A/N Sorry this one took so long, gang. I've been fighting with this chapter literally since I posted the last chapter, but this one's been fighting back!

I finally got it to a point where I'm not completely disappointed in it, so here it is.

Please do comment! (Responses to previous chapter comments are, as always, at the end)

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Singer Salvage

Sioux Falls, SD

June 6, 2001

6:45 pm

"You said, push it left!" Sam reminded his brother. "Hold still," he added and poured a little rubbing alcohol on his brother's stomach and side.

"Mother…!" Dean choked out and closed his eyes, leaning harder into the tree Sam had put him against. "Yes, I did," he agreed through clenched teeth as the burning faded away. "And you pushed it right."

"I pushed it left," Sam corrected and poured some of the rubbing alcohol on the forceps he'd pulled from the medical kit in his backpack.

"You need to learn your right from your left, Sammy!" Dean snapped. "You pushed it right."

"You taught me my left from my right when I was three, and I pushed left," Sam repeated. "Here we go," he added and started fishing in the hole in his brother's side for the bullet in question.

Dean gave a strangled — and very manly — scream, and forced the words out. "You. Went. Right, dammit. I know, because I was standing right, and you fucking HIT ME!"

"Got it," Sam said triumphantly and held the bullet up for Dean to see. "I pushed it left!" Sam placed a hand over the hole he'd inadvertently put in his brother, and closed his eyes. "I pushed it to my left," he continued, softly. "If you'd meant I should have pushed it to your left, you should have fuckin' said so!"

"Why the hell would I tell you to push it at me?" Dean countered, biting his lip at the mid level — and very weird — pain of his tissue knitting itself back together.

"I don't know!" Sam snapped. "Maybe you wanted to dodge it. And I didn't know you were standing to my left, did I? And why didn't I know that? Because somebody wanted me to try it blindfolded, and then decided to shoot the gun and then just stand there! And we're done," he added, pulling his hand away.

"Thanks," Dean nodded and looked down at his torso, where he no longer had a hole and could see no scar. "You do good work, Sammy. You should go pre-Med after all, become a plastic surgeon, you'd make a fortune. Plus think of all the hot chicks you meet," he added bouncing his eyebrows at his brother's bitch face with a grin. "And anyway, you were the one who said Bullets and Bracelets was too easy for you. I was just trying to do you a solid and make it harder."

"When I said it was getting easy, I was thinking you could switch caliber, or use buckshot or something, not that we should try it blindfolded."

"You agreed to do it!"

"Because you wouldn't shut up about it!" Sam wiped the blood off the forceps and returned them to the med kit. "Backpack."

Dean tossed the backpack over and opened his mouth to continue his side of the argument, then stopped, noticing that Sam was spending an unusually long amount of time putting the med kit in the backpack, and was not looking at Dean at all.

"Hey," Dean said, and dropped a hand to Sam's shoulder. "It's okay, man. I know it was an accident."

Sam shrugged him off, and stood, throwing the backpack onto his shoulder. "Of course it was an accident," he said angrily, and started walking towards home. "If I wanted you dead, Dean, I've got much more efficient ways to do it. "

Dean paused a moment, before scrambling to his feet and following. "That…that's not reassuring, Sammy. Do I need to start sleeping with one eye open, here?"

Sam snorted. "Of course not," he said quietly. "I'd never…I was…"

"Hey, hey, hey," Dean caught up to his little brother and grabbed an elbow, tugging on it until Sam turned towards him, although the kid was looking at the ground, still avoiding looking directly at Dean. "Come on, Sammy. You know I'm not really mad, right? I mean, you're right, it was my fault, totally. I should've said my left. The instructions weren't clear, so what happened was…"

"What happened," Sam interrupted, pulling away from Dean, "was that my stupid abilities got somebody hurt. AGAIN. Anyway, the only reason I agreed was because I didn't think I could do it blindfolded, so if anyone got hurt it would be me."

