Happy Sunday, we can officially say season 14 starts this week! Following the latest trailer and scene that got put out, it got me thinking, and this little piece popped up. It's more introspective than I'm used to writing, so any sort of feedback on if it worked or not would be greatly appreciated if you could spare a few seconds!

I don't own Supernatural, spoilers for 13x23, speculative somewhat for 14x01, but nothing major.

It's been three weeks. Twenty-one days, five hundred four hours, and somewhere around thirty thousand minutes. Sam doesn't know the seconds, he hasn't gotten there yet. It's how long Dean's been gone, four more days than it had been when Sam had left for Atlanta. It had been a thin lead in the first place, but at that point, thin worked. Anything worked. Especially if it were an excuse to get out of the bunker and feel like he was doing something other than just typing at a computer praying for Michael to slip up somewhere. Anywhere.

But there was no such luck, as was the Winchester way. Michael stayed hidden, the woman he talked to was two cats short of crazy, and he was at a loss. There was nothing to go on, nothing at all.

He takes the backroads to get to and from Kansas, stopping midway through the seventeen-hour drive that Dean could've done in fourteen because he still needed sleep, and he'd be any good to anyone else let alone Dean if he was found wrapped around a barrier at four in the morning.

So he had parked the smaller, newer, more eco-friendly car that lacked the muscle, the memories, and the deep, powerful engine outside a motel where he still asked for two beds because it was so ingrained in him that he didn't realize what he'd done at first. Not until he stood in the doorway looking at the two beds with only one duffle in his hands.

He sleeps, but he doesn't rest, he hasn't in three weeks anyways, not with his home filled with unfamiliar people, none of them being his brother. Not that it's anything against the hunters from the apocalypse world, they're doing their best, they're being respectful, but it's a lot of people to have in what he had started considering their home, especially after having it being practically just him and Dean and Cas for the past five years, and mom for part of the last two.

That's also part of the reason for the motel, and why he sleeps an extra hour. He'd missed the space beyond his own room, the ability to walk out and not really be present until he'd had coffee or adjusted. Now, whenever he wakes, he has to be ready to go before the door to his room opens and he steps out, sometimes even before that if someone thinks they've found something. People expect something out of him, whether they say it or not, and he has to be there to at least try to deliver.

And it's wearing on him. Mom can tell, Cas can tell, Jack can tell, but they say nothing explicit, and Sam won't bring it up. He's pushing and he's present and he needs to get Dean back, and that's about all he can do.

And he has to get to Dean first, before anyone else, no question about it.

Nothing about the apocalypse world hunters, he doesn't blame them, but if it comes down to saving Dean or killing Michael, he knows which one they'll choose. Hell, he knows which one he'd choose if Michael weren't carting around his brother like some bullet proof vest. How many innocent vessels have he and his brother dispatched throughout the years without a second thought? So of course it's another one of the worst archangels that has to take the one vessel Sam can't live without.

He eventually gets up, checks the time, makes the bed, and heads back out to the too-small car that they so seldom use he was surprised it even turned on when he took it out. Two hours in, he puts on the radio to a rock station, just out of habit. When Asia starts playing fifteen minutes later, he flicks it off, pulls to the side of the road to check to make sure it's actually Thursday and that Dean is still alive, just possessed, there's a difference between that and being dead, and gets back on the road.

The radio stays off for the rest of the trip back home.

He relays what happened in Atlanta to Mary, fills in a few expectant hunters with the same information, and excuses himself to his room. Hunters are milling around in the map room, the hallways, the extra rooms, the kitchen, talking, smiling, going over pieces of paper and computer screens. It's a sharp contrast to how the bunker normally is. All the noise covers up the slight hum of electricity, or the click when the air turns on and off, minuscule sounds he's learned to expect, live with, and find comfort in. Even with the door closed, it isn't exactly private, not in the way it was before. Voices still filter in through the walls, unfamiliar boot-steps sound outside the door. Sam thought after three weeks he'd get more used to it, and he's still waiting for it to kick in.

He puts his stuff back where it belongs and just…stops. He's not sure where to go next, he realizes. Maybe someone else has found a lead, found something at least, he should go out and check since his own search turned up nothing. But not now, he needs time, time Dean and Michael's victims don't have. Sam's eyes dart to his laptop, he could always just work in the room and say he got distracted.

He doesn't want to go back outside, that's what it boils down to. He doesn't want to plaster on another reassuring smile for the benefit of everyone but himself and say 'we'll find him, of course we will, we just need to keep looking'. His slight admission of that to Mary was one of the firsts in a growing crack in the wall of optimism and false hope he's had up protecting his fear and doubt this whole time.

