A/N. Thanks so much for the reviews, views and support! My answer to reviews are after the context notes at the bottom of the chapter.

Also, remember that "I will not be rewriting episodes" thing? I may have lied. Why the change? Well, I'd been rewatching the entire series (for like the 5th time) when I started writing this, and when I hit the Pilot in this story, I was well into season 15, and it became confusing for me, the differences in what the boys had done — and become — in 15 years.. Add that to the truly excellent Supernatural Then and Now podcasts Rob Benedict and Richard Speight Jr are doing (and if you haven't listened, get on that. It's amazing!), and between the podcast and the confusion, I had to stop watching season 15 and go back to the beginning. And I'm now reminded that there were some… anomalies? with some of the stories, and some aspects of a few episodes that are directly opposed to powers!witch!Sam, or at least which feel like they would have been different in this world. So. Yeah. There we go. I still probably won't rewrite entire episodes, but there will be rewriting of scenes and additional scenes, sometimes multiple episodes in the same chapter. I'm sorry about that, I hope it doesn't get confusing.

Also, there's some real bad language in this chapter (more than usual) and I humbly apologize to all my readers for the use of the 'c' word (not by our boys. They were raised to respect women). It just didn't sound right without it.

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US-75 South

Somewhere in Nebraska

After Hookman

Dean shot Sammy another look out of the corner of his eye and sighed. "Sammy, if you look under that bandage one more time, I'm going to cuff your right hand to the door."

Sam let out a tiny snort, but stopped fussing with the bandage the EMTs had put over the deep laceration Hookman had gouged into his left arm just below the elbow.

"That gonna need stitches?" Dean wondered.

Sam shrugged and winced as he pulled his right shoulder, turning to look out the window at the endless rows of corn going by.

Dean was quiet for a few minutes before his brother's silence got to him.

"How about we find a diner and I'll take a look at that cut."

"Mmmhmm."

"Maybe get some ice on that shoulder."

"Yeah."

Dean shot another look at the battered kid sitting beside him, before turning his attention back to the road. "We could order up some strippers."

"Yeah, Dean, whatever you want."

Dean nodded. "Ground Control to Major Tom," he said, and reached out to flick his finger against Sam's exposed left ear.

"Hey!" Sam swatted Dean's hand aside. "Knock it off."

Dean smirked. Mission accomplished. "Dude, you haven't heard a word I've said in five minutes. Where's your head at?" he asked. "Still back with Lori? We can turn around."

Sam shook his head, and looked out the side window again. "No. Thanks."

Dean let the silence float for a couple minutes more, and turned off the stereo, making a mental apology for cutting off the great Robert Plant mid-lyric.

"Talk to me," Dean said. "What's stuck in that freaky big brain of yours, little brother?"

Sam shook his head, but didn't turn back from the window. "Nothin'," he muttered and leaned his forehead against the glass.

"Hey," Dean frowned and leaned over to put a hand on Sammy's shoulder. "Look at me."

"I'm fine!" Sam protested and tried to pull away.

"Dammit, Sammy, I saw the wreckage in the chapel, man, don't tell me you weren't tossed around. Let me see your eyes," he added and checked the lane in front of him — clear in front, no traffic coming the other way — before meeting his brother's gaze when Sam turned towards him with a sigh. "Well neither of your pupils is blown," Dean acknowledged and reached out quickly to place a hand on Sammy's forehead before the kid had time to pull away.

"Cut it out!`" Sam protested and batted Dean's hand aside, too late to stop his brother.

"You do feel warm," Dean mused. "I think we need to stop, find a place to hole up for a bit."

"Dean…." And the slight whine in his brother's voice did nothing to change his mind.

Dean turned his attention to the road again. "Saw a sign a little way back, motel up ahead. We'll break there, find someplace to eat."

Sam shook his head, but gave in with a sigh. "Whatever," he muttered and turned his attention back to the window.

Half an hour later, the pair were standing in the door of what they had been assured was the "best room in the house" of the Traveler's Haven motel, looking at the shabby room glowing weirdly under the neon spelling vel Ha in flickering pink letters.

"I think that's a bullet hole," Sam nodded towards the window.

