Whew. Getting this in under the wire before tonight's episode!

Don't forget to tip your waiters. Oh, and let me know what you think. :P

Safe and Sound

"He just – he just left." It takes obvious effort for Dean to get the words out. Hell, to form the thought.

Sam registers his brother's difficulty before he really hears what Dean is saying. Taken aback, he asks, "why?"

"I don't know." An honest, immediate response. He meets Sam's eyes and repeats in a rough, awestruck voice, "I don't know."

"Okay." Sam frowns, nods. He cocks his head, smiles. "Well, it's good to see you, man." He wants to wrap his brother in the sort of hug he's only allowed once every few years and only in dire circumstances, to offer some support but mostly just to know for sure that Dean is really here. He fights the urge, because he has some idea of the violation – not to mention colossal mindfuck – his brother is currently dealing with, and it can hardly be helped by Sam invading his space and pawing at him just to make himself feel better. He has a feeling Dean's bubble of personal space is about expand considerably for the foreseeable future.

The corner of Dean's mouth lifts and he raises his squinted gaze to look over Sam's head, at Mom. It looks for a moment like he's going to speak, but instead he frowns, winces, and coughs a raspy, choking sound.

Sam shoots a worried glace up at his mother before settling his attention back on Dean. His brother can't seem to catch his breath, eyes moving wildly but unseeing as he continues to gasp and choke, panicking as he settles back into himself.

"Hey. Hey, Dean." He bounces on his heels and scoots closer, plants a palm on the man's heaving chest. "Just breathe, man. Dean, just – "

Not seeming to hear him, Dean's white, trembling hands fumble with the knot of the tie around his reddening neck.

Sam intervenes, knocks his brother's frigid fingers aside to loosen and remove the tie, then undo the top button of his shirt. He goes one step further and pops the buttons of the out-of-place vest before he pulls his hands away, keeping them raised between he and Dean. "Better?"

Lips pressed in a tight line, Dean nods, eyes meeting his for only a fraction of a second before darting away. He attempts to shrug out of the wool jacket, tailored to his frame but not to him, but the severe northwestern chill in the air has Sam reaching out to grip his brother's shoulder and stop him.

Dean flinches at the touch, and everything fragile inside Sam that's spent four weeks pretending to be strong shatters like a pane of glass.

He's not the only one. His mother crouches at his side, smiling sadly but warmly as she lays a hesitant hand on Dean's arm. She moves her fingers, frowns. "Sam, he's freezing."

Dean's eyes crinkle as he sluggishly turns his head and returns the smile with a weary one of his own. "I'm okay, Mom."

He's not. He's really, emphatically not. He's chalk-white, with deep lines of exhaustion – of pain – carved into his features. He doesn't appear to be hurt, but seems wounded all the same. He's hunched over, and still having a hard time catching his breath, panting around chattering teeth.

Shock, Sam thinks, physically rocked by the realization, and wholly unprepared.

They'd readied themselves to face, fight, and subdue Michael, by any means necessary. They hadn't prepared to find Dean in Duluth. Who knows what havoc the archangel wreaked within his brother's body, what damage he did. With Dean, they may never know. This is a very short, very important window of openness and vulnerability that Sam needed to take advantage of before his brother closes the internal lid and locks it up tight.

"Mom." His own voice chokes. "Can you, uh…can you and Bobby check and make sure we're really alone here?"

She nods, stands. "Of course." They all know what he's doing. What he's trying to do.

Sam waits until their shuffling footsteps have moved across the large room, then grips his brother by the back of the neck and rattles him gently until his dull gaze slides back. His mom was right; Dean's skin has a definite, concerning chill to it. "Hey. How you doing? Really?"

Dean's eyes dart past Sam's shoulder to where Mom is. He huffs and shakes his head, leans away and presses his shoulder into the pillar.

"Okay." Sam's voice is barely above a whisper, like a single word spoken at regular volume will spook Dean into hiding. "That's okay, man."

There are no words for how grateful he is that his mom is here, and Bobby, but right now he wishes it was just the two of them. Dean will want to be strong in front of them, and he shouldn't have to be. He shouldn't have to put up the tough guy façade in the immediate aftermath of what he's been through.

