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The cave-in wasn’t wholly unexpected. The entire hill had looked like little more than loose shale and tree-root tangled disaster-to-be.
But the black dog they were tracking had killed three people in the last ten days, one of whom was a seven-year old little girl named Gracie. The bloodstained teddy bear that had been in the evidence box had stared accusingly at Sam, so when Dean had insisted on tracking it up the mountain the second the storm had blown through, Sam had reluctantly agreed.
Not that he really would have disagreed, since Dean hadn’t felt the need to actually discuss much with Sam since he’d returned from Purgatory (the exception being Sam’s myriad failings as a brother, naturally).
Sam was used to wearing guilt like Dean had once worn a bronze amulet, so he’d merely shrugged on a jacket and followed his brother up the trail from the campground where the black dog had been hunting its victims. Dean had nearly left him behind while Sam had left a quick note with their itinerary at the ranger’s station.
“A fat lot of good that’s going to do.” Dean had snarked. “The black dog could run circles around us on these trails. Keep up already.”
“Better safe than sorry.” Sam mumbled tiredly. The rangers wouldn’t even look for them unless they took longer than twenty-four hours to check back in.
But other than weapons and a few bottles of water, they weren’t taking much with them in the way of supplies.
Black dogs were fast, and tracking them meant traveling faster. The less gear they were burdened with, the more likely they were to be successful. But it also meant they had no security net if something went wrong. He’d tossed an elastic bandage and some ibuprofen in his pack, along with a back up flashlight and batteries, some bottled water and a single use flare, but that was really it.
It was the double-edged sword of hunting. The things that normally ensured survival in any given situation could spell disaster on a hunt. Black Dogs could scent food from miles away. And they’d both seen hunters caught by the straps of their packs and tossed around like children’s toys.
So it really wasn’t any big surprise that Dean considered his weapons and attitude to be sufficient for the hunt. Nor was it a shock when he scoffed at Sam’s pack.
“Looking like a good little boy scout there, Sammy.” He’d tossed over his shoulder. “Did you do a lot of hiking in Texas?”
Sam had swallowed down his anger, reminding himself that Dean had survived in Purgatory for a year with just his attitude.
The hunt had taken the better part of the day, but they’d finally cornered the black dog in a cave that looked like it might have actually been a mine at one point. There was a section near the front that had been reinforced with wooden logs, though the back of the cavern dead-ended in the black dog’s nest, where the creature had tunneled a good twenty feet further into the hill.
The fight had been ugly, with Dean shouting instructions Sam hadn’t needed, and him ignoring Sam’s own instructions.
One of those had been “Dean, drop, I have a clear shot!”
Dean had ignored Sam’s call, instead taking a shot of his own, but his angle had been crap, and Sam had been forced to dive to the side to get another clear angle. By the time the creature was dead, Sam found himself wishing John Winchester had been on the hunt with them for perhaps the first time ever in his life.
Because even for Dean, that had been stupid and haphazard.
Even Dean seemed to realize just how belligerent he was being- probably about the time he watched Sam re-set two of his fingers which had pulled out of joint in the scuffle.
“I would have done that for you.” Dean had grumbled, looking sheepish in the low light of the black dog’s burning corpse. Black dogs could heal faster than a vampire, so they always torched the body immediately. The stench made Sam’s eyes water as he shook his head in frustration.
Dean being pissy was just another day in Winchester-land, as predictable as rain in Washington. But he was usually better than this- he’d nearly screwed up the hunt for the sake of not listening to Sam.
This wasn’t going to work….
He took a deep breath, forcing down the misgivings. Dean had been on edge since he returned, but Sam had known that when he made the decision to return for good. No point whining about it now.
But God, he wished Dean would pull his head just a little out of his ass. As if there Sam wouldn’t have moved heaven and earth to get to his brother if he’d actually known he was in purgatory and not heaven. As if Sam had spent that year at the beach and not stitching himself back together by himself, stone number one nowhere to be found.
His skin felt tight. Intellectually he knew it was adrenaline and sweat and grime. Instinctively he knew it was the cage and Lucifer’s hot-cold fingers and Benny’s been a better brother to me than you’ve ever been-
He turned on his heel, striding towards the entrance of the cave. He couldn’t breathe through the morass of anxiety and exhaustion and anger and guilt-guilt-guilt in his chest.