"Hey!" Dean grabbed his brother's chin and forced the kid to look at him. "If you thought you could get hurt, that's when you say 'no', you stupid…" He took a breath and started again. "It's not your abilities that're the problem, here, Sammy. It's the training method. And I'm sorry. I'm pushing you too fast, making you do stuff you're not ready for, and I'm sorry." He let go of Sam's chin and reached around to put a hand on the back of Sam's neck. "It's just like Dad used to do to us, pushing us into exercises or drills we weren't ready for, and just like with Dad, one of us got hurt. It's my own fault, Sam. Not yours. Okay?"

"You're just saying…"

"I'm not," Dean assured him, and pulled Sam towards him until their foreheads were touching. "I fucked up, Sammy. I'm sorry."

Sam nodded slightly. " 'Sall right," he said quietly and pulled away, moving slowly enough that Dean knew any movement he made would keep Sam from pulling back.

Dean dropped his hand from the back of Sam's neck and the pair started walking again, the brief tension between them gone in a heartbeat.

They walked in silence, side by side when the path was wide enough, single file — Dean protectively on point in front, of course — when it wasn't.

They were walking side by side when Sam lifted a fist to signal a halt, and they both stopped.

"You hear that?" Sam whispered.

Dean paused a second and frowned. "Where are the birds?" he whispered back. "Where are the insects?"

Sam shook his head. "Something's out here."

"Our kind of something?"

"I don't know," Sam admitted and rested his hand against a nearby tree. "Please. Show me," he breathed.

They both jumped when Dean's phone rang.

"Bobby," Dean told his brother and flipped the phone open to answer. "What's up, Bob—Uh." Dean glanced above him. "No, not really, the trees are kind of thick…

Son of a bitch! Okay," Dean said briskly and snapped the phone shut. He faced his brother, who pulled away from the tree with a soft thank you.

"They're back," the brothers told each other.

Dean lifted his chin towards Sammy, signaling him to go first. "What have you got?"

"They showed me the sky," Sam admitted, even as both brothers looked up through the thickly woven canopy of branches above them. "The same clouds that came for me last year."

Dean nodded. "Yeah. Bobby said they were starting to build over the forest. Pretty much right on top of us."

"Well, that's great," Sam sighed. "What now?"

"The trees will offer some prote…."

"They won't," Sam interrupted. "And I can't keep them out of a wild place. I can't."

Dean shrugged and grabbed Sammy's wrist. "Then we run," he said and the pair started to sprint through the forest, back towards Singer Salvage and the safety of home, jumping over fallen logs and roots that seemed to be trying to trip them.

The path narrowed and Dean had to let go of his brother. "Keep up!" he urged, and led the way through the familiar path that suddenly was becoming much darker than the late afternoon sun should allow.

Behind him, he heard Sam swear and cry out, and turned back to his brother. "Sammy!"

Sam was down on one knee on the path, his hands over his ears, trying to block out a sound Dean couldn't hear. "No! Stop!" Sam yelled. "I can't…Please, don't…I don't understand! I just…I can't! Just Stop! STOOOPPPPP!"

Dean was thrown backwards into chaos.

Branches, twigs, dirt, whole bushes, small saplings and entire full grown trees were flying beside him, over him, into him, battering him as he tried to breathe against a sudden pressure against his chest. A flying boulder, half as high as he was tall, sped past him and smacked into a tree with enough force to splinter it and keep going.

Dean slammed into an ancient, wide oak and slid to the ground. Some instinct made him look up, and he threw himself to the side as an entire tree, easily a foot around, crashed into the tree he'd been thrown against and embedded itself there, just at the height where Dean's head had been.

Everywhere he looked was a nightmare of flying objects shooting in every direction, nearly killing him time and again as he pressed himself flat against the dirt.

"Sam!" he yelled, and lifted his head to look for his brother, then ducked back down as a rock the size of a football came at his face.

Instinctively, he curled himself into a ball, covering his head with his arms, and protecting his torso as best he could.

