A/N: My own explanation of all the crazy awesome stuff that's going on Show right now.

Warnings: SPOILERS all the way up to 6.07: Family Matters. Very mild swearing, blood, some violence, aaaangst, present-tense, metaphor-abuse.

Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or any of its characters.

In this empty space

When Sam wakes up, he curls up on his side and doesn't move for hours.

The ground is rough and cold, the damp soaking through his clothes and chilling him to the bone, but it's so much warmer than where he's come from that he cuddles into it like it's home. He's not opened his eyes yet; if this is just another illusion, he doesn't ever want it to end. He doesn't want to see -

(nothing winding back on nothing, cold and so alone)

At some point, he falls asleep. He doesn't know why or when, spends an eternity in the twilit limbo between sleep and wakefulness marvelling over the fact that he can rest at all, then descends into oblivion.

Dean's there in his dreams.

Dean, with Lisa. Ben. A house, family, a job, a pick-up truck, movies on Saturday night and baseball Sunday morning. It's strange how scenes from Typical American Suburbia can cause Sam's heart to clench and his eyes tear, but it's Dean. It's his brother (and, after everything, that's always been the one explanation for his life).

Then the dreams shift, swirl in tones of black and red and grey, and darkness encroaches upon Dean's perfect life. Monsters emerge - poltergeists and wraiths and ghosts and demons and everything that has ever had a reason to hate the Winchesters - and they break into Dean's home, run claws through Ben, ripping him from throat to hip; feed on Lisa, tearing chunks of her flesh even as she screams insufferable agony, even as Dean fights and screams and begs, waves iron and salt and holy water in desperate defence, even as his limbs are ripped from their sockets in showers of blood and muscle and shattered bone -

Sam gasps, and opens his eyes.

It's night, and his breath fogs in front of his face, ruffles the dead-looking grass. He rises to his feet, feeling dizzy and nauseous and weak and so goddamned alive, and looks around. The world sways, shifts in and out of focus, but finally he can see - gravestones, so many of them, stretching for what seems like miles around him. It's a cemetery. Sam starts forward, but he nearly trips over something at his feet. He looks down.

It's another gravestone.

He bends, squints so he can read what's engraved on it.

Samuel Winchester

1983 - 2010

- and Sam knows. This is where he Fell. This is where he is supposed to have died, and never come back.

Except, he's here, and not in the Cage with its centuries of cold torment. He doesn't know why, or how, is too tired to really start to care, but there's a purpose that becomes clear to him (and, after everything, that always should've been the one explanation for his life).

He needs to find Dean.

The purpose seemed easy enough when he walked out of the cemetery.

Now that he's staggering toward the nearest support (and there isn't any support; he falls flat on his face on the rough tarmac), Sam's beginning to think that might be tougher than he thought. The world will not stop swaying, the sunlight's bouncing off surfaces at harsh angles and blinding his sensitive eyes and his thoughts buzz inside his skull like flies trapped in a glass jar.

But he keeps moving, because that's just what he does.

He eventually reaches what he can just make out as a rest stop - gas station, toilets, fast food - and even after escaping from decades of acid and fire and ice, he can't help but feel this is the happiest he has been to see anything, ever. He goes straight into the bathroom - spotted with mould and old stains - dunks his head under the running tap in the sink. He lifts his head, and he can see his face in the mirror - and starts regretting the move. He looks gaunt, wasted, his skin cleaving to the shape of his skull, his eyes, dull and shot through with red, staring out of orbits that seem too big for them. His hair, wet and limp against his forehead, is stark against the paleness of his skin.

He pretty much fits the part of someone who hasn't eaten or seen sunshine in years.

For the first time, he pays attention to what he's wearing. It's the same thing he wore the day he died: the worn jacket, the blood-stained blue shirt, jeans. He pats down his pockets, and is surprised to find his wallet is still there - a few bills, old gas receipts, his driving licence and Stanford student ID, along with an old picture of him and Dean and Dad that he'd flicked from the Impala in a fit of sentimentality before they drove out to Detroit.

