Okay, I don't know what I'm doing at all. Why am I posting this? Why did I write it in present tense? I never do that. I'm not done writing it so everything about it is subject to change, but for some reason it just felt right to post it today.

AU from Season 2 Episode 1 on.

He was running. Running and running, never stopping. Running through and past and over trees and rocks and underbrush and there was always, always more.

Something was chasing him. He couldn't fight it, so he had to run. As far and as fast as he could. But there was always more to these woods and he had been running for ages and he was getting tired.

Scratch that, he'd passed tired three miles ago, he didn't even know how he was still putting one foot in front of the other, let alone at any speed worth a damn.

He looked ahead and blanched, suddenly digging his heels in, meaning to backpedal away from the thing in front of him.

He turned and there it was, not a foot away.

"You're getting to be a pain in my ass, Winchester."

Fingers touched his forehead and the world dropped away.

It takes him a while to figure out what's happened to him.

The first time he wakes up, he's in the driver seat of the Impala and Bob Dylan is playing. It's dark out and he's confused, just for a second. Then he hears the trunk slam and knows he's not alone.

Baffled and wary, he gets out and there's Sammy. Thirteen-year-old Sammy, with an excited gleam in his eyes and an innocent, happy grin Dean hasn't seen in years.

"Come on, let's go!"

His voice fluctuates between high and deep, but somehow manages not to crack, and he runs out to the field by the road, holding tight to a box of roman candles and firecrackers like they just might disappear if he doesn't.

They shoot off fireworks and it's 1996 again, and it's one of the happiest nights of Dean's life because it was one of the last times he felt like he was the awesome big brother, the one who could make everything better.

But this time around, he can't help but feel like he's forgetting something.

He's dead.

He figures that part out pretty quick, but it's like the knowledge doesn't want to stay in his head. He knows, but he doesn't want to remember.

The fact that he appears to be in Heaven (maybe?) is a pleasant surprise. He didn't think Heaven existed. He assumed Hell did, what with the demons, but he'd never believed in Heaven. He'd always just thought you died and that was it.

But now he's wondering if everyone who isn't a serial killer or something gets into Heaven, because he sure as hell knows it isn't the devout because that does not describe him at all and he hasn't lived a good enough life to warrant a free pass. What with all the stealing and credit card scams, it felt like saving the people he could only made him break even.

Still, he was here... somehow.

It takes him a while to remember the hospital. The memory hits him somewhere in between his mom cutting the crust off his PB&J and the first time he kisses Lisa.

It was a car crash, of all things. Sure, a demon was driving the semi, but c'mon, a car crash? Seriously?

Did Fate just get bored and decide to piss him off?

Then there was Sam and Dad fighting, of course, and Tessa the Grim Reaper.

And he remembers why he's dead.

Sammy was begging him, begging him to hold on. Saying he couldn't leave now, not when they were just starting to be brothers again, saying he needed him, Dean couldn't leave him alone with Dad, they'd kill each other.

But then Tessa explained to him how angry spirits were born. Told him he'd spend the rest of his life unseen and unheard. Alone. Told him he'd become one of the things he hunted. That he might hurt someone.

Might hurt Sam.

And she gave him a choice- stay for that life, or go with her.

He didn't want to leave his brother, but he would not risk hurting him.

So Tessa brushed a hand across his forehead and it was the Fourth of July.

It would be so easy to just sit back and let himself fall into these memories, it's so much harder to try and focus on the idea of being here not being the right thing, but he knows that back on Earth, Sam and Dad are alone.

Dad can take care of himself. Hell, Dad had ditched them the first opportunity he had. But Sammy, he has a demon after him. A demon with "plans"; "plans" with ominous emphasis. He can't trust Dad to watch Sam's back, especially not with the way they butt heads.

So what if he's dead, he has to be able to help somehow. Sure, he might not be able to shoot the bad things in the face anymore, but he has to be able to do something.