The air rushed by in a wave of silent heat, the force of it tugging at his clothes, the heat enough to blister the exposed skin of his wrists and hands.

And then…it was over.

It all just…stopped.

Slowly, cautiously Dean uncurled himself and looked around him, panting. "What the hell?"

He stood, dizzy and staggering a little— so, that was another concussion, yay — and looked around.

They'd been running through a forest, old and dense, trees towering above them. They'd been pushing their way through undergrowth, over roots and around boulders. It was a forest they knew nearly as well as they knew Bobby's house. They'd played and run and trained out here for just about as long as Dean could remember.

And for yards in every direction, it was gone.

Every tree, bush, shrub, flower. Every twig, branch, rock. Every piece of lichen, every bit of moss, every fallen pine needle, every dead leaf. All of it.

Gone.

In its place was a perfect circle of bare dirt, 15, maybe 20 feet across, pock marked by holes where trees and bushes and rocks had been ripped out by their roots.

There was no real mystery as to what happened to the forest inside the circle, although his brain couldn't begin to understand how. It had been blown — or thrown, he didn't know which — into the forest that remained, filling up all the spaces between trees to a height of at least 15 feet with debris and, weirdly, what looked like ash.

It was a solid wall of decimated forest around them, and Dean couldn't see a single gap. He couldn't see the remaining forest, beyond the first line of trees that had been turned into supports for the packed debris.

He couldn't see a way out.

The dizziness took him again, and he crouched down to steady himself.

The motion reminded him of something much more important than the ring of destruction and he lifted his head carefully, fighting nausea as he looked back the way he came for…

"Sammy!" Dean half-ran, half-crawled to his brother's side and reached out to the still, bloodied figure curled up in the exact center of the devastation.

Heat, so intense he jerked his hand back before he actually touched anything, radiated from the curled up form. Dean stared at his red, slightly blistered fingers and collapsed into a sitting position about a foot away from his brother.

"Sammy," he breathed, and his mind tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

Sammy's clothes were shredded, hanging off him in useless strips, many of which were singed on the edges. The bared skin on his arms, legs and torso looked flayed in places, pieces of skin hanging off in narrow strips, exposing red layers of flesh and blood and, in a couple places, what Dean was fairly certain was fat and muscle.

Sammy's hands still covered his ears, but even so Dean could see the blood trailing from beneath Sammy's hands, running across the slack, ruined face to meet with the blood running from his little brother's nose and closed eyes, all of it dripping slowly onto the earth beneath him.

Sam didn't look burned, but the heat coming off him was like sitting next to a bonfire.

"Sammy, no," Dean begged. "Please, no."

His phone rang and he answered without thought.

A familiar voice, full of concern. "Dean? You all right, boy? Sounded like some kind of explosion…"

For a moment he just sat there, unable to function enough to even answer.

"Dean, are you there? Dean!"

"Bobby?" Dean whispered and tried to figure out why they were talking.

"Dean? Dean, are you all right? Are you hurt?"

Dean's breathing hitched, and he forced himself to turn away from his brother's body lying on the ground. "I think…I…Bobby, you need to come. We're…I can't explain it, but…There was some kind of explosion," he admitted, his voice oddly flat and detached, and slowly stood to make his way to the edge of what his mine could only think of as a crater. "I can't…the whole forest, everything down to the dirt, it's just…it's gone, Bobby," he said, his voice catching on the words. As he spoke, he began walking around the perimeter, cautiously running his hand over the twigs and rocks and trees that were sticking out. "It was just…it was blown away. I don't…all the trees and bushes and…all the everything…it's just… It's all blown into the rest of the forest, and…it's like a wall," Dean shook his head. "I can't see a way out. We're trapped here."

"Where is here? Dean?"

"I…this side of the clearing where we practice shooting," Dean said softly.

"Which path did you take, Dean?"

"Um. The…the path…in..in the corner. Where we pick blackberries."

"Path by the blackberries, got it," Bobby repeated. "Did you turn off the path at all?"