“Sam-” Dean’s voice, still just a touch contrite, but it was already fading, would be gone before Sam reached fresh air, he knew.
Sure enough, the entrance was still ten feet away when Dean caught Sam by the hand-his bad hand, and the pain ground Sam to a gasping halt.
“What the hell is your problem?” Dean snapped.
Sam just looked at him incredulously, cradling his hand to his chest. His fingers felt like they'd been replaced with glowing coals. Sam had actual experience, thanks to Lucifer, to back up the analogy.
“Seriously?” He asked after a moment, feeling little-brother stupid somehow, like he was returning his older brother’s taunts once again with ‘jerk’, too scared to use actual curse words, to actually risk making his brother feel sad-bad-mad.
Dean was scowling at him, his ‘damned if I feel guilty’ scowl, and yeah, Sam knew the look, knew what lay underneath it, but he didn’t want to just….to have to remind himself, over and over again.
Just once, he wanted Dean to own it. Sam had broken the world, after all, had lost his soul and lost his brother in purgatory. Dean could sin until the end of days and his sins would never weigh what Sam’s did.
So couldn’t Dean ever just own up to something, even if it was just hurting Sam’s hand? It wasn’t like Sam would judge him for it-
The dirt drifting down from the ceiling was all the warning Sam had. His bad hand flashed out, shoving hard into Dean’s chest, throwing Dean backwards.
And then the cave collapsed.
Sammy smiled in glee as he clambered up onto the seat on the bike as Dean held it steady.
“Careful, kiddo.” Dean said with a blinding smile. Sammy knew something was up with Dean because he’d been overly attentive the last few days.
As in, he hadn’t let Sammy out of his sight.
Until a few days ago, he had gotten the sense that Dean was getting a little frustrated with him, with being stuck with him in the motel all day while Dad was gone. But ever since he’d woken up at Pastor Jim’s a few days ago with a sore throat, Dean had been really, really nice to him.
Maybe it was just because Sammy had been a little sick that first day, but even after he’d gotten better, Dean had still stuck by his side instead of going to play with the older boys. He’d let Sammy pick the cartoons they watched or pushed him on the swings as long as he wanted.
It was awesome.
And now Dean and Pastor Jim (but mostly just his big brother) had fixed up an old bike so Sammy could learn to ride it. When he went back to school, he wouldn’t be the only kid who didn’t know how to ride a bike anymore.
It was a little scary, at first, the way the bike wobbled from side to side. It didn’t have any training wheels, but Dean was holding onto the back, and Dean wouldn’t ever let him fall anyway.
Sammy pedaled as fast as he could, but Dean was a big kid and he ran behind it easily, laughing.
“Look at you go, Sammy! You’re doing it! You got this!”
Dean sounded so proud. Sammy’s grin was so wide he wouldn’t have been surprised if a bug had flown in his mouth.
“Let go, Dean!” He yelled suddenly. He didn’t actually want Dean to let go, never wanted Dean to let go, but he realized, with a stunning, brutal joy, that he was brave.
He’d never been sure if he actually was brave like the people on tv, he usually felt scared and wanted to run to Dean for reassurance, but in that moment, wind in his face and Dean laughing and whooping behind him, he felt incredibly, wonderfully brave.
The sun was shining and Dean was right there beside him, and he knew suddenly, that of course, he could do this.
“Not yet, Sammy!” Dean’s words were almost stolen by the wind because they were flying, they were fast-fast-fast and Sammy shrieked in delight, tossing a look over his shoulder at his big brother, his favorite person in the world.
And he was brave.
“It’s okay, Dean. You can let go now….”
By rights, it should have been the pain that woke Sam up. Dean had been right, back when Sam had actively been hallucinating Lucifer- pain was different topside.
But regardless of those differences, Sam had experienced so much pain over the years (centuries), that the truth was, pain didn’t always set off his internal alarms the way it should.
He’d needed stitches only once in his year with Amelia, when he’d torn open the outside of his arm changing out a storm window, and hadn’t quite realized it for some time after.
Amelia had stitched him up, scowling and muttering (and that had been both heartbreaking and familiar and something Sam didn’t let himself think of often).
So it was actually the grit in his eyes, sandpaper against delicate tissue that had woken him, groaning. He was flat on his back in the…dark?
“Cave…” He murmured to himself, frowning when his voice didn’t echo near as much as he knew it should have.