He pays for food - burgers, soda, fries, he doesn't really pay attention, because there's a persistent gnawing at the pit of his stomach that started up when he first smelled the cheese and grease and his vision's still wavering. The kid who takes his order stares at him like he's just seen an alien (maybe he has), but Sam jerks his chin and narrows his eyes and the kid scampers away. There's a calender next to the counter, and it's open to September 14th, 2010.

Four months. Yeah, Sam's not going to dwell on the coincidence. Much.

He wolfs the food down, washing the meat and grease down with copious amounts of soda. It isn't enough (nothing's ever enough) but it infuses some strength in his limbs, brings some clarity to his thoughts. He thinks that he might have even smiled at the gas station kid, but given the kid's still staring at him with something akin to fear and fascination, he thinks he might not have been very successful.

A few miles later, on the outskirts of a town he doesn't know the name of, he hotwires a Honda. It's not the Impala (it's not home) but it feels good to be back on the road - with a purpose to fulfill, a destination to reach. He wonders if sometimes that's all he's ever asked of life.

The road stretches behind and beyond, between torment and freedom, and Sam thinks he should be enjoying the wind in his hair, the sunshine on his face, the quiet, but all he can think of is Dean bloody, dying, his perfect life torn asunder.

I'm coming, Dean.

It's next day evening by the time Sam makes it to Lisa (no, Dean and Lisa, he's got to get used to saying that)'s house. He sits in his stolen car for a long time, engine idling, even when every cell of his body is screaming that Dean is right there - his destination, his purpose, his life. And yet Sam hesitates, because this is the life he pushed Dean into, this is the life that he thinks - he knows - that Dean deserves.

He hesitates, because he doesn't know if the monsters he saw in his dreams were literal. Maybe the monster that tears apart Dean's future is him.

He's still stuck in a daze (still wavering and weak, and puking all the meat and soda he'd eaten a couple dozen miles from the gas station didn't help) when someone taps at his window. He's barely turned to see that it's Dean (it's Dean) before his brother's smashing the window and there's the all-too-familiar sensation of the muzzle of a gun resting against his head.

Sam takes a deep breath and raises his hand. "Dean," he says, his voice cracking from strain and disuse, "It's me."

"Yeah, I've heard that one before," his brother snorts. There's a pause, and his brother's speaking again; his voice trembles slightly, but the gun never wavers. "Don't you dare think you can screw with me like this; I'm not falling for it."

Sam wants to laugh, he wants to jump up and hug his brother, because this is so inimitably Dean it's unbelievable. Instead, he stays very, very still, and speaks. "Okay," he says slowly, carefully, "okay. Let me get out of this car, and you can find out for sure, alright?"

More hesitation, before the pressure of the muzzle against his head is removed. Sam opens the door and slides out carefully, hyper-aware that Dean is still training the gun on him. "You might not want to make this too conspicuous," Sam says with a weak half-smile. "Respectable neighbourhood, and all that."

Dean doesn't smile, doesn't even fling a cocky retort. "Christo," he says. He seems confused when nothing happens, before he pulls out a knife from his belt - a silver blade, Sam guesses. He stretches his arm out obediently. Dean stares at him, but doesn't follow the obvious suggestion. He puts the knife back, and lowers the gun. "Sam?" he says, his voice raspy and wondrous and dragged down by so many layers of emotion.

Sam smiles - really smiles - for the first time in decades. "Hey, Dean."

To his surprise, Dean deflates, his shoulders slumping, weariness descending on every line of his body. "So you're back."

"Uh, yeah." Sam frowns. "You know, I was sort of hoping that would be good news."

Dean turns those tired eyes on him, and Sam's suddenly so confused, fear and bewilderment filling his lungs and stealing his breath. "What do you expect, Sam? A hug? For me to break down, crying, because, look, my brother's back from Hell?" He shakes his head. "Not after all this."