Dean leaned back slightly to get a better look. "I don't see anything," he shrugged and dropped the two bags he carried on the bottom of the bed closest to the door.

Sam paused, looking at the unbroken window with a frown. "Must be a shadow," he decided, then stepped into the room, kicking the door shut behind him, and set his own duffle bag and backpack on the other bed. "I feel like I need a tetanus shot just standing here," he grimaced, and closed the drapes over the window.

"College made you soft, little brother," Dean scoffed and started rummaging through the weapons bag for the first aid kit. "Let me see that arm."

Sam sighed, greatly put upon, and sat gingerly on the edge of his bed, shrugging off his coat and rolling up his left sleeve.

Dean deftly unwrapped the bandage and tossed it in the general direction of the trash can by the door.

"Damn, this is still bleeding," Dean frowned and looked up at Sammy who seemed fascinated by the bandage lying on the floor just short of the trash can. "You never unbound your healing, did you?"

Sam shook his head. "I'm not planning to."

"Dammit, Sam!" Dean reached into the first aid kit for the suture kit, and froze when Sam wrapped a hand around his wrist.

"Salt first," Sam said quietly.

Dean turned and looked at his brother, finally taking in the fine lines of worry around the mouth, the slight scrunch of his forehead, the nearly brown cast to his eyes. "What's wrong?"

Sam shook his head. "I'm not bleeding out, Dean," he said with a shrug and nonchalance Dean knew was forced. "Safety first. Neither of us will be able to defend ourselves if something comes in while you're stitching me up."

The reasoning was sound, echoing repeated lessons they'd been taught their entire lives. It was also complete bullshit, because Dean knew, he knew there was something Sam wasn't telling him. But it would be faster to just do it than to argue about it, and Dean wanted to get that cut stitched as much as — maybe more than — he wanted to find out what Sam was hiding.

Dean sighed and stood, reaching into the weapons bag for salt, surprised when Sam pulled out a second can.

"You get the door and check the bathroom," Sam said oh-so-casually. "I'll get the front window."

Dean opened his mouth to argue, but stopped and did as he'd been asked.

Dean was in the bathroom when the shouting started.

"Dammit, bitch, don't you walk away from me!"

"I told you, Tommy, we're OVER. Get outa here before somebody calls the cops."

"I decide when it's over, you stupid cunt."

"GET AWAY FROM ME!"

"Don't you run away from me! I'll kill you dead, I swear!"

Dean turned away from the salt lined window with a sigh. Some asshole was about to beat on a woman, and that was something neither of the brothers could let stand. He turned toward the bathroom door, and started to pull his gun out of the waistband of his jeans, when the door suddenly slammed shut in front of him.

"What the…" He grabbed the door knob, tried to pull it open, but the door wouldn't budge. "SAAAAMM!"

The gun shot, when it came, was softer than he would have expected, but the sound of glass breaking and a heavy thump into the bathroom door was unmistakable.

Seconds later, a car started and peeled out of the parking lot, and suddenly the door was opening in his hand, and his brother fell into the bathroom, bleeding from a hole in his already injured right shoulder.

"Sam!" Dean dropped to his knees and pulled Sammy to his feet, to settle him on Dean's bed. "Crap, Sam, you're…Take it easy, take it easy," Dean panted, and grabbed the first aid kit. "Here, here," he handed Sam the bottle of whiskey they kept in the bag.

Sam took a quick swig then handed it back to Dean, who poured it over the wound.

"AAAGH!"

"I know, I know." Dean scrambled through the kit for the long-handled tweezers. "You're gonna be okay," Dean assured Sam — or possibly himself — as he poured the whiskey over the tweezers to sterilize them.

"Dean. Dean!" Sam reached up with his left hand — the arm he'd already need to stitch up — and grabbed his brother's wrist.

Dean froze and looked down at his brother.

"Take a breath," Sam said quietly. "It's okay. You're okay. I'll be fine. Just…your hand's shaking a bit," he pointed out, "and I'm not sure I want you poking in my shoulder or sewing me up like that, dude," he chuckled softly.

Dean frowned and closed his eyes.

