I am only going to say this once, listen close:

Disclaimer: This is not for any material profit, only sentimental. Supernatural does not belong to me, it belongs to Kripke/TheCW/et al.

A/N: This is my first Supernatural Fanfiction so please be kind! This story starts at 1012, does a nice loop-de-loop then starts drifting to the left...yeah.

Prologue

"Can you turn me back?" Tina ask.

"The hex bag ended up in flames," Dean says. Remorse is clear to see in the way he looks down at her. "I'm so sorry Tina."

Sam can see that Dean is struggling and he doesn't need this guilt too. Sam has to say something to fix this. "We may be able to reverse engineer the spell though," and his mind is racing through lists of contacts, maybe some old hunter has run into this kind of thing before; nothing is new in the supernatural world.

"Or maybe you don't," Tina says and its like the slow rise of the sun after an endless night. "I got three ex-husbands, 50 grand in debt, and not much else. I was... kind of a crappy adult. Maybe I'll do better this time around. Get out of town. Get a fresh start. This is my second chance. Everybody wants a second chance right?"

It's barely there for a split second and if Sam wasn't looking he would have missed it; the minute crumbling of Dean's face before he reigns it in with that famous Winchester's-don't-show-weakness skill. But Sam knows. Dean's crushed because this was supposed to be his second chance. A chance to have a childhood, to grow up without having to be a parent to a younger sibling, who knows, maybe even go to college. A chance to be free of the Mark.

With a brave yet carefully blank face Dean ask, " You sure you're going to be alright?"

"Like I told you I always am," Tina says and Dean can see it's the first time she really truly believes it when she says it. Her face is young and bright like the first rays of dawn, eyes shining bright with her future.

A second chance

A second chance

'Everybody wants a second chance right?' Tina's word resonates around Sam's head like an echo. Hits right at the heart like a punch to the solar plexus. It hits home because it's true. Dean deserves a second chance. If anyone does it's him. They've been through hell and back, literally. They fought off the apocalypse, angels, demons, death, hell everything. When is life going to give then a break, some reprieve against this seemingly endless onslaught. If not for Sam, because heaven knows he's been tainted from the age of 6 months and destined to be evil from even before that. But Dean is good, pure and selfless. The only true good person Sam's ever known. He's noble. Always ready to pull a Dean Winchester.

They're standing at the bus station after giving Tina all the money they had between them, a cool $712.00, sending her off to her brand new life and Sam can't help but resent her a little.

"I wanted you back" Sam confess after Tina leaves. He looks Dean in the eye trying to let him know that its ok, that everythings going to be alright. He still can't help but resent himself a little for saying that, but Sam's has always been selfish, especially when it came to Dean. "As for the rest of it... the mark, everything else. We'll figure it out, we always do."

Except they don't, not when it comes to saving Dean. When Sam weighs his track record for saving Dean, he finds it wanting. When Dean's heart was failing, it was another hunter that told Sam about the faith healer, and though Dean was fixed at the end of that mess, the guilt of an innocent life weighed heavily on Dean's shoulders and gnawed at his self-esteem. When Dean was living out his last year in what was clearly a desperate cry for help before his trip to hell, Sam swore to Dean that he would save him; he promised... and when that year was up, Dean screamed as the pack of Hell hounds tore him apart right in front of Sam. He will never, for as long as he lives forget those screams; the gargles of choked cries and piercing wails of agony turned into nightmares morphing the sounds into the words "loser, liar, failure!" Every night they kept him awake for months, untill Dean miraculously showed up at his door step. Nothing hurt as much as telling Dean that he wasn't the one that saved him from hell, and even though Dean tried to hide it, his eyes couldn't hide the raw hurt and disappointment he felt at Sam's failure to fulfill his promise to save him. And the biggest stain of them all, purgatory; the less said the better; he never even tried, and Dean may not ever truly forgive him for it. Now this, the Mark. Sam doesn't know what hurts more, the fact that he's failing once again at protecting Dean and saving him, or the fact that Dean has no faith that Sam will come through for him. He's half hearted in this fight and believes that it's beyond Sam's ability to help him. Sam's abhorrent of his own perceived incompetence...

Not this time. Sam's going to save Dean and he's going to do it alone.

"Maybe I'll do better this time around"

"A second chance"