Sam pulled the shotgun tight to his shoulder, mindful of the kickback and pulled the trigger, fast-fast-fast, no time to think, to freeze up.
The werewolf pulled upright, snarling, but it had turned away from Dean, now facing Sam. The shotgun held silvershot, and it probably burned like hot coals, but it wasn’t a kill shot.
But it had bought John the time he needed to get the new magazine in his taurus, and the crack of the bullet echoed in the clearing as the monster sank to the ground with one last dying snarl.
“Holy crap, Sam. That was awesome! Going up against a werewolf with a shotgun? Badass!” Dean was there, grinning, beautiful and brave like he wasn’t nearly eviscerated.
And Sam grinned back, thankful, so thankful that he’d been fast enough, and brave enough to protect his brother for once.
A heavy hand landed on his shoulder, and he looked up at his father.
“You did good, Sam. You saved Dean. I’m proud of you.”
It was nearly dark outside, a fact Sam was able to discern only because, to his right, the pile of rock and stone blocking the entrance rose nearly to the top. Only the barest sliver of light made its way through, not even skyline, just the diffused light from the cave entrance. He hadn’t thought it was so dark a moment ago, though.
Where was Dean? Did Dean make it clear? Sam had been forced to push Dean backwards, deeper in the cave (it was always easier to push hard, had he pulled and tried to cross his own body, it probably wouldn’t have worked…)
“Dean?” His first try at talking wasn’t quite a ringing success. His voice was a husky wreck. He coughed weakly, trying to clear his throat, but the red hot pain that blazed through him left him gasping.
He could sense the weight on his body now, and he warily ran his hands down his torso, towards his waist. Several large stones had landed across his midsection. Trailing his hand out further, to the left, he encountered the primary cave in- the one he’d hopefully pushed Dean clear from….
“Dean?” He called again, forcing the air into his lungs necessary to make his voice louder despite the screaming pain that accompanied the deeper breath.
Sam let himself into the apartment quietly. Jess was probably asleep by now. He’d been too keyed up after taking the LSAT, so he’d used the energy to do something else he’d been trying to gear up the bravery to do.
He could see Jess now, asleep on the couch, late night tv playing softly, painting her beautiful features with shadow and light.
God, she was so, so beautiful. Somedays he was still astounded that he’d been brave enough to ask her for her number.
He stood, stretching, intending to carry her into the bedroom, when a plate on the kitchen counter caught his attention. He drifted closer, smiling a little.
He’d been so embarrassed, when they’d first moved in together. Jess had declared that nothing would get rid of the scent of new paint and wood glue faster than the scent of fresh baked cookies.
She’d asked him what his favorite kind had been, and he’d stammered, caught off guard. No one had ever made him cookies before, up until that moment, he’d have simply said ‘anything’s better than the convenience store ones’.
The truth was, he’d always fantasized about someone making cookies for him, and his instinct had been to say ‘chocolate chip’, but how stupid was that, how telling was it, such a basic answer, poor little Sammy, no one’s made him any cookies before, how could he have a favorite?
He stuttered something stupid, oatmeal raisin maybe, anything to not sound awkward and trite and even more like an orphan than he’d already felt like when Jess’s family had turned up to help her move in and he’d only had Zach and Becky.
But she’d known, somehow, Jess had known anyway and she’d made him chocolate chip cookies. He could still remember her shy smile when she brought him the plate, like he wouldn’t have crawled over broken glass just to try the cookies she’d made for him.
He smiled softly as he took one, feeling the weight of the ring box in his pocket. He picked up the note-
‘Because I don’t need to see the results to know you’re worth celebrating’.
He wondered, if he called Dean….would Dean be his best man?
He definitely had some broken ribs. He flailed his right arm out, reaching around until he’d found his pack. He’d shoved his flashlight in there right before they’d set the black dog ablaze, knowing the light from the fire plus the daylight behind him at the cave’s entrance should be enough to safely climb out.
And it was always better to preserve batteries. But it was much darker now, it had grown darker so quickly despite the season….
It took him a few moments longer than he’d like to locate the pack, and he lost a few more precious moments getting it open. Finally, he wrapped his hand around the flashlight, praying it hadn’t broken in the fall.
He flicked his thump on the switch, exhaling gratefully when the light actually came on. Then he carefully began taking stock of his situation.