Sam was right, he was trembling — not just his hand, all over — and he didn't know why. He'd stitched Sammy up a hundred times — Dad even more — had extracted more bullets from more of his family's body parts than anyone had a right to. Why was he freaking out now?

Because, some still semi-rational portion of his brain pointed out, it's been over four years since Sammy's been hurt this bad, and over seven years since he hasn't been able to fix it himself.

Dean took a few deep breaths, and forced himself to calm down. Panic won't help you, boy. You need to be calm to keep somebody alive, he could hear his Dad's deep voice in his head.

"You okay?" Sammy asked after another minute.

"Am I okay?" Dean opened his eyes, and glared down at his brother. "You're the one bleeding all over the bed, dude. MY bed."

"You're the one who put me here," Sam smirked. "Seriously, Dean, I'm okay. You know I've had worse."

Dean snorted and grabbed hold of Sammy's shoulder, holding him still as his rock-steady hand pushed the tweezers into the hole in his brother's shoulder. Dean winced at Sammy's sharp inhale, and allowed himself a moment of pride — and sorrow — that it was the only sign Sammy gave of his pain, then felt the tweezer hit something solid, but too movable and too small to be bone, and closed the tweezer around it, pulling the bullet out slowly and carefully, to avoid opening the hole any wider.

"Got it," he said triumphantly, then looked down at the blood rhythmically gushing out of his brother's shoulder. "Fuck! I think it nicked something important." He scrambled out of his overshirt and pressed the flannel over the hole. "Dammit. Sammy, I've gotta get you to a hospital, man."

"No," Sam shook his head. "Not enough time. Get my backpack," he said calmly, and pushed Dean's hand away to press down on his own shoulder..

"Y- Sam…"

"Backpack," Sam repeated firmly and Dean scrambled over to the other bed to grab Sammy's bag, returning immediately to his brother's side.

"Bottom of the back zipper pocket — blue velvet bag."

Dean dug for a moment and pulled out the small drawstring bag in question, frowning at the runic symbols sewn on the front.

"Open it."

It took Dean a second to figure out which of the two sets of drawstrings to pull on to open it, and once he had he tipped the contents into his hand. He stared for a moment at the swirling silver blue liquid, immediately recognizable as the correlation to the vial Sam had broken outside of Vegas over two years ago.

Sam put his hand out, and Dean handed the vial over. Immediately, Sam started to move to the other side of the bed, wincing in pain and blinking his eyes to keep his vision clear.

"Help me onto the floor," Sam gasped, as the pain and light headedness nearly dropped him back to the mattress, "between the beds."

Frowning, Dean walked around the bed. He hesitated a moment only, taking in the increasingly shallow breathing and the long, slow blinks of Sammy-trying-to-stay-conscious, before just picking him up and lowering him gently to the floor with his back against the night stand that stood between their beds.

It said a lot about how bad a shape Sammy was in that he didn't protest being carried like he was a toddler again.

"What do you need?" Dean demanded.

"Get me…pillows," Sam panted, "from…both beds. All of them."

Dean nodded and scrambled to get the pillows.

"Around me," Sam corrected when Dean started to put one behind his head. "And the…couch…cushions. All arou - around me."

Dean started to stand, then glanced around him at the array of pillows. "A pillow fort? You're making a fucking pillow fort? NOW?"

"It's not a…pillow fort," Sam assured him, and gave Dean a weak push towards the couch. "It's to hold in the…concussive…force of the…spell," he panted as Dean brought the two large cushions back from the threadbare couch.

"This is a pillow fort," Dean said firmly, and tented the two couch cushions over his brother, packing the other pillows around him. "Lucky for you," he added, ducking his head to look through the little tunnel he'd made around his kid, "I make the best pillow forts on the planet."

"You do," Sam laughed, weakly, "you really do. Bedspreads. Over top."

Dean dragged the bedspreads off the mattresses and draped them over the pillow fort. "Now what?"

"Get…away," Sam ordered. "Other. Side of…bed. Keep…head…down."

Dean nodded and rolled himself over his bed to kneel close to the floor.