Dean shook his head.

"Dean?"

"No. No turns."

"Dean, are you hurt?"

Dean breathed a short laugh. He looked over at the still, bloody caricature that was what was left of his baby brother. Hurt? He was dead. If what he saw about Sammy was true…Dean was dead. But that's not what Bobby meant, and enough of his training remained that he was able to answer. "Um…not bad. Bruised? A little burned, I think. I don't…I don't know. I can't…I can't feel," he admitted softly.

"Okay. Okay. Then where's Sam?" Bobby asked, and waited for an answer that didn't come. "Dean? Where's Sam, is he with you? Is Sam there?"

Dean nodded and then remembered that Bobby couldn't see him. "Yeah," he said softly. "He's…he's here," Dean admitted, his voice suddenly shaking with all the emotion he'd been holding down, turning back to look at the still form.

"Dean? Is Sammy hurt?"

"I…he…yeah," he sighed. "Sammy…he's real bad, Bobby," he closed his eyes against the reality. "I'm not sure…he…Bobby," Dean gasped. "I think…I don't know," he admitted and dropped to his knees by the radiant heat that was his whole life. "I…he might…I think he might…". Dean swallowed hard, to keep from vomiting the words.

"Dean," Bobby's voice was shaking a little now, but still an island of sanity in the sudden hell Dean was stuck in. "Have you checked for a pulse?"

"N-no," Dean admitted. "I - I tried, Bobby, but…He's so hot," Dean whispered, shaking his head in confusion. "Not, not like a fever, it's like…it's like he's on fire, but…there isn't any…I tried to touch him, but it burned. Before I even touched him, it just burned."

"Is he breathing, Dean?" Bobby asked, trying to keep his voice even and calm. "Can you see his chest moving at all? Does it look like he's breathing?"

Dean shook his head slowly. "I don't…I can't…" The figure was so still, so entirely still. "I-I don't know," he lied.

"Dean," Bobby said softly, soothingly. "It's gonna be okay," Bobby said gently, and Dean could hear the rattling of tools being moved around. "I'm on the way, boy. I'll be there as soon as I can. Do you want to stay on the line with me?"

"No," Dean said, staring down at the lifeless body in front of him. "I just…I'll just wait here," he breathed. "With Sammy."

"Okay, Dean, I'm on…"

Dean flipped the phone closed and dropped it to the bare earth beside him.

His breathing was ragged, his heart was beating so loudly he figured Bobby could use it as a beacon. Beyond that, Dean was just numb. There wasn't any point in feeling anymore, anyway.

Slowly, Dean lowered himself to the ground, lying on his side facing his brother.

"I'm here, Sammy," he whispered to no one, and slid his burnt hand as close to his little brother as he could without getting burned again. "I've got you, little brother. It's all gonna be okay. I got you. I always…" his voice hitched into a sob and he closed his eyes, unable to keep looking at the Sammy-shaped pile of..of…stuff…that had been his baby brother, his best friend, his reason for…well, everything.

Dean wrapped his arms around his stomach. It hurt, he knew it hurt. Hell, everything hurt, but the pain was all muted and far away. Everything except the pain of losing Sammy. That was crushing, and he could barely breathe for the pain.

Dean didn't know how long he'd lain there, before he forced his eyes open again. He watched the Sammy-pile closely, checking if there was the slightest twitch, the smallest movement of chest or stomach or side to indicate that breath was being drawn.

The heat seemed to have dissipated now, and Dean sat up, moved closer until he was sitting as close to Sammy as he could. Slowly, he extended a trembling hand and set two fingers lightly against Sammy's neck in a move that was far too practiced.

He felt nothing.

He shifted and moved his fingers just under Sammy's nose, checking for the soft exhale of a breath.

He found none.

Dean lay down next to his brother, again, and rested one hand over Sammy's hand where is still covered Sam's ear.

"I'm here, Sammy," he reassured the unmoving pile of flesh and bone, of shredded clothes and shredded skin.

