Most of us grow up on fairy tales. The knight slays the dragon, rescues the princess, and lives happily ever after. If you're new, you might have that in your head as an idea of what hunting is, and it can be. For some people. Just not most of us.

Sometimes, the dragon can only be killed by a silver sword, but the knight brought bronze, so he gets roasted alive in his armor. Sometimes the princess was eaten days before. Sometimes there's not even a dragon to begin with, just somebody who's a perfect vanilla human and gets off on kidnapping princesses, and the knight's not equipped to deal with that. Sometimes the princess and the dragon are the same person.

But even if everything goes off without a hitch, dragon dead, princess safe, the princess goes home and lives happily ever after with somebody else, because there are a thousand other dragons out there, and graveyards full of dead princesses no one got there in time for, and the knight can't stand that.

You don't have to live like that. You can always decide you're done after so long, and walk away. Settle down. Start a business, raise a family, work support for the rest of us or cut yourself completely out of the life. Nobody would ever blame you for that.

For most of us, though, there is no happy ending for hunters. The best we can hope for is that the people we save get one.

- "Welcome to Hunting," Sam Winchester

Dean was almost to the door when Bobby came rolling out of his office, wheels bumping over the floorboards.

"You going outside?"

"Yeah."

Bobby grunted. "Just went out this morning, didn't you?"

"Been a few hours." Dean spread his hands, and Bobby snorted, shaking his head.

"Ain't nothing changed since you were yea high," he stated, holding a hand level with his hip. "Bundle up. Fall's on the way."

"Whatever you say, Mom."

Bobby scowled. "Watch it, boy. Just 'cause you're a few thousand years older than me don't mean I ain't your daddy."

Dean's eyes flicked black. Probably because it was harder to see him rolling them that way. Bobby must have caught it anyway, though, because he scowled even harder.

"Just don't go past the wards." He went to roll himself back in among the haphazard stacks of books. "And if you see the kid, tell him he better have those damn dogs tuckered out by tonight. Don't want 'em keeping everybody up again."

Dean reached for the walking stick leaning against the overburdened coat rack.

"I don't need it."

Dean glanced over his shoulder, eyes sweeping clear.

"This is a good day for me."

"Uh huh," Dean agreed, "and that's why we're not taking the wheelchair."

He tossed the stick. Sam caught it, easily. Dean smiled at him and Sam, even though he was annoyed in a weird, warm kind of way, smiled back.

"Okay, old man, you got your cane." Dean grabbed a little weather radio off the rack where it was hanging by a woven strap, then opened the door and gestured Sam out. "Let's go."

"It's a walking stick."

"Sure," Dean said agreeably.

Bobby had been right: there was a bite to the sea-fresh air today, as they stepped off the back porch and into the salt grass. But that was to be expected in mid-September, especially along the northern coast of Maine. Sam closed his eyes in simple pleasure as the wind scoured his shaggy hair back off his face. Even his nose starting to run was almost nice.

Static hissed next to him, from close enough to steady him if he stumbled, as Dean clk-clk-clked the telescoping antenna out to its full length and started fiddling with the knobs.

"You're never gonna get a classic rock station on that thing."

"Shut up, Marconi. Like you know so much about radios."

They walked along the line where sand feathered in to soil, and the pale beach scooped out from under the wiry grass and scrub and smooth rocks. Salt laced the air sharp and clean. Sam leaned heavily on his stick.

His old cane had been broken, when Dean went back to the cabin. Somehow snapped in brutal, jagged halves. Dean had made this one himself, bark stripped and wood sanded, quaking aspen, twisted and knotty and thin. It could take Sam's full weight without bending. It branched up at the top, only the knobby, polished bases left, looking like a stunted antler.

"You've sure been having a lotta good days recently," Dean commented as they walked. He'd managed to get a fuzzy weather station on the radio.

" - much milder than last year's summer, which saw record hurricane and tornado seasons along the East - "

Sam glanced back over his shoulder at the house to see how far they'd come, was pleasantly surprised. "Uh huh."

It was the truth. He was grateful to have the walking stick, even though he wouldn't tell Dean, and there was a whisper of pull and catch deep down at the tails of his lungs with every breath, but overall, he felt mostly whole. Stable. Like he was coming back together. It was better than he'd ever expected to feel ever again.

"Been a couple months since you last brought up any blood, right?"

"Yep," Sam agreed proudly, "not since July. No nosebleeds, either."

"Eyebleeds, earbleeds?" Dean switched to another station, this one news.