Inside the concussive barrier (so not a pillow fort), Sam closed his eyes and tried to get his breathing to even out. It wasn't working, so he gave that up and just went forward with the reversal spell.

He closed his eyes, and lifted the vial of swirling liquid towards the ceiling.

"Virtutem meam solvo et restituo in corpus meum, spiritum, cor et animam bono animo et nulli nocebo."

He quickly unpopped the cork and drank the — frankly vile — liquid, and braced himself for what came next.

Sam shook and cried out in pain as the spell took over his body, spreading through his veins and out through his skin in a sharp wind that shook the bedspreads over him and reverberated briefly through the pillow —- concussive barrier and out the open end into the room.

For a moment, he shook violently, as if his own power was shaking him like a doll, then lay still, panting beneath the cushions and between the pillows.

"SAM?!"

"I'm good," he assured Dean, still panting a little. "Give me a few to…close all the bleeders," he said and closed his eyes, feeling the strong, almost painful tingling as his body knit itself back together.

He didn't know how long he sat there, but it must've been several minutes, before he pushed his way through the —- okay, pillow fort — and out the open end.

"Dean?" he called and made his way around his brother's bed, to find Dean curled up in a ball holding his stomach. "My god, Dean, did it hurt you? I tried so har…."

Sam froze and his eyes narrowed into a glare as Dean rolled onto his back, waving one hand helplessly at his brother…

And laughing.

"What the fuck, Dean?!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Dean gasped, wiping the tears from his face and trying to pull himself under control. "It's just…dude, when that…that wind…" he tried and started laughing again. "And the bedspreads all flapping aorund and it just goes….ppppppfffffttt."

Dean fell back onto the floor, holding his aching sides.

"DEAN!"

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I can't…Dude. That was the most epic. Fart. EVER!" he gasped out and grabbed his aching side as the tears ran down his cheeks.

"Dean, you…" Sammy started, angrily and then the mental image hit him and he smiled, then snorted, and in seconds, he was on the floor with his brother as they leaned against each other and laughed like they hadn't laughed in years.

When they finally wound down to just the occasional chuckle, Dean turned to look at his brother.

"All healed then?"

"Yeah," Sammy smiled and jumped in surprise when Dean turned and slammed his fist into Sam's arm. "What the hell, Dude!" Sam shoved Dean away as he ran a hand up his aching arm.

"That is what you get," Dean told him as he pulled himself to his feet and glared down at his little brother, "for locking me in a bathroom so you could take a fucking bullet!"

Sam scrambled to his own feet and stood as tall as he could, trying to make Dean look up at him in an effort to intimidate that he knew before he tried was fated to fail. "I don't…"

"DON'T!" Dean interrupted. "Did you think I'd forget that little bullet hole you saw in the window? The one that wasn't there? At least not until after You. Got. Shot. So, what, Sammy? You dream about this place, huh? About that bullet hole? Got us here, because you decided that was the answer to your prayers?"

"Wh—What the fu—" Sam exhaled sharply. "Okay, firstly, I didn't have a dream about this place. And even if I had, you were the one driving, Dean. I didn't choose this motel, dude, you did. Second, what the hell are you talking about? Answer to what prayers?"

Dean swallowed and looked away for a moment, before meeting his brother's eyes again. "You think I haven't noticed?" Dean wondered, his voice suddenly soft and just a little…broken. Sam found himself blinking in surprise at the hint of moisture in the familiar green eyes. "I sleep three feet away, dude. I hear you. Every night."

"Ok, I'm still having nightmares but…"

"I'm not talking about the damn nightmares!" Dean interrupted him. "Dude, you talk in your sleep, you always have. And I hear you, man," Dean told him and grabbed onto the back of Sammy's neck. He shook his head as a tear slid free. "Why am I still alive? Why did I live? Why do I have to be stuck here, without you?"

Sam gasped and would have pulled back, but Dean held tight to the nape of his neck.

"Man, when there's a real victim involved, when you're actually saving somebody, you're cool. But when we've got the potential victim safe and it's just us and whatever we're trying to gank? Do you really think I haven't noticed?"