Angel inside of you, it's kinda like being chained to a comet.

That's what Jimmy Novak had told them once, a description that stuck with Sam for a long time, that came to mind in an ugly, apt way when he experienced it for himself.

No, I'm not okay was a weighty, serious admission, but Sam won't get any more than that with the others in the room, in the car. And they have a long drive home ahead of them.

"Looks clear." Mom's voice startles Sam from his musing. "You know, except for the werewolves."

Sam nods but doesn't take his eyes from his brother, who doesn't give any indication that he's hearing or seeing any of them. "Okay. We should go."

"Sam," Bobby says carefully, audibly shifting his weight behind him. "I hate to be this guy, but how do we know that he's really…"

Sam turns to face the man with such severity, he probably risks a serious case of self-inflicted whiplash. "Really who? Dean?" He rises, throwing a finger back at his slumped, wheezing brother. "Bobby, look at him."

But that isn't enough, and Sam knows that. Probably better than anyone. He should have expected Bobby's wariness, because it's completely warranted. Michael had plans – has plans – and Dean isn't a game piece the archangel is likely to have given up easily. Definitely not voluntarily. There's a knot of dread twisting Sam's gut, because there's just no way this is over. Not this easily. But Dean is right here, white-faced and shell-shocked, and he has to be Sam's priority.

He knows they can't let their guard down entirely, but his breath still catches at the sight of the angel cuffs in the older hunter's hands.

Dean sees them too, the first thing he seems to really see in about five minutes, and he recoils violently, knocks the back of his head against the pillar.

Sam swallows. "Dean…"

"He's gone," Dean whispers, a raspy, uncharacteristic plea.

Sam wants to believe that, he really does. His brother's been a prisoner in his own body for the past month, and now they're looking to shackle him. He knows this is too much, knows it isn't fair. "I know this sucks, man. It's just until we get back to the bunker."

Dean screws up his nose, blinking roughly as he shifts his head and attempts to take in his surroundings. "Where are we?"

"Uh, Duluth," Sam answers with a wince.

Dean sucks in a breath and pulls his head back. He's still not entirely with it, but he knows they're a long way from home.

"It won't…I'll drive as fast as I can, Dean." He narrows his gaze appraisingly as his brother's hooded, dull eyes, his pale face. "You should probably try to get some sleep, anyway."

"No." Dean shakes his head, forces his eyes open wider as he attempts to sit straighter. "No, I'm okay."

No, Sam thinks, heart sinking. You're not. He takes the cuffs from Bobby, and the metallic jangle seems amplified in the large room. He snaps them loosely around his brother's limp, cold wrists, and from the betrayed look on Dean's face, Sam might as well have just lashed him to an anchor and thrown him into the sea. "Can you stand?"

Dean makes a face, tries to be offended by the question, but he'd have hit the deck pretty damn hard if Sam hadn't been here.

"It's all right, man. We'll take it slow." It's not easy with his cuffed hands, and Dean bites his lip when Sam wraps an arm around his shoulders.

He loses track of his mother and Bobby, focused completely on his brother. On the obvious strain of each step. On the pain it's causing Dean.

Sam's insides suddenly feel as ice-cold as his brother's skin. He was wrong. He has no idea what Dean's been through, what he's going through.

After he'd forced out Gadreel, he'd been painfully hungry and thirsty, felt achy and sore like he'd spent the weekend in bed with the flu. The angel had full control of him for roughly three days, Lucifer for an awful but quick thirty-six hours, and Meg for a blur of a week. Michael – an archangel – had Dean for a month. After Lucifer, Sam had suffered tortures in Hell but not the physical toll that sort of possession can take on a body, or on the mind. Raphael's vessel had been a drooling husk, a senseless shadow of the man taken over by the archangel.

He can try to empathize, but Sam can't touch the level of trauma his brother has endured, or what lies ahead. Because this isn't over, not for any of them, but especially not for Dean. The aftershocks are still settling in his organs and muscles and fucking with his head.

He'll be lucky to fully recover from this.

How far away did they leave the damn car? Sam takes on more and more of Dean's weight as they walk, as his brother's knees buckle and he sags.