" - abrupt end to the mysterious cattle mutilations occurring across the - "

"No bleeding from any hole." Which Dean ought to know, considering the way Sam had to practically pry him off with a crowbar to get any alone time. Not that he was complaining. Much.

"Gonna be able to go running again soon." Dean playfully jostled Sam from one side, catching him with a telekinetic touch from the other. Sam laughed.

"Yeah." His mind went, frustratingly, to his left leg, even though it'd been healed for almost eighteen months and wasn't the issue here. "I wish."

They kept walking, slowly, wind gusting off the rolling gray-blue water to one side and grass ruffling on the other. Sand crunched under Sam's boots, and the butt of his walking stick. Dean kept messing with the radio, static buzzing, little snatches of words and conversation coming out.

" - President Obama - "

" - murder rate dropping - "

" - year's lobster harvest - "

He must've been using telekinesis to do it, because one of his hands was firmly in Sam's, the other swinging the radio by the strap.

"Y'know," Dean mentioned after a little while, forced casualness dripping off the word as the radio's volume spun down into nothing, "Cas swung by while you were in the shower."

"What?" Sam looked at him. "Why the hell didn't you come get me?"

"Well, you've been making such a big damn deal about showering on your own for so long now, I didn't wanna intrude on the sanctity of your bathroom time." Dean looked back, eyebrows raised. "Seriously, though. He didn't stay long, and you know he'll be back around again soon."

"Yeah." Sam glanced up at the sky. Blue. Same color as it'd been over the ocean down in Texas, during the winter, but with a different feel to it. White clouds scudding, some with gray lowlights. "Wish he'd stay."

Dean grunted, then took a while to say anything else. His fingers hooked a little more securely into the spaces between Sam's.

"Can't blame him for wanting to stay on the move. Gotta keep an eye out for new Messiahs, now the last one wound up full of demon blood and on low-battery mode."

Sam ignored the way Dean eyed him. "How's he doing, anyway? Did he say?"

"He's okay." Dean shrugged. "I mean, he's looking pretty good, for once."

"You think he's getting back on his feet, then?"

"Oh, yeah. He really wrung himself out helping me glue you back together, and of course he was already pretty Section Eight even before that, with what Zachariah did to him, but - "

"H-has he heard anything about Zachariah?" Sam interrupted. "Or any of the others that I…"

Dean let him trail off before he spoke. He moved closer to him, matched his steps with a bow-legged swagger.

"You know they're choking up on his connection to Heaven, and nobody's talking to him. Far as he knows, they've still only turned up the same ones as last time. Zachariah, Akobel, Annanel...all those, still missing." Dean glanced at Sam, then sighed. "Jesus, Sam, don't do this."

"I'm not - I don't feel guilty," Sam protested.

"Uh huh."

"I don't."

"Well. Anyway." Dean cleared his throat. "Cas is fine. Wings ain't clipped by any means. Seraphs are tough little bastards, trust me."

Sam was silent again for a little while, trying to revel in the burn in his whole, untorn muscles. He was starting to get sort of tired, but didn't say anything.

He knew what he wanted to ask next. Just wasn't sure if he really ought to bring it up, considering it rested on some of the shakiest ground Dean had. It wasn't as shaky as it used to be, though, some of the hidden caverns erased when Sam yanked the knotted mess of his allegiances out of him, and he'd like to think he was helping Dean rebuild the rest.

"Did he say anything else about Alastair?"

Dean didn't answer right away. The radio ratcheted back up in a burst of words Sam couldn't even hope to catch, then abruptly died again.

"Just the same. Still nothing. But…" He looked at Sam. "I know - knew him, man, and no matter what he was, if he couldn't get back to Hell, he would've drug a trail of destruction a mile wide behind him. Fact it's been so hard for us to find that just makes me worry more."

Sam remembered getting the news Alastair had turned up in a Brazilian morgue, corpse riddled with insect bites, dehydration, starvation, infection. He remembered the look on Dean's face, relief and fury and concern at how many months Alastair had been alive and unaccounted for. He remembered his own foreboding, because he was still feeling it now.

"I don't like it, either," he agreed. Dean exhaled loudly through his nose.

"Well, not super useful to keep talking about it." He started tugging Sam towards a small outcropping that overlooked the ocean, knotted grass on top and a squat white cliff underneath. One of their favorite spots. "C'mon. You're tired."