Sam Winchester knows better than most: mental walls tumble, and when they do, all hell spills loose.

Better it spill loose in his own room than in front of everyone though, if it has to go that way. He doesn't want to go back out, not now.

He wants to go down to the shooting range and fill a target so full of holes the paper tears to shreds, imagining it as Michael himself standing just a few feet away. But he can't do that, not when the others use it as a practice area and if no one's down there, the shots will bring in curious people.

He wants to take the Impala out for a drive, rock music blaring through the Kansas plains with the windows down. But he can't do that, not when Dean isn't there to pick out the absolute best AC/DC tape for them to share with the universe. Not when he isn't there to drive the black beast of the car that's more their home than the bunker, and certainly now. Not when Sam himself can't go near the car, and has a growing worry that if they never get Dean back, will he ever be able to ride in it again?

He wants to sit down, type away, and magically fix all of this. Find Michael, get rid of him, and save Dean, and then have things go back to normal. But he can't do that, because he's a Winchester and he certainly knows better by now that it's just not how the world works.

He wants to get Michael to come to him. Maybe if they can meet face to face, it can bring Dean to the surface somehow. It worked with Sam and Lucifer all those years ago. But he can't do that either, if Michael's smart enough to avoid all of this world's technology, he's smart enough to not listen to anything Sam or any other hunter would say.

He wants to get drunk. It's more of a fleeting feeling than a constant desire, but he wants something to fill the hole that's been steadily growing and deepening in him, to forget just for a few moments that for three weeks Dean has been carted around as a murderous archangel's suitcase, and even if they do get him back, the therapy that will be involved probably won't come about until it's too late. He can't do that, not when people depend on him, not when Dean is depending on him. Sam didn't pull him out of Purgatory, but he can pull him out of this mess.

He wants to make a deal, go over a spell, cast something down on Michael to make him stop. Again, it's fleeting, because Sam knows better. The feeling is born out of anger, frustration, and sheer loss because again, he doesn't know where to go with it. All the deals they've ever made have always gone south, and he can't afford it, the hunters can't afford it, his family can't afford it, Dean can't afford it.

It always comes back to Dean.

He wants to save his brother. He wants to get Dean back, whole, normal, without the PTSD that comes along with watching his hands murder however many innocent people Michael has on his to-do list. Dean will blame himself, at least to some degree, and while Sam may be able to eventually convince him otherwise, it will do nothing to keep the memories from playing on repeat in his brother's head. That, Sam won't be able to help, not in any way that matters in the long run.

He wants to practice his shooting, see who can get the closest grouping in the shortest amount of time, who can reload the fastest, who can dismantle, clean, and put the weapon back together the fastest. He wants to see the grin on Dean's face when he does it first and then advises Sam to stop messing around with so many spells and books and work with real weapons instead.

He wants it to be just the two of them, at least at first, blowing through a town, rumble of the Impala announcing that they've come to save the day. Hell, he even wants to stretch out in Baby's leather seats that have slowly gotten a bit too small for him over the years, not that he minds of course. Anyways, it's his own fault he's a sasquatch, as Dean would say.

He just wants it to all be better, back to the normal amount of monster of the week crazy it always is.

He wants to look Michael in the eye and tell him he lost the second he thought wearing Dean Winchester to the prom would end well for him. He wants to see the angel's face contort in fear when he realizes Sam was right.

He wants to go to a bar, have a few beers, and play some pool with his brother. Not even hustling, just against each other, staying out way too late and complaining about it in the morning with mumblings of 'where the hell's my coffee?' and 'who turned on the lights so bright?' in less clear english. It's not because they're getting older, of course not, Dean would never admit to that.

He wants it to be known to every angel, demon, monster, and otherwise that what you do to one brother, expect a hundred-fold in return. The Winchesters are good at striking fear into the hearts of monsters, but it usually works better when there are two of them to do the intimidating and gun-levelling.

Sam wants to explain this all to someone, but none of the hunters could ever possibly understand in a hundred lifetimes what the brothers mean to each other, and not for a lack of trying. Cas is searching, trying to rectify the situation as always, probably going through the same process as Sam. Jack is being propped up by others at the moment, Sam included, and it wouldn't do the kid any good to put more on his shoulders than he already feels. Mom is complicated, it just wouldn't work. The platitudes and the waning optimism, things that usually come out of Sam's mouth in times like these, won't help, again not for the lack of trying.

The only person he wants to talk to about Dean being gone…is Dean.