AN: Written for a prompt by Tumblr user Safiyabat, with the following requirements: 1.) Season 9, 2.) Ezekiel is ejected somehow (method and timing up to author), 3.) Someone who is real, not a hallucination, needs to make Sam understand that he is valued.

Beta'd by Caladrius (of Boogeyman fame - Go read it!).

Dean taps on the framing at the junction between the library and the war room. "You ready?" He frowns at Sam. "Whatcha doin? I thought we were checking into that witch thing in Bailey."

Sam doesn't look up from the manuscript sitting in front of him. "Yeah, yeah. Just finishing up-"

"Can't Kevin do that? He's even more of a nerd than you are."

Sam looks at him then, brows together in some kind of - something, and Dean suddenly feels like he's done something wrong. For the life of him, he can't figure out what. He's saying Sam isn't the nerdiest nerd to ever nerd. "Come on, shake a leg, Sammy." He turns and leaves Sam to follow when he feels like it. There's a little guilt in the pit of his stomach, and it might be because of that look on Sam's face, or it might be because he's pretty sure that he's gonna ask for Zeke's help on this hunt again, and he doesn't want to, okay? He doesn't. He just. Can't let a resource go unused while people are dying.

Saving people, right? The greater good. Or something. He tells himself Sam would agree.

They ride in silence to Bailey, a tiny town some three hours north of the bunker. She's a witch, for sure, but a strange one, because she's getting her power from some angel instead of through a demon deal, and that's where Zeke comes in.

But he was only supposed to find her and then vamoose. He wasn't supposed to take the wheel and kick her ass. He wasn't supposed to find and shatter the thread of grace connecting her to the angel. He wasn't supposed to do anything.

But Dean is kneeling at Sam's side patting him awake after Zeke passes out, and he's wiping blood from Sam's face and he's mustering another excuse, and he's hoping that it holds the way it has been for the last four hunts; Sam has been accepting these excuses, Dean knows, only because he can't think of anything else to believe, but deep down, Sam knows they're lies. He just hasn't worked out the truth yet.

And then Sam opens his eyes, groggy and he looks around him, at the broken chair and the blood on Dean's hands and the witch's body on the ground and at himself, looks down at his chest where she'd most definitely scraped her razor fingernails into his skin as she taunted him, Sam the bait out of circumstance, Dean the hero by accident of a plan gone awry - And Sam brings his hand to his magically uninjured chest and there's the look of realization and he says:

"Oh my god. I can't believe it. Dean, tell me you didn't - How could you be so stupid-?"

"Sammy, wait." Dean is scrambling.

"Dean. I can't believe you did this for me. How sick could I have possibly been-?" His stupid eyebrows have gone from angry scowl to five-year-old adoration. "I'm gonna fix it. Don't worry. I'll fix it. I'm gonna get you out of this. For once, I'm gonna save you."

Dean stares.

A week later, Sam is back in the library with a pen and some pages stapled together and he's running down a list, and when Dean comes behind him to read it, it looks suspiciously like a test. A test on monsters and how to kill them. Dean laughs.

"How'd he do?" he asks, just as Sam is marking another answer wrong.

"Well, he got his name right."

"I thought this kid was smart."

Sam laughs under his breath. "He is. He knows the basics. This is really finicky stuff."

"Name three signs of wendigo activity specific to the Upper Penninsula of Michigan." Dean whistles. "I don't know if I'd pass."

"You'd pass. And so will he."

Dean chuckles and heads to the kitchen with his coffee cup, swiping Sam's on the way.

"Hey," Sam says. Dean stops, turns. Sam smiles tentatively, guilt-ridden. "I haven't given up. There's a way to kick this angel out of you, Dean. I'm gonna find it."

Dean is struck numb. He stares. A coffee mug crashes to the floor. Sam is at his side, taking the other mug from his limp fingers.

"Dean? Hey. Hey."

Dean looks at him.

"Dean? You good?"

Dean clears his throat. "Trick question," he says.

Sam gives him this look, worry and confusion and maybe slight hysteria-

"The test. There are no wendigo under 50N that far east. Give the kid a break, will ya?"

The following week, there's a banshee keeping kids awake, and then there's a ghost in middle America, surprise surprise, and Sam apologizes when he wakes up, and he shakes his head and he looks distraught and he says things like:

I swear I'm feeling better.

I guess I'm not doing as well as we thought.

Sorry, man, I thought I had that guy.

I don't even remember getting hit.

And then he knocks on the door to Dean's bedroom and he comes in looking at the floor and everything in him says we need to talk and he gets as far as, "I think you should-" before Dean is on his feet, hand swiping through the air a firm no and he's saying, "I'm not hunting without you, Sam. That's final."