If he can just watch Sammy, make sure he's okay on occasion, anything would be better than this not knowing. Sure, it's a long shot, but he can't just sit back while Sam is in trouble down there. Hell, would he even know if Sam had died, if he was trapped in his own memories like this?

He makes his decision while teaching a six-year-old Sammy how to ride a bike. He needs to find a way out, if not of Heaven, then at least out of this infinite memory loop. It's just so hard to concentrate. It feels like it has taken him months just to be able to step back enough to think this much.

When he figures out how to control his surroundings, it's like Christmas. Literally, because he's thinking about the Christmas Sam gave him his amulet and then he's sitting in the crappy old motel room he remembers so well.

It takes him what feels like a couple of weeks to remember again after that, now that he can jump to whatever memory he wants. Still, at least he can use this newfound power to his advantage.

It's the matter of a thought to go from the driver's seat of the Impala to Bobby's living room.

Research has always been Sam's shtick, Dean is more of the 'shoot it until it dies' sort, but when Sam went away to Stanford, he was left without another option. So he spent a few horrible weeks in a small town library, refreshing his knowledge of Latin and basic mythology.

It is with these hard-learned skills that he tackles Bobby's library. It was 1989 and their Dad had dropped them off with Bobby for a few weeks that had coincided with Sammy's sixth birthday. It had been a great time, Sam got to read all he wanted, got to go to school, got his first birthday cake ever, and Bobby started teaching Dean the inner workings of cars.

This time around, though, instead of standing on an old wooden crate in the garage so he could lean elbow-deep into an engine, Dean is inside, flipping through book after book, trying to learn all he could about Heaven.

He's never researched this before, and it's infuriating how much lore there was and how often it contradicted itself. Every culture on Earth had their own interpretation of Heaven or Paradise or whatever and to be perfectly honest he has no idea if he is in one or the other or some sort of bastard combination of all of them.

It takes a long time, as everything here seems to. Of course, he can't mind that much, not when he's at Bobby's during one of the longest periods of happiness in his life. Even hunched over the table with a Coke (because even in a memory he was in charge of, Bobby kept the beer out of reach of children), he could just flick his eyes up and Sam would be on the other side, doing his homework, or in the living room, asleep on the couch.

It's harder and harder to fight off the urge to just fall into this flow. He's holding onto his determination by the tips of his fingers. The only reason he doesn't let go is because he doesn't know if he'd ever see Sam again if he did. If this is Heaven, Sammy should be here, he'd always been better than Dean, hell he actually believed in the whole Heaven thing.

But then again, Dean's mom isn't here either. Sure, his memory version of her is, but she isn't. She should be in Heaven too, shouldn't she?

He can't stay here if he isn't even able to see his family. He has to figure out where he is, what he can do, what the rules are. He can go from there.

It's only after three dozen books and an accident involving Holy Water that he comes to the tentative conclusion that he's in the Judeo-Christian version of Heaven.

Again, how did he get there? Weren't you supposed to actually believe in the big man upstairs for that?

Or maybe it was the only place that would take him, it's not like he was exactly besties with the pagan pantheons.

The more he thinks about everything, the less sense it makes. How and why he is in Heaven, why he's getting out, what he's going to do when he does- none of the answers stay the same for more than three minutes before his brain is filling in new 'what if's and theories.

Still, he isn't stopping until he finds Sam. That's rock number one, he can build on it.

He finds the Enochian eventually. It's at the back of a dusty bookshelf that probably hasn't been disturbed in at least a decade, like Bobby thought it was probably rubbish, but had enough doubt to keep it around.

Good thing he did too.

"Dean! Where are you?"

After an untold amount of time, his memories are starting to act differently than they had at first. Originally, when he'd stayed inside to research, Bobby had continued outside and carried on how he had the very first time, even though Dean didn't go with him. Now Bobby was calling out to him.

