force connected to Dean's time travel, must have interfered to speed up one of them.

"Unless it's a butterfly effect."

Dean arched a brow his direction. "A what?"

"Butterfly effect," Sam repeated. "You know, a butterfly flaps its wings in California today, tomorrow there's a typhoon in the Philippines?"

Dean was staring at him like he was crazy, and the younger of the two rolled his eyes,

"It's the idea that the smallest of actions can have ripple effects, creating disproportionally larger reactions that are impossible to predict." Which could explain why Cassie or Max had changed their actions. It was probably far more complicated than they could ever track, with any number of degrees of separation between whatever Dean did and the end result of one of them moving up their time table, but it wasn't impossible. It was, however, really bad news for them.

That was one theoretical problem with time travel. If whatever they did effected non-local change, then there was no way they could keep those changes small. There would always be too many variables, too many ways the world was connected to avoid the domino effect.

"Well it better not be that," Dean groused, the vein in his temple twitching as he clenched his jaw painfully. "We've done a hell of a lot more than flap some butterfly wings here, Sammy."

The younger Winchester wisely didn't respond to that, instead turning his gaze out the windshield and silently urging the Impala to go faster.

-o-o-o-

Outside the apartment, Dean threw the Impala into park and reached for the door, but Sam's hand wrapping around his forearm held him up.

"Dean, you can't take your gun in there." Sam was staring at him like the statement was an obvious one, but Dean did a double take, glancing at the .45 in his hand.

"I'm not going in there unarmed, Sammy. And neither are you!"

"He's already taken your gun once," the younger Winchester argued back, "and last time you said he killed himself with it."

That, if nothing else, gave Dean pause, but ultimately he shook his head. "What the hell am I supposed to do? The guy can take a knife off me as easily as a gun, Sam, and I'm not going in there unarmed."

With that, the older Winchester climbed out of the car, tucking his ivory laid pistol into the back of his jeans. Sam gave him a look over the roof of the car, which Dean pointedly ignore.

"Look," he said as they moved around the car, hastily jogging towards the double glass doors that marked the front of the apartment complex, "I won't pull it unless I intend to use it."

The look his younger brother sent him spoke volumes as to what Sam though of that plan. He punched in the four digit code Dean could only assume he'd seen in his vision and the security box beeped, the sound of the lock releasing from the door. Dean pulled it open, gesturing his brother inside.

"He probably has to see it to use it, right?" the man from the future continued as they started through the halls, looking for the elevator. His brother shrugged beside him, still looking unconvinced. "So, I won't pull it unless I intend to use it before he can."

Sam drew up short even as they rounded the corner to the bank of elevators, staring at his brother. The older man didn't stop moving, reaching the wall and pressing the up button. Sam was slower to join him, but didn't argue his point. The young hunter knew they were quickly approaching the point where Dean's solution would be their only solution.

-o-o-o-

They burst into the apartment, Max spinning around to see them as Roger Miller pressed himself against the kitchen window, clutching his bleeding forearm. Glass shards clinked like a mockery of a peaceful wind chime as what was left of the beer bottle fell to the kitchen tiles under Max's shift in focus.

"Get out!"

Sam raised his hands in placation, but was already shaking his head regretfully. "We can't do that, Max. We can't let you kill him."

"It's none of your business!" the traumatized man yelled, face reddening. "I won't let you stop me!"

Max spun back to the kitchen to find Roger pushing open the window, intent to escape through it. He let out a howl, jerking his head to the side and back. His uncle yelled as he went flying back into the kitchen, skidding across the kitchen tiles straight towards his nephew.

Dean's fingers twitched against his thigh to draw his gun, but he held back. He'd made his brother a promise, and one born out of a damn good point. No reason to give the kid a faster method of killing his uncle. Or himself.

Sam took a step forward, knowing his brother would intervene more forcefully if it meant saving Roger Miller's life. "Listen to me, Max. This has to stop."

"It will," he growled through clenched teeth, staring down at the man who had beat him for so many years, who had been the source of every nightmare, waking and asleep. Roger Miller curled up on himself, sobbing like a pathetic bully that he was. Max held out his hand. "After my uncle, it'll stop."

"No!" Sam moved into the kitchen and Max's field of vision, staying clear of his uncle but still with those hands raised and his eyes pleading. "You need to let him go."

"Why?" Max balked, staring at the man who knew nothing about him. Who had no idea what his life was like, the hell he had lived through. Who dared to take his revenge – his justice – away from him.

"What they did to you growing up…They deserve to be punished, Max, I get that-"

"Growing up?" Max stared at Sam with wild eyes. Suddenly, he straightened, reaching for his shirt. Dean, who had been moving in behind him, froze with his hand wrapped around the hilt of his gun, but Sam shook his head as minutely as possible. Max pulled up the hem of his shirt, well above his pectorals to reveal a hell of a bruise, blossomed across his side, over his ribs and up towards his collar bone.

Sam suddenly found himself struggling to breathe at the myriad of colors and suffering that covered the kid.