Sam looks at him like Dean is making a huge sacrifice staying with him, and that look on his face like he wishes he was anything else, not a useless hunter who passes out at the first sign of violence, not a guy who doesn't remember half the fight because he's so fragile these days and no matter how many hours he spends working out and sparring with Kevin, he's not getting better, because he just keeps getting his ass handed to him when it counts, leaving Dean with the dirty work, with the angel-

Dean can't look at him. He curses knowing this kid so well. Pushes past him. "We got a job," he growls, and it's not fair to Sam to act like he's pissed, but it's not an act, and there is someone in Sam's body he is pissed at, so -

The job's not far, just half an hour out of town, an abandoned farmhouse kids keep trying to spend the night in. These jobs make up at least half their resume, and kids never get the hint and stop going, and kids are always dumb, and kids love to act tough-

And Dean is always dumb, and Dean loves to act tough.

And when Sam startles awake this time, his gaze is on the cursed totem, hewn in half. He blinks. And Dean looks down at the shotgun in his hands, and they both look at the axe in Sam's lap, and Sam looks up at Dean, and there's a shock of suspicion, realization, horror and dread and betrayal, and he opens his mouth to try to make sense of what he now knows is true and Dean curses that Sam knows him so well, that he could just see right through acting tough, and he braces himself for impact-

But Sam drops his head, stops. Tosses the axe at Dean's feet, and when he looks up, there's no question it's Ezekiel, and then it's Sam again, smiling crookedly up at Dean and lifting his arm for a hand up, apology on his lips.

And Dean's heart, god, fuck.

"Thank God for you, man," Sam says, patting Dean's chest as he makes his way past and out, toward the car while Dean stands there in the risen dust, the shafting sunlight, the scent of salt rounds.

They're careful after that, although fuck they because there is no they, there's no Dean and Zeke. There's Zeke the asshole pacemaker and there's Sam and Dean -

But they are, they're careful. Even so, Dean can see that at some level, Sam knows something, there's sometimes just this glint of realization before it's gone, just as he wakes up at the end of the fight, that spark and then nothing again, and Dean wonders how many times he's figured it out and then had his memory of the realization erased. And just how intricate is that machinery in his little brother's head? How far into those firing neurons does Ezekiel go to ensure Sam doesn't figure it out again? How much does it burn the dick to know he isn't going far enough, Sam's too smart for him to anticipate, Sam's stupid big brain is always going to work it out.

Dean is proud and terrified.

And he starts to go through the research Sam has done on kicking out an angel, and he can see Sam's been frustrated by not getting very far, because of all the question marks scrawled everywhere. His research doesn't look anything like the mess Dean usually finds. Mess is the wrong word for it; Dean can never make sense of it but he can tell it's always organized and has a logic to it that Sam can understand.

But this? Is circular bullshit that is clearly the result of Ezekiel erasing bits of Sam's memory, so he researches the same thing twenty times without remembering his notes about it are further back in the notebook. His pages are covered with questions and notes to himself: What'd I mean by this? Wait, according to who? Huh, wait, how? Even his notes to himself are fashioned like academic annotations, written for clarity, for reference. Trying to find the connections he normally would have just known, but now can't remember. Because of Ezekiel.

Dean calms himself, and his hand hurts, and he's sure there's a dent in the little metal desk down here in the sub-basement where Sam has been doing this research, trying to keep it out of sight of the angel he thinks is in Dean's head. Oh Sammy. He opens the notebook back up to where Sam had left it, and he sorts through the notes and he organizes them, and he draws lines to connect things Sam normally would have just remembered were connected, because he can't stand to see him frustrated like this.

He checks on Sam's research more regularly after that, to see if he can clean up his work, drawing in the connections Sam might mysteriously forget he made, finding in the pages the Sam he used to know, worrying a problem, and it is painful to watch him frustrate himself, but Dean pours over the pages with his fingers anyway: Sam was here.

Because the more Zeke shows up in the middle of Sam talking, Sam sitting somewhere reading, Sam trying to enjoy a life he had earned goddammit - the more Sam is in the back seat while Zeke is behind the wheel, the more Dean misses his brother.

And then he finds black ink drawings in Sam's notebook, bare trees, skeletal landscape, a shape of a man, an entire page of spirals drawn over and over, an entire page of criss-crossing lines precise enough a headcase could have done it, and among these black ink drawings, sentences, fragments. Strange things. Poetry, maybe.

Watch for the one who says brother

You are not sleeping

It's all in a box keep it in boxes

Don't go near the thing in the center

You are not sleeping

You are not sleeping

you need to wake up wake up wake up

thisisafunkytown-

They're all scratched out, they're all cut abruptly at the ends, they're all Sam, his Sam, his real Sam trying to give himself a message before Ezekiel shuts him down.