Then it feels like something has reached into his head, closed around his concentration, and yanked.

He claws back higher brain function after reliving the first time Dad took him out to shoot, which he thinks is some kind of record, and whips up a new memory at Bobby's because he's starting to think he spent too much time in the first one.

Something must have changed. He's not sure what, but he has no doubt. It's been clear for a while now that he swimming against the current with the whole 'not becoming one with his memories' thing, but now, now he's thinking he's fighting against something sentient, rather than the natural course of dead people.

He's going to have to be more careful, if this thing has power in Heaven, he's pretty sure he's no match for it.

This memory at Bobby's might be even better. It's only four days long, but it's December and he and Sammy sit in the living room, watching all the crappy Christmas-themed movies that most channels love spitting out that time of year (or, in Dean's case, sitting on the couch with a book on runes older than most civilizations balanced on his knees), and drinking cocoa, the real stuff, not the instant kind.

But unlike before, he can't put this memory on repeat. It ends and he can't start it over and now he's sure someone has wised up to his antics because something yanks at his concentration again and the next thing he knows, he's snuck into a public pool at ten at night to teach Sam how to swim.

It's harder now, because he can only get to the book sporadically, and he can't keep his notes so he has to memorize what he needs and the only thing Dean's ever been good at memorizing was every Clint Eastwood movie ever.

Still, he knows he's farther ahead than ever; someone wouldn't be trying to screw up his efforts if he wasn't on to something.

And yeah, it's kind of a testament to how messed up he is when someone trying to screw with him is actually encouraging.

He has to go back, way back for good memories with Bobby where he can get at that book. Fortunately, it turns out Pastor Jim has a copy of the book too, so he has another cache of memories to access there.

And thank God for Pastor Jim, who, it turns out, has even more books on the subject of Heaven than Bobby does. Sure, they're all mostly theory and hearsay, but they help Dean think and that is invaluable.

In the end, he has a rough idea of his situation. All the stories said Heaven was a perfect place, but humans were all so different that there was no way it was the same for all of them. So, theory said, that Heaven was different for every person.

If that was true, it definitely explained this memory loop thing that was going on. He could only access good memories. He hadn't tried to bring up a bad one, but he'd tried mediocre with no results at all.

Still, basing Heaven off his good memories? Making him alone? It was both unoriginal and a horrible backfire. Dean hates being alone more than anything. Sure, he shares his memories with Sammy, and Bobby, and Dad, and Lisa, and Pastor Jim, but they aren't the real thing, he knew that.

Knowing it's all an illusion makes loneliness settle bone-deep inside him and yeah, now concentrating is a lot easier.

His first step is going to be getting out of his Heaven. If he can just do that, maybe he can think. He can make a plan that is somehow beyond 'Find Sammy'.

It doesn't take that much longer, with that theory and the knowledge of the small amount of Enochian the tiny book held.

He manages to cobble together a sigil that ought to open up an exit. At least, he thinks so. He's pulling at straws and has no doubt about it, but he has to try something. It's a working idea, and if he even gets a reaction it will be progress.

But he can't sit around anymore. Not now that he knows he's fighting against something.

Fighting is something he knows how to do.

The second he figures out how to do it, he has to.

Because it is now so hard to think, he's lost himself twice in the last hour.

He calls up one of his last memories at Bobby's house. He'd gotten in late and found Sam asleep on the couch, waiting for him to come back.

He does the exact same thing he did then: grabs the blanket off the back of the couch, folds it over his little brother who has just grown tall enough that he doesn't fit on the couch too well anymore. He runs a hand over Sammy's hair, smoothing it out of his face.

Then he walks over to Bobby's cabinets, reaches up to where he keeps the less volatile supplies, and grabs himself a handful of chalk.

He walks to the front door and draws out the symbol that he's burned into his brain after hours of sketching and making slight changes until he thought it could work.

He connects the last line and something flashes outside the window.