Sam sighed, but hiked up, Dean towing him. Soon as he could sit down on one of the boulders up there, he did, careful to control his breathing so he wouldn't wheeze. Just being able to do that, the climbing and the breathing, having that much say in what his body did, felt wildly good.

"Remember that whole 'not lying to each other' thing we're doing now?" Dean asked as he sat down next to Sam, side and back pressed against him. Sam rolled his eyes.

"Fine. I needed a break."

Sam's hands and face were cold. He leaned against Dean, feeling his warmth and smelling his scent as he started in on the radio again. The sulfur was fading. Only by degrees, but it'd shocked Sam when he first noticed. His real smell was dusky-sweet, leather and vanilla, with a biting tang of metal underneath. Still a demon. Just no longer marked by Hell.

" - ictims all had their hearts - "

"Werewolf." Dean grunted as he turned the volume up.

"Or skinwalker." Sam mentally counted backwards to the last full moon as he made a note of where the broadcast was coming from. "Probably a werewolf. I'll call Jo and Garth, let 'em know. Charlie's still busy with that djinn thing."

"More and more monster attacks, recently."

"Yeah."

The wind gusted hard up over the edge of the outcropping. Tears sprouted, burning hot, in Sam's eyes. Dean pointed out towards the furthest wards, where there were tidepools in the rock.

"That Vaughn?"

Sam looked, saw red hair, a blue jacket, two canine shapes. Before he could say anything, Dean was moving to stand up.

"Is he fucking wading?" he demanded incredulously.

"It's fine."

"It's forty degrees out! He's gonna catch pneumonia!"

"Dean, it's fine. He's fine." Sam grabbed a handful of Dean's flannel, previously his, and tugged him back down. "We'll go get him in a minute, but it's not gonna kill him."

"Yeah, okay, fine." Dean muttered something Sam didn't quite catch, but sounded a lot like "not going back to Purgatory for his skinny, freckled ass a second time."

Sam rolled his eyes again, leaned more firmly against Dean. He reached blindly for his hand, felt calluses lock onto the jagged, puffy scar running across his palm a second later. He squeezed, and Dean squeezed back.

"You thought at all about his offer?" Dean asked. The radio was back on static, a low fizz under the wind and the sound of the water.

"What, to illustrate my books?" Dean had offered to help, too. "Yeah. Even if I don't take him up on it...might be a good idea to start that again. The researching, the publishing." Sam grimaced, thinking about it. "Might be a good way to start reaching out to everybody. Considering how many of 'em are pretty much 'shoot on sight' with me. Us. Gotta...get the ones who'll listen to a place where I can explain."

Dean didn't answer, because tinny, scratchy music had finally started floating out of the radio. He whooped, throwing his arms up, and twisted so that Sam could see him grinning wildly with black eyes. Sam laughed, giving him the high five he was looking for when he raised a hand. He decided not to point out that the strains filtering out of the tiny speakers were a whole lot more Today's Top 40 than Rock'n'Roll Oldies. It was something.

Dean positioned the radio carefully on the bolder between them, antenna angled just so, and turned the volume up. He seemed content enough with the throbbing bass beat. Sam was thinking he hadn't registered what he'd said as he settled back down, one shoulder blade all but stitched to Sam's, and was about to repeat it when Dean spoke.

"Sure, you could do that," he agreed, voice perfectly casual. Sam glanced at him, saw a slice of black eye swirled glossy with cloud reflections. "Apologize to all the people who tried to kill you. Hurled every kinda shit in the book at you for doing what needed to be done. Think you're headed straight for the Hell you boarded up 'cause of who you like to stick your dick in. And just keep on trying to bail their dumb asses out."

Sam was half-smirking as Dean talked. It hurt on his face, and not just because of the cold.

"Or?" he prompted when Dean didn't offer an alternative.

"Hang on a second." Dean was quiet, one leg jiggling up and down. Pebbles stacked themselves over by the cliff's edge. "I've been thinking about it for a while, but...feels like now might be a good time for us to clear out. Get our own place."

"What d'you mean?" The space between Sam's eyebrows creased.

"You, me, the kid. I guess he could stay with Bobby, but I'm pretty sure he's gonna wanna come with you."

"Think he might like you better these days, honestly."

"Not that living with my dad and feeling like I'm fourteen again isn't totally awesome," Dean went on, like Sam hadn't spoken, "but I'd kinda like to fuck you straight through the damn wall without worrying about him hearing."

Sam's face went hot under the chill.