Dean washes his face, flushes the toilet, scrubs the floor around it, barely made it. He claims food poisoning when Sam asks, Sam so trusting brings him broth and crackers and makes him go to bed, fuck fuck fuck-

He knows. Even when they aren't hunting now. Sam's figuring it out over and over again, he's aware. And whether Dean tells him about Ezekiel or not, Sam will never be able to hold onto the memory long enough to kick the angel out. He needs time, and help. He's going to rescue himself, but he needs Dean's hands to do it.

So Dean files away the circular rambling about holy oil and protection spells and repelling spells and he hopes that somehow his brain will make sense of something he's always had Sam to make sense of. And he leaves him a little note that says Keep working, kid. You got this. I'm counting on you. He signs it and he goes to beat the shit out of some guys in a bar in town so that he doesn't wake up everyone in the bunker.

Sam is out running - running - the next time Dean takes a look at the book. He's been collecting the missing pieces, the things Ezekiel is trying to cover up, because that'll be where it is. He knows it's true when there's another scrawled message from his Sammy, saying Dean, it's what's not here. For the first time in a week, Dean smiles. Damn right, Sammy.

Dean flips through the notebook. How Sam is able to put anything together with Zeke in his head, how he is able to even give Dean a message considering Ezekiel knows everything Sam knows is - it's beyond Dean. But it's right there. In black and white. A neatly numbered column titled "Complete list of summoning rituals," and Dean doesn't know just from looking, but he knows Sam. He does some research of his own, and yes. Okay.

Way to come to your own rescue Sam. There are forty seven rituals on his list, there are forty eight in the reference book sitting right next to the notebook.

And the missing one? A ritual to summon a mortal human.

And Dean understands what he has to do now, but the problem is, Zeke's a pacemaker, and Sam's a prisoner until he's well enough to be on his own.

Sam comes back from his run. Color's good. Face is stormy.

"What's wrong?" Dean asks.

"Nothin. Headache."

"That's all? You look like you wanna strangle something."

Sam leans over, hands on his knees, flushed from his run. "Yeah. I wanted to work on our little problem." His brow wrinkles in sudden pain and his hand is at his temple.

"Whoa, hey," Dean says, at his side, pulling him upright.

Sam pushes him away. "Sorry. I'll work on it later." Serious, sacred: "I promise." And he heads to his bedroom to lay down and that's Zeke, preventing Sam from kicking him out, but it's too late, dick. Your days are numbered.

Got a clock? he writes into Sam's notebook.

No. Another day, another no. It's another week, and it's been a month and a half since the hospital and the yes. But the sign comes. It comes.

It is waiting for him when he opens the door to the little room and finds that the bare overhead light bulb is already glowing, and Sam is sitting at the desk.

Sam turns, and there's betrayal in his face, there's realization, resignation, and then there's the furrowed brow and Sam closes his eyes and goes still and -

"Zeke?"

For a moment, the only sound is the static buzz of old electricity. And then:

"Dean-" And it's a rush a breathless plea it's Sammy and Dean is at his side before he even registers that this is Sam, fighting.

"Sam? Are you-"

"I'm fine. I'll be fine."

"You sure? Because if you aren't-"

Sam's fingers close on Dean's sleeve, dig in, he's breathing through and he's calming himself and he says, "I got him. We gotta move."

In the expansive grounds outside the bunker, Kevin helps set up the summoning circle while Sam sits in the grass ten feet away in a ring of holy oil, focused on keeping control. Dean's got Sam's notes and charts and he's trying not to watch Sam for signs he's not well enough yet, for signs he's just trying to die again, just trying to get free of a parasite even if it means his death. Sam's fighting harder than he had at Stull, but he was on demon blood then, and now, under all that angel juice, Sam is possibly barely functional.

But Sam has asked him - you have asked me so many times to trust in you.

When the flames go up around him, Sam startles, stares at the flames like this wasn't his idea in the first place, like he's trapped. The roar of the holy fire drowns the sound of Sam's breathing, but Dean watches his shoulders move, watches his chest fill and fall so fast he worries Sam might pass out, and all the lore says cohabitating minds mingle when one of them is unconscious, and it's too great a risk, so hang on little brother, just hold on.

Kevin finishes the summoning spell moments later, the final word, the final component - a lock of Sam's hair - and a shriek from the flames and the smoke and the light and the smell of burning sage-

And Sam appears in the center of Kevin's circle, curled onto his side, one hand braced on the ground, and he's coughing and he's groaning and he's pale and he sits up to look into the flames, mouth pressed into an angry grim line. In holy fire, a blue light, fighting upward, trapped.

It takes both Kevin and Dean to help him back, but only after he's fought them, only after he's stumbled to the ground and skinned his knees, only after his will has been broken by his own body. He gives away whatever dignity he had left and allows them under each arm.

It's a full day before he can even look at Dean, but when he does, it's to say "Why? How?"

