Chapter Text

Dean had the equivalent of an Atomic Bomb in his chest because he was about to kill God’s sister.

It was a lot for even him.

 Over the last thirteen years, so much weird freaky shit has happened that he was half convinced that he was actually in some psych ward hopped up on so many drugs that reality wasn’t a thing anymore.

That would be more believable than whatever the Hell his life was now.

Amara knows he has an Atomic Bomb in his chest, and she isn’t very happy, so he starts to make shit up, trying to stall so he can figure out how to get closer to her and blow them both up.

It was hard to come up with some half-assed argument when his chest and limbs felt like they were melting from the inside out and his nerve endings were burning like ash—it vaguely reminded him of his times downstairs, the way his skin didn’t feel like it fit, and the heat that never left, that burned away part of his soul forever.

But he persevered. He was stubborn like that.

One of his skills—one of the only things he prided himself on—was his ability to talk to people. Sammy and Dad had all the book smarts, but Dean had gotten all the people skills.

He went on about “family” and other nonsense, inching closer to Amara. He was running out of time. He could feel it in the way his heart started to stutter from the immense power in him.

Then, Chuck was there, and he and Amara were having a Family Reunion. 

Cute.

Not sure what that meant for him and the rest of humanity. Chuck was a selfish asshole on the best of days, and Amara a psychopath. Not a winning combination, especially when they had both tried to kill each other on multiple occasions.

Amara waved a hand at him. “Dean Winchester.”

He stiffened. He’d rather avoid any more attention from the psychotic younger sister of God.

“You gave me what I needed most,” she said. “I’d like to do the same for you.”

Amara touched him, and the burning, melting, Hell-like , sensation was gone from his chest, and he could breathe again. 

She gave him a long look. It was hard to read the ancient being, but he thought it was gratitude.

“Enjoy your second chance, Dean. Don’t waste it,” she said before tapping two fingers to his forehead. 

Before he could move away—he knew the two fingers of doom personally from Cas—everything went dark.

*
*
*

Wrong.

Everything felt wrong.

His body didn’t ache like it should. He couldn’t feel the tension in his shoulders from the time he threw his back out in Purgatory or the achy knee from when it had gotten kicked in by a Werewolf, the headache that had been behind his eyes since the Mark of Cain was gone, and he felt lighter than he had in years, not weighed down by all his pain and suffering.

Wrong.

He didn’t like it.

It felt like Hell.

Alastair liked to play with his body, change how it felt, and redo all his nerve endings to make all sensations a thousand times more painful. He would change him until his body wasn’t his own anymore. To the point that it was unrecognizable. And he did it thousands of times.

He bolted upright, breathing heavily, and found himself tangled in blankets. 

His thoughts weren’t clear, just that he needed to move.  

He scrambled, trying to get out of the covers, and landed flat on the ground, knocking the little air he had out of his lungs.

Before he could even try to get his bearings, the lights switched on, and Dean almost threw up; it was so blinding and overwhelming.

“Dean?” Someone with his brother's face asked.

Because that was not Sam. 

The Shifter or whatever the Hell that was in front of him had that stupid Justin Beiber haircut that Sam used to have and was all gangly limbs and baby-faced, with innocent eyes and an open expression.

His Sam was tall and had broad shoulders with his princess hair that he maintained almost psychotically. He was hardened and stoic and dependable and he was his brother. Not this baby.

Everything was wrong. 

Sam was wrong.

His body was wrong.

The room—a crappy motel room, not the comfy Bunker—was wrong.

“Boys, what’s going on?” a deep, gravelly voice asked, rough from sleep.

Dean knew that voice well, better than his own, even if he hadn’t heard it in over a decade. But it couldn’t be who he thought it was because that man was dead. 

He pushed himself shakily onto his feet. 

His dad—his very dead dad—was pushed up onto his elbow, staring at him with stern eyes. “Dean?”

“Not real, this isn’t real,” he muttered. “I’ve finally lost my mind.”

It couldn’t be. Dad was dead, and that wasn’t his Sam. His body wasn’t his body. 

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remember the last thing that had happened.  The Darkness. End of the World Part One Million and Two. Chuck. Giving up his life again. Amara….Amara.

No, it couldn’t be.

“Dean? Are you alright?” Sam asked hesitantly. 

Enjoy your second chance, Dean. Don’t waste it.

Sam touched his shoulder lightly and everything came crashing down around him—because he could feel that . It was real.  

Baby Sam was real. And that meant—that meant his dad was real, too.

It was too much, far too much for Dean. He had thought he was going to die, had been prepared to, had maybe even looked forward to the peace that it would bring. 

And now this.

His stomach turned violently, and he practically ran to the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him and locking it. He ran over to the toilet and emptied his stomach of food he didn’t remember eating.

He wiped the bile off his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned against the wall. 

If this was real—and deep down, he knew it was—then he was back before the whole Stanford debacle. Before the visions, and the Demons, the Angels, and the torture and death. When his family was a family and not two broken shells of people trying to get by. 

Nothing had happened yet.

Nothing.

Everyone was alive— everyone.

Dad, Bobby, Ellen, Jo, Ash, Charlie, Kevin, Pastor Jim, and dozens of others. All the people that he had lost, who had left him and taken a piece of his soul with them, they were here. They weren’t gone. 

He choked back a sob and covered his mouth with his hand. 

It couldn’t be real. Yet he knew it was.

Thank you, Amara.

None of the bad things had happened yet—none of the really bad things—Sam was just a normal kid. He hadn’t died a dozen times, gotten addicted to Demon blood, gone to Hell, or anything . 

“Dean, I really need to hear something from you, man, or I’m breaking the door down,” Sam called, his voice holding a note of hysteria.

Right.

This Sam still tried to comfort him because he didn’t know that there was no way to comfort him for the things he went through. This Sam didn’t follow the unsaid rule of letting the little emotional breakdowns go in favor of the world-ending ones.

This Sam didn’t know anything.

“I—I’m fine, just a bad dream,” he called hoarsly. 

Just a bad dream . That was essentially what the last seventeen—fifty-seven?—years were now. A bad dream .

He shivered at the thought. Everything he fought for, every injury, everything he had paid for in blood, it had never happened. 

Hell, Purgatory, that year without Sam. 

It was just a dream now, one he would have to live with for the rest of his inevitably short life without anyone to lean on. Because there was no way in hell he was telling his dad or Sam that God's sister had sent him back in time because she had the hots for him . 

His dad would probably kill him.

Dean wouldn’t exactly blame him if he heard the same crackpot story.

“Son, I think it’s best if you come out here.”

His lungs froze in his chest. The young side of him, the soldier, was moving to his feet, but the real Dean stayed put. The Dean who had lived through a dozen apocalypses and lost everyone he loved, the one who had hunted far greater evils than his father could ever even imagine, the one who was decades older than his father, the one who had spent longer in Hell than on Earth—he didn’t move.

“I need a minute,” he said firmly. 

He had just been sent  seventeen—fifty-seven?—years back in time. He needed time to adjust. He deserved at least five minutes to himself. It wasn’t that much to ask.

There was mumbling behind the door he couldn’t make out. If he had to guess, his dad was about to kick the door in, and Sammy was holding him back.

“You got it, Dean,” Sam said.

His head thumped against the back of the wall. No matter if this Sam wasn’t really his Sam, he had Deans back like always. That would never change.

“Thanks, Sammy,” he said.

*
*
*

After ten minutes of pulling himself together and wiping all traces of vomit and tears away, he pulled on the mask of Young Dean, one he hadn’t worn in a while.

He had cultivated his entire being ever since he was four to hold his broken family together, to keep the peace, to tone down the constant gloom and doom, but the mask had cracked almost completely after his dad's death and had been obliterated after Hell, and he was struggling to shove himself back into that persona.

He opened the door, and instantly, Sam was on his feet, puppy dog eyes in full force. “Dean.”

Dean tried to grin. “Sam.”

Sam hesitated as if he wanted to give him a hug or something. “What was that?”

He kept the tired grin on his face and shrugged. “Don’t really know. Just a dream that freaked the living daylights out of me.”

Sam gave him a Look—one that said he didn’t buy it. “You don’t have bad dreams.”

Dean clapped him on the shoulder. “What can I say? There is a first time for everything.”

Sam was still watching him warily, but eventually, the look fell away. This Sam trusted him wholeheartedly, even if he was a teenage brat. Dean hadn’t broken his trust a thousand times over yet. 

“You freaked me out there for a second,” Sam said, relief written on his face. “Don’t do that again.”

Dean gave him a cocky grin. “I’ll try not to, Sunshine.”

He hesitated a moment before glancing at his dad, who was glaring a hole in his head. His heart still stuttered at the sight of him, and the air seemed more like water in his lungs, but he managed to keep his composure. 

They had a stare down, Dad giving him a substantial look, like he was supposed to do something, but Dean couldn’t think of what he wanted from him. 

“You boys get some sleep. We ride at dawn,” Dad said after Dean didn’t say anything.

Sam gave him a clap to the back before muttering goodnight, and Dean shuffled into his sweaty bed. 

He missed the Bunker at that moment. He missed his memory foam mattress, his soft blankets, and the walls that were decorated with his guns. 

But his family was whole for the first time in forever, so he couldn’t complain.

He jerked awake when someone grabbed his shoulder—which was weird because Sam and Cas knew not to touch him while he slept—and was halfway to his gun before he realized it was Sammy —not Sam —trying to get him awake. 

It took a second for it all to come back, all the crazy nonsense that was his life. 

Amara. Time-travel. Second Chance.

“Time to go, Dean,” Sam said impatiently. 

He gave himself five seconds to readjust to this, to his baby brother being a child again, to his dad being freaking alive before he pushed himself up and slapped Sam away.

Sam glared at him petulantly. 

Dean rolled his eyes and got out of bed, shoving on his boots. This was familiar. This was almost normal. Even in their ancient age, he and Sam still went about the same routine they had years ago.

The one thing that wasn’t normal, the one glaring difference that made his heart beat too fast and his hand tremble, was his dad. 

He could sense his presence in the corner of the room, but he couldn’t make himself look over there. He couldn’t even point his body in that direction.

His relationship with his father was complicated, to say the least. He loved the man. He hated him. Dean felt like he had never really been the man's son , only a soldier. But all Dean knew was being a soldier, even after he was gone, so how could he judge him for it?

He had spent the years without him trying to grapple with everything he felt, but he never really came to a conclusion. After a while, he just shoved all his feelings into a box because he didn’t have enough mental energy to try and deal with his “feelings” while also saving the world and keeping his idiotic brother alive.

Dean grabbed his old duffle, which looked practically new, and followed Sam and his dad out the door. 

His dad gave them brief orders—apparently, they were in North Carolina and heading to Vermont—before he got in his giant truck.

Sam threw him the keys to Baby, and he froze for a second.

It probably wouldn’t be the smartest thing to drive right now—the world still seemed fuzzy and staticy around the edges—but Sam was giving him one of his Looks, and he really couldn’t afford to let Sam or his dad getting suspicious, so he slapped on a grin and hopped in the driver's seat even as his gut rolled. 

To keep his sanity, he slammed in a random cassette to distract his brain from his teenage brother, who had been in his thirties yesterday.

“You all right, Dean? You’re looking kinda pale,” Sam asked, voice ridiculously high pitched.

He was his brother.

But he also wasn’t.

Not the one he remembered.

“Yeah, I’m fine, still shaking off last night,” he said. 

Sam hummed thoughtfully. “What did you dream about?”

Dean almost choked; he asked it so casually. In his time, Sam would corner him first, guilt trip him, and choose his words and time carefully so that he could manipulate him to the fullest extent.

His Sam was diabolical in his efforts to get him to “talk about his mental health.”

Sammy was…innocent. Naive. 

And that made him smile. 

“Some real freaky shit. Trust me, you don’t want to know,” he said. 

Sam cracked a grin in the corner of his eye. “Alight, Mr. Macho Man, who can’t talk about feelings.”

This Sam could still smile easily and brightly, and that was something that Dean would die for.

Chapter Text

Dean still wasn’t one hundred percent certain that he wasn’t actually dead and living out some torture dream orchestrated by all the cosmic beings he had pissed off in his relatively short life. But he was trying to keep his cover as Charming and Boyish Dean Winchester while coming up with a plan to save literally everyone, even if everything around him was an illusion. 

He wasn’t sure how well he was doing.

He knew Sam was mostly distracted by the upcoming Stanford bomb that would be dropped soon—which would put Dean on a time crunch because he had no idea what he was going to do about that.

So, yeah, Sam was all sunshine and rainbows, didn’t suspect a thing.

But Dad.

Dad was a paranoid bastard who shot first and asked questions later, and his son having a major personality change was something that would trigger his killer instincts and end with a very dead Dean—which was a situation he would like to avoid.

Dean tried to smile and make jokes like he used to, tried to be happy and carefree, but his nightmares were always in the corner of his eye, taunting him. 

Hard to smile when the man you had gotten killed was staring right back at you.

So, he did his best to avoid him. 

They were hunting a ghost in Vermont, and Dean was honestly shocked. He couldn’t remember the last time he had done a simple Salt’n Burn.  Anything less than the world almost ending wasn’t even a blip on his radar.

It gave him a little time to figure out what the Hell he was going to do. He remembered this hunt vaguely, and he knew it gave him roughly a week before the fight that ended his family happened. The day Sammy left for Stanford, Dad ran out, and Dean was left all on his own.

Those four years that Sam was gone were some of the worst of his life, which was saying something. His life recently may have sucked ass, The Mark, becoming a demon for a second, almost obliterating his relationship with Sam, and only fixing it by literally dying , but at least his life wasn’t pointless.

 At least he was wanted by some people. 

Because at the end of the day, Dean feared being alone more than anything he’d ever been through.

(He would do anything to not be alone ever again.)

But he saw what happened when he brought people into the Life out of selfishness—they died. All of them. Dead.

There were a few who made it—Garth, Jody, Donna, and the rest of the girls, but he’d known since the second they’d stepped into their lives there was a clocking counting down on their time left. Till they were gone too.

He wanted them free from this terrible life. 

Even if that meant he would be trapped in it alone.

(Even if it meant Dean would live out his worst nightmare.)

“Dean?” Sam asked, a note of hesitancy in his voice.

Dean glanced at him. He and Sam were waiting on Dad to finish talking to witnesses and were stuck in the crappy motel room. It had been a while since he hadn’t been the lead hunter calling the shots.

 Over the years, he and Sam had come to an agreement of sorts, where they were equals, but if push came to shove Dean always was the one who made the play. It was one of the things that had soured their relationship. Maybe the agreement had only been in Dean’s head. 

“What?” he asked.

“I don’t know—you just looked, really, I don’t know, morose? Is something going on? Are you okay? Did Dad do something?” he asked, his voice hardening. “Because if he did—”

He held a hand up to stop the word vomit and ignored his racing heart, because, dammit, if Sam could see it, his dad sure as Hell could too. 

“I’m fine, Dude.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “I’m not a kid or an idiot! I know when something is going on, and you can tell me what it is.”

Dean almost sighed.

Because that was just the thing.

Dean wished he could tell him.

He wished that he had his Sam to lean on because he would know what to do. He would have a plan. He wouldn’t be rattled by this as long as Dean was. 

But the boy in front of him wasn’t his Sam—his Sam, who, for all his sadness and trauma, had been his brother , was essentially dead. He was gone, forever. 

It was selfish to think like that, he knew. He hated himself for it. 

Because his brother was alive, right in front of him, he just wouldn’t understand Dean anymore. He couldn’t, not really. Because he was innocent , he didn’t have nightmares or hallucinations. He didn’t know what happened to Dean—he couldn’t relate.

He was just Sam. 

Not the harbinger of the Apocalypse or Lucifer's vessel or psychic—just a normal kid who wanted to go to college.

With no nightmares or memories of torture. Just a kid who had his entire future ahead of him. Nothing was holding him back. And Dean would do anything to keep it that way.

Even if that meant Dean was alone.

(Alone—that was his future in this reality.)

“There are some things that you are better off not knowing,” Dean said. “Trust me.”

The Sam he knew would probably deck him in the face and then lock him in their dungeon if he did this to him, if he tried to go at this alone. Sam had never wanted to be part of this life—left the first chance he got when Dean went to Purgatory but came back just as quickly when Dean reappeared. 

His Sam had hated the life, but Dean knew that he would’ve hated him more for making decisions for him like this.

Well, too bad, loser, you aren’t here to stop me. You’ll just have to live with being a normal, happy guy.

“Will you ever trust me?” Sam scoffed. “All our lives, you’ve treated me like—like glass that’ll break at any moment. I’ve lived this life just as long as you have, Dean. Don’t treat me like I haven’t.”

There was the Teenage Drama Queen that Dean remembered. 

He knew he shouldn’t, but he found it ridiculously funny. He was just a baby —only a little older than Claire. 

He cracked a grin and ruffled his hair. “Aw, all grown up, are you, Sammy? I happen to have it on good authority that you can’t watch The Grinch because Jim Carrey freaks you out too much.”

Sam glared at him and slapped his hand away. “Shut up.”

“That not even getting into the clown thing—”

Sam threw a book at him. “I’m going to kill you, Dean!”

He laughed manically. “You can try.”

Maybe things weren’t so bad after all.

Dad came back, and Dean started to feel like the walls were closing in on him because that look in his eyes—it meant something bad. It meant he was suspicious. 

“Think I found the culprit,” Dad said, slamming a picture to the ground. “Elle Woods, drowned when she was fifteen. It was ruled an accident, but the parents are fishy, and she had bruises covering her.”

Sam nodded beside him, chewing on a pen. “That was easy. We heading out?”

Dad glanced at Dean before returning his gaze to Sam. 

Crap.

He knew that look. 

“Yeah, take the bags to the car.”

Sam got up and grabbed their bags from the bed they laid on, glancing between Dean and Dad. “Are you guys coming?”

John clapped a hand on Dean’s shoulder, and he had to keep himself from flinching. “Me and your brother are gonna have a word.”

Great. This totally wasn’t his worst nightmare.

He had tried so hard not to be left alone in the same room as his dad. He wasn’t afraid of him, exactly…but he knew his place in his eyes, and he really didn’t want to have to confront all of the “feelings” that he had about it. He’d avoided them for his almost hundred years of existence, it would be terrible to break the streak now.

But because someone hated him, it looked like he wouldn’t have a choice in the matter.

Sam gave him a look, as if asking, can I leave? Or should I stay?

Dean desperately wanted to say, stay, don’t leave me alone with him, but kept his mouth shut and gave him a sharp nod. 

He didn’t need to involve Sam in this. He had kept his problems with their dad mostly hidden last time, he wasn’t about to start airing it all out the second time around.

Sam left with one final look, and he was alone with his father for the first time since this fever dream started. 

Dean leaned against the wall, which was conveniently as far as he could get away from his dad. “What did you want to talk about?”

Dad pressed his lips together. “I think you know.”

It was such a Sam move that Dean almost cracked a grin. Make Dean answer the question he thought he was asking, probably get him to share more.

Sorry, Dad, but I know your tricks. Sam’s had a lifetime of trying to manipulate me into confessing things.

Dean let his grin loose, even though his stomach was still clenched in anxiety. “Sorry, sir, but I don’t.”

“Don’t get smart with me, boy,” Dad growled. “I’m talking about you staring into the distance like my buddies from ‘Nam, the hypervigilance, that damned nightmare that scared the living daylight outta me and your brother.”

Crap.

CrapCrapCrapCrapCrapCrapCrapCrapCrapCrap.

He knows. He can see it.

Dean hasn’t been right in the head since Hell, all those years ago. He’d always known it, but the people around him didn’t. They forgot about it with all the Apocalypses happening and everyone dying, and Dean had wanted them to. He didn’t want people to know just how messed up he was in the head. 

(Everyone had forgotten how Dean used to be the Old Dean—no one could see how much he’d changed. Not even Sam. He pretended that didn’t hurt.)

But his Dad knew.

He could see it .

“I’m…worried about you,” Dad said. “What’s going on?”

He scrambled to come up with a better excuse than, you’re just crazy, I’m fine . That was usually how he responded to Sam or—well, just Sam. But Dad wouldn’t take that answer. He’d only take the truth, and that wasn’t an option.

He ran a hand through his hair. 

He couldn’t even remember what happened a week ago because it had been literal decades since then, so he couldn’t just blame it on a past event. 

He opened and closed his mouth, because maybe if he just started bullshiting, he could get out of this, but nothing would come out.

Dad sighed. “Can you tell me if you’re alright, at least? You aren’t secretly dying or anything?”

“No! I’m fine. No dying is happening. I’m in my prime,” he assured him quickly, almost stumbling over his words.

Dean wanted to hug him for giving him the out, for once in his stubborn life, not pushing. 

Dad gave him a once-over. “Don’t do nothing stupid, you hear me, boy? Keep your head screwed on right. Otherwise, get Sam or me.”

Dean decided he was not going to think about the implications of what he just said, or what he thought he would do, and just nodded along with a yessir in tow, following him out to the cars.

This was a win in his book, even if his stomach was still in knots and he felt a stress headache forming behind his eyes. His Dad hadn’t accused him of being some creature from Purgatory or tried to kill him, which he had totally been expecting.

The Salt’n’burn went by quickly. Dad and Sam did most of the heavy lifting while Dean tried to get his mind in order.

Both of them knew something was wrong with him, and he knew it would only be a matter of time before they found out just how messed up in the head he was. 

Unlike His Sam, who had grown used to Dean’s crappy mental state, these two were completely unaccustomed to anything other than Happy-Go-Lucky Dean Winchester, a cocky, arrogant bastard who didn’t fear anything. 

Dean hadn’t been that version of himself in a while. He was scarred and torn and broken in so many ways. He barely felt human. He certainly didn’t feel like the Dean from 2001. Alistair had killed that version of himself a long time ago.

The Dean he was now constantly watched all entrances and exits, memorized people's faces, was jumpy and quiet. A sadder, more pathetic man.

The contrast was so sharp between those versions of himself; they were practically different people, and he wasn’t so stupid as to think Sam and Dad wouldn’t notice it.

Which meant he had to get away from them as soon as possible. 

If they got worried , that meant that Sam would probably postpone Stanford, Dad would probably think he was possessed and do who knows what—and just a whole lot of bad would happen.

Sam needed to go to Stanford. He would be safe there for four years. Nothing would touch him. Sure, there would be Demons watching , but Dean was working on a plan for them. They would stay away from him. 

If the timeline got screwed up so early, it would change everything , and his knowledge of the future would be useless. He would just have to live through a different version of the same hell from before, one he might not even win.

Sam would leave for Stanford in six days. 

Should he let it play out the same way as last time? Let Sam cut all ties and just never talk to him again? Let him live out his fairy tale life without his idiot older brother?

That would be the ideal version, to cut Sam off clean from the life, but if he did that, Sam would be left open to to many dangers to count. Dean wouldn’t be able to protect him that way. 

He had to keep Sam close while also letting him go. 

He rubbed his thumb and forefinger into his eyes. 

Too much—just too much . 

There was a weight on his shoulders that he had been carrying ever since his mother died, and it seemed to get bigger every day. At first, it was take care of Sammy and then protect people from the things that go bump in the night —and somewhere along the way, it became protect everyone. Save everyone.

Dean knew what he was, and it wasn’t God—he couldn’t do everything, he couldn’t protect anyone, he couldn’t even protect his brother the first time along—and now, it was up to him , the screw-up , the failure, to save everyone he loved.

Enjoy your second chance, Dean. Don’t waste it.

He sighed. 

Maybe he wasn’t Sam, Dad, or Bobby, but there was a chance that none of all the bad things had to happen. No one had to die. He would just have to be enough.

“Yo, Dean, we finished,” Sam called, duffel over his shoulder and ash on his face as he walked over to the Impala. “Dad said we’re going to get pie at that diner we passed to celebrate.”

Dean shoved a smile on his face. “Amazing. Pie. I love it.”

Sam rolled his eyes as he stowed his bag. “You don’t have to say that— everyone knows. It’s weird how much you like it.”

Dean hopped into the driver's seat, and Sam sat beside him. “Don’t be such a Negative Nelly, Sam, everyone loves pie.”

“Not as much as you,” Sam huffed.

Dean shrugged, feeling a little lighter in the presence of his brother. “Can’t account for bad taste.”

In the Impala with his brother by his side, Dean was home. For a second, Dean could pretend none of the bad, none of the nightmares had happened; it was just him, Sam, and the road, and that was what Dean dreamed about. Home.

Chapter Text

Dean was hovering over Sam. Sam did not appreciate it, and had punched him several times. But Dean couldn’t help himself. 

Stanford Day was approaching.

The day that had destroyed his family beyond repair last time.

The one thing that Dean had cared about, the only thing he’d ever really had, had disappeared in seconds and would never return to what it had been before. Eventually, he and Sam would reunite, but it wasn’t the same. In a lot of ways, they grew closer, but over the years, the trust they had in each other would fracture almost completely. 

Sam trusting a Demon over him multiple times.

Dean going over Sam’s head, making decisions, like selling his soul.

Purgatory.

Gadreel.

The Mark.

Sam “healing” him from The Mark.

So on, and so forth. Too many shitty things to name.

(And most of them were on Dean—because who could blame Sam for abandoning his piece of crap brother? Or following his lead in making stupid choices for the others good?)