Suddenly the gun's back up, aimed right at the centre of his chest. "You don't need this, Sam," Dean says, and his voice is so sad, so -

"Dean, stop, you don't know what you're doing -"

Dean pulls the trigger, but Sam's already twisting away, and the bullet slams into his bicep. At first, there is no sensation, only Dean and his gun and a teetering, confusing world before sensation slams back in: the pain and the starvation overwhelm him, and finally pull him down to blackness.

He only has time to think that he's falling again, and to be grateful that Dean's not leaving him this time, too, before he simply can't think at all.

Sam wakes to pain and warmth.

He registers that he's lying on something soft, comfortable - a bed, he thinks, how long has it been since he actually lay down on a mattress - and the agony in his arm has reduced to a dull throb. He opens his eyes to a room painted in pleasant pastels, cozy and neat and well-used. Dean's sitting next to him, obscuring the window, his face shadowed in the sunlight streaming behind him.

"How's your arm?" Dean asks tonelessly.

Sam wants to get up and shake Dean until his teeth rattle, wants to ask him what the hell is wrong with him (wants to ask him if he really has moved on - because, goddamn, Sam is selfish and he doesn't care). But he's feeling tired, too, so he answers, "it's fine."

Dean snorts, maybe grins a little. "That sounds familiar, at least."

Sam closes his eyes again. "What the hell is going on, Dean?"

"You tell me." He can hear the creak of wood against wood and he imagines Dean leaning back, those tired green eyes appraising him with painful indifference. "You're not Sam, are you."

Sam sighs. "I am, Dean. You can try any test you want, okay? You'll -"

"I've tried all of them," Dean interrupts. "And, you know what? You may be human, you may look like him, but you're not Sam."

Decades spent alone in frigid captivity has taught Sam a little about patience. "Why?"

"Sam would've met me sooner. Sam would be hunting." Dean laughs. "Sam would have the sense to be less conspicuous when he's on a stake-out."

Sam's so very tired. "I was not -" He opens his eyes. "I don't get it, Dean. I just - I came back. I haven't been hunting. I don't even, uh." He swallows, but his throat is so dry it only hurts like there's glass shards stuck in there. "I just want to know what's going on."

"I just... I thought, hey, it's better this way, you know?" Dean says, his eyes distant, unfocussed. He hasn't listened to a word Sam's said. "The hunting life, it was killing Sammy. I could see it. Right from when he was a kid, from the time we refused to let him go to college. Maybe he's better off dead. Maybe if he's gone as the man who died to save the world -"

"Dean." Sam tries to sit up, struggling to breathe past the terror that's burgeoning in his chest. "Dean, what the hell -"

"So cold, you know?" Dean shudders. "He'd kill, and he'd kill, and he'll have rational explanations for everything. Even after I died for him, even after I came back... sometimes, I'd look at him, and I'd think how familiar he seems. Because really? He would've fit right down in Hell. He was made for it."

"Stop it, Dean." Sam swings his legs off the bed, clutching his bandaged arm. He needs to get out of here. Something is terribly wrong. "Just, please. Stop."

Unsurprisingly, Dean ignores him. "He... drank the demon-blood, he started the Apocalypse, he said yes... but he ended it, too. He opened the cage, and he jumped in. I don't know how, or why, but he did." Dean's eyes meet his for the first time since Sam woke up. "He died a hero, when he was living a monster. So you're not Sam. You can't be. He's dead."

Sam's aware of the tears running down his face and he wants so desperately to beg Dean to see sense, just one more time, but Dean's not crying; Dean's just looking at him with that dead, resigned gaze of his. Beaten-down. "Sam needs to be dead. He can't return to this life. He can't."

There aren't any more words to say.

Sam gets up and stumbles out the door, weak and weary and pain-dazed, and Dean doesn't stop him.

Sam screams and screams at the sky until his throat burns, but Castiel doesn't answer. He's already tried praying, begging, but the angel remains silent, stays put like the world hasn't been turned inside-out. Then he remembers vaguely, as though from a different life (it was a different life), a - a snap of (his) fingers, and Castiel... exploding in a shower of blood and organs, and - (his) anger, (his) sadness, (his) endless agonising because (he)'d killed one brother for the sake of another...