Sam shook his head and shrugged. "Dude, I don't…"

"You're careless, Sammy," Dean said accusingly. "Like with that Bloody Mary thing? You were so eager to call her, to have her come for your sins. Knowing damn well you might not — probably wouldn't survive. And when we went after that Wendigo. You figured out what we were hunting, one of the most dangerous predators out there, and you think I never noticed when you went into the woods alone? Outside the Anansi signs?"

"I had to pee!"

"Bullshit!" Dean snapped. "You've got a death wish, Sammy. You wanna die, and I am not going to let you do it."

"Dean, that…" Sam closed his eyes and bit his lower lip before meeting his brother's gaze and putting his own hand behind Dean's neck. "That isn't true. I swear to you, Dean. I told you in Colorado, man, all I want is to find Dad. To find Jessica's killer. And yeah, killing all the evil sons of bitches we can along the way. But, Dean…I am not gonna die. Not until you and I, and maybe Dad, take this son of bitch down."

Dean swallowed and grabbed Sammy's face in both his hands, making sure he was looking right into — through — Sammy's pale green eyes, into his soul. "Yeah?"

"I swear, Dean."

Dean let go and stepped back abruptly, giving Sam a little push onto the bed as he moved. "Then what the hell was that with the bathroom door, Sammy? Huh? With the bullet? You said there was a bullet hole, and there wasn't and now there is. You didn't dream that?"

"No!"

"Then what, Sammy, huh? What you're having visions now?"

Sam just looked down and bit his lip.

"Son of a bitch!" Dean sat down heavily on the bed beside his brother, and rested his head in his hands for a moment. "When the hell did this start?"

"I…just…I'm not sure," Sam admitted a little sheepishly.

Dean raised his head and turned to look at his brother. "You're not sure? What the hell, Sam? How can you not be sure? You're the one having them!"

"I'm not…I don't…It's just not that simple, Dean," Sam tried again, and sighed, chewing nervously on his thumbnail.

Dean reached over without thinking and pulled his brother's hand away from his mouth. "Not that simple. Where have I heard that before?"

Sam shook his head. "Dean…look, I…sometimes, when I find new stuff I can do, it…Like with the prophecy dreams, remember? It can take a little while before I can figure out what I'm doing. You gotta remember, dude, when I first start…doing something new," he explained and glared at Dean, daring him to call it 'getting a power' or 'powering up' or something equally annoying. Dean wisely just raised his eyebrows and kept his mouth shut. "When it's just starting, I can't control it, so it can take a little while for me to know it's…" he glanced at his brother and sighed at the single cocked eyebrow, "a new power," he conceded, rolling his eyes. "So, I usually don't know when it actually started. I just know when I…notice it."

Dean nodded, slowly. "Okay," he conceded. "Okay. So when did you notice you're having visions?"

"They're not visions," Sam countered. "Not, not really. They're just…flashes. Just…I don't…it's like…it's like somebody superimposes a picture over what I'm seeing, what's really there. It's a…an overlay! Like, just for a second, I saw the bullet hole. Then you said there wasn't one and I looked again, and…there wasn't one," Sam shrugged.

"So what the hell happened with the bathroom door, then, Sammy? Why'd you lock me in?"

"Ah-I-ah-I," Sam stuttered and shook his head. "I didn't know I had."

Dean just looked at him.

"Really! I knew I'd closed the door, but I didn't know I was keeping it closed."

"Why did you close it, then?" Dean snapped.

Sam opened his mouth for a moment then, closed it, and looked away, shaking his head. "It was another overlay. I was turning towards the window, checking out that fight while I was getting my gun from where I'd put it on the dresser next to the bathroom, and when I saw you standing there…you'd been shot. Just for a second, and then it was gone. Then, when I got to the window, and I saw that asshole pull a gun of his own, and his girl was heading towards the car parked next to the Impala…I closed the door."

"Right," Dean glared, shooting Sam a perfectly effective bitchface of his own. "Because you getting shot, is better than me getting shot? No, Sam. That's not how it works!"

"Oh, so we're back to this bullshit again!" Sam Winchester-yelled, and sprang up from the bed to angrily pace to the front door of the room and back. "Jesus, Dean, you never change, do you? We've been over this," Sam reminded him. "I get it, dude, I'm your brother, and you're going to keep me safe. Well, newsflash, asshole: your MY brother, and I'm gonna keep you safe, too!"