And it all started with this day. Stanford Day.

“If you don’t get out of my face in the next three seconds, I’m shooting you,” Sam hissed.

They were currently sitting on the couch attempting to watch some random movie while Dad was out getting food, and Dean was admittedly in Sam’s “personal bubble,” as he would call it.

Dean reluctantly moved away. It wasn’t that he was consciously hovering—it was just this was the start of it all, and one of the worst days of his life. 

He shivered when he thought about those four years—the things he did, the things he thought about doing. The things he never told Sam.

Suffice to say, it wasn’t pretty.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

This time, it would be different. He would make sure of it. This time, he wouldn’t let his Dad be such an asshole, he wouldn’t stay by his dad's side, this time, Sam wouldn’t be alone.

That night, when little punctual Sammy was asleep, he approached his dad.

Dad was outside, a glass of whisky in his hand as he leaned against the railing of the motel porch. 

Dean wasn’t afraid of many things—not monsters, not death, not even Chuck, but his Dad? 

His Dad never hurt him—if you didn’t count sending a twelve-year-old on hunts and the wounds that resulted from them—never physically. 

He was a lot like Sam in that way. 

He never punched or kicked or anything—he did something much worse.

He destroyed Dean with words—broke him mentally in a way not even Alistair managed. Because, unlike that fugly demon, Dean cared what he thought about him. He wanted his dad’s approval and his love.

Dad had known that.

And what did he do with that information?

He used it to control Dean. He used it to control him like a puppet, all the while destroying whatever naivety was left in him.

(Because if his Dad, his own flesh and blood, didn’t love him, why would anyone else? If he wasn’t enough for him—)

Dean stood stiffly behind him, hands clenched behind his back. “Dad, we need to talk.”

Dad glanced back at him over his shoulder and took another sip of his whiskey. “What is it?”

Dean had done a lot of impossible things—survived Hell, The Mark of Cain, stopped a couple of apocalypses, and lost Sammy , but he had never stood up to his dad. Not in the twenty-seven years he’d known the man.

He cleared his throat. “Sam is going to leave in a week, and you are going to let him.”

Dad stiffened. “What did you just say?”

Dean stood his ground, hiding his shaking hands behind his back. “Sam is leaving in a week, and you are going to let him. No fighting, no threats, no nothing. You are going to say that you’re proud of him and that you support him. That’s it.”

Dad turned fully around, his eyes ablaze with rage. “Sam is not leaving—over my dead body. And who do you think you are ordering your father around? This ain’t a democracy, son.”

He’d heard that line before.

Listen to me, Boy, we don’t take votes around here.

A million times whenever Dean had the slightest objection.

It used to cow him.

Now, it just made him angry.

“I am not a child anymore, Dad. I’m a grown-ass man. That means I can make my own decisions and that I have a say in what happens in this family; God knows I’m more of a part of it than you’ve ever been,” he scoffed. “And Sam is leaving, whether you like it or not. But you don’t get to yell at him or threaten him. You get to accept that fact like a man and support your son for once in your damn life!”

When he was younger, his dad was practically god to him. He was strung on his every word and would do whatever the hell he asked, even if it ruined all his relationships or even got him killed. He hadn’t cared.

Neither had his dad.

He didn’t really care that much about how his dad had treated him—a small part of him said it was justified . He was the screw-up, the failure, after all—but Sammy? Dean had raised that boy, no one got to treat him with anything other than respect, or Dean would beat them into next week. 

“It’s not safe,” Dad said, his voice cracking a little. “It’s dangerous out there—”

“And you think he’ll be safer out there alone? Because we both know that Sam’s going to go no matter what you say, even if you disown him,” he growled. “You being a stubborn ass will only make him go out there on his own—but let’s make one thing clear here, if Sam’s gone, so am I.”

Dad stared at him, stupified. 

“Not a word of this to Sam. He doesn’t need to get wrapped into this crap,” Dean warned. “I’ve laid everything out for you, so make your choice. You let Sam go, or you lose both of us.”

With that, Dean turned on his heels and walked back into the motel, shaking with rage and anxiety. 

He stumbled around in the dark until he reached Sammy’s bed. He could hear him breathing, and he was safe, and he was still here—

Dean wasn’t a clingy person, but the thought of letting Sam out of his immediate vicinity made his lungs constrict and his throat feel like it was about to close up, so he grabbed a pillow from his bed and laid down on the ground beside Sam’s bed. 

He didn’t know how he was going to let Sam go to Stanford this time around. In the last decade and a half, he and Sam had only been separated if they literally died or the end of the world was happening. They had grown “codependent,” whatever that meant.

Well, there was no more “they,” Dean mused. It was only Dean who got separation anxiety like a freaking cat. Sam, thank God, was a well-adjusted human in this universe. Not a pansy.

He would just have to deal with this the way he dealt with everything. Gritting his teeth and getting through his troubles through sheer force of will and spite. 

(And maybe, he told himself , when this is all over…we can be a family again.)

Chapter Text

Dad avoided him after the Confrontation. 

It was almost like he was scared. Which was such an outlandish thought because he was Dad , he wasn’t afraid of anything. (Dean was the one who was scared. Never Dad. Dad never cared about anything.)

Dean spent his time with Sam—pretty much every second of every day. 

Even though his mind refused to accept the fact that soon he would be gone —not dead, never dead, just gone —Dean was stuck at his side, probably annoying the living crap out of him. But Dean couldn’t care less. Shit was about to go down, and Dean didn’t know how he was going to deal with it. 

I won’t have much of a choice, he mused. Like always. 

“Dean, I swear to God if you don’t leave me alone for five minutes…” Sammy huffed, slamming his book shut.

“What?” Dean asked innocently. 

Sam gave him a petulant look. “You’ve been hovering over me for the last three days like I’m about to die.”

Dean shrugged. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Not only was denial the best tool in his arsenal, but it was funny as Hell when it got on Sam’s nerves.  It was one of the privileges of being an older sibling—trying to make them go insane.

Sam punched him in the shoulder.

“Hey!” he shouted. “What was that for?”

“You know what, Dean,” Sam huffed. “You aren’t stupid, even if you pretend to be.”

Dean clutched his chest and dramatically heaved. “ Me ? Pretending?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Please, just five minutes without you leaning over my shoulder. It’s getting kinda creepy, Dude. You were sleeping on the floor the other day.”

He winced internally. It had not been fun trying to explain that when Sam had stepped on his face and screamed like a girl, and Dean had almost snapped his ankle on reflex.

“I told you, I was blasted. No idea how I got there,” he said, parroting the lie he had decided on. 

Sam gave him his resting bitch face. “You? Blackout drunk?”

It was infuriating trying to come up with cover stories for Young Dean because, as cocky as he acted, he was clean as a whistle. He got drunk, but only after Sammy and Dad had left. He had terrible coping mechanisms, but he only discovered those after his family abandoned him. 

This Dean didn’t get drunk.

This Dean certainly never let Sam see it.

“Yeah…not my best day,” he settled on. “But that’s life.”

Sam looked skeptical. “Are you alright, Dean? Ever since that night…you’ve been off.”

His grin stayed on his face, but he could feel it crack. “I’m right as rain, Samantha. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.”

Please just let it go this one time. 

“What about Dad? You two haven’t talked in days,” Sam pressed on. “You haven’t even looked at him.”

Clearly, his life was destined to be shit. Why was everyone in this damn family so observant? Why couldn’t they be like Cas…his life would be so much easier.

(He ignored the pang in his heart at the thought of his best friend, who was truly gone forever in this universe. His Cas was dead. And he didn’t have time to deal with the “feelings” that surrounded that.)

“Dad and I just had a disagreement,” he said with a nonchalant shrug. “It’s nothing.”

“ It’s nothing?” Sam spluttered. “You and Dad never fight. Ever. And now, all of a sudden, you can’t be out of a ten-foot radius from me.”

He let out a short, sharp breath. This was who Sam was. He wanted to know everything— needed to and would stop at nothing until he solved the mystery that was life. He shouldn’t have expected this to be smooth sailing. He knew Sam wasn’t insinuating that he didn’t trust Dean or anything like that, but he couldn’t help but think of all the times he and His Sam had fought like this. It never ended pretty.

He stood up from his chair. “I’ll be in the shower. You can have some alone time.”

“Dean—” Sam started, his eyes wide and innocent, and damn if that didn’t make him feel like an asshole.

Dean always managed to screw everything up. It was a talent.

He waved him off. “I’ll be back in thirty.”

Lie.

He didn’t know where he was going to go, but it was going to be out. Maybe a bar. Yeah, that sounded nice.

He slammed the bathroom door shut behind him and turned the shower on without getting in.

He leaned against the bathroom countertop and hung his head.

How many times had he and Sam fought about Dad? How many times had Sam called him a mindless soldier who held Dad on a pedestal against all else? How many times had Dean put him above Sam?

It hasn’t happened yet, he reminded himself. This is your second chance.

But it had still happened. Even if Sam couldn’t remember, even if he didn’t hate him, Dean had still done that. Done everything.

It was almost like he was taking advantage of Sam. Dean and His Sam had come to an agreement by the end, both of them choosing to just forget the past—well, try to—but this Sam…he didn’t know just what shitty brother he had.

He never will, he thought viciously. He will never have to live through it.

He could almost hear His Sam shouting at him, shaking him, telling him to tell Sammy. 

“We’re brothers, Dean. Don’t shut me out.”

Dean shook his head. “You get to be happy. After everything, one of us deserves to be happy. And we both know that was never going to be me.”

“Really, Dean? After everything … you are just going to go back to making decisions for me?”

“This is different,” he assured himself. This wasn’t anything like Gadreel. “It’s what’s best for you.”

“That’s what you said last time.”

He slammed his hands down on the counter. “Damnit, Sam, why can’t you just let me save you?”

There was no response.

He ran a shaking hand through his hair. “I’m losing my damn mind.”

Dean did indeed get plastered—may have also had some fun with a girl named Margie or something. Maybe it was Maggie? He couldn’t remember.

Sam was not happy about it at all. 

He could feel him glaring holes into the back of his head. He probably should have been more focused on saving the world and all that jazz, but Dean was an inch away from total insanity—he’d been having a full-on conversation with himself, for Godsake—and drinking was his only coping mechanism. 

It was either drink himself silly, or have a mental breakdown. And not normal person mental breakdown. More like Sammy after getting his soul back breakdown. Completely and utterly insane. He was inching closer every damn day to it.

So drinking it was.

“You’re hungover,” Sam finally said.

Dean leaned further into the couch and squeezed his eyes shut. Young Dean did not have any alcohol tolerance. “No shit, Sherlock.”

There was a silence, but he could feel the judgment rolling off of him. He had spent the last decade with a version of Sam, most of which in life-or-death scenarios, so he had learned to read him non-verbally.

“Shut up, Sam. I don’t need that crap from you—Dad already gave me the fifth degree.”

Dad had been pissed when he had come back at four in the morning, barely able to put his feet in front of each other. He had screamed at him before he went to sleep and for a good thirty minutes after he woke up.

He had not missed having a superior officer, that was for sure. He was a grown man, damnit.

“I didn’t say anything!” Sam said.

He raised a finger. “You were thinking it.”

“You can’t know that,” he argued.

“But you were, weren’t you?” Dean said with a smirk.

Sam didn’t answer after a beat, which meant yeah, he was. Another nonverbal win for Dean. This Sam was less rough around the edges—and missing around fourteen - one hundred eighty years of memory—but at heart, he was still Sammy. He knew Sammy better than he knew himself. 

“Fine, I was, Dean,” Sam snapped. “You’ve been acting crazy recently. The last time you got this drunk was when Dad almost died after hunting that Wendigo.”

He rolled his closed eyes. “Let’s just say it hasn’t been a stellar week for Dean Winchester.”

“But nothing has happened! Unless Dad did something or…” Sam stopped suddenly, and Dean knew shit had hit the fan. 

Sam had just put something together. He knew something. 

Crap.

He cracked an eye open and glanced at Sam. His eyes were wide with realization, and his mouth slightly open.

“Dean…” he started but stopped himself.

Dean’s mouth was dry, and he could hear his heart in his ears. There was no way he could know that he was from the future. He knew that. But that look…Sam was never wrong.

“What, Sammy?” he asked.

“Did—did you go through my stuff?” he asked. “Did you find my—”

He cut himself off.

Dean kept the sigh of relief inside. This was explainable. Probably. This had nothing to do with Heaven, Hell, or Amara. Yeah, this was fine. He could handle whatever was about to happen.

“You’re going to have to be specific, Samantha. We don’t exactly have privacy here.” It was true. They pretty much shared everything. 

“That has to be it…the clingyness…Dad…the freaking weirdness…” Sam muttered.

He sat up straighter and fully opened his eyes, wincing slightly at the light. “What the Hell are you talking about?”

Sam’s eyes connected with his. “You know. About Stanford.”

Dean froze, his brain deciding that it was a fantastic moment to go on vacation. “Uh.”

Sam stuck out an accusing finger. “I knew it. ”

“Uh,” he repeated.

This was not how this was supposed to go down. Sam was supposed to tell them this on Saturday. Dean was supposed to encourage him, and Dad was going to say he was proud of him this time around. He’d already been mentally preparing for it. It wouldn’t be like last time.

Shit. 

“And Dad! God, Dean, did you tell him about Stanford?” he hissed. “Is that why he’s been out all the time and barely stops by the motel to sleep?”

This was not how this was supposed to go. 

This was not what he had been planning on. He couldn’t even get this little thing right—how was he supposed to save the whole damn world?

“Dean?” Sam pressed.

Damage control. That was what he needed to do—because Sam was pissed . The saving the world thing could wait, probably, he didn’t really care.

“Uh, yeah, I knew,” he got out. “And me and Dad had a…talk about it.”

Sam was seething where he sat. “I was going to tell him, Dean. I was going to tell you.”

Something in his chest twisted painfully, and his lungs stuttered briefly. 

That was the tone His Sam used. 

When they fought. When their relationship was in the crapper.

“I didn’t mean to; I just stumbled over it,” he scrambled to explain.

His brain was shouting fix this! At him, and he didn’t know how. He never knew how.

“I didn’t just leave it lying around, Dean—but whatever,” he scoffed. “Why did you tell Dad? That wasn’t any of your business.”

Sam and Dad’s relationship had always been rocky, but Stanford Day had utterly destroyed it. Dad had disowned him. His Sam would know, he would understand, but Sammy would not. As much as he fought with Dad, he still held him on a pedestal to an extent.

“Dad isn’t…he is very protective. I just wanted to make sure everything was clear,” he settled on. 

Sam got up from his chair and started pacing in front of him. “What does that mean?”

“I knocked some sense into him, that’s all.”

That was what he had been doing. Keeping Dad in line and making sure he wasn’t an utter asshole.

“Why would he care that I was going to college!” Sam all but yelled, stopping in front of him to stare him down.

“Dad’s protective, you know that,” he said, the words acid on his tongue. He didn’t want to ruin the image of Dad that Sam had in his mind. Sam was a rebellious teenager, but all he ever wanted was for Dad to accept him. 

“He would be proud , not—not protective ,” Sam said, almost pleading with himself. “He would let me go.”

No. No, he wouldn’t.

“Maybe he would have, but I know Dad, Sam. He wants you to be safe, and he thinks that’s by his side,” he tried to explain. 

Dad had always wanted Sammy to be safe. Not so much Dean—Dean was a weapon. Sam was a son.

“Just…stop, Dean. Stop,” he said.

“Sam—”

Sam put a hand up. “I need some time alone.”

He stalked over to the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind him, leaving a paralyzed Dean in his wake.

It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

They were supposed to be happy this time. Sam was supposed to get the reception he deserved. Dad was going to tell him that he was proud, and they were going to send him off to Stanford together. 

If he couldn’t even get this right…how was he supposed to save everyone? Stop the Apocalypse? 

He heaved himself off the couch and knocked on the bathroom door. “I’m going out. You have the motel to yourself.”

Dean quickly got into Baby and just drove . 

He turned the music on, and he could almost imagine that His Sam was sitting beside him, giving him his bitch face because the music was way too loud for his delicate sensibilities, and a book in his lap.

He stopped Baby at a park and just sat, staring at the trees.

He had barely survived the last go around—and now he was supposed to do it again? All that pain, all that suffering. 

He let out a deep breath.

“You can do this, Dean,” he could hear His Sam saying. “ You’ve already done it. You’ve got the advantage now.”

“Well, it sure doesn’t feel like it,” he muttered.

“Don’t be such a pessimist. We’ve lived through the impossible more times than I can count—why is it so hard to believe that you can do this?”

“Last time…it wasn’t pretty, Sam. I didn’t do well without you and Dad,” he said. 

“This isn’t like last time.”

“Well, it sure as hell seems like it,” he snapped.

“If you just explain the situation to me, Dad, Bobby, Ellen—you would have all the help you needed.” 

He shook his head. “I can’t do that. You all died . I had to watch you all die. Never again.”

He wouldn’t be able to make it if he had to live through that again. His family was his everything—without them, he was nothing. 

“So what’s the plan then? You’ll just let me go around with no idea what’s happening? Let all of us? That’s more dangerous than telling us!”

His knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. “Everyone is safe for at least four more years. I haven’t changed anything yet.”

“Butterfly effect, Dean—every choice you make changes the future.”

“I know that! Okay,  I know. But the big things…those won’t change unless I do something drastic.”

“Like the whole Stanford thing?” 

Dean froze. He hadn’t thought of that. Stanford Day was something that forged the rest of the Winchester's lives. Dean had only talked to Sam once in the four years that he was gone. Dad visited Palo Alto whenever he had the chance but never spoke to Sam. He barely even mentioned him after he left.

And Sam, he turned into practically a different person. 

“Shit,” he whispered.

“See, you need to tell—”

“You, shut up. I already have a Sam I need to deal with. I don’t need another one.” He paused. “I’m losing my mind, aren’t I? God.” 

He was rapidly approaching Post-Soulless Sam levels of crazy. He was talking, out loud , to a figment of his imagination. 

Par for the fricking course. 

He resisted the urge to slam his head into the steering wheel until he was unconscious only because he loved Baby more than himself. 

His phone rang in his pocket, and he quickly flipped it open. “Dean Winchester speaking.”

“It’s, uh, it’s Sam.”

“Really? I thought you were Taylor Swift,” he snarked weakly.

“What? Who’s—whatever, just, you’ve been gone for a long time,” Sam said. 

“And?” he asked.

“Could you please just come back?” Sam asked quietly.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. “What did something happen? Are you okay? Dad—”

“Woah! Everything is fine, just, you’ve been gone for hours. The sun is setting, and I really don’t want to have to pick your ass up from some seedy bar,” he said.

Dean glanced outside. The sun was indeed setting. 

What the—

He could have sworn it hadn’t even been half an hour. 

“Damnit,” he whispered. “Freaking Sam insane.”

“Excuse me?” Sam spluttered. Sam. His brother. His real brother who wasn’t a figment of his messed up mind.

“You’re insane. I would never go to a seedy bar,” he said, putting his keys in the ignition. 

Totally saved it. 

“You better have pie for me when I get home,” he warned. 

There was pie for him. Actual pie . 

Sam was offering it to him like a cat did a dead mouse, and it was freaking him out. 

He stuffed another bite of glorious pie into his mouth. “I thought you hated me right now.”

Sam blinked. “I was angry with you—which I was totally right to be—but I don’t hate you. That would be stupid.”

Dean squinted at Sam. “You sure about that?”

“Dean, you’re my brother,” he said quietly. “I could never hate you. I was just angry—I’d been building up the courage to tell you and Dad for weeks , and you already knew, and you told Dad.”

Right. This was Sammy . They didn’t have a love-hate relationship in this reality. Sam believed him when he said he was doing what was best for him. 

“Sorry. For all of it,” Dean said. 

I am sorry for more than you’ll ever know.

“It—just, I know you didn’t mean anything by it…but next time, leave the talking to me, okay?” Sam said. 

He gave him a thumbs up. “Sure thing, Samantha.”

“You can’t be serious for one second , can you?” Sam huffed lightly. 

He shrugged. “What can I say? It’s part of my charm.”

Sam shoved his shoulder. 

They both enjoyed the silence as they ate their pie. It was so peaceful —Dean could hardly believe it was real. He couldn’t remember the last time it had just been him and Sam. No one dying, no end of the world. Just…silence.

They put on Star Trek after the pie, and Dean was honestly ashamed to call Sam his brother. He could barely even name Spock, let alone Kirk, the most badass space cowboy ever . 

Sam’s pop culture knowledge was atrocious . It was embarrassing to be related to him.

“—How is he cool? He just sleeps with a different alien girl every episode and almost dies,” Sam argued.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that. Otherwise, I would have to kill you,” Dean threatened, shaking the remote at Sam’s head.

Sam glared at him. “I’m just saying—”

The door opened, and Dad stepped in, looking absolutely haggard. 

“Boys,” Dad grunted before going to the fridge and grabbing a beer. 

Sam fidgeted beside him. 

It was showtime. 

Dean forced down his nausea and remained nonchalant. This was it. Stanford Day 2.0 was happening. 

It won’t be like last time, he told himself. Our family is going to survive.

“Hey, uh, Dad, I wanted to talk to you,” Sam started, standing up from the couch. 

Dad’s eyes darted to Dean before they went back to Sam. “What is it, Son?”

“I got into Stanford,” Sam said quickly. “Full ride, it won’t cost us a penny. I’ll be going in the Fall.”

Dad’s eyes bore a hole into Sam’s head. “Right. Stanford.”

Not good . 

That was Dad’s asshole-I’m-better-than-you tone. Dean had been on the receiving end of it for most of his life—but Sam had always been exempt for the most part.

Dean quickly got off the couch and slung an arm over Sam’s shoulder. “Little Samantha is putting all his brain to work! Isn’t that great, Dad?”

This whole time, he had kept the man he had become under wraps—hidden behind a cracked mask of Young Dean—but here, he let a little of the ruthlessness show. He let the manic edge of his smile show, and the broken depth of his eyes shine freely, almost as if he was saying, I don’t care about myself, and I don’t care about you—mess with him, and I’ll gut you where you stand.

“Dad?” Sam asked hopefully.

Dean raised an eyebrow. Hurt him, and you’re dead.

Dad blinked rapidly before turning his attention back to Sam. “It’s amazing. I’m proud of you, Sam.”

Sam was out of Dean's arms in a blink, hugging Dad. Dad’s eyes were owlishly large before he embraced Sam back.

Dean grinned. Stanford Day was no more.

Chapter Text

Dean was fine.

Absolutely fine. 

Sam was leaving for Stanford. This time, he and Dad were coming with him to help set him up with an apartment and find him a job. It was already going a thousand times better than last time.

But after they found him an apartment, after they found him a job, Dean would have to leave him. Alone. Against everything that was happening. 

He gets to be normal in this life, and to be normal; I have to leave him.

People had called Sam and Dean codependent before. He still wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. What he did know was that he was like a war veteran with PTSD, and Sam was his emotional support dog. When Sam was around, he was calm. He was in control. Sam would have his back if anything went wrong. 

Without his emotional support dog, Dean was going to be utterly alone. 

But yeah, he was fine.

“Dean, what are you doing? We’re hitting the road,” Sam said, peaking head into the motel room.

Dean shook himself from his stupor. “Still a little wiped out from yesterday—that Star Trek marathon really took it out of me.”

Sam furrowed his brow. “You’re twenty-two, Dean, not exactly an old man.”

“Just wait till you’re my age—you’ll be singing a different tune,” he said, grabbing his duffel from the ground.

It was so annoying not being able to blame his problems on age. Not feeling well? Not sick, just died around eighty times. Spacing out? Totally didn’t lose all sense of reality, just a brain fart from a sickly old man.

“You were forty, not eighty, Dean,” he could hear His Sam saying.

“Shut up,” he mumbled. 

He followed Sam out and hopped into Baby. It was road trip time.

The trip to California was a long one , but Dean actually enjoyed it. Vintage Sam was honestly hilarious—he got so riled up about everything like a cat, and unlike His Sam, he voiced it very loudly. At some point, His Sam had decided that his bitch face was enough to convey his annoyance at Dean and his antics. 

“All of these places are shit holes,” he said as they walked through another apartment.

“And where have we lived our whole lives?” Sam said as he opened one of the creaky kitchen cabinets.

“The motels were just waystations; this is supposed to be your home ,” Dean insisted. 

Sam snorted. “I think you’re taking this too seriously, Dean. As long as I have a roof over my head, I’m happy— I’m going to Stanford! What else do I need?”

Sometimes, it was hard to remember that Sam had never really longed for a home—not in the way Dean did—he just wanted to be normal. A college student living in a hell hole was probably normal.

“Don’t call crying when you wake up with fleas and lice.”

Sam wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think that’ll happen.”

Dean pointed to the wall. “There are literally three cockroaches the size of my hand on the wall.”

Sam glanced over and jumped. “Oh, God, let’s get out of here.”

Sam ran out of the room, and Dean followed behind him, rolling his eyes. “This is what happens when you don’t listen to me.”

They looked at three other places before settling on the least rodent/insect infected one. He had a roommate that Dean was pretty sure he didn’t have before—which meant, probably not a Demon.

This was where things got tricky. 

From what they learned over the years, ever since Sam had been a damn baby, he had been surrounded by Demons in the hopes of manipulating him.