Then Sam is left with nothing but his grief and confusion and Hell-scarred mind.

When he's able to think straight, able to look past the urge to curl up around the pain and sleep away a few more centuries, he drives to the nearest town, books a motel room and racks his brains for every summoning spell he knows.

As always, if everything else fails, Sam's got himself.

For now, himself is all he needs.

He's barely set up a demon-summoning ritual, when an all-too-familiar voice pipes up from behind him. "Did you call, Sam?"

He whirls around, fights off the vertigo even as he pulls his lips over his teeth in a snarl. "Crowley."

The demon smirks. "That expression would be half-way threatening, Sam, if you didn't look like you'd keel over at a touch."

"What's going on?" Sam growls. "What - where the hell am I?"

Crowley raises his eyebrows. "You... are holed up in a motel room, in the middle of nowhere, Indiana, and I have to say," he says, casting an appraising gaze over the room's yellow, brown and green psychedelic pattern, "your taste in accommodation has certainly not improved a single notch."

"Quit screwing around." Sam has nothing more than holy water, a devil's trap and the knife in his boot, but he knows that with demons, it's always been a step above petty physical weapons. "Where am I?"

"Earth, Sam. Terra firma. Good old home country." Crowley stops, tilts his head speculatively. "Except, it's not yours."

Sam stares at him. "Then, wh- where -"

"I've had dealings," Crowley says conversationally, "with people in high places. Really high places." He smiles. "It was just a matter of lending a few of the souls in my possession, and I get a spanking new alternate reality to keep you in, Sammy. How do you like it? I'd like to call it my own... cosmic zoo."

Alternate reality. Sam holds on to the words for dear life. Then there is a world where Dean isn't this broken shell of a man, where he can come back, and it can mean something - if only he can somehow, somehow escape -

"Don't get too hopeful, Sammy," Crowley says, raising a hand. "You don't get to go anywhere unless it's on my say-so. Besides," he continues, casually skirting the area covered by the devil's trap Sam's painted on the ceiling, "there's a whole world here to discover, Sam! What it would be like if you grew to your full potential - not physically, mind, because there's more than enough of that - and if your job and your personality did what they're supposed to - make you an unfeeling, soulless bastard, so much so your own brother rejoices in your death."

"This is not real," Sam says through clenched teeth.

"And how are you so sure that it's any better - or any different, actually - in reality?" Crowley shrugs. "You're the same soulless fool over there."

Sam starts. "What?"

"Yes, Sam," Crowley says, looking infinitely pleased with himself. "You're already with your brother in your reality - except, you're here, and the body that's supposed to be you is hanging out with dear old Dean. A sasquatch-shaped canister of unlit gasoline, if I may impress upon you my metaphoric prowess."

"No." Suddenly Sam's calm, centred; he has a purpose again. "That won't work. Dean won't fall for it."

"Your co-dependency and bromance issues with your brother is really none of my concern," Crowley says, "as long as the arrangement is working. And as for now? It is working mighty well."

Crowley's already turning to leave, and as desperate and crazy as it is, Sam wants to keep him there a little longer - his only real link to the world he knows he belongs to. "Wait," he says, "wait. Why - are you doing this? What could you possibly achieve through this?"

Crowley smiles at him. "Like I told your brother, Sam, it's really none of your business."

And he disappears.

Sam hits the road, and begins to hunt.

He has nothing more than his boot knife and a lifetime of knowledge and experience, but he forges his arsenal, new contacts, ferreting out information. He avoids Bobby and the hunters he used to know well; in long, weary hours spent driving or researching, he tries not to think of hunting with his family and his friends. He tries not to think of his Dean, of fledgling trust that is so easily crushed. He tries not to think of Hell, even as it haunts his every waking moment, just as surely as if it is imprinted on the back of his eyelids.

But when he sleeps, he dreams of Dean.

And Sam wakes up every morning, with only one thought, one purpose:

I'll find you, Dean.

Finis