"Dean!" he heard Bobby's voice, muffled by the solid wall of destroyed vegetation behind him. "Dean? Dean, answer me, boy!"

He said nothing, just sniffed a little and shifted slightly to be closer yet to Sammy.

"DEAN!"

He could hear the fear, the worry, the near panic in Bobby's voice, but couldn't make himself respond. Couldn't make himself care. Why would he care about someone's fear, so far away, when he'd already lost the only thing he'd ever really cared about at all?

Dean closed his hand around Sammy's and pulled the hand closer to him, shifting his grip to properly hold the steadily cooling hand in his own, and he pulled it against his own cheek.

He heard what sounded like a chainsaw starting, and the whine of it beginning to cut through wood. It didn't matter.

Nothing mattered, not anymore. Not without Sammy.

Dean exhaled slowly, as an errant thought scrolled across his brain: Could you really, actually die from a broken heart?

He closed eyes, and hoped he could.

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A/N "Bullets and Bracelets" is a reference to the D.C. Comic character Wonder Woman, who uses the bracelets on her wrists to deflect bullets. I don't own Wonder Woman, either, although I admire her greatly.

Souless666 - first, don't ever apologize for leaving a detailed, thoughtful review! I love hearing how my readers feel about my stories! As to your points: I believe that in several places in the series, Sam makes reference to how difficult it was always being the new kid in school, and that he did get picked on. Also, Dean in a couple flashbacks indicates that if somebody hurts his baby brother he will rip their lungs out, so in my opinion (and in my AU) Dean did protect Sam. While it's still true that Sam could take pretty much any bully in school, despite his height, as you mentioned…well, at least in this AU he didn't want to, because doing so would make him even a bigger freak, and all the kid ever wanted was to fit in.

Regarding going to Stanford for Law — in chapter 11, Dean correctly guesses not only what Sam would want to go to school for, but what schools he'd be looking at. Sam chose law because, as Dean explained, it was a way for Sam to continue the two parts of Hunting he did like: research and, more importantly, saving people. I do have to add, though, that while Dean does correctly figure out that Sam wants to help those poor buggers who were possessed, or who had a skinwalker take their shape. The demon or skinwalker or whatever then commits a crime and the innocent civilian is arrested for it. It has always seemed to me that Sam has a strong sense of fairness, perhaps even stronger than his sense of what is right and what is wrong, and that situation of being arrested and tried for something that was committed by the person's body, but not his mind or soul, would be an issue for Sam. Dean is, as Sam confirmed, absolutely correct about that, but Dean is also missing something that ties into your observation that Sam wanted to be a lawyer because of his family, although not for the reason you suggested. My Sam wants to be a lawyer to protect his family and other hunters who will inevitably be arrested for their activities, as well as the innocent victims of the supernatural. Sam is, after all, a Winchester, and Winchesters all seem, to me, to possess a drastically overdeveloped sense of responsibility for others, and almost a compulsion to help.

Your comments about Jessica confused me a little. I totally agree that Jess was only in his life to die and get Sam back into hunting, but I'm confused that you think Sam would "see a demon coming from a mile off" and therefore Brady couldn't have been possessed and couldn't have introduced them and, therefore, no Jess. Sam cannot tell a demon from anyone who isn't possessed (at least not at this point in the story). If you are thinking about the attack on Bobby's house, (and let me state clearly that I am not either confirming or denying that the entity or entities behind that were or were not demons), he only knew about that when he noticed the sky was weird, not before. Yes, he knew something was coming slightly before that, but that was because the Force (or whatever it is, I'm not committing to anything LOL) told him. And it was only able to tell him because he was directly standing on the ground, barefoot. So, Brady being a demon and introducing Sam to Jess is still a valid option (although, again, I am not confirming anything about whether or not she'll be in the story)

Again, thanks SO MUCH for your wonderful review, and I'm delighted to have you on board. Can't wait to hear what you (and everyone else) think about this chapter!