Which meant, in about three weeks, everyone around Sam would be a well-placed soldier of old Yellow Eyes.

First things first: tattoo time.

“I have an awesome idea for some brother bonding time,” Dean smirked. 

“I don’t think I’m going to like this,” Sam said.

Dean slung an arm over his shoulder. “Most definitely not.”

Anitpossesion tattoos were a bit of a bitch, but Dean would rather cut off his own hand than for Sam to go through anything similar to what he had before. His Sam hadn’t liked to talk about it…but the possessions, Meg, Lucifer, Gadreel, they had messed him up. Majorly.  This would keep him safe from one side of the aisle. 

“How am I supposed to explain this to people? They’ll think I’m part of some Satanic cult!” Sam huffed, pulling down his shirt to look at it. 

“Aw, is Sammy afraid none of the girls will like him if they see his ink?” he teased. “Relax, Dude, people get way weirder and creepier things tattooed onto them. They’ll probably think you’re like those white guys who get random Japanese words tattooed on.”

“That’s almost worse,” Sam shuddered.

“Trust me, it’s not,” Dean snorted.

Sam glared at him. “Why’d I need to get this anyway? And don’t give me that brotherly connection bullshit. I almost vomited when you started going on about how “we’re connected by the heart now.””

“What can I say? I’m sentimental. I didn’t want my college brother to forget all about his more handsome, cooler, hotter—”

“Dean! Just… stop,” Sam said, looking like he was about to explode. “Is a clear answer so hard to give?”

“No, but you gotta admit this is way funnier,” he said, slapping on a cocky grin. 

Sam rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I’m not going to get an answer, am I? I just vandalized my body, and I won’t know why.”

Dean froze, mind flashbacking to His Sam. He would have beaten his ass into next week if he did something like this and then ignored him for a month.  Sam was very particular about making informed decisions about himself. 

You can’t break this again. Don’t make the same mistakes.

“It’s, uh, charm. It’ll keep you safe,” he said after a moment.

Sam’s head whipped up. “What?”

Dean scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “Just a precaution. I won’t be here to kick anyone's asses for you…so that’ll have to do for now.”

Sam blinked a couple of times. “Oh. Thanks.” 

He would rather gouge his eyes out than talk about feelings, not when he was on such uneven ground.

Dean slapped him in the back. “What do you say we go get some pie?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “You have issues, Man.”

“I think you mean tastebuds .”

Dean was still awake at four in the morning—after a dream about his time as Demon Dean, when he attacked Sam, only this time he succeeded, and he killed him. He killed Sam —

Well. It was better not to think about it.

He was not getting any more sleep.

He put on a movie and turned the sound down so he didn’t wake up Dad or Sam. It was an old Clint Eastwood film, a classic, and usually, it would have enthralled Dean. Westerns were his favorites.

But the dream.

It had felt so real.

He could feel the blood on his hands. He could taste it in his mouth. He had felt the burning of The Mark, hungering for destruction and violence. The image of Sam helpless and bloody and dead was burned into his eyes, and he could barely think straight.

It hadn’t happened. He knew that.

Yet his brain was telling him that it had. It didn’t matter that Sammy was peacefully sleeping just ten feet away from him—his train-like snore filled the echoey motel room—he could feel his blood on his hands.

His fingers dug into his arm where The Mark used to rest. The Mark was gone—that pain he felt, that was real. Sam was alive. Dean was human. Everything was alright.

There was a rustling, and Dean froze. 

“Dean? What are you doing up?” Dad called gruffly. 

He struggled to make his vocal cords work. “Couldn’t sleep.”

That was a perfectly good answer. That explained everything. Why could he hear Dad getting out of bed? That shouldn’t be happening. 

Dad shuffled so that he was standing in front of him, blocking his view of Clint Eastwood. “You don’t look so good.”

Words were hard. He just shrugged.

Dad gave him a searching look before his eyes narrowed on his arm. “Damnit, Dean, what are you doing?”

Dad grabbed his arm and ripped away his hand that had been scratching into where the mark had been.

Dean looked down, trying to find out why Dad was so alarmed. 

“Oh.”

He was bleeding. 

Quite a bit, actually.

So it wasn’t Sammy’s blood I was feeling.

Dad ripped off his shirt and pressed it into the wound. “What the hell is going on with you, Boy.”

Dean knew he had to get it together. Young Dean didn’t have mental breakdowns or bad dreams—he was always okay all the time. He was the glue of their stupid family. He wasn’t allowed to break.

Dad dragged him to his feet and tugged him into the bathroom, sitting him down on the toilet. “Stay. I’m getting the first aid kit.”

“Yessir,” he slurred. 

Dean held the shirt to his arm and could vaguely feel the pain radiating from it. It had been a while since he’d been this out of it—hadn’t really given his brain a chance to rest in years, so it hadn’t had the opportunity to shut down.

But now, while the Apocalypse was on the horizon, it wasn’t breathing down his neck and killing all his family.

For now, he was safe. 

Until he started his hunt for Yellow Eyes.

Dad came back in, removed the shirt from his arm, and started cleaning the wound.

Dad worked quietly for the first couple of minutes. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, Dean. But you aren’t acting like yourself. I’m going to need an explanation, or we’re going to have a problem.”

It sounded harsh. But that was how Winchester Men were—entirely unable to communicate their feelings.

Dean felt like he was coming out of the fog, breaking the surface of the water, because this was important. Dad couldn’t be suspicious because that meant bad things for Dean’s future. He needed to be unhindered and fully able to do what needed to be done in the coming days. 

Luckily, he’d already put in a little thought to this if the worst-case scenario came true. Its believability came entirely from his acting ability, though, so he needed to give this his all. 

He took in a deep breath and summoned all his energy from his reserves. “I’ve seen things, Dad… horrible things.”

Dad paused. “We all have in this life—”

“No, Dad, I’ve seen things—things that haven’t happened yet,” he said, dropping the bomb.

Would he take the lie? Stealing Sam’s psychic shtick had been the best option he could come up with for his knowledge…but Dad was a paranoid bastard on the best of days. What he would believe was up for grabs.

“Like what?” Dad asked.

“Stanford. That’s how I knew—but when I saw it, it destroyed us. We lost Sam, Dad. Almost for good,” he whispered, letting the heartache that he usually kept locked up out. 

Dad paused. “What?”

“You fought—and you disowned him. We didn’t see him for years,” he said.

“It could have been a dream—a coincidence,” Dad denied.

Dean could tell right then that Dad would never believe him unless he lived through it himself. Unlike Sammy, he didn’t have the whole Demon Blood thing to explain his magic powers. 

It was time to page out of Sam and Dad’s book then if the good old fashion Dean way wouldn’t work.

“Do you trust me, Dad?” he asked.

“You’re my son, Dean,” Dad said, as if it explained anything.

Dean shook his injured arm out of his grip and stared him down. “I asked if you trusted me.”

“Dean—”

“I’m telling you I saw this—it wasn’t a dream…it was like I lived through it myself,” he said strongly. “Do you think I’m crazy? That I’m lying to you?”

“I don’t think you’re lying to me, but Son, you’ve been erratic recently,” Dad said almost softly.

He thinks I’m crazy.

Which wasn’t exactly far off—but still.

I should have left after Stanford Day.

“You don’t trust me—you never have,” he scoffed. “And don’t pretend that you care, either. I’ve heard enough of that shit.”

“Dean of course I care about—don’t put words in my mouth. This isn’t about me ,” Dad insisted.

“ Everything is about you, Dad. My whole damn life has been about you and your mission for vengeance,” he hissed. 

Dean had never had a childhood. Neither had Sam. They had never had a home. Because Dad was a selfish bastard who only cared about himself.

“Dean…” he whispered. 

“I need you to believe me. Something big is coming, and if we aren’t prepared…we’ll lose everything.” He paused. “So, please, I don’t want to have to do this on my own.”

“I’m going to need time…to process this,” Dad said. 

A sad smile graced his face. He should have known he would be doing this on his own—it was too much to hope that Dad would believe him.

“Okay.”

Tomorrow, the Mission would start. Dean was going to save his family and the world, and he would be doing it alone.

Sam had asked about the bandage wrapped around his arm, and Dean had shrugged it off as an accident, too much beer once again. Sam hadn’t looked convinced but was too preoccupied with the whole college thing and independence and whatnot.

“You could stay here in California with me,” Sam proposed as Dean packed up Baby.

“It’s time for you to spread your wings, baby bird. You can’t do that with your older brother hanging over your shoulder,” he said, slamming the trunk shut.

He wished he could stay. Just for another day or two. But with the mental breakdown he had the other night, he needed to get out fast before Dad dropped his ass in a mental asylum.

“Besides, I wasn’t made for this kind of life.”

“How would you know?” Sam pressed. “You’ve never had anything like this before.”

Dean sighed. “Trust me, Sam, it’s not meant to be. Maybe someday…but not today.”

Life with Lisa and Ben had been both a dream and a nightmare. He was out of the Life, he had a beautiful woman who loved him, and a little rascal that he thought of as a son. But he had been twitchy. Had nightmares all the time and could barely sleep. And that was before Purgatory, The Mark, dying again, being a Demon, losing so many people…he was barely human now. He couldn’t live a human life.

“You’ll visit, right?” Sam asked. 

Dean slugged him in the shoulder. “Of course. Gotta make sure that head of yours doesn’t get too big.”

Sam rolled his eyes. 

“You take care of yourself, alright? Just because you’re out of the Life doesn’t mean the Life left you,” Dean warned. “We’ve made a lot of enemies over the years.”

“Really? We hunt Ghosts for the most part—but whatever, I’ll try not to die,” he said sardonically. 

“Attaboy.” Dean slammed the trunk of Baby shut. “Guess it’s time to go.”

Sam fidgeted where he stood. “You take care of yourself too, Dean. Call me if you need anything.” 

“Sure thing, Samantha,” he lied. 

Sam was out of the Life now—as much as he could be, at least, until Dean killed Yellow Eyes and stopped the Apocalypse.

Dean would die before he dragged Sam back into Hunting—he was out, and he would stay out.

Dean dragged Sam into a hug. He was real. He was alive. He was happy. That was all Dean needed. 

Chapter Text

The drive to Kansas was suffocating. 

Dean was alone. No Dad, no Sam, no nothing. 

At least he had a purpose—killing Yellow Eyes. He started all of the nonsense, all the pain, all the death. He hadn’t orchestrated it. Apparently, everything had been in the works since the beginning of freaking time, but he kickstarted it. 

After he killed Yellow Eyes, Heaven and Hell would be on his tail and the rest of his families. He needed to find a way to protect them while ending this Apocalypse.

After Yellow Eyes, Dean had gone to Hell and broken the First Seal—but as long as he kept Sammy alive, the seal would stay sealed. They could find another “Righteous Man,” but Dean doubted it; they were strangely poetic. They wanted it to be Dean—which meant under no circumstances could it happen.

As long as Lucifer was trapped in the Cage, the Apocalypse would never happen. 

And even if somehow the First Seal was broken—it was the last one that mattered. Killing Lilith. Over the years, Dean had learned a bunch of ways to trap a Demon without killing them. If worse came to worst, he could deal with it.

Heaven was what he was really worried about. 

Without Cas, he didn’t really have a defense against them. He didn’t even have an Angel Blade yet—there might be some in the Bunker, but he couldn’t remember. 

Heaven would stop at nothing to get the Apocalypse going. They wanted Chuck's attention, and they were going to do anything to get it. 

His hands tightened around the steering wheel. It was just him against the end of the world.

“You aren’t alone,” His Sam said. “ You have people you can rely on. You just won’t ask for their help.”

“I can’t ask for their help,” Dean said. “We’ve been over this.”

“Well, you’re being an obtuse idiot,” Sam scoffed. “ You need help, Dean.” 

Sam wasn’t wrong. But what options did he have? Dad and Sam were out of the question—if they got in the game, not only would Dean have failed at everything he set out to do, but they would be more of a weakness than strength.

Dad had sold his Soul when Dean kicked the bucket, and then Dean had done the same for Sam, and then Sam had gone behind his back and found a cure for The Mark of Cain,  which had gotten Charlie killed and unleashed a world-ending plague.

His family was his greatest strength, but they were also his weakness.

“Me and Dad aren’t the only ones you can reach out to.”

“Yeah, but at what cost? Everyone died the first time around; I can’t draw them back into this.”

“If you do this alone, they will die again. Besides, Heaven and Hell only went after us. They didn’t care about our friends—they were just collateral damage.”

“That’s true…” he said, contemplating. 

They had never been targeted, unlike Sam and Dean. They either choose to sacrifice themselves—Ellen and Jo—or got caught up in the crossfire.

Maybe he wasn’t as alone as he thought.

Making it to the Bunker made him breathe easier. It was probably one of the safest places on the planet, warded against Heaven and Hell to the seams. 

It was weird to see none of Cas’s, Sam’s, or his own things. There was no mark of the years that they had lived there. 

Nothing but dust.

After checking the armory, there was indeed a good supply of Angel Blades—which he quickly took. 

He scavenged the library after that, looking for any books on Angel warding. He was very aware that he no longer had Cas’s anti-tracking sigils embedded in his ribs. That meant all of Heaven and Hell knew where he was—and where Sam was. 

Focus on working, not the end of the world, he told himself.

While Dean had learned a lot over the years, this was far more Sammy’s domain than his. Dean hated reading with a passion; the letters would swirl and switch places on the page, annoying him to no extent—Sam had tried to tell him he had “dyslexia” and that it was fine that he couldn’t read as well as him. Sounded like a load of bullcrap to him, but whatever.

But maybe…he didn’t have to read up on this. 

There was someone far more knowledgeable than even Sam who could help him.

He fingered his phone. Asking for information wouldn’t hurt, would it? That was fine. Perfectly acceptable.

He dialed in the number he knew by heart. 

“Who is it?” a deep, gruff voice asked. 

Dean’s eyes shuttered shut in phantom pain. He’s alive, too.

He wasn’t sure if he had actually believed that he would pick up—because he, like Dad, had been dead for years.

“Heya, Bobby, It’s Dean Winchester,” he got out.

Bobby snorted. “Good to hear from you, Son. Thought it would take longer for that bastard of a father you have to lick his wounds, though—what can I do for you and John?”

“It’s, uh, it’s just me, Bobby. Dad and I have…split ways,” he explained with a wince.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Bobby said, his voice colored with disbelief. “I thought you would follow that man until he got your dumbass killed.”

Dean chuckled. “Well, Sammy’s in college now; I figured if he could leave the nest, so could I.”

“College? Surprise after surprise. John must be pissed,” he said. “But we can talk about that later. What did you need?”

Dean scratched his arm. “Warding spells—or charms. The most powerful ones available.”

There was a pause. “What do you need those for, Boy?”

“Bobby…somethings coming, something big,” he admitted. “It’s not something to talk about over the phone.”

“Well, then you better get your ass over to Sioux Falls,” Bobby ordered. “Or I’ll come and beat your ass myself.”

Dean grinned. “Yessir.”

Bobby was still Bobby—suddenly, the world didn’t seem so bleak.

The Bunker was empty, and it felt wrong. There was no Cas. There was no Sam. Their rooms were bare, so he couldn’t even take solace in the mark they left behind. He could call Sam if he were feeling so mopey, but even that…he wanted Sam . His brother, who knew what Dean was thinking with just a glance, who had always—well, mostly—been on his side against the world-ending baddies.

Sammy didn’t even know that Vampires existed. 

“He never will,” Dean muttered.

It was better that he didn’t know. It didn’t matter that Dean felt like he had just lost a piece of his Soul; Sam was happy. And he was going to stay happy.

But at least he had his brother in this world—Cas was gone. They only met because Dean had gotten his ass stuck in Hell, and he had been sent to save him. And since he didn’t plan on going Downstairs ever again…he didn’t know if he’d ever see the weird guy again.

Maybe he would be happier in this reality. Dean had sort of been part of the reason most of his dickish family died. This time around, Heaven might not be totally obliterated. If they gave up this Apocalypse nonsense…otherwise, Dean would have to have words with them.

(What he would do to have Cas with him…he probably would never get to know him and become friends with him in this reality, and that loss was staggering. Cas had been his brother in all but name.)

To keep his mind from wandering into the Depths of Things He Did Not Want To Think About, he started deep cleaning the Bunker. This was his home, and he would not stand for it to be covered in dirt and dust and smell like pretentious assholes.

The Bunker was a huge maze of rooms—there were some that Dean hadn’t even been in yet—so he kept to the main ones. He cleaned all the sheets in the dozens of bedrooms, mopped all the main floors, and dusted pretty much every surface. 

He ended up going into the town fourteen hours of cleaning later, to pick up some supplies. He stopped by the small grocery store and picked up some essentials—body wash, more cleaning stuff, ingredients for food, and pie. 

He got a couple of odd looks from the store goers, but he was too tired to give a shit. 

He put all the stuff down at the register, and the cashier, Lora , her name tag read, gave him a once over. “You new in town?”

“Yeah. My creepy old uncle died and left me some land,” he shrugged. “Thought it would be a nice place to get a fresh start.”

Cover stories were fun to craft. Just to see how far he could push the line until someone called him out on his bullshit. Sam had not thought it was funny when he did it—but screw him, if Dean wasn’t allowed to laugh, then he was going to go insane. More insane than he already was.

“Oh…you’re awfully young to be out here all on your own,” she said, her middle-aged, midwestern mom instincts kicking in. 

“I’m thirty-nine,” he said, straight-faced, grabbing his bags and leaving. 

He hadn’t lied. Or had he? He hadn’t accounted for the forty years in Hell…but whatever. Her baffled face would be enough to lift his spirits for a little while.

Dean glanced at the notes he had written on the wall. Fifty hours into his return to the Bunker and zero hours of sleep, he had turned back to his plan for saving his family and the world. Somewhere along the way, he had written on all the paper he’d had, whispered screw it , and grabbed a Sharpie and started writing.

To anyone else—save maybe His Sam—it looked like incoherent scribbles, the notes jumping from being in English, Latin, and a little bit of Enochian, and almost nonsensible. This was somewhat intentional. The information was confidential, and it wouldn’t be good if anyone stole his plans.

“You’re being paranoid,” His Sam said.

“It’s not paranoia if they’re actually out to get you,” Dean responded. “And they are. All of them are.”

Sam was silent.

So far, he had patched together something resembling a plan. What was most important was not tipping his hand. They probably already knew something was up, but as long as he didn’t arouse their suspicions too much, he would be in the clear. He needed all the time he could get to prepare for the coming battle. 

The first thing he would need would be the Colt—and Ruby’s Demon Killing knife, God, he loved that thing—but going after it would attract too much attention. There was no doubt in his mind that Heaven and Hell were already watching his every move. The only safe place was the Bunker. 

He wanted to get it as soon as possible for insurance. He needed those Charms from Bobby ASAP. If they couldn’t track him, or listen to his words, he should be able to get the Colt from Dad’s old mentor if he played his cards right. Without anyone, the wiser. 

He had four years if he played his cards right—four years to prepare, four years of relative peace for him and everyone else. 

He would need every second. He couldn’t mess this up—literally everyone's lives were riding on this.

He wrote down another thing he needed to deal with—in pig-Latin, because why not—Ruby. That bitch would not even look at Sam in this reality. His blood boiled at the thought of her. At what she had done. She’d corrupted Sammy . She’d turned him against Dean and effectively started the Apocalypse.

He was still a little pissed at Sam for trusting that black-eyed bitch over him—but Dean knew what it was like to have something else controlling him now. The Mark of Cain had stripped him of his humanity to the point that he had almost killed Sam . He figured the Demon Blood and Ruby’s seductive words had done something similar to Sam. 

(And maybe he blamed himself, too. After all, he was the big brother. He was supposed to protect Sam against all evils—and he’d let Ruby get his claws into him…)

She was in the top ten of his Most Wanted List. 

He would take great pleasure in killing her.

Meg, too, went on the list.

No one got to mess with his brother and live.

He went on for a while, naming everyone on his kill this—using pseudonyms because Top Secret information and whatnot.

When his vision started to blur, and his hands felt weirdly numb, he hit the sack. Partly against his will. 

He woke up to ringing, and his heart jumped into his throat—he’d dreamed that dream again. Sammy. Dead. Because of Dean, but this time…this time was somehow worse. Because Sam had begged, and cried, and screamed . And Dean had smiled. He’d laughed.

He gagged, choking down bile before answering the phone.

“Hello?” he asked, his voice pathetically weak.

“Dean! You said you’d call me yesterday when you stopped wherever it is you were going,” Sam whispered shouted. “I called you, like, ten times.”

Dean’s chest untightened at the sound of his voice. He was alive.

“Oh. Shit,” he whispered. “I, uh, got kinda caught up in researching a case.”

“You can’t do crap like that, Dean, not with you Hunting by yourself now,” Sam scolded. “I literally thought you were dead. I was about to call Dad—”

“Woah! I’m sorry for worrying you, dick move on my part, but don’t call Dad. If you’re worried, call Bobby.”

Dad needed to stay out of all of this. He ended up dead last time, and the whole point of this torture-dream was to save his family.

“What—you’re talking to Bobby again?”

“Yeah. He’s the most experienced Hunter alive, and he helped raise us. Of course, I’m talking to him.”

“Okay…okay,” Sam repeated like he was trying to calm himself down. “Next time, just answer your damn phone.”

“Aw, is Sammy worried about me? Missing his cool, hot, better Hunter—”

“Shut up,” Sam warned. “I’ll find you, and I will kill you.”

“Really? You’d put in all that work to find your older brother? Shucks, Sam, you know how to make a guy feel special.”

Sam growled on the other end of the line, and Dean laughed hysterically. It was just too easy. 

“Was there any other reason you wanted to call me? Besides making sure I didn’t get myself killed?” he asked after a moment.

“Am I not allowed to call you or something?” Sam asked, a definseve note in his voice.

“Hold your horses, cowboy. Just asking a friendly question.”

Sam sighed. “You’re my brother, Dean. Of course, I want to talk to you.”

Dean froze. That couldn’t be true. Last time around, Sam had practically run with glee to get away from him and Dad. Any time Dean tried to contact him, he was ignored, except that one time, he was literally almost dead.

“What?” 

Was there something going on that he didn’t know about? Was Sam, like, dying or something? No, that didn’t make any sense. He would’ve been dying in the past timeline as well.

“What do you mean, “what,”? You literally raised me, and we haven’t been apart for a couple of weeks in our entire lives. Did you think I was just going to ghost you when I went to college?”

You did last time! He wanted to scream. Why would he have thought anything different?

His silence was answer enough.

“You’re such an idiot, Dean,” Sam scoffed, and Dean could perfectly picture the bitch face he must have on. “I don’t even want to have a discussion about this. You’re my brother. Whether we are in the same crappy motel room or separate sides of the country. End of story. Don’t say—no, don’t even think —any of that crap again.”

This.

This wasn’t right.

This was not what happened last time. 

Had what he done changed the timeline so much? He’d just prevented Dad from being an utter asshole. Sam was still Sam; he still wanted out of the Life, and he still resented Dean for all the previous years of being Dad’s perfect little soldier. 

“Understood, I guess…” he muttered, still utterly baffled. 

“So, what’s college like?” he asked, shifting topic before Sam could think too hard about everything that had been implied.

Sam jumped at the bait and started eagerly describing his roommate and what the campus was like. 

Hearing Sam talk, and talk happily , removed some of the anxiety in his chest. Sam was fine. He was living his best life and would thrive there. Dean would be cheering him on from the sidelines.

“So, what exactly are you doing?” Sam asked after a good forty minutes of yapping. 

How much to tell? How much to lie? 

Sam knew Dean better than anyone on the planet did—but not the version he was today. He could probably get away with a couple of white lies; anything more than that would be pushing it.

“I set up a home base near Bobby—” not that much of a lie, North Dakota wasn’t too far away “—old bunker. It’s pretty cool, lots of books and shit. I’m looking for cases now.”

Sam hummed. “Why’d you leave, Dad? He was pretty pissed about it when you left without saying anything. He even seemed…worried.”

He’d been like ninety percent sure Dad hadn’t mentioned his “visions” to Sam, but to hear it confirmed was like another weight off his shoulders. If Sam thought he was going nutso, he’d probably do something stupid.

“He was freaking me out, man. After that dream I had, he acted like I was an escaped mental asulyum patient. I got out after he said he loved me,” he lied. 

“He pulled out the L word? Shit, Man.”

He knew Sam would understand. Dad only used feelings as weapons or justification. He never pulled out the big guns unless he wanted something.

And maybe he’d lied about it…but whatever, Dad had been an inch away from using psychological manipulation.

“I know. Maybe when he’s cooled down, I’ll meet back up with him…but I kind of like being on my own. No more “yessir” shit.” He did not like being on his own—it was suffocating—but the yessir stuff he would not miss in the least.

“Wow, Dean, I’m really proud of you. I kind of thought you would follow Dad until you died.”

You have no idea how right that statement is, he almost said.

Dean just hummed in affirmation. 

“I gotta go, Dean; I’ll call you in the morning,” Sam said quickly.

“Sayonara, Samantha.” 

Dean lay in bed for a couple of more minutes, trying to center himself in the universe, before pushing himself up.

There was work to do.

Chapter Text

Bobby got back to him on some Charm’s and other things that might work—the most powerful that he could find. 