"Try four hours ago," Max bit out, lowering his shirt back down. "Guess old habits die hard."

"Your uncle wasn't at your house four hours ago," Sam tried to reason weakly, licking his lips. Even he knew it was a pathetic excuse.

"You think he's any different? So it was my dad this time. It's been him plenty of times before." Roger flinched as Max pointed at him with a shaking finger. The glass on the floor of the kitchen started to rattle around them.

"I'm sorry," Sam whispered, and meant it. "Why didn't you just leave?"

Max shook his head at him, eyes filled with the betrayal of yet another person failing to get him. "It wasn't about getting away. It was about being…not afraid anymore. My whole life I've been helpless…not anymore. Now I'm strong."

Max turned back to his uncle and Dean moved in, drawing his gun and pressing the muzzle flush to the man's back. Sam sucked in a breath, expecting to see the misunderstood, mistreated kid hit the floor with a bullet to his spine. But the moment came and left, his older brother standing there with the gun against Max's back and a fierce expression on his face that belied the fact he couldn't pull that trigger.

"It's over," Dean said instead, false bravado and confidence in his voice. "You're not gonna kill him."

Max tilted his head to the side, glancing from his periphery at the man behind him. He raised his arms out to the side slowly in a mockery of surrender that was anything but. The fake FBI agents both tensed, and for a single moment, Max reveled in their fear of him.

"I won't have to."

Dean swore as the gun was ripped from his grasp once more, a single shot cracking off but veering wide. He was sent flying through the air seconds later, crashing atop Roger and rolling off of him with his momentum. The man grunted beneath him, but the hunter was fairly sure he'd live.

Sam moved to tackle Max, but the gun came to a frozen halt between them, barrel aimed straight at the taller man's head. Sam glared down the length of the gun at the kid controlling it. Max smirked, holding out one hand towards Dean and his uncle. Sam tensed, expecting him to go after Roger, with nothing he or Dean could do to stop him.

Instead, his older brother let out a grunt of surprise as he straightened upright on his knees on the kitchen floor. His body was rigid and stiff, and his eyes blown wide in confusion.

"Dean?"

The hunter made a strangled noise as he suddenly bent down and landed a solid right hook straight across Roger Miller's face. The man cried out, arms coming up to his bleeding, busted nose.

"Shit!" Dean swore through gritted teeth as his broken left arm came down right after, cast splintering with a solid crack as he caught the wounded man across his cheek. Roger's head snapped to the side as Dean let out a painful cry. Fist after fist reigned down as the hunter screamed out against it. "I'm not doing it. Damn it, Sam, you gotta stop him!"

Sam took a forceful step forward but Max snapped his attention back, head tilting in a daring motion as the gun cocked between them. The hunter drew up short, teeth gritted and bared as he stared at the gun and the boy, wondering if he could get to one before the other went off.

"Sam!"

Roger Miller was barely fighting back anymore, arms weakly held up to stop the barrage of fists that hit every inch of available flesh. Dean was going to end up killing him if Sam didn't do anything.

"Damn it, Sam, knock me out!"

Max turned at the command, surprise lighting his eyes and Sam took his chance. He might not have made it to Max before the gun went off, but he could easily dodge to the side, to Dean, and out of that path of that gun, which is exactly what he did. Max didn't even have a chance to fire the weapon before Sam was tackling his brother with a right hook of his own.

Dean went down hard, head cracking against the kitchen tile loud enough to make Sam flinch. But he didn't get back up, which had been the whole idea.

Sam straightened slowly, posture stiff and dangerous, as he turned back to Max. The kid's face had a hardened look all his own, the enjoyment of this gone from his eyes. Now Sam was only in the way.

The youngest Winchester threw out his hand on instinct as soon as that gun rounded on him once more, and the weapon twitched and shook in the air as the two psychics fought for control of the device. Sam grit his teeth against the strain and put all of his focus into keeping the gun aimed away from himself, his brother, and Roger Miller. The trigger trembled beneath their opposed strengths. Max had a lot more practice, but Sam was quickly losing any reason to hold back.

"You know the difference between us?" Max asked, voice shaking from equal parts mental strain and anger. "You don't have the guts to do it. To take what you want."

The gun waivered, and then slowly but surely started towards Dean, groaning on the kitchen floor as he started to come to. Sam clenched his teeth, fingertips curling as he fought to hold the gun back but lost ground, one centimeter at a time.

He could once more feel the vibrations beneath his skin which were becoming terrifyingly familiar. Sam knew he was holding back; he could hear them singing for release, for the freedom he had granted them once, when they faced off against a lifeless hunk of metal.

The gun slipped another inch closer to his brother, coming within firing range of the downed hunter.

"You know the difference between us, Max?" He tore his eyes off the weapon to meet the watery, rage-filled gaze of the kid he could have become so easily. "I don't need a gun."

