AN: Its been a while since I attempted to get any ideas out on pages, typed or written; the feeling is like coming home to mom's cooking after a few years of cereal and grilled cheese. Please bear with me as I try to organize these ideas that I've been holding onto with a vice grip for a few years now.

Summary: It's been months since Dean let his little brother walk straight out the door of his tunnel vision life and although not a single day has gone by where Dean has not had to shut out that pain, nothing is worse than when he receives a frantic phone call that cuts dead and leaves him on a desperate search for Sam from a life Dean thinks he was safe from.

Warnings: Some language, I apologize for Dean's dirty mouth sometimes.

Disclaimer: These boys and their Impala don't belong to me, that privilege lies with Kripke and the CW, I'm just borrowing, but I'll return them in one piece!

Behind closed eyelids, Dean can still see the too tall silhouette of his barely eighteen year old little brother framed by the peeling door frame of the rundown apartment that the three of them had managed to fit themselves in for three short months. He remembered the black patches that clouded his vision, the breath rushing out of his chest in dazed shock and could still feel the burns etched into his palm where he had gripped the only lit lamp in the musty room which – of course - lacked a shade. Sammy please, Dean remembered pleading. Was that out loud?

It was raining that night; Dean remembered Sam standing for what seemed like forever in a New York minute in the open doorway, dampening the cheap hard wood floor.

I'm leaving, Sam had spoken down to his ripped chucks, the big toe on his right foot just visible through the worn down black fabric. Do I have your seal of approval, or not?

The black patches only fabricated Dean's usually quick witted intelligence and he could only stare at Sam, open mouthed and with hitched breaths. Sammy, I want you out of this, but I don't want you walking out on me.

His father answered for them both, his back to his two sons, the stale scent of whisky curling around his words. You walk out this door, Sam, and you don't come back.

Dean's stomach plummeted, bile rushing into his watering mouth, but he shoved it back down, ignoring the sour sick taste and meeting Sam's eyes with his own, aching for his little brother to read his mind, to know that he wished him all the best in the world, that he wanted to walk right out the door after him. In a reflexive move, so natural it felt like home, Dean clutched the amulet that never seemed to cool on his chest. Take your brother and run, Dean, and don't look back.

But instead he was met with one last look from Sam; several emotions clearly etched upon his face: anger, confusion, hurt, and was that – fucking disappointment? And then the door slammed, rattling the thin walls and the rain sounds muffled again, and Dean was left standing in the same spot, staring at the back side of the door for seven hours, twenty-six minutes and thirty three seconds, waiting for the knock that never came.

That was four months, six days, seventeen hours, thirty-four minutes and twenty seven seconds ago, and the humidity soaked rain was replaced with heavy snow that coated the ground outside of the Howard Johnson Motel just two miles outside of Helena, Montana. It was quiet at 2:34 A.M., and with only one sleeping Winchester in the dark room it seemed like a slow Saturday night, until Dean was yanked violently out of a short night's sleep, breath coming fast and eyes darting around the room, reliving the last few moments of his recurring nightmare. Dean finally was able to glance at the clock and read the glowing digital letters before rubbing a hand down his face and flopping back unceremoniously onto the hard mattress.

He was rewarded with a significant twinge in an aching head and Dean's hand darted back up to left eye, feeling the warm and inflamed area there, his skin stretched tight. A shiner would be greeting his reflection when he finally got himself around to looking at it, and Dean silently chastised himself for not putting ice on it before he shut down and fell asleep barely four hours earlier.

A simple salt and burn on the outskirts of Helena in Deer Lodge, Montana; a nasty poltergeist doing a number in an orphanage scaring the shit out of the poor kids that already had a tough enough life. Jeremiah Rook, a bitter past caretaker made sick and later deceased from a particularly nasty bit of Spanish flu that broke out in the kids years ago, resurfacing when a contagious twenty – four hour stomach virus turned into an all – out battle for life. With the remains located, Dean expected a usual night of slinking under cloudy skies and snow crunching underneath his feet, the ground so frozen it felt like digging through iron. What he did not expect was for Jeremiah to pay his respects with a very real and very painful right hook to the face.

Dean swung his legs off his bed, reluctant to leave the warmth that the moth – eaten covers offered him from the drafty and cold room. With aching muscles, he shuffled slowly to the bathroom and after adjusting to the light examined his brilliantly blossoming black eye, inky purple vessels spreading like watercolor on paper. Dean winced internally before rummaging in the duffel he had dropped in front of the bathroom door and fishing a disposable icepack from the bottom of the bag, punching it once, and feeling the cold immediately begin to spread to his hands. He placed it gingerly on his eye, sighing with relief as he swayed on his feet in the brightly lit bathroom. Solo hunting was not his favorite pastime, but with his dad away on a requested help hunting trip with Bobby in Michigan, Dean was playing patrol car for what felt like the entire west side of the country.

Dean flipped off the light, keeping the cold pack pressed to his face and walked blindly towards the bed, only falling into it when he felt his shins press against the hard wooden frame. He is just beginning to close his eyes and cross his fingers for a dreamless sleep when the chorus for Foreigner's Hot Blooded rings out boldly in the dark room, assaulting his senses. Dean grumbles to no one in particular, silently cursing the two hour time difference thinking it is his dad looking to confirm that the job was done. Without a glance to the number, Dean flipped open the offending phone and clears his throat.

"Yeah?" he rasped, irritated.

The voice that responds is not his father, but he knows exactly who it is when they first inhale; Dean can recognize that preparation to speak through miles and over four months. Dean can hear this voice almost dripping with relief when he responds. "Dean?"

Dean swallows and his stomach drops; something is not right.

"S – Sammy?" he whispers almost inaudible, except he can hear in his little brother's voice that he is on high alert, and could probably hear Dean whispering if he stood three miles away.

"Dean," he whispers, dropping his high pitched nervous whisper to a quieter tone; behind Sam's desperate whispers Dean can hear distant footsteps approaching and Dean wants to reach through the phone and grab Sam by the too long hair. "Please find me, please help me, I didn't see them, don't tell dad, I'm sor – ."

The line was cut, and a dial tone was blaring an obnoxious single note; but it didn't matter, because Dean had his worn down olive green duffel packed and keys in the ignition of his black '67 Impala before the line beeped its impatience, tearing out of the slick parking lot and nose pointed west towards Stanford University in Serra Mall, California.