"Okay." Like a goddamn broken record, as he finally props Dean against the side of the Impala. Not even the sight of his baby is enough to take some of that scary white out of his brother's face, and Sam can't remember with a gun to his head where the fucking keys are.

He finally drags the ring from the pocket of his jeans, and his mom immediately closes her warm fingers around his.

"I'll drive."

Sam's grip tightens. "Mom – "

"I'm driving, Sam," she says firmly. "You should be with Dean. Just in case…" She lets it go unspoken, all the just in cases. The things they all know are possibilities but don't dare say. Not out loud, and not in front of Dean. She smiles tightly. "Besides, it was my car first."

He nods, but he can't find the humor. Not in this moment. "All right." He releases the keyring and turns back to Dean as Mom moves around the hood of the car. "Dean – "

His brother is braced on a palm against the Impala, staring at his reflection in the window. He raises a cuffed, shaking hand and tousles his hair, mussing the perfect part put there by Michael.

Sam swallows a lump the size of an elephant, and his chest pangs painfully. This isn't anywhere near over. This might be his brother, but it could take a while to really get Dean back.

The car ride is tense and mostly silent. Sam sits on the edge of the seat, twisted at a horribly uncomfortable angle to keep a close, monitoring eye on his brother. Sam asks his mom to find something on the radio to play quietly in the background, in an attempt to help Dean feel calm and safe, seeing as his hands are chained together. He's also hoping to encourage the man to relax, and rest. He needs it.

Dean remains too quiet, and too pale, shifting and wincing as he struggles to find a comfortable position on the bench. Spasms of pain contort his features and shudders wrack his body despite the cranked heater. But he doesn't grunt or moan or complain, suffers it all just as silently as Sam had feared he would. He's managed to choke down about a bottle's worth of water, but he's dehydrated, and one of them stays behind with him during bathroom pit stops throughout the night and into dawn breaking.

He needs it, but he won't sleep. Just flat-out refuses to give in to that very important demand of his body, which has been puppeted around for weeks on end without an opportunity to rest and recover.

Sam's tired and cranky himself, and he'd force the issue, but there's a glimmer of terror in his brother's eyes that has him staying silent.

It takes hours, but Dean's exhaustion finally beats out his stubbornness and obvious aversion – his fear – of falling asleep. He slumps, temple against the cool glass of the window, and twitches fitfully. No doubt dreaming, no doubt awful things that Sam will never know.

Dean's tremors travel through the bench seat to jostle the weaker, weary parts inside Sam. He gingerly presses two fingertips to the pulse point at his brother's wrist, appalled once more by the chill of Dean's skin.

Like being chained to a comet. Burned up from the inside.

"How is he?" Mom asks softly from the front seat, careful not to disturb her son's much-needed rest.

Sam shakes his head, reluctant to break the physical contact with his brother. "I don't know."

"We should call Cas and Jack."

"Yeah." Sam nods impassively, digs his cell phone out of his jacket pocket. He stares dumbly at the screen for a moment before remembering how to work the damn thing.

"Sam." An anxious, breathless greeting from a being who doesn't need to breathe.

"Cas." He speaks barely above a whisper, not wanting to wake Dean. "We've got him."

"Michael?"

"Uh, no. Dean."

The silence on the other end of the line stretches on. Sam knows the exact emotional rollercoaster Cas is going through, because he's still reeling from it himself. Disbelief, relief, hope, apprehension. Suspicion. Because there's just no way they get him back this easily. His brother is a shocky, shaking wreck on the bench beside him. This isn't over.

"How?"

Sam swallows. "Dean says he just…left."

"Sam, that doesn't make any sense. Why would Michael – "

"I know, Cas." He drags a hand down his face, sighing deeply. "I get it, I really do. But this is one gift horse I'm really not gonna look in the mouth. I don't know how, or why, but it's Dean."

"How is he?"

Sam doesn't answer, staring at the ghostly pale, twitching mess of a man at his side. There's too much precedence, and he has too much experience to convincingly lie to the angel.

Dean's in bad shape, and probably will be for a damn long time.

This is nowhere near over.