Sam released his grip on the weapon and on himself. His hand dropped and the gun went flying into the kitchen wall under the sudden pull of only one master. It fired off with a thunderous crack, the bullet ripping through the air and shattering the window. Dean weakly covered his head, limbs disoriented and only half-responsive, as glass reigned down around him.

In the same movement, Sam raised his other hand and curled his fingers into a tight, aching fist around an invisible object. Across from him, eyes still wide in surprise at the one eighty turn of events, Max suddenly choked on his own throat. His eyes bulged as he scrambled for his neck, the air within his chest turning against him as Sam squeezed his power around the man's lungs and windpipe. A torn gag ripped from the kid's throat as he started to asphyxiate on nothing, fingers clawing at his skin.

Sam knew what he had to do. Max wasn't going to stop, he couldn't be talked down. And Sam had to end it before he could kill anyone else, especially Dean.

The blood in his veins sung in release, vibrations humming through every limb as they stretched across the space between predator and prey and wrapped their icy hands around Max Miller.

"S'm…" Dean made it onto his back on the kitchen floor, hand pressed weakly against his aching jaw as he stared up at the multiple swaying men looming above him. He blinked hard, trying to clear his vision with little success. "S'm, don't."

The young hunter didn't answer, his focus entirely on Max. He honed in past the shallow surface of the world, beneath skin and blood and muscle, searching for something deeper. Max shuddered, a gasp caught in his sealed throat and escaping only as a pained gurgle. Sam found his target – a weak, shuddering glow at the center of his prey. The edges flickered grey, and streaks of slimy black perforated the light like blackened veins.

If Sam could pull those out, Max would never hurt anyone ever again.

He tightened his hold on the boy, reaching his other hand up and towards the frozen man. Curling his fingers, he could feel the same slimy darkness that had wrapped around the Baku's center. Just like then, Sam moved more on sense than knowledge, clenching his power around a sliver of that taint.

Max writhed in his grip, what were surely screams cut off by his sealed throat escaped only as squeaks, but Sam was too focused to see or hear the world around him.

"Sam!" Dean was upright now and struggling to stay that way through what was no doubt a concussion. "Sam, stop, yer killin' him."

But Sam didn't stop, or perceive his brother's words beyond sound that existed out there. He was inside, beyond the physical world, a layer deeper. The power within him thrummed with that connection, and he breathed with each powerful surge sent through his body.

Max's face was turning a dangerous shade of purple and his struggles starting to falter. The edges of the light in his chest flickered further, grey beginning to crawl its way towards the center. Sam didn't pay it any attention, focused on the dark veins, the poison the demon Azazel had left behind.

"Sammy!"

The young psychic was suddenly ripped from that other world by a very physical hand wrapped around his calf, fingers gripping into jeans tight enough to bruise. Sam blinked, hands dropping as he stared down at his brother, half collapsed on the floor with his arm stretched out, hand clenched around Sam's leg. Injury-glazed eyes searched up at his own pleadingly.

"Yer not a killer, Sam." The words were slurred, but desperate. Sam could tell his brother was about half a second from passing out, yet that grip on his leg never waivered. "That's not…what those powers mean."

Max stumbled onto the floor of the kitchen, barely catching himself against the counter as he hacked and coughed. The full force of what he'd almost done hit Sam like a semi to the chest and he stumbled back a step. Dean's fingers slipped from his jeans as his brother let his head fall back to the cool tile. He was still conscious; the long, moaning groan was proof of that.

Sam stared, horrified, as Max tried to right himself using the counter as support, but it was clear he was struggling to breathe. He clutched at his chest and throat, and the young hunter paled at the deep, red finger marks starting to purple around the boy's throat. Sam hadn't even touched him.

He looked down at his hands, knowing that he hadn't needed to.

"Sam," Dean mumbled, head still pressed to the floor but he made a momentous effort to get back to his knees at the very least. Dazed green eyes started up at three tilting versions of his brother, and he tried adamantly to stay on the one in the middle. "It's okay."

It really wasn't.

Sam lowered shaky hands back to his side, the sight of them causing nothing but nausea in his stomach. He'd been trying to help. Consciously, he knew that. He'd known if he could somehow pull that darkness from Max, he could fix him. But in doing so, he'd almost killed him.

And he wouldn't have even noticed.

Hazel eyes flickered up. Max lifted his head, face still an ugly red, to meet his gaze. There was terror in his eyes that Sam had put there. The youngest Winchester opened his mouth, no clue what to say, but desperate to say something.

Max Miller's head suddenly snapped a hundred and eighty degrees around with a terrifyingly loud crack. His body slumped to the floor beside his equally unmoving uncle.

Sam stumbled back in shock, hitting the counter on the other side of the galley kitchen with legs that weren't going to hold him up for much longer. Dean scrambled back, succeeding only in falling over more than moving away. His eyes traced over the floor to the pair of dusty boots standing just past Max's now lifeless body, up past the old jeans and flannel shirt, to the pale yellow irises of the demon standing in the kitchen doorway.

"Sam, Dean," Azazel greeted with a cheerful smile on his borrowed face. "I think it's time for a chat."