His immediate impulse had been to push the rocks off of himself, but he’d known he’d needed to actually see what was on top of him- and what else might shift when he moved them. Clearing the rubble off his body wouldn’t help if it just triggered more falling, possibly nailing him in the head or pinning his arms this time.
Luckily (well, on the Winchester scale of luck, anyway), he’d been cocooned between what looked to have been two separate cave-ins, one between him and the entrance, and one between him and (Dean) the rear of the cavern. He couldn’t see Dean at all and he had to fight down the panicked fear that he hadn’t managed to push Dean fully clear, that Dean was trapped somewhere under the rubble.
“Dean! Can you hear me-” He choked on the last word again, closing his eyes against the pain.
The rocks were pushing against his diaphragm, stopping him from actually breathing deep enough to truly yell. He needed to get upright and take stock….
Luckily, it looked like the rocks that had landed on him had just been overflow from the cave-in behind him, he should be able to clear it off of him without triggering more debris falling.
He began the slow, painstaking process of moving the rubble off of himself, hindered by the pain and the inability to breathe deeply, exacerbated by the fact that he kept spending breath he didn’t have calling for his brother.
Did Dean have enough air? The remains of the black dog had still been smoldering (burning precious oxygen) and the play of the flashlight off the rocks that had fallen down hadn’t shown him any helpful gaps like in the one between Sam and the cave’s entrance.
Even if Dean was clear, he could very well be suffocating on the other side of the cave-in. Sam steadfastly ignored the needling voice in the back of his head reminding him that he had no idea really how long he’d been unconscious and Dean could already be dead, suffocated, bleeding out, buried under the rubble, gone, again, and Sam wouldn’t even know, just like last time, he’d have no idea-
The sudden absence of the weight of the largest of the rocks that had been pinning him, was thankfully enough to break through his spiral of panic.
Focus. Take stock of yourself, then the situation. Dean’s counting on you.
Because that, Sam was certain of. Dean wasn’t calling for him, wasn’t clawing his way through the earth to check on him, which meant Dean was down for the count. No matter how badly they fought, no matter how mad Dean got, he’d never not check on Sam. For all his snapping and growling and accusations and ‘I’m going out, don’t wait up’, there was always at least one second where Dean had checked in on Sam.
There was a cave-in and Sam’s brother hadn’t come to check on him, which meant he couldn't.
Finally free of the last of the rubble, Sam sat up cautiously. His head still hurt, his hand came away smeared with traces of blood when he felt along his hairline, but the pain there really wasn’t that bad, and head wounds bled like a mother anyway.
It was the pain that wound through him when he climbed shakily to his feet that rearranged all his plans. It’s the insidious, energy stealing wrongness that settled into him.
Sam knew pain. Thanks to decades upon decades of time spent in the cage, he was deeply and intimately acquainted with pain. Every kind of pain, fast and furious and slow and insidious.
Sam knew what dying felt like, too. Lucifer had killed him over and over again, enough times that even Gabriel would have clapped back in Broward County.
Sam knew what internal bleeding felt like. He knew what that growing bruise on his upper right flank represented. And he knew he was now on a timer that wasn’t just counting down to Dean’s possible suffocation.
There were choices to be made now.
Sam could no longer count on himself being useful for long enough to clear both the cave-in behind him as well as the one in front of him. He had to decide the best use of his time and strength. He could work on widening the hole between him and the cave’s entrance, getting out, going for help. Or at the least, getting to the cave’s entrance and shooting off the flare gun. He had no idea how badly Dean might have been hurt, even if he freed Dean, he might not be capable of getting Dean down the mountain himself.
But on the other hand, Dean was either trapped under the rubble or on the other side of it- presumably with no light, limited air, and no idea what had happened to Sam. He was obviously injured or incapacitated, or Sam would at least be hearing him call out by now. He might not know that Sam had gone for help.
He wouldn’t know why Sam had left him behind.
He shifted, pain lancing his side again, enough to nearly make him breathless. And then he began clearing the rubble behind him.
There hadn’t actually ever been any choice that Sam could see.
“One stone at a time.” He said to himself, pushing through the pain.
It was slow going. Sam was able to work a little quicker at first, gently easing rocks from the top of the pile, and almost immediately, he was able to move enough that he was pretty sure there was now a decent chance of air flow from his side to Dean’s.