And they sit at the table and Dean hands him a beer he doesn't touch and he tells him. About the shady permission slip. About the decision to keep the secret. "He said as soon as you knew, you could push him out."

Sam grits his teeth. "He lied."

"I figured that out."

And Sam tells him, or tells himself like he's reciting, like he's making sure he'll remember, all about the place he went when Ezekiel took over. How for the last couple of weeks he'd felt better enough that he wasn't out during those times something else took control of his body, but instead was like any other possessed person, stuffed down into himself, into the dark void of his own mind, and Dean remembers skeletal trees and dark figures and watch for the one who says brother and don't go near the thing in the center. But Sam doesn't go into those details, and Dean doesn't ask. Sam tells him he remembered it only as a dream when he was allowed to walk around, for a few seconds he knew the truth and then it was just gone.

Now he remembers everything.

"But you're healed," Dean says. "It worked."

Sam looks at him. "Everything," he says again. He remembers everything. He remembers being ready to go with Death. "Why would you do that? Dean."

"I can't. I couldn't. I couldn't let you go out like that-"

"Like what? In my sleep? At peace? On my own terms, for once-"

"I couldn't let you go out at all, Sam!"

Sam nods, eyes glassed, little wry smile. "Right. Listen. I get it. I'm your responsibility. You'd do anything. I'd do anything for you too. But this-"

"It wasn't that," Dean says. At Sam's look, he concedes: "Okay, it was part that, but Sam. You deserve this. A life. A home here. Look at what we've got! Charlie's coming over next week for a cookout. Kevin's doing tests you made up for him, hanging papers with little As on them on the fridge like a sarcastic little brat. We have family, man. And you deserve to enjoy that."

"Deserve-" Sam twists it out of his mouth like it's foul, and Dean cuts him off.

"Yeah. Sam. You do. Listen, kid. What I said in that church-"

"Yeah. Dean. I get it. Brother blah blah, no matter what terrible crap I pull, no matter how much I fail you, you're always gonna be there to drag my bacon out of the fire-"

"Except I wasn't always there, Sam." It's out before he's even engaged his brain. "I wasn't, and I blamed you for crap you had no way of knowin' the truth about, and I just rolled over and let you shoulder the apocalypse and the Lucifer thing, and- Look. The list is like a mile long and you can add this to it if you want to. I can't ever apologize enough for any of it, and I don't expect you to forgive me, Sam. I'm human and I was scared and I screwed up tricking you into saying yes to that angel, but god if I hadn't, you'd never be able to share this life I wanna make here. It wouldn't even be worth trying."

Dean thinks it's a pretty good speech. But Sam is just watching him, unconvinced.

Dean drinks his beer. "You know, I seem to remember you giving me this speech a few months ago. Remember that? At the-"

"Cassity Ranch," Sam says, subdued. "Yeah. The difference being, I was right about you."

"Meaning I'm wrong about you?"

"You've always been the 'righteous man,' Dean. I'm just the screw-up, forever trying to make up for what I've done." He's gruff and petulant, he's felt this way for a while, it's coming out because he's tired, because he's clearly not feeling as well as he was when Ezekiel was riding shotgun, pale and drawn and unhappy, stressed to the point of teenaged melodrama.

Forgivable. This time.

"Yeah? Ya think? Cuz I think that's bullshit. I think you think all this heroic crap you've done is penance for something, when it's really just you being a goddamned badass. Shift it all into the credit column, Sammy. You've never been paying back a debt, forget whatever crap I said to you. I'm an asshole."

Sam tilts his head, conceding the last with raised brows and a little nod.

"Tell ya what. To get started on my massive list of shit to make up for, we can get really drunk and talk about our feelings, it'll be great."

Sam laughs a little. Looks down at the table. He's always been way too forgiving. He's had more than his fair share of choices between terrible and even worse. He's always seen the grey where Dean's been black and white. That can only work in Dean's favor here. But Sam's quiet, and this is going to take more than a speech or two.

"Listen, Sam. I don't have any right to try to say this and think it'll mean something to you, but. I'm proud of ya, kid. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't figured this out. I don't know how you do half the crap you do, while the world is just crashing down around you." He watches Sam play with the label on his beer, smiles at how self-conscious Sam is under just this little bit of praise. He deserves more than this bunker and this tiny little family they've knit together out of scraps.

"Dean-" he says, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. Dean gets it, but certain things need to be said.

"Thank god for you, Sammy."

It's a long moment Sam takes to respond, it's a long terrible silence, and Dean thinks even when Sam looks back up, he doesn't really buy it, he hasn't totally forgiven Dean, but he looks like he might start to, now that he has his body back, his mind back, his freedom back. And when he rolls his eyes and picks up his beer, Dean knows he has his brother back.