“Thanks, Bobby; I’ll drive up on Friday. We can talk then,” he said, walking into the diner. He’d loved coming to this place whenever the Bunker just felt like too much. Now, it felt too empty.

“Take care of yourself, boy. Don’t get your dumbass killed,” Bobby warned. “Or I’ll tell Sam about that time you cried when we watched Gilligan's Island.”

“I was eight!” he sputtered. 

“Sam won’t know that, and you’ll be too dead to say otherwise.”

“You are a cruel old man,” he said, sitting down at a table.

“I can be crueler,” he said like it was a challenge.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll try not to die. See you soon.”

After a gruff goodbye, Bobby hung up. 

It was still a little brain-melting that Bobby was alive. Dad had been dead for over a decade, but it seemed like just yesterday he’d seen Bobby flatline. When he’d gone to Purgatory, the scene had played out nonstop in his brain. Another person he’d failed to save. Another person gone.

It hadn’t really felt real—out of all of them, Bobby had always seemed invincible. He always got back up; he always kept fighting. 

Until he didn’t.

“What can I get for you?” a waitress, Mara, asked.

“One double-bacon cheeseburger, please.”

She wrote it down, and Dean gave her a charming smile. People liked it when you smiled, Dean had learned, and it usually made them treat you better. 

She gave him a slight grin back and left, telling him she would be back soon.

Being nice bought you a lot of favors and leeway in life, so Dean always made sure he was kind to service workers and people in general. Unless they were dicks. Then Dean might just break their nose.

Dean opened the laptop he’d brought with him and started researching cases nearby. Specifically, Demon Omens or anything like it.

Nothing.

That was a good thing.

Even if it felt like it was just pressure-building. Till the literal end of the world.

Dean Winchester, ever the optimist. 

After another sleepless night of Wall Scribbling—the Sam in his head called it paranoid nonsense— he was on the road to see Bobby.

In Baby, it was easier to pretend everything was normal. She still looked the same—actually felt more like home than the one he’d left behind. He had put her together so many times over the years that she was barely the same car. But this Baby, she was the one he grew up in. She was home. And that wasn’t a slight against the one he’d left behind—he’d toiled over that car so much, she was practically a part of his soul—but it just felt different to be back in the original. Like returning home after a long journey. 

 With the music on, he could pretend Sam was beside him and that it was just a normal hunt. It was the closest he could get to peace with His Sam erased and Sammy on the other side of the country.

There was somewhere he was stopping halfway to Bobby’s. He’d debated going there but had decided he needed to see them alive, just once. Not for more than ten minutes. Just to assure himself. 

The Road House was exactly as he remembered—hillbilly, awesome, and one of the only places in the world that felt safe. 

Walking in was an otherworldly experience. So many Hunters were in there, a lot of them who he knew died eventually. The building itself he’d seen burned to ash—yet here it stood. Tall and proud, a waystation for all Hunters alike.

Another crazy thing—no one knew him. He was just a guy. Not the bringer or stopper of the Apocalypse. Not John Winchester's son. Not the guy who came back to life a million times.

Just a nobody.

It was an incredibly freeing thought.

When Dean saw her, he almost choked. Ellen was at the bar, serving some biker-looking dude, laughing her head off. 

Alive.

Not holding her dying daughter. The daughter that had gotten killed because of him.

Dean sat at the far end of the bar. Far enough away that he wasn’t drawing attention to himself, but he could observe unhampered. Happy and alive. Laughing and smiling. It felt like a piece of his soul had been found and hammered back into the shattered thing. 

“I’ve never seen you around here ‘fore,” a young feminine voice said.

Dean twisted to his right and almost had a heart attack.

Jo.

A tiny baby, Jo was staring him down with her lips in a stern frown.

God , she was so young. She was younger than even Sammy.

“First time,” he answered, slightly choked.

“You’re a Hunter, aren’t you?” 

“How’d you know?” 

“Ya reek of it,” she said, gesturing to him like that explained it. “Plus, not many others come here. No civilians make it through that door without running away.”

He shrugged. “Couple of my buddies were talking about this place—thought I’d check it out while I was in town.”

She nodded. “Good decision—won’t find any better food or drink in the good state of Nebraska than here.”

He grinned slightly. “That so? Good thing I stopped by then.”

“Who’s this you’re talking to, Jo?” Ellen asked, all stern and motherly.

Dean had heard coming the second she turned their way—a bonus of hypervigilance and paranoia. It still hadn’t given him enough time to prepare to see her for the first time in a lifetime.

“I dunno, we haven’t got there yet,” she shrugged.

Ellen turned her piercing gaze to him. “What’s your name, boy?”

Dean’s heart stuttered in his chest. Alive. Alive. Alive. 

“Dean,” he offered.

She raised a brow. “Winchester?”

He made a face of confusion. “No, Braeden.”

He didn’t want to be connected to Dad—if word got to him what he was up to, and with all the connections he had, it would, he would go batshit and mess everything up. He was away, and he was safe.

He’d decided to use Lisa’s last name a while ago. His mother’s maiden name was too well known, and there were still Campbell Hunters sneaking around, who all happened to be assholes. He’d rather choke on his own foot than be associated with them.

“Sorry, you just reminded me of someone I used to know,” she said, still giving him a once-over. “Why are you in town? Haven’t seen you around these parts before. Or heard your name.”

“Just passing through on my way to a Hunt. Thought I’d check out your estimated establishment,” he said, ignoring the last question.

“Whatcha Hunting?” she asked, grabbing him a glass.

“Not sure yet. I think it’s a Wendigo, but we’ll see.”

She poured him a glass of whiskey. “Wendigo’s are tough sons of bitches. You sure you got that handled? You seem pretty young for a Hunter.”

“Runs in the blood, I guess. Both of my parents served before they died and trained me up pretty well, hoping I’d join the Airforce and get a cushy job in an office…but it wasn’t meant to be, I guess.”

Plausible backstory, not too detailed as to arouse suspicion, and reasonably vague enough to forget after hearing.

“What got your parents?” 

“...It’s not something I like to talk about.” He let a haunted look pass over his face—didn’t even have to act because both of his parents had actually met horrific deaths—and let her extrapolate from that. No Hunter just goes around crying about their Tragic Backstory, especially not right after it happened. 

“Sorry,” she said, and he could feel her motherly instincts attacking him. If he didn’t leave soon, he’d be trapped. 

He took a good swig of the whiskey. “I best be going now. The Hunt waits for no one.”

He stood up, brushed off his jacket, and dropped a ten on the counter.

“Stop by on your way back. So I know you didn’t get your ass killed,” Ellen ordered. 

“Yes, Ma’am,” he gave her a mock salute. “Nice meeting y’all.”

He resisted the urge to touch either of them just to make sure they weren’t an illusion and left. He wished he could have just hugged both of them to death before he left forever. If he came back…he didn’t know if he’d be able to leave them alone. They had been family to him, and he had trouble letting family be.

But they had died because they had gotten involved with him.

That wouldn’t happen again.

Bobby’s house came up in the distance, and Dean’s hands started to get clammy. The house had been destroyed in his timeline. One of the only places that had ever felt like home. It was real. Nothing had happened yet. 

He parked Baby and sat.

He couldn’t move. 

He couldn’t name the exact feeling that was weighing down on him—but it was crushing him. Bobby was in there. Alive. He’d hug him, call him idjit, and help him save the world. 

(Bobby, the man who’d been more of a father than Dad ever was. The man who he thought of as a father.)

He closed his eyes tightly.

Pull it together. You’ve got a long while to go—you can’t break down yet.

He gave himself five minutes to pull himself together, done the mask of Young Dean, and grabbed his duffel. 

He walked up the path and knocked on the door. 

It didn’t take more than a second before the door was opened, and Bobby was standing there.

Dean had dreams about this before. Bobby at the house, still alive, just waiting to help them out on their latest disaster. Not a word of complaint, just his steady voice and knowledge there to guide them along.

“Well, come inside, boy. Don’t just stand there,” Bobby ordered.

Before Dean could think much more about it, he pulled Bobby into a tight hug. 

He was real.

He was alive.

Bobby made a noise of surprise before he embraced him back. 

They stood there for a moment, and time didn’t seem to pass. 

“Y’alright, son?” Bobby asked. 

Dean released him from the hug. “Yeah, it’s just been a long couple of—” years “—days.” 

Bobby gave him a searching look. “Let’s get inside, we got a lot to talk about.”

Bobby walked to the living room. It was just as Dean remembered; the stench of whiskey and old books permeated the air. 

Bobby grabbed a book off the table. “It took some digging, but I found some warding spells. Not even the most powerful creature out there could track you down with these.”

Dean took the book from Bobby and skimmed through the pages. It was a complicated ritual developed by monks in the 16th century to ward off Demons from finding them and other creatures, like minor gods.

“This is just what I needed—thanks, Bobby,” he said with a grin. “Do we have everything for it?”

Bobby nodded. “Got it all prepared, too. But first, you’re going to tell me what’s going on.”

Dean kept the easy grin on his face, even though he felt ash on his tongue. “Well—”

“And don’t try to lie to me, boy. John already called me, telling me about these visions . Told me you’d been acting real weird to,” Bobby said, crossing his arms.

Dean could hear his heart in his ears so loud he could barely hear his thoughts. He had been planning on telling Bobby that he knew information—how he knew it, vague things about creatures acting weirdly—but he absolutely did not plan on telling Bobby about his downward spiral into insanity. 

“Did—did you tell him I was talking to you?” he asked.

“No. Don’t see why it’s any of his business.”

Dean sighed. That was one good thing. Dad didn’t know he was in contact with Bobby, which meant he didn’t know where he was or what he was doing.

“So, you’re having visions?” Bobby prompted.

Dean decided that it was a good idea to lean against the table—it anchored him to the world and gave the illusion of nonchalance.

“I don’t know if I would call them that…but I’ve seen things, Bobby. And they weren’t dreams—it was almost like I lived through them. I felt everything; I could see everything crystal clear.”

Bobby was silent.

“You don’t believe me either, do you?” he said with a frustrated sigh. 

It was all total bullshit, but it kinda stung that neither of his father figures believed his words, even if they were batshit insane.

“Don’t put words in my mouth, boy. I said nothing of the sort—I was just hoping for more detail than “I’ve seen things.””

Dean almost grinned. 

Bobby always has my back.

“If I tell you what I saw, you’ll think I’m mental,” he warned.

Bobby shrugged. “In our line of work, aren’t we all? Most of what we see is unexplainable. I still believe it.”

Dean gave him a once-over. If there were anyone who would believe him, it would be Bobby. He would probably be his best bet in this fight against Heaven and Hell. But did he want to further involve him in this? The whole point of Dean Winchester's Horrible Life 2.0 was to change things.

“Well, get on with it!” Bobby ordered.

“Bobby…If you get involved in this—it’s dangerous. You could get hurt, or worse. ” You died last time.

“Then all the more reason to tell me. If it could get me killed, then it sure as hell would get your idjit ass killed, and I ain’t about to let that happen.”

Dean blinked a couple of times. Dad had called him crazy. Bobby called him stupid for not wanting to tell him.

“Well, then, you better buckle up because it’s a wild ride,” Dean said.

Dean gave him the cliff notes version up until the first Apocalypse. He left out some parts—Hell—and understated a couple of them—Sam and his addiction—and just stuck to the major events. Dad and Sam dying, Yellow Eyes, the Seals, and the existence of Heaven and how dickish they were. He tried to frame it so that it didn’t seem like he knew everything, kept the ending a secret, and was over all just vague.

“...and unless we do something, it’s going to play out exactly like I saw it,” he finished.

Bobby took another sip of his whiskey. He had gotten that out around the time Dad died. “I ain’t gonna lie, this is hard to story to take. But I know you, and you aren’t a liar.”

Dean almost felt bad for his deception. Bobby didn’t even know how wrong he was. “Thanks, Bobby.”

“I’ll help you, but give me a minute to process this…” he muttered. “Actually, I do have one question—did you plan on doing this on your own?”

He scratched the back of his head. “I tried to tell Dad, but he didn’t believe me.”

“You were gonna try and save everyone and everything by yourself— Idjit. Don’t do nothing stupid like that again. You call me if anything starts to happen, you hear me, boy?”

Dean shifted on his feet. It had been a while since he’d been scolded, and it was almost weird, considering how old he was. But it was Bobby—you didn’t say no to orders from Bobby.

“Yessir,” he said. 

Bobby grunted. “Your room’s all made up; get some sleep. You look half dead.”

Bobby slapped his shoulder on his way to the alcohol, and Dean trudged his way to the room that was basically his when he was a wayward teenager. The room was bare with plain sheets and a twin bed, but it was his in a way that only the Bunker came close to.

He dropped his duffel beside the bed and sat down, running a hand through his spiky hair.

He hadn’t meant to spill the beans. Well, he hadn’t been intending to. 

But it was Bobby , if anyone could take it, it was him. He hadn’t died in the first Apocalypse (not permanently); it had been those damn Leviathans that had gotten him. And Dean was an inch from losing his freaking mind. He already kind of had. He needed someone else to at least know something —to know something about who Dean really was now. 

He hadn’t even solved the last Apocalypse—in fact, he was almost certain that if he had been removed from the equation entirely, they would still have found a way to end the Apocalypse. 

How was he supposed to do it on his own, then? As long as he was smart about it, everything would end up fine. But he needed help. Without Sam, he was half the Hunter he usually was and barely functional. It was the cold, pathetic truth.

He needed Bobby if he wanted to end this Apocalypse. 

“I’m such a mess,” he muttered. 

If Bobby got hurt from all of this…

Dean wasn’t sure what he’d do. Probably go nuclear. 

“You did good today,” His Sam said. “I didn’t think you’d ever ask for help.”

“Shut up,” he muttered. You aren’t real.

He really couldn’t keep having conversations with His Sam—it was absolutely batshit. Dean would lock himself in a mental asylum if he could, but the end of the world and all that jazz, he was forced to stay somewhat functioning.

“You don’t have to be such a jerk,” Sam huffed.

“Yeah, well, you aren’t real. So suck it.”

“I’m not real? News to me.”

Dean rolled his eyes. His subconscious was trying to gaslight him into believing a hallucination. Hah. Literally, what was his life?

Total horse shit, he thought bitterly.

He took off his boots before getting into bed. The bed was ridiculously comfy, and the blankets were warm and smelled fresh. Add in the fact that he’d gotten around five hours of sleep total in the last week, he was out like a light.

Waking up was like waking up from a coma—which he would know since he’d done that before. 

All his limbs were weirdly uncooperative, his eyes were blurry and refused to focus, and he was starving. 

He stumbled out of bed and made his way to the kitchen, where he smelled God’s gift to man— Bacon.

“You're finally awake!” Bobby yelled. “Bout damn time, thought I’d have to stun your ass to get you up.”

“Volume, Bobby, volume,” he said with a wince. “How long was I out?”

“Fourteen hours—it’s noon now,” Bobby said, putting a plate in front of him.

It did not take long for him to realize his screw-up.

“Aw, crap,” he said.

“What is it?”

He grabbed his phone from his pocket—sure enough, there were five missed calls. “I was supposed to call Sammy at seven.”

Hopefully, he hadn’t gone on another tirade. Dean was still too out of it to sit through another lecture on answering his phone because Sam thought he was too stupid to be a Hunter. It was almost ironic; Dean was now probably the most experienced Hunter on Earth. He’d literally lived through so much stupid shit it was insane. He had died a couple of times, but that was semantics. He’d made it back eventually. 

“Oh, I know. Sam called me when you slept through his calls. Yelled at me about how stupid you were for almost half an hour.”

Dean winced. “Sorry about that—he’s been a little freak lately about me answering his calls.”

“Dean, you’ve never Hunted on your own before—of course, he’s worried about you getting yourself killed,” Bobby scolded. 

He scowled. At least back in his time, he was only called stupid when he was stupid. “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

He dialed Sam’s number. He got his voicemail. “Hey, it’s Dean. I’m still alive. Call me when you can.”

He hung up and focused on the bacon in front of him.

“Does Sam know?” Bobby asked.

“Bout what?”

Bobby gestured to all of him. “The end of the world—the fact that you’re seeing in it.”

Dean stopped eating. “No. And he won’t ever know.”

Bobby gave him a long look.

“He’s out of the Life, Bobby. He’s happy. I won’t take that from him,” he said. “The future I saw…he died, Bobby, and was only brought back because those dicks on wings need him. I couldn’t live with myself if I killed my brother.”

Dean prepared for the lecture, the arguments. He’s your brother, Dean, and he’d want to help you . Well sucks to be him because it wasn’t going to happen.

Bobby nodded. “Alight.”

Dean’s head snapped up at that. “What?”

“You're right. He’s out of the life; not many get that chance. No sense in dragging him back in,” Bobby shrugged.

Dean leaned back in his chair, stupified. He shouldn’t be so surprised. Bobby did something similar after the first Apocalypse when Sam came back wrong. He let Dean believe his brother was dead because he was safer that way. 

He decided to blame his surprise on the Sam in his head, who at every chance tried to get Sammy involved in all the nonsense. Yeah, that was it.

(Well, the reasonable part of his brain said, the Sam in your head is fake, and is actually your subco—)

He told the voice in his head to shut up.

“Thanks, Bobby,” Dean said. 

“Just eat your damn food.”

Dean grinned and let out a chuckle before stuffing his face full of bacon.

In the basement, he and Bobby went over the ritual. Lots of Latin, animal blood, and really stinky ingredients later, they were both officially blocked off from Heaven and Hell. It shouldn’t trigger their suspicions since, while he was doubtlessly under surveillance, it was probably just casual check-ins. The plan was still years out of bounds; they wouldn’t care more than keeping him alive.

“I’m going to need about a hundred hot showers to get this stink off of me,” Dean complained. 

His fingers were coated in the Stew of Nightmares that they had made, and if Dean hadn’t spent a year in purgatory eating God knows what, he probably would have thrown up. That Hell-hole had destroyed his gag reflex. Somewhere along the first week, after eating nothing but tree bark and maggots, his stomach had decided it was useless to resist.

That was probably a problem. He didn’t care enough to actually do anything about it.

“Not before I do,” Bobby said. 

Bobby did, in fact, go first. 

In the horrific meantime, Sam finally got back to him. 

“So you’re at Bobby’s. How’s that going?” Sam asked after five minutes of whining like a literal toddler. 

Dean, I was so worried.

Dean, I thought you were dead.

Dean, you’re an idiot.

Maybe some of the complaints were valid. He refused to acknowledge them.

“Yeah. It’s been cool. The man makes a mean omelet,” he said, picking at the black gunk under his fingernails.

“What made you go to him? I tried to ask him, but he got all squirlly about it. It was weird.”

Good ‘ole Bobby. He knew when to zip his mouth.

“I’m Hunting one mean sonuvabitch; decided it was probably best to get Bobby’s help on this one,” he lied easily. 

It was, like, half-truth, so it wasn’t totally morally wrong.

“I’m glad you’re not a total idiot,” Sam laughed. “What is it you’re Hunting?”

Dean tutted his tongue. “Sorry, College Boy, that’s confidential. Civilians don’t need to know about what creeps in the dark.”

“Hey, just because I left doesn’t mean I can’t talk to you about Hunting.”

“Uh, yeah, it does. It’s easy to fall back into old patterns. First, it’s talking, then you look at the papers, just for fun, and then you think, why not? It’s only a couple of minutes away, it’d actually be a crime not to —”

“Okay! I get it, Dean,” Sam huffed. “But since it’s what your life revolves around, what are we supposed to talk about?”

“Your life,” he answered easily.

“That— that’s not fair. You get to know everything about me, but I can’t know basic information about what’s going on in your life? That’s so freaking stupid.”

“My life isn’t even that interesting. It’s just what we’ve done our whole lives; you already know all about it. Your life is new and more exciting. It just makes sense.”

“I don’t want to know what you’re doing because it’s exciting . You’re my brother. I want to know what’s going on in your life. That’s how it works, Dean.”

Oh .

That changed things. 

He’d never had to do this. The last time Sam had left there had been no contact between them. And then when he was back, he automatically knew everything that was going on. The few times—maybe more than a few—he’d lied, they’d all ended terribly.

“Guess I never thought about it that way,” he said. “We’ll figure something out.”

They would. Maybe that would be never talking again. Maybe it would be using weird metaphors and code to communicate. 

“We will,” Sam agreed. 

After getting washed, he sat down with Bobby in the living room and poured them both glasses of whiskey. 

“What’s your next move?” Bobby asked.

“The Colt. Dad’s old mentor has it stashed away. I don’t know if I want to get right away or wait. It could tip them off that I know things.” He took a sip of his drink. 

“I could get it,” Bobby offered.

“No. The less involved you are, the better.”

Heaven and Hell knew what that gun could do—anyone who had it or showed an interest in it would be on a hit list.

“Are you sure about that? The end of the world is coming. This ain’t a one-man war, son.”

Dean took another sip of his drink and knew he would regret it in the morning. Young Dean’s tolerance was trash.

“We have four years before it all starts and another four after that before it all kicks into high gear. We don’t have to take any risks—and I won’t where you guys are concerned,” he said. 

“But it’s fine if you take risks? Cut everyone out and make all the decisions by yourself? You gotta realize that’s not gonna end well, Dean. You’re only one man.”

He knew Bobby didn’t mean it in a you’re a terrible person kinda way, but more stop being so stupid , but it still stung. 

“I let you in, didn’t I? I told Dad. Who else is there? Pastor Jim? Do we really want to get him involved?”

Bobby held up his hands in surrender. “I know. But the way you talk…you never mention yourself. You’re making an old man worry.”

Dean rolled his eyes. He didn’t want to die.

He just cared more about if they lived than if he did.

“I’m not going anywhere, Bobby. But my job’s always been to protect those around me—it’s just what I’m doing.”

Bobby nodded. “Good to hear.”

He took another sip of his drink.

“Now that we’ve got all of that covered, I have a favor to ask you,” Bobby said, grabbing a folder and handing it to him. “There’s a case in Nebraska, and a newbie needs some help. Pretty sure it's a Wendigo.”

Dean took the folder handed to him and skimmed through it. Hikers were disappearing on the trails surrounding a small town. Leaving no trace. Sounded legit. 

“Who’s the Hunter?”

“Jeffery Holmes. He’s only eighteen. His parents were killed by a Poltergeist a couple of months ago. They were old friends.”

Hunter’s gone civilian, no doubt. “Did he know about…everything?”

“Nah, they wanted to keep him out of it all; lot of good it did them,” he said, shaking his head.

After Sammy left for college last time, Dean and Dad had gotten pretty active in the Hunter community. They knew a lot of names…he’d never heard of Jeff’s.

The kid probably got himself killed.

Dean was itching to do something in his downtime. A Hunt, and saving a stupid kid, was probably a good way to spend it. 

“I’ll cover this. I just have one more favor to ask,” Dean asked, grabbing a piece of paper from his pocket and handing it to Bobby. “These names. I need all the information you can get on them. They’re important.”

Bobby took it with a nod. 

“To saving the world,” Bobby toasted.

Dean raised his glass to saving the damn world the second time. (From this particular Apocalypse.)

Chapter Text

Chapter eight.

The kid, Jeff, was pitiful. 

He was about 5’6 in shoes, weighed maybe a little over a hundred pounds, and was most definitely not eighteen. 

He met the kid at the Road House—it was the Hunter’s commune, it just made sense to do the case debrief there. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he was dying to see Ellen and Jo again, happy and healthy. Nothing at all.

Ellen had given him a friendly nod as if to say, look, the idiot isn’t dead.

He and Jeff were seated at a table, and he suddenly felt very uncomfortable having a kid in a bar. 

“How old are you really, kid?” Dean asked straight off the gate.

Nobody with cheeks that round were allowed to buy a gun legally. 

He fidgeted. “I’m eighteen.”

Dean held up a finger. “No, that’s how old you told Bobby you were. You’re, like, fifteen, tops. ”

The kid looked down at his arms, avoiding all eye contact like the plague. 

Holy mother of God.

He really was fifteen.

Dean almost sighed. Why were so many kids so damn stupid? I’m not even out of High school. How about I try and get myself killed? For fun.

Dean was definitely smarter than that when he was a teenager.

“You were not. Not even close,” His Sam said.

Dean ignored him, because he was wrong.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Dean muttered. “Whatever. Somebody just got himself a one-way trip to Bobby’s.”

The kid’s eyes widened. “No! I need to do this.”

“You really don’t.” Dean had first-hand experience. Fighting helped in the short term, but after that, it just made it worse. One only had to look at Dean.

The kid glared. “You don’t understand. My parents…I saw it happen and couldn’t do anything. I was helpless.”

Dean bit the inside of his check. He couldn’t just sweep this under the rug and tell the kid everything was sunshine and rainbows—he’d seen things he’d never unsee. 

Dean sighed. He’d have to go deeper, then.

“Trust me, kid, I probably understand that better than anyone.” He’d seen practically everyone he loved die and been able to do nothing about it. “But getting yourself killed won’t help anyone. It won’t change the past either.”

“What am I supposed to do? I’m an orphan. I have nowhere to go. I’m not smart enough for school. This is all I’ve got,” he pressed. 

In that moment, the scrawny kid reminded him of Claire. A kid with both parents torn away from her because of the Supernatural war going on around her. Someone with no one in her corner and forced to fight. Another kid forced into being a soldier.