Then Dean turns the knob and steps outside.

It's sort of anti-climactic for a jailbreak from Heaven.

It's bright outside, which Dean really shouldn't be surprised by. He should really be used to the jumps between day and night and entire seasons by now, but he's not, he's really not.

It's a forest, a mottled collection of trees from any and every corner of the world, thrown together with no semblance of order. They stretch high over his head and into blue sky. He has no idea where the sun is, the forest is all shade. It could be any forest and he wouldn't know.

All he does know is that he's never seen it before.

He lets out a shaky exhale of stunned relief. He cannot believe that worked on the first try.

He turns and looks at the door he just came through. He can see back into Bobby's house through the doorway, he has yet to let go of the knob, but there's nothing around the view, not even a frame.

Dean has the sick feeling that if he closes the door, it will disappear and there will be no way back.

He looks back at the couch and takes a slow, deep breath.

Then he pushes the door. He doesn't close it by hand or slam it, he exerts just enough force so that it closes by itself. It clicks shut, the outline flashes, and then it's gone, replaced by more forest.

A wave of his hand tells him that, yes, it's gone. He is well and truly alone now. And he has no idea where he is. All he has are the clothes on his back, the knife in his boot (courtesy of the memory of going out, though now he's wishing he'd picked a memory where he was armed to the teeth), and the handful of chalk in his pocket.

Yeah, he snorts, he's a force to be reckoned with.

So he starts walking.

The forest is endless.

It's infinite and feels unchanging. Sometimes there's little rolls of elevation change or some patch of grass that isn't at all big enough to be called a clearing, but is free of trees for a few yards at least, and he thinks he can see a mountain in the distance, but he can't be sure.

If he had to estimate, he'd say he'd been walking for three or four hours now, but he has no idea how much ground he's covered. Everything looks the same, hell, the damn light hasn't even shifted.

He's starting to panic, just a little.

He has had nothing to do but walk, so of course, now that he's free of his Heaven and can think, his mind is taking the opportunity to freak him out as much as possible.

He has no idea where he is, has no way of getting back to where he was, has no supplies, nothing. He doesn't know if he's still in Heaven or if he's somewhere entirely different, but this place is way too ethereal to be Earth.

At first he'd thought he had stumbled into someone else's Heaven, but if that were true he's pretty sure he'd have run into them or heard something by now.

But there's nothing, no rustle of wind or grass or leaves or animals, not even birds.

It's starting to freak him out.

He could be stuck here forever, for eternity, if he doesn't find his way out, and he doesn't even have an illusion anymore.

The only sound he can hear is his own breathing.

He's beginning to believe he's done something monumentally stupid.

Then there's a soft rustling sound behind him and he jumps at the suddenness of it and whips around, already falling into a crouched fighting stance, ready to dip and yank the knife out of his boot if he has to.

Standing in front of him is something that looks like a man, but he knows it isn't. He could never explain how, but he knows. It doesn't feel evil and he's usually pretty inclined to trust his instincts, but he's wound too tight and has too little information and there's no way he's letting his guard down even for a second.

The guy himself seems unassuming enough. A couple of inches shorter than Dean, he's wearing a cheap black suit over a white shirt and a blue tie. A kind of ridiculous tan trench coat is draped over his shoulders like an afterthought, as if he doesn't know what it's for, or maybe even realize that it's there. In direct contrast to his business-like appearance, his dark hair makes him like he just rolled out of bed (if his bed was an angry cat, or perhaps a washing machine) and he's rocking a five-o-clock shadow.

It's his presence that gives it away, really. Dean's taller, but he feels like he's being towered over by someone much bigger, or maybe an angry bear. The guy doesn't look angry, hell if anything he looks bemusedly curious, but his eyes make the hunter feel like someone is performing some kind of invasive surgery on his soul.

"Hello, Dean."

Alright, that's it. In my fit of temporary insanity, I've posted it. Let me know what you think!