Chapter 2.

Sam wakes to the same bright, fresh sunshine that he had the previous morning. He rubs his eyes and blinks up the window behind the couch he was sleeping on. So it was real...he hadn't dreamed it, Lucifer hadn't conjured it up to torture him in a whole new way. He rubs his eyes roughly, adding just a little pain, just enough to ground him and shake him from this If was a dream.

He sighs and lets his body relax into the couch again with his hands still over his eyes when this realty doesn't tremble and melt into the cage. Through the stripes of light his fingers let fall over his eyes Sam accustoms himself to the brightness slowly, the burning of sleepiness slowly fading away. Sounds of life around him finally registering.

Footsteps, the popping and sizzling of bacon...the smell. God, the smell, Sam never thought he'd ever love smell of frying fat so much. He can hear the knocking of eggs against the edge of a bowl until the cracking sound when the shell breaks open. Listens as Bobby whisks them together pausing to throw salt and pepper into the mix.

He goes still, his very heart goes still, as another pair of footsteps calmly pad down the hall and come closer ending with the scraping of a chair being pulled back from the table across the kitchen floor. He hears the wood creak as weight falls into the seat, and the huff of breath that escapes as the person slouches down into the chair, rubbing his eyes and yawning, still not quite awake...

Just like Sam knew he did. Just like Sam had watched him wake thousands of thousands of times.

"Mornin' Dean." He hears Bobby grunt.

"Mornin' Bobby." And it's muttered and soft, grating and deep...but Sam would know it anywhere. The depth and gravel is just like Sam remembers. The softness of the tone, the gentle rumble that Sam feels all the way in the living room. He closes his eyes and lets it wash over him along with all the memories of safety and happiness he ever had.

It makes his soul, his very foundation groan in relief and a sense of completion and belonging...Dean.

He's up before he knows what he's doing and standing in the kitchen doorway, eyes locked on Dean's form sitting at the table. The screen door provides light around the older Winchester's sharp profile and Sam just stands there swallowing, feasting his eyes on the sight of his big brother alive and well...literally one step away.

"Dean." He breathes out, thankful and blinking against tears.

Dean's head jerks towards his voice. Wide green eyes landing on the familiar face. Long cheek bones, fox like slanted eyes sparkling with warmth and intelligence, long shaggy hair, soft and tucked behind his ears. It's a sight painfully familiar to Dean. They stare at each other for a silent moment, Sam frozen and Dean obviously struggling to understand the situation.

Dean's fingers wrap surely around the handle of a knife on the table and he lunges for his brother. Sam is still too lost in the moment his eyes dazedly fixed on Dean's face, Bobby catches Dean's wrist and pushes him backwards with all his might, a hand on his chest stepping between the two brothers.

"Dean!" He says calmly straight into his face, "It's him, it's really Sam...I already tested him, he's not a demon or a shifter." He grunts as Dean lunges for Sam again, and Bobby throws a glare at Sam who's still trying to approach.

"Back off Sam, he will kill you." He pushes back against Dean, the hunter grunts as he falls back into his chair and Bobby presses both hands on his chest keeping him down.

"Dean." He speaks evenly, "You're not going to kill you're brother. Now calm the hell down."

Dean goes eerily still under Bobby. His eyes glaring up at the older hunter, eyes that weren't cold, but were void of something...something Sam had always expected to find there...something that was in essence Dean. What is there, what Sam can recognize with painful clarity, because he's seen it in the mirror, felt it cutting in his heart.

Dean's eyes are filled with pain. Soul deep, aching pain. Loneliness that was eating him inside out...fear and confusion pulling him apart. It breaks Sam's heart. What had their decision to put the world before themselves done to them? It was time to see.

Dean's eyes leave Bobby's face and jump to Sam's as the younger Winchester approaches slowly. Bobby eases away from Dean as he doesn't fight anymore, he steps away to give the brother's their space.

"Dean, it's me." Sam says, voice oddly husky, he surprised to feel tears pricking in his eyes. His brother stays silent and Sam swallows thickly. He doesn't know why but he feels like these are the words he needs to speak to Dean...the pure agony he'd read in his brother's clear eyes still rippling pain through himself.

"I am so sorry I left you, I'm so sorry it took me so long to come back." He places a hand on Dean's forearm, fingers wrapping around it, warm flesh and muscle reassuring Sam, making his soul sigh in relief...Dean, here, alive and real.

Dean's eyes are wide and fixed on his younger brother's face, and not a single sound escapes him as he slowly lifts up his hand and Sam is frozen as his brother's rough fingertips slide gently over his cheek bones. Spreading the tears, letting Sam feel cool air against wet skin.

They blink at each other for one moment with terrible clarity. The ache and the torture open and shared between them. Sam catching a glimpse of the twisted, broken insides of the man his brother has become. Dean watches more tears fall from Sam's eyes, run down his cheeks and drop from his chin to absorb into Dean's jeans.

Suddenly the elder Winchester flinches, wrenching his arm from Sam's grasp, he pushes Sam out of the way and walks out of the room. Sam stands there still and staring at the chair his brother had just been sitting in, had just been there and looking at him, letting him in...

He jumps with the sound of the front opening and shutting...he and Bobby look at each other in drowning silence. Emptiness and pain more than anything he'd every experienced in the cage fills him and spreads through his insides like gangrene.

. . .