(He was like Dean.)

“Bobby’ll take you in. And if you aren’t a total asshole, he might even train you up to be a Hunter,” Dean said. “And Bobby’s the best around. You get him to teach you; you’ll outclass every Hunter in here by the time you’re twenty.”

The kid still looked pissed. 

Dean did not get paid enough to deal with “feelings.” Especially other peoples.

He sighed.

It was his curse to be burdened by human beings with emotions.

“Listen, I know all you want to do is beat the crap out of something right now, but you’ll just get yourself hurt. That won’t benefit anyone, least of all you,” he said, pausing. “When I lost my family…it felt like the end. But I kept going for them, and because of that, a lot of people are here that wouldn’t be if I’d been stupid.”

“Who’d you lose?” Jeff asked hesitantly.

“Everyone. I thought so, at least. A couple of ‘em came back…but there was a time when they were all gone.” The worst time of his life. 

Jeff nodded in solidarity. 

“Now, I’ll go call Bobby, get you a ride up to Sioux Falls, and you’ll be set.” He clapped Jeff on the shoulder. 

“What about the Wendigo?” 

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it.”

“You. Alone .”

“Yes, me . Why does everyone find it so hard to believe?” 

Jeff raised an eyebrow and smirked. “You’re barely any older than me.”

“I’m th—twenty-two. And I’ve been doing this my whole life,” he said, sticking a threatening finger at him. “So put some damn respect in your tone.”

The kid's smirk just got bigger. “Okay, old-timer.”

His eye twitched.

If he were any less of a good person, he would’ve dumped the kid's ass. Was this what people thought of Dean when he had been a smartass kid? No. Dean would have been dead. 

Bobby had been scandalized to hear how young the kid actually was. Apparently, he had fallen out of contact with the kid's parents a long time ago, and the kid found him through a Hunter who had still been close with family. 

From Bobby’s tone, Dean knew that Jeff was in for a Hell of tongue-lashing when he got up there. Dean had been there done that. He almost felt bad for the little asshole.

After calling a cab, he went back into the Road House to get the punk. 

He found him sitting with Jo, with a flirtatious smirk on his face. 

Jo. Who was like a sister to him. 

Yeah, nice try, buddy. But there was no way on God's green Earth that anything was happening, ever , between them.

Dean scowled at the kid. “Jeff, what the Hell are you doing?”

The kid jumped before turning to him. “Talking…?” 

Dean raised his eyebrows. “Really?” 

I was a teenage boy too. You can’t fool me.

“Dean, really, we were just talking,” Jo said.

Jo was like a sister to him, he loved her, but he knew that she was a sneaky little shit. All teenagers were. 

“Really?” he repeated, feeling like the old man he was. 

Both of them shifted.

“What’s going on here?” Ellen asked, amusement coloring her voice. 

Dean turned. Finally, an actual adult was here. Dean looked like a freaking frat boy. He could not command respect. 

“Yeah, guys, what’s going on here?” he asked.

“Nothing, Dean’s just blowing things out of proportion,” Jo said. “I was just talking to the new guy.”

Ellen crossed her arms. “And who is this?”

Jeff quickly stuck his hand out. “Jeffery Holmes, Ma’am.”

She gave a critical look before slowly shaking his hand.

“Dean?”

“He’s an idiot, that’s what he is, and he has a cab waiting to take him to Bobby’s.”

Jeff scowled at him. “Hey!”

Dean gave him a sarcastic smile. “Say your goodbyes. You got to go.”

Jeff scoffed. “Right now?”

“What are you, three? Yes, right now.” 

Jeff mumbled a goodbye, and Jo looked strangely wistful. Teenage romance. Dean had been gone for maybe ten minutes. 

Dean grabbed Jeff by his arm. “Okay, time to go before I die of old age.”

Dean pointed to Ellen and then to Jo. “You keep an eye on that one.”

“Trust me, I am,” she said. “You better keep an eye on yours, too.”

Jeff froze at the words and looked at him. 

Dean, however, was on a different plane of existence. Had he just adopted another little brother? Another Claire? God, he had.

Dean was both way too old and way too young for this. 

“I got him,” Dean said. 

He dragged Jeff outside to the cab. “Now, Bobby’s gonna take you in, but he’s pissed at you right now. You’ll be watched closely for the next couple of weeks and probably have a shit ton of chores as punishment, but you’ll be fine as long as you aren’t stupid or an asshole.”

Jeff nodded mechanically. 

“I’ll probably be up there soon. My home base is in Kansas, but Bobby and I are working on something,” he said. 

He put Jeffs's bag in the cabs trunk. 

“Keep your head on straight,” he said, clapping the kid's shoulder. 

The kid shrugged. “You too, old man.”

Not much for tearful goodbyes, Jeff got in the car, and Dean waved him off. 

Time to hunt a Wendigo.

A Wendigo’s weaknesses were fire and silver, both of which Dean had in ready supply. Back all those years ago, during his first Wendigo hunt, he’d almost died. They were fast, strong, vicious bastards. This time, though, Dean had his youthful body, along with nearly two more decades of experience. 

It would be a cakewalk. 

He traded some machetes for some silver bullets from another hunter and got on the road. It had been a while since he’d done a simple case like this. One without Sam. 

But it was fine.

He was fine.

He had to be.

After a moment of the emptiness filling his soul, he decided to call Sam. He dialed his number and stuck his phone between his shoulder and his ear. 

“Hello?” Sam answered. 

“Hey, it’s Dean.”

“What’s up?”

“Just got a drive ahead of me, and I’m bored out of my mind. Entertain me.”

He could hear Sam rolling his eyes. 

“You’re an asshole, you know that?”

“So I’ve been told,” Dean said with a smile. “So, what’s College Boy up to?” 

“Working. So much work. I almost miss hustling pool.”

“Life is hard. We all have our challenges.” He smirked.

“Shut up,” he warned. “What are you up to?”

“Eh, you know, the usual. Bobby sent me to help this new Hunter—turns out he’s only fifteen and was planning on taking a Hunt on all by himself. Freaking idiot. Now I’m taking on his Hunt while his ass gets shipped up to Bobby’s,” he explained. 

Sam whistled. “Fifteen? That’s insane. Is the Hunt an easy in-and-out?”

Sam’s question was hesitant. After the talk they had about being sucked back into life, Dean couldn’t really blame him.

“Should be a cakewalk,” he said.

“That’s good,” Sam said with relief. 

“Yeah, it should be fun,” he said, and then hesitantly added, “Have you heard from Dad at all?”

Dad was constantly on his mind. He had no idea where the man was or what he was doing. He had died in the last timeline, and Dean was an inch away from having a mental breakdown every time he thought about it. 

Dad was alive, and Dean couldn’t even talk to him.

“Yeah, he’s, uh, stuck around in California for a little bit,” Sam said, like he was telling him he had just killed his dog.

Oh.

Dad was still there. With Sam. 

Dean’s hands tightened on the wheel. 

Last time, Sam left, and Dad walked out right after him, only contacting him about Hunts and other things. But when Dean left, he stayed with Sam. Dean was replaceable. Sam was not. 

“He’s asked about you,” Sam was quick to assure. “He’s just too much of a prideful asshole to reach out.”

Dean wasn’t even sure Sammy was telling the truth. In Dean’s mind, it was more likely that he was lying to save Dean’s feelings. In all the time Sam had been gone, four-freaking-years, Dad hadn’t ever said a word. Dean didn’t think that had changed in this time line—espically for Dean.

“That’s…something. What is he up to?” 

Was he Hunting? Had he gone native? Just what was John Winchester up to in the Suburbs?

“I have no freaking clue. He just appears. Talks for a couple of minutes and disappears.”

‘“That sounds like Dad.”

He was reminded of the year he and Sam had spent Hunting him, doing everything they could to find their dad. Dad had known and done nothing. A full freaking year. And then he’d gotten his ass killed—sold his soul to save Dean. 

He couldn’t say that his Dad hadn’t cared about him. He’d literally given his life for Dean. But Dean also couldn’t say he’d ever been a good father.

“Can we talk in the morning? I need to get some sleep before work tomorrow,” Sam asked.

“Sure, sure. Just don’t get any ideas if I don’t answer at ass-o-clock in the morning,” he said. 

Sam muttered goodbye before hanging up,

It was night when he made it to the hiking trail, and Dean decided that it would be idiotic to try and gank the Wendigo blind and started preparing his supplies for the morning. Homemade flame-thrower, a gun loaded with silver bullets, five silver knives on his person, and some candy for energy. 

After shoveling his fifth handful of chocolates into his mouth, he heard a rustling. And voices. 

Crap.

He’d put a good distance between him and the hunting trails the Wendigo liked, but he was also miles away from human civilization, and it was like three in the morning. Unless it was some teenagers coming out to do the Devil's Tango, it meant trouble. Typical Winchester luck.

He loaded his gun and leaned further back into Baby. 

The mumbles got louder, and Dean tensed. 

All sound stopped. 

“Help! Somebody help me!” A young female voice screamed. 

“This is probably a trap,” His Sam said.

“Yeah. But what if it isn’t?” he whispered.

It was stupidly suspicious…but Dean already had enough lives on his conscience. He didn’t know if he could live with any more on it.

“ Help!” 

He gripp his gun tightly and got out of Baby. He crouched as he got out and pointed his gun in the general direction that he’d heard the mumbles. 

“Help!” she screamed.

Dean’s heart pounded. She sounded like she was dying. It was probably a trap. He couldn’t get himself to care. He wouldn’t lose another person.

He stalked over through the underbrush, barely making a sound. The year in Purgatory had beaten the need for stealth into him after the fifth Leviathan was forewarned of their attacks because of Dean’s heavy footsteps. 

The screams got louder, and Dean palmed one of his many knives before breaking out of the bushes. 

There were five people that he could see—four of them adult dudes who were almost as tall as Dean and one youngish girl on the ground in the middle. 

“What the Hell is going on here?” he demanded, pointing his gun at the circle.

One of the men hissed. “I thought I smelled human.”

They were Supernatural then, Vampire or Werewolf, most likely. A whole freaking pack. 

The best-dressed one waved his hand. “Kill him.”

“Hey! Let’s wait a second before we kill anyone,” Dean stalled. He would love nothing more than to kill all of them, but there was a girl who seemed to be innocent, and he had no idea what they were. “Just calm down, and no one gets hurt.”

“You have no idea who you're messing with,” the leader smirked. 

Likewise, asshole.

If these losers knew who he was—if he had his old reputation—they would be pissing their pants as they ran away for dear life.

Who knew he would ever miss his old crappy life. At least it had some perks. If you die and come back to life as many times as Dean had, you become something of a legend.

“Yeah, I don’t know about that, but whatever. How about you give me the girl, and we can go our separate ways,” he said with a tight grin.

The girl looked up at him from the ground. Her arms were covered in scratches, and she was bathed in dirt. “Please…”

Her voice was weak, probably from all the screaming she had been doing.

She was probably just out of high school. Just a kid. 

Why was it always kids?

The leader—he would be calling him Suit now—rolled his eyes and flicked his hand, and Dean was surrounded. 

Dean shot the first one through the heart—nothing.

They were Vamps, then.

Crap.

He had knives, not machetes. How the Hell was he supposed to chop their heads off? 

He quickly holstered the gun for later and got out another one of his knives. He probably wasn’t going to die, but God, was this fight going to hurt. There was no way he was getting out unscathed. 

He could thank the Winchester’s craptastic luck for it.

Two attacked at once, and Dean dodged the swipe from the one on the left—Ugly was his name—and slashed the man's throat. He was, sadly, still alive, but incapacitated for a second.

Dean kicked in the other attacker's knee—Stupid, Dean called him in his head—and stabbed his knife through his spinal cord. He dropped dead to the ground with a gratifying thump.

So. 

Full decapitation was unneeded. 

The Vamp’s screamed, knocking him out of his revelry, and he went back into fighting position.

The girl was still with Suit Guy and behind a firm line of Vamps. There was no way to get to her.

Another Vamp got close, hissing with his teeth barred. Loser swiped at him with a knife, and Dean dodged just in time, getting a knick to his shoulder. Dean barely felt it. 

Dean stabbed him in the throat, leaving his knife stuck there as he thudded to the ground. Dean got another knife out of his belt. 

The Vamps froze. Apparently, they weren’t used to losing.

He spun them in his hands. “That all you got?”

“A Hunter. How unfortunate,” Suit Guy said. “This complicates things.”

“Just give me the girl, and I’m gone,” he lied.

Suit tilted his head. “No. You’ll be back with better weapons and more Hunters. You guys are like cockroaches—you never give up.”

“Could say the same about you. Really damn annoying to kill,” he grinned. “I’ll give you a headstart; how does that sound?”

“Tempting, but I’m going to have to pass. You miscalculated,” Suit Guy smirked. “We aren’t the only ones out here.”

Before Dean could even say shit, something hit the back of his head, and he was out like a light.

Dean’s head was killing him. It was the most pain he’d felt since coming back to the ancient days, and he was not enjoying it.

He tried to reach back and touch his head, but his hands were restrained. 

Oh. Right.

Freaking Vamps. 

Dean groaned. “This is so not cool.”

He forced his eyes open. It felt like they were closed with glue. He definitely had a concussion. 

Great. Just great.

Looking around, he was in a rundown shed, if he had to guess. His hands were restrained above him; the chain bolted into the ceiling. Now, he could feel his shoulders burning from the position.

“You’re finally awake.”

Dean’s head whipped to the left and almost threw up from the sudden movement. The girl was there, on the ground, wrists tied together.

“Are you alright?” he asked, throat dry.

“I am doing just fantastic , thanks for asking,” she scoffed. “I get kidnapped on a field trip and then get my blood sucked out by some Dracula wannabe freaks.”

Dean counted himself lucky she hadn’t gone into hysterics. He just didn’t have the mental bandwithd to deal with that.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get us out of here,” he assured her. 

“And how are you going to do that? There are at least a dozen of them, and we’re in the middle of nowhere. What’s the plan, Mr. Macho Man? Because it looks like we’re screwed.”

It did not look good. Dean could admit that.

But he had been in far worse situations and still came out on top. This would be nothing.

“Before, you had us. There’s no backup coming, Dean,” His Sam reminded him. “Don’t be an idiot.”

He rolled his eyes. “I know that. Don’t have to be such a smartass.”

“Who are you talking to?”

Dean blinked. He had totally forgotten about her and how insane he was. “I have a concussion.”

“No shit.”

He needed a plan, but first things first. “What’s your name?”

She raised a brow. “Avery.”

“I’m Dean. Nice to meet you,” he said. “What can you tell me about our captors?”

She raised her tied hands and scratched her face. “They aren’t from around here. They’re hiding from someone and feeding on hikers who come through the area. I’m one of those lucky bastards.”

Dean frowned. “You said there were a lot of them…how are they feeding all of them on hikers?”

“I heard some of them talk about “starving” and “rationing.” I think that’s why they didn’t kill you—they want to suck you dry,” she explained. 

That fit. Usually, they would kill a Hunter if they even breathed. Lucky him that they were hungry.

“Okay. Any other prisoners?”

If there were anyone else, Dean would need to get them out of here, too. Somehow. 

“No,” she shook her head. “They…they were all dead when I got here. Bled dry.”

Dean’s heart clenched. He knew there was nothing he could have done for them, they’d probably been dead before Dean had even caught wind of the case…but guilt tightened in his stomach. More people he hadn’t been able to save.

The door opened, and Suit Guy walked in. “Are you two having fun chatting?”

Dean gave him a sharp grin, covering up any feelings he had. “We’re having a ball.”

“I’m glad,” Suit Guy snarked. “Now, we have a few questions, Dean.”

He winced internally. They’d overheard them. Now they knew his name, and Dean wasn’t exactly common. Hopefully, that didn’t come back to bite him in the future. But knowing his luck, it would somehow.

“Why were you here?”

Translated: did Dean know about them beforehand?

What was the best option? Tell the truth, or lie his ass off? What gave him more time?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, shrugging as much as he could in his position.

If he told them the truth, that gave them all the power. He needed to keep the cards he had.

“Don’t lie to me, Hunter. Why were you here? Did you know about us? Does anyone else know about us?” 

They were afraid. 

Of what?

Dean stretched his memory back. Dad’s old mentor, Elkins, he’d supposedly hunted these guys into extinction. Was he on these Vamp’s trail?

“And what will you do if I don’t answer?” 

One of the thugs—Ugly—came over and punched him in the stomach, knocking all the air out of his lungs. 

“ You’re–gonna–hafta–do–better–than—that,” he coughed and let a feral grin lose. 

Dean had been to Hell. There was nothing on this Earth that could hurt him. Alistair had long since removed his weakness to pain.

Ugly punched him a dozen more times, moving up his chest. With his Vampiric super strength, Dean definitely broke a few ribs. Hopefully, none of them punctured his lungs.

“You ready to answer our questions now?” 

“Maybe. What were they again?” Dean coughed out, his ribs burning.

Ugly brandished a knife and growled, but Suit held him off with a wave of his hand.

“Is there anyone coming for you?”

If Dean was gone long enough without calling, Bobby and Sammy would definitely try to find him, but Dean had no idea where he was, and it probably wasn’t close to where he’d left Baby, they’d have nowhere to start. By the time they started their search, he’d be dead anyway.

If he didn’t escape himself. Which he was working on.

“No. No one is coming for me—I’m something of a Lone Wolf,” he said before coughing. From the metallic taste, there was blood. Fan-freaking-tastic.

Suit Guy walked over and grabbed him by the hair. 

“If you’re lying, if we see any help coming, the girl dies.”

Dean grinned. “Understood, captain.”

Suit scoffed and released his head. 

“Boss—” one of his underlings called. “Mary tried to kill Doug.”

Suit sighed. “Damnit. All of you are useless animals!”

They left in a hurry to deal with the apparently hungry and rogue Vamp.

Dean sighed and winced when it jostled his ribs. “Avery, how long was I out?”

“A while. Maybe six hours?”

That meant it was daylight outside. That gave them the advantage. 

He waited until five minutes after they had left and listened closely to the movement outside. There were no guards stationed. 

“It’s now or never,” he muttered. He turned to Avery and mimed zipping his mouth shut. If the Vamps had a warning, it would undo all his hard work.

This was going to hurt like a bitch.

Dean stood on his toes, grabbed the chain above him with both hands, and began climbing up it. The effort burned his ribs and shoulders, but he kept going, even as his vision darkened around the corners.

He reached the top and froze, taking in a fortifying breath before letting go. 

He fell a good ten feet to the ground, and the chain attached to the ceiling came down with him. He laid there gaping for a second before he pushed himself up. His hands were still restrained, but that was easily fixed. He dislocated his thumbs and slid the chains off, wincing at the pain. His young hands were not accustomed to being forced out of their sockets.

He pushed himself up onto wobbly feet and walked over to the gaping Avery. He took a knife out of the side of his boot—they had missed two—and cut her bindings. “You can walk, right?”

She nodded slowly, as if she didn’t quite believe what she had just seen.

 “You take this knife. Aim for the neck, always. Let’s go.”

He looked around the room for anything else they could use as a weapon, and his eyes landed on a rusty sickle abandoned in the corner. He quickly grabbed it and swung it experimentally through the air. This would work perfectly. 

He cracked his neck. “Bring it on, Vamps.”

Chapter Text

The door crashed open, and two Vampires entered, looking absolutely pissed.

That worked out perfectly because Dean was also pissed and in the mood for some payback. 

They both had a brief WTF moment at the sight of him unchained and armed but quickly got ahold of themselves and charged at once. 

Dean, though injured, was still a killing machine.

The first one practically ran into his blade, and his head rolled to the ground with a wet thud. The second one was faster and stronger, managing to get a good knick in Dean’s left shoulder. But Dean quickly sidestepped after that, tripped the Vamp, and sliced his head off. He joined his friend on the ground. 

Avery was watching, horrified. “Who are you?”

Dean grabbed her wrist. “Later. Right now, we gotta get out of here alive.”

He pulled her out of the room with him, and they entered a lowly lit corridor. Where even were they? Some old abandoned house in the middle of nowhere? He’d checked the maps thoroughly before taking the Hunt. There were no listed buildings for miles . It must have been some secret panic base for Vamps.

Dean ran as fast as he could, but Avery was missing half of her blood and had barely had any food for who knows how long. She couldn’t keep the pace. 

Damnit.

He didn’t know where the exit was; they were deep in enemy territory, and they were going about as fast as an arthritic turtle. 

They weren’t getting out of here in one piece, were they? 

Not only did Dean not like being injured, he had the whole saving the world thing that he needed to do, and he couldn’t afford to lose any time. He needed to be in top shape. 

Damn it all to Hell.

They turned left, and three Vamp’s were waiting for them. 

Dean shoved Avery behind him. “Let’s go, you blood-sucking bastards.”

The first one approached lightning fast, and Dean kicked her feet out from under her before stabbing down on her neck with his knife, severing her spinal cord. With his other hand, he deflected a strike with his sickle and used it to twist the knife out of the guy's hand.

In a second, Dean was back on his feet. He dodged a punch from the guy before he sliced his head off. 

He heard a clicking and threw his knife before he knew what he was doing.

The last Vamp dropped his gun and screamed as he pulled the knife out of his eye. Dean ran up and finished him off before he could recover. 

Dean’s ribs and shoulders were killing him. God, he hated Vampires. If Sam were here, he would never let him live this down. It was going to be such a pain to fight with his definitely broken ribs and bruised shoulders. Maybe he shouldn’t have egged Suit Guy on. 

“You alright?” Avery asked.

Nope. Not even freaking close, but when was he?

“Yeah, let’s go.” 

Before they left, Dean searched the first Vamp he had killed and pocketed her phone. Hopefully, there was service out here. 

He also grabbed the gun.

They opened a door to a room and found a window. Yahtzee. 

Dean smashed it in with a chair from the room and put his jacket over the glass for Avery to climb over. When they were both out, Dean grabbed his leather jacket and gave it to Avery. She was wearing a torn tank top and athletic shorts; she would need it more than him.

Dean cataloged his surroundings, his head turning rapidly to drink it all in. They had just broken out of a compound and were in the middle of a forest. There was a mountain to his back, which Dean guessed placed them five miles from where they had kidnapped him if he had the mountain right. He prayed to God that it was the one he thought it was, or he and Avery were royally screwed.

There were no cars in sight, so on foot, it was. They did have the sun on their side—it would disable the Vamps a bit and give them a bit of an edge. 

But distraction first. They needed a head start. 

Dean reached into the secret pocket that he had in his jeans—a precaution he had made when he came back in time—and grabbed one of his lighters. Those Vamps really needed to work on their pat down skills. 

The house was old, and the wood was dry. It would burn like hotcakes. 

Dean lit it and threw it into the room. It landed neatly on top of some books, and Dean saw a flame spark. 

“We need to run as fast as we can—I think we’ll find my car if we head North for a couple of miles,” he explained as he started jogging.

She nodded and followed his lead, setting a nice pace. 

“Here,” he handed her the phone he had stolen. “Tell me if you ever get any service.”

“To call the cops?”

Dean wished that was an option, but they had no chance against the Vampires. He’d just get more people killed.

“Naw, to call some friends. They’ll be able to take care of those freaks.”

He could hear screaming behind them, and with a glance, sure enough, the place was already burning. Hopefully, he hadn’t just started a forest fire. 

“What even are they?”

He considered her for a moment. Should he give her the whole X-Files talk? Monsters are real and all that shit, or just let her live in blissful ignorance.

Well, it was a little too late for that. She had seen him kill like six people.

“Vamps.”

“Vampires? Really?” she scoffed.

“Did you not see their freaking fangs when they fed on you?”

“Well, I thought—they can’t be Vampires , that—” she huffed. “They aren’t real.”

“I wish they weren’t, kid. I wish they weren’t.” If he could have saved her from that knowledge, he would have. Knowing what crept in the dark only ended in nightmares and bloodshed.

She was quiet as they jogged. 

“I’ve always believed in what I could see—stuff proven by science, you know. But this. This is straight out of a bad horror movie,” she shuddered. “They called you a Hunter—is this what you do? Kill monsters?”

He almost stopped in his tracks. Dean had expected a mental breakdown type deal. Monsters are real, and the world is misery, type shtick. Hysterics. 

“Yeah…I take care of the bad guys.” 

“I’m glad,” she said. “That you do. Otherwise, I would be dead.”

“Don’t thank me yet. We have a while to go and pissed off army after us,” he warned. “But you’re welcome. It’s what I do.”

She snorted. “You talk like my uncle.”

“And why’s that funny?” he asked as they zig-zagged around a tree.

“He’s like, fifty years old. He served in ‘Nam and always has this vibe about him. You have the same one.”

Huh. Dean reminded her of her geriatric traumatized uncle. 

It tracked, if Dean was being honest. Even if it hurt his pride.

“But you're, like, twenty. Barely older than me.”

“I’m twenty-two, technically, and way older than you,” he corrected.

“What do you mean technically ?”

He hadn’t meant to let that slip. Freaking head wounds. He was turning into Sam . 

“Concussion.” That would explain everything. Dean was simply suffering from a minor traumatic brain injury. That was why he was somewhat insane.

They jogged for a good three hours before they reached a stream. 

“Wash as much as you can, and get rid of anything you don’t need,” Dean said. They needed to obscure their scent as much as possible. 