"By getting shot?" Dean countered, standing and crossing to where Sam stood in the middle room, matching his brother's stance, arms crossed over his chest, feet shoulder width apart, one slightly in front of the other in a fighting stance. "I don't think so, Sam!"

"Okay, first, I didn't know I would get shot," Sam defended. "All I saw was you."

"Oh, good," Dean scoffed. "So, not knowing if you'd get shot or not — or where — and with an arm that had been bleeding for hours, and a shoulder that was damned near dislocated," he frowned, and pushed hard against Sammy's (now healed) right shoulder "you decided to protect me," Dean sneered.

"I told you!" Sam responded. "I didn't know I'd get hit, and you know what, Dean? Even if I had known, I'd've fuckin' done it anyway!"

"Oh, that's brilliant, Sammy. Seeing as it hit a fuckin' artery."

"Yeah, it was brilliant, dumbass," Sam countered and uncrossed his arms. " 'Cause you got shot here," he yelled and pushed a finger — hard — into the space right between Dean's eyebrows.

Dean blinked and pulled his head back.

"That's right," Sam nodded. "That's what I saw, Dean. You, standing in the door to the bathroom as a bullet when straight between your eyes and into that stupid, stubborn brain!" he yelled as the tears began to fall.

Dean's breath hitched and he reached for his brother as Sam turned away and walked to sit, panting slightly, on his own bed, his gaze fixed to the floor.

"Even if I knew it'd hit the artery," Sam said flatly, "I'd do it just the same." He lifted his head to face his brother, pulling his arm away when Dean - closer than he'd thought - reached out to touch him. "I had a shot to fix my artery, Dean," he said, quietly. "You. Were dead. I can't fix DEAD, Dean. Nobody can. And I've told you before," he added in a bare whisper. "I won't. Let you die. Ever." There was a long pause, and Sam suddenly stood, grabbing his bag. "I'm getting a shower," he said firmly, not looking at Dean any more, and missing the sheer relief on his brother's face when Dean realized that Sam wasn't walking out on him.

Sam disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door behind him with a very final click that hit Dean harder than if Sam'd slammed the door.

Dean sank onto his bed, settling against the headboard, his breath still to harsh in his own ears, and wiped his hand slowly over his mouth.

"Oh, Sammy," he breathed and closed his eyes, for a second, before snapping them quickly open as Sammy's well-described vision of Dean with a bullet to the brain sprang onto his eyelids.

Dean's gaze shifted, inevitably, to the firmly closed bathroom door. If he asked, he knew Sam would tell him he wasn't still seeing that self-same image in his mind, and he knew that would be a stone-cold lie.

"Oh, Sammy," Dean breathed, his heart breaking as he thought of what other horrors his baby brother might see and never share.

"What am I going to do with you?"

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A/N - Explanations:

A klick is military slang for kilometer.

"Ground Control to Major Tom" is a repeating lyric in David Bowie's classic song A Space Oddity, in which an astronaut is believed to be dead after a ship malfunction, but is actually drifting in space, alive until (presumably) his systems die and he runs out of air.

Robert Plant was the lead singer of Led Zeppelin, canonically Dean's favorite band (although they were never heard on the show, because Kripke & Co couldn't afford the rights)

The Latin Sam uses to release his healing was translated from English by an app, as always. The original English was:

I unbind my power and retrieve it back into my body, spirit, heart and soul with good intention and harm towards none.

For those of you wondering why not that simple seems familiar to Dean, take a quick look in Chapter 10.

An overlay is a term used when a computer program puts a static, formatted image over a changeable text document, so all documents look the same when viewed or printed, without having to waste memory on keeping the static portions of the image in the actual saved document. The term was also used when an overhead projector had two transparencies on top of each other, with the same effect.