Now that he was upright, he found himself battling bouts of unsteadiness, the world shifting just a little, like so much loose gravel.
His hand screamed at him, his side yelled back, and every breath hurt. If he moved too fast, he risked causing further cave-ins. And he couldn’t just throw the stones he was moving to his feet, he had to carry them to the furthest side of the space where he was trapped, or he’d run out of room to work.
He had used the elastic bandage in his bag to wrap his chest. It wasn’t near enough to protect the ribs, and it was absolutely counter-intunitive for everything else that was wrong with him, but he lied to himself, telling his body that it helped, and persevered.
“Oh, you bitch. You didn’t.” Dean’s face said ‘pissed’ but his voice said ‘dude’ and his eyes were laughing. No one admires a well executed prank more than Sam’s big brother. Around him, the diner is full of the sound of families eating, the smell of burgers cooking, twangy country music spilling through speakers in the corner older than Sam.
Sam just laughed as he held up the super glue, and Dean shook his hand, trying to dislodge the bottle that stuck fast to it.
“I totally did.”
The pain was excruciating, but he pretended it was fire and his body was fuel and he focused on first one stone then another (stone number one, little brother), and the stench of the black dog’s corpse was stronger now.
He heard a groan from the other side of the cave in, and his chest relaxed despite the bandage, the broken ribs, the hot blue-white lightning in his side, tucked close against shattered bone, and the world wavered but his brother was alive-
“Dean?” His voice was a husky wreck, and his relief hit him so hard he lost his balance for a moment, forced to lean against the larger boulders.
“Sam?” His brother’s voice was rough, like he’d been breathing in smoke and dirt. Sam supposed that made sense.
“Dean. Are you hurt?” He forced his voice to be steady despite his wandering thoughts. He couldn’t figure out if he felt cold or hot, or maybe his hands were cold and his face was hot…
“My leg was caught under some rocks.” Dean called back, coughing again. “Hit my damn head, but it’s not too bad. What about you?”
“Umm. I’m upright.” Sam returned, forcing his scattered attention back to the task at hand.
One stone at a time.
“Your leg okay?” This rock was larger and he struggled for a moment, gasping as it worked free and he found himself holding more weight than he anticipated. The pain in his side was a living thing, an animal with teeth that was no longer satisfied with laying quiet. Now it felt hungry, like it was chewing on him from the inside.
Sam watched in awe as Dean carved their initials into the Impala. It was divine vandalism, the Impala was their home, after all, and Dean loved her no less than John, probably more. Sam wasn’t actually surprised that Dean had felt the need to mark her with his initials, he’d always been a little proprietary about the things he bothered to care about, but what stunned Sam was that he’d included Sam’s. He hadn’t even made Sam do it himself, which was the least Sam had expected.
But Dean had moved smoothly from carving his to carving Sam’s, as if it had never occurred to him that one set of initials would be without the other, and it left something warm in Sam’s chest…
“Sam? Sammy?” He must have gasped out loud that time, he wasn’t sure. He had the notion he might have lost a few moments of time, Dean had that tone to his voice he used when Sam hadn’t been answering his questions.
“M’here.” He mumbled, shaking his head, forcing himself to focus. He could just see Dean’s face peering over the edge of the hole he made.
“What happened? What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” Dean’s questions were fast-fast-fast, and it took him a moment to parse out their meaning.
“Hand hurts.” He says truthfully. It did, the two fingers he’d reset earlier burned, though the rest of his extremities felt cold.
“Sam, did you hit your head?” Dean was talking slower now, thankfully. He’d also started clearing rocks at his end, enlarging the hole.
“A bit, maybe.” Sam agreed. He wondered where the lights dancing in the air had come from. Were there fireflies in the cave with them? He hadn’t realized there was a species of cave dwelling fireflies….
“Sam, sit the hell down before you fall, okay kiddo?”
Dean had the flashlight now, though Sam didn’t remember giving it to him. Obediently, he began to sit, Dean was using the big-brother voice, and sometimes Sam wanted to fight back against that voice, but right now he was really pretty tired.
“No, no, Sam, Sam! Over by the other side, okay? We don’t have time to clear the rest of this hole, I’m going to have to climb over, I don’t want more rocks to fall on you, okay?”
“Rocks…landed on you. Thought they landed on you. No…air.” Sam sighed, annoyed with himself because he wanted better words, wordier words but they kept dancing away from him like the lights that were maybe-fireflies.