As they washed, Dean finally paid attention to two cuts he had on his shoulders. One was barely even a scratch, but the other was a nasty cut, still bleeding sluggishly. 

Out from his secret pocket came another lighter, which he held under his knife. Blood would be a dead giveaway, and no amount of clothing or cleaning would hide it. 

Before he could think much of it, he pressed his blade into the wound and gritted his teeth through the pain, grunting slightly. He held it there for a good fifteen seconds. 

When he removed the blade, the skin was blistering and red, but it wasn’t bleeding. Mission accomplished. 

The smell of burning skin made his insides turn. It had taken him weeks to get used to the smell of bacon when he had gotten topside. The smell of burning flesh still set him off, even all these years later. It made his gut roll and mouth get that awful acidic taste, but he dealt. 

Stomaching his nausea, he sheathed his knife in his belt.

He cleaned the wound off with water—he wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t be getting an infection if he could help it—and wrapped it the best he could with a strip of his flannel that wasn’t too dirty.

“That was pretty metal,” Avery said. 

“Gotta do what you gotta do,” he shrugged and winced. 

“You didn’t even make a sound,” she said, awe infused into her voice before she shook herself. “Uh, I checked. We have service here.”

“What!” he quickly took the phone from her. 

He punched in Bobby’s number. “Come on. Come on. Pick up , Bobby.”

“You’ve reached Bobby—leave a message if it’s important.”

He sighed through gritted teeth. “It’s Dean. The Hunt went bad. Vamp’s. Need help. Got a girl with me—Avery.”

He hung up before he put in Sam’s number. He knew he wouldn’t answer—it was the middle of his shift, and it was an unidentified number. Dean hadn’t raised an idiot.

Sure enough, he reached his voicemail. “Hey, Sam, it’s Dean. Just wanted to…to make sure you were okay. Take care of yourself, okay? Don’t do anything stupid. Take care of Dad, too; he’s an idiot. And, uh…talk to Bobby. He’ll know what I’m talking about. And, I’m sorry. For everything—just, take care of yourself for me.” Dean paused for a second, the thought that these could be his final words to his brother sinking in, and continued without thinking. “I love you. Bye.” 

He hung up.

He probably wasn’t going to die.

But he wasn’t going to take any chances.

“Hey—hey, Dean, we got company!” Avery shouted.

Dean swiveled. Five Vamps. Freaking great.

He shouldn’t have wasted time trying to get rid of their scent, he cursed himself in his head. 

“Avery, you stay back and aim for the neck if you have to!” he shouted.

He pocketed the phone and put his sickle and knife in the ready. “I don’t have all day, you bloodless freaks!”

The first one went down without much of a fight, probably newly turned, and Dean would have felt bad for ending him if he hadn’t been trying to kill him. 

Number Two was a giant and also had the Vampiric speed on his side. After a bit of wrestle—in which, Giant got a good kick into Dean’s knee—Dean beheaded the bastard. 

The next two came at him at once, from both sides. Dean rolled to the ground, almost passed out because of pain , and the two ran into each other like Loony Toons characters. Dean jumped on top of one of them, and severed his spinal cord before he started wrestling with the second. 

Dean almost lost his hold on him when the Vamp punched into his already cracked ribs and definitely broke one based on the crunching sound they made. After that, because this guy was a bitch, Dean punched his face and then cut off his head.

Before he could catch his breath, Avery screamed. “Dean!”

The fifth Vamp was jumping at her, and Dean knew he could never reach her in time. “Avery! Roll to the ground! Roll your ass out of the way!”

She dropped, and Dean released the entire clip of the gun he had stolen into the Vamp. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would sure as Hell hurt.

“Hey, asshole! Pick on someone your own size!”

Dean dropped the gun and readied his sickle as the Vampire ran at him. He was faster than the rest of his family, and Dean couldn’t dodge him when he lodged a knife in his arm. Dean smothered a scream and twisted out of arm’s length before he chopped his head off, too. 

He heaved in heavy breaths as he cradled his arm.

“Dean!” Avery yelled before stumbling over to him. “You’re hurt.”

He resisted saying no shit.

“I’ve had worse. Are you alright?” he asked. 

She was frowning. “I just roughed up my hands a little when I fell. I’ll be fine. But we need to get your—your wound taken care of before you bleed out.”

She looked like she was about to cry. Dean was used to blood, guts, and horror, but she was just some high school girl dropped in the middle of it all. He would be worried if she wasn’t freaked out.

“I’ll wrap it up—we need to keep moving. We should make it soon.”

She looked somewhat pleased at that. “Good. We can’t have you falling over from blood loss, or we’re both dead.”

Dean almost grinned. “Practical. You’d make a good Hunter.”

“I’m flattered, but after this, I’m never leaving the city again. No more monsters for me,” she said, shaking her head.

There were still monsters in cities. Tons of them. But he wouldn’t be the one bursting her bubble. Not until they were out of this nightmare alive.

“Good choice,” he said, wrapping his new wound with yet another piece of his flannel. It really sucked. It had been one of his favorite shirts.

Much to his annoyance, the phone had gotten broken in the tussle, and they didn’t have time to pat down the fallen Vamps for phones. They had already almost died—they needed to be fast.

But they were going slow. Dean’s injuries were catching up to him, even if he didn’t acknowledge them. Avery was still suffering from being fed on by the blood freaks and had told him she’d only been given half an energy bar to eat in the morning, which was hours ago.

They had a couple more hours of sunlight on their side before they would be fed to the wolves. He didn’t even know if they were going in the right direction. He was pretty sure he had underestimated how far away the mountain was from where he had been kidnapped. 

“Who are Bobby and Sam?” Avery asked. 

He blinked a couple of times. They hadn’t talked in almost an hour, and he could feel the concussion finally catching up to him.

“Uh, Bobby, he’s a friend. Family, really, practically raised me,” he said. It would probably be too much to tell her that he was basically his dad. “And Sammy, he’s, uh, my brother. He’s in California. He’s going to Stanford.”

She let out a low sound. “Wow. Ivy League. Is he a Hunter?”

“No, thank God. He got out,” he said. “What about you? Who is Avery Last Name I Don’t Know?”

“I’m Avery Jones. Senior in High School. I want to go to medical school,” she said. 

“Family?” he prompted.

“Two divorced parents and three half-siblings,” she said. “The epitome of the American family.”

“You’re the oldest, I take it?”

“Yep,” she said, popping the p.

“Tough gig, being the older sibling. I get it.”

Dean’s entire point of existence at that point was being an older sibling, he embraced it freely, but sometimes…sometimes he wondered if he could ever be more. Sometimes he wondered if he could actually be a person instead of a protector and caretaker, be an equal with Sammy. 

(Deep down Dean knew the reason why they didn’t have a typical sibling relationship was because Dean wasn’t so much Sam’s brother , but his father, mother, and sibling wrapped in one. A cocktail of roles that altered Dean’s entire view on life, and could never be reversed.)

“Well, it’s more like both my parents pretend I don’t exist because their marriage crashed and burned, and they hate anything that reminds them of each other. Like me, for example,” she scoffed. “You probably didn’t want to know that.”

He chuckled. “Hey, we all have our own Tragic Backstories. Don’t be ashamed of it.”

She didn’t talk for a minute. 

“I wonder if they even noticed I was gone,” she said, her voice choked. 

Dean decided once this whole fiasco was over, he would be avoiding teens for the rest of his life. He did not have enough emotional bandwidth for this. He could barely deal with his issues. 

“I don’t know your folks, so I can’t say what they’re doing, but if they aren’t searching every nook and cranny for you, then they’re some of the most stupid people I’ve ever heard of. And Dicks. You’re pretty cool for a loser teenager, Avery. Don’t let your parents change you.”

Was that “comforting”? Did that help? Did it make things worse? Should he not have called her parents dicks?

“Thanks, Dean,” she sniffled. “I really hope we don’t die. I’d really like it if you cussed out my parents.”

He, apparently, had succeeded in the Child Calming. Thank God.

“If we get out of here, you’ll have the show of a lifetime.”

The sun was almost down, and they still hadn’t found the car or were anywhere near civilization. 

Worst case scenario, they died. Dean would probably have to make some freaky deal with the Angels if he wanted to come back. And Avery would be dead. No coming back because she wasn’t a Winchester VIP. 

That couldn’t happen. Dean wouldn’t let her die. 

They needed to find somewhere easily defendable and sheltered.

“Avery, we need to find somewhere to hide. The sun’s going down, and we lose our advantage over the Vamp’s,” he explained.

“So, like, a cave?” she asked.

“Yeah, something like that.” 

A cave would be Ideal, but he didn’t know if they’d ever be able to find something like that. 

For once in his miserable life, he had a stroke of luck. They found a pile of boulders that were stacked in such a way that there was a room underneath it, and you had to go through a narrow opening if you wanted to get in. 

It was also planted firmly against part of the mountain that they had been walking along the outline of. 

Dean collected some sticks and kindling for a fire. 

“Won’t that just attract them?”

“Doesn’t matter—they already have our scent. This will at least give us an advantage.”

The sun was setting, and war was about to start. 

Dean got the fire started in the back of the room, illuminating it slightly so he wasn’t totally blind. It wasn’t too smokey, so they wouldn’t suffocate. 

Dean wrapped his injured knee. Hopefully, it would give him some support. “Avery, I want you to stay behind that shelf of rocks back there unless there is no other option. They probably won’t try to kill you right away. They still want your blood, so don’t fight too hard. My family will come for you if you buy yourself time.”

He hoped they kept her alive long enough for Bobby to find her. He didn’t know how pissed they would be at her—he was betting it wouldn’t be pretty.

Her lower lip wobbled. “What about you?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Don’t worry about me.”

“You—you think you’ll die?” she sniffled. 

“She’s a child, not a soldier, Dean. She isn’t like us,” His Sam said. 

“Right,” he muttered. “Listen, kid, I signed up for this—” no, he really hadn’t, “—I knew what could happen. It’s my job. So don’t—don’t be sad about it. I picked this life.”

An angry tear left her eye. “You’re an asshole, you know that? Just act like you care that you think you’re going to die. Don’t act like you don’t care because that’s—don’t give up, Dean. You still have a family waiting for you. Don’t abandon them.”

Why did everyone think he wanted to die? It was getting annoying. 

He held up placating hands. “I’m going to fight my hardest, I promise. I just want you to be ready if anything happens.”

“You promise?”

“I promise. We’re both getting out of here alive.” Maybe it was a lie, but Dean couldn’t tell her the truth. Dean never could hurt kids. 

Dean leaned against the wall and waited for the blood-sucking parasites. Avery was hiding behind a rock wall that jutted out and had a knife as a last resort. 

He could hear them approaching. He didn’t know how many there were, but it was a lot. An entire freaking nest. Bobby was probably calling him an idjit somewhere or would be when he found Dean’s body. If there was anything left.

“Don’t think like that,” he scolded himself. 

He still had a mission to complete, and he’d like to do that without making a devil's bargain with the feathery dicks. 

If he died, it would probably drag Sam back into Hunting. The first time he had died, it had stolen a part of Sam. Something that never really came back. Before Dean went to Hell, Sam used to joke and laugh and make stupid comments. He still had a bit of hope in his eyes that together, he and Dean could do anything. 

When Dean got back, his baby brother was gone. In his place had been a distorted version of him, who Dean had loved just the same, but would have given anything to have that hope back in his eyes. 

Sam would be staying in college, and he would stay innocent. 

He wouldn’t be wasting this second chance. 

The first wave he got through almost untouched: adrenaline flooding his veins and years of combat experience flowing through him. 

The narrow opening to the cave worked amazingly to his advantage; he could only face one of them at a time. Easy peasy. Child's play, almost. 

The second wave was when things started getting dicey. 

They had rediscovered that guns existed and remembered that Dean was a human who had a weakness to bullets. 

They nicked him good in his left thigh before he wised up to their tricks and started waiting until they came around the edge and disarmed them, and then sliced their heads off. 

He was losing blood pretty rapidly and didn’t know how much longer he could keep it together. He figured there couldn’t be that many left. He couldn’t remember how many he killed—concussion, blood loss, not a good combination for his short-term memory—but he knew it was pretty high in the double digits, and Vamp’s were being Hunted to extinction during this time. He had to be almost done. 

He leaned heavily against the rock wall when there was a lull between the fighting. He let out a bloody cough. 

Some savior of the universe he was. He was in the past only like two weeks—was it longer than that?  Freaking concussion—and he was already dead. And from Vampires, no less. He’d always known he’d die Hunting, but he’d thought it would at least be cool . Like actually saving the world, not dooming it. 

He really didn’t want to have to make a deal.

They always ended with death or a relationship broken.

“You’ve killed almost all my children,” a voice echoed through the cave. He knew that voice. Suit Guy. “What a feat. It is something you will die for.”

Dean pushed himself away from the wall and put his weapons in a defensive position. 

Suit Guy walked in, clothing immaculate, and head tilted back in arrogance. “They were my family.”

“You should have let us go,” he said. “Not my fault you’re an idiot who doesn’t know when to stop.”

Suit Guy growled. “You will die.”

“Heard that before. Try harder.”

Suit Guy lunged, and Dean rolled away sluggishly, blocking him with his sickle. His old, reliable friend broke under the strength of Suit Guy, and Dean only narrowly avoided getting his throat bitten out. 

Dean rolled back onto his feet, and he and Suit Guy started circling each other. Dean was weaponless and had about five minutes before he passed out. The odds weren’t in his favor.

“Who are you, Dean? You kill most of my children with the ease of a legendary Hunter, yet I’ve never heard your name.”

“Like I said, I’m a Lone Wolf. No one’s around to tell my awesome story,” he said with a weak smirk. “The only people who know about me are dead.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.

That set him off, and Suit Guy struck; this time, Dean couldn’t dodge. 

They fell to the bloodied ground and wrestled for a moment before Suit Guy came out on top, his forearm in Dean's throat, holding him down and shutting his oxygen supply off. Dean tried to push him off, but he was to weak. His arms felt like putty against a rock hard wall.

“You killed my family—decapitated them and burned them. You will pay for that,” he hissed before he started pummeling Dean. 

Dean continued to struggle against him, but it was weak. His vision was going black on the edges with stars lining his sight as his body fought for air. 

He couldn’t see a way out of this one. 

Maybe there wasn’t one. 

Maybe…maybe he would finally rest. 

“If you don’t get out from under him, you are going to die!” His Sam shouted at him. “Move, Dean!”

Dean knew that. But he was tired, bruised, and concussed, going against Vampiric strength. 

“Avery! You need to save her, Dean, and you can’t do that if you’re dead. So move!” His Sam shouted.

Avery.

He couldn’t let her die. He couldn’t have any more blood on his conscience. 

(She wouldn’t be like Charlie.)

Dean somehow still had his knife in his left hand. Using his remaining strength, he stabbed Suit Guy in the gut, slicing until he’d open the guy’s stomach. Suit Guy was surprised by the attack, and that gave Dean enough leeway to get out from under his grip. 

He rolled away and tried to get his bearings. Suit Guy had knocked his head in pretty good. He needed a weapon. Something that could get that guy's head off his body. He looked around frantically. There was nothing but the knife in his hand. 

Suit Guy held a hand to his gut as it healed before his eyes. Freaking Vampire regeneration.

“You put up a good fight, Hunter. Just not good enough.”

Suit Guy ambled over and stuck his heel in Dean’s throat. He smiled viciously, and he prepared for the killing blow.

I’m sorry, Avery. I’m sorry I wasn’t enough, he thought miserably. 

“Goodbye, Dean—” Suit Guy said before abruptly cutting off. 

There was a sick crunch and Suit Guy fell over top of Dean. 

“What the…Hell…” he muttered weakly. His vocal cords were shot.

Suit Guy was pushed off of him, and Avery’s face was right over the top of his. She was covered in blood.

“Dean, are you alright?” she asked. 

Avery was fine. She was alive. Dean hadn’t failed. 

He could rest now. Just for a second. 

(He still had to save Sam and Dad from their fates, along with everyone else…but Dean just wanted to sleep for a second. He just wanted one break. He hadn’t gotten one since Sam had died, and that one was practically torture.)

Avery slapped him in the face—which, ouch, his face was a pancake after all the punches he’d taken over the last couple of days.

“Dean! I need you to answer me. Can you hear me?”

“Just…want’ta…sleep,” he said. 

She cursed. “You’re going into shock, Dean; I need you to stay awake.”

He tried to keep his eyes open; he really did, but they were so heavy . 

“No, no—Dean! Crap…I’m going to get help, Dean. I’m going to get help. You aren’t going to die. I won’t let you.”

The darkness took him after that. 

He could rest now.

Someone was touching him. For some reason. They should know not to touch Dean in his sleep, but he was too tired to move. 

“Help is coming, Dean. You’re going to be okay.”

They didn’t sound like Sammy. But he was the only one who ever really cared if he was dying or not, so that didn’t make any sense. 

He went back to the darkness.

“—he’s in here. He has been in and out of consciousness for the last hour. At least four ribs are broken, the rest bruised, and his throat has been smashed in a couple of times. He also has a concussion,” someone was saying. “And he was stabbed and, I think, shot in the leg. I dealt with the bleeding the best I could.”

“Okay, thank you. We’ll take care of him. Please go to the other paramedics to get checked out,” another voice said.

“No! I can’t leave him yet.”

“I’m afraid—”

“He saved my life! I need to make sure he’s alright,” the first voice sobbed. “He saved me.”

Dean was grabbed, and it dragged him further out of the darkness. It hurt like a bitch when he moved, so he would like it if it stopped, thank you very much.

“If you want us to be able to do our jobs, you’ll leave. We need to focus on him, we can’t do that with you in the way.” 

“Okay,” the voice said weakly.

Dean was put on top of something, and he was moving. 

“Call into the Hospital—get the ICU ready for him. His lung has been punctured, and his throat is close to swelling up. Multiple open wounds,” a commanding voice barked out orders. 

Something poked his arm, and the pain went away. 

There was a very annoying beeping by his head, and Dean was ready to destroy it. His head was pounding—actually, his whole body felt like it was being crushed under a rock and then set on fire. 

For a second, panic took hold, and he thought he was back in Hell. 

The beeping sped up. 

Everything hurt , but it was also weirdly floaty. Like he wasn’t quite there.

Alistair would never have held back. 

The beeping slowed down. He wasn’t in Hell, then. His memory was blank, and his head hurt if he tried to think back to even ten minutes ago.

Only one way to find out. Hopefully, he wasn’t kidnapped or something.

He forced his eyes open. 

Oh. 

He was in a Hospital. The clinically clean room, the beeping machine, and the depressing lighting were a dead giveaway.

Also, there was a comically large college student sitting in a chair beside his bed.

“Sammy?” he slurred. 

Chapter Text

His brother, Sam Winchester, was sitting in a chair beside him. This was problematic for several reasons. One: he was supposed to be in Palo Alto doing whatever pre-law students did. Two: Dean had been intending to keep Sam in the dark regarding everything Hunting, and clearly, something had happened. Three: he looked absolutely pissed , and it was probably Dean’s fault.

“Dean!” Sam shot out of his chair, looking like he wanted to hug him or punch him. Dean couldn’t tell. “You’re awake.

Was he? He didn’t really feel awake.

“What’er you doing’er?” he got out. Barely. Talking felt like eating glass—very painful and something Dean would rather not do.

Sam clenched his fists. Dean had just poked the bear. Oops. 

“You almost died, Dean. You’ve been asleep for a week. You told me this Hunt would be a cakewalk.” Sam’s voice cracked. “You took on an entire Vampire nest! I didn’t even know they were real until Bobby told me.”

Dean wasn’t all there, but his prime directive— protect Sammy— was going off. 

He was crying.

Dean had made Sam cry.

Fix it . 

“I’m s’rry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

So it had been Vamps. Dean could vaguely remember the beginning of the Hunt—he had thought he had been Hunting a Wendigo, and then he’d gotten ambushed.

Sam sighed, dragging a hand across his face before he sat back down in his chair. “I’m glad you’re awake. You really had me worried.”

Dean tried to crack a grin, but it pulled at his face in all the wrong ways. 

“What happened?” Dean asked, his voice clearer than before. Still felt like chewing glass, but maybe with a side of rocks. “Can’t remember.”

Sam’s leg bounced up and down. “I don’t really know. Bobby said you were Hunting a Wendigo, and then he got your message about the Vampires…he headed out as soon as he could, but first responders got there first. You saved a girl, and she stole a phone off of one of the Vampires, called 911.”

Dean blinked a couple of times. Images filled his mind rapidly—the shed, the sickle, all the Vamps he’d killed, Avery.

He couldn’t remember how she was the last time he saw her. She had been severely dehydrated and malnourished and had lost a lot of blood.

He pushed himself up, ignoring the burning pain that lit up in his chest. “Where’s Avery? I need to see her—”

“Whoa! You can’t get up, Dean,” Sam said, pushing down lightly on Dean's chest. 

Dean winced at the force. The light touch sent fire racing down his chest. He flopped back down on the bumpy hospital bed without a fight.

Right. The super Vampire punches. 

“You’re drugged up and half dead.”

“Avery…” he said as if it explained everything. 

“How about I go get a doctor to check you out, and then I’ll go find Avery for you?” 

Dean knew from the look on Sam’s face that there was no other option. “Fine.”

Sam grinned. “Great. Also, you should know Bobby and Dad are here and are going to kill you. Also, a lady named Ellen and her kid Jo. And some rando named Jeff.”

Just kill him now. He did not want to deal with that. He shuddered just thinking of the lectures he was going to get, and they wouldn’t even be fair! He’d thought he’d been Hunting a Wendigo, not a freaking nest. He wouldn’t have gone solo if he’d known, but that wouldn’t matter in their eyes. 

(That was a lie. He still would have gone alone, but he would have been properly prepared with Deadman's blood and a shit ton of machetes.)

He groaned. “Break me out. I’ll give you anything you want.”

“Sorry, no can do,” Sam said with a grin. “Now, stay there while I get the doctor.”

The doctor came in, checked him out, and said he was doing much better now but would need to stay under observation for a week before he could be released. At the minimum.  

It was at times like these that he realized how much he’d taken Cas for granted. 

After that, as promised, Sam brought Avery, who looked much better than the last time he’d seen her. 

“Hey,” he said. 

She smiled. “We made it.”

She sat down in Sammy’s chair. 

“See your parents yet?” he asked.

“Yeah. Turns out they were looking for me. The only reason I’m out of their sight right now is because I’m seeing you,” she said with a huff. “They are so gonna smother you if they ever get to meet you. They think you’re my savior.”

“ Think? I saved your ass,” he said with a smirk. “So, no need to cuss them out?”

Sam coughed from the back of the room and gave him a questioning look. Dean ignored him.

“Nah. I’ll call you if that changes, though,” she said. “So, that’s your brother? Stanford?” 

She turned her gaze to the door where Sam was standing.

Sammy startled slightly.

“Yep. The one and only.”

“He’s kinda cute,” she said with a wink towards his baby brother.

For a second, he thought he is way too old for you— before he realized that they were actually the same age. Freaking time travel. 

“I’m never gonna get used to that,” he muttered. 

“Get used to what?” Sam asked. 

“Concussion,” Dean and Avery said in unison. 

“Hey!” he pointed at Avery. “That ruins the believability of it. Also, no. That’s my brother, you little freak.”

She smirked. “You can only use the same excuse so many times. And Sam’s cute. He’s not my brother.”

He mimed gagging. “Disgusting. I’m never talking to you again.”

“I’m willing to make that sacrifice,” she said with a shrug. “You’re, like, a thousand years old.”

“And here I thought we had a bond.”

They both grinned. They were both alive, so overall, everything was good. 

“Dude, your face looks terrible,” Avery said. 

He cringed. “I don’t even want to see it. Freaking Suit Guy and freaking Vampire strength.”

“I’m surprised your face didn’t cave in; he was going pretty hard at you. You’re lucky I saved your ass,” she said. 

Sam looked decisively uncomfortable, and Dean wished he had left and given them some privacy. He didn’t need to know all the dirty details.

“What can I say? I’m made of tough stuff.”

They chatted for a couple of minutes and went over the cover story that had been made. Apparently, the Vamps were cultists who had been kidnapping people, and Dean and Avery were their unlucky victims. Dean was the hero in this scenario, saving him and Avery almost at the cost of his life.

After that, it was goodbye. “I’ll come to see you tomorrow.”

“Yes, please do. You can help break me out.”

“Why so desperate?” she said with a raised brow.

“You know how your parents are annoying you? Imagine that but about ten thousand times worse, and you might have a fraction of what I’m about to go through.”

“It’s true,” Sam said from the back of the room. “He’s dead.”

“We all have our battles,” she said sagely. “You’ll have to fight this one alone.”

“Traitors, both of you,” he muttered. 

She left after that, and Sam declared that he needed to get some sleep because broken bones and whatever.

Drugs were not something that melded well with Dean. They made everything murky and confused him. He preferred alcohol, thank you very much. Sleep was more like torture under drugs, causing his dreams to turn more into paralyzing nightmares. 

Instead of numbing him, they kept him trapped under all of his worst thoughts and dreams that he put his all into shoving so far down he could pretend they didn’t exist most of the time.

It was torture. 

One second, he was a Demon killing Sam for the thousandth time in his head, but this time, he killed Cas, too. The next, he was awake and scrambling to get a breath in. 