"You're doing good enough now you don't need Bobby and Bela around to take care of you. I can handle it." He nudged Sam, and flashed him a grin. "C'mon. Think about it. Our own place. Someplace in the mountains. Or on the beach, but, like, a warm one...Texas?"

Sam laughed. "Gonna have to be someplace the car can get to."

"Well, obviously." Dean's grin widened. Sam's chest was full of heat and light, the good kind of both.

"What would we do there?" he asked. "The three of us, in our own place. Besides you apparently...cock-thrusting me through walls every time we have sex; the roof's gonna fall down on the first day." Dean laughed. "Do research? Help out all the people you hate and that hate us back?" He doubted that was it.

"No." Dean shook his head. "We're gonna ward it up real good, so we got someplace safe to cool our heels and get in some R and R. 'Cause you need a home, you deserve one. Vaughn, too. Then...we're gonna do what I'm thinking we were all three meant to do." He squeezed Sam's hand, tight and hard on the long, thin bones. "Save people. Hunt things. Make a family business out of it."

Sam stared at him. When he didn't say anything, Dean went on. "Cas can even roost there. Y'know, when he's ready."

"A-are you...sure about that?" Sam asked tentatively.

"Yeah, why the hell not. I'll build him a chicken coop or whatever out back."

"No, no, not that. Me. Hunting. You're sure?"

"'Course I'm sure," Dean replied. "Can happen in a couple months even, probably. What with you being all…" He did a single jazz hand. "Jesus Christ Superstar."

Sam snorted. "I can't even bend spoons since the Trials."

"Sure," Dean allowed, "but you lived through those Trials." He looked at Sam. "You weren't supposed to. You lived through burning three-quarters of your soul off, too. And not only all that, you're healing from it. Fast."

"You and Cas had a hell of a lot more to do with that than I did," Sam pointed out. Dean shook his head.

"Not as much as you seem to think."

Sam's skepticism must have shown on his face, because Dean shrugged.

"All I'm saying is it seems pretty Messianic to me, but what do I know. I'm just a Knight of Hell."

"Not of Hell," Sam said softly, and squeezed his hand. "Not anymore."

Dean regarded him, then got up, moving around to stand in front of him as the radio played behind him. The song had changed. Sam kind of liked it, kind of felt like the singer sounded familiar. Dean put both hands on his shoulders and looked down at him.

"You were sick," he told him. "But now you're well again. And there's work to do."

Sam looked up at Dean, and swallowed.

"But d'you wanna do that work?" he asked him. "Be honest. Because you never did before. You just wanted to get out, get away from all of it."

"I don't know I can," Dean responded. "Not anymore. And let's say I could." He fixed Sam with eyes as deep and clear as jade, pupils with drifting borders. "You can't. And I'm never going anywhere without you. You wanna do this, fulfill your purpose or whatever, and my purpose? It's staying with you."

Sam took a deep breath. "You're wrong."

Dean cocked his head. He must have picked that up from Castiel.

"About my purpose." Sam reached into the pocket of his heavy coat. His fingers were entirely numb, but he still found and felt every detail on the bronze and coiled leather he'd been carrying around with him every single day. Just waiting for everything to click into place, worried it hadn't yet, worried it never would.

He shouldn't have worried, knowing Dean, knowing himself, knowing the two of them when they were at their best together. Knowing they carried shared blood in their veins, now, and shared pain in their bones.

"Then what is it?" Dean asked.

"We got the same one," Sam said, and pulled out the amulet.

Dean didn't ask if he was sure. He must have been able to feel that he was. He closed his eyes and bowed his head as Sam draped the cord around his neck, slotting it between the pale bumps of two vertebrae. Sam squeezed the pendant before he let it rest against Dean's breastbone. When Dean straightened back up, he looked down at it with black eyes, surprise briefly flashing through the space around them before he looked at Sam again. He smiled, leaned down, and they kissed, his warmth flowing into Sam, Sam's fingers locking themselves stiffly into the short hair on the back of Dean's head, reveling in the miracle flavor of a kind of demon that'd never existed before and never would again.

The music had ended, and the DJ was talking, all but drowned out by the wind.

"...ue Wilson, exploding back onto the scene after years of...new hit single, featuring stripped-down vocals and classic...says he feels like he's got a new lease on life, and he's a new...finally cleared up what the lyrics mean, ending weeks of debate, saying they're deeply personal to...intended it to be about a man in love with a dem…"

"You were right about one thing, though," Sam told Dean, when they broke, lips wet and hot with the imprint of each other's mouths. "We got work to do."