I got Sam back.

Cas – I don't know that I'll ever get Cas back, or even if I even want him back. He gave me Sammy back, so points for that. But I don't know if it's enough points, not after the damning and damaging way he took Sam away from me.

But I got Sam back.

I was working on about nineteen hours of sleep total for the past seven or nine days, and I wanted nothing more than to drop into that psych ward bed right next to Sam and just go comatose for a year. But I couldn't. I knew I couldn't.

What I did know was that as soon as Cas healed Sam – and Cas had to be able to heal Sam – as soon as he did that, we were going to have to haul ass out of there. Hopefully Cas would be able to Angel-Air us out. But if not, it wouldn't be the first hospital – or even the first psych ward – Sam and I had 'angel-aired' ourselves out of.

Then Cas healed Sam and lost himself doing it and I knew I had to get Sam out of there, somewhere safe and sometime soon. As Sam pulled himself out of bed and shakily got Cas turned to lean against the metal headboard so he wouldn't topple onto the floor – because even in his tortured, tormented, just-returned-to-sanity state, Sam's first thought was to help the man responsible for his torment - my exhausted brain went on autopilot: get Sam dressed, create a diversion, get us through the locked door at the end of the hall and out to the car and to another time zone as soon as possible.

I pulled Sam's clothes and boots out of the bottom of his white metal cupboard and shoved them at him.

"Get dressed. Fast."

Even half comatose himself, Sam knew what I meant. We can get dressed in less than two minutes when we have to, and right now, he had to. He took the clothes and moved away from the bed, out of view of the door, to swap his jeans and shirts for his hospital issue crap. I finished getting Cas safely stowed on the bed, looking for any hint or clue or sign that he was anywhere in there, that anyone was in there, Cas or Jimmy or Emmanuel, but all I got was a vacant stare. I tried to care, but – I was too tired to care.

I turned back and Sam was resting against his little white desk thing, just finishing getting his boots on. He looked up at me and nodded that he was ready. It was time for the diversion. I went to the door and shouted down the hallway.

"Hey! We need some help in here!"

In no time flat two nurses burst into the room and I gestured them to Castiel, who was still and silent and staring on the bed. As Sam slipped out the door behind them, the nurses tried to rouse Cas, starting in with the "Sir? Can you hear me? Sir?" waste of time. They got as much nothing out of him as I'd gotten.

"What happened?" One of them asked me, but it wasn't like I would've told her anything, even if I wasn't too dead on my feet to withstand an interrogation.

"I don't know. I found him like that."

"Is he with you?"

I swallowed and shook my head.

"No, he's not with me."

She gave me a 'we'll see about that' look then jerked her head to the door and told me I needed to leave the room. Oh, happy to oblige. I walked out to Sam and prayed to nobody in particular that he was strong enough and lucid enough and happy enough to leave, and that the nurses were too busy working on Castiel to notice that their actual patient was escaping under their noses.

"C'mon, let's hit the road."

Still functioning on nearly-comatose, Sam knew the drill. He pulled himself upright and started walking down the hallway like he was just fine, thanks for asking, and I walked behind him, keeping an eye on him, hoping he wouldn't face-plant until after we got to the car.

There was some interest in the hallway of what was going on in the room that nurses and orderlies were swarming into, people looking out of their rooms and talking amongst themselves. I put my hand on Sam's shoulder and kept him moving straight and casually for the locked door.

A nurse was coming through the door just as we were heading out and I patted my hand on Sam's shoulder like I was comforting him and because the best place to hide is sometimes right out in the open, I gave her my best 'visiting a loved one here is always so hard' look and she held the door for us and gave me her own 'yes it is, isn't it?' look and she patted my arm and then we were out the door and on our way to getting safely the hell out of there.

Then I could drive us a few states away while Sammy slept and didn't die.

Sam wasn't ready to leave yet. Of course.

"We can't leave Cas here." He said as we got to the car.

We couldn't, but we had to. If this had happened only a few months before, whoever was in that bed up there, whether Sam or Cas or just some civilian we happened across who had demons on their ass, we would've taken them to Bobby's and permanently installed them in the panic room.

But it wasn't a few months ago and there was no panic room and there was no Bobby and that locked ward was the safest place for Cas and sometimes cutting our losses was the only way to survive.

Sam still took some convincing. Of course. Even after everything, everything, that had happened, Sammy still thought of Cas as a friend. I wasn't ready to think of him at all. Not yet.

"All of our friends are dead." I reminded Sam bluntly and we got in the car and started putting asphalt between us and 'Club Psychotropic Med'.