Panic plus broken ribs was not a good combination. Zero out of ten, would not try again. 

Someone touched him, which was a stupid choice, and Dean twisted their arm and would have broken it if he had been at full strength.

“Dean, you need to calm down,” a voice commanded. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

Instantly, Dean stilled because he knew that voice. It was ingrained in him to listen to his commands. 

“Dad?” he croaked. 

“Hello, son,” Dad said, still holding him down. “Can I let go of you?”

“Yeah, I’m good now…” he lied. 

Dad released him and sat back in his chair. “Another nightmare?”

“Yeah,” he said. He really did not want to talk about it. Or think about it.

Dad hummed. 

Dean felt the panic start to trickle back. Dad was here. Dean had wanted him gone because he was safer that way. Dad was here and probably pissed. What if he still thought that Dean was insane? What would Dad do?

He let out a deep breath through his teeth. There was no room to panic. One miss step and Dean could say buh-bye to freedom.

“You gave us all quite a scare. Sam damn near had a panic attack when he got your voicemail,” Dad said. “He thought you were already dead.”

He’d forgotten about that.

He hadn’t meant to scare them, but he hadn’t wanted to leave them without any closure either. 

“I’m sorry,” he croaked. “I didn’t—”

“I don’t want to hear any of that. You were in a bad situation. You did your best, and you got out. Nothing to apologize for,” Dad barked. “But I tell you this so you’ll be more careful. We don’t got much, Dean. We can’t lose any more family.”

Dean knew that more than Dad could ever imagine. He had lost everything and then he’d lost more. He only had what he had now because he fought tooth and nail to the death for it, did so much messed up shit to perserve it that he almost lost what he’d been trying to save in the first place. 

He knew what there was to lose. 

His dad didn’t.

Dean didn’t say that though.

“Yessir,” he said instead.

Dad sighed. “This is partly my fault. Mostly. If I hadn’t scared you away, you wouldn’t be half dead in the Hospital.”

“That’s not true,” Dean said. The drugs were definitely loosening his tongue. “I woulda left anyway.”

Dad froze. “Why?”

The drugs were definitely making him more prone to take risks, but he wasn’t a total idiot. He knew he was towing a fine line, and spilling the beans about the future would not cut it.

“Something’s coming, Dad. After Sammy. Terrible, terrible things…” he said cryptically. “You need to stay close to him. Protect him.”

“Dean, I know you’ve been hurt, but this psychic crap—”

“I know what killed Mom,” he interrupted. 

“What?” All the blood drained from Dad’s face. 

Dean wondered for a second if maybe he was revealing to much, but he’d already took the plunge. There was no going back.

“A Demon. His name is Azazel. And he’s going to kill Sam and ruin his life unless you stay by his side,” Dean said. “So you better start believing.”

“A Demon…I thought as much—if we know who he is, we can kill him. We can get revenge for your mother and protect Sam.”

“No,” Dean said firmly.

“No? We can’t just let him go after everything he’s done—”

“I’m not letting him go.”

Dean would Hunt that bastard down and shove him so full of salt and holy water he’d wish he could die. Yellow Eyes wasn’t going to kill his family this time. Dean would die before that happened. 

“You don’t mean that you’re going after him by yourself, do you? That would be suicide, Dean.”

Maybe if Dad knew who Dean really was, he wouldn’t doubt him so much. Probably not. Dad never had believed in Dean more than another tool to use as he saw fit. A brainless soldier, never a son, never an equal.

“In the future, I saw, we went after him. You die, Dad. So does Sam. And me, and Bobby, and everyone else,” Dean said heavily. “It all starts with us going after Azazel together.”

“But we can do it differently this time, Dean,” Dad said. “It won’t be the same.”

Dad always thought he was right. He thought he knew everything. Even when the truth punched him right in the jaw, he’d ignore it because he believed he was some kind of god.

Dean used to believe that, to. That his dad was a superhero who always did the right thing.

He didn’t believe that anymore.

“Do you think I’m saying this for fun, Dad? For attention? I’m telling you, if you get involved, we all die. Do you think I would lie about that?” he growled. 

Dad was quiet for a moment. “You wouldn’t.”

“Then can you trust me for once in your life? Someone needs to protect Sam, and it can’t be me, so that leaves you,” Dean said. “If we keep Sam safe, nothing happens.”

Dad leaned back in his chair. 

Dean never really knew Dad that well. They had spent a lot of time together before Stanford Day, but it was more like they were coworkers, even when he was a little kid. Dean had been someone Dad had relied on—to take care of Sammy, to watch his back on Hunts, to do everything inbetween—but that hadn’t been mutual.  One thing he did know was that his dad was one stubborn bastard who hated taking orders from people. He and Dean were similar like that.

“I trust you, Dean. You would never do anything that put our family at risk,” Dad finally said. “But this thing…how are you going to gank it by yourself? You’re just a kid. This thing is a monster.”

Dean wasn’t a kid—never had been. And he’d faced plenty of monsters before. Hell, he probably was one now by Dad’s standards. He didn’t tell Dad that. 

“I’m not alone. I’ve got Bobby and others. And I’m not an idiot. I’m not going to go guns blazing. I’m biding my time and preparing. I just need you and Sammy to stay safe.”

If they weren’t safe, how would Dean get anything done? If they weren’t safe, what was the point?

“I’m your father. I should be the one protecting you,” Dad said with guilt coloring his tone.

Dean shook his head sadly. “ You raised me as a Hunter. You had to know that wouldn’t end pretty.”

That slipped out only because of the drugs. Because Dean never called Dad out on his bullshit. Dean never did anything Dad disagreed with.

Dad’s eyes went wide. “Dean, you know I never want to see you hurt.”

“Doesn’t mean it never happened. I’ve been hurt plenty of times since I was twelve years old. Don’t start caring now,” Dean said. 

Dad gaped. 

“Stupid drugs,” Dean muttered. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Dean was totally going to regret that in the morning when he could feel guilt. He really shouldn’t be having Earth-shattering conversations when he was high.

“We can talk more later,” Dad said, apparently realizing his son was drugged up and injured for the first time. “You need your rest.”

Dean was too tired to disagree. “Yessir.”

The next time he woke up, his dad was gone—thank God . He did not want to have to deal with that shitshow yet—and Bobby, Ellen, and the two misfit teenagers were there. 

“Y’all look like I just killed your dog or something,” he said with a yawn.

“You’re damn lucky you’re injured, or I woulda beat your ass,” Bobby said. “You know how many hours of sleep I’ve lost over you, Idjit?”

Dean scratched his arm. He really did not want to think about how he affected other people. It was easier to believe he was replaceable and forgettable than to confront the fact that people actually cared about him.

“I dunno, three?”

Bobby glared at him. “Idjit.”

Dean gave him a winning smile. Well, the best he could with his pancake of a face.

“You sure worried us,” Ellen said. “We thought you were dead.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “How did you even find out?”

She glanced at the teens. “Jeff here was with Bobby, obviously, and overheard your message. He then passed it on to Jo, who told me.”

“That’s one game of telephone,” he laughed to himself. Yeah. He was so high.

That was probably the only reason he wasn’t freaking out of his mind—except when he slept—about his whole mission and the time he was wasting. All the people that he loved were on the line, and here he was, on a freaking vacation.

“I’m sorry for giving you this case, if it wasn’t for me—” Jeff started.

“Don’t apologize. If you hadn’t said anything, you’d be dead, and so would Avery. This is the best of the worst case scenario.” 

Dean didn’t want to hear any of that guilt shit. Dean knew what it was like to carry everything on his shoulders; he didn’t want Jeff to live through that.

“He’s right, boy. Don’t blame yourself,” Bobby said, clapping him on the shoulder. 

Jeff nodded bashfully, staring at the ground. 

“How long are you stuck here?” Jo asked. 

“A week.”

Ellen raised her eyebrows. “A week? Boy, you look like you were just dragged through Hell.”

Dean had to suppress a wince at that. He was oddly sensitive about his time in Hell recently. Probably the concussion. Or the drugs. 

(It was not a symptom of underlying issues; shut up , he told the Sam in his head.)

“That’s the minimum,” Sammy said, popping his head in the door. “He’s probably going to have to stay longer than that.”

“Traitor,” Dean huffed. “What are you even still doing here? Don’t you have, like, a job? And college? Shouldn’t that be starting now?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Yeah, my boss understood when I told him you were dying and let me go. And Stanford is letting me stay till you get better—you’re a national hero, you know, all over the news.”

“You’re joking.”

“Nope,” Sam said with a shit-eating grin.

Dean groaned. How was he supposed to stay in the background with his face and name plastered everywhere? Maybe they hadn’t gotten his face? Just his gruesome wounds. 

After an hour of chatting, Ellen took Jeff and Jo to go get lunch and Sam had disappeared somewhere leaving Dean alone with Bobby for the first time in forever. 

“Ya look like shit,” Bobby said. 

“Thanks,” Dean drawled. 

Bobby’s brow was pressed together and his lips were set in a firm line. “I don’t know how you survived that, son. Not a dig at your skills—but a couple dozen blood suckers? I don’t even think your daddy could handle that.”

Dean sighed, tired of all the lying, of coming up with excuses. “What do you want me to say, Bobby?”

Bobby gave him a critical look, like he could see Dean’s broken and battered soul and everything that came with it. “You’re different. Quieter. Harder. I don’t know what’s going on with your visions and all that crap, but I hope you’ll tell me one day.”

If he had been Dad, Dean would have had a panic attack and probably have just croaked on the spot. But Dean had always known he wouldn’t be able to hide everything from Bobby—the man had a sixth since for stuff. And he was Bobby , he didn’t have to worry about the possibly of being Hunted by him. 

(Dean never forgot about what Dad had told him on his deathbed. Told him that he might have to kill Sammy. Never forgave him for it either.)

Dean shrugged. “Someday, when all this is over, I’ll tell you.”

If Dean made it through alive, he’d make Bobby a damn slide show.

“I’ll be holding you to that.” Bobby smiled lightly. “I hope you’re ready for Hunters to look at you like you’re the second coming of Christ, you don’t want to know how many calls I got asking if your Hunt was true.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “God, this is going to be so annoying, isn’t it?”

Being “legendary” had it’s perks, but it had also led to him and Sam being literally murdered over rumors. People wouldn’t think he was a rookie, but they’d also being eyeing him with suspicion from now on.

“You bet your ass—I already got a dozen men who want your help.” Bobby chuckled. “But that’s for another day. That idjit kid Jeff is going to be the death of me…”

After a couple hours of talking with Bobby (most of which was filled up with how it was a miracle that Jeff was still alive), a doctor came in and made him leave because “Dean needed his rest to heal.” Dean was very grateful for the reprieve. Too much talking. 

That afternoon, he met Avery’s parents. Her dad was a bookish fellow, while her mother looked like she ran a multimillion-dollar company. They were both very grateful, gave him their numbers, and informed him that they had already covered his medical bills, something he hadn’t even thought of yet. Avery seemed pretty happy to be doted on, even if she acted like a bratty teenager about it. 

Then he was told he had to sleep again. He was beginning to feel like a toddler. 

When he woke up again, Sam was by his bedside reading a book like the nerd he was. Sam was happy. Content. That was good enough for Dean.

“Whatcha reading?” he asked.

Sam glanced up and smiled. “You’re awake. I’m just reading something for school. I have to email my work to my professor by tonight.”

“Are you enjoying college?”

“Yeah. I bet it’ll be better when I’m actually on campus, though,” he said with a shrug. 

“That’s good,” Dean said sleepily. He’d gotten more sleep in the last few days than since he’d arrived in this timeline and he still felt like he was in the grave.

“I wish you would try for college. You’re smart enough for it, definitely. Even if you act like an idiot,” Sam said, almost to himself. “But you don’t want to leave the life. And it’s going to get you killed.”

Dean wasn’t so far gone that he didn’t understand the gravity of what he was saying. He reached out to Sammy with his hand blindly. Sam took his hand in a tight grip.

“I’m not dead, see? And I don’t plan on dying any time soon. This was just a flook,” he said. “And college is your thing—not mine. I’d probably die of boredom on the first day.”

Sam's grip on his hand almost hurt. “No one plans on dying, Dean. Especially Hunters. It just happens . And what am I supposed to do if…”

It was still weird that this Sam was so touchy-feely. It didn’t compute in his brain that this version of Sam didn’t hate him—because Dean had been carrying that on his shoulders since the first Stanford Day. 

But he ignored that.

Sam needed to be reassured. The problem was he had no idea how he was supposed to do that. 

“If the worst happens, you’ll keep living on for the both of us. You gotta promise me that, Sammy. Stay in your apple pie life, get a girl, and have ten kids. Don’t come back into Hunting no matter what happens,” he pleaded. 

Sam barked out a manic laugh. “You won’t leave Hunting but are begging me to stay out of it. Why can’t you leave it? Would it really be that bad to be normal? To be with me in California?”

Oh. 

Sam thought he was choosing Hunting over him.

This was some twisted version of the last timeline, except it was Dean who was the backstabber. What the Hell.

“Sam, I am not cut out to be a civilian. It’s just not in the cards. I can’t pretend not to know the things we know,” Dean said quickly. “God, Sam. It’s not because of you. You’re probably the only thing that could get me out of Hunting.”

Sam was quiet.

“You’ve always wanted to be normal, so I don’t expect you to understand…just don’t say I don’t care about you. Don’t do that.”

Dean did not think he could function if his brother thought he hated him or didn’t care about him. Everything he did was for Sam; ever since he was four years old. 

“I’m sorry, Dean. I shouldn’t have said that,” Sam sighed. “Of course, I know that—I just don’t want to see you dead.”

Dean almost sighed in relief. “I am not going to die.”

“You can’t promise that,” Sam said, voice colored with despair. “But I guess I won’t be able to change your mind. Just be careful, Dean. Our family is small enough.”

“You won’t get rid of me that easily…” he said, yawning. These drugs were a bitch. 

“Get some sleep, Dean.”

Dean shut his eyes and drifted off once more into oblivion.

Chapter Text

His hospital stay was mostly just him and Sammy talking about anything other than death. Their one talk was enough for both of them. Dean was bored out of his mind but was happy to have Sam with him. He didn’t know how he was going to cope when he went back to Palo Alto. 

Dad came and went when Dean was asleep—he knew this because the nurses would ask about his odd group of visitors he got and mentioned Dad's description.

Bobby had to go back to South Dakota; he had so many Hunters who relied on him, and Dean wasn’t going to die anymore. He just yelled at him over the phone now, along with comments about how Jeff was an idjit. 

Bobby really liked the kid. 

Ellen had left back to Road House with Jo and a sly comment about how he had lied about his name. He had a feeling that she wouldn’t forget about that any time soon.

Avery was gone, to. She’d been discharged and was back in Iowa with her parents. She texted him almost every hour. If he didn’t care about her, he would have blocked her after the tenth message about how lame Iowa was. 

Dean was going to be discharged in an hour, which meant he was going back to Kansas. 

Alone. 

It was in one of the brief moments that Sam wasn’t present—he’d gone to call someone , which meant Jess, Dean guessed, or some friend he made in California—when Dad appeared. 

Dean sat up straighter, ignoring the pain in his ribs and everywhere else in his body. God, did he hate Vampires. “Dad.”

“I’ve been thinking about our talk,” Dad started. “I don’t like it. Not one bit. But I do trust you, Dean. You’re probably the only one on this Earth that I do.”

Dean tensed, waiting for him to finish.

Does that mean…?

Dad rubbed his face with his hands. “I’ll keep an eye on Sammy. But I want to be informed about what’s going on. I can’t let you do this if you don’t.”

“Of course, Dad,” Dean hurried to say. He would probably be vague about everything and lie about some stuff, but that was doable. This was a way better arrangement than before.

“And stay close to Bobby. He’ll take care of you.”

Dean nodded rapidly. 

“Thanks, Dad,” he said. He knew how hard it had been for him to do this.

Dad grimaced. “Don’t thank me. I am the one who should be protecting this family, not you. It was never supposed to be your responsibility, Dean. I hope you know that.”

Oh yeah. The Emotions from their last talk. Dean had said a bunch of things he definitely shouldn’t have.

“I know, Dad. It’s okay.”

Maybe it wasn’t really okay. But Dean was over it. He had his Dad back—no matter the issues they had between them—and that was it. He’d already lost Dad once; he didn’t want to go through that again.

Sam bounded into the room after that. “Hey, ready to head out?”

“Yep. Go get one of the nurses to bring a wheelchair for Dean; ain’t no way he’s making it to the car on his own,” Dad said. 

“What?” Dean asked.

Sam ignored him and nodded, leaving the room once more.

Sam had known that Dad was going to be in here, and had addressed him instead of Dean. This had been a planned attack.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

“Well, Sam and I are checking you out and then driving you to Bobby’s, where you’ll be staying until you’re all healed up,” Dad explained calmly.

Dean stared blankly. 

This really couldn’t be happening. He was planning on heading back to the Bunker and coming up with more of a game plan than get the Colt and hope everything went perfectly after that.

“If you have a problem with that plan, the alternative is that I drag your ass back to California with us and babysit you for a month,” Dad threatened. 

“Come on! I’ll be fine. I’m a grown man,” he complained. 

Dad gave him a flat look. “You’re still a kid in my eyes, Dean—and one that can’t even walk. I’m not leaving you on your own.”

Dean glared. 

This was totally unfair. He’d been looking out for himself since forever. Maybe he was remembering this time period wrong—it had been almost sixty years for Dean—but Dad had never shown an ounce of care before. 

(Dean had also never been this seriously injured back then, but semantics.)

The only one who ever really gave a shit was Sam—but at the end of the day, Dean was the older brother. He took care of Sam, not the other way around. It was his job.

“If you won’t do this for yourself, do it for Sam. he’s already half out of his head with worry about leaving you with Bobby. He won’t leave your side if you don’t agree to it.”

Dean felt himself crumbling. Sam was stupid like that. He would totally drop out of college if he thought Dean was being an idiot.

“Fine,” he said gruffly. 

Dad smiled. “Good to see you have some sense in that thick skull of yours.”

Sam came back a second later with a wheelchair in tow. “Time to break you out of here.”

Sam drove them to South Dakota, following Dad’s truck in the distance. 

“—you better call me. Every day. Or I kill you myself,” Sam threatened.

Dean rolled his eyes. “Okay, Mom . Chill. It really wouldn’t be a problem if you just called at night instead of at ass-o-clock in the morning.”

“Hey! I need the evenings to study and work. The mornings are the only free time I have.”

Fair points, but also, Dean liked sleep. So there really wasn’t a contest. “You got to at least stop acting like I died if I don’t answer immediately; it freaks me out.”

“When you stop doing things that could kill you, I’ll stop annoying you,” Sam countered.

Dean groaned, mostly for show.

The fact that Sam cared enough to call was enough to cover the annoyance he got at Sam’s paranoia. 

Arriving at Bobby’s made Dean’s shoulders droop. Dad and Sam would be leaving, and God knows when he’d see them again.

Getting out of Baby was a struggle. His right knee was shot from being kicked in, and his left leg had actually been shot. He couldn’t use crutches because his shoulders and ribs were held together with duct tape and a dream, so he had to be put in a wheelchair. 

He was beginning to see why Dad thought he was an idiot.

They got him into Bobby’s house miraculously, and Dean was already ready to sleep from the exertion, and he hadn’t even done anything. It was pathetic, but at the same time, Dean thought he deserved to be pathetic every once in a while. He’d earned it.

Dad and Bobby were awkward around each other but were cordial. Dean would not be touching that mess with a ten-foot pole. He was done with relationship drama. He already had enough of his own to deal with.

Dean sat on Bobby’s couch and even had a blanket over him that Sam had put there because, apparently, his immune system had been trashed, and he couldn’t risk getting a cold. If Sam hadn’t been about to leave, and Dean’s separation anxiety hadn’t come back in full force, he would have punched him for treating him like a baby.

“I could stay until you’re better if you want,” Sam said quietly from where he sat beside him.

Dean tried to grin—it still pulled at all the bruises, but not so much that he couldn’t manage it. “You have a life to get back to, College Boy. I’m fine now. Bobby’ll take care of me.”

The words felt like ash on his tongue because he wanted nothing more than for his brother to stay where he could keep an eye on him. Where he could see him. Touch him just to make sure he was real. 

(He was coping just fine, thank you very much. He did not have issues and was a perfectly normal man.)

Sam fidgeted with his hands. “Dad said he was going back to California with me.”

Sam looked up at the moment, bracing for Dean’s reaction.

Dean sighed deeply. Leave it to Sammy to care more about Dean’s feelings about it then rejoice that Dad was finally being a parent.

“I know.”

Sam blinked. “You…know.” 

“That’s what I said,” he shrugged. “Me and Dad talked about it. We don’t want you to be on your own.”

Sam processed this for what seemed like an eternity. “I can’t be on my own, but you can?”

Dean winced at the wording. Considering everything that had gone down recently, he couldn’t blame Sam for being ticked. 

“We talked about it before all of this.” Kind of. Dean had been building up to it. “And it’s not permanent, or anything, just until you’re settled in California.” That was a lie, but Sam wouldn’t accept it if he knew anything close to the truth. White lies for the greater good.

(It wouldn’t be like it was in his timeline, he told himself. This time, Dean didn’t expect Sam to have a relationship with him. This time, Sam would be happy.)

Sam frowned. “I’m not a child; I can handle this alone.”

And there was the teenage rebellious streak. Disagreeing for disagreement's sake. God, he missed his brother when he was in his thirties. It was so weird having to deal with Sam’s teenage hormones again.

Though, His Sam probably would have had the same reaction. Probably worse. He would have fought tooth and nail for Dean to be taken care of without a thought for his own life because he was just as freakishly attached to Dean. 

“You can. But you don’t have to,” Dean said with a painful shrug. “And you’re the baby of this family—you’ll always take priority.”

“You’re half-dead, Dean. That takes priority over me being on my own. You won’t come to California with me, you don’t want me to stay, and you’re sending Dad to babysit me,” Sam said, his frustration growing with every word. “Why? Just why, Dean?”

When he said it like that, it sounded bad. 

“That’s because it is,” His Sam said helpfully.

He barely stopped himself from telling His Sam to shut up. No need for Sammy to know his brother was insane.

There really was no good way to answer this without letting the cat out of the bag about everything, which was not going to happen. Ever. 

“I—”

“Sam,” Dad said, walking into the room. “This ain’t about your abilities or Dean’s injuries. We talked about this a while ago. Dean has Bobby in his corner, and you’ll have me.”

For once in his damned life, Dad had chosen to be the peacemaker, and Dean almost cried. He was holding it together by a thread . He did not need to be cross-interrogated by his baby brother who he was doing all of this for. 

Sam still looked pissed. “Why didn’t you include me in these talks of yours?”

Ah, shit. Dean could see this going wrong a million ways in just a few seconds. 

Dad pursed his lips. “Well, your brother approached me and asked about it. And then I talked to you about it after hearing his pitch. That wasn’t going behind your back.” Dad paused, glancing at Dean. “And I’d watch that tongue of yours—your brother was hit all the way to Thursday, and this is the last time you’ll see him for who knows how long. Don’t say nothing you’d regret.”

Sam gave Dean a guilty glance and deflated. “Sorry.”

Holy shit.

Holy. Shit.

Dad had just been a parent. He had defended Dean while also being honest (to an extent) and hadn’t caused everything to explode and the world to end. Maybe it was because it had been so long that his memory had blurred, and he’d started to remember only the worst of his dad, but he hadn’t expected this in a million freaking years.

“It’s, uh, fine,” Dean got out after a second, then added hastily, “I shouldn’t have just thrown this at you out of left field, though. That was crappy of me.” Regardless of the fact that until Sam and Dad had kidnapped him, he’d had no idea it needed explaining.

Sam pouted. “Yeah. But whatever, since you almost died, I guess I’ll cut you some slack.”

Dean gave him a lop-sided smile. “Wow, I’m eternally grateful for your mercy, oh Wise One.”

Sam shoved his good shoulder lightly, barely even touching him. “Shut up. Jerk.”

Dean stuck his tongue out at him. “You first, Bitch.”

Dad let them tease each other for a couple of minutes before clapping his hands. “It’s time to head out if you still want a seat in that college of yours, Sam.”

Sam sighed deeply, his eyes on the ground, before pulling himself off the couch. 

“I’d hug you, but that might actually kill me,” Dean joked. He really didn’t want the last moment he had with his family for the foreseeable future to be so depressing. “Take care of yourself, Sam, or I’ll beat your ass.”

Sam's lips quirked up slightly. “I’d say the same thing to you—but oh wait, you already almost got yourself killed. No room to stand, Dude.” Sam gave a long look. “Remember, every morning, you answer, or I’m coming for you.”

Dean mock saluted him the best he could. “Aye, aye, captain.”

Sam patted him on the shoulder lightly. “Seriously, Dean, take care of yourself.” Don’t leave me alone, he didn’t have to say. 

Dean nodded. He couldn’t even try to find the words. 

“You go get the car started. I want to have a word with your brother,” Dad said. 

Sam gave him a suspicious look but complied. 

Dean shifted uneasily. That tone was his serious-take-no-shit tone, and Dean didn’t know what it could be about. Dad had been a bit of a loose cannon recently. 

