Room 408, Inn of the Four Sons, Roswell, NM– 8:17 AM, Central Standard Time

Total miles traveled: 1,995

Dean wakes up at 8:17 AM and immediately panics. His feet are on the floor, his gun in hand, before the sleep has fully cleared his eyes. When it does and he remembers where he is something drains from him so quickly that his legs grow weak beneath him. He sags back onto the bed with something that sounds like a strangled sob.

The nightmare is always the same: He is burning, his arms wrapped around something he knows he can't let go of. If he does, the world would fall away, his world would fall away.

Dean always wakes up the same way, ever since the showdown in Four Points. The shitty thing is he can't remember exactly what happened, and that seems like a big slap in the face. It was the fucking showdown of the goddamn Apocalypse for chrissake, and he can't remember a single detail.

Except...he can, just one: the sound of an urgent voice, warped and muddy like it was layered atop several others, calling his name. Dean, please wake up.

The memory of that voice is the only thing that can snap him out of his nightmare.

Dean glances at the clock on the nightstand. He stares at it for a full minute before he realizes, belatedly, that he has slept in. Nobody had woken him up like he'd asked… and that just irritates the piss out of him. Sam (he assumes it's Sam because Castiel still hasn't learned how to use the remote) left the television on the weather channel. Why that shit interests him, Dean will never understand. The forecaster's voice is a garbled, low hum from the other side of the room. Dean glances at the TV and the smiling sun with tells him it's going to be a nice sunny Sunday afternoon. He checks the ticker running at the bottom and sees that it's January 24th – they've been on the road with Cas for two weeks now.

He staggers upright once again and stretches, joints creaking, spine popping like a row of caps from a cap gun. Shit, he's gotten older and never realized it. He goes straight to the restroom, takes a piss that feels like it lasts forever. He braces a hand on the wall and realizes that he's never had the time to acknowledge that he's growing older. Now, though, on this stupid road trip that Castiel insists they take, he's got nothing but buckets of hours and minutes to fill with such thoughts and speculations.

Dean hates time, he decides. It leaves him too much room to think, to wonder...to hope.

He washes up, cold water shocking his mind into full awareness, and decides it's about time he gets some fucking answers.

Parking Lot, Inn of the Four Sons, Roswell, NM - 8:25 AM, Central Standard Time

Cas and Sam are nowhere to be found, which right away worries Dean. There's a twinge in his stomach, an ulcer forming perhaps, which Dean thinks is just goddamn dandy given that he managed to go to Hell and back without so much as a paper cut let alone a hole in his stomach. His worry continues to mount as he pulls on his jacket – he's been wearing John's lately, something just feels right about it – and heads out of his room.

The New Mexico air is warm and dry on his face – not yet hot, just the same as the air had been in Arizona. He knows he'll hate it by midday, but for now, it's nice enough.

He makes his way over to the Impala, filthy with dust from their drive through the desert clime. Somebody's scrawled 'Wash Me' on the windshield, to which Dean immediately takes offense. He looks around accusingly, as if the culprit might still be there, but the parking lot is empty save for a grackle that is staring at him expectantly.

Dean kicks some gravel toward the bird, which only causes it to hop back a few inches and resume staring. Dean ignores it, peering instead into the back window of the Impala, looking to see if Cas had retreated to the backseat to escape Sam's snoring.

The first time he'd done it, Dean had charged out of the room in the middle of the night calling his name, frantic that something had snatched him from under their noses, or that he'd gone back to Heaven. That was his real fear – one he didn't share with anyone else.

When he'd discovered Cas in the car, curled up like a kitten in the backseat, he'd felt immediately foolish… and furious. He'd woken him up, banging on the hood like a madman, ranting and yelling about stupid, inconsiderate angels. Cas had simply rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and explained that Sam's, 'grizzly bear snores' had kept him awake so he'd retreated to Impala instead.

Thing is, Cas isn't in the backseat. It's empty, no angel in sight. He curls his hand into a fist as an irrational thought crosses his mind: Sam and Cas have gone off together, probably somewhere stupid like a stupid Alien Museum, and left him alone.

The thought makes Dean's stomach clench and anger ripple through him, though if he thinks about it too long the reasons for his anger become vague and confusing.

He chooses not to dwell any longer on it, instead whirls on his heel, jamming one hand into the pocket of his jeans to dig out his cell phone. He's stormed a few feet away from the Impala, stabbing the first few digits of Sam's number into keypad angrily, when he hears the low murmur of voices. He looks up… and that's when he sees them.

Sam and Castiel are sitting side by side at a picnic table in a small grassy square, maybe a little bigger than a walk-in closet, that's been set aside by the motel as a designated "smoking" area. His brother and Cas aren't pushed right up next to each other – oddly, this relieves him – but Castiel is watching Sam very closely. Oddly, his feelings on that could not be considered relief… not in the slightest. In fact, Dean found the whole scene goddamn aggravating.

He walks towards them, intending to interrupt this little 'moment' and demand the answers he knows he's due, but he stops mid-step, faltering when he sees what they are actually doing.

Sam and Cas are eating oranges. And Sam is smiling; smiling in a way that Dean hasn't seen him smile in too fucking long. It's the way Sam used to smile, or at least close to it. The easy smile he used to see before Dean had been ripped apart by hellhounds and sent to the Pit.

Sam is showing Castiel how to peel and eat the orange fruit. Cas, with his usual somber manner, is peeling the skin of his orange off carefully, like it's something too precious to just rip into. He gets all of the peel off and looks to Sam, his expression questioning and focused, intense – it makes Dean want to look away. Sam splits his orange open into two halves. Cas follows suit. Dean takes another step closer as Castiel shoves a whole half of an orange into his mouth.

Cas bites down; juices dribble down his chin, sticky and glistening in the sunlight. Dean expects him to spit out a mouthful of half-chewed fruit but is again stopped in his tracks when an expression of utter rapture and delight flashes across Castiel's features. Sam smiles, laughing now as he mimics Cas.

The sound is open and free in the morning air. It sounds like new beginnings.

Dean decides that he doesn't need his answers today and leaves his brother and Cas to their moment.

Later Castiel, hands smelling like oranges, hands Dean a small alien-shaped car freshener. Dean scoffs at it, but hangs it from the Impala's rearview mirror.