Sam finds Dean sitting on the dry rotted couch under the lean-to next to the workshop. It'd been there for years, it was disgusting but Sam can remember the two of them hanging out there him doing homework and Dean cleaning guns and running through hard rock radio stations. Sometimes dozing off to a crackling country station and making Sam numb and fuzzy with the security of his slow breaths.

The morning is warming up, the ground still wet with dew and the air clear and fresh with spring. In the over grown weeds around all the junkers and the back of the yard wild flowers bloom and bugs and bees leave their quiet hum as they visit the sweet buds. The sky is huge and blue, clouds like the softest pillows filling it and letting Sam feel that glorious liberty and the ability to actually breathe.

He makes his way over to Dean slowly, dragging his boots in the gravel as he thinks of what he should say. He brother sits with his arms wrapped around his stomach, his eyes fixed on something over his left shoulder. Brightest green half strange to Sam with the half-distracted expression in them.

Sam follows his stare searching for what might have his brother's attention but sees nothing but more weeds and rusting vehicle parts. He sighs deeply coming to a stop standing to the right side of Dean next to the couch. He puts his hands in the pockets of his jacket and silence lays between them almost comforting...almost like the way it used to.

Except Sam can see Dean's throat hitch and his breath speed up, his eyes still fixed on the empty overgrown area of land to their left. Where was Dean right now? What was he seeing? What added hell was he being put through? Sam watches as Dean's chest rises faster and faster his fingers fisting in his own jacket.

The obvious sorrow and panic written all over his older sibling's face is too much for Sam to bear, he steps forward once. "Dean." He says softly and watches as his brother simply shivers,

"Dean!" He calls a little louder and the older hunter jumps. His fingers pull on the sides of his coat as he blinks his eyes rapidly and looks around bewilderedly jumping at finding Sam to his right standing there calmly, looking back to his left like he expected something to be there.

"It's just me." Sam says, hands spread out non threateningly. The look on Dean's face isn't comforted, the flashes of emotion, fear and confusion, disappear as Dean closes himself off. Shutting Sam out and leaving rejection smarting intensely in Sam's heart. He rubs his hands together as he comes closer to Dean and his brother shifts uncomfortably on the couch.

"Look," Sam starts, voice gentle. "I know this is a lot to take in. But it's me, it really is...I swear. I'm here."

Dean makes no response but his right hand fists tightly, knuckles going white.

"You don't feel like talking, I get that, you were always that way. But please Dean, don't shut me out, don't make me live without you..." Sam gives self deprecating laugh, "Even though that's exactly what I made you do."

Dean wraps his arms around himself tighter, eyes closing momentarily, a sigh shuddering in his chest.

Sam swallows around the anger at himself, and Dean, swallows down the pain and the way he wants to scream at Dean and shake him until his eyes focus on his little brother's face and just says 'hey' just lets Sam know, I've been aching with missing you too.

"I know what you're thinking." Sam says softly, and Dean tenses. "You're thinking I'm going to be gone tomorrow, you're thinking you're just imagining me...well I'm not going anywhere Dean, and I'm going to keep annoying you and talking to you until you acknowledge me...so please Dean, believe, believe this is real. Believe in me..."

The silence is deafening and Dean's shoulders turned slightly away from him while his body subtly rocks with nervousness slaps Sam in the face like defeat.

. . .

Cas has slowly gotten to know the new version of his best friend. Of the best man he knew. He's learned this new Dean calls out to him unconsciously when the emotions he couldn't control or understand swept down on him like a massive flood. And when Dean reached out to him all those feeling shared between them in a violent, dark river.

At first Cas had been confused and angered by Dean's behavior. But after Bobby asked him to fix what was broken and Cas peered inside the mind of the righteous man...he shuddered at the memory of it. An ocean of blackness, raging and flashing of Sam's face, of the fall, of the moments when he took Sam's and Lucifer's blows willingly.

The moments when they were children and Dean indelibly took on the responsibility of Sam...not only of his safety but of his very happiness. That was the world Castiel found Dean was lost in. Segments of his life let loose into his present reminding him and locking him in the past. And no matter how much Cas tried to mend the pieces together Sam's face, innocently blank while falling falling falling into the darkness of hell undoes it all in one millisecond.

And Dean goes back to being a quiet, scared of himself, broken hunter—brother.

That's what Cas sees mostly. Dean is so scared of himself. He's so ashamed and terrified of the choices he's made and the consequences. And Sam not being there to keep him afloat, to assure him it had all been worth it, for Sam, as long as Sam was alive, Sam was "happy". Now Sam's absence was just a constant reminder that everything Dean had ever done, he'd ever sacrificed for, in his mind, was worthless.

So often as he can when Dean's mind calls to Cas and the angel can feel his terror and confusion and pain over their bond Cas comes flying to his best friend's side. They've spent long hours in silence simply sitting side by side, Cas has spent many a night by Dean's bedside, fingers pressed to his temple seeing those mind numbing, soul crushing last moments of Sam Winchester's life that played in a loop through the elder Winchester's mind.

So when Cas answers to Dean's mental terror stricken scream the last thing he expected to see was the younger Winchester by his side, and alive and whole and very real. The angel's often wistful theory that if Sam came back Dean would be healed of his illness, of his brokenness was immediately crushed.

Whether it was the fear of losing him again, or the fear of being disappointed if Sam wasn't real the righteous man wouldn't open himself, couldn't let all his broken insides come rushing out, either way nothing was resolved and Dean was shattering even more.

...tbc

REVIEW!? ;);)

...yes I'm trash, it took me how many months to write 2,000 words?