“Dean. I am trusting you a lot here. I don’t do that easily. You take care of yourself, get rid of Yellow Eyes, and you come back to me and Sam. We’ve already lost enough family. Don’t make us go through it again.”

There was a lot more to do than that, he wanted to say, but he kept his trap shut. There would be a time to reveal just how bad things got. He didn’t need to break the fragile alliance he and Dad had at the moment. 

Dean nodded slowly, careful not to jostle his concussion-riddled head. “Understood.”

“Just…just don’t do anything stupid,” Dad got out, and Dean figured that was the closest he’d get to I love you.

“Well, you know me, Dad. Stupid just comes after me,” he grinned lightly.

Dad chuckled, gripped his shoulder one last time, and left. 

And Dean was alone. He clenched his eyes shut to keep everything inside. He couldn’t break just yet. Not with Bobby and Jeff just in the other room. 

He had already done this a couple of weeks ago. It shouldn’t be so hard to say goodbye again. Maybe it was because they had been given back to him only to have it ripped out of his hands that it felt so cruel. In the last thirteen years, he’d only been gone from Sammy twice for long periods of time—both of which were an utter disaster—and he’d basically become his other half.

And Dad…

He’d only just gotten him back, and he had to push him away. 

He let out a shuddering breath. “After everything is over…then we can be a family again.”

If Dean saved everyone. 

If Dean stopped the Apocalypse. 

If Dean lived. 

Yeah. He wasn’t that optimistic. That was Sam’s department, he snorted bitterly. 

Bobby made him a room on the first floor, called him idjit at least twenty times, and told him he’d be confined to either the couch or the bed for the next three weeks. Dean took the news with a hiss, but Bobby had glared at him, and Dean had shut the Hell up. 

Strictly speaking, he had time to get rid of Yellow Eyes. He had time to research, plan, and think everything through. 

But he could feel a clock ticking above him, and every second he wasted being on bed rest felt like a physical wound. 

“You can research here just fine, Dean,” Bobby said, exasperated. “In fact, you’ll have mine and that Idjit boys help to.”

Dean had accepted the news the best he could, with a grin and a sarcastic comment. But he just couldn’t shake the weight that was resting on his shoulders. Bobby didn’t know everything—Hell, Dean didn’t even remember everything. So much had happened, and so much time had gone by, Dean couldn’t help but be terrified that he’d forget something huge. 

Jeff looked physically pained to be sitting down and doing nothing, and Dean couldn’t help but relate. 

Dean cleared his throat. “Uh, did you find anything on those people?”

Bobby glanced up from his plate of food. “Yeah, let me get the file.”

Bobby hobbled out of the kitchen chair and went back to the table in the other room that was covered in papers from a thousand different cases. He grabbed one and came back. 

“I got everything I could find on ‘em here. They seem like fine people,” Bobby said, handing him the file before sitting down. “Why did you want the background check?”

Dean took the papers quickly and flipped through them. They lived near where he and Sam had found them last time, and his mom still worked at the same hospital. 

Still alive.

“Dean?” Bobby asked.

Dean’s head snapped up. “Uh, what?”

Bobby raised a bushy eyebrow. “Why’d ya want the file?”

Oh. Right. This probably raised…questions. 

Dean blinked a couple of times. 

How the Hell should he explain this? Did he want to reveal their relationship? What if he told Dad— or Sam?  

No, Bobby wouldn’t do that. Dean could trust him—and if anything happened to Dean, he’d need someone to take care of them.

He let out a steadying breath. “Uh, the kid, Adam, he’s my brother.”

“The Hell?” Bobby muttered. “John has a secret kid. Why am I surprised?”

Dean had been beyond surprised when he’d learned of Adam’s existence. Beyond furious, to. Dad took him to freaking baseball games . Dad didn’t even buy Dean birthday presents. Or Sammy. Dean had had to buy his gifts since he’d been eight years old. 

“Lemme guess, visions?” Bobby asked. 

Dean nodded lightly. “Yeah. Bad things happen. I need to get him somewhere safe.”

Adam's dead body flashed through his eyes. His stomach carved open, and his guts barely held in. Dean could feel the bile rise in his throat. 

On top of letting the kid freaking die, Dean had let him rot in Hell for centuries. With Lucifer. He wouldn’t change his decision to save Sam, to get his Soul back, but he’d forever regret abandoning him to a fate that he didn’t deserve. He should’ve been in Heaven with his mom, reliving his shitty prom. Not being tortured for all of eternity by the meanest bitch to ever live.

He’d do right by him this time around. He’d get to stay with his mom for as long as he wanted and do whatever he wanted. 

Dean was still foggy on a plan, though. Adam and his mom hadn’t gotten killed because of anything they’d done but because they simply had a connection to the Winchesters, and that would never go away. 

And then there was Heaven—if the Apocalypse did get kickstarted, Dean would never say yes to Michael, which meant they’d go after Adam again. And he was just a kid —only eleven years old, probably still had baby teeth. Who knew what they would do to him to get him to say yes? He couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t.

“I hear ya,” Bobby nodded. “Does John know about this? Or Sam?”

“No.”

“Are ya sure that’s the best idea? I have a feeling neither of them would take kindly to hearing you go behind their backs like this.” Bobby paused. “ ‘spcially Sam. This kid’s his brother, too.”

Dean winced. Sammy would want to know. If he found out that Dean had hidden this for even a second, he’d probably kick his ass, regardless of him being deaths row already. 

Sam would be ecstatic to realize he had a brother—he’d attached to the kid (or who they’d thought was him) instantly last time. 

But Dean just didn’t know what to do. 

Of course, he’d like to tell Sam about him—but what then? Sam would start asking questions Dean couldn’t answer, like how he knew about him in the first place. Why he was putting them in Witness Protection. Why he didn’t tell him as soon as he found out. 

Dean already had a thousand things to worry about, and the thought of getting into a fight with Sam already had his eyes twitching and his hands shaking. 

He just couldn’t do it. Not yet. 

“I’ll tell him, of course…just not now. I need to get everything figured out first.” 

Maybe he could get Dad to tell Sammy about them. But then he’d have to talk to his dad…he decided then it was the problem of Future Dean to deal with. When he wasn’t out of his mind on painkillers and could think about it without having a stroke. 

Bobby hummed. “Alright. You better get it figured out fast, then. I have a feeling your brother might not take to kindly to being left in the dark for so long.”

“Don’t I know, Bobby,” he mumbled. “Don’t I know.”

*

*

*

Palo Alto, California. 

Sam drummed his fingers on his knee. Dad drove at a ridiculously fast pace, and he barely kept himself from telling him to slow down. They were only a couple miles out from his apartment now, and after exchanging almost zero words with Dad the whole trip, Sam was grateful. He was only keeping the peace because Dean wanted him to. His idiot brother, who never smiled right anymore, laughed too loudly to be real, and who’d almost gotten himself killed. 

His fingers paused on his knees as a new song came on the radio. 

I never meant to be so bad to you—

Instantly, Sam’s hand moved to change the station, a feeling of grief passing through him so strong he felt like he was going to throw up. 

Dad glanced over at him. “What’s so wrong with Asia ?”

The words couldn’t come because he had no idea—and the sorrow clogged his throat up too much to talk—just that he would never listen to Heat Of The Moment Again.

“Nothing, Dad,” he managed to get out. “Just doesn’t feel right without Dean.”

Nothing did.

Chapter Text

C12 - Folsom Prison Blues

September 31st - October 7th

2001

Life at Bobby’s was slow. Dean couldn’t really move around, couldn’t go out to the garage and mess with cars like he usually did. All he could do was read, and he was getting sick of it. 

Researching was Sammy’s thing. Dean was the guy who needed to be in action— needed being the most important word. He didn’t like sitting still; he certainly didn’t like having time to think on his hands. 

So he started a project on top of all the research and trying to find Daniel Elkins: his own journal. 

Not a touchy-feely teenage girl type shit, but one like his dad's, a chronicle of all the fugly douchebags he’d encountered in all his years and how to deal with them. If things did go to shit, and something happened to Dean, it would be best to leave something behind to help guide the sorry guys who’d be left behind.

Jeff asked about a thousand questions about it, and Dean considered writing it in Latin just to spite him before deciding it would be counterintuitive to do that.

Writing everything down made him question his own sanity. Seriously. What the Hell was his life? Demons, Angels, Ghosts, freaking God. It all sounded like a bad joke with no punchline.

He also warded it, just in case any black-eyed freaks or dicks with wings got a hold of it. It would mess everything up if they got an inkling of what was going on with him. 

After one week of sitting around doing nothing, he was finally allowed to start walking. His knee felt like it would snap in two; his other leg was pins and needles, but God, he could walk again. He’d take that pain any day over being confined—besides, he’d had way worse. It was a cakewalk compared to Hell. 

Dean was sitting inside Baby, flipping through the file on the Milligans. Adam was a straight-A student, captain of his basketball team, and had just turned eleven. Dean pulled the picture of him out of the paper clip and brought it into the light to get a better look at the kid. It was a picture from a game; his face was lit up with a crooked grin, and his teammates were swarming him.

Dean could see Dad in him, in his eyes. But his smile—he could see a little bit of himself and Sammy. 

It was surreal. It had been almost a decade since he’d found out about the kid. He shouldn’t be so shocked about it. But before he’d even met the kid, he’d been murdered in cold blood along with his mother before being kidnapped by Angels and trapped in Hell. Dean had never had the chance to process it. Or a chance to be a brother. 

Dean’s fingers clenched around the picture. 

He had another brother. A kid still in middle school. 

Dean had chosen Sam over him the last time around, but if Dean played his cards right, that would never happen. Both Sam and Adam would be free from the Winchester destiny that they had both fallen to last time. 

He just needed to keep them both safe while he dealt with everything. 

He knew it was going to be hard. After dealing with Yellow Eyes, Heaven and Hell weren’t going to shrug their shoulders and say, Aw shucks, and move on. They’d keep trying to get Dean—maybe Dad —into Hell until that First Seal was broken, and all Hell broke loose. 

He closed his eyes. 

His Sam would know what to do—he’d already have had a twelve-point plan and have called Dean an idiot about a thousand times. 

Dean was never supposed to be a one-man band. Hunting Ghosts? Yeah, he could manage that just fine. Did for almost four years. 

But saving the freaking world? He’d never done that on his own. 

“God, what am I going to do?” he muttered. 

“You’re not alone, Dean. You have more people around you than we have had in years. Maybe use them?” His Sam helpfully supplied. 

Dean had gotten somewhat used to his auditory hallucination buddy. His grip on sanity had always been loose, so he wasn’t that freaked out by it, just disappointed. His brother was alive. He was healthier and happier than he’d been in decades, and Dean had to hallucinate the traumatized version of him because he missed him. Because he couldn’t function without him. 

“Yeah, and that worked out so well last time.” Every single one of them dead in the ground. That was what he was trying to avoid. 

“You gotta let someone in, Dean. You need someone in your corner—someone who knows the whole story, not that shit you were selling to Bobby and Dad.”

“I really don’t.” I really don’t want to.

“I’d say that you talking to me is pretty good evidence that you do. If you don’t keep it together up here, how are you going to when shit starts going down? It’s not going to be pretty, man.”

Dean bit his lip. He hadn’t hallucinated anything or had any psychotic episodes…but what if he did? What then? Who would protect his family?

“Nope, nope,” he said quickly, pressing the palms of his hands into his eyes. “This is one of your weird psycho-therapist tricks. You’re trying to gaslight me into opening up to someone.”

Dean had gone to Hell for forty years and had been able to function once he came out the other side. This was nothing. Sure, he now was alone in a way he never had been before, with all those memories of Hell on top of it, but that didn’t matter. Dean had always dealt with things on his own.

(Maybe he didn’t have Sammy in his corner, forever understanding and practically reading his thoughts, but that was fine. Dean just had to power through it.) 

“You’re a prick sometimes, you know that? I just don’t want you to lose your freaking mind. No man is supposed to carry this much on his shoulders.”

“And what do you suggest? I go tell Bobby that I got sent back in time by God’s freaking sister , after living through three apocalypses and countless other almost world-ending events? Tell him about the Winchester Gospels that had its own freaking musical made about it? That I let you rot in Hell for almost two centuries? Or maybe about that time I became a literal Demon? He’d lock me up, and I wouldn’t exactly blame him.”

The psychic visions were a tough enough sell. He doubted he’d be able to convince Bobby of the truth. Hell, he wouldn’t believe it if he hadn’t lived it.

“I would believe you.”

Dean’s heart stuttered. Sammy was probably the only guy in the world who would, but if he did…Sam would come back into the life, and he’d leave Stanford and Jess. He’d lose the innocence he’d only just regained.

“No. Never.” 

If it came down to it, Dean knew that over everyone else, he’d choose Sam. Without hesitation. If Dean couldn’t save Sam and let him live his life this time around…then what was the point?

“Then don’t tell me the truth! Just talk to me. Don’t smile and nod and let yourself rot from the inside out—tell me, tell Bobby, say whatever you need to to get that weight off of you before it crushes you. Make terrible jokes, laugh, tell Bobby that the visions are hurting.”

Dean had never been able to rely on others. Maybe because since before he could ever even remember, he’d never had anyone to rely on but himself. He’d been the caretaker, the cook, the teacher, the everything , and had no one to help him. His inability to depend on others had almost gotten him killed too many times to count.

“Call me, the young stupid me, and just talk. Doesn’t have to be about the truth, but whenever you feel that despair creeping in, you gotta forget about it. You call me, and you talk about nothing. Call me stupid and whatever, just—just don’t die on me, Dean. Promise me.”

Dean blinked back his watery eyes. Because that voice in his head sounded just like His Sam. The words, the tone. For a second, he could believe Sam was sitting shotgun, ready to throttle him for being an idiot. 

“Fine. I promise I’ll call you or Bobby if it ever gets bad.”

Maybe Dean was insane, making promises to a figment of his imagination, to himself, basically. But he couldn’t really care because, for the first time since he’d arrived in 2001, he hadn’t felt alone. He’d felt like he’d had his brother for a second.

“Then how about you call me right now? Don’t tell me you aren’t in a dark place.”

Dean groaned dramatically. Why was his imagination just as persistent as the real thing?

“Fine.”

He grabbed his phone and dialed Sammy. “You happy now?”

“Very.”

Dean rolled his eyes. 

“Hey, Dean, what’s up?” Sammy answered. 

“Just, uh, thinking of you. What are you up to?”

“School. Lots of school. It’s hard, but it’s enjoyable. I’m learning so much,” Sammy said with a pause. “Also…I, uh, met someone.”

Jess .

She was everything Sam had ever wanted—normal, pretty, and just a girl. No secret Supernatural enemies around her. She was the life that Sam wanted. The one that was stolen from him.

But she was also a threat. Based on information they’d learned over the years, Jess was put in Sam’s path by Demons. Which meant he was surrounded by them by now. Dean had always known this was going to happen, but it still made his heart sink. He had Dad with him this time; his apartment was properly warded—which Dad was in charge of, so he knew that they were unbreakable—and he had his tattoo. He was safe.

Yet Dean still felt like he was making a terrible mistake by not being at his brother's side. He should be there , keeping him safe. But Dean knew he had to deal with all the Apocalypse nonsense before he could be by Sam’s side again as his brother. 

Dean forced a lighthearted tone. “Who is this someone, and how did you trick her into liking you?”

Sam huffed. “Her name’s Jess; she’s another student here. She’s so smart and beautiful—I think you’d like her.”

Dean could barely picture Jess in his mind; he’d only seen her a couple of times decades ago, but he remembered being impressed that his kid brother had pulled such a catch. 

“So she’s out of your league?”

“Shut up.” 

Dean could hear Sam rolling his eyes. 

“What about you, Dean? What are you up to? How are you healing?” Sammy asked rapid fire.

Dean paused for a second, considering what he had just promised his hallucination buddy.

“It’s, uh, been an adjustment. I can walk now, but it sucks. Other than that, I’m just really freaking bored. Bobby has me reading books all day long researching Hunts—I feel like my eyes are going to fall out of my skull,” he said with a dramatic groan. “And! He won’t let me drive! I’m going stir crazy.”

Sam huffed a laugh. “God, Bobby must hate you right now.”

Dean winced. Bobby had been an inch from throttling him after Dean had made his way to Baby the first time and had exhausted himself so much that he hadn’t been able to make it back to the house. 

“Yeah, definitely not his favorite right now.”

“Were you ever?” Sam shot back.

“Oh, you would be surprised.” 

Dean was getting twitchy. His legs were doing better now; it was his shoulder that was being a pain in the ass. He had to wear a sling that completely immobilized his arm, and it felt like it was specifically designed to spite Dean. He couldn’t get on or off on his own, had to use Bobby’s or the kids’ help, and it made it impossible to put clothes on.

He’d have burned it if Bobby wasn’t watching him like a hawk.

Apparently, if he took it off, he risked damaging whatever the Vamps had messed up. It had been so long since he’d had to worry about injuries that he couldn’t really muster the energy to care. 

“I really took you for granted, Cas,” he muttered to himself. “Wonder how you’re doing in Heaven.”

Dean had briefly considered praying to him. In his weakest moments—because it was Cas. He was Dean’s best friend, a dork, and sometimes did stupid things but had a good heart. 

But that wasn’t who he was now. 

Cas was an Angel of the Lord without a single original thought in his head.

He wasn’t Cas. 

Dean wished he was, and maybe that was selfish. Ever since Cas had met him and Sam, it hadn’t been fun for him. He’d lost his entire community, his wings, his life on occasion, and so much more.

Maybe it was better if he stayed in Heaven, even if he kept being a prick. 

The loss of Cas was different than losing a version of Sam. He was gone, probably forever. And if they did meet in this time, Dean shuddered to think what might happen. What positions Dean might be forced into…because he couldn’t hurt Cas, even if he wasn’t really him. And that put everything at risk. 

(Because Cas wasn’t his friend , he was his brother. And Dean never could hurt family.)

They were on opposite sides of a war. That inevitably meant conflict. 

“Then I’ll just have to stop the war from happening,” he muttered. That was the plan: prevent all the death and suffering—including Cas’s.

“Dean, Bobby wants you!” Jeff yelled from the doorway, popping his head into Dean’s bedroom, where he’d been wrestling with his sling. “Dude, did you try to take it off again?”

Dean scowled. “I was trying to put a jacket on. It’s freezing. Damn sling is trying to kill me.”

Jeff rolled his eyes and came into the room, quickly unbuckling the sling from Dean’s back and helping him shrug on his jacket. He moved the sling back into place over the top of it. “Thanks, kid.”

“Sure, old man.”

Dean huffed. “I’m twenty-two, man.”

Jeff patted him on his good shoulder. “You sure don’t act like it. I swear, sometimes I think you’re older than Bobby with the way you talk.”

Technically, if you included the Hell years, Dean was. 

But it wasn’t a good thing people could sense it. 

“What do you mean?” he asked, keeping the Casual Dean Winchester Tone that he had mastered after years of de-escalating stupid shit.

Jeff shrugged. “I dunno. All you care about is Hunting and your brother. Most guys your age…are more worldly. Even Bobby has hobbies. Avery agrees with me.”

Dean stretched back his memory to his twenties, and yeah, Jeff wasn’t wrong. Young Dean certainly cared more about pretty girls than Hunting. At least, in comparison to how focused he was on it now.

“Wait—what do you mean Bobby has hobbies?”

Jeff smirked before walking away. 

“What did you mean?” he shouted, but Jeff ignored him. “I’m going to kill that punk one day.”

Dean hobbled his way to the kitchen, where Bobby was waiting for him. “What did ya need, Bobby?”

Bobby looked up from the ancient-looking book that was laid out on the table. “I was wondering if you could give the kid a shooting lesson. Can’t shoot for shit, and nothing I do helps.”

Dean’s shoulders immediately went up. “Bobby, I’m no teacher. Just ask Sammy.”

Sure, there were a few times that Dean had taught people some stuff, but most of the time, Dean was just winging it and making shit up as he went.

Bobby frowned. “I reckon if we get your brother on the phone, he’d disagree with you. You damn near raised that boy, and he’s going to Stanford—I think you can teach just fine.”

“I never taught him anything.” Dean just helped him sometimes; that was all. Sure, he may have helped him with his homework when he could, and kept up to date on all his classes, and always helped him on any project he was working on, but that was nothing. 

Bobby just shook his head. “You're an idjit. But we can debate that another day—will you help the kid or not?”

Dean bit the inside of his cheek. “Fine. But don’t come complaining when he comes back worse.”

Bobby gave him a sarcastic smile. “Thank you.”

“Jeff, you need to plant your feet when you take a shot and stop tensing up so much,” Dean barked from his lawn chair. 

They’d set up some beer bottles for target practice, and Jeff had clearly not inherited his parent's Hunting skills. 

Jeff corrected his form, and he did slightly better, managing to hit one of the bottles.

“Good job—and remember featherlight touch on that trigger. It doesn’t need to be strangled.”

Jeff nodded, reloaded his colt,  and emptied his mag into the bottles, hitting one out of five.

Dean had taught Sam how to shoot years and years ago, but that had been out of desperation. Dad had always left Dean and Sam to fend for themselves, but it had always been squarely on Dean’s shoulders to protect Sam. Once Dad started taking Dean on Hunts and leaving Sam alone, Dean had been absolutely terrified that something would happen to him while he was gone. So he taught him how to shoot and how to stab and how to do anything he could to survive. 

Jeff didn’t need to do this. He had a chance at a life. Dean could teach him how to use a gun—they still came in handy when dealing with the human variety of monsters—but he was reluctant to teach him more than that. 

He didn’t buy for a second that he was too stupid for school or a nice job—he was a savant with books with a recall that rivaled Sammy’s. Dean could ask him a question about a book he read that was eight hundred pages, and the kid had no trouble relaying the information. The problem was that the kid tended to rant and get distracted. And Dean just knew that some teacher—maybe a couple—had called him stupid for not being able to get to the point, and now Jeff had a terrible self-image. 

(It had nothing to do with the fact that Dean had lived through the same thing—his brain going a thousand different ways and being told to just get to the point. It's not that hard. Nothing at all.)

But he couldn’t see the kid getting out of Hunting. He’d seen his parents sliced and diced and had to clean up the blood; you couldn’t just walk away from that. 

Dean was still working on a plan. 

Jeff huffed and set his colt down on the barrel they’d been using as a table, switching the safety on. “I just can’t do it. Not consistently. God, it’s so pathetic.”

“You’re a beginner. No one's amazing right off the bat,” he tried to comfort.

Jeff gave him the stink eye. “Bobby told me you were shooting bullseyes the second you picked up a gun. When you were eight freaking years old.”

Dean’s eye twitched. He’d have to have a talk with Bobby.

“Well, that’s not the average case. I had to be a perfect shot. I had to protect my baby brother while my dad went who knows where hunting evil sonsofbitchs.” 

Jeff bit his lip. “That sounds like a sucky childhood.”

Dean winced. The kid had no subtlety. Usually, people had enough tact not to comment on the shadier aspects of his upbringing. “It wasn’t amazing, but it’s what I got. No changing it now.”

“You’re weirdly well-adjusted,” Jeff said. “My parents are dead, and I’m still pissed at them for lying to me about who they were and what this messed up world is.”

To Dean, it had been decades. It was ancient history, and he had so many other problems that it was a joke. He wasn’t anywhere close to adjusted , but in the grand scheme of everything that had happened to him, his childhood was probably a highlight.

“Trust me, kid, naivety is a gift. Knowing is a curse. It’ll only get you dead,” Dean said with a shrug. “Your parents were just doing what they thought was best for you.”

Jeff glared at the ground. “Maybe. I’m still pissed, though.”

Dean got up and clapped him on the shoulder. “And that’s fine. But someday, I hope you try to see it from their perspective. They just wanted you to be free.”

If only the kid knew just how lucky he was to have parents that cared enough to hide the truth from him. That he’d gotten to have a normal life, if only for fifteen years.

Chapter Text

C13 - No Parental Supervision

October 28th

2001

Four weeks into his imprisonment, he was set free from his sling, and his leg was healed enough that Bobby couldn’t justify keeping him there.

“You can stay here. Lord knows I can’t handle the kid all on my lonesome,” Bobby said as Dean packed up Baby.

“I’d love to stay, Bobby, but I have to get the Milligans somewhere safe. And then the Colt…it’s better this way,” Dean said, obviously not trying to convince himself that he shouldn’t stay and keep an eye on Bobby. “And you and the kid will be fine.”

Minus his injuries, his time at Bobby’s had been…nice. For the first time since Bobby had died, Dean didn’t feel like the one who had to take care of everything. He’d had Sam, but it was Dean’s job to take care of him. He didn’t like putting his shit on his shoulders. But Bobby…he just took it without asking. He dealt with it even when Dean didn’t want him to. Dean didn’t deserve him.

“You better call me, boy, or I’ll kill ya,” Bobby threatened before pulling him into a hug. “Take care of yourself—and you come back soon. I wasn’t joking about that kid; he’s a troublemaker.”

Dean embraced Bobby back and absorbed his warmth. Dean couldn’t count how many times he’d wished over the years that he could have a moment like this with Bobby. To be able to lean on someone without fear. 

“If we didn’t do credit card scams, my phone bill would be killing me. You guys are all so clingy,” he joked.

“Shouldn’t have almost killed yourself if you didn’t want us to be clingy,” Bobby responded.