“I know, kiddo. You did good, okay? You got me a way out, now just…try and scoot over so I can come over there with you, okay Sammy?”
“Never…call me Sammy anymore…” Sam observed as he willed his sluggish limbs to make room for Dean. The pain-animal in his chest had different ideas, though-
“Come on, Sammy! Chuck Norris is waiting on us!” Dean grinned as he splayed out on Bobby’s old couch, legs wide, arm along the back of the sofa. “Love me some Chuck Norris.”
“Aren’t we going to wait for Bobby?” Sam asked, quirking a brow as sat down beside him.
“Chuck Norris waits for no man. Hell, time waits for Chuck Norris.” Dean waggled his brows.
Sam laughed as he tossed a pillow into Dean’s stomach. “Fine. Fine, see if I cover for you.”
“It’s his own fault for taking so long.” Dean chortled. “What are you doing old man, brewing it yourself?” He raised his voice this time, pitched so Bobby could hear it in the other room.
“He’s gonna fill your ass with buckshot, and I’m not going to pick it out for you.” Sam laughed, as he shook his head.
“Way to respect your elders, jerk-face.” Dean shuffles through the bag of snacks. “Where’s the licorice?”
“No licorice…” Sam said as he blinked, pulling his head back when he found Dean’s face right in front of him, smudged with dirt.
“You back with me, kiddo?” Dean’s eyes were wide, his breathing a little fast.
“Didn’t get the licorice.” Sam repeated. “Tastes like dirt.”
“Well, tastes like dirt, that, I get.” Dean was running his hands up and down Sam’s limbs. He pulled up Sam’s shirt, pointing the flashlight at the sports bandage he’d wrapped around his chest.
“Sam? Sammy? Did you wrap this because of your ribs? Are you hurt somewhere else?” Dean’s voice had a shake to it, maybe he was tired.
“Bruises.” Sam said after a long moment.
Dean shook his head, looking worried and confused. “What, what bruises, Sammy? You mean your head? ‘Cause your lips are kinda blue, dude, I don’t think that’s a head thing. Sam? Sammy, stay with me, don’t go to sleep again-”
“The spleen…is located in the upper right quadrant.” He informed his brother. Looking past him, he realized he could see out of the cave. “I thought….there were more rocks there.”
Had he moved those rocks? Maybe Dean knew who moved the rocks…
Dean wasn’t answering him, though, instead he was frantically unwrapping the bandage around Sam.
“Oh, god, Sam. Why didn’t you get down the mountain while you could?” Dean sounded horrified as he gently traced the bruises that mapped Sam’s side and torso. They’d grown exponentially. His body was a map, and he wondered if there were any dragons left at the end, or if he and Dean had killed the last of them.
“Sam, these are hours old, you could have gotten help-”
Sam shook his head, confused. Had he hit his head? Everything hurt.
“I knew where to look, this time.” He mumbled quietly, feeling tired. “Didn’t know…if you could breathe. Didn’t want to leave you….in the dark. S’no fun….trapped in the dark.”
“Sammy.” Dean’s voice sounded hurt. Was Dean hurt? Was Sam hurt? He hurt, he usually did though. Maybe that wasn’t the same as being hurt…
“Tired.” He admitted to Dean. He hoped Dean wouldn’t get mad at him this time. “Think I knew…I was going to get tired. Had to…choose. Didn’t want to screw up again. Don’t…be mad anymore, okay?”
“I know, I know, kiddo. But we gotta…we gotta get down, so I gotta get you up, I can’t carry you down this mountain, Sam. Can’t put you in a fireman’s hold, man, you’re bleeding out internally, we got to get to help.” Dean was already pulling on Sam, pulling him upward, and Sam felt like taffy, the salt water kind the machine in the window pulled and stretched while kids watched hungrily.
“Hey ya, Sammy!” And the person standing there looks so much like Dean it hurts, because it feels like hope, and hope only hurts, but Bobby is there, he’s practically crying, Sam can see the shine in his damn eyes.
“I know, I look fantastic.”
And his brother is back-
“Stay awake, Sammy! Sam, left foot, right foot, come on, come on, you oversized sonuvabitch, stay with me, come on, just a few miles to go-”
Dawn is just breaking as he pulls up to the meeting spot. Dean is leaning against the Impala, the only home he’d ever known, the car, but more, his brother.