I was still exhausted and my mind was still on auto pilot, planning out the rest of our day: Sam would sleep, I'd drive us a few hundred miles before we stopped and then I'd wake Sam up for some milk and vitamin supplements to ease him out of his eight day starvation diet, then I'd drive another few hundred miles while Sam slept some more and then I'd get us a motel room and more milk and more sleep and more Sam not dying.

Sam hadn't gotten that memo yet apparently. He was still upright and awake in the shotgun seat.

"Anytime." I told him.

"Anytime what?"

"You can go to sleep, anytime."

He kind of shook his head, making me wonder he could be possibly objecting to.

"I can wait 'til we get to the cabin."

"Cabin?"

"Yeah, Rufus's cabin? We're near there, aren't we?" He looked out the car window, at the buildings and vacant lots and railroad tracks speeding past, trying to orient himself, no doubt. And yeah, we were about a half hour or forty minutes away from our little dry-rot corner of paradise. But I wasn't headed there.

"We're not stopping at the cabin. I'm driving us the hell out of Dodge."

"We can't." Sam told me. "We need to stop."

He was so earnest, so adamant, I had to switch off the autopilot that my brain was still on and consider what he was saying, what he meant. He was going on better than a week of total sleep deprivation, eight days of near starvation and at least four days of close-enough-to-call-it dehydration, he'd been hit by a car three days and some change ago and he'd just had his brains deep-fried. He had to feel like crap on toast. I started planning to stop only one state over instead of three, until Sam informed me,

"You need to rest."

"Me?" I asked him. He was telling me that I needed to rest? "I got a few states left in me, Sammy, before we need to stop. We're getting the hell away from here."

Away from this town, from that hospital.

From everyone in that hospital.

Sam was quiet a minute and then, like he was afraid I might not like the question and he didn't have the strength to withstand the explosion of an answer, he quietly asked me,

"Where'd you find Cas, anyway?"

"Colorado." I told him. I was about to give him a little more detailed explanation but 'tired, quiet, and fragile' suddenly gave way to really really pissed.

"Colorado?" He barked at me in his deep, deep, rumble of thunder voice. "Seriously? In the last three days you drove from Montana to Colorado and back again? You need to rest."

I was tired. I was beyond tired. I'd nearly lost Sam and now I had him back again. I'd gotten Cas back and now I'd lost him again. I was exhausted and messed up and surviving on fumes and I was in no mood to argue with Sam.

"Dean?" Sam gave me then, because I hadn't answered him. Because he hadn't gotten the 'I'm not in a mood to argue' memo. So I answered him back in my 100% guaranteed to make Sam give in and be quiet 'Dad' voice warning.

"Sam..."

That would make him shut up and shut down and friggin' go to sleep.

Only - it only made him point his finger at me and bark again,

"No. Do not 'Sam' me. You're exhausted, Dean. You need to rest."

"I can drive, Sam." I snarled back at him. "We're getting out of here."

"How much sleep have you had in this past week, Dean? Hunh? In this whole past week, have you gotten even thirty hours of sleep?"

"Yes." I answered immediately. Too immediately for my own good because just like that, my little mathlete brother had already done the numbers and was purposely tripping me up.

"Oh, really? So if you got no sleep these past three days, which I know you didn't, that means you got thirty hours of sleep in the previous four days which means you got pretty much the full eight each of those nights? You forget I was there? And awake those four days and nights? I know how much sleep you didn't get."

"Would you please shut the freakin' hell up?" I demanded. "You're the one just got dumped off the Crazy Train. I don't need to sleep."

"Yes, you do." Sam shouted at me.

"No, I don't." I shouted back at him. Great, we were reduced to shouting at each other. "Sam, you're the one who hasn't slept in a week, hasn't eaten, the one who played piñata to a speeding car and just got served your brains flambéd. YOU need to sleep, not me."

Sam's breathing started coming heavy, his shoulders lifting and dropping with each breath. He was pissed. Pissed and starting to consider that I really did have shit for brains.

"You're the one who hasn't had a break in how many years." He ground out at me. His voice was low and measured, but the shouting hadn't been left far behind, I could tell. "Never mind looking out for Dad, looking out for me, looking out for the family all those years, going to hell, fighting off demons and angels all the while carrying the Apocalypse like a millstone around your neck – just these past couple of years how much have you been through?"

I started to tell him that I didn't care what I'd been through, but he didn't give me a chance.

"I'll tell you what you've been through - Jo and Ellen died, Anna died, Bobby had to kill his wife again, Gabriel died, Adam died and then came back only to die again…"

Don't care, don't care, don't care… I thought and tried to say out loud, except Insomnia-Boy wouldn't let me talk.

"You lost Lisa and Ben," he kept on.

I swear I don't care.

"You lost Cas and you lost Bobby."

I can't afford to care. I was going to say that to Sam. I don't care because I can't afford to care. We were at a red light and I was going to use the moment to shove the damn 'shut up and go to sleep already' memo down Sam's sleep-deprived throat.