CorvusVeritatis - So glad you're still enjoying this. I'd always had an issue with the way Sam reacted — or was shown to react — to the fire and Jess's death. "We've got work to do" and that stoic face just didn't seem right for the emo Sammy we all know and love. I, unfortunately, have watched several people I dearly love lose the love of their lives, and let me tell you, no matter how emotionally controlled you usually are, immediately after a sudden death, your emotions are all over the place (and by the way, even if you are dealing with someone clearly at the end of their life due to age or illness or whatever, the actual moment when you realize they are gone is ALWAYS a "sudden death") [As an only slightly unrelated note, I have to say that while I am deeply saddened by the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, I was not surprised. Prince Philip died in April and I have personally seen, on more than one occasion, that when one partner of a long-married couple passes, the other will typically not last more than 6 months, often despite other loved ones who still need them.]

As for the relationship between the boys…"dangerously codependent" was the starting point, and then I added Dean literally saving Sammy's life by pulling a gun on the father Dean worships….Well, it sure wasn't going to get less codependent, now, was it? LOL.

Glad you're still here, despite the delays — keep telling me what you think, I love it!

Princess of the Fae — oh, sweetie. I haven't even begun to torture these two. BWAHAHAHA

Souless666 — Ah, yes. Sam's love life. In a lot of ways, loving Sam Winchester is a lot like visiting Jessica Fletcher (the female lead in the 80's show Murder She Wrote, about a middle age crime novelist who was constantly solving murders.) All her friends knew that if Jessica Fletcher was there, someone would die — why would you ever invite her to your party? Similarly, once you knew anything about Sam's history, why would you even have coffee with this guy? Yes, he's gorgeous, and sweet and smart and basically perfect — but Dean's label of "Trouble Magnet" doesn't even begin to explain the problem he causes for the women in his life. Equally important, why would Sam ever let himself get involved with someone? With the way that boy carries guilt? Again, coffee is the extent of his ability to be with someone and not have them possessed, burned, shot… Which, by the way, is one of the reasons I wholly buy into the Sam/Eileen relationship. Like Amelia (yeah, not thrilled with that either), Eileen started as an attraction and then they got to know each other, but with Eileen, there was no need for lies or lies-of-omission, nothing at all Sam needed to hide in his entire life. They clearly became fast friends — at least in part because Sam knew a little sign language, and Eileen had to be massively relieved to be able to talk to someone in her native language, not just lip read from theirs. They are also a little nerdy, but badass, and clearly have an understanding of the other's motivations (revenge, family). In my personal experience, when a solid friendship is formed, entirely organically, as you say, between two good, attractive, compatible people, at least one of them is going to develop some romantic feelings towards the other. If that feeling is on both sides, it seems natural to me that it would grow into love. I've already discussed why anyone would fall for Sam, but from Sam's point of view, Eileen is everything he could want. She's a perfect combination of Jess and Dean. She has Jess's vulnerability, by virtue of her deafness, but has Dean's badassery and is able to have his back. She's smart, like Jess, and sarcastic like Jess and Dean. And she doesn't take his shit, like Jess and especially Dean. Why wouldn't they fall for each other? My two cents.

RE: John — oh, I know. Canon-John managed, against all odds, to stay functional for months after Mary died, no argument. But this isn't canon-John. Canon-John never blamed Sam for anything and, according to Dean [in Bugs], was very proud of Sammy, just afraid of what would happen when Sam didn't listen or was on his own (your take on the butterfly knife for his graduation present, which I am still deliberately not confirming or denying as accurate) This John blamed Sammy for nearly 12 years, against all logic, and on the flimsy say-so of some rando hunter. This John has been largely unfunctional pretty much from the moment Mary was killed, although even Dean admits that he only stayed in the bottle for 3 or 4 months (basically until he went to Missouri), at which point he became more or less sober and started Hunting, but I don't think rationality ever really returned. I feel like this John went a little bonkers when Mary died, and never quite recovered, making it a stone miracle that Dean and Sam came out as well as they did, frankly.

All of that can change as the story progresses, of course, since I learned long ago that my plotting these things out doesn't work. Ever. I just end up fighting the characters to make them do what I want them to do, and I think we all know that the Winchesters really can't be controlled like that :)

Glad you're still with me on this, and for the record, I love your well-thought-out comments. Keep 'em coming!