Dean pulls a knife and for a second, Sam thought, ‘This is it.”
But Dean flipped it around, handle first, holding it out to Sam.
“If you're serious, and you want back in….”
“One more mile, come on Sammy, one more mile, you got this, you dug me out of that cave, you can do this, come on kiddo, just a little further-”
The Impala’s engine purred smoothly under him as he pulled up to the cabin in Whitefish. A part of him still can’t believe it was Dean on the phone, couldn’t wrap his mind around it.
“I don’t know whether to give you a hug, or…take a shower.” Sam is thunderstruck, banalities falling out of his mouth as his world attempts to realign.
“Let’s do this. “ And they were hugging, their patented ‘someone died again’ hug and for a wild moment, he wondered if this time it was him, was he in heaven? Because Dean was in Heaven, but Sam’s heaven had been broken, full of second-best memories and Dean was in front of him, alive, so….
His brother was alive. His brother was freaking alive-
“Come on, kiddo. You’re doing so good, not far now, get you to the Impala, get you to a hospital, get you fixed up, right? Get you some of the good jello, hell, maybe even some pudding, right? Sam, Sammy, eyes open, buddy, come on, come on, Sam-
Sam blinked his eyes, squinting against the light. Dean was singing along softly with one of his favorite Metallica tapes, but as he watched Sam stretch and wake up, he let his volume increase until he was belting out the words.
Sam grinned, looking out the window. It was early, but not too early. Dean must have driven straight through the night.
The song came to an end, and Dean turned the volume down. “Nice to see you rejoin the land of the living, sleeping beauty. Thought you were going to snore your way through Kansas.”
“The band, or the state?” Sam scratched his brow. He must have been sleeping for a long time, he felt half-drunk with it.
“You must have been pretty tired.” Dean shot him a smile.
“Yeah, I guess.” Sam replied, as he stretched again. He felt…really good. Like, weirdly good. He frowned, running a hand down his side curiously.
Hadn’t he….did he get hurt?
“You hungry? Snack bag’s by your feet. You slept through the rest stop. Never fear, I, big brother extraordinaire, got you some of those granola bars you’re so fond of.” Dean grinned at him again, and Sam smiled back reflexively.
It had been years since he’d seen Dean so light hearted.
His eyes trailed down, catching on the amulet around Dean’s neck. It shifted whenever Dean moved, shooting glints of light around the Impala….
Oh.
Oh.
And Sam understood then.
Because Dean hadn’t worn the amulet in years. Not since Heaven.
“Sammy, please, please. Open your eyes, come on kiddo, Sammy, come on, stay with me, we’re so close, I need you to get up, Sam, I’ll hurt you more if I carry you, but damn it, I will, I swear to god I will throw you and your stupid princess hair over my shoulder and -” Dean’s frantic pleading cut off as Sam opened his eyes.
They weren’t in the cave anymore. They weren’t even on the mountain anymore, that he could tell. He thought he could see the Impala in the distance, but…there was something…something he wanted to tell Dean….
His hip hurt, something was in his pocket, digging at him. He raised his eyes to his brother, feeling the tired smile on his face even as his eyes tried to drift closed.
“Sammy, don’t you dare pass out again-”
“They fixed it.” He told Dean, so happy he wanted to cry. He’d hoped, he’d always hoped it had just been Zachariah screwing around with them, how could his heaven not have Jess, or Bobby, or Dean…
“Fixed what, kiddo?” Dean was leaning close, Sam must not have been speaking as loud as he’d thought he was. It was okay though, Dean was used to figuring out his gibberish, he’d taught Sam how to talk after all.
“My…heaven.” He managed after a moment.
Dean’s face had gone sheet white. “What did you say?”
Sam was tired. Maybe Dean would let him sleep a little longer in the car. Sam always slept well in the car….
“Sammy!”
Through vision that had started to darken at the edges, he watched as Dean tore frantically through his pack, desperately yanking out the flare.
The pain was gone, it had drifted away somewhere behind them, they were so fast-fast-fast. He wondered for a second what had happened to his little blue bike.
Dean pointed the flare upward shakily, pulling the cord-
And fireworks exploded across the night sky. Sam grinned at his older brother, still his favorite person.
“Thanks Dean. This is awesome.”
“Clear!!!!!!”