"I don't care, we're outta here."

Only Sam still wasn't done. I've got one really strong weak spot and he knew what it was and how to get right to it.

"What about your brother, Dean? You care about him? How many times have you lost him? How many times have you watched your brother die, or suffer, or just plain walk away from you? You nearly lost him, again, this past week, and if wasn't for some weird-ass miracle of finding Cas, you would've lost him, permanently this time, and you knew it. You know it. So don't try to tell me that you got any sleep this past week, because I know you didn't. You wouldn't, not when your brother needed you. You need to rest."

The one thing he knew I couldn't dispute caring about. Him.

The traffic light turned green then, and I turned my attention back to the road.

"I have to keep moving." I told Sam. Admitted to him. "I stop moving, it's like I'll die."

And damn, if saying that didn't make me feel ten times more exhausted than I felt already. And I wasn't talking about Leviathans or demons or even just plain old 5-O coming after us. I was just talking about me. I was talking about being tired of being all the time in survival mode, tired of wondering if buying gas this time would end up with us getting killed by the Leviathans, tired of not being able to protect Sam or Bobby, not being able to save Cas or the world. I was just damn tired of everything. I was tired of being tired.

And the longer I could keep moving, the longer I could keep moving. If I stopped - if I stopped, I might just never start up again.

Sam must've known or seen or realized what I was feeling or how I was feeling it. He dialed his 'rumble of thunder' voice back to his 'concerned little brother' near-whisper.

"Four hours, man. That's all I'm asking. Four hours."

And I still so wanted to just crash, into some bed, any bed, at the cabin, in a roach motel, even just across the front seat of this car. But I couldn't. I couldn't. Sam's black eyes and broken rib, his road-rash elbow, lacerated wrist and rotting fingernails all told me that I couldn't.

"No. Not yet." I shook my head. "Not 'til I get us somewhere safe. Somewhere I can get you patched up."

"Dean – I'm fine."

"Pfft – yeah. You're fine."

"LOOK." Rumble of Thunder was back and rumbled at me. "For the first time in how long I've got no Lucifer in my brain, scrambling my eggs. No damn wall held up with chewing gum and shoestrings just waiting to topple me over into insanity. For the first time in how many years - no visions, no blood dependence, no hell like a freight train charging straight for either one of us. We might have Leviathans gunning for us and demons on our asses but - hey - there's no dick angels after us this time, that's a plus. I might be exhausted and banged up, but I'm alert and oriented, and I can eat, walk, talk, breathe and probably sleep all on my own, so - yeah - I'd say I'm pretty damn fine."

He ended his rant on a huff and I was gonna huff him right back but then - I couldn't. Sammy was giving me a death glare, but I couldn't say anything or do anything but look away. I didn't smile, but I could feel a smirk building and I knew that if I looked at him, my face would betray what I was feeling.

Sam Winchester - who never met a person he thought he was better than, who never met a woman he ever thought he was good enough for, who even now looked like a down-on-his-luck backwoods zombie who'd had way too much caffeine - had just declared himself to be 'pretty damn fine'.

Who was I to disagree?

"What?" Sam demanded from me then. He must've seen my face and it only took him a second to figure out what I was smirking about and he rolled his eyes. "You know what I mean."

I kind of shrugged a nod in agreement but didn't say anything, only the smirk kept building, and in another minute or so, Sammy laughed too.

"You know what I mean," he said again, in his 'stop making me laugh when I'm trying to be serious' tone.

"I didn't say a word." I told him, in my 'but you know I was thinking it' tone.

Sam laughed and sighed and shook his head and got right back to it.

Of course.

"Dean - really. I'm serious. I need to know you're okay. You need to rest. All I'm asking is four hours."

I decided to give up arguing with Sam and just drive. Eventually, he'd fall asleep. He needed to rest. He needed to sleep for like the next five days straight. I wanted to sleep the next five days straight, but what I wanted more was –

I looked at Sam. At my giant-little-mathlete-zombie-on-too-many-and-yet-not-enough-drugs brother.

He needed to sleep. I was sure he even wanted to sleep. But what he wanted more was the same thing I wanted more than anything else – for my brother to be safe and okay.

"Dean – please."

And well-rested.

"All right. Four hours. That's it. We stop for some food, head to the cabin, and then in four hours, we're on the road again and you're asleep in the backseat. Got it?"

And Sam nodded.

"Got it."

Another block on, I turned the corner and got us on the road that would take us to the cabin. Next to me, Insomnia-Boy stayed upright and awake.

"Anytime." I told him.

He huffed and smiled, but shook his head.

"I can wait 'til we get to